Knowledge and Power – My family wasn’t very book-smart, of course, nor worldly. An absence of media and cultural influences means they had never heard of Michael Jackson, the state of California, or the city of New York. They had heard the words “Bush” and “Hip-Hop” before but had to be reminded who and what these were. Another example: one of the (few) toys the 6 and 4 year-olds played with was a small toy kangaroo. I asked them and my dad if they knew what animal this was. They had no idea what it was called, nor had they ever heard of a place called Australia.
To my chagrin, I tried unsuccessfully to bring up some weightier topics, like equality between men and women and the value (or not) of education. I still can’t figure out if these topics just didn’t interest them or if they simply had no conceptual understanding of what I was getting at.
This cultural ignorance might soon change, seeing as how my family recently acquired an old black-and-white television. But maybe not. They watch the images on the screen but cannot understand any of the words, lacking both knowledge of the French language and classical Arabic, and the ability to read any and all subtitles. One time a fictional Christmas movie came on (in black-and-white), which focused on Santa Clause and his elves in the North Pole. Think for a second about the layers and layers of context needed for my host family to understand the premise of this movie. How do I begin to explain something like that?
The problem is that the women never go to school, and while Seehr had once been literate, he has mostly forgotten this skill in the absence of books, newspapers, and governmental tax forms. He enjoyed practicing reading with me, however; it was a nostalgic act for him, like an ex-baseball player putting on an old mitt. Although the 6 and 4 year-olds now go to a local madrassa (elementary school), there are still kinks to work out: they have books in French and Tamazigh, but not Arabic!
Without an Arabic version as a baseline, these books, designed to teach the kids how to read, are essentially turned into picture-books. An image of a beverage carton with the word lait (milk in French) on it, for example, was in my family’s opinion aseer (juice in Arabic). They refused to believe me when I told them I knew it was halib (milk in Arabic). This simple exercise reveals how truly powerful—and privileged—those with access to knowledge are.