That’s Kichwa, apparently, for “Information about …”

Rockland County is circulating fliers in the Kichwa language, along with English and Spanish, to spread the word about a local referral service called Information Rockland, or InfoRock.

Why Kichwa and what is this language? It is spoken by many Ecuadorian immigrants in Rockland who come from indigenous communities in the Andes. Spanish is their second language, and English a distant third, which has made it extraordinarily difficult for for the county’s health and social service personnel to work with the community. It took an anthropologist to sort this out for the county, after one Spanish-speaking physician had trouble communicating with her Ecuadorian patients. The anthropologist explained that these were indigenous people from the province of Cañar, and that they brought only limited Spanish.

Kichwa is an Ecuadorian variation of Kechwa, the family of languages spoken in parts of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and elsewhere, and dating back before the Inca empire. To make matters more complicated, Kechwa is also spelled Quechua (in Spanish) and Kechua (another indigenous spelling).

This flier is considered only a start. The county wants to find a liaison to help it communicate with the Kichwa speakers, but it’s been difficult to find someone who is equally fluent in English, Spanish and this particular variation of Kichwa. “We want to be able to reach this community. We just can’t reach them,” says Peggy Gordon, who works for the county’s social services department. Meanwhile, it’s not clear how many Kichwa speakers will be able to read this flier. Kichwa is often learned in spoken form at home, and when children go to school, they learn to read and write in Spanish.

InfoRock, by the way, can be reached at 845-364-2020 for information about local programs on health, counseling, and other matters. They don’t have a Kichwa speaker on staff, but they have access to a telephone translation service that does.