Pláticas nocturnas

In Pláticas nocturnas (‘evening chats’) I will be writing about my life as a North American who immigrated to Costa Rica 45 years ago, long before coming here was cool. I worked as a translator in a small publishing house while studying at the University of Costa Rica, and after graduating, returned to the United States for a Ph.D. in linguistics. I then came back to this southern-most country of Central America, where I've been teaching linguistics at my alma mater --the University of Costa Rica-- for 34 years.

For nearly 20 of those years, I was also a translation consultant for the United Bible Societies, working side by side with Native American translators in Central and South America. In many cases we became close friends, and the experiences I had with them immeasurably enriched my life and helped to give it perspective.

For years, friends and family have urged me write about those experiences, convinced that they were worth sharing with others. Until now, what I have put to pen has been limited to personal correspondence. However, it occurs to me that an appropriate medium for such reflections may well be a blog or bitácora --as they are often called in Spanish-- after a ship captain's log.

Having been born and reared in Colorado, I am a native speaker of English. Having come to Latin America at 20 years of age (first to Mexico and then to Costa Rica), I am an English speaker who has heard and uttered many more words in his adopted language of Spanish than in English. It seems fitting, therefore, that this blog (or bitácora) reflect in some way the bilingual nature of my existence. I am uncertain at this point how that will be realized. I am only certain that it will be.

Tactic

Tactic, Alta Verapaz

It was my real first visit to the Pocomchí project in central Guatemala. I knew I had to go to the Monja Blanca bus terminal in Guatemala City and --after nearly five hours’ ride north-- be certain to get before the bus veered off northwest toward Cobán. The only way to be sure to get off at the right place was to tell the driver where you were going and ask him to let you know when you got there. This I did, and I sat near the front on the left side of the bus so he would see me in his review mirror and not forget.

He let me off a short distance from the town, and I knew that I had to walk about two and a half kilometers (a mile and a quarter) to get to the only place in town where I could rent a room: La Pensión Central. And I would have to lug my suitcase and laptop computer with me!

I don’t know a really good English word for pensión except perhaps “flophouse”. But this translation seems more than adequate in this case. The manager appeared from the back of this one-story hotel, took one look at my Nordic features, assumed I had money and offered me the deluxe room. “Deluxe” meant that it had a toilet (en suite, as the Europeans say), a miniscule sink and a pipe sticking straight out from the wall which served as a shower. The room was quite narrow, perhaps six by twelve feet, and along one side was an even narrower cot with a straw mattress. I shook the proprietor’s hand and said, “I’ll take it!” How could you go wrong at $1.75 per night?

Now I had to get organized. I had to unpack the things I would need for working with the project, try to find where the project was located, etc. But I quickly perceived a problem. My room could be locked from the inside by barring it, but there was no way to lock it from the outside. Clearly the assumption was that roomers would rent the room, spend the night and leave the next morning. But I intended to stay for seven days and had to find a way to secure the room while I was at the project.

In traditional colonial style, there were actually two doors that met in the middle. It seemed to me that I could get two eye screws and a padlock, close the doors from the outside, insert one screw into the center edge of each door and then thread the padlock through both eyes and lock the two doors together. Ingenious!

First I needed to go out in search of a store where I could buy two eye screws and a padlock, taking my suitcase and laptop with me. I quickly discovered that –while there is no shortage of tiny stores in Tactic—there is indeed a very different system of classifying them on the basis of their merchandise. In one store they sold nylon stockings, votive candles and deodorant. In another, scissors, tuna and light bulbs. And in yet another, ballpoint pens, yarn, little bowls and machetes.

This led me to believe that there was no good basis for assuming that I would find the screws and lock in the same store, which indeed turned out to be true. I did eventually find both the screws and the lock, but I have yet to unravel the system of store classification used in Tactic. However, having read George Lakoff’s book Fire, Women and Dangerous Things. I don’t doubt for one minute that they have one!

Patzún

Patzún, March 2003

I am back in Patzún, Guatemala, a place that will soon become a part of my past. I’ve been coming here three or four times a year for the last decade. The Kaqchikel language project is winding down and before long will become the third whole Bible translation project that I began with and finished, the other two being Chuj de San Sebastian and Garífuna.

I will miss Patzún, and as I walked across the town late this afternoon for some exercise, I had to ask myself, why? A pretty town it is not. Narrow streets lined on both sides by bare adobe walls with a door here and there leading into an often windowless little smoke-filled house. A few of the streets are cobbled, and Third Street is actually paved. Most of the rest are just two-inch deep dust. Lying in front of nearly every doorway are a couple of dogs. They are just your basic dog, undefinable critters, not big, not small, and with a very clear set of ribs sticking through their short fur. They are not aggressive in the least. Most of them cower if you look at them. These are not the pampered purebreds of the North.

Like many other rural Guatemalan towns, Patzún is characterized by the acrid smell of smoke. At times, the entire valley lies under a canopy of smoke. It is a fairly good-sized town, about 15,000 souls, I would guess. There used to be a fair number of Ladinos here (Spanish-speaking Guatemalans), but they have virtually all gone. The Indians decided to reclaim their town for themselves. There wasn’t much fuss. Every week or so, another Ladino would appear floating face down in the town laundry tanks where the women gather to wash in the morning. They got the message. Now when I walk around, I see only Indian faces and hear virtually no Spanish.

There is a very high percentage of young people here. That is probably because many families are rather large and people don’t tend to live long lives. The monotonous diet, the prevalence of palm oil for cooking, the hard work, the lack of hygiene, and the smoke all take their toll. There are no HMOs around here. What’s cholesterol? No doctors to remind you to come in for your annual physical. I saw an old man standing in the middle of a dusty street with his zipper down trying in vain to urinate. He probably hadn’t a clue as to why he couldn't. When I come here I feel obscenely well off. I can stroll in here for a couple of weeks and then fly back to Costa Rica, to my creature comforts, my medical insurance, my air conditioned car, clean water, super markets and forget about this. But I don’t forget. Maybe that is what I appreciate about Patzún. It reminds me. Even as it makes me feel guilty, it reminds me that I have much more than I need, more than what 98% of the world’s population could dream of and that it behooves me to be grateful for it.

Last week I spoke to a group of prosperous North American students taking part in an semester abroad program in Costa Rica sponsored by the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities. The topic was "globalization". What do I know about globalization? The young man who invited me to speak told me that they had already read dozens of articles about the economic aspects of globalization, how companies that used to be national become transnational with branches anywhere and everywhere and how US fast food chains have altered --for the worse-- the nutritional habits of millions around the world. The miracle of telecommunications and information technology, the Internet and access to limitless knowledge. He asked me to put a human face on globalization as I saw it –-or didn’t-- in the places where I go.

I told them, among other things, that where I went and worked, globalization didn’t seem all that "global". The infamous "information gap" is far wider there than ever before simply because the difference between very limited information and virtually limitless information is incommensurable. The people in Patzún don’t have computers or any likelihood of acquiring one any time soon. Very few of them even have phones. (Guatemala is a country of 12 million people, but it has just one --not particularly thick-- phone book that includes both white and yellow pages.) The Internet will never publish news from CNN in Kaqchikel. So, globalization is great if you can afford it, if you have dependable electricity, if you have a phone, if you have a computer, if you speak one the right languages, if . . . if . . . if . . .

I guess what I really owe to Patzún is the invaluable gift of perspective. Thank you, Patzún.