Foreign accents

A debris-strewn tsunami zone in Asia. Piles of mangled plastic and splintered bits of wood along the roads. Silence in the streets, a few empty lopsided buildings still standing. Months after the earthquake and the city-erasing waves, cleanup goes on.

In the dining room of a random mostly-empty hotel, local aid workers talk about the day’s schedule. Suddenly I’m aware of the jarringly incongruous sound of American English. Here? It’s not exactly tourist land—

I jump up and go towards the accents. Two teenagers blink at me. I introduce myself and ask the perennial American question: What brings you here? The girl recedes into the background; the brown-haired boy starts talking.

Talking, sort of. “So, we’re, uh, here, because, um, this is where, uh, we’re, like, setting up a charity…” He goes on for a while but conveys almost nothing. “So, like, there’s, um, a, well, we…” I strain to make any sense of the impenetrable mass of pointless words. Really, if American teenagers aren’t more articulate than this, I weep for the future.

“Because, uh, our sister, uh, was here, teaching English, and, like, you know, um, well, so, there was—” I grow truly irritated, can he not string together a single coherent sentence, what is wrong with him?

“And she was riding her bicycle when the tsunami came, and she, like, um, well, died.”