Peace Corps training is winding to an end here in Comoros, and I am getting ready to head to my village and set up my house and classroom and prepare to be an English teacher for the next two years.

I visited my village last week for the first time and found the smallest and most determined school I’ve ever encountered. The school consists of five rooms. The walls are made of palm fronds woven together, the floor is hard-packed dirt and the roof is constructed of tin sheets.

The village, Harembo, collaborated on the project two years ago after the government denied them funding for a school. They wanted education for their children, and they found a way to make it happen. Nearly 300 children fill those five classrooms, and they are only there because of how important education is to their community.

Before coming to Comoros, many people asked me what I would be doing here and then questioned the need for English. Not many understood why it could be important for people half way around the world in these little islands to speak a nonlocal language. This week, the answer to that question really hit home for me.

Comoros is made up of three islands, and each island speaks a different language. Though they are all similar to Swahili, these exact languages are not spoken anywhere else in the world. This means that before even being able to explore the idea of opportunities outside of these islands, Comorian people need to first learn a different language.

Many people here do speak several languages. Usually one or two of the local island language, maybe Arabic and quite a bit of French, since the islands were colonized by France until the 1970s.

So, what changes for someone who is only able to speak the local languages? They won’t have access to higher education other than the single university offered here, they can’t work outside of Comoros, traveling anywhere will be extremely difficult, even health care needs beyond what is available in country will be made difficult.

Beyond just this, speaking only the local language restricts even the information that is available in written form. The local dialects are not written languages, meaning if one wants to learn through reading, they can’t do it without being literate in another language. So if nothing else, giving the people here the opportunity to expand their world through the simple act of reading seems good enough reason to be here teaching English.

I worked with local students for the first time this week. The other Peace Corps volunteers and I decided to start an English club in our training village and offer free weekly lessons to the community. We had more than 100 students show up for the first lesson. During the lesson we asked why they wanted to learn English so we could get a better idea of what we should focus on for their lessons.

Nearly every student answered that they wanted to learn English because it is an international language. The more languages you speak, the more opportunities become available. Knowing more languages opens worlds that would otherwise be closed to you.

In America, many of our students take language as an elective or study it for fun. Here, it’s what you have to do if you want a life that reaches outside of these islands.

Navigating this country without speaking the language has been an eye-opening and difficult experience. It has put into perspective every encounter in America I’ve had with someone who does not speak English. Some people are willing to go to great lengths to try and communicate with me, using charades, a mix of the little bits of other languages we both might happen to know, a touch of English they’ve learned, and lots of hand gestures to get their point across. I’m always grateful for these people.

You can see by their effort how important it is to them for me to understand what they are trying to communicate, and it makes me want to try even harder to understand what they are telling me. Others might simply keep repeating what they said, sometimes getting louder with each repeat, thinking if I didn’t know the words the first time around, surely I’ll get it by the third or fourth time. I never do.

The next time you encounter someone who does not speak your language, do not try this tactic. Both parties will end up frustrated and no one will understand the other.

There are many rewarding moments when it comes to language though. Since most days feel like one long language lesson, I spend most of the time feeling like I don’t know what’s going on and guessing at words, hoping I’ve got it right. But once in a while, someone will say something to me and I find that I completely understand and am able to answer and they understand me. Before I know it, I’ve had a whole conversation in Shinswani. Those moments are magical. Those moments make all the work of learning a new language worth it. Those moments make me want to study and learn even more. These are the moments I hope I will be able to bring to my students with English.

Editor’s note: Sarah McQueen, former associate editor for the Portage County Gazette and University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point graduate, recently embarked on a two-year journey with the Peace Corps to the Comoros, a small Arabic-speaking archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the south-east coast of Africa, to the east of Mozambique and northwest of Madagascar. She plans to write a regular column journaling her experiences abroad. The views in the column do not represent any reflected by the Peace Corps.