The Ugly American

I am not going to tell you what Latin American country I am in in case this is picked up on some search engine and I would not want to embarrass anyone, but I will tell you that I now understand the expression the ugly American. I got an invitation from the American embassy to attend an opening of a joint United States /Latin American project. The invitation, by the way, came from the American Embassy, not from the Latin American joint venture. All of the principals spoke and said the usual, but what struck me like a bolt of lightning was the fact that the new American Ambassador spoke in English. Surely to God Obama could have found one campaign contributor who spoke Spanish! I found the fact that the Ambassador spoke in English condescending at best and insulting at worse. Even if she spoke Spanish, which she apparently did not, surely she could have put in some Spanish expressions.

The other issue was the poor job she did of speaking with a translator. I learned last year that when you speak with a translator, you give the whole idea first and then you stop and let the translator speak. She stopped, like I used to, after every phrase which could be two or three words. The translator has no hope when you do that other than botching up the translation.

Yesterday, by the way, I continued my road show and went to the town of Nicoya in the Nicoya peninsula, about two hours, mas o menos, from where I live. I went to a little restaurant for lunch and met the Chinese Costa Rican owner married to a German Costa Rican. When I asked the German when and why his family came here he told me that they had been living in Costa Rica for 80 years and control all of the cocoa export. I scared his wife when I asked” ni how ma” because she was embarrassed that she did not speak Chinese and moved away but how serendipitous that they were married to each other, the mixture of Chinese and Swiss living in Costa Rica and ending their family traditions because they did not have children.

I am coming home next week for the month of May to try and sell our school to Toronto high school kids. I think we have a great product since our school is on a 72 hectare farm and we tons of interesting outdoor interactive stuff. It would also benefit our 10 high school students to have some interaction with the outside world. We are getting two OISE students next week but hopefully I can generate a little more interaction than this!