This summer has been a great one. At the volunteer house, we
had a few American volunteers stay, but actually even more Haitian volunteers
than American this year. Two of the Haitian volunteers have completed a few
years of medical school.
When I was learning Creole, the word “lestomak” was listed
in the dictionary for stomach. Makes sense. However, once I started practicing
and immersing myself, I learned that people called what I know as stomach “vant”.
They call what I know as chest “lestomak”. I just counted it off as a mistake.
The general population probably doesn’t know very much science and they are
misusing the term but it’s become part of the language so I learned to call
chest “lestomak” in Creole.
Ten years after first learning to speak Creole I was
relieved to hear one of these Haitian volunteers refer to the actual organ
stomach as “lestomak”. I told him that he was the first Haitian I had heard say
that as others use it to mean chest.
However, I was confused again when a few days later he said
that his stomach hurt and he pointed to his chest area. When I inquired, saying
that I thought he knew the true meaning of stomach, he said that he did. The
region he was pointing to is where the organ stomach is located. An American
volunteer and I pointed to where we knew our stomachs were: the belly region
around the belly button. He replied that we were pointing to our intestines. We
laughed and teased him. But oh too soon.
I ran and got my son’s basic science book that covers the
different systems and turned to the digestive system. It turns out that the
But I was shocked! Ten years of just shrugging off the
Creole misuse of the word stomach to come and realize that Americans actually
aren’t correct either! So this was just another reminder to always be slow to
judge and critique.
“Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach
will be judged more strictly.” - James 3:1
