K is for Kilo

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

Okay, I’ve run aground; K is a difficult letter in the Spanish alphabet. There are all sorts of K words, but they are mostly translations of things like Kant, Karachi, Kurdish, etc.

So today  I thought I would discuss Kilo. Most Americans know it as a unit of weight; one we refuse to use in our weights and measures system. Remember when the USA was going to switch from the imperial to the metric system? What a disaster. Americans just refused to do it.

I became accustomed to the metric system when I worked as a nurse, and it is such a no-brainer I’m surprised Americans are reluctant to make the switch. 10 X 10= 100, 100 X 100 = 1000. What could be easier? But we get caught up in the conversions… let’s see, a kilo is 2.2 pounds… so that makes my ten pound bag of sugar… how many kilos?

Americans are more adept at associating kilos with drugs. Cocaine. Marijuana. Columbian cartels and the Mafia. I think Americans think it sounds more like a foreign invasion if it’s in that foreign measurement. Screaming headlines like: COSTA RICA SEIZES 900 KILOS OF COCAINE. Well, clearly, this is a foreign problem. But, whether the reports are in metric or Imperial, the problem is All-American. All drugs grown or manufactured on this continent are headed for that market.

Both Panama and Costa Rica share the dubious distinction of being narrow countries on the isthmus connecting South America with the rest of Central America. Consequently, there is a logjam of drugs headed north.

The fishermen who live in Manzanillo talk about the Two Waters, the area off the coast where big boats with powerful motors run up and down the coast. They have found jettisoned packages of cocaine and brought them home. Certainly a better return than a boatload of pargo. There were a couple of bad boys down here that took to running that course at night, looking for the boats and stealing their cargo. One can only imagine the gun battles out there on with bullets flying in the salt spray. Their boat mysteriously caught fire one day. It exploded, killed one and burned the other two badly. Dangerous work.

If the contraband is not running on the sea it is laboriously making its way overland on ancient Indigenous trails. We often hear the US DEA planes flying overhead, and for about six months one year we heard loud regular explosions at night. Alan, who spent a year in Vietnam, knew immediately what it was: aerial reconnaissance, looking for marijuana fields and transport routes.

The only arrests we read about in the papers involve low-level targets. The big fish always seem to get away, and the kilos keep flowing north.

 

J is for Hij’ue Puta!

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

¡Hij’ue puta! (pronounced Way-Poota)

Okay, if you are sensitive close your ears; this one’s a swear word. It’s also the one most used in Costa Rica.

Literally it is translated as “shit whore,” but it is used the way we use son of a bitch or the F word to express shock or indignation.  Or, it can be used to express amazement. ¡Hij’ue puta! that girl is gorgeous.

Just seen a snake?  ¡Hij’ue puta!

I saw a snake once. I was speechless. Not one swear word out of me.

I wrote about it and the essay appears on Gordon Grice’s blog, Deadly Kingdom.

Here is the beginning:

“Costa Rica is home to many of the world’s deadliest snakes, including thirteen species of pit vipers. The largest of these is the bushmaster (Lachesis muta), but it is the fer-de-lance (Bothrops asper), or terciopelo, that locals fear the most.

When we first moved to Costa Rica our neighbors repeatedly warned us about them. They believed if I merely saw a man bitten it would bring bad luck. I wasn’t keen on seeking one out, but sometimes a snake is just where it is. 

One February morning back in 2007 my husband and I drove to the county seat to pay our garbage bill. I dressed casually in shorts and a tank top for comfort in the tropical heat. Alan parked our old, dependable Jeep pickup in front of the municipal building and I asked if he wanted to go with me. Getting the predictable answer, I left him there and walked in. Ten minutes later, I was back. I climbed into the truck and started to tell him about my success over bureaucracy. 

 Then something caught my eye.”    (Click here to read the rest of the essay.)

