The world according to me....

The second time I made an extended visit to Brazil, I found that difficultly in communication stemmed in part from my name. This is because it is difficult for Portuguese speakers to pronounce the “th” in Matthew. Some local kids solved the problem by deciding that “Metro” was close enough. Thus a new nickname was born, and was quickly adopted. I even started introducing myself as Metro to the local fishermen that we worked with when monitoring the nesting beaches. But the nickname quickly evolved. Within a week, one of these fishermen nicknamed Cheiro came to the office to do some paperwork, and he also brought me some jackfruit, because he knew I liked it and his house had one of the few robust trees in the area. Cheiro arrived, asking: “Where is Trena? Has anyone seen Trena?” Immediately, everyone but me knew that he was referring to me. It took me a little while to figure out this was because Metro means meter, and Trena is the local word for measuring tape. But the name stuck, and I was proud of my nickname. The same cannot be said of one of the other biologists who also worked with me. Her real name was Fernanda, but Cheiro decided to call her Chupacabra.