LOL, JA-JA-JA, and Dead-end Jobs

Every time I meet someone who speaks English, or better yet, that doesn’t speak Spanish, and we engage in the act of texting each other, there are the customary things that always occur.

One of those routine things is that we fail to see eye-to-eye in the essence of textual laughter. It is because of this lack of understanding that when I try to be more active in the conversation and not conform to the mundane-ness and simplicity of what is abbreviations like LOL we reach an impasse. Because when I write out “jajajajaja” they somehow understand a harsh “ya-ya-ya” and proceed to question my legitimacy as an educated human being. But then I clear it up and we go on with our lives.

Any who, I’d like to assure you that this short narrative was not due to the pure randomness of my chaotic mind, but more due to Paternostro  describing some Colombian people saying “Aja” and then clarifying that “in English would sound “a-ha”.

So.

Besides that little intro, there is one thing that held my interest while reading. At one point Silvana is in the Barranquilla airport and when she sees one of the luggage men, she says, “I have witnessed this scene since the day I was born. The power of the few and the servility of the many remains unchanged. There will always be those who hover around moneyed pockets like bees around honey. These men are willing to lift more than their body weight for a few dollars.”

For some reason, this annoyed me. (Well, isn’t that new). Which is not to say I didn’t find some parts of the paragraph to be interesting. In fact, I adore the last sentence and I find it both poetic and poignant because of the truth enmeshed in it. The description is so that it creates imagery while at the same time capturing the figurative sense of the extents people will go to in search of money. Which actually strengthens her previous sentences but I think this one does something the others do not. The beginning of her statement makes those people that work dead-end jobs for low pay are pestering little leeches that exist for the sole purpose of sticking to people with cash like greedy hogs. But I find that statement to be such a negative-inclined idea and not factual at all. Of course there will always exist those who do fit in said category, but the latter explains a sad truth in our country which is the poverty that encompasses it. Not only that, but also the fact that so many people endure hard labor and kill themselves trying to earn some extra cash.

That is something that characterizes Colombia and one of the things that, whether it be directly or indirectly, spurts the violence we see today. The poverty.

Sad. But true.