!Estoy en la Chamba!

We're driving through the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico with my cousin Taquin. Men and women approach the car selling fruit, water, candy. Ricardo takes a picture of a man selling large calculators. Later, also with Taquin, we get a card with a girl on it wearing a bathing suit, a phone number. We turn our heads to a performer walking on his hands. Check it out, Cardo says. Tako was tired and grouchy. “Pues asi lo hacen aca,” he says, “para el dinero.”

The slang for "hustle," we learn soon enough, is "chamba." It's not exactly a verb, though one can say, "estoy chambiando." I prefer using it as if it were an all-enveloping mode of existence--"estoy en la chamba" (literally: i'm in work).

Making money in Mexico seems more honest, somehow.