Local Immigrants Confront the Power, Beauty of Words

Jampa Khando's name was written in ink across the bottom of the pages of the journal she left behind Thursday in the cafeteria at Montville High School.

The brightly colored book featured a scripture in the bottom left corner: Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

When the 16-year-old Tibetan student, who organized a celebration of her culture that featured Tibetan food, returned and retrieved the book, I asked her about the meaning of the words in those two verses. 

Although she chose the journal because of the design, not the Bible passage, she was happy to oblige. 

I asked because as a pastor I know that the precise meaning of a word in the Bible, including its origins in Hebrew or Greek, is crucial to the understanding and the impact of the truth of each verse. So much meaning and power is wound into these words that it provokes deep reflection, conviction and even action.

Even if English is not a barrier, people often struggle to express what is true love, for example. Even more so, then, for immigrants who arrive with little to no English and who must start with the vocabulary of a child. 

This provides deeper context to what we mean when we say that immigrants must overcome the language barrier when they arrive in the United States. They must overcome the initial inability to express the language that creates common ground, fosters mutual respect, and encourages friendship and fellowship. In short, an immigrant must learn to express his or her personality, their passions, their hopes, their dreams — a subject I am exploring in a film called “A Voice to be Heard.” If we’re not careful, we may think of an immigrant with limited English as just another face in the crowd and this ignorance creates another barrier — a social, human one. 

The words immigrants hear when they first arrive to the United States are more than just vocabulary. They add up to the overall message of this nation, telling newcomers who to become and who we are. I’ll never forget when one of the English as a Second Language teachers at Montville gave an impromptu history lesson on 9/11 to a Tibetan student who had never before heard about the tragedy. Slowly, the teacher repeated the word “terror,” and made a mock, scary face to get his point across. 

Jampa is worried about breaking the language barrier in its largest sense.

“I will never grow up to talk like English people,” she said, struggling for each word. And yet, Jampa, who is featured in the trailer to the film, has overcome so much already, beautifully expressing in an essay what the American Dream means to her. 

The Tibetan native, who left home for India in 2006 and then the United States in 2009, could not yet describe what faithfulness or goodness means as noted in the scripture on her journal. But she said love “means you can’t hate people.” Gentleness means, “you talk to people nicely.” Patience is what she hears her teachers ask of the students in her classes. Kindness is when “someone cries because they don’t have money, you give them money.”

I’d say, precisely. 

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My passion is to give immigrant students a voice and this film is an important tool in that endeavor. But this project needs your support. Go to www.voicetobeheard.org to find out how you can give a student like Jampa a voice to be heard.