There are several bloggers at Maya Pedal, the appropriate technology nonprofit where I am currently spending time. ¨Sometimes I just don´t feel like updating it,¨ said Dory, an Oberlin College student. ¨Then I think, who is actually reading my blog? And I realize it´s only my mom.¨
Likewise, there was a reporting of a barmaid in Montericco, at the Guatemalan coast, wearing a t-shirt that read: I don´t care about your blog. Matteo, another Pedal volunteer had a better shirt logo: ¨my mom cares about my blog!¨
I say all this becuase it`s my sister that writes to me and asks for another blogpost. She is my mom substitute here (mi quierida!), so for you Kates, here is one.
Semuc Champey is quite possibly the most bonito lugar in all of Guatemala. A winding and somewhat naseauting five hour busride from Guatemala City, first you go through the department´s capital city, Coban. Stopping in Coban for the night, we ran into a). a young british backpacker b). a friday night procession. (Jesus on the cross looking pretty ill, being carted around on a float again, down the road. For hours. See my photos from procession Antigua).
Coban is somewhat of a working class town, but tucked into a mountainous pass, and plenty warm. The guidebook said it wasn´t much of a place to stick around, though usually when the Lonely Planet says this, it means it`s a normal town and without too much tourism, which I think is a good reason to explore. The British tourist, a young guy, after trashing the Lonely Planet also remarked: ¨There´s absolutely no one here. This town is absolutely empty, isn`t it?¨ I looked around and saw a lot of people. In fact, the procession alone probably had a few hundred people in it. I realized then that he meant gringos. Weird.
The next day, a shuttle bus wound us around the mountains and onto a dirt track. All in all, 61 kilometers took 2 hours to navigate, and when we reached Lanquin, a tiny valley town on the side of a river, my ears were so stuffy that I couldn`t walk straight. The hustlers that gave us hotel information out of the bus were under the age of 15. We said we were going to El Retiro, the infamous hostel on the river bank, full of palapas (thatched roof rooms)and hammocks. The kids didn´t try to convince us out of it, which meant there wasn´t much competetion. The british tourist, an affable young guy, was with us, and when we reached El Retiro he whistled. There were white people everywhere, except for the kitchen. Just the ticket.
Coffee is widespread in the Verapaces, and grows underneath huge sheaths of green canvas, to protect it from the heat. In Lanquin (deep caves with a fresh water river running through) and Semuc Champey (crystal blue pools and roaring waterfalls that churn underground into deep, dark, scary tunnels), tourism is also huge, and trucks packed with backpackers trundle through these small towns at breakneck speed. On the way back from the pools at Semuc Champey we got a ride with a guy driving agua pura. He said work was really hard to get. He said he also was a grade school gym teacher, and that everyone had three jobs. His friend had tried to go to the states for work, but had just been deported.
At El Retiro, people were feeling pretty good. There were Dutch and American guys behind the bar, and plenty of vegetarian food. Music of the western variety pummeled through the soundsystem, and young girls in pretty traje walked through the crowd. ¨Commo tu llama?¨they`d start by asking, and soon have a giant mountain of beaded necklaces and bracelets on the table. ¨Que tu quieres?¨ If you didn´t want jewelry, you could also buy flat discs of chocolate wrapped in tinfoil for 5 Q. Sometimes you`d see the kids` mother, hanging out a few meters away, sort of hidden by a bush.
The Lonely Planet tags El Retiro as the kind of dangerous place you could easily stay at for months, taking part in various happy hours from the hammock, dipping your feet in the river and having frequently good looking foreigners slather sun screen on your body. The room we were issued looked sort of like a garage, and had exposed foundation stones jutting into the beds. The buffet dinners were dominated by Israeli travelers, and English was the international language. I sort of thought I might redub El Retiro as the dangerous kind of place where if you stayed too long, you`d be broke, and you also might have lost your ablility to interact with people from Latin America. But if we were judging from our british friends´ standards, that place was packed.
Trying to buck the insane price tag on everything from El Retiro, including the Semuc tour, we made it to Semuc Champey with a ride for 10Q each, with a group of peace corps volunteers. The pools on a Sunday were actually packed with locals, and bored looking gaurds with ropes coiled around their arms stood erect, waiting for something to happen. Howler monkeys screamed inside the woods, and people shrieked as they jumped from high rocks into the water. We watched the roaring river disapear into the rocks for awhile, and then one of the guards asked me to help him with his english homework. Maybe it was because I was in a small bathing suit. The paper he held out spelled out terms phonetically:
Guime a koke. For instance.