 

Note: the photo at the top of this post is of an eyelash viper I spotted on our property a couple of years ago. Below is the fer de lance, responsible for the largest number of snake bites recorded here every year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I is for Importar un Rábano

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

Or, le importa un rábano. Literally this means “it has the importance, or worth, of a radish.” I have also heard no importarle un pito. For a translation of that just think of Rhett Butler’s comments to Scarlett O’Hara when she begged him to come back.

I am pretty fond of the radish because it is fresh, has crunch. Pito isn’t bad either. Pito translates as cigarette, a jot, boo, whistle, or hiss.

I enjoy collecting foreign idioms because they are perfect, as well as fresh, metaphors for my writing. When that cliché rears its ugly head (hear that?), or my critique group points one out, sometimes searching for a new way to express that thought can be difficult. They are clichés because they adhere in our brains like glue, a kind of mental fly paper that the writing hand sticks to when feeling lazy or uninventive.

An idiom from a foreign language can add just the right tone and a new twist. My work in progress is about living in this country, so using metaphors that come from here seems logical and I think adds flavor of the pieces I write.

Other ways to work on the issue:

•  Use all your senses to describe a scene or a person
• Keep a journal of experiences—many of these posts are coming from my journals, by the way.
• Read, read, read.  Some of my favorite writers have wonderful new and imaginative metaphors. TC Boyle and Neal Stephenson are masters of the art.
• Exercises to flex the brain.
• Write a new metaphor every day for a year. You will get better at it.

So, how clichéd is your writing, and how do you find new ways to express those flabby old radishes that crop up from time to time in our work?

 

H is for Hacerse Bolas

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

  Hacerse bolas is to become confused, which is easy to do if you don’t speak Spanish very well. Like me.

But for a long time I didn’t have to learn the language.

The area where we live, the Atlantic coast, was first populated by indigenous natives and then by West Indian blacks, who came to Costa Rica to work for Minor Cooper Keith, the American who built the railroad from San José to Limón in the 1800s. The government gave him vast tracts of Caribbean lowland as a form of payment, and eventually he founded United Fruit; Costa Rica is the original Banana Republic.

These people of color stayed after the railroad was completed and called Limón home. They worked on Keith’s plantations or fished along the Atlantic coastline or farmed cacao here for many generations.

All that changed in the late 1970s when a mildew blight infected their cacao crops, With their harvest and income depleted, they sold the land to people like us. Now the area is filled with European and North American expats and Spanish descendants from the Central Valley– a cultural melting pot– but for many years the primary language here was either English or patois.

Being a lazy person, I consequently didn’t learn Spanish and still do not speak it fluently. I still get lost in a rapid-fire or highly complex conversations. One drink and I’m articulate. Two and I’m expressive, communicative, and eloquent, or think I am. Three, and I revert to being like a two-year old who asks for things with gestures, rudimentary words, and temper tantrums.

So, for years this was our routine when we were looking for a shop or a business in San José. Alan drove and I would tell him pull over when I saw someone I thought looked friendly and might know the area. I’d ask if they knew the place we were looking for. Depending on which way they pointed, we drove in that direction until I found another person and repeated the drill. It took Alan years to realize I hadn’t understood a jot of what they’d said.

“You always looked like you knew what you were doing,” he told me one day when it became obvious I had no clue. We backtracked a lot in those days, were lost more often than not, but we eventually found our way.

There is less hunt and peck these days. Now I know San José and many of its shortcuts. Alan still drives, but I can navigate at least three blocks ahead of us. I work on my Spanish, even though their verbs drive me insane, and I’m only caught scratching my head a few times a year. I can even use the telephone to inquire about things. Now that is progress.

 

 

 

 

 

G is for Guachimán

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

Guachimán is another name for a watchman. Some dress in formal uniforms, have a police baton, and a gun like the guy on the left. They guard neighborhoods and individual businesses. Tourists are often alarmed to see these men with automatic assault weapons at the grocery store or ferretería (hardware store), but, hey, you get used to it. Crime is everywhere.

