Porfa Blao Blao

I’m about to head out to Cochabamba again, a fun 12- hour ride in a bus cama. A bus cama, thank god, is an overnight bus that makes the lengthy trip through the mountains slightly more bearable with its reclining seats and tiny little bathroom in the back.

We’ve got IST, or in-service training. We get to reunite with our original training group and sit through 10 hour days of who-knows-what, but it will be great to hear how everyone’s projects are going, what the sites are like, what strange and unusual customs we’ve now adopted as our own, and how our outlooks (and our Spanish) has changed.

I’m signed up to take a rigorous crash course in Quechua, which is the language of the Incas. I’m pretty excited but not quite sure how much more my poor little brain can take. I think I’m bordering on the red zone when it comes to languages. Samaipata is such a mix of cultures- European, North American, Bolivian, Asian, etc. I hear Spanish tinted with Brazilian, Kamba, Kolla, Argentinian, German, Dutch and Japanese accents… the list goes on and on. Then there are the varying levels of English from each of these groups, added to the mix of Bolivians who love to practice their English with me. And of course, the strictly Spanish-speaking and strictly English-speaking crowds. My days are spent turning on and off portions of my brain at irregular intervals, switching from English to Spanish plus a little mix of Vietnamese when my parents decide to call.

Some people say, “Cool, you’re tri-lingual.” But in all honesty, I am non-lingual. Or in other words, I speak horrific English, confused Spanish, and some rather humorous Vietnamese. If I stay with one language for a bit, I’m great. But introduce another bi-lingual person into the fray, and it’s about to get ugly.

At times I don’t know what to do when I encounter Bolivians who speak English. If they use English will I offend them by speaking in Spanish, implying that my Spanish is better than their English? Or sometimes out of habit I begin to speak Spanish but then realize I could better express myself in my native language. As my brain begins playing hop-scotch, the words that actually flow out of my mouth make no sense at all.

Take for example, my conversation with a Peace Corps employee the other day. He’s Bolivian and speaks great English. We start out in Spanish… It digresses to English… and at the end reverts to a bit of Spanglish. We end the conversation and I’m about to say “bye” then thought I would say “chao,” and what actually came out of my mouth was a great big “BLAO!” Then I stared at the phone, horrified that he actually heard what I said, and quickly hung up.

Needless to say, my confusion and inability to express myself can make for some good laughs as well as some embarrassing moments. But whatever… on with Quechua!