-ita

Una Problem-ita.

One of the most endearing things I have encountered here in the DR is the use of the suffix –ita. Usually -ita means smaller. Mi hermana – my sister; mi herman-ita – my little sister. However,  –ita is sometimes used to describe things that are much bigger. For example having a problem-ita, which literally means to have a little problem “I struck match…” here it means to have a BIG problem “…and the wind blew it into your car’s gas tank”.

Kind of like how we say “bless your heart” in the South, when sometimes we really mean – “remind me to never let you watch my kids/leave you alone with my husband/borrow money/etc”

So one afternoon I was  teaching my neighbor swear words in English minding my business on my back porch when the wind picked up. My doña said “looks like we are going to have a breeze-ita!” (in Spanish of course) Meaning, to me, it was going to get a little breezy. I failed to remember the –ita rule and about 20 minutes later there was torrential down pour, the power went out, and our banana trees were snapping like twigs.

In all the hustle, My doña started sweeping the water off the back porch, which I thought was unnecessary because the porch has excellent drainage, but since the only thing sillier than sweeping rain was watching someone sweep rain I grabbed a broom and went two it! After another 5 minutes a few stranded kids from our campo came running into our house to find sanctuary. We made an intricate assembly line of water sweeping. I swept from the back on one half to one of the younger boys who passed the small wave the right to another boy who whacked the water off the porch like it was a hockey puck. This was one side of the porch; my doña swept the other side was faster than the three of us combined. After about an hour of sweeping, the rain let up and the breeze-ita passed.

Then my neighbor came over and painted my toes and nails, just because you don’t have power or water, doesn’t mean your nails have to go un-polished. Right? Right.

The next day while riding with another neighbor to a community baseball game, on the back of a motorcycle because I am SO badass here, I noticed DOZENS of fallen trees and our power line was down. The next day, day three without power and water, I finally asked, what the heck is a breeze – ita? (in Spanish, of course) ¿y mi repuesta? A tornado. . . Of course! How else could you possibly describe what knocked over all those trees and is the reason I am using the water I shower with to flush the potty*, a tornado –ita!

*I realize that other volunteers have to so this anyway, tornado or not, so for the record I thank God often for my flushing potty and am not taking that for granted!

So lesson learned. Breeze – ita = massive tornado. Hopefully, I will keep learning more without many problem-itas.