Chepe y Chui y Chincha y Chita y Chana

I love nicknames here.  To my (gringa) ear they have even less relation to the original name than is usual in English.  For example: the nickname for José is Chepe (or Chepito); Jesus is Chui (sounds to the gringa like Chewy); Geovany is Chincha; Felicita is Chita, and I was delighted to learn that Susana is Chana.  You'd notice a preference for the "ch" sound - and somehow that makes sense to me, all those "ch" names sound friendly.  Of course there are nicknames like Rosy and Mari, and if some of the popular English-sounding names, like Marvin and Nelson and Wilson have standard nicknames, I haven't heard them yet.   I'm tempted to try Charvin or Chelson, but that's probably wishful thinking. 

A source of comedy indeed

During our surgical mission, I spent time in the afternoons with our volunteers from San Rafael Cedros, Yanci and Victoria (in the photo with Iris Alas, our Cedros coordinator). Yanci and Victoria were gigglers, and they found my Spanish pretty hilarious from time to time (as it is from time to time). So I tried to explain to them that one of my goals was to be a source of comedy for Salvadorans - only instead of saying that I wanted to be a fuente de comedia, I heard myself saying that I wanted to be a fuente de comida, a source of food. And, strangely enough, they thought that was really pretty funny.

Onward to further adventures in mangling the beautiful Spanish language!

Ojala que llueve

¡Ojalá que llueve! - if only it would rain! That's how we're all feeling now at the end of the dry season as it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, with no rains to provide a bit of divine air-conditioning. The water around is coming out of our bodies instead: it's hard to drink enough to replenish what I'm sweating out. I'll confess that these temperatures have made it really pleasant to get into the project car (air-conditioned) and drive to the city to make those last-minute preparations for our surgery group, arriving on Saturday for a week of cataract surgeries at the almost-new and very welcoming Hospital Nacional de Cojutepeque. That's the national hospital for Cuscatlán, the departamento we live in.

¡Ojalá que llueve! I love this phrase because it recalls the time, centuries ago, when Spain was a Moslem country. Ojalá was a petition to God, O Allah, and is one of many Arabic words that are inextricably woven into the Spanish language. I'd also want to say tonight "¡Ojalá que todo vaya bien con nuestra misión!" - may all go well with our mission, with the group and their work next week for the people of Cuscatlán.

Novel without End

About a year and a half ago, I bought a copy en español of Ken Follett's World without End, or in this case Un Mundo Sin Fin. All 1178 pages of it.....and I don't read very fast in Spanish. I dithered along with it for a year and more, got to about page 300, and didn't have much energy to continue. Then Sister Kristin Funari came on a Christmas visit, and she spent every possible moment reading the English version of World without End. I decided that if she was having that much fun with it, I owed it to myself to persevere through the remaining 878 pages.

And now, three months later, I have actually read page 1178, the novel without end has ended, and I feel very pleased to have arrived there. I am also reminding myself that the next book I pick up in Spanish could well be something a little, er, shorter....say 250 pages, max? But Ken Follett is always fun, and I now have a vocabulary that includes some unusual architectural terms - who knows when I can ever use it?

Tomorrow I fly back to Seattle for three weeks of combined meetings, vacation, family time and friend time - at least I won't need to carry a three-pound book along!

Satisfactions

Today was full of satisfactions. First thing in the morning, last thing in the afternoon, I helped some of my favorite scholars get ready: Walther needed some extra cash for lab and materials fees, as he continues his 5-year program toward an engineering degree. Then, in the afternoon, I helped Rosita and her girls, Lupita and Edith, get backpacks and notebooks and colored pencils - they're in 4th and 5th grade.

In between those happy moments, I had the satisfaction of completely understanding a couple of relatively complicated phone calls from strangers - I must really be picking up my level of Spanish, though sometimes it seems as if I'll never master it - finding two challenging locations in the city, and picking up medications and eyeglasses for our clinics. Then I came home and made a stir-fry with roasted red pepper sauce, cooking to my pleasure without a recipe - and it turned out well.

None of this solves the deeper problems of the world or the terrible crises of El Salvador, crises of poverty and crime that I wrote about earlier this week. But it's good to have a day of minor satisfactions. Those, too, are real.

