The Most Difficult (but most fun) language lessons, part 2.

I seriously suggest reading part 1 (below) before venturing into part 2.

“Were you scared”

As an American male, I am not scared.

“Were you scared on 9-11?” “no, not really, I was scared for other people, but I wasn´t scared” “Oh, I was scared by 9-11.” Why was my host dad scared on 9-11, while I was not? I had far more reason to be scared. The simple answer is that the Spanish word for scared asustado also kind of means surprised. I guess I can admit to being surprised, but rarely that I was scared. I wasn´t even scared when robbed at gunpoint, seriously I took it quite calmly, maybe it was scary, but I wasn´t exactly scared.

This is not about weather some third party impartial judge would rule me scared or asustado by any one event, this is about trying to figure what the heck is the difference between what I think when I say that I was asustado, and when they here that I was.

Once again, let´s start with me the fairly typical American male (I think), when I say I was scared by something I was so scared that there is no plausible way that someone would believe me if I said I wasn´t, I am half joking, or I am trying to get a better hold of the way Guatemalans use the word. For me, being and admitting to being scarred has little consequence other than in the moment and whatever blow my pride will face from people believing that I was scared.

In my short experience here, Q´eqchi´ Guatemalans seem way more preoccupied with weather one was scared or not. It does not have to do with pride. If one was, in fact scared, it can have serious repercussions. There are two basic reasons I think: ancient beliefs and recent traumatic events.

I made the early mistake of admitting that I had had a bad dream one night. I did not understand why my family took it so seriously. My host mom reminded me a couple times to say my prayers before going to bed. I am a fairly vivid dreamer and I had problems as a kid getting over a spate of bad dreams (some of which I still remember), but it has been a long time since they deserved such worry. Recently I said how I had a dream (I think it was a dream) where I was in bed and I couldn´t move any of my limbs, I said it smiling because I thought it had been kind of neat and because I was purposefully trying to put off their worry. My host dad and brother looked at me very seriously and asked if it had been pesadilla (something pretty bad), but were visibly relieved that I hadn´t been asustado.

I recently heart my fellow librarian trying to diagnose a student who was saying he was having problems studying, he gets bored, can´t focus, and overall is just tired. There were lots of interesting things brought up in this conversation, but I´ll keep it short and simply recall a small part of the conversation “Did you have a scare somewhere?” “no” “are you sure, did you have a scare somewhere” “I don´t think so,” “I don´t believe you. You got scared somewhere. You were scared. You might not even remember it now, but you got scared. That´s what happened to me” According to the Mayan beliefs he says, you have to do something with a doll (I forget exactly what you are supposed to do.).

In another conversation between my fellow librarian and another teacher which was full of magical tales that they themselves had lived or heard about there was a particular preoccupation with being scared. I hope to write more about this subject later, but this will do for this entry.

My host father has admitted to me of not being able to sleep because of bad dreams, and I think he might have an actually fairly real problem of dealing with some sort of post trauma disorder. He spend of a lot of his life in a country going through a terrible civil war. So when I say I didn´t sleep well because of a bad dream, they associate that with the actually serious bad dreams of my host father, not with my easily dismissible soul stealing monsters or whatever new invention of my mind.

Some peoples bad dreams here could be serious trauma inducing events I can´t admit to being scared (even to myself) despite the fact that I am sometimes very jumpy when people come jogging up behind me (I was robbed once and punched once by people running up behind me in foreign countries). I am pretty easily asustado by people joking around and jumping out of shadows at me, but if you do that to me and ask me if I was scared, no I will say, you surprised me, you did not scare me.

Here, being scared can call up both recent memory and current afflictions with post traumatic events problems and can recall ages long ideas about a spiritual world totally separate from our western faith in science, progress, and a one true God which we can get to know personally.

Jordan