Kate's Friend, Joseph

Kate Caldwell

In the middle of 5th grade I met Joseph. He transferred to Powell Elementary in the middle of the year. Joseph had only lived in The United States for one year. Some of the other kids made fun of him because of his accent. He also didn't know English very well, he had spoken Swahili all of his life. This caused him to stumble over words, sometimes not knowing how to say what he wanted to say. I became his friend and helped him find the word he wanted to use. We would carry on conversations, which would involve speaking very slowly and a lot of explaining. By the end of the year his English had improved 110%.Joseph was on the school track team with me. Even when his English got pretty good, he still didn't understand jokes. Joseph got a kick out of to tell knock-knock jokes that sometimes got very annoying. He would tell me things about where he had lived in Africa.Our friendship helped both of us understand other cultures better.