My family's originally from Haiti
and I am the youngest out of 3 beautiful daughters.
I am also the first to be born in America.
Now, growing up, in kindergarten, you know,
I was the most curious, enthusiastic,
energetic kid you could ever meet.
And I was always asking questions and whenever
I got the answers to them, I always wanted
to share it with somebody, whether it
be my friends, my family, especially my mom.
However, sometimes that would be a bit
of a challenge because me and her
had a language barrier between us.
Now, of course she spoke the basics
of English and I spoke basics of Haitian Creole
but there were times where I wouldn't be able
to understand her and she would be
asking me to do something for her, I'd be like,
"What?
What are you saying?
I don't understand."
And if you have Caribbean parents,
you would understand that they get
irritated pretty quickly.
So, that resulted in me getting a butt whooping sometimes.
And, of course, so that led to my sisters
and my dad being the translators for us.
Of course, if one wasn't there then
the other one would translate.
However, sometimes, you know, my family's very busy
and if nobody was there, then sometimes
we would just walk past each other
in the hallway like it was a ghost town
and not say anything to each other at all.
And you could imagine how frustrating that is,
especially for a kid who's in kindergarten
because I just wanted to tell my mom everything,
like how I learned 2 plus 2 is 4 and not 8
and how I mixed red and blue which makes purple
and how I learned how to jump rope
because I'm telling you, I was the worst
jump roper known to mankind ever.
And so, that was so important for me
but because of the fact that I couldn't properly
communicate with her, it was so frustrating.
So, one day I decided to ask my sisters
and my dad to teach me Haitian Creole.
That didn't last very long.
Like I said I was very curious and I asked
way too many questions apparently
like "Why is the sky blue? and why does grass
"grow out the ground and not the walls?"
and why is my name pronounced "KAH-ti-ana"
in English but "Kah-ti-ANA" in Haitian Creole?
And, of course, you know, my sisters being busy
getting ready for college and my dad
just working a lot, they were like,
"Okay, child, you askin' too much."
And they didn't completely give up on me
if I had questions, of course they would answer
but I was basically left on my own.
So, my mom and my dad, like I said worked
long hours at work and whenever they came back
home they always needed help around the house.
And, so, me being the youngest,
I would have to help them out.
However that was frustrating for me
because that interfered with the time of me
teaching myself Haitian Creole.
So, what I would do is, I would lock
myself in the bathroom, pretend
like I had a stomach virus or something
and just keep practicing but they just kept
calling me so it didn't really work out all the time.
So, fast forwarding to January 1st,
it is also known as Haitian Independence Day
and it is tradition to drink Soup Joumou:
Pumpkin soup.
Now, me being the picky little American that I was,
I was like, "Ew, I don't want to eat that,
that looks nasty, yellow and thick, like get out of here."
And so I asked my mom to make me something else.
However, my siblings always ate in front of me
and were like, "Girl, you missin' out,
"like this tastes so good like look at
"all the meat in the soup, oh my gosh."
I was like, "Damn girl, we really try in
this house, like let's really try this."
When I had the soup for the first time,
I was like, "Damn girl, where you been all my life?
Tastes so good.
And I remember us sitting at the table
and it was set up as if we were like a
mafia mob family, you know like my dad
sitting on one side, the devious kids sitting
in the middle and the wife sitting at the other end.
And I remember it sometime during dinner,
my mom asked me in Haitian Creole, "es'ke manje a bon?"
"Is the food good?"
And for me in that specific moment
everything kind of stopped because
I was like, "I understood what she just said like,"
"I really understood what she just said."
And me not realizing that I was kind of
taking quite awhile to respond back to her,
my sisters were getting ready to say,
"Okay, so she said..."
I was like, "No, no, no, it's okay,
"I got it like I know what she said."
And so I gathered all that I was learning
and teaching myself in the little bathroom.
And I said, "Wi, manje a bon."
"Yes, the food is good."
And the table kind of got quiet like everybody's surprised
and you know, my mom, eyes are bulging
out of her head ready to pop out
but they're not going to fall out yet
cause she's really surprised that
I really responded to her.
Of course, I have a lisp and when I was younger
it was really really bad, so I kind of
mispronounce a couple of words
but she still understood what I said.
You know, in that time you expect your family to
support you but you know, no, my sisters
being the sisters that they were,
They said, "Oh, the fake Haitian know
how to speak Creole, oh!"
And so that like tore down my little confidence as a kid.
And however, that moment was
very inspirational for me
because that gave me a piece of hope
and also that showed me that I just broke
down a piece of the language barrier that's
stopping me and my mom from having a closer relationship.
And now that's showing me that I can now
take it a step further and continue
to teach myself and completely tear it down.
So, now, fast forwarding to today,
I am proud to say that I can speak
fluent Haitian Creole and my mom—
and my mom can speak fluent English
and the language barrier no longer exists between us
and we are as close as close could ever be
as a mother and daughter should.
Thank you.