Revealing Reaction 2

 

It’s funny watching Downton Abbey in Colombia.

 

For a start, I don’t know how to translate words like

footman, kitchen maid, valet, or Dowager Duchess

for the local audience.

 

And the Colombian tendency to be prepared for the worst

(I’ve blogged about this before)

means that watching the series can be a tense experience.

 

Example: John Bates and Tom Barrow meet unexpectedly in the dark.

He’s going to kill him, gasps my fellow-viewer.

 

In reality, they have a philosophical little chat and no one is harmed.

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Want a laugh?

 

So I am at the audiologist,

getting my hearing tested.

 

I am in a little booth, with headphones on.

The technician says:

I am going to say some words and you are going to repeat them.

I say: OK.

 

Then she says: Without looking at me so you can’t read my lips.

So I parrot obediently: Without looking at me so you can’t read my lips.

 

No, no, she says, stifling her laughter, we haven’t started yet.

Any time I need a wee laugh, I just remember that moment.

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Good news from the audiologist, Colombian style

 

I had got this idea that I was losing my hearing,

so I went to get my ears tested.

 

Well, I had nothing to worry about,

and the technician and the audiologist,

being Colombian, both told me so in a typically flamboyant way

 

The technician:

There is nothing wrong with your hearing!

Your hearing is perfect. You can hear everything.

You can hear my thoughts. You can hear things in the future.

 

The audiologist:

Your hearing is perfect. You have the hearing of a baby.

You have the hearing of a 15-year-old.

 

So now, I just have to recognize that when I don’t catch

what people say here, it’s because I don’t understand,

not that I can’t hear. Rats.

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And now some news of my plans for later in the year:

 

I am planning to be in Scotland

from September 2013 to January 2014, all being well.

In that time, I’ll be having a good rest,

catching up with friends and family,

and doing some studying.

 

I am also available in October and November

to do talks about Colombia and the projects I am involved with

so if you’d like me to come and speak at

your school/church/youth fellowship/women’s group/missionary prayer meeting,

send me a message through the guestbook (I won’t publish it),

and we’ll see if we can work something out.

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Conversation with another child

 

Setting: the corridor at work.

Context: I’ve just questioned 3 children (two girls and a boy)

about why they are there, because they shouldn’t really be,

only to be told the girls were showing the boy

to the toilet at the end of the corridor

because the toilet they should be using is out of order.

 

Next…

Child: Do you speak English?

Me: Yes. Why? Do I look as if I speak English?

Child nods.

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Drained

 

I love travelling on the Coast

but I always come back exhausted

and it always takes me a few days to feel myself again.

 

I wrote the following after my latest trip.

(On one leg of my journey I gave

a New Testament to a young man.

Later, I was told that he was probably

a member of one of the illegal armed groups.

His hesitation in telling me his name and where he was from

might have alerted me.)

 

I left full, I came back empty.


I gave away what I had.

I gave it away to children,

sweet children, smiling don’t-hurt-me smiles.

I gave it away to poor and desperate women.

I gave it away to men of violence.

I gave it away to the people of God.


Now, I lean into the barrel

and scrape up a mouthful of water

to get me through the day.

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Revealing Reaction 1

 

I was in the copy shop where we print our materiales

when a policeman came in and said,

Your alarm has gone off, is everything ok?

 

The young man in the shop was new

and knew nothing about any alarm and said so.

 

The policeman was a bit irritated,

asked for the young man’s name

and the name of the security company, and left.

 

Immediately, several people who happened to be in the shop

began to speculate whether the policeman was, in fact, legitimate.

Strange that he came on his own, and on foot.

Perhaps it was some scam, they speculated.

 

Several minutes later someone turned up from the security firm,

and we were all reassured.

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Most Ridiculous Reason for not Letting a Girl Go to High School, Ever

 

I met someone recently who told me her father

had not allowed her and her sisters to go to Secondary School

because they would only learn to write letters to their boyfriends.

 

She is now twenty years old,

and expecting her second baby out of wedlock,

each baby by a different father,

so her father’s strategy didn’t exactly work.

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Revealing Conversation

 

A man is showing me photos of his farms.

 

This one, he says, is in [such and such a region],

a place of guerrilla and paramilitaries.

 

You’ve still got it? I say.

Nobody’s taken it away from you?

 

I pay them not to take it away from me,

he says matter-of-factly.

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Motorcycle Madness

 

Last week, I saw someone texting while riding a motorbike.

He pressed a key, then looked up at the traffic,

then pressed another key.

 

Today I saw a dog on a motorbike,

a big dog, labrador-sized,

sandwiched between the driver and his passenger.

 

And I saw a common sight, the overturned motorbike;

traffic police and ambulance in attendance.

I caught a glimpse of motionless feet in the ambulance

and thought, Nobody wakes up and thinks he is going to die that day.

 

That’s our daily bread, the taxi driver said, Every day.

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