How to Feign Interest in a Meeting Conducted in Arabic

Today I had a meeting that to me seemed something like this:

نحن بحاجة لمناقشة رواتب الذين يعملون في مركز للالتفصيل والخياطة. يجب أن يكون (Vous Comprenez) هناك سلفة من البنك لدفع لهم في الشهر المقبل، وهذه مشكلة. علينا أيضا(les jeunes filles) أن نتحدث عن كيفية استبدال المخرج الذي يتحرك إلى فرنسا في شهر آب.  ينبغي لنا أن نتحدث عن كيف لم يتم استيفاء أعضاء مجلس الإدارة مع عدد من (le remboursement)الزيارات الميدانية ممثلي الدورة وعلق بأن تبذل في(L'emploi et developpement durable) موقع ريفي. وبمجرد أن تغطي كل هذه المواضيع، ويمكننا  (merci) أن نذهب أكل نوع من مبلغ مجنون من لحم الضأن المشوي التي تم ذبحها أمام أعيننا. الحمد لله رب العالمين.

That is pretty confusing, right?  I thought so too.  The majority of the meeting was conducted in Arabic, though at least this time the member of ACEO I was with had the foresight to at least explain that these particular folks do not speak French well enough to take care of business matters.  So I sat for an hour and a half listening to Arabic.  I was able to pick out the french words and phrases that are artfully woven into Tunisian Arabic (it's reminiscent of Spanglish), and I can count to ten, say the words coffee, bread, water, cup, yummy, salad and sugar.  Unfortunately, those are things that do not come up often in a business meeting.  So much to my chagrin, no one asked for 5 cups of coffee, 4 loaves of bread and 6 yummy cups.  Alas I was lost and left to my own devices to figure out how to look engaged when I had about a 6% comprehension rate.  Here is a list I wrote down in my notebook during the meeting:

1. Listen for any clue words (like the 7 Arabic words I know or the French ones)

2. Learn more numbers

3. Nod and make eye contact intermittently

4. Take notes in notebook

5. Write my name backwards, then also write backwards, "Is this how Arabs feel?"

6. Laugh when other people laugh even though you may not have even a little clue what is funny

7. Listen for words that are repeated a lot

That is about as far as I got.  It both got me through the meeting, and made me look successfully engaged.  The language duality is interesting in Tunisia.  Amongst themselves, Tunisians generally speak Arabic unless I or another foreigner is around.  Those who speak French well tend to be either of a higher socio-economic status or well educated or employed in tourism.  This means that in the small towns, rural villages and poor suburbs where I will spend most of my time, the reliability of speaking French decreases drastically.  This is fine, it leads to a lot of gesturing, and trying to string together the vocab words I know into some coherent phrase: "good morning, coffee water bread all yummy, thank you, peace be on you.  500."  followed by a lot more gesturing.  Somehow in my micropolitics of development class, development management class, or really any development class at grad school, we didn't cover meetings in a foreign language that you don't speak.  I guess I should have assumed that this would be a given, but for whatever reason it never crossed my mind.

So after 90 minutes of Arabic, we all got up to leave, it was gestured to me that we would all go to eat together, I was sprayed with  A LOT of cologne by the director of the center without being  asked (they had been smoking inside) and suddenly we were out the door and on our way to dinner.  The director of the center for cutting and sewing and the teacher were taking us out to dinner as a thank you for paying them that month's salary.  I like that tradition.

We went to a restaurant called a "mishoui" which means a grill.  As we were looking for a table out on the patio, a man walked out of the restaurant with a little bitty squirrely lamb jostling around in his arms.  It was so cute with its little back face.  He took it to a concrete slab with a drain, faced it towards mecca, and with a flick of the wrist slit its cute little throat.  Our dinner was now dead.  And I now understood where the other lamb carcasses hanging from hooks had come from.  They proceeded to drain it of blood and skin it while we were served a delicious salad of roasted hot peppers, garlic, onions, tomatoes and olive oil (salad mishouia) with crusty bread.  They brought us a bottle of coke while the lamb was hacked up.  After our salad and about 30 minutes of waiting they brought us two heaping plates of lamb ribs as well as a plate with the kidneys, liver and heart.  It was the. best. lamb. ever.  It was lightly salted and grilled on a giant charcoal grill then served to us with lemon and parsley.  Amazing.  I tried the liver and kidneys but couldn't stomach the heart.  

We ate outside and I tried to communicate in my second language to people who don't speak my second language.  I am now more impressed by Helen Keller.  I did so much awkward gesturing and smiling and making the yummmmm noise.  I got my point across-I enjoyed myself and was grateful for a delicious meal.  

After dinner we drove the hour back to Sousse and I returned to my home.  The family I live with got a big laugh out of my recounting of the death of the lamb and the subsequent meal.  Sometimes I am just not entirely sure what is going on...