Jolly J!

One summer day in Kremenchuk, I felt like having some ice cream so I hied off to the corner store.

I was getting two pre-wrapped cones of Ukrainian ice cream from the store’s freezer when my mobile phone beeped. It was my husband sending me a message. I tried to read the text message in a jiffy when all of a sudden the grocery owner grabbed the ice cream cones from my left hand and slammed them back into the freezer as she reprimanded me in Russian on machine-gun mode. She kept pointing at my mobile phone as she hurled angry words at me. Maybe she thought I was going to steal her ice cream and was calling my (non-existent) ‘partner in crime’ to prepare the get-away car parked somewhere nearby.

A young man, who was with his friends, spoke on my behalf. I think he told the grocer that I couldn’t speak Russian. And then I heard the magic words that brought relief to my heart, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked from afar. I responded: “Ja! Ja! Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch. Ich spreche Englisch auch. (Yes! Yes! I speak a little German. I also speak English.)

The young man then moved away from his friends, whose eyes were glued to what was happening, and swaggered towards my direction. It appeared that he wanted to make my acquiantance. I tried to remember all the German phrases I knew — you know, those you try to learn when planning to go to Germany as a tourist.

“Wie heissen Sie? (How are you called?)” he asked.

“Ich heisse Jay-Ann. Ich komme aus den Philippinen. (I come from the Philippines),” I answered.

Clearing his throat and trying to look cool, he said rather proudly, “Ich spreche Deutsch. Ich heisse English. (I speak German. I’m called English.)”

“Wie bitte? (Pardon me?)” I asked, a bit confused.

“Ich heisse Englisch (I’m called English),” he repeated, still looking as confident as ever.

I couldn’t believe my ears. There was clearly something linguistically awry, I thought.

“Also, Vielen Dank! Auf Wiedersehen. (Ok, thank you very much. Good-bye.),” I said clumsily.

Thinking that the young man might want to chat me up in (bad) German, I quickly summoned the still angry grocery owner to get the two cones of ice cream for me and paid for them. I then dashed towards the exit. And with one last look at the guy called ‘English,’ I waved good-bye and escaped on foot.

Confusing German conversations are not my thing. (Kremenchuk, Ukraine/July 2005)

“We would like to buy a dozen eggs, please,” I tell the Ukrainian shopkeeper with a smile.

No response from her.

So my husband says in simple, slow English, “Eggs. Do you have eggs here?”

Just a look of confusion from the shopkeeper.

To ease up the process of communication, the shopkeeper then starts pointing at various goods stacked on the shelves at random. Pointing at the bread section, she waits for our response. We shake our heads and say, “Nyet” (Russian for “no”). She points at the milk cartons. “Nyet,” we answer in unison. Looking hopeful, she then points at the meat products. “Nyet.” Lots of pointing and lots of “Nyets” transpire between us.

In desperation, my husband tries to communicate in German, and then French. No luck.

We then do the unthinkable: we flap both our arms wildly as if they were chicken wings and we match our outrageous flapping with loud chicken sounds. Our “performance” culminate in a pantomime showing me as a “mother hen” laying an egg. I then show to the shopkeeper the invisible egg, cupped in my hands. She turns red all over, suppressing a laugh.

A drunk customer, a middle-aged man, enters the store. He sees us stuck in this language barrier predicament and offers his help. He tells us he can speak a little English. We feel a little bit relieved, but part of us doubt his capacity to do an impromptu translation work in his drunken state. Just the same, we ask him to please tell the lady that we would like to take home some eggs.

Our self-assigned translator happily “translates” our order from English to Russian. The shopkeeper, who is still recovering from her fits of laughter, goes to the fridge to get an unopened bottle of water.

She shows it to us from afar. My husband exclaims, “Nyet! Nyet!” He sounds like a frustrated child on a brink of having a major tantrum.

I get my mini notepad and pen from my bag, and try to draw an egg. My husband praises me for my quick thinking. “Now this will work,” he says. I, too, feel that this is going to be the cutting-edge solution to our current linguistic problem.

I then show my grade school sketch to the lady. She nods her head, smiles, and insists in Russian that she has understood what we were trying to say. She finally hands the bottle of water to us over the glass counter. The man beside us seems pleased with his translation.

“She thought you drew a drop of water, not an egg,” my husband whispers to me. He then attempts to draw his own egg version, and presents it to the lady.

“Da, da (Yes, yes),” she replies.

Already tired from the lost-in-Russian-dubbing cinema experience we just had prior to the store visit, I let go of the struggle and admonish my husband to just buy the bottle of water. Not just one, but two. “Just to get it done and over with.”

On the way out, my husband remarks in total disbelief: “How can they not see that we’ve drawn an egg?”

“Beats me.” (Kiev, Ukraine/August 2005)