Appendix A

 Glossary of Non-English Terms

(Spanish unless otherwise designated)

Colombian FARC guerilla watches as local small-town band plays[1]

abuela – grandmother

aguardiente – anise-flavored liqueur popular among partying men in coastal Colombia in the 1990s

¡Ai! – oh! – oh darn!

a la carte – French for ‘charged by the item’ (as opposed to prix fixe, meaning ‘a single charge for the whole meal’)

amable – kind, nice, pleasant, amiable, affable

ama de casa – housewife

aquí – here

arepa – a small flat round corn cake; a Colombian variety of corn patty made from corn flour (and maybe other ingredients, depending on place, time and cook) which is several inches wide, but much thicker than the Mexican tortilla, perhaps even as much as a quarter inch thick

Avenida – avenue; please use ‘Avenida’ in a sentence:

The St. Regis Hotel where Robbie Rivera worked in 2016

is at 55th and Avenida 5

(55th and 5th Ave.)

in New York City.

Avianca – a Colombian airline; in the 1990s it was the principal Colombian airline that flew between Colombia and the U.S.

bachillerato – prep school; in Europe and Latin America, a two-year program after high school and before university, to prepare for university, roughly ages 17-19, or 16-18

baño – an indoor or outdoor bathroom

barrio – lower class neighborhood, often so ‘lower’ the houses are ‘constructed’ of cardboard, trash, or just thin air and imagination; please use ‘barrio’ in a sentence:

As the sign says, Pedro (right) has taken the Dr.

on a tour of the ‘Barrio La Mano de Dios’ (The-Hand-of-God Neighborhood)

in Santisima Cruz.

barro – mud

bobo – stupid, silly, foolish (in the sense of ‘dumb’), naive; note: please give an example of ‘bobo’

Getting a massage at the Boca Grande beach

in a bathing suit which is the yellow, blue and red of the Colombian flag

and with Adriana watching

is a gringo bobo

(a U.S. American clown)

known as mj lorenzo.

bobito – a little ‘bobo’ (see ‘bobo’ above) or partially ‘bobo’; note: please provide an example of a ‘bobito’

Robbie’s getting a total body massage at Boca Grande beach

makes him a bobito

(only slightly less foolish than the Dr.).

bordelo – WARNING: the temptation to interpret a Spanish word that SOUNDS (or looks) EXACTLY or almost exactly LIKE an English word as meaning EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS IN ENGLISH should be avoided religiously when learning Spanish or any language: the Spanish-English Larousse, which is not shy about sex-related words, does not even contain this French-based word; and the English word ‘bordello’ (with double l) means ‘brothel’; but one of mj’s tour guides explained that ‘bordelo’ in Colombia meant: ‘a questionable hotel where you rent a room by the hour’; naturally this implied that a person might rent a room in a bordelo for quick sex that they either did or did not pay for; on the other hand, nothing said a person could not rent such a room for something as simple and innocent as a quick midday nap and a shower; and years after this Colombia trip, in Mexico once, mj’s helper, Martín, finding himself without a car or bike and unable to discover a room closer to his temporary construction job five hours from his home in Morelia, rented a cheap room in a bordelo in León, Mexico, for weeks at a stretch

Brazo de Loba – literally ‘she-wolf’s foreleg’; and the rest is not as clear: apparently it is the name given to a particular stretch of Colombia’s ‘Rio Cauca’ (the Cauca River), namely the portion stretching up the Cauca from Magangué to where the Rio Mojana enters the Cauca; or perhaps to a point even further upstream, to where the Cauca merges with a branch of the Magdalena 

¡Buenas! – Buenas Noches, i.e., ‘Good evening!’; please note: this common expression does not mean ‘good night’; it is used not at the end of the evening to say ‘farewell until morning’, but rather during the evening to greet someone and wish them a pleasant evening; ‘Buenas’ may also mean ‘Good afternoon’, if said before sundown

¡Bueno! – well ok!; note: please use ¡Bueno! in a sentence.