Hitchhiking back in the agua pura truck, we realized that we weren´t the only ones with that idea. By the end of the ride, our driver friend had packed a whole roadside village into the back, the older women carrying bundles wrapped in cloth on their heads. He was headed to an aldea, or tiny village, so he let us off, and we walked the rest of the way, stopping to buy pineapple juice and Big Cola at a roadside stand.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Mama Zoila and Julianita
Apparantly there are people that have more kids than Zoila and her husband Julian, who have 14, but i haven´t ever met those people. Zoila and Julian´s 14 kids have since produced 35 grandchildren, half of which i seem to live with, though the ebb and flow of bodies in the house is like some frenetic tide.
This is in San Andres, Petén, where I´ve been for a week. Zoila´s family has a molino, or corn grinder that services much of the neighborhood, which is on a steep hill and overlooks the blue blue blue lake Petén Itza. It is important to add that people in San Andres are the earliest risers i have ever seen, some of them getting up at 3:30 in the morning, for no seriously apparant reason, other than they prefer it. So the Molino is no exception, and the first morning I thought a plane was landing in the yard at 5am, only no, it was the gas guzzling machine in a shed next door grinding up paste for somebody´s tortillas, with Julian at the helm.
Julian is quite small, hence the ¨ita¨some paste to the end of his name, though he has a pot belly and seldom wears a shirt. Zoila is bigger, and hardly ever leaves the outdoor kitchen with its steller view of the water and blackened walls from years of wood smoke. The people here make tortillas on the table rather than in their hands like in Xela, and when you live in a house with a molino, it´s tortillas three meals a day. No joke, almost like a religious thing. This stuff is filling! I guess that´s the point.
The kids have befriended me almost as fast as the adults have ignored me. The four, or is it seven? that actually have a bed in the house have names that I am only starting to know. Yorleni, Daríl, Ardeli, Donimar. We go swimming together down at ¨Gringo Beach¨where other spanish school students and volunteering whities from the park next door wear bikinis which the locals get excited about. There is a flooded, abandoned restaurant turned village dock that we fling ourselves off of into the warm water. Cement pillars left over from railings and other construction sit ominously under the water in a ¨sue for sure¨situation if we were in the states, but we aren´t. A piece of waterfront here costs about $1,000 US.
Zoila is very punctual with my meals. Instant coffee and tortillas and some kind of soup, or often eggs and beans. Yesterday, Erwin, a 12-year-old cousin and I ate lunch together at the table. The adult women never eat at the table, always in the smokey kitchen with Zoila which is clearly a hub of activity. So Erwin and I had the same caldo, a chicken broth that had potatoes and wizkeel (squash that is spelled something different but I don´t know what), and I look over and his has a chicken foot in it. And he´s chatting happily to me and just as happily eating the chicken foot clean of meat like it´s a corn on the cob.
From what I can tell, Zoila feeds about 15 people a day, and that´s a low estimate. I rarely exchange conversation with her or her daughters as they don´t seem to understand me when i talk and they also like to keep to themselves. Julian and I have had some meals together. Zoila brings him his food, and if he wants a different glass for his orange kool aid, she´ll fetch him that too. Not in a loving way, in a dutiful one. Julian and I discuss our respective pueblos, and every so often he´ll yell at the chucho (dog, which is a pet, but not treated so nicely) to get the hell out of the house. He sits back and rubs his belly.
I suppose everyone in the family is used to people coming and going. Gringos are not uncommon boarders, and there are two boys squeezed into the room next door (seperated by plywood that doesn´t reach the ceiling)that seem to cook in their room. They lock their door with a padlock. I have a feeling they aren´t family.
I can´t say it´s been a fuzzy, good time with this family. But it sure has been an interesting one. When else have I run down a darkened street with ten kids, including one aggressive kid that´s mute, past the evengelical church with it´s gospel singing, and ended up at the vista overlooking the lake and a sliver of moon? Only in Petén.
This is in San Andres, Petén, where I´ve been for a week. Zoila´s family has a molino, or corn grinder that services much of the neighborhood, which is on a steep hill and overlooks the blue blue blue lake Petén Itza. It is important to add that people in San Andres are the earliest risers i have ever seen, some of them getting up at 3:30 in the morning, for no seriously apparant reason, other than they prefer it. So the Molino is no exception, and the first morning I thought a plane was landing in the yard at 5am, only no, it was the gas guzzling machine in a shed next door grinding up paste for somebody´s tortillas, with Julian at the helm.
Julian is quite small, hence the ¨ita¨some paste to the end of his name, though he has a pot belly and seldom wears a shirt. Zoila is bigger, and hardly ever leaves the outdoor kitchen with its steller view of the water and blackened walls from years of wood smoke. The people here make tortillas on the table rather than in their hands like in Xela, and when you live in a house with a molino, it´s tortillas three meals a day. No joke, almost like a religious thing. This stuff is filling! I guess that´s the point.
