lost in translation

There's always something new to learn around here. Today, I headed over to A Ward to write notes in some charts and was greeted by the two teenage girls in beds eighteen and nineteen. They've both been here for a while; one has a mama who can't care for her on her own, and the other has no mama at all. (Or, at least, no mama that we can find at the moment. There's a note on the charge board saying that she's maybe in Ghana for the elections, but we're really not sure. We've decided to be her family until we can find her real one.)

They greeted me uproariously, shouting and giggling from their beds, smiles as wide as the sunrise. Afi-vi! Afi-vi! I shook my head, feigning a frown. No, not Afi-vi. Afi-gan! When they burst into absolutely uncontrollable laughter, I realized I'd probably made some sort of mistake.

Afi is my Mina name. In Togo, you're named after the day of the week you were born on, and since I'm a Friday-born girl, my name is Afi, just like somewhere around one-fourteenth of the population around here. The suffixes -vi and -gan refer to things that are small or large, respectively.

I thought I had it all figured out. They were making fun of my height, calling me Little Friday-born Girl. I was being clever by coming right back and telling them I was actually tall. What I couldn't understand was why it was all funny enough that they were about to pee their beds.

It got even worse a moment later, when one of the girls held out a sticker to me. I took it and saw a little mouse, hiding behind a chunk of cheese. Now thoroughly confused, I turned to the translator standing by, a smile on his face.

Why is she giving me a mouse? What does that have to do with anything? He explained to me that afi actually means mouse, which made no sense to me, since he then went on to explain that afi actually also means Friday-born girl. Who's confused with me here?

It took us a good while, but we finally got it all figured out.

You see, like all the other languages around here, Mina is tonal. The variations are subtle enough that my Yovo ears can only very rarely hear them; I rely on my translators to demonstrate the lilt of the words with hand motions. They've gotten used to waving their hands up and down, pointing to floor or ceiling as I try vainly to master the sounds.

The word afi, when it goes ever so slightly up at the end, refers to the day of the week when I was born. When there's an infinitesimal shift downwards, it turns me into a mouse. The girls hadn't been just calling me small; they were calling me a small mouse and feeling terribly clever about their little play on words. And when I replied that I was actually a big one, they just about lost it.

We spent the next few minutes cracking up while I scuttled around the ward, pretending to be an afi-gan. (All that was missing was the tail.)


My father would be so proud of me; I am a pun in an African tribal language.