¡Bueno!  Well ok!  In 1981 Dr. Lorenzo looked a lot younger

than in 1994 (or now in 2017! yikes!)

when he was with Robbie in Crested Butte, as here,

6 months after they met in Miami.

burundanga – a soporific chemical sometimes used surreptitiously (and criminally) in Colombia in the 1990s to lace chewing gum or alcohol drinks or other things in order to drug a person and make them docile, so that they could be led astray more easily, robbed, or used without their full permission in some other way; note: mj lorenzo used burundanga in a sentence when he wrote this, speaking of Robbie:

“he's always putting somebody up to something. at times i resist it. other times i go along like a burundanga victim, submitting to every ploy and prank that strikes his fancy. today i might have resisted his capers if Chalo hadn't put me in such a partying mood.”

Question: was the Dr. on burundanga when he took this picture in Santisima Cruz? – :

Question: was the Dr. on burundanga when he took this picture in Santisima Cruz?

Cachaco – from Bogotá, or the area around Bogotá; from the highlands of inland Colombia, not the lowland coast, and not the Amazon jungle; a term usually used neutrally, not derogatorily

camino – way; path; road; walkway; highway – usually reserved for busy principal routes

campesino – country-folk; peasant

The dugout canoe paddler,

given the remote rural Colombian location, the hat, and the white shirt,

probably could rightly be called a ‘campesino’.

cantina – a night spot (usually indoors) for dancing, drinking, partying, etc.

caño – canal; water channel

cariñoso – affectionate, caring

calles – streets

Carnaval – carnival; Latin America’s version of Mardi Gras (which is the last day before lent)

Cartagena de Indias – a city on the northeastern (Caribbean) coast of Colombia, usually called simply ‘Cartagena’ – explanation: when the (North African) Carthaginians were powerful in the Mediterranean, including in Spain, they conquered an ancient Messenian Greek settlement on the southeastern Spanish coast across the sea from Carthage, their capital city, which the Romans then took and called ‘Cartago Nova’, or New Carthage, and later generations called ‘Cartagena’, which some say means 'woman from Carthage' – it is still there today – and 1800 years later, soon after Spain discovered the New World in 1492, Spanish settlers on the Caribbean coast of northern South America founded a town in the 1530s and named it after that ancient city of ‘Cartagena’ in Spain; to distinguish the New World city of ‘Cartagena’ from the Old, the new was given the name of ‘Cartagena de Indias’, meaning the city of Cartagena which lies in ‘the Indies’, meaning in ‘America’, i.e., the New World (for, at the time of conquest, when the city was founded – in the 1500s – all of Spanish America was often called ‘the Indies’, i.e., ‘Indias’)

A young man and woman converse

along one of the oldest streets of ‘Old Town’ Cartagena de Indias.

casas – houses

Although U.S. Americans might call these little buildings

‘thatch-roofed cottages’,

the locals consider them full-fledged ‘casas’.

caserío – hamlet, small village; country house and its outbuildings

caseta – small house; for example, a toll booth or ticket booth

cerdo – pig

Cerveza Aguila – (literally:) Beer Eagle, or, better translated: Eagle Beer, a popular brand of ice cold beer at the super-hot Colombian coast, manufactured in the big industrial coastal city of Barranquilla (Shakira’s home town)

chalupa – in coastal Colombia: a river speedboat often with rows of seats and a convertible canvas (or plastic) roof/awning, used to transport goods and/or people at high speed up-and down-stream in backward areas where often there are no roads or airports

The red canvas roof / awning  (now folded back)

of a passenger chalupa on Colombia’s Rio Mojana

can be untied and folded down over the metal frame

for protection from wind, waves or sun,

or left on top in nice weather, rolled up, as here.

chocolate – chocolate; or, chocolate in color

cigarrillos – cigarettes

¡Claro! – of course!

colectivo – enclosed van or open truck that hauls 10-20 people at once, usually rented by a family or group of friends for transport to some joint activity, such as a party or workplace

Colombiano, Colombiana, Colombianos – Colombian, Colombians

This flag (bandera) is the Colombiana (Colombian).

