Future Gazillionaire

There are so many good characters in San Nicolas, they could populate a Dickens novel. In light of this, we thought we would give you a taste of a few of our favorite San Nicolaseños. This week we profile 12-year-old Samari, one of our first friends in town.

We first met Samari because her younger sister Tamara, who is five, would always shout, “Adios!” to us from the front stoop of their house as we climbed the hill to school. One day, just a few weeks after we got here, we invited Tamara and a few other little kids in the community over to watch a movie. We dragged our mattress out into the courtyard, set up the movie Wall-E, and brought out popcorn and brownies.

At first all of the kids, including Tamara and her sister Samari (who had come with her), were shy about eating our snacks. They sat stiffly on the mattress, looking obediently at the movie but not watching it, darting fervent glances at the bowl of popcorn and not saying a word when we urged them to eat. Then the boldest among them reached out a timid hand and grabbed a brownie. After that, everyone began to eat brownies, and within minutes, the whole plate was gone.

When the sugar kicked in, there was no going back. The movie was discarded and the mattress became a trampoline. Making sound in front of the gringos was no longer taboo. It was when the mattress turned into a dance platform, though, that we first noticed Samari. She had been relatively quiet up until that point, but when she whipped out those hips, she didn't have to talk. Even with her abnormally huge feet anchoring her twig of a body to the dance mattress, that girl had moves.

After that day, Samari became one of our most devoted friends. She started coming over to our house to cook with us, always bringing her little sister Tamara along with her. She joined both our primary and secondary-school English classes, since she is in seventh grade this year. And recently she also joined our book club.

Although Samari is technically in high school, she still looks like a little kid. She always shows up to English class, her huge flip-flops flapping, with her English notebook peeking out of the elastic of her sweat pants. She wears her hair in a ponytail and saves lollypops for later by sticking them in her ponytail. Our favorite Samari t-shirt is an old Junior Achievement shirt that says, “Future Gazillionaire.”

Besides dancing, Samari also loves learning English. She has a funny way of pronouncing words in English, adding a “k” sound to the end of most words and pausing heavily in between words so “How are you?” comes out sounding like, “Howk ark youk?”. She is one of our most enthusiastic students, though, and learning English has given her a “thing” to be proud of. She says that when she grows up, she wants to be an English translator.

Last week when Samari came over for English class, she asked me in English, like she always does, “Howk ark youk?” When I told her I was fine and returned the question, she paused and said in Spanish, “How can I tell you? I am so happy. My mom is going to buy me a bike!” She went on to tell me the whole long-winded story about how this good fortune had come upon her, about how if the bike was smaller she would share it with her younger sister and if it was bigger she would share it with her older sister. She went on and on about that bike, visibly brimming with happiness.

In our book club meetings, it usually seems like Samari doesn't really understand much of what she's read. She is only at a seventh grade reading level, after all, and has never read another book in her life. Once when I asked what their favorite part of The Hunger Games was, Samari flipped randomly to a page and began reading, “'When I was 11, I used to have nightmares about the coal mines.' That's my favorite part,” she said.

But this week she lingered after our book club meeting for a cup of cold water, and when I asked her how the reading was going, she told me that her mom had been reading to her. “My mom sits in a chair,” she explained, “and Tamara and I sit on the floor and my mom reads to us. Tamara always interrupts my mom to ask what different words mean, but I understand it.”

In a culture dominated by TV, where almost no one ever reads anything except maybe the Bible, this kind of family reading is rare. Once again, Samari had warmed my heart.