In Which My Name Provokes a Screaming Match

It took me a long time to get to a point where I could actually administer surveys (I had to translate everything, hold focus groups to finalize the wording, wait for the IRB's approval of the project, conduct a pilot test with 20 participants, arrange everything with the hospital, and on and on...). Which means that now I have to do the surveys every day. The hours of the hospital are mysterious and esoteric. They are be different in every department and seem to change daily... I have figured out that if I come from 7-11 AM, I can be pretty much assured of getting a room to work in. This translates to about 10 surveys a day, give or take.

On the days I have girls club, I head up to the clinic after giving the morning's surveys. Last Tuesday, I decided to wait a bit before heading to the guaguas. I went home, ate some Cheerios, checked my email, and took a ten minute cat nap on top of my laptop (funny how some habits are country-independent). I headed over to the guagua gathering place (not really a station, just where they congregate), and realized I had made a big mistake.

Yoryi (pronounced Georgie, spelling approximated), a guy who became my go-to guagua guy when he helped me search for a notebook I dropped about a month ago, was sitting in a colmado with a very motley assortment of associates. Yoryi doesn't drive a guagua - I actually have no idea what he does, just loiters around and helps people get in the guagua sometimes. As I walked up, I realized that there wasn't anybody in the guagua. "Sit here!" Yoryi said, gesturing at a stool in the colmado. This is a very, very bad sign if you are trying to leave within the hour - usually they just have you wait in a guagua until it's sufficiently stuffed with people to leave. I sat, resigned to waiting hours for a guagua. Never again will I try to go up during lunch time.

Yoryi then introduced me to his friend Franklin. "What's your name?" asked Franklin. I told him, and he said, "but what is it in English? Is it spelled differently?" At which point Yoryi countered, "names are all the same in every language!" You wouldn't think that this would be a contentious topic, but the discussion grew more and more heated as the other men in the colmado jumped in, until Yoryi, Franklin, and Co. were essentially yelling. Highlights from the rhetorical free-for-all:

• Franklin: "How do you spell beisbol in English? It's different and it sounds different!"
• Yoryi: "But proper names are always the same!" (I was impressed by this statement; Yoryi is missing some teeth and has a broken nose - an unlikely grammarian)
• Guy #3: "But Yoryi your name is "hor-hay" in Spanish and "georgie" in English!"
• Yoryi: " No. My name is always "georgie."
• Guy #3: "HOR-HAY in Spanish!"
• Yoryi: "NO. MY NAME IS ALWAYS "GEORGIE."
• Franklin, with authority: "IN CHINESE! RAPHAELA IS WRITTEN DIFFERENT IN CHINESE! THERE ARE CHINESE PEOPLE NAMED RAPHAELA! IT IS PRONOUNCED DIFFERENTLY THERE!" (to me) "Right???"
• Me, laughing: I don't know Chinese.

I then decided to wait in the guagua in hopes that they would get the idea that I wanted to leave. I ended up sitting there an hour and a half.