You need muscles.

Hi.

There aren't many people who speak English in my town. Most of the people that say they "speak English" actually know a few key phrases like "you're crazy!" and "I eat couscous." It's like how you can convince someone you speak a Berber dialect if you know how to say "bread" and "tea." The point is, it's always very surprising when someone I've never met throws out a new string of English words that make sense in the given context.

FOR EXAMPLE.

I've been troubleshooting, sort of, what's wrong with my water heater over the past few weeks. It stopped producing hot water this summer, but I was hardly bothered by it then. Who takes hot showers in June? Lately, of course, it's been a bit of an issue.

Not wanting to admit that there might be something wrong with the actual water heater, I decided there was a problem with my buta. Buta, for those of you who are not aware, is what we call our huge butane gas tanks that power our water heaters, stoves, and ovens if we have them.

Butas are very heavy. I had an inkling that mine might be empty, but the tank itself is so goddamn heavy I can't tell if it's got anything in it or not. Last week a friend was visiting and he confirmed that it was, indeed, empty.

I sat on this information for a couple days, but tonight I was feelin' sassy. I decided to deal with this buta once and for all. After eating cookies and watching a terrible Mexican soap opera with my host aunt, of course... and after stopping by my landlord to borrow a wrench, making sure I dropped some hints that I'd be carrying my buta tank down to the shop to have it filled and trying to look as weak as possible so that maybe he'd just do it for me. No dice.

Once I got the empty buta into a comfortable position, I found it was sort of easy to waddle down the hill from my front door to the shop. The fact that I live on a hill becomes important later (foreshadowing!).

The shop assistant filled up my buta very quickly and then just kind of looked at it and at me, as if to say "I can't wait to see how this is going to go." I smiled down at my buta as if it were a loyal pet or something and nudged it. Except it didn't move. This was supposed to be the shop assistant's cue to offer to carry it to my house, but once again, no dice. So I asked to borrow his buta cart and started trying to roll it up the hill to my house.

Some tips for dragging a full butane gas tank up a gravelly hill:

1. carbo-load.
2. don't wear ballet flats. Serious work requires serious footwear.
3. get someone else to do it. The common term for this in Peace Corps Morocco is to "small boy" it, referring to the Moroccan tradition of making a little kid run your errands for you, but I think that regarding buta, you might need to "large boy" it.

After about five minutes of huffing and puffing and dragging my buta uphill, I looked up to see that I'd moved about three feet, and sort of more sideways than up. At this point I also noticed a group of teenage boys staring at me. I may have disobeyed tips 1 and 2, but it wasn't too late for 3:

Alli: Yimkin y3awni? (Could you help me?)
Boy: You need muscles! (<--note the English here)
Alli: Haha, yep.
--awkward smiles all around--
Alli: ...Iwa...y3awni? (So...help me?)

The boy very nicely (and effortlessly) dragged my buta up to the alleyway where my house is, allowing my poor little arms to recuperate for the last hurrah--getting the buta off the cart and into my house. He said nothing else in English, leading me to believe that the one phrase he's picked up in life is "you need muscles!"

At this point I'd like to point out that my water heater still doesn't work.