So I Guess We Both Were Right

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

organ called the stomach is much higher than the place I thought it was. What I referred to as my stomach was actually where my intestines seem to be located. The Haitian volunteer submitted a little as well and admitted that maybe the stomach is slightly lower than where he was pointing.

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