There is also the entrepreneurial watchmen, or car parker. In downtown Limón, and many other towns across Costa Rica, a driver has a choice: leave the car unattended on the street and hope it doesn’t get ransacked by a car prowler, or leave it with an informal attendant. Often they are one and the same, but no matter.

The car parkers in Limón are a half step up from vagrancy, but they never want very much money, and we have never lost anything over the years, so we use them. (Oh, I take that back. We did get burned once when the car was in a secure parking lot.) When we park our old Jeep pickup on the street, inevitably some vago in tattered clothing staggers from doorway, where he’s been sleeping, and points vehemently with one hand at the truck and simultaneously at his own eye. “I got it! I got it! I watchin’ it!”

My husband likes to engage these men in conversation—he knows all of them— and sometimes it has unexpected results. One day he was chatting with our parker-for-a-day, and the guy asked, “What you doing here?” Alan, at first confused as the whether this was a philosophic question about being an expat in Costa Rica, started to answer, “Well, we’ve lived here— ”

“No, I mean what’s you doing in Limón? Today!”

Alan said,  “We’re looking for tires.”

The car parker’s face lit up, eyes blazing, and he rushed the truck. Bending down, he asked, “What size is she?”

I laughed and told Alan, “You better tell him you were joking or somebody’s car will be missing all four tires tonight.”

 

 

 

F is for Frito

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

 

Accident at Nestor Creek

Frito means “in trouble,” sort of our way of saying, “It’s toast.”

It used to be wild down on the Atlantic side of this country. It’s called the Free Zone because it is the area between the Panamanian frontier and the first puesto de policía (police check point) at Cahuita. Twenty years ago there were only two police officers stationed in Puerto Viejo and the government didn’t fund them very well, so people took care of things themselves.

There was a wreck on a one-way bridge close to our property several years ago. A car and a four-wheeler had played chicken about who had the right of way. The four-wheeler lost the contest—no surprise there— and was upside down under the bridge when we arrived. The car, parked in the middle of the bridge, had a large dent in the front end. The female driver stood next to it waiting for the police. A small group restrained the owner of the four-wheeler who wanted to mix it up. Cars, trucks, and a bus were backed up on both sides of the bridge, and a group of men argued with the woman, imploring her to move her vehicle.  She refused.

When there is a car accident in Costa Rica, drivers are supposed to leave their vehicles in position and wait for the police. They then write-up a report and turn it over to the governmental agency that handles all things Insurance.

That may work in San José, but all of us knew the police were not coming. I once called them about a fight that had broken out between one of our workers and another local over some stupid insult. The police told me, “When we can borrow a car, we’ll be down to check on it.”

The men finally convinced the woman to move her car off the bridge, but it was probably the bus’ air horn that made the biggest impact. Traffic resumed. My husband and I went on into town to run our errands.

We  bounced over the rough road into Puerto Viejo and were just in time to see two men pushing the police car down the dirt street toward the police station. More trouble with the engine. ¡Frito!

E is for Estañon Sin Fondo

 

Costarican idioms (loosely interpreted)

Old-time pulperia

Gluttony. I don’t believe I am a glutton, but I do tend to hoard food.

For a long time I stockpiled because there simply weren’t any decent pulperias ( grocery stores, mostly called tiendas in other Latin American countries) in our area, so if I saw something we needed, or I wanted, I bought two or three and stashed the rest away for later use. My larder was chock-a-block full and the freezer packed tight.

Back in the late 1980s a whiny old Italian ran our local pulperia in Punta Uva. Leno had an epiphany on the plane when he emigrated to Costa Rica whereby it was revealed that his true calling was as a curandero, a healer. I am sure it was mere coincidence that he had no other way to support himself when he left his home shores.

Sometimes, without notice, Leno closed the store because he was holding sessions. His patients paid for his services with Guinea fowl, chickens, ducks, or geese, and an attack by one of these was fairly common when trying to buy food. If he was available, he slouched behind the counter of his little multi-colored, rundown shack and kept a board across the entrance, barring anyone from passing.