Un año y medio

A year and a half - that's exactly how long I've been living in El Salvador. Good time for an assessment. When I came here at the end of December, 2008, I thought I'd be fluent in Spanish at the end of a year. Alas, I still get the verb forms mixed up, I can misunderstand what someone's trying to tell me, and I'm sometimes misunderstood. I'm still a learner of this beautiful language, and the learning happens more slowly than I wish it did. I can and do carry on conversations, handle business, and even write formal letters in Spanish: I just wish it was elegant Spanish. Helps to remember that I don't expect immigrants to the United States to be fluent in English after a year and half!

On the other hand: I can zip around Suchitoto, San Salvador, and all the areas in between with ease. I know the locations of hospitals, government centers, historical sites, shopping centers, crafts markets, villages; I can do business with a variety of government authorities without sweating any more than is natural in this climate. I know all the thousand and one steps necessary to set up our mission clinics.

Best of all, I have friends here, people I care about who care about me, friends who come to dinner and invite me to their homes, friends who can give me good advice about how to live wisely here. I even have a thriving godson. And always, I'm aware of the community of my Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, present here in the house through Margaret Jane and present in prayer and mail and e-mail messages. I'm sustained by the PeaceHealth community, by Kathy Garcia and our grand volunteers. And I'm sustained by the work, as worth the while as anything I've ever done, of connecting our PeaceHealth and CSJP volunteers with the Salvadoran people that I have come to love.

And the Spanish....well it gets a little better daily. And slowly. Primero Dios.

A rose, by any other name

You discover what's in a name and how complicated names can be when you're looking for a somewhat obscure thing in a language not your own. The other day I was searching for steel wool, something I've used for this and that so many times. I knew better than to translate "steel" and add "wool" - instead I looked it up in two of my English/Spanish dictionaries, and discovered that it's called estropajo de acero which sounded fine. Except that no one in Freund or Vidri, the two largest hardware stores had heard of estropajo de acero. Then I tried to describe it, and talked about a metal sponge, una esponja metálica, and that didn't help either. It also didn't help that my planned use - to discourage rats from colonizing a particular dark corner of the house - got the salesmen talking poisons and traps. I roamed up and down the aisles, trying to spot a little bag of the familiar stuff, and couldn't. Maybe it's never been imported to El Salvador? But that hardly seems likely. Next time I go in, I'm going to take this picture, because a picture is definitely worth 1,000 words. And if I discover what it's called in El Salvador, I'll let you know.

Fufurufo and other wonderful Salvadoran words

Fufurufo (or fufurufa if you're describing a woman) is a Salvadoran word that should be widely adopted, because it so perfectly fits. Think for a minute what fufurufo sounds like - that's right, fancy, wearing-four-inch-heels-and-a-cocktail-dress-to-the-supermarket fancy, a little too fluffy and a little too much and a little too delighted with yourself fancy.

This and other splendid Salvadoran words appear on a T-shirt I found in La Palma, and Pat and I have been working our way through it with Martha's help. Puchica I already knew as an all purpose exclamation, something in between "good heavens" and "I'll be damned." But chucho for a dog was new, as was patachucho, which is how you describe a guy who's out at the bars and hot spots when he should be home ("out catting around"?). Hediondo means stinky, and peche is the word for the last child in the family - the last one on the breast (breast is el pecho, and yes, it makes no sense that this word is masculine, but there it is).

Two of my favorite Salvadoran words don't appear on this shirt, probably because they're not at all uniquely Salvadoran, but they have a special flavor here. Cabal means "honest" or "exact" or "complete" according to my dictionary, but here it's used the way we use "right on" or "great!" in English. It's a beautiful word with a good full sound that makes a splendid exclamation point: ¡Cabal! And va, which means "it goes" is an all-purpose response here, meaning "OK," or "good" or "yes."

I'm a little hesitant to write about Salvadoran Spanish when I'm still so far from fluency - it's so easy to get it wrong and sound like a fake know-it-all, you know, fufurufa. If the word fits, use it!

The students

This is Crisseyda, my computer student and Spanish teacher. She's 11 and lives just down the street in Suchitoto, and she loves learning how to use a computer - in her school, there aren't very many computers and each student just gets a few minutes on one once in a while. So Crisseyda and I have explored the basics - turning the computer on and off, opening a program, writing a few sentences in Word. Right now Crisseyda's learning touch typing (OK, keyboarding, I learned in another era) from a cheerful program, the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor. It's all been fun to experience with her, and our conversation is very good for my Spanish. We're acquiring a useful vocabulary of computer words in both languages. For me, it's good to be a teacher again - and a learner always.

