12/7/10
Firework season is here. The stores stared selling them from little one cent poppers to one dollar dynamite sticks. These should not be legal. All they do is explode, no sparks or colors or shooting. They are sold to kids of all ages who just put them everywhere and light them. Sometimes when I’m sitting in my room what sounds like a sonic boom will occur right outside, making me jump about six feet high. It’s the kind of explosion that where you can feel the sound waves, it hits you in a blast.
Work is slow here (non-existent). School is out until late January and I don’t feel like I really know the people, languages, and needs of the community well enough to undertake any major projects that involve co-operation. So now I’m just studying and practicing Spanish, meeting and hanging out with people and generally making myself a presence in peoples lives.
Yesterday I was walking by a house when I heard the familiar shout “Don Nacho!!!” I stopped to see who it was (someone I had met but forgot his name) and ended up helping him install a gate to his yard. This time was filled with the usual casual conversation, which I want to share with you so you get a feeling for how my conversations go.
Dude: (something completely indecipherable) phone for five dollars?
Me: What?
Dude: sell the phone for five dollars
Me: What phone?
Dude: FIVE dollars. To sell.
Me: My phone? Or whose?
Dude: Five dollars. The phone.
Me: What phone?
Dude: Oh OK. (turns back to his work)
Me: WTF happened?
While this is happening I am creating and weighing various possibilities as to what he might be saying. Does he want to buy my phone? Is he selling me a phone? Is he asking how much mine cost? Am I expected to now sell my phone?
This is a typical failed conversation. Most are better than this, but when these utter disasters of communication occur I am left completely baffled and have to wonder whose fault it was, if anyone’s. I thought that my Spanish is good enough to have this kind of basic dialogue, but the local dialect is full of letters and whole words left unpronounced, as well as slang that does not exist in any dictionary.
After that he invited me to have lunch with him, and I mentioned that I was going to go to town to get a haircut. He said that he cuts lots of peoples hair and I must let him do mine, because “I will make you so handsome that you will be the champion of a mountain of young girls. It will be a very cold two years in your bed if you don’t find a girlfriend.” Indeed an offer I could not refuse. Haircuts here are infamously terrible, I have seen some infamous mullets, bowl cuts, and ridiculous gel-jobs. I now am the proud owner of some kind of bowl cut gone wrong, with the back and sides really short and an area on top three times as long. I’m to ashamed to post a picture, so just use your imagination. The good news is there is no one here to laugh, everyone else thinks its standard issue. I won’t be leaving to see other volunteers much in the near future, so I can give my hair some time to heal.
There have been some hilarious attempts to set me up with local women. People seem confused when I point out such minor flaws as “she has three kids” “she’s pregnant” or “she’s 15”. They just give me a look like “so what?”
More later….