No quiero comer atún: learning Spanish in Colombia

Jef Weg
Jef Weg
Aug 8, 2017 · 14 min read

When I told my friends and family I was going to Colombia most of them asked why. Usually what they meant was why would you go there, and I had different answers for different people. I told my parents it was for the cocaine because as their youngest son, I like to keep them guessing. I told some friends it was for salsa dancing but they knew I was kidding. The last time I tried to salsa dance I was at a wedding and my date was wearing open-toed shoes. By the end of the wedding one of her toenails was missing and there was blood on the dance floor, literally. I made her a tourniquet from a table napkin.

I’ve wanted to learn Spanish since I walked through Spain on the Camino de Santiago and I chose Colombia because my friends who speak Spanish told me that the accent is widely understood by native Spanish speaking people. Everything I knew about Colombia I learned from Romancing the Stone; in other words I didn’t know anything about Colombia. I wasn’t worried because I’m not exactly risk-averse, in 2004 I moved to New Zealand thinking it was nothing but palm trees and coconuts and that turned out okay. And maybe Colombia is famous because of Pablo Escobar but that was twenty years ago. As of today, I can say with gusto that I felt safe in Medellín. I wasn’t kidnapped or decapitated once and the only time I lost my mind was in Spanish class.

Before coming to Colombia a beautiful South American woman asked me what I could say in Spanish, and I told her no quiero comer atún. She gave me the finger and walked away. Apparently what I actually said was no quiero comer tú, I don’t want to eat you. This has a sexual connotation and it was the first time I unintentionally insulted someone in Spanish. I should have studied more before arriving in Colombia, but I didn’t, so these are the words I easily understood: hola, adios, amigo, taco, burrito, enchilada, quesadilla, casa, hombre, puta, and naranja.

I enrolled in a school called Total Spanish in El Poblado, the tourist neighbourhood of the city. It was four hours a day of Spanish, sometimes six hours, five days a week. I made so many mistakes in the beginning because mistakes are easy to make when learning a foreign language. For example there are words in Spanish that are spelled the same way except for one letter. For the first two weeks I told people I was from Nine Zealand instead of New Zealand (nueve vs. nueva). One day I tried to reserve a hair for hair-back riding instead of a horse for horseback riding (cabello vs. caballo, that was a very awkward conversation). When a waitress asked me what I ordered for dinner I said that I fart chicken (pedo vs. pido). She raised her eyebrows and for some reason I thought I needed to enunciate, so I locked eyes with her and slowly, deliberately repeated, I fart chicken.

She probably expected me to say beans instead of chicken. Beans are easy to find here, but fresh vegetables on the other hand, not so much. When I found a restaurant called Ganso & Castor that served them I became a faithful customer. One day I took my friend Varna there for lunch to eat their menu del día. I always ordered this set menu because it was easy to say in Spanish, but on this day there were two options, an unexpected speed bump. We could choose pasta or chicken.

So I say to the waiter menu del día, pasta por favor and I point to the word pasta on the menu. Notice the word pasta is identical in English. I assumed my speech was intelligible and even if it wasn’t, I buttressed my request with sign language. Varna says yo también, which means me too. In case you’re traveling and need to speak a foreign language, this is the best way to order food because you say exactly what you want by piggybacking. About ten minutes later he hands her a plate of chicken with sautéed vegetables and he hands me a plate of pork cutlet with french fries. There is no pasta. We look at each other and I shrug my shoulders and start eating. After he leaves we try to work out what happened and she decides to ask the waiter about our food. When he comes back she asks por qué están diferente, why are they different? He points to her plate and says es pollo and he points to my plate and says es cerdo. He literally says this is chicken and that is pork.

Another night we were at a restaurant famous for steak called Parrilla Déjame Que Te Cuente. I ate so much meat this day one good whack and I would’ve burst like a piñata raining pork belly onto laughing Colombian children. During dinner we talked about what we should do afterwards and the choices were between getting wasted with aguardiente, a cheap Colombian spirit that tastes like anise, or horseback riding in the morning. This is what happens in life when you’re not working and in Colombia: should we get wasted or should we go horseback riding? When you’re 36 years old you do neither and instead go home, put on your jammies and go to sleep.

Never try to learn a new language with a hangover because concentration is necessary. Not only is the grammar different to English, usually they omit the subject of the sentence entirely because it’s unnecessary. Take for instance the verb to want, querer: quiero, quieres, quiere, queremos, quieren. All of these words mean to want but since they’re different, the subject isn’t needed. I only need to focus on the ending of every verb to figure out who they’re talking about. If English was like Spanish, to want might look like this: I want, you wantes, he wants, we wantos, they wanten. You wouldn’t need to say I, you, he, we, or they, because the verbs are unique.

Spanish is also very specific when talking about the past. There are many ways to express it and what tense you use depends on the following: when the action started, how many times it happened, if it’s still happening, if it’s something that usually happened, if it happened one time immediately before something else happened, if it finished, if it’s subjunctive, if your mom’s name is Barbara, and if you’re feeling bloated. For example the verb tener: tengo, tuve, tenía, tendría, ha tenido, había tenido, habría tenido, estaba teniendo, estuve teniendo, and tuviera. In English we just say have, was having, and had. Why is Spanish so particular about the past? Why isn’t the future in Spanish as specific?

