Coda Connections: A Meeting of Like-Minded Souls
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" - C.S. Lewis
In the vast cosmos of life, there are moments when connections are forged not by proximity or circumstance, but by the simple shared threads of our experiences. Such was the case when I recently had the pleasure of meeting Billa, a fellow Coda from Germany, and her darling husband, Andreas. Showing the team at Wangsel how the bond of Codas extends beyond borders.
Now, I was going to start this post with the line ‘An Aussie and a German walk into a bar in Bhutan…’, but truth be told, Billa was visiting Bhutan as a tourist, and I promise you the village of Drukgyel, where the Wangsel Institute for the Deaf is located, is not on any tourist map.
So how did an Aussie and a German meet in Bhutan? Had these Codas ever met before? Nope. Do they share the same language? Nope. One's all about German Sign Language, while the other knows Auslan— and neither has a decent grasp of Bhutanese Sign Language.
The circumstances of our meeting were serendipitous, orchestrated in part by the global network of Codas. Billa, reaching out through the International Coda community, was connected with me, an Australian, by Cedar from the USA. Crazy, huh? It's moments like these that reaffirm to me the power of a shared identity—it can transcend borders and languages and introduce you to a friend you haven’t met yet.
How can this happen? Well, there is a unique solidarity among Codas, grounded in the understanding that, despite our diverse backgrounds, we share a common bond—#MotherFatherDeaf. (If you want to read more about this, check out my earlier blog from 2019 when I attended Coda Love in Paris.)
Now, Billa and I had been chatting via WhatsApp using Google Translate before she arrived. The messages were inevitably brief, limited by language barriers. Yet when she walked into the Research room at Wangsel, it was as if an old friend had walked back into my life. Without knowing each other, we hugged like old friends—it was as if we had been waiting for this moment for years.
And that spoken language barrier I mentioned… well, it went out the window as soon as our hands and eyes took over – they spoke more than words ever could, bridging the divide between our different cultures and languages.
The conversation flowed, and then suddenly we realized Andreas, Billa's patient and long-suffering partner, had gone unnoticed in the room as he was belatedly introduced to everyone. Thanks, Andreas, for being such a great sport about it. This is a scenario familiar to many Codas, where our interactions are so enveloping that others fade into the background.
Billa and Andreas's decision to prioritize a visit to the Wangsel Institute for the Deaf amidst their Bhutan holiday speaks volumes about the enduring connection Codas feel to the Deaf community. It's a sentiment I've experienced firsthand in my own travels, where encounters with deaf individuals have enriched my understanding of sign language and deaf culture in that country.
As a volunteer in a foreign land, the warmth and familiarity of meeting a fellow Coda reminded me that friendship knows no bounds. Which brings me back to the beginning with ‘shared threads of our experiences’ what better representation of that than the ‘Travelling Coda Quilt’ a physical embodiement that, no matter where life takes us, we are never truly alone—for in the embrace of kindred spirits, we find connections which become the threads that bind us together, weaving a fabric of friendship and understanding that knows no bounds.
Yep, that's the Coda life for you... 🤟"
