Part Deux0
of the Fellow Missionary Spolight Lecture Series.
0Look at me, throwing in a wie
bit o Scottish for you young buggers! (get it? It´s French!)
Marie!1 Marie Abernathy is from Scotland and was born shortly before the end of the
second world war. She has a knack for speaking almost exclusively in English
and getting by just fine, but she’s continuing to work on her Spanish. First
and foremost, though, she’s quotable. We’ll begin with a brief sampling:
1Or Mary, as
she is often called in Central America.
In our house while cooking dinner:
“When I die here I
hope they bury me next to Vincent in the church.”
At the very end of Inception:
Marie: “Okay, what the heck is the name of that
actor!? This has been driving me nuts all movie!” Kevin: “Wait, Marie, did you
see the top spinning on the table?”
Marie: “No?”
Kevin: “That’s super important because it isn’t
clear whether it is falling or not, and if it hasn’t, he’s still…”
Marie: “OH I’VE GOT IT! DONALD SUTHERLAND!2”
2The actor’s name was Michael
Kaine.
When
the girl who occasionally makes donuts comes to our house:
Marie: “Oh, you, donuts por favor! Today!”
Girl (translated for the reader into English):
“What is she saying?”
Other Missionary (translated for the reader
into English): “She’s asking you if you’ll make donuts today for her”
Marie: “Yeah, donuts, hoy! Muy rico!”
Girl: “I could make them on Saturday when it is
my turn to cook?”
Marie: “No, no sabado, today.”
Girl leaves in confused silence. Returns in 1.5
hours with donuts.3
3This girl and
Marie are now best friends.
In the youngest girls’ house during lunch:
“Oh, you mean they
kill the chickens? I thought they just waited till they died and then cooked
them. Like me, when I die here you’ll just throw me into the pot.”
Marie is also the intellectual
property owner of several lines I can’t repeat in public, and has the distinct
misfortune of having said nearly all of these above things in English. It is
quite unclear to what degree the kids get her sense of humor, but given that
she´s always giving away things and always cleaning, they like her anyway. When
she’s not creating quotable moments, Marie can be found pouring water on the
heads of unsuspecting maintenance men during halftime of soccer games, kissing
raw frozen chickens out of pure joy, asking most Fridays and Saturdays whether
there’s a spiritual life event that night4, saying, “I’m over it!” in
regards to anything from Cooking to The Finca to Bleach to Rats4.5 and
occasionally slipping into a Scottish accent, entertaining us all.
4The answer is always no.
4.5She has never
seen a single one of these in our house. That seems nigh impossible to me. I
can’t tell whether it is a luck thing, a vision thing, or an ‘ignorance is
bliss’ thing. My guess is the latter.
Apart from her sense
of humor (or rather, including it), Marie ought to be well recognized for her skills
in accompaniment. Within two weeks of being here and speaking almost entirely
in English, she had somehow developed a better relationship with several of the
House 6 girls than I have in three years. The maintenance guys have suddenly
begun to stop by our house for coffee or just merely to chat, and at least once
I came back to the house to find two of the house dads sorting, washing, and
cooking beans for her. She’s also the elected representative of the missionary
house sent to House 6 to get back all of the cooking utensils, pans, etc that
they’ve “borrowed” from us and now believe are theirs5. I want to
say there’s something entirely disarming about being 71 that allows her to
build relationship completely differently from the rest of us, but it might
just be something about Marie.
5This happens surprisingly often…
and if we don’t send Marie, they get extremely defensive of “their”6
stuff with whichever of the other missionaries we do send. By the way, it is definitely
our stuff. Although when I put it
like that, it doesn’t seem like a very Christian way of thinking about it.
P.S. Here’s a few
more:
While discussing cooking eggs:
“Oh no! I hate eggs. I
hate the sight of them and I especially hate cooking them. We cook them so
often!”
Three minutes later:
“What if we cook some eggs with
that? That could work really well!”
While discussing a recent leak in the girl’s
bathroom:
“We gotta get that
stuff cleaned up. You don’t want me to break a hip in there! Oh no! Send a
helicopter! Get here quick!”
When deciding whether or not to use something called
‘mantequilla’ here:
“You know, that
stuff’s really not that good, but it at least helps the beans we have here
slide down your throat. It really helps you get them down.”
When someone else offers to do the dishes for
her:
“Oh no, I’ve got this.
You sit down and take a rest. I’ll deal with this nightmare. Oh God.”
