Now that I'm more or less back...

Here, we have a custom.  Weekly I will pull a chair out from my kitchen to the street in front of my house to sit in a clump with my neighbors and talk.  On the way home from school I will stop at a lady’s house and wind up sitting for hours on her front porch.  As I pass by a friends house on the way to play volleyball, I stop for a few minutes (which usually turns into at least twenty) and chat.  Echar cuento, as it is known in Panamanian Spanish, literally translated is to throw out a story.  I love this translation, as I think it embodies the essence of just what you should do when hanging out is at its best.  Tell stories.  Funny ones.  Sad ones.  Scary ones.  Ones you’ve told over, and over and over again.  Perhaps we do this at home, but in English I would posit that we have failed to come up with a term that so accurately expresses the right way to do it.

So, readers, that’s just what I’m going to do.  I’m going to throw stories at you.  There may be long descriptions or analytical, introspective-type blogs now and then.  But mostly, I want you to get a sense of what stands out to me in daily life.  I promise to tell you what I tell my neighbors at the end of the day, and possibly share some of what they tell me.

So pull up a lawn chair and sit somewhere you shouldn’t.  It’s going to be a nice evening.

So this is why you guys sit here.

One Sunday I walked through the center of town on my way to visit my old host mom when I saw a friend sitting outside the store that his family owns.  I stopped, assuming I’d chat for a bit, catch up since I hadn’t seen him in a while, and be on my way.  I situated myself on the bench outside of the store, which is neatly tucked between a cantina and another supermarket (yes, it does seem like a bit much, but there are five surrounding the central plaza alone) that serves as a bus stop for the transport going to the small towns nearby.  

An old farmer with ten teeth and a crooked hat stumbled over to me from the side that I can only assume was the cantina side of the bench.  Rather than slur something to me, he merely leaned in, looked at my eyes, and melodically recited the following:
“Yo tengo el alma mas claro del mundo! Yo tengo el alma más claro del mundo! Tú tienes los ojos más claro del mundo, pero yo tengo el alma más claro del mundo! Yo tengo el rio más grande del mundo, más grande que el rio amazona o el nile! Yo soy feo…por fuera pero bonito por dentro!” 

Roughly translated, that’s:
“I have the clearest (or lightest) soul in the world!  I have the lightest soul in the world!  You have the lightest eyes, but I have the lightest soul! I have the deepest river in the world, deeper than the Amazon or the Nile! I’m ugly…on the on the outside but beautiful on the inside!”

I couldn’t do much else but sit and smile while my friend and his brother made sure the man didn’t fall on top of us and the rest of the people in the center of town looked on. 

Is this a normal happening in sleepy Macaracas?  No.  Was I surprised?  ....No. Welcome to my daily life.