I’m going to keep this brief (since I’m feeling lazy, and since the whole encounter only lasted about ten minutes in real life), but I feel like I need to tell you guys about this. The other day I was at the mayor’s office as usual and I left the main building entrance to head back to my office (which is basically a converted storage closet, with an entrance around the side of the building). I was a bit distracted and it wasn’t until I was actually half way through the door that I noticed the old, wild eyed, campesino man standing inside my office with a machete in hand. Now, back in the US, I feel like this kind of thing would probably have freaked me out (just a bit). After a year of living in Fraternidad however, it didn’t really phase me all that much, and the first thing I did was to ask him who he was looking for, and how I could help him (as opposed to the normal US reaction of “dear god, don’t kill me”). This was when things got weird (well weirder). He continued what he was doing when I came in, which was peering at the wall behind my door, and without missing a beat, asked me where I kept the “puros”. Now I was expecting a question about some sort of municipal business and this threw me for a loop. My mind began quickly racing through possible other meanings for the word, but I kept coming back to “cigars”, which is the only meaning I knew for that word. As I asked him some clarifying questions it rapidly became clear that he was indeed looking for cigars, and had been doing so since the day before. It turned out that some “muchacho” (word for boy or young man) had directed him to the “big yellow house” (the mayor’s office) and told him to go see the gringo, since he sold cigars. By this point I was pretty confused, but was coming to realize that the old man was definitely a bit off in the head (that or really drunk, though he did not smell of booze). Also at this moment I heard a whistling coming from one of the houses that backs up on the mayor’s office (people here can whistle with amazing force), and looked up to see one of my friends on his back porch laughing his butt off. He yelled to me that he had directed the old man my way since I sell the best cigars, and I realized that I had been had. Assuming that this would be the end of the confusion I explained to the old man that it had been a joke and that I did not actually sell cigars. He however was neither finished with his quest for cigars, nor fully convinced that I did not sell them. He continued to try to wheedle some out of me, saying that he would be content with just one (or even if I could just see fit to give him a wad of tobacco to chew on). Eventually he bagan to get a bit agitated that I was so clearly holding out on him, and I decided that I didn’t like the idea of having a debate with an agitated (and as I realized by this point, clearly delusional) man holding a machete, alone, around the side of the building. Thus I walked back to the main office and proceeded to pass him off on the vice mayor, who is also one of the biggest “chavacanes” (tricksters/jokers) in town who calmly listened to the man’s request and explained that we (the residents of the “big yellow house”) had recently run out of cigars, but that the folks in the health center had tons (and that he [the old man] should not take “No” for an answer from them, since he [the vice mayor] had given them a whole bunch of cigars just the day before). In retrospect it seems kind of mean that people just pass off this man (who it was explained to me is not of a right state of mind) on others, leaving him to wander around the streets all day, but I’ve come to learn that it is pretty much standard practice here (they do the same thing with the mayors mentally handicapped nephew when he gets confused and shows up looking for his pay check multiple times in the same day [he gets paid by the municipality to collecting trash with the garbage truck once a week]).
