My day with Chino

Chino is a nickname given to whoever has ‘slanty’ eyes. In our community we have 3 chinos—chino the bus driver, chino grande, y chino pequeno. Chino the bus driver is exactly what his name suggests, chino grande is the older and bigger chino on the soccer team, and chino pequeno is the younger and smaller chino on the soccer team. Makes you wonder why all nicknames aren’t so straightforward.

Let me describe a bit chino grande. The very first day I visited my community I played soccer in the evening. On a field full of sticks and rocks and other players wearing cleats and kicking at anything that moves, chino was running around barefoot, and not backing away from any challenge. At first glance, it was apparent that he was the biggest, fastest, and toughest one out there. Basically, chino is a badass and I was more than a little intimidated by him.

Chino is also one of the mainstays of the group of guys that drink at the corner by my house at night. He’s the one, who whenever he sees me outback washing the dishes, invites me to come over and sit around telling jokes and riddles with him. He’s the one who was offended that Eddie turned down his third helping of radish-onion salad.

In El Salvador, ‘confianza’ is king. ‘Confianza’ translates into confidence or trust. Distrust is so prevalent in this country, it is extremely important to develop confianza and to display it in any way possible—even if that means choking down your third helping of radish-onion salad (Eddie).

Now on to my day with Chino. On Wednesday I was doing some cleaning and other chores around my house. Around lunchtime I went out back to wash some dishes and Chino called me from next door. I went to talk with him, and he was dying to hang out—he was definitely bored, and maybe a little drunk. He suggested we go to Chepe’s house (Chepe is the leader/most respected person in the community) to get some eggs from some sort of fowl (smaller than a chicken, and the eggs look like quail eggs) Chepe keeps. I said sure, and we went over there. Of course I assumed that Chepe would be there, he wasn’t. The door was open, so we walked through his house, which I felt very uncomfortable doing without him being there, looked for some eggs out back in the coup—also uncomfortable—but didn’t find anything. He then asked if I like lifting weights. I said sure, so we walked to another person’s yard and did curls using the cement and steel weight laying out (this, isn’t uncommon and wasn’t uncomfortable—just going into someone’s house when they weren’t there seemed wrong).

After all of this, we walked back to my house. Chino wanted me to come with him to his house to watch a movie. A lot of the guys here get pirated porn movies and watch them, and I assumed that’s what he meant. I said, not today, I have to finish cleaning up my house. He said, c’mon, it’s a good movie, lots of action (which I took to mean sexual action) and again politely declined. Eventually, he mentioned Jackie Chan, and I realized it was a legitimate action movie, but I still declined. Finally, he started saying I don’t have confianza in him. He said he considers me a good friend; we play soccer together, tell jokes and riddles, hang out, but obviously I don’t trust him. I said that’s ridiculous, of course I trust him, but I want to finish my chores around the house. Of course he offers to help me so we can finish and go to his house. I accept, we finish, and we head out to his house.

The DVD player wasn’t working, so he put on some music to ask me if I liked it. First CD was Technotronics ‘Pump up the jam’ which if you have ever heard this CD (think early 90s) you will know it is fantastic and of course I liked it. Second CD was ‘musica romantica.’ So I’m sitting there with the biggest badass in my community listening to love songs and he’s watching me to see my reaction and whether or not I like the music.

From there, he asked me if I like bananas. I said yes, so we chopped down a banana tree (surprisingly easy, at least for him) so he could give me a branch with some 50 bananas on it and then walked back to my house carrying a 40 pound branch of bananas on my back.

The weirdest part of the entire day is that none of it was weird. I learned that people go through Chepe’s house all the time and he has no problem with it. That’s why he leaves his door open. The eggs he keeps in the coup in he back is up for grabs to anyone, and that’s why there were none. Sitting around listening to Spanish love songs, not weird either. And chopping down banana trees—just plain cool obviously.