Travel Stories- No Habla Espanol! No Habla Inglis!

Language guide books teach you nothing. I landed in Guatemala city armed with just one sentence “ no habla espanol” (I don’t speak Spanish). The problem was that I could say it so well that most people wouldn’t believe me. It did not help that I looked a little like them. Come to think of it most Mayan Indians look like Asian Indians!!
A quick conversion of the Quetzals (local currency) into dollars (and then of course into rupees) told me that I couldn’t afford more than one drink at the paid for business hotel I was put up in. I decided to take a stroll to find a liquor shop. I stopped every friendly looking guy on the pavement to enquire in English about where I could find a liquor shop. I hated myself for not having learnt the useful words. They would smile and indicate that they did not understand English. No habla Inglise. I tried different strategies and words. I tried ‘Rum’. No chance. Beer? A cock of the head and a slow shake. Whiskey? Blank. Finally I stopped an elderly man and did a mime of drinking and then lolling my head around like I was drunk. He glanced curiously at me. When he showed interest, I repeated the act once more and added a few staggering steps to indicate drunkenness. He now looked at me with great interest his hands on his hip like he was watching a street play. He watched for a while then shook his head sadly and said something before walking away. I thought it was loco. This time I understood him. I also understood that it was a hopeless adventure. I went to my room and slept off the jet lag in absolute sobriety.
Paul Smyth was a lanky guy with great uncombed curls on his head and a scraggly beard. His ill fitting pair of jeans looked like they would slip down any moment and trip him at the ankle. He looked straight out of Greenwich Village in the sixties. Paul introduced himself as the parish priest from the Parroquio San Antonia. Padre Pablo as he was fondly called by his parishioners had come to fetch me. I was to be transported to a small sub-urban community in the Barrios district on the Caribbean coast. The Fronteras was eight hours away from Guatemala City. I had volunteered to be a Rotary Volunteer dentist for the Quiche’ Indians who lived in the villages (aldeas) nearby. I almost grabbed Paul’s hands when he spoke English. We obviously shared more than a common name. That was my first conversation since I arrived in the city the previous day. I toyed with the idea of asking him about the liquor shop and decided it would be inappropriate to ask a catholic priest. We drove in silence through the streets of Guatemala City on our way out. I looked out at the numerous shops and almost pointed excitedly when I saw what I thought was a shop selling some kind of alcohol. Now! I am not an alcoholic, but the prospect of living in a strange place with a bunch of priests definitely cried out for some entertainment. The stuff found in the bottle was convenient and uncomplicated.
Two days at the Parish and I was bored and thirsty. Father Smyth was the only other person who spoke English. In fact he was the only other occupant of my living quarters, if you excluded the extended family of cats and kittens purring in every room. I am distrustful of cats and for that matter all kinds of pets. I finally picked up the courage to ask Fr Paul Smyth if I could find a place to buy some beer. He laughed aloud and took me to his refrigerator (run on gas). It was stocked up with bottles and bottles of beer. He thought I showed no interest because Indians had some serious issues with alcohol. I didn’t ask him because I thought the Church had issues with alcohol. In any case I got myself a drinking buddy for the next one month. My Spanish vocabulary on that front improved to discover that beer is called ‘cerbeza’, whiskey is called ‘scotch’ and rum is called ‘ron’. No wonder I had a communication problem
The problem of the drinks was solved pretty easily. Food was a more complex issue. Alicia, was a pleasant young woman with a ready smile. We had long smiling conversations. Not a word spoken. She was our cook and she took her job very seriously. I should have been happy, considering that my most adventurous cooking was the making of a boiled egg. I was capable of botching up even that! I was therefore completely at her mercy. And she had a job to do. Make me eat Pasta morning, noon and night. She was some kind of pasta angel. I can digest an occasional pasta meal. But Pasta for a month was too much. I suspect that she never did know to make anything else. So it was Pasta! She made this very good looking pasta, yes! Only good looking, topped with some kind of grilled meat and plenty of tomato ketchup and cooked in olive oil. I am not a fussy eater but the olive oil really had me. Every forkful of the pasta was a painful process. I would somehow clear the plate with Alicia hovering at my back. She would then lean towards me and ask me in that sensuous way of Latinos “Beuno?” (meaning “Good?”). The only word opposite to ‘beuno’, which I knew, was ‘mal’ and that meant bad. Oh! I was caught in that terrible disposition between losing that smile on good Alicia’s sensuous lips and the indignity of throwing up on the plate. My language disability precluded using a complex expression such as “ its good but thank you” or some such thing. I would roll up my eyes and make funny noises to express my hesitation and would end up saying without enthusiasm “ Si, Beuno….”.and try to cover the plate with my hands. It never worked. She dumped all the pasta she made. This went on day after day with only Sundays for holidays, when she went to church or maybe torture her poor husband with her pastas. Why did she not just make regular Guatemalan food like tortillas and beans or Enchiladas or Tamales?
One weekend I decided that I would cook myself something to eat. Alicia, as I said, did not cook for us on Sundays. I looked at all the canned food in the pantry. The names in Spanish meant nothing to me. It was food alright….and it couldn’t be worst than Alicia’s pasta. Finally, I settled on a can with a picture of a smiling fish on it. Underneath it was written “Por Gatto”. It looked friendly enough. I opened the can and smelt its contents. Definitely fish. The smell was a little too fishy but then this was Guatemala. I put it into a frying pan and generally heated up the contents. It was just about edible- slightly better than Alicia’s Pasta.
That evening over a bottle of beer (cerbaza), I told Paul Smyth that I had cooked myself a lunch. I then showed him the empty tin with the picture of a fish. Father Smyth, in his cool English manner told me with a wry smile that “Por Gatto” means “For the Cat”. I looked at the tin in horror. Yes I had cat food for lunch. The only lunch I had cooked myself! The fish on the can’s label really was smiling!