The International Language

 

 

  In the American bunkering world, foreign mariners can be separated (wrongly) into three ethnic groups. Filipinos, Russians and Indians.

 

  Doesn’t matter what you are, you’re going in one of those groups. I guess Americans don't get in there, but I mean except for areas around Norfolk and San Diego, with their naval fleets, we see American ships like once a year, so our own people can be ignored here.

 

  Yeah, Filipinos, Russians and Indians.

 

 Norwegian? Russian.

 Ukrainian? Russian (Boy isn’t that a fun one, when some dipshit deckhand calls them that).

 Danish? Russian.

French? Russian. (CMA CGM, a French company, usually has a French chief engineer).

 

 Everyone else is a Filipino or an Indian.

 

  For the most part this is not a big problem. The Chinese ships don’t have anyone aboard who speaks English, so it’s not like they get insulted. One Chinese company hired a Chinese-American, a pharmacist in fact, to handle bunkering operations on their ships in NY, what with his language skills, high IQ and charm. Great guy. He is famous and beloved, because at the beginning of every bunker operation he gives the tankermen a box of cookies. Obviously he is treasured and valued, receiving for about $4 worth of cookies the admiration, cooperation and exquisite politeness than only a group of men deprived of many of life’s little joys available to their peers would give a man who gives them cookies when he doesn’t have to.

 

 

  last week I had an attentive young Ordianary Seaman aboard, a tugboater who has just gotten out of training, there to be the tug captain’s eyes and ears and talk us alongside the ship. Whoever trained the kid did it well, as he was one of the ones who ‘gets it’ from the get go- listening more and talking less, but aware that his job is to tell the captain everything that the captain needs to know that distance and parallax error makes hard to see, all the while incorporating my advice and observations while using his own understanding to get us in position for bunkering.

 

  As the kid was obviously interested and willing to learn, I got to talk to him along the way about the value of politeness, and respect and cooperation. He laughed but listened when I talked about being nice to the ship’s deck gang when they were taking our lines, knowing that if we piss them off enough, they’ll try to throw something at our heads, which is not difficult to do when you’re 40 feet up and almost directly overhead.

 

  I was also able to share a warning about cultural sensitivity- not calling every white guy a Russian when he might not be, and when he might be worried that his family is being killed by Russians back home, for example, or making jokes about Filipinos’ good yet heavily accented English when you only speak one fucking language yourself.

 

  I had actually met the kid the day before, when I bunkered one of the Orange Juice tankers that run between here and Brazil. I was talking with the Russ...er Eastern European engineer, and we switched into Portuguese, as we both learned it for the same reason- to talk to good-looking Brazilian women. Me, with Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife, and the engineer with the local girls in Santos and Santa Catarina.

  Me, never passing up an opportunity to be both crude and humorous, on the kid’s asking me: What he hell langauge is that? Spanish? How’d you learn Spanish so good?”

  Me: “No, Portuguese. Ya’ gotta speak it if you wanna bang a Brazilian girl. This ship is homeported in Brazil.”

  The kid: “Oh, OK. Did you work for these guys before?”

  Me: “Naw, Brazil came to me. I met my wife here.” Light dawned on the kid then, as to why a random middle aged and very white tankerman could rattle away 12 to the dozen talking foreign.

  The engineer (Ukranian, turns out), smiling:” Yas, is good spik Porchuguses. . The girls is very nice, very pretty!”

            I mean, I'm living proof that even the laziest American can pick up a 2nd language if properly motivated.