Farewell to Antigua

Tomorrow I head back to El Salvador, taking with me many fond memories of Antigua and of the maddening, frustrating, hilarious process of learning another language as an adult (children, bless their hearts, have no trouble with this at all). I hope I emerge more comprehensible, though I am sure I will continue to be a source of comedy to my Latino/a friends.

I was happily distracted from the subjuntive and its many complications by the fourth Corpus Christi celebration this month. The first, on the actual day reserved for Corpus Christi, the feast celebrating the gift of the Eucharist, took place in the Cathedral, and was followed by a grand procession. But why have only one procession when you can have several? Each of the major churches of Antigua took turns with their own Corpus Christi celebration and procession on the following Sundays - first the Escuela de Cristo, then La Merced, and finally, on Sunday, San Francisco El Grande, the church closest to the Molina's house. Before Sunday's celebration Los Gigantes - giant figures mounted on tripods, see the first photo above, danced in the streets where Sunday's procession takes place. The giants dance with the aid of strong men and - I don't know why though I asked - they are two couples, one clearly European and the oher clearly African. Then on Sunday the procession emerged from the church, complete with incense and firecrackers, and made its slow way through the streets of the neighborhood. Doña Thelma has bought pine needles for the passage of the Corpus - they made the entrance to the house smell wonderful all week - and the family rushed out to place them in the street just before the procession arrived. Then the padre carrying the cross and his canopy passed over the pine needles, and five minutes later the street sweepers were cleaning up, collecting the pine needles and putting them in the dump truck (see last photo). So those pine needles were out in the street for no more than 15 minutes. The people of Antigua know how to celebrate, and how to clean up afterwards.

Looking at the volcano

I'd recommend to anyone this way to learn a language: four hours a day one-to-one with an experienced teacher. It's a joy to be able to take subjects at my own pace, rather than being part of a class, and it's especially a joy to get to ask Rosa Maria, aka Rosita, some of the millions of questions I have about life in Centroamerica.

We take our daily four hours on the rooftop of the school, looking out at the hills and volcanoes that surround Antigua (there we are at a favorite table). I am constantly distracted by the Volcan de Fuego, the Fire Volcano, that belches out puffs of ash and smoke pretty frequently, but doesn't seem to worry anyone in Antigua (in part, no doubt, because anything that comes out of that volcano heads in a direction away from Antigua). I've been trying to get a good photo of the volcano at work, a challenge because this is the rainy season and the clouds cover it early in the mornings. But today was my day: the sky was clear and the volcano was puffing away and you can see what a fine contribution it makes to my day and my learning.

picops and hoosegows

Wonderfully funny things happen when words move from one language to another. I shared one of my favorites, the western U.S. word hoosegow with my teacher Rosa Maria yesterday. She looked at it in puzzlement, and I explained that it was a transliteration into English of juzgado, the Spanish word for a court, though in the West, the jail was the hoosegow, not the court.

I loved finding the word picop in an excellent book I'm reading in Spanish about the murder of Bishop Gerardi, subsequent investigations and the court case (in English, it's The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman). A picop, in case you didn't sound it out, is known as a pickup in the U.S.

Hoosegows and picops - a delightful change from wrestling with the subjunctive and stem-changing verbs.

Español

My Spanish is slowly - but surely - improving. Yesterday, I got out my iPod and listened to a broadcast of BBC's Mundo - a daily Spanish news roundup. When I was last listening to Mundo, back in Bellevue in December, I'd get the general drift of a news story, but miss all the details. This time I understood every word and thought the announcer and the various reporters were really speaking quite slowly - as I'm sure they were.

I'm understanding the radio here, and getting the gist of overheard conversations, and enjoying talking with Thelma and her family at mealtimes. The verbs still get crossed on my tongue, but at least I'm usually aware of that.

