Letter 18: Peace Corps--American Boners Lost and Found

Well, it has been a long time since I have written. Mine has been an arduous month of trying to learn Spanish and getting acquainted with my upcoming responsibilities in the Peace Corps. Generally, I should be serving as a strategic planning and cost analysis advisor for an agency involved in the transfer of technology.

Truth be told: I am glad to be a volunteer since I these functional areas – and technology in general – are quite new to me. In any case, after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with civilian agencies, I fully realize that I will likely be doing something else -- and something new -- anyways.

This exciting opportunity will be like school again. I will be learning more than my counterparts will. More on all of that later, when I actually know what I am doing in México’s tech transfer program. At this point, I am delighted to say that my Peace Corps team-mates are top-notch and will be very instrumental to any success I might achieve.

In this note, I would like to discuss the usual pitfall of people in my position: unintentionally quizzical or comical remarks due to the use of false cognates or not knowing an unfamiliar language. Also posted, separately, is a photo-essay on México’s two hundredth birthday. This ‘stride toward freedom’ started right here in Querétaro!

NEVER TEASE SOMEONE ABOUT HIS OR HER IDEALS, especially environmentalists under thirty. At my advanced age, I really should know better: to dismiss another’s core values with levity is to attack someone’s beliefs. For example, a group of us were discussing coping strategies for loneliness in some orientation session. Stuffed animals were suggested as a means of reducing a sense of isolation in some remote place. Whereupon I stated, less than gallantly, that I would have brought my stuffed animal but the taxidermist wasn’t finished yet. At least I am alive to admonish you….

LANGUAGE GAFFES emerge with an annoying frequency. For example, three days ago, in trying to show off my Spanish speaking skills (sic), I discussed how actions can change one’s innate character over time. To defend this idea, I launched into a re-telling of the story in Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray”.

Initially, I thought my argument had been too sophisticated for my class-mates to understand. Then I realized that I was saying that every time Dorian Gray committed a dead fish, his portrait would get uglier until it was so hideous he went to Hell. Of course, I had been intending to say that every time Dorian Gray committed a sin (i.e., the closest thing I could think of as a translation for “evil deeds”), the portrait worsened.

In Spanish, "pescado" means fish ready for eating whereas "pecado" means sin…what a difference one letter can make. These ‘mad-lib’ confusions occur almost every day; this fishy mis-statement being among the more entertaining. As my father told me many times, “Never try to make an impression because, by golly, you never know impression you are making.”

Then there is THE FALSE COGNATE “embarazada” which means “pregnant” in Spanish. As I aspire to be a man of culture, I will not go there on how ‘embarazada’ embarrassed me!