comida – food; formal and traditional mid-to-late-afternoon dinner for the whole family, including the workers, many of whom commute twice a day so they can be home for comida (with the result that in Hispanic countries there are four rush hours each work day)

conchas de coca – coconut shells

condón – condom

cordillera – mountain range

costeño – of or related to the coast, in this case the coast of Colombia, the regions along the Caribbean coast

Egidio’s Spanish was so muddled by costeño accent

he was as hard to understand as everyone else at the Colombian coast.

cumbia – a type of music and dance very popular in Colombia and certain other Latin countries, such as Mexico, where in updated form it became a craze in the 90s and 2000s

cuñada – sister-in-law

cuñado – brother-in-law

departamento – department, state – one of the couple-dozen state-like political units which, when added together, comprise the nation of Colombia; just as the 50 ‘states’ comprise the nation of The United States of America

derecha – to the right

derecho – straight ahead

desaparecido – disappeared

desnudo – naked, unclothed, stripped

directo – straight ahead

el centro – the center of town; downtown

El Pescador – The Fisher (man or boy fisherman)

el sida – AIDS (auto-immune deficiency disease), the full-blown disease, often lethal, that often results from an HIV infection

enfermo – sick

¡Es oké! – It’s OK!

Es posible. – It is possible.

estufa – stove

¡Exacto! – exactly!

falso – wrong in the sense of incorrect

familia – family

federales – the Mexican federal (central government) police, as opposed to (local) state or municipal police

Feliz Navidad – Merry Christmas

finca – farm; country estate; hacienda

fútbol – soccer

Hogging the pigskin is one thing, but playing with pigs on the field?!

(Santisima Cruz’ fútbol field.)

gamín – street urchin

giro – money wire

¡Gracias! – thank you

grandes dames – (French language) important ladies, usually older ladies

gringa – woman from U.S. or another Western country

gringo – U. S. American; a term originally applied with neutral connotation; later applied to people of any developed Western country

guayaba – guava (a fruit)

guayabo – guava tree; hung over, sick with hangover

hacienda – a large working country estate or ranch, owned by landed moneyed gentry and employing (and often housing and feeding) landless ‘serfs’ (in the past) or ‘peasants’ (currently) to tend the grazing, cultivation, harvesting, sugar-refining, flour milling, lumber milling, brickmaking and/or anything else the owner may think needed or profitable; also: the large beautiful Spanish-looking ranch house in which the owners of such a place live

¡hola, amigo! – hello, friend!

invierno – winter; or, in equatorial regions of the New World, the rainy season

Irlanda – Ireland

Jesucristo – Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah (‘Christ’ is the Greek word for the Hebrew word ‘Messiah’)

jungla – jungle

La Cartagena Amable – the kind city of Cartagena

La Cartagena Terrible –the terrifying city of Cartagena

la caseta – (see ‘caseta’ above) – in Santisima Cruz in 1994 an enclosed field with high brick walls and a stage, entered from the street through a toll booth, or little house, where one paid to attain entrance to a big town party

la límita – the limit

legumbres – vegetables

liria, lirio – iris; lily; but in some Latin American countries the name is applied also to what could best be described as a water hyacinth

llanos – plains

loco – crazy

machete – large, slightly curved work knife (or weapon) of Spanish origin, blade dimensions approximately 16 inches long and 2 inches wide

machismo – exaggerated false manliness; a ridiculously demanding behavior code for boys and men in Spanish-speaking countries that makes them act like fool puppets of stupid unwritten male gender rules and often gets them in jail or killed, unless they’re lucky

mafioso – ‘mafia’ (organized crime, cartel) criminal gang people: in Colombia, during the 1990s, they were mostly illegal drug producers and/or traffickers; but then guerrilla groups started cultivating and trafficking illegal drugs too, and the lines between the two originally separate traditions of ‘mafia’ and ‘guerrilla’ became blurred

mal – sick, feeling sick

Mamá – Mama, Mommie (the accent mark over the second ‘a’ informs that the emphasis is on the second syllable)