So much of a new language needs to be learned on the street. When a waiter or waitress asked me if I enjoyed my meal, I would say estaba bien, because I thought I was saying that the food was good. Sometimes they smiled, sometimes they didn’t, when they didn’t I assumed it was because they heard my accent and knew that continuing a conversation would be uncomfortable for the both of us. On a hunch I told my teacher what I said and she told me that I’ve been implying the food could be better, that is was so-so. I needed to say estaba rico. This was one of many times I was unintentionally insulting.

In conversations I spend most of my time trying to distinguish questions from statements, i.e. do I need to say something, or can I nod and smile? One day our teacher asked Varna to read three sentences and she replied but she didn’t start reading. She was staring at the teacher. The teacher asked vas a leer las tres oraciónes siguientes, are you going to read the next three sentences? Varna said again, but still just sat there. We were all looking at her, trying to figure out what was happening inside her mind. Then the teacher said dónde estás – en la luna, where are you – on the moon? She was utterly dazed. Who can blame her? When class ended I was so tired I usually needed a big boy nap in my apartment. Coincidentally Varna was living in the same building and one day when she came back after class the custodian asked her what she was doing, because she was standing at a gate that was wide open trying to unlock it, for no reason whatsoever.

Varna invited me over for dinner once and when I arrived she was tediously cutting vegetables with a butter knife. I mention vegetables again because you could almost say my entire time in Medellín was spent trying to find them to eat. Her apartment didn’t have a chopping knife so I said I would check if my apartment had bigger knives. I needed to check because this fella never used the kitchen so I had no idea how it was supplied. When I went upstairs two women were in my apartment cooking dinner and they didn’t speak English. This is what I was training for. I asked them for a knife and they gave me a spoon because I confused the words, so I said no and pointed to a knife. They gave me the knife that I pointed to, but I shook my head and said I needed a muy grande cuchillo, a very big knife. They looked at each other and one of them handed me a butcher knife and then I walked out of the apartment carrying it in my hand.

Has a random white man with a moustache ever asked you for a butcher knife in your Airbnb apartment, and after giving it to him, walked out the door with it? Looking back I can see why they avoided me in the morning and moved out the next day. Sometimes I saw them walking in the streets when I was eating lunch or dinner. Unfortunately I was almost always aggressively cutting meat with a sharp knife. They didn’t say hola.

All restaurants in El Poblado have outdoor seating since the weather is perfect. This might sound lovely to you but I hate picnics and eating food outside, it’s one of my quirks. The problem with eating outside in El Poblado is that merchants walk past your table trying to sell you everything, all the time. They’re friendly, and they want your money. If they could speak English fluently, they would say this: Would you like to buy a hammock for your apartment? I also have a paint bucket filled with delicious strawberries you would love. No? I see you’re eating dessert alone. Whilst you’re enjoying your flan can I interest you in an after dinner prostitute? Still no? What about pineapple flavoured cocaine? But they don’t speak it fluently, so it sounds like this: ¿Hamaca? ¿Fresas? ¿Women? ¿Men? ¿Coca piña? Every day I was offered cocaine, marijuana, strawberries, hookers, and hammocks. Sometimes I was offered candy, sometimes there were people begging for money, but it happened every time I ate outside. There are so many people in Colombia looking for work and trying to live, it’s hard not to buy something every day.

The one thing I needed that wasn’t offered to me on the street was a razor for shaving and in Colombia, you buy this item at a pharmacy. Pharmacies keep most of their products behind a counter so you can’t simply browse for what you want; you need to talk to the pharmacist. This is also what I was training for. I prepared myself by memorising the correct vocabulary words, the most important word was the razor itself, which is called a cuchillo para afeitar or a knife for shaving. I request it, he understands me. He fetches a disposable Gillette razor, the same razor I use in New Zealand. I ask how much it costs and he says 2,500 pesos, or around $1.15 NZD. It is so cheap. This is an excellent example of capitalist bullshit, so I bought 20.

I didn’t mind that people are trying to make a living on the streets, what bothered me was the traffic. Traffic is so bad and the air is smoggy, and even though it’s smaller than Bogotá it still has around three million people with three million cars. When I took a bus to Guatapé with my school, a two hour ride took five hours because of the congestion. On the way back an oncoming car wasn’t paying attention and swerved to the right, knocking a motorcyclist off his bike. I looked out the back window of the bus and he wasn’t moving, and a woman was praying over his body. We didn’t stop to help. A few minutes later an ambulance was jackhammering its way through traffic. I have no idea what happened to him.

You see a lot of praying in and around the city because about 70% of the people of Colombia are Catholics. Originally in the city centre of Medellín there were two Catholic churches built, the first is the Basílica Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria and the second is Iglesia de la Veracruz.

