Something very funny happened with me recently that I wanted to share with you.
I come from California, which if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few years, has received a lot of attention for its “immigration crisis,” in addition to a plethora of other problems. I live in a city with a high population of migrant workers, and friends in my city make jokes consistently about “la migra,” or immigration police who have the power to send people out of the country. Though deportation and the constant threat of being labeled as illegal is a serious matter for my community back home, people make light of it consistently through humor. Which I love. Though I didn’t realize it, that fear of seeing my friends labeled in this way, though they didn't fit the bill, truly affected me and my worldview.
I got a taste of that in my new home this week…sort of. Let me explain.
I was walking with a friend who was visiting for the summer to get her phone line renewed for the month. We waited for an attendant to open up and when he did, we went quickly to avoid anyone else crowding the register waiting for their turn. He asked what we wanted in English, and she quickly explained in English what she wanted. He told us that if we wanted to increase data, which she had requested, we would have to do it a certain way as laid out by their company. When she told him that she didn’t want the extra bells and whistles that he told her that she needed, he asked for her passport, which she then provided. He looked at it, and said that if she wanted to data, the only way that she could avoid migration (the word he chose) was to put it in the bundle plan that he was offering my friend. And he continued to use the word migration. My thoughts raced:
Migration? Why does he keep using the word migration?
Does he mean immigration?
IS HE GOING TO CALL IMMIGRATION ON US? ALL WE WANT IS EXTRA DATA!
Is there something people have here against extra data?
Is my new country's version of la migra here kinder than in America?
I wonder if I can just grab the passport out of his hands and run.
Wait…I have done nothing wrong.
All we want is data.
Why does he keep using the word migration?
I don’t understand.
Immigration?
What does he want from us?
During this time, he continued to shake my friend’s passport emphatically and told her that if we wanted migration data without the bundle, he would have to call his boss.
Migration…
Migration…
Roaming…
Roaming.
Roaming data.
I had panicked for nothing. He was making sure that we knew we were paying for roaming data. This was made clear after he translated into the local language here.
He gave my friend back her passport, she paid for the data, and then we left, my heart still racing.
Lessons learned: English in my country has its own dialect, and my California English may not be universally understood (people tell me I speak “American,” not real English. My worldview colors how I see the world. Awareness of that is always good, and a closer to step to seeing the world in different ways.
I could share many more stories like this, but the point is becoming clearer and clearer: not everyone sees the world in the same way that I do. This affects everything I do. There is grace in abundance from our Father in the journey, and I am thankful for humorous moments along the way.