On the other hand, there are moments in Spanish - as in English, as in any language - that feel a bit to the learner like a trap deliberately set for fools to fall into. I've long known that most Spanish nouns that end in -ma look like feminine nouns, but are, in fact, masculine: el mapa (the map) or el trauma. Imagine my dismay at discovering that el arma (the armament) is, instead, a feminine noun with which you use the masculine article el. El arma perfecta you would need to say, or las armas vendidas. Alas!

The really important thing

The really important thing that happened on June 1st in El Salvador - and that I didn't blog about because I ran out of time - was the inauguration of President Mauricio Funes, the first President from the left-wing FMLN. This is also, I believe, the first peaceful and democratic transition of government from one party to an opposing one in El Salvador's history. A wonderful and memorable day!

At the start of the day, Funes and his wife went to the crypt of the Cathedral to pray at Monseñor Romero's tomb, and to pledge themselves to carry on his preferential option for the poor - a moment of deep resonance throughout El Salvador.

Marta and I watched it all on television from Suchitoto - an event filled with pomp and ceremony, and with deep meaning. I rejoiced in Hillary Clinton's presence - wearing a red pantsuit, the FMLN color - as a sign of U.S. Government support for this democratic transition and for Funes. And we rejoiced in Funes' inaugural address, where he called for a focus on the needs of the poorest people in El Salvador, for new homes, a better healthcare system, better education. Funding all of this and carrying it out will not be easy, it never is, but Funes begins his term with a 72% approval rating, which will surely help. For more details on his speech and the first steps of the new government, go to Tim's El Salvador blog, always an excellent source of evenhanded information. By the way, Funes named Obama and Brazil's President Lula da Silva as his inspirations in choosing the path ahead.

Now I find myself in Guatemala, which is having its own political troubles. But in the beautiful city of Antigua, all seems very calm and peaceful (and full of U.S. tourists - you hear as much English as Spanish in the streets). I'm spending four hours a day with my splendid teacher, Rosa Maria, and let me tell you, it is exhausting to have one-to-one instruction for four hours. Home is about eight blocks from the school, with Thelma Molina, who has a great family and a pleasant house - and is a good cook as well. Between times, I'm reading novels in Spanish, going to Mass at the historic churches here, and wandering happily in Antigua. Oh, and going to sleep at 8:30 pm because I can't keep my eyes open any longer.

Antigua

I'm in Antigua, Guatemala tonight - Peggy drove me into San Salvador very early this morning (we started at 4 am) to catch the bus to the Ciudad de Guatemala, where I found a friendly and chatty taxi driver to take me to Antigua, about an hour further on. This ancient, beautiful city is full of English-speaking tourists and language schools. Tonight I'm staying at a hotel, but tomorrow I head for the Escuela Maya and a family home...

Almost

It strikes me that postings may be scarce the next few days as the move happens. Everything's scarce at this point. I made salad, but the salad bowl is packed. Vilma brought flowers, but the vases are packed. The photos and paintings and santos, the dishes and tablecloths, the books and bowls and utensils are hidden away in rubbermaid tubs. So in lieu of decor, here's a photo of morning sweepings from a courtyard in Suchitoto.

We had a grand time last night - dinner with Dra. Daysi Ramirez Chicas, a long-time friend of Grace and Eleanor, and with all Daysi's family - her husband, two sisters and their husbands, her mother and father, and - star of the show - her niece, beautiful three-year-old Alejandra Sofia, full of life and bounce. We ate pupusas and empanadas and talked and talked while Alejandra danced rings around us all. Salvadoran family life at its most beautiful - it was a joy to be included.

And I had a grand time of another sort this morning, carrying on an argument with my Amnet representative about just what sort of documents I had to present to get my phone hooked up: a grand time only because the argument happened on the phone, and I said my piece fully, and with feeling. Don't know that it did much good, but it was satisfying to have reached the point when I can do more than sputter on the phone.

Talking

Living and working in a country when your grasp of the language is several city blocks short of fluent is hard. It's hard on the Salvadorans who need to communicate with me, and it's hard on me. A friend who has learned English as a second language (and is now fluent) said that in earlier years talking English for any length of time made her very tired. At the end of any extended communication (or miscommunication) I feel wrung out, sweaty, exhausted. All my brain cells have been working overtime to produce results that are so much less agile than I'd like them to be.

Like any native speaker, I'm used to opening my mouth and having my own language roll out without much need for conscious thought or effort. In Spanish, at this stage, I stumble and bumble.

