Little Things Make It All Worth It

We have a 5 to 6 foot vertical dirt bank next to our driveway. On top of the bank is the concrete box to house our generator.

The generator has never been in the box.

Why?

We can't lift the generator up the bank without throwing someone's back out.

In addition, our dogs, who effortlessly jump up the bank, have worn the dirt down 18 inches and undermined the bottom of the fence.

When our male dog sees another dog, he jumps up the bank and rakes his feet on the ground thus digging out the soil.

Some kind of ancient male dominance ritual, I think.

I asked our gardener to build stairs up the bank. This will do 2 things: stop the undermining of the fence and provide an easier way to lift the generator to it's rightful place in it's box.

I explained what I want to him and then I let him do it his way.

This takes tremendous restraint on my part because he seems to be doing in WRONG. For once I kept my mouth shut. As he progressed, I could see that he actually has a wonderful design for the stairs.

I am so glad I let him do it his way!

It order to finish the project, he needs to cut a 6 inch metal stud off the bottom of the box.

So off I go to find hack saw blades.

This is where the "little thing" showed up that I mentioned in the blog title.

I walked into a chino hardware and construction supply store. These chino stores are scattered along the highway every 2 or 3 miles. Always owned and operated by a Chinese family.

The Chinese have a stronghold on this type of store throughout Panama.

Everything is behind the counter so you have to ask for what you want, thus the problem...insufficient Spanish!

I pull out my hack saw and I point and say, "Tiene este?" "Este" is a wonderful word meaning "this" so it covers all those things that you don't know the Spanish word for...Yay! (Tiene este means, Do you have this?)

Now an interesting thing happens.

The Panamanian customer next to me tells me the Spanish word for "saw blade". Panamanians are very helpful. I try to pronounce it and get it wrong, of course. He repeats. I screw it up. He repeats it. I screw it up. We go back and forth about 6 times until I get it.

Now everyone in the store, staff and customers, start to smile and laugh because I finally got it.

It amazes me how little it takes to be related to people when they are so accommodating.

I go to the cash register to pay and the chino owner asks me how to say it in English. I tell him "blade".

Now he gets to try and fail about 6 times. When he gets it, everyone smiles and laughs for him too.

Here is an interesting aspect of pronunciation in Spanish.

They do not pronounce "d" as a hard "d". No such sound in Spanish. It is more like the softer sound of "th". The chino owner was struggling with the hard "d" at the end of "blade".

Ah, the trials and travails of learning a new language.

It made me feel great that the locals enjoyed my learning process and that the owner reciprocated by learning the English word.

I do dearly love this culture.