No matter what the weather, he had some complaint. “It’s too hot and sticky” he would say, running his hands through his uncombed white hair. Three days later when the rains came he’d vetch, “It’s too cold and the rain… it’s so depressing.”

He never let me pick the items I wanted, instead he held up vegetables that were ready for the compost and asked how many I wanted. Rotting, rubbery carrots, some black-spotted cabbage, and a small bin of onions that reared half the world’s population of fruit flies was the extent of his inventory.

I’ve heard Hell’s punishment for gluttony is being force-fed rats, toads, and snakes for eternity. It couldn’t be any worse that those vegetables. Mostly, unless desperate, we traveled the 40 kilometers to Limón and the bigger markets, but that took hours because the roads were so bad.

photo by Hubert Steed

Now, of course, there are grocery stores you can walk into and browse the aisles, handle the fruits and vegetables, and pick your own. The roads are paved, so running into town is a viable option, and Puerto Viejo even has a Saturday market where vendors from the Central Valley bring an array of farm-fresh vegetables. Fennel the size of softballs, carrots so full of juice they practically bleed when you cut them, red and yellow onions, zucchini, eggplants, and greens. Ah, the greens! When I first saw the pile of Swiss chard at one stall I nearly bought the entire stock.

It is hard for me, and I must repeat to myself like a mantra, “Only buy one, Sarah, there will be more next week.”

 

 

 

 

D is for Dicha

Costarican idioms fro A to Z (loosely interpreted)

D is for dicha, or luck. When you ask anyone in Costa Rica how they are, they almost always answer, “Muy bien, por dicha,” or, “Muy bien, gracias a dios.”  “With luck,”  or “Thanks be to God,” we are doing okay. They acknowledge with this common greeting that their wellbeing is not an assured thing.

When I was in nursing school we learned in our cross cultural classes about something called locus of control. The idea was first introduced by Julian Rotter in 1954 and has come into and out of fashion in psychology ever since.

The idea is that everyone has a locus (Latin for place) where they feel their life is controlled. People with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions.  Contrarily, People with a  high external locus  feel events outside of themselves decide if they are successful or not.

I’ve always found this concept fascinating and how it applies in things like obesity, diabetes management, and exercise, but I also think it applies to politics and the current state of inequity in the USA. For instance, has the recent economic decline in the USA flipped some people who firmly believed they had control over their destinies in to the external locus group? Hard not to see how that might happen. How many people lost jobs and fell behind in the mortgages or became homeless through no fault of their own? Do hard economic times change the statistics?

In Rotters’ time (the 1950s and 60s) the data showed whites as having a propensity for internal locus, blacks and hispanics, external. And in the 1950s it’s easy to see how those statistics might hold up. But now? I doubt it. My guess is white people are feeling less secure in their ability to steer their own ship, unless, of course they are in the 1%.

Costaricans tend to acknowledge that not everything is within their control. Life has taught them that.

I once thought I was firmly in the Internal Locus group. I could do anything I wanted. Now, being— of a certain age— I have discovered that even though I have done everything correctly, life sometimes offers up a curve ball when I thought it was coming right down the middle.

What’s your locus of control? Click here for a short questionnaire.

 

 

 

C is for calenton de cabeza.

Costarican idioms from A to Z (loosely interpreted)

The verb calentar means “to heat,” so this expression means “to get angry” (hot headed).

Do I have a problem with this?

Ha!

This has probably been my single highest hurdle living in Costa Rica. When I first arrived twenty years ago (can it have been that long?) any little thing would have me venting my spleen. Their insane driving habits, long lines in banks, multiple locations where we had to pay bills, nothing I wanted in grocery stores, no Internet, no PHONE, all had me in a constant tizzy.

Poooor Sarita.

“Why can’t they do things in an orderly manner?” I bitched to my long-suffering partner.

His response, “If you want it done like they do it in the USA, why don’t you go home?”  That always shut me up, because what I really I wanted was to be with him.

