What Wave, Crazy? (Why I love caliche)

One of the things I like best about Nueva Suyapans is the way they use language. When I moved here two years ago I had trouble understanding a lot of conversations despite having majored in Spanish in college. Now I realize that a lot of people from right here in Tegucigalpa wouldn’t understand parts of many of my conversations with friends in Suyapa.

That’s because my Nueva Suyapan friends are consummate users of caliche, Honduran slang. (Calicheros, we call them.) Some Hondurans turn up their noses at caliche: It’s vulgar. It’s gang-banger language. It’s uneducated.

Personally, I think it’s a blast. I mean, why say “how are you, friend?” when you can say “what wave, crazy?” or “what fart, gangsta’?” or “what pepsi, kiddo?” Or why say “you are a good fellow,” when you could say, “you’re the real cheese”?

You can bet that when I get home from work and my neighbors and good friends Wilmer and Dennis are playing soccer on the street or sitting on the front step of my house waiting for me, we don’t say, “hello my friend, how goes it with you?” We say, “Qué hondas loco?” (what wave, crazy?).

Wilmer and I like listening to 80s rock songs on my laptop (by Cinderella, REM, Phil Collins, Tracy Chapman, Guns and Roses…there are lots of radio stations in Honduras dedicated exclusively to this genre of music!) and then figuring out how to play them on our guitars. If Wilmer hears a song he really likes, he might say to me, “wow, that song is really strawberry.” Then if Wilmer figures out how to play it, I might say, “wow Wilmer you’re stiff at playing the guitar.” Then maybe Yolanda, the mom of the Honduran family I live with, will come into the room tell me she’s made me a real good soup for dinner. “Come eat, cool dude, this soup came out savage!”

Wilmer is strawberry at playing the guitar, crazy.

Not all of the colorful language I enjoy so much in Nueva Suyapa fits under the category of urban caliche—a lot of it is also country bumpkin language, a vestige of many Nueva Suyapans’ not-too-distant past. Nueva Suyapa, like many of the sprawling, poor communities surrounding Tegucigalpa’s more developed urban center, was settled just thirty years ago, and many of its settlers came from the countryside. Many, or even most people in Nueva Suyapa older than 30 were born and spent part of their childhoods in pueblos in the countryside.

So when I say, “I’m ready to shuck the corn,” people here know I mean I’m about to leave; when I say “My tiger is roaring,” they know I’m hungry; and when I say, “I’m going to put away the bedpan,” they know I’m ready for bed.

Nueva Suyapans use many every-day words in new and imaginative ways, but they also use plenty of words that exist only in caliche. Macizo, tumbado, and tuanis are all simply more streetwise synonyms of “very good.” Carpiar means the same as comer, “to eat,” but if you say comer you’re not going to impress anyone—whereas if you say carpiar, Nueva Suyapans will know you’re the real cheese.

—Abe