Because I am one person and my village is 7,000 people, almost everyone here knows who I am, but I don't know who they are. (incidentally, this is strangely similar to how I felt when my family came home on furloughs and everyone in our home church would hug me and give me food and i had no clue who they were)
So one day I was in the teacher's lounge and one of the teachers talked to me enough so that I couldn't ask her what her name was at the end of the conversation. So when I went home that evening I asked Gabi what her name was.
"Ea este mica, grasa, si vorbeste mult" (She is little, fat and talkes a lot)
Gabi laughed and told me that the woman's name was Ioana.
A few days later, a woman I work with came up to me and told me that she heard I had described Ioana as mica, grasa, si vorbeste mult. She said, "I laughed so hard when I heard it. In fact, all of us teachers were laughing about it. You described Ioana perfectly!"
Oh no, I thought, Ioana will probably find out that I had to ask about her name and that I called her fat.
Yesterday, as I was walking through town, Ioana saw me across the street and crossed the street to talk with me, her face beaming.
"I heard that you described me as little, fat and talks a lot," she told me, chucklin. "You described me so perfectly. I laughed so hard when they told me!" And then Ioana gave me a bouquet of flowers.
So that's what you get in my village when you call someone fat.
2 comments:
i wish we could all be that confident.
i like your disclaimer. one of my co-workers is a former peace corps volunteer and she was talking to the director of the peace corps in some country. he told her he has a person on staff whose whole job is to read the blogs of the peace corps volunteers in his country and make sure they're not writing things that could get the peace corps in trouble. glad to see you've covered your ass.:)
Post a Comment