Living in another language is ripe with opportunity to embarrass oneself linguistically. Like the time my second day in Bolivia when I was talking to the Habitat national team for Bolivia and I highly recommended that they maintain frequent massages to stay in close contact with volunteers and donors. The group of about 15 people stared at me, surprised, until a few moments later one woman said, “Senorita Naomi, do you mean messages perhaps instead of massages?” “Um, yes, exactly.”
Yesterday the fathers of the families, Oscar (the architect), and I began the hard work of 
“replanteos” which entails measuring all the lots for the first 10 families, nailing stakes in the ground for the blueprints of their houses and chalking the outlines of the houses. We don’t have any sophisticated tools, like say a square, to measure right angles, so everything is done with fishing wire and using triangles from measuring tape to confirm the angles. It’s tedious and involves hours of crouching at stakes holding fishing wire tight at a specific spot in order to confirm the lines.
During the first few houses in the morning, we were covered with mosquitoes. I had around 40 bites by lunchtime, while wearing full Deet repellant. When we stopped to eat, I wasn’t surprised when the conversation turned to complain about the mosquitoes. I was however a little surprised that they kept calling them “bitches”. For a group of people whose English is limited to “hello” and “how are you” and who are generally gentle people, the choice of a cuss word to round out their English vocabulary struck me as odd. But when in Rome…
Before we got back to work, I offered up my repellant to the group. They looked at the little bottle, and I cheerfully said “It’s for the bitche
s!” The looked at me perplexed, so I repeated “bitches” multiple times and pointed to my bites. “Oooh,” corrected Oscar, “the bichos.” Bichos are in fact “bugs”. It seems my Bolivian group wasn’t cussing at the mosquitoes all morning as I had thought. But in my mind, trust me, they are bitches!
Despite the adventures with insects, the replanteos are going well. We have finished 7 and should complete the remaining 3 tomorrow. Also, quite exciting, we will break ground on two of the houses tomorrow and 2 more Friday. I also made an important strategic alliance this afternoon. After 2 days of being parched in the sun, I walked the 2 miles after work to the nearest shack where they sell drinks and negotiated with the 6 year old to deliver beverages twice a day for the bargain price of 2 bolivianos (25 cents) per delivery. We were mutually thrilled with the outcome, my best win-win in Bolivia to date!
Finally, it seems my adventures in Spanish radio aren’t finished yet, 2 more interviews to come Friday morning. Another good opportunity to embarrass myself linguistically. I’ll keep you posted.
If you want to see more pictures from the replanteos, CLICK HERE!
Saludos from Villamontes, with besos and bichos,
naomi
Those were very funny stories! Glad to see the posts back!
Aditya
Posted by: Aditya | August 09, 2007 at 12:00 AM