A couple of things changed the way I approached all these brain-combusting situations. One was a comment by my Australian son-in-law. He said once in casual conversation—and he is right—  “The First World is an anomaly; the way things happen in the rest of the world is the norm.” Well. I had to think about that.

Why should there be staid and starchy traffic patterns? Why did I assume there should be quick and efficient access to a teller? In almost all non-westernized countries there is a general chaos (loose anarchy?) and what I have come to call “informal payments.” But there is also also personal freedom of a kind I was unaccustomed to in the USA. No police will stop you when you are trying to kill yourself on a motorcycle without a helmet, there are no federal safety regulations (to speak of), and if you stand under a guy on a ladder and he drops a hammer and it hits you on the head, well… you have the fault. People in the Third World assume you have common sense and will take care of yourself.

The other thing that happened to change my outlook relates to yesterday’s post: the propensity of Costaricans to pick a legal fight. Once involved in one of those, all other irritants seem minor by comparision.I have learned to pick my battles.

Now, I always take a book to the bank and can sit for long periods of time until they are ready to wait on me (love my Kindle). The Internet has cleared up my time paying bills, so those multiple locations and days to pay bills are no longer and issue (that really was annoying, I have to admit). There are now often more choices in our grocery stores on this Caribbean coast than in San José, and I have an iPhone (I believe everyone is calmer when operating an iPhone).

There are still irritating things that happen, but just drop by the Department of Motor Vehicles in almost any state in America and it will prove that Costa Rica is not unique in exasperating chores.

So (mostly) I don’t sweat the small stuff, even when all of it piled together could create a bonfire for the brain.

And I remeber to breathe.

 

B is for Bochinche

Costarican idioms from A to Z

In Costa Rica, bochinche means “to mix it up” or “to fight.” But, curiously, it is also a Costarican national dish.

When ordering the almuerzo, or lunch, one can order a casado or a bochinche. The only difference is the way they are presented. The casado is a combination plate of rice, beans, a stewed meat, a salad, and, if you are lucky, a crispy, sweet fried plantain. The bochinche has all the same ingredients but is served in individual small bowls. As my friend Lidia, who owns Lidia’s Place, a small soda (cafe) in Puerto Viejo, says, “You get’s to mix it up.”And actually it is not surprising to me that the bochinche would be a national dish.

Fighting is a state sport here. For all the public relations blitzes about having no military, and the myth that Costa Rica is The Switzerland of Latin America, these people are scrappers.  Historically, they have stolen land from their neighbors and fought wars over it;  Guanacaste and the Nicoya Peninsula were both stolen from Nicaragua, The Southern Zone stolen from Panama, and last year the Costarican government had armed conflicts with Nicaragua over the Rio San Juan border to the north.

This is not something expats learn until they have lived here for some time. The urge to mix it up goes from the highest levels of government right down to campasinos. Almost everyone I know has either been in court, or is in court, over some stupid conflict or another.

One friend of ours bought a plot of land from someone he grew with, his neighbor for over twenty years. Six years after the purchase, and with the price of land skyrocketing, they burned him out and claimed he’d never bought the land, despite his having documents to prove otherwise. Their rationale? He didn’t pay enough money and they needed more. There are fights like this one going on all the time, legal brawls between families, brother against brother, expats versus the locals, and most famously, one hotel owner who fought the government for twenty years. They finally tore his hotel down and he died two months later, but not before he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs.

You can spend years in the legal mosh pits over something as illegal as the previous owner changing his mind despite having signed a bill of sale—”Oh, someone offered more!” Not to put to fine a point on it, it’s a form of extortion.  Ask any Costarican—  they can quote the law as though they’d been to law school, and they are ready to mix it up. The courts are complicit in all this; often, is comes down to paying your way out.

Perhaps Costa Rica should establish a military and conscript  everyone in the country to serve for at least two years. Maybe that would curb the appetite for battle.

So, yes, B si for bochinche, a very Costarican dish.