'Same-same'

We arrived at Hal Far to chaos, there have been high winds in Malta and a few of the tents have been blown down. Men are sleeping in the education center for the time being. We finally managed to move some tables around and found a place to teach. It was a tight squeeze.

After settling in, a rush of new students came in. More boats have landed and detention centers had to let some people out to make room for the new refugees. So, the camps have been filled past their max again. I had eight students today, 4 more than last week. They were all very beginners, we learned how to hold a pen and write the letters of the alphabet. Luckily, they all spoke the same language so they could translate for each other if they were confused. There is a phrase they use a lot, 'Same-same.' We have started to say it, usually during lecture or at school. It's one of those sayings that rubs off on everyone. The refugees use it for direct translations, words that are the same in Somalian and English, or for synonyms. Small, tiny, little...things like that.

We learned colors today, too. We went through red, yellow, blue, the basics. Then we came to gray, black, white, brown...a little harder. I said "black," pointed to the black crayon and the man pointed to his face. Then, he pointed to me and said "white." I didn't know what to do, I guess he was kind of right, those are common ways of using the words black and white, but I didn't want to reinforce the difference and whittle ourselves down to a Crayola crayon color. But then, he looked at me, pointed to the two crayons then to his face and to my face. He said, "Same-same." Yes. Same-same. He is right. I don't know how the other colors fared in the lesson---whether he knows the 'go' light is green or not, but we got to the point regardless. People are people.

Love,
Audrey