You know how some Catholics like to pick and choose what to believe? I know this is a generalisation but transubstantiation, the immaculate conception, and divorce. For Colombians, they don’t marry. When we walked into the first church my teacher told us about her parents. They’re married, which is unusual, and recently her father found a new woman and now her mother is like a mistress even though they’re still married. This is accepted because Colombian culture uses machismo as mortar. She told us that men can have many women, and they’re smiled upon if they can afford to provide for more than one woman, but if women have many men they’re putas.

When we walked by the second church she told us that during the War of Independence, one of its bells was melted down and transformed into a cannon, because nothing says unconditional love and forgiveness like a holy cannon, and now the cannon is housed inside the church. Someone in our group asked if we could go inside to see it and she said no, es peligroso, hay muchas prostitutas. I never thought I would learn the word for prostitutes while talking about a church, but you never know what sentences you’ll hear in a day. If you ever visit Medellín and you walk by this church and you hear the words my god you should think twice about what’s happening inside. And the cannon isn’t the only thing that’s causing explosions. I could go on. Isn’t life fun?

Apart from when I was on this tour, I didn’t feel like a tourist because every day I was studying. So one weekend I decided to be a tourist by traveling to Pereira, a small city sort of between Bogotá and Cali. Instead of taking a bus for five hours I flew south for 35 minutes on a small plane from the local airport. The plane had propellors and was full of businesspeople and as we boarded, almost everyone made the sign of the cross and kissed their rosaries. If I knew the turbulence was going to be bad, I would have kissed a rosary too because it felt like the clouds were playing hot potato with the plane. I spent most of the time wiping the sweat from my palms and repeating the words I believe in science to myself. I stared out the window trying to memorise the terrain in case the plane went down because for some reason if I can see where the plane will crash, that relieves my anxiety.

When I looked at the other passengers for reassurance that we weren’t about to die together, each and every person had their chairs reclined with their eyes closed as if they were laying in a casket. During our descent they woke up and murmured together in prayer and after touchdown, they applauded and kissed their rosaries again. I expected them to genuflect out of their row as we deplaned.

That night I ordered a big steak. It came with a small baked potato, a handful of chopped cabbage with five slices of cucumber, and arepa. Arepa is the staple food of the country. It’s made from corn and it’s about the size and shape of a tea saucer. If you want to experience the flavour and texture of arepa from your home, find an empty cardboard box and chew it until it transforms into a sludge that you can swallow. If you think that sounds mean you haven’t tried arepa. I have no idea what they do to corn to make it so tasteless and gritty. The first day I tasted it, I tried to feed it to a stray dog and he literally looked at me, barked a single arf, turned up his nose, and walked away.

But no one in history has traveled to Colombia to eat arepa. For the steaks though, probably. Mine was excellent and the total cost of dinner was 9 NZD, about 6.50 USD. Pereira is not a tourist destination and it’s hard for Colombians to find work, so when they have money they don’t give it away to people who already have jobs. But it was so cheap I wanted to leave the waitress a tip so I left 6,000 pesos, or about 3 NZD. From the time I offered her the tip to the time she realised I was handing her free money, her face went from confusion to disbelief to joy. If I could be as happy and she was from something so small, I’d be a better person. I remember when I was a kid I played with rocks. At one time in my life, rocks made me happy. What happened to me?

Paragliding into Medéllin

If I’m honest, I don’t need to learn Spanish. No matter where I travel in the world, there’s someone who can speak a few words of English. Not only can they speak it, they actively try to learn more. When I walked across Spain I met hundreds of people from different countries and for better or worse, English was the common language at the dinner table. When I took a taxi from the airport into Mexico City, the taxi driver told me he wanted to practise his English because it would be good for business.

There are a few reasons to learn a language, and they all involve talking to other people. I’m an introvert that’s uncomfortable around strangers, so why would I bother? Quite the pickle, isn’t it. I think some of my behaviour comes from the internet because in my daily life it’s easy to avoid strangers. I can buy anything online and have it shipped to my door. I can use my phone to order a car to take me where I want to go, and I don’t even need to talk to the driver. I can rent an apartment for weeks without meeting the owner once, because the key to the apartment is in a lockbox outside the building. During my lifetime programmers have created so many ways for me to replace human contact with convenience.

So I put myself in a situation where I needed to talk to strangers. Every day I found myself depending on the kindness and patience of Colombians as we fumbled through my mistakes in Spanish. Not one person gave up on me and walked away.

One day I went to Comuna 13 with my teacher. This neighbourhood was notoriously violent during the reign of Pablo Escobar because for reasons you can Google, it was the centre of the global drug war. I asked my teacher if she was born there and not only did she say yes, she said she would live there forever. It was her home. She said this after finishing a story about how one morning, on her way to school she found a man and woman bound and gagged, dead in the street from gunshot wounds to the head. And as she was running home she was hit by a motorcycle. But even with these bad experiences, she stays because her family and her community built their lives there, together. Walking with her through the streets and watching her interact with her neighbours, I felt like I was able to glimpse a real community. It made me think something’s missing in my life. If you think about your happiest memories, who were you with? Were you alone?

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Not many people have the opportunity to learn a new language in a foreign country so I’m grateful that I could. A mis profesores en mi escuela, muchas gracias! He aprendido mucho y espero cuando regrese a Medellín pueda verlos una vez más!

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