SOME THINGS ARE CULTURE and SOME ARE COMPLETE ACCIDENTS!

The other day I’m in language class and my teacher is introducing me to some new verbs. We get to the verb, “saltaade”, which means “to refuse”. My teacher says the word, and then I look it up in my dictionary, and say, “to refuse”. My teacher then repeats what I said and flaps one of his arms like a chicken. I’ve never seen that before so I try my hardest to figure out what it means. My teacher would make the motion and then say “to refuse,” then do it again and say “saltaade”. He did that like twice and in the middle of one of the times, he turned his head to the side and blew a snot rocket (snot rocket - to blow your nose without a tissue). In my mind I just thought that blowing a snot rocket was another African way of saying, “I don’t want it” I’d never seen the flapping one arm thingy so I didn’t think the snot rocket would be that different. Anyways, I figured out what I wanted and we went on forward to some more verbs, or should I say “dandols”. About 30 minutes later my teacher blew another snot rocket and thinking about his earlier lesson I said, “saltaade”. My teacher then says “I’m sorry” and gets up and walks about 10 ft away while continuing to blow his nose. Now I can tell he thinks that I don’t like it when he does that. If you know me, then you know that blowing a snot rocket does not bother me at all. It’s actually on my top ten list of things to do when I’m board.
Some people say you learn something new every day, and I’m also finding out that you learn something wrong every day. So….yeah, if you’re ever coming to West Africa, remember, blowing a snot rocket doesn’t mean that you refuse, it just means that you got buggers in your nose!
Quick side note, my teacher’s best friend, just became a believer. So over the next few months he will be in close contact with two Christians. Pray not only for the witness of the new believer, but for the witness that I will be on my teacher.