Problems Communicating

So I was sitting by the front door at my host family’s house in Lagartillo, Nicaragua, studying the subjunctive past participle of the conditional future tense, when the four year old grandchild of my host mother walked out of the house, pulled out his “little hombre” and started urinating on the front walk and chair that happened to be sitting outside the door. I almost started to yell something but then reconsidered as I thought my jumbled garble I try to pass as Spanish might cause the boy to turn putting me dangerously close to the line of fire. Besides, the thought of coming up with the words to explain why this was wrong was way beyond my kindergarten level of conversing. So I pretended that I didn’t see or hear the action taking place five feet beside me and went back to my studying which to my amusement happened to be a story describing a little boy and a waterfall. And I would have been completely content with my lack of bravery if five minutes later my host mom hadn’t come out and picked up the chair in order to use it in the kitchen. Here my moral consciousness overcame my lack of wanting to speak and I blurted out, “NO, NO! Orinar! Orinar, el nino!” Now orinar is the verb “to urinate” which I know because I looked it up the day before after a very painful conversation where I was asking if it was alright to pee “orinar” in their back yard instead of using their very tricky composting toilet (another story). Now I know my sentence, or nonsentence, was terrible but I didn’t expect the response of a blank faced smile and nod that I use so often when I don’t understand what the hell someone is saying to me, as she continued to take the chair into the kitchen. With this fight too risky to give up on I collected myself and said very calmly, “Un momento, el niño orino (yes, I even used the past prederate form of the verb) in la silla. No esta bueno para usar.” It was perfect. I was so proud of myself and my Spanish; of course until I saw her reaction was the same smile along with a “si” as she continued on past me. Knowing all I could do to get the point across would be to demonstrate the action, I choose again to go back to my reading. To this day I still don’t know what happened in the kitchen after that. I like to think she understood my perfect Spanish and the chair was quarantined until a proper triple bleach treatment could be made available, but to be on the safe side I still have chosen to stand no matter how many times I have been asked to sit down and relax in this nice comfortable blue chair.

A horse is a horse, of course of course

So after 33 years and 10 months I have finally ridden my first horse. Well riding might be too strong of a word, but I was definitely on top of a horse that was moving (sort of). As you probably have gotten from the other stories of Lagartillo there are no cars here; only los caballos (horses). Most families tend to have a least one or two for transportation and work, and my family was not different. Although their brave stallion was 20+ years old, he was a good old worker and a good old pal as I spent a Saturday and Sunday along side him helping to weed red beans, pick fruit, milk the cows and chop and carry wood for the stove. At the end of a tiring day I was commenting on the use of the horse to my host father and mentioned that I had never ridden one. This was the only time I saw one of the sternest faced men I have ever met laugh out loud as he told me what I can only imagine translates into “well gringo, today is your lucky day.” So without any instructions he motioned for me to hop on and then smiled as I tried to figure out how this was to be done. Seeing enough cowboy movies I figured I would pretend I knew what I was doing and I put one foot in the thing-a-magigi and threw my other leg over the side severely hitting what no guy wants to hit. Not a good start.

My host dad then walked away to tend to some cattle that were going astray while I tried to figure out how to take the parking break off this thing. After five minutes (seemed like an hour) I was still sitting in the exact same place. I tried everything! English, Spanish, “open sesame, Heeyah! Heeyaho! (Spanish for Heeyah), kicking (softly), patting, horse whispering, scratching behind the ears and …… Nothing! I was finally looking around for a carrot to dangle when out of no where my host father popped out of the forest, hitting the horse with a branch full of leaves and WE WERE OFF! I guess first, second, and third gear were broken because we went straight into forth, as the horse galloped along the densely forested path. Again my “little guys” were not happy. I felt like a mix between Luke Skywalker in the Ewak village and Indiana Jones as I was trying to hold on for my life while keeping my hat from getting knock off on all the low lying branches. Again, it may have been a problem with my Spanish pronunciation or maybe this horse spoke German, but none of my commands were working. It was at that point that I heard my host father yelling “No! No! Derecha, derecha! (Right, right!)” as my horse distinctly decided to go down the left path. I felt like I was on that kids ride at Six Flags where the friendly singing frog puppet tells you to “stay away from the Marsh, don’t go in the Marsh,” as your boat makes a wrong turn into the not so friendly dragons mouth. But like the ride, everything turned out alright as my horse finally stopped at a stream and gently bent down to take a sip of water, like this is what he was planning the whole time.

Although an Olympic dismount followed by a kissing of the ground could have been in order, I decided to stay on and after a short time and with my own (much smaller) branch in my hand, the horse and I made or way out to the dirt road. The rest of the ride it was still clear who was in charge (hint: not the one that can do calculus), but I think an understanding was reached. The horse would choose when to go, when to stop, faster or slower, and which path to take, while I had the responsibility of yelling out a command after the horse started doing it. It worked perfect, as only Robert Redford knows how we ended up back at the house just in time to see my host father arrive from the apparently “correct” direction with a big smile on his face.