Laundry Anyone?
Not a clue…
You could tell from the expression on her face that she did not have the faintest idea what Bob was trying to get from her. Perhaps he was trying to sell lottery tickets? Maybe he was looking for a donation? Could it really be that he was one of these spoiled brats that come from a wealthy country only to end up begging on the streets of a developing nation?
Bob, at the same time, was perhaps even more confused. He was aware of the language barrier, but could this really be that confusing? She does it for a living, he was thinking to himself. Sure, he was extremely hungover and perhaps even still a little drunk, but he could have never imagined that this small errand could become so overly complicated.
He had been standing here now for over 15 minutes. Waving his ticket in the air. He barely had enough room to wave it as he was surrounded by all sorts of little bottles of sunscreen and various kinds of repellents that this kiosk was selling. The woman was sitting at an old wooden table that they somehow managed to maneuver into the small space. Bob had seen a menu laying around as well and was wondering whether they actually served food in the kiosk or whether it was a menu from a different restaurant that someone had left behind. The woman had been sitting at the table for the entire 15 minutes and appeared genuinely interested in helping Bob out with whatever it was. After all this time of him waving around the ticket and mumbling the same word over and over again in some strange language, she was however nowhere closer to understanding what he was looking for.
The prior day the interaction Bob had with the same woman had been far more pleasant. He had gone to her little store with a bag full of his dirty laundry and although they couldn’t exchange any words, due to the language barrier, the entire transaction had happened very much as Bob expected. The woman had taken the bag of clothes and put it on a scale to weigh. The resulting weight was then multiplied by some arbitrary number which would equal the amount Bob would have to pay for the woman to do his laundry. Bob thought to himself that this arbitrary number would probably change significantly based on whether it was a local or a tourist that stepped into her store. He was happy to pay for a service provided however, and as such took out his wallet and paid the lady the amount owed to her in exchange for his laundry ticket. He had experienced this process plenty of times by now to realize that the next day he could come back with his ticket and in turn, would receive back his cleaned laundry. All is well he thought and went on with his day.
Now being back to pick up his laundry, the fact that it was becoming an issue caught him by surprise. As a reflex, he just kept saying laundry while holding his ticket out in front of him. He wasn’t really sure what approach to take however now that it was becoming an issue.
He decided to rotate the intonation between a demanding, begging, and question tone so that he actually started to wonder how many ways there were in which he could pronounce the word laundry. He also then figured maybe she understands some other language, so he started saying laundry in any language he knew. Laundry, Lavado, Was, Dicriola, etc. all however to no prevail.
The woman at the table didn’t give the slightest impression to even recognize Bob from the day before nor have any idea what to do with the piece of paper he was holding out in front of him.
Bob started to second guess whether he was indeed sober enough or whether perhaps he went to the wrong store. That made him wonder however if a town as small as the one he was staying in would really have multiple stores. In addition, why would the same woman be working at both stores and forget about her activities from the previous day?
It all didn’t make sense. It was overly confusing and just as Bob was about to give up and turn back to his hostel to figure out what to do about it, another woman came from the back of the store. She immediately took the ticket out of his hand. As soon as she had appeared she was gone again and only a few moments later did she re-appear with a bag of clean clothes. She handed the bag to Bob and before saying another word made her way through the maze of little bottles towards the woman at the old wooden table and took her order. When Bob finally understood that the menu he had seen lying around was indeed from this place he turned redder than the ripest tomato you can find in any greenhouse in Spain and he was out the door within seconds.
