The Curse
A man has been walking by Managua´s Quaker House daily. As he trods menotonously, he calls out a drone, ¨fotanegro, fotanegro, fotanegro.¨ The voice rings ominous, and it spreads through the neighborhood, settling like a curse in the house. Today, when Nick and I were running through the back roads, we heard the curse again, ¨fotanegro, fotanegro.¨ The same guy had made his way to this neighborhood, continuing his drone. In his left hand, we noticed a long, dark shape that appeared like a gun. We ran a little faster to get back to the house. But not long after we arrived back at Quaker House, the voice followed. ¨Fotanegro¨again boomed through the patio and covered the casa in a curse. ¨What does fotanegro actually mean?¨ we wondered. ¨Negro¨in spanish means black, so we speculated that the man was wishing blackness on our house and throughout the neighborhoods. We asked Lillian, our guide, what ill-wishes he was sending our way. Fontanero, not Fotanegro, we discovered, means plumber. The man was not bringing the devil to our house, but instead walking the streets to offer his services. The long cylinder, not a gun, but a pipe to replace a leaking one. As he trods the streets yelling ¨fontanero,¨anyone who needs a plumber can run out of their house to grab him to fix their pipes. Like the ice cream truck for broken pipes.