Teacher on Two Wheels

Thursday 4/3/08 San Juan, Panama

I was all set to blow through the small farming community of San Juan when a few drops of sweat slipped off my upper lip into my open mouth. Soaked to the bone with sweat, I suddenly realized how hot and tired I was. I put on the brakes on the edge of San Juan and pulled into the dirt lot in front of a small tienda covered in soda advertisements.

I bought a bottle of soda for $0.30 and walked over to my bike.

“Sit, please. Sit in the shade,” an older woman said in Spanish, gesturing to a plastic chair beside her. She was sitting in the shade of a large thatched-roof hut next to the tienda.

I took a seat and put the soda to my lips. For a moment, as the ice-cold liquid hit the back of my throat, I was transported away from the heat, the wet shirt on my back, my tired legs. I closed my eyes and reveled in the escape. A few seconds passed. I turned toward the woman.

“Cold enough?” the woman asked.

“Yes, it’s amazing,” I said.

We introduced ourselves and started talking. The woman, Olga was her name, had vibrant brown eyes and a bun of dark hair streaked with gray. She told me about San Juan. About the electricity that always cuts out. About the school on the hill that, despite its rural location, still manages to teach its students English. About the student who was hit and killed by a car on the highway in front of where we were sitting.

Olga explained that she liked to help people. Like some people enjoy playing soccer or baseball, Olga enjoys helping people.

“Wait here a minute,” she said. She walked into her house next to where we were sitting, the one that was connected to the tienda, and came out a few seconds later holding two plastic bags.

“Try this. I make these myself.”

I took a bag. It was filled with some type of frozen juice. I ripped a corner off the bag with my teeth and chewed away at the ice inside. It tasted like frozen pineapple juice mixed with milk.

From the cool shade of Olga’s thatched-roof hut, I let the hottest part of the day slip away. Olga’s husband, Ernesto, the man who sold me my soda earlier, joined us in the hut when the tienda got too hot. Ernesto is lanky and takes small, deliberate steps. He is 73-years-old but looks far younger. His mustache is trimmed and his eyes betray his father’s Chinese ancestry. When Olga went to watch after the tienda, Ernesto and I lounged in hammocks and talked in Spanish about the year-and-a-half he spent living and working in New York City.

“Before I got to New York, I knew how to say only one type of food in English: Ham and egg,” Ernesto said. “But when I first got there, I needed to eat, right? So I went to into a restaurant and I asked for the only thing I knew–ham and egg. For a week or so, all I ate was ham and egg. Every meal, ham and egg. I didn’t mind it. Finally, though, my friend told me I needed to learn other words because I couldn’t spend a year or so in New York eating only ham and eggs! ‘All these great restaurants here and you just keep eating ham and eggs!’ my friend said.”

We laughed.

“So I learned some other stuff. Hamburger. Pasta. Pizza. French fries. Lasagna. You know, all the stuff you guys like. One night, after I spent a few hours studying the English names of different foods, I had worked up an appetite. I was excited to use my new words, so I walked to a restaurant near my apartment. I decided I would order a huge meal just so I could practice saying what I studied! When I walked into the restaurant, though, I suddenly became nervous. The waiter at the counter asked what I wanted, and before I knew it, I blurted out, ‘Ham and egg!’ Can you believe it!? I’ll never forget that.” He smiled and looked at me.

In my eyes, he saw New York City. He saw his ham and eggs, his tiny city apartment, his long hours working each day to save money to bring back to Panama. In his eyes, a little cloudy but wide and focused, I saw San Juan, the quiet farming village refusing to fade away in the dusty hills of rural Panama.

Neither of us meant for it to be that way. It just was. We each reflected things far off and exotic. We were windows. But also mirrors, too. We swung in hammocks in the breeze in the exact same way. Our ankles were boney and identical. When words hid from our tongues, we were content with just looking at each other from time to time. Because in our looking, we each absorbed a little more of the places we knew little about.

After a long silence, Ernesto turned to me.

“If you want to, you can sleep here under the hut tonight. This hut is always open to travelers who need a place to stay,” Ernesto said.

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that.”

After a dinner with Olga and Ernesto by candlelight, as the electricity puttered on and off, sending the street lights out front twinkling at odd intervals, I drifted off to sleep with Ernesto’s guard dog by my head. Just as Olga promised, a cool breeze kept the heat and humidity away the whole night long.