I called from across the street to a man in a bright red shirt. I recognized something: the font of that familiar “KEEP CALM and CARRY ON” message. It said “KEEP CALM and TAKE ACTION.” So I called to him: do you know what your shirt means? I had interrupted his conversation, that wasn’t very suave of me. But he said no, so I continued: It means “Se tranquilla y haga acción” (I’m sure the translation wasn’t flawless) but he got the point and shook my hand. I nodded and walked on. I love random conversations with strangers on the street. In the US, I hardly ever approach strangers for directions much less unsolicited translation.

PACAs are used clothing piles that are shipped over from the US. Needless to say the vast majority of the clothes are made in China. But I’m not sure that’s recognized here. They are just clothes sent from the US. But things are lost in translation.

Never was this more evident to me than when a man rode past me on a bicycle donning the message “I Heart Female Orgasm” across his black t-shirt. That would have been a cereal-through-the-nose moment had I been eating breakfast. I snickered to myself, it caught me off-guard to say the least. I don’t know if this guy knows what his shirt says and I’m not sure if I know what his shirt means.

I could take some guesses, a message to say that women like pleasure and that we can be just as straightforward about desire as men. Ambitious cotton. It was black with white writing and a red heart to represent “heart” or “love,” whichever.

I mentioned my awkward t-shirt sighting to another volunteer and she said: “Oh my God we hash-tagged that in college and trademarked that phrase! Did you get a picture?” More cereal through the nose. Regarding the picture, he was moving too fast and I try not to take pictures of strangers head on out of respect. If I wore that shirt in my parents house, they would ask me to change. I don’t really want to wear that shirt. But meaning is a shifty thing on t-shirts, coffee mugs and advertisements. More don’t elicit reactions but words have a lot of power especially when they’re in your native language.

The world is small and it greets me in odd ways, printed on t-shirts riding by on bikes or arriving to country in piles of unused clothes from the US made in China and Indonesia and The Philippines. Things are more connected than they appear. Maybe we’re all wearing shirts from China with messages from the USA crossing Central America on bicycles. Maybe we all heart female orgasm? Sabeeeeer (Guatemalan colloquialism for ‘who knows’). But when I met the ‘muchacha’/domestic worker in Ciudad Vieja on my third day in country, she was wearing an Atlanta Braves shirt. I’m from Atlanta! I was surprised and warmed by the connection but the shirt meant nothing to her. Funny.