The line-up: where we come from and the languages we speak

By Rosien Herweijer

Florian and Nina, the facilitators, lead us through a series of games that help us to find out things about each other. We learn that in the group we speak Azeri, Armenian, Dutch, English, French, German, Georgian, Greek, Irish, Kurdish, Moldovan, Polish, Rumanian, Russian, Swedish, Spanish,  and  then I still may have missed one or two. So for the group,  all these languages, would this be an asset or obstacle? What do you think?

I think it is a bit of both.  We overcame the obstacle of all the different languages: by only using our hands and some made-up sign language the entire group of 34 people figured out a near perfect line-up of our birthdays without speaking a word in any language. Yet with all those languages we speak, we can reach out to many others if we work as a group.

And, if you carefully read the expectations, we also have to make sure that we help each other because English, the language that we share, is not as easy for everyone.