My friend Pat - a language teacher - reminded me that plateaus are a natural part of the learning process, and not a sign that I'm stuck forever. I know this, at least intellectually, but I'm eager for the work of May, when I will be studying Spanish for 4 weeks in Antigua Guatemala. Hope to reach a plateau a little higher than the one I'm now stuck on.

Being a language learner when you have to depend on your very imperfect grasp of the new language to meet your daily needs and talk to people is a humbling and spiritually potent experience. It's an experience of powerlessness, inability. Something I am honored to share with immigrants in my native land.

In Santa Tecla

A good, busy day, with many pieces of our coming cataract surgical mission falling into place. I went out to Hospital San Rafael in Santa Tecla, where our Comasagua patients will go for their cataract surgeries. With the help of Cristy, a staff member at CIS who translated for me, I had a good conversation with Licenciada Guardado, the head of nursing, about all the arrangements (Licenciado/a is the term of respectful address for those who've completed University degrees). I look forward in hope to the day when I can have a full and complete conversation about important matters in adequate Spanish - but I'm not there yet. A side benefit of the trip was getting to talk to Cristy - en español - on the way there and back again about her work, life and political passions.

Hospital San Rafael is the middle of a vast transformation - new surgery suites and wards have been built; an area that was a dustbowl two weeks ago has been transformed into a parking lot. The site is still full of workmen and full of polvo, dust, blowing around in the swift March winds. This is the season of dust: Salvadorans I've talked to think of March and April as the hardest months, when it gets hotter and hotter, and dustier and dustier, and there's no rain to cool things down. We've been lucky this year, catching the tail-end of the cold weather further north in the Americas, to have lots of wind and cooler than usual weather. The Salvadorans think it's cold. I think it's pretty nice. Except for the polvo.

Neighborhood meeting

Last week there was a neighborhood meeting for the 24 houses on our street, and I went. The meeting started at 8:30, and when I gave up and went home at 10:30, it was still going, but jerkily. I've facilitated neighborhood meetings and organized neighborhood meetings, so it was very odd to sit, struck dumb, in a neighborhood meeting where, if I opened my mouth, I would sound like someone's four-year-old who just happened to look like a gray-haired grandmother.

We all sat or stood around the guard house on a variety of plastic chairs. The circle of neighbors extended out into the street, so whenever a car entered half of the meeting had to pick up their chairs and move.

I followed the general thread of the meeting, met some neighbors, and heard some familiar attitudes - the man who valued his time at home and didn't want to go to meetings, the woman who could always think of one more possibility. But there was much I didn't follow, so I listened for language and attitudes. The formality was a surprise: the neighbors carefully addressed each other as Don, Doña or Licenciada (an all purpose title indicating a college graduate). They addressed our guards as Don Alex and Don Francisco.

I've already learned that Salvadorans like wearing uniforms and dressing carefully. This was another indication that the rules of courtesy - rules we've mostly discarded in the United States, where almost everyone is on a first-name basis - are important here. It hadn't occurred to me to say "Don Alex" or "Don Francisco" to our guards: now it does. And I'm getting to like being called "Hermana Susana," though I have never been entirely comfortable with Sister Susan.

Naming

At last - after waiting a week and spending two hours doing more focused waiting in the Sertracen offices - I have a card that shows me, Dewitt, Susan Vera, as owner of the PazSalud car.

Easy to see how my name got scrambled. Any Spanish speaker looking at the name Susan Vera Dewitt would most likely assume that I was Vera de Witt, Susan - that my maiden name was Vera and my married name was Witt. That's how names are constructed in Spanish speaking countries: everyone carries two surnames. For men and unmarried women, those are the father's last name followed by the mother's last name. So because my father's name was Dewitt and my mother's name Hahn, I really should be, in a Spanish-speaking country, Susana Dewitt Hahn (and Dewitt is considered the main last name, el primer apellido). A married woman uses her father's name followed by de and her husband's name. So if I had married someone named Jones, I would be Susana Dewitt de Jones.

This difference in naming leads to endless confusion - the mixup of my name by the authorities at Sertracen, the mixup when Norteamericanos assume someone's mother-name is their real last name. Messes with your assumptions. A healthy thing, even if it leads to long, long waits in line.