mamagallo – a coastal-Colombian form of playful mind-fuck; but a word extremely difficult to translate or use properly if you are not from the Caribbean coast of Colombia; yet this did not stop mj lorenzo from using the word again and again in the present diary – it should be noted that mj used it in his diary, in almost all cases, completely incorrectly, usually as a semi-polite substitute for the English adjectives ‘fucking’ or ‘damn’ – when in fact, if used properly, the word refers to a traditional coastal-Colombia playful prankish behavior that approximates severe teasing of a friend, accompanied by all kinds of bluffing, blustering and posturing, and sometimes in a way that may even have sexual connotations (assuming that the Americans composing this glossary understood it even halfway right)

mamí – little mommie (intimate term of endearment addressed to a woman by a man, properly reserved for addressing a woman who would like the intimacy it implies, but more often used not properly, to address, invite and titillate women strangers)

masa – dry flour; or wet flour that has become pasty; ‘breakfast masa’ would probably mean fried masa cakes, i.e., ‘arepas’ (q.v., above), i.e., quarter-inch-thick cornmeal patties mixed with cheese and egg

menudo – the word for tripe soup in Mexico and certain other Latin countries

militarios – people working in or associated with legitimate government armed forces

Every time the Dr. came to Santisima Cruz’ plaza

he saw militarios

(here: two – on left).

mondongo – the word for tripe soup in coastal Colombia

morena, moreno – the color of the people who come from the continent of Africa; which means that ‘moreno’ can be anything from light brown, as in North Africa, to deep dark black, as in sub-Saharan Africa; in other words, the word alone is not a very useful designator of color or racial origin; but more often than not it means ‘very dark-skinned like the people of sub-Saharan Africa’; unless absolutely certain of the situation, hold off interpreting or using the word until more understanding is acquired!!

monstruo – monster

¡mucho gusto! – glad to meet you!

mujer – woman

municipio – county

nalgas – ass cheeks; buttocks

narcotraficar – to produce or ship illegal drugs

negociar – negotiate; talk business or money; haggle; work something out among two or more people

no tengo dinero – I don’t have money; I’m broke; I don’t have cash

Nueva Your – Nueva York (New York); ‘Nueva’ meaning ‘new’; ‘Your’ meaning ‘York’ as it sounds when pronounced by people who speak with a Spanish accent

¡Ojalá! – if only it could be so; if only God would permit!

oscuro – dark; or, mysterious; when used to describe skin color it means ‘very dark’, i.e., Negroid or Afro-American

padrino – godfather

papá – father

¡Pase! – come on in! you may pass through this area!

pescador – fisherman; man (or boy) fishing

pica – it bites; it stings

¡pilas! – watch out! be especially careful! (a coastal-Colombian expression; or, it was, at any rate, in Robbie’s family)

plátanos – bananas; plantains; any unspecified type of banana in the banana family

Plaza de Toros – bull ring; small round high stadium where toreadors and matadors (bullfighters) fight and/or kill bulls for ritual traditional sport Spanish-style

politico – politician, someone involved in politics

poncho – a blanket with a hole in the middle of it for the head, so it can be (also) worn over the shoulders in cooler weather

problema – problem

puta – prostitute, whore

¿Que le falta la reina? Ai, no le falta nalgas. – What does the beauty queen lack? Good grief, she doesn’t lack ass!

rio – river; e.g., ‘Rio Cauca’ means Cauca River

Some houses on the Rio Mojana in Santisima Cruz

have rooves of rusted tin

and foundations of log piles driven into the bed of the river

raising them high above floodwaters of the rainy season (hopefully).

(The Dr.’s photo has been digitally ‘posterized’ for effect.)

ruana – the word for ‘poncho’ in Venezuela and Colombia (see ‘poncho’ above)

rumba – a dance party

sabana – savannah

Magangué from inside a chalupa (river launch).

In Magangué you change modes of transportation, and worlds.

You climb down off the bus from Cartagena, walk a few blocks with your luggage, and climb down again into the chalupa.

