My Legume

This is peanut, our newest kid. His real name is Eduil, but I call him peanut. If I'm speaking in English I refer to him as peanut. If I'm speaking in Portuguese I refer to him as the portuguese word for Peanut.

Nicknames here are a very very strange thing. It is very common for people to have a nickname here. Usually they are called "house names" and so many people have them because... I don't know why. These are not abbreviates as nicknames like Katie or Suzy or Johnny or even odd ones like Billy. They are often different, completely normal names that are given in place of a given name.

On a side note, I thank my parents for naming me TJ because I went through school with so many other Tims it would have been an identity crisis. And kids are mean! I remember there were two kids particular I went to school with that had the same name. Using Bill as an example (real name changed to protect the innocent) we called one "cool Bill" and the other "not-cool Bill".

The orphanage has a long history of nicknames due mostly to bad luck. Many of the boys have a nickname that is not their given name. After talking to everybody here, I think I have pieced it together all the way to Joao. When he showed up I think there was another Joao here, so instead of calling them Number 1 and Number 2, or by their last names, they decided to invent a name and call him Carlitos (little Carlos).

This was fine till a real Carlos showed up. Rather than changing Joao aka Carlitos to something new, they changed the real Carlos and called him Zaqueio (like the character Zacceus in the Bible). This boy was not particularly short, nor did he live in a tree, it just was given to him. Then, after bestowing the name Zaqueio, along came a new kid called Zacarias. Deciding these were to similar, Zacarias got called Samito (little Sam). As of yet, there has not been another Samito showing up to throw a bump in the road.

Eduil does not have the problem of sharing his name with anybody else. In fact, nobody here has ever heard of his name before. Supposedly it is Malawian, but he is not. Eduil's nickname comes from that the fact that his BFF can't say his name properly. Eduil is in first grade and the same age as Dorcas, but is attached at the hip to Jose. Due to his speech difficulties, Jose has difficulties speaking Eduil's name properly. Instead of saying "eh-doo-wheel" (emphasis on the wheel) he says "meh-doo-whee". It's a slight difference, but enough to make it sound like Jose is saying the Portuguese for peanut.

And because Jose doesn't do anything less than 110%, he was often heard shouting "Peanut!!! Peanut, where are you," causing everybody to break out in laughter the first several days. After a week everybody just took to calling him peanut. We still laugh. Eduil is young enough to know that his name is not peanut but thinks its funny that everybody calls him peanut. We're not making fun of him. Far from it. We're branding him as part of our family.