Magangué is the limen, as Carl Jung would have said,

the psychological and emotional threshold

between a conscious awake world and an unconscious dream world,

a magic doorway from the more modern coastal Colombia

to the old-fashioned dreamy and magical coastal ‘sabana’, or savannah,

the flooded delta country where there are no man-made automobile roads,

just unpaved indigenous walking paths between towns,

and God-given water paths, called rivers.

sala – living room, or parlor, or hall; i.e., most often, the first space you enter when coming into a house from the street, regardless of its shape or function

sano – sane; healthy, mentally and/or physically

satsang – (Sanskrit, adopted into Hindi, English and other languages) literally, 'company of truth' or 'company of the wise, or virtuous'; example, from the world of Joey's Indian guru, Guru Garland: when a person, even including the Indian guru himself, tells his own deep personal experience of his own guru, whether to a group, or to just one person, the event of the telling – and listening – is called 'satsang'

Semana Santa – Holy Week; the week leading up to Easter Sunday, starting on the previous Sunday, which is Palm Sunday, and including Holy Thursday and Good Friday; but in Mexico the 'Semana Santa' spring break starts roughly on the Friday before Palm Sunday, and continues until the Sunday after Easter, a total of 17 or 18 days: other than summer vacation from school, Easter and Christmas breaks are the big family vacation times in Mexico, when people who can afford to do so pack the Atlantic and Pacific beaches

Señora – lady

serape – Mexican ‘blanket’ which is more than a blanket because it doubles as wrap-around coat during the daytime and wrap-around blanket at night when you sleep lying on the cool ground or wherever

sí – yes

¿Sí? – yes?

siesta – mid-day or mid-afternoon break to eat and rest; in Santisima Cruz when Dr. Lorenzo was there, it was from Noon to 2PM; in Mexico when he lived there (2001-2017) the exact one- or two-hour stretch was flexible, varying from region to region, town to town, and home to home, but perhaps most commonly occurred 2-4 P.M., coinciding with the comida (qv, above)

simpático – nice, likeable, kind, friendly, charming

sol – sun

Sprechen Sie Deutsch? – (German language:) ‘do you speak German?’

Sucreña – lady or girl from the Colombian state of Sucre (Sucre being a ‘departamento’, or state, in Colombia) (see departamento)

suero – serum; also used in coastal Colombia to refer to the liquid part of milk which remains when milk is separated into curds and whey; in other words: whey

suyo – yours (de Usted); hers, his, its

taxista – taxi driver

terrible – terrifying

tiene nalgas – she has a big posterior (or ass); she has an ass – (‘nalga’ literally means a single buttock or ass cheek; and so the plural, ‘nalgas’, means both buttocks or ass cheeks, or ‘ass’ as this is called in rough English; a similar expression in French (and also used in polite witty English) would be avoirdupois

tinto – in coastal Colombia: a small amount of strong, finely-ground (Turkish-style) black coffee (without cream, but with lots of sugar to complement the strong flavor)

Tío – Uncle

‘Tio’ (uncle of Ibrahim, Gustavo and Sandi)
prepares meat in Victoria’s 'kitchen' in her back yard 'patio'.

todavía – even still

todo es incluso – everything is included

vallenato – a type of dance and music ragingly popular on Colombia’s Caribbean coast in 1994

Veal Marsala – veal cooked in sweet fortified ‘Marsala’ wine which is from the town of Marsala (in Sicily) or nearby

verano – summer; or (in equatorial regions of the New World) the dry season

Yanqui, yanqui – in Colombia: Yankee, meaning a U.S. American; but especially one who believes wrongly that the USA should interfere in the internal affairs of Latin American countries without invitation of the person or entity complaining about the interfering; often used in the expression ‘¡Yanqui fuera!’ meaning ‘Yankees get out!’ or ‘Yankee go home!’

Yo soy Colombiano. – I am Colombian.

yuca – tapioca; manioc; a somewhat sweet edible root and a staple of the coastal-Colombian diet (not the same as yucca with two c’s); rich, hearty and usually delicious, it serves about the same purpose the potato does in the gringo diet (used in soups, or as a filling starchy vegetable)