The kids have befriended me almost as fast as the adults have ignored me. The four, or is it seven? that actually have a bed in the house have names that I am only starting to know. Yorleni, Daríl, Ardeli, Donimar. We go swimming together down at ¨Gringo Beach¨where other spanish school students and volunteering whities from the park next door wear bikinis which the locals get excited about. There is a flooded, abandoned restaurant turned village dock that we fling ourselves off of into the warm water. Cement pillars left over from railings and other construction sit ominously under the water in a ¨sue for sure¨situation if we were in the states, but we aren´t. A piece of waterfront here costs about $1,000 US.
Zoila is very punctual with my meals. Instant coffee and tortillas and some kind of soup, or often eggs and beans. Yesterday, Erwin, a 12-year-old cousin and I ate lunch together at the table. The adult women never eat at the table, always in the smokey kitchen with Zoila which is clearly a hub of activity. So Erwin and I had the same caldo, a chicken broth that had potatoes and wizkeel (squash that is spelled something different but I don´t know what), and I look over and his has a chicken foot in it. And he´s chatting happily to me and just as happily eating the chicken foot clean of meat like it´s a corn on the cob.
From what I can tell, Zoila feeds about 15 people a day, and that´s a low estimate. I rarely exchange conversation with her or her daughters as they don´t seem to understand me when i talk and they also like to keep to themselves. Julian and I have had some meals together. Zoila brings him his food, and if he wants a different glass for his orange kool aid, she´ll fetch him that too. Not in a loving way, in a dutiful one. Julian and I discuss our respective pueblos, and every so often he´ll yell at the chucho (dog, which is a pet, but not treated so nicely) to get the hell out of the house. He sits back and rubs his belly.
I suppose everyone in the family is used to people coming and going. Gringos are not uncommon boarders, and there are two boys squeezed into the room next door (seperated by plywood that doesn´t reach the ceiling)that seem to cook in their room. They lock their door with a padlock. I have a feeling they aren´t family.
I can´t say it´s been a fuzzy, good time with this family. But it sure has been an interesting one. When else have I run down a darkened street with ten kids, including one aggressive kid that´s mute, past the evengelical church with it´s gospel singing, and ended up at the vista overlooking the lake and a sliver of moon? Only in Petén.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Long Way Home is Right
So I´ve been thinking about ¨volunteer opportunities¨recently, which are thick like moscas to a porch luce here in Guatemala. You can live in a gringo commune and build a kitchen from tires or stay at a coffee farm and show women how to use Microsoft Excel. You can teach english to kids, or translate at a collective weaving shop. There´s plenty of talk about ¨helping the street children¨as well, a term which a friend of mine wondered about. Sort of like saying you were going to help the hobos....the term PC doesn´t translate here.
Anyway, I came back this morning from checking out the first mentioned on the list--the gringo commune neatly labeled ¨A Long Way Home.¨ The short story is that this dude spent his two year peace corps stint in San Juan Comolapa, a beautiful mountain town about an hour north of Antigua. They wanted a park for the kids, but didn´t have the money, so this dude went back to his college town (Ashland, Oregon) and made some money and recruited some good old boys like himself, and came down and built a soccar field. and a basketball court. and a gringo commune-house. and then a nice little house for him and his girlfriend with a fence around it.
his house remains the only one with hot water for showers, but that´s a minor detail.
I think what Americans, and probably Europeans and definitely Canadians don´t quite admit to themselves is that ¨volunteer opportunities¨in developing countries might be better categorized as ¨eco tourism.¨ At least in my experience here in Guatemala in the places I have seen so far, where money is contributed for room and board and the eager, fresh faced volunteer is arranged into some form of work, and definitely given some compromising living conditions, and generally begins to feel like they´re getting a ¨real¨look into the country.
Enter in day two at Long Way Home, where an alternative school is being built in a corn field. I was supposed to leave that morning, but the night before we celebrated someone´s birthday, and el jefe Matteo was seeing his girlfriend off for the final time, so there was partying all around and the good people of the community showed up on the back of a pickup truck and a gaggle of women in beautiful embroidery opened up pots of stewed meat, rice, mayo salad and tortillas and served the men first. The local tienda, owned by the gregarious and nosy Fidelia, must make a fortune selling litres of Gallo by the caseload solely to the volunteers.
But anyway, the next day. the commune (seven people in all, all below the age of thirty) was slathered in sun screen. The good old boys, three other Oregonians in their mid-twenties with differeing degrees of poor spanish, drank coffee and smoked pot. Someone gave me a pack of saltine crackers for later. And then we packed the truck with tools (which everyone was incredibly uptight about. apparantly you are supposed to buy your own, so no one wanted to share. The commune-idea, i would soon realize, was not really desired by most) and we were off.
I suppose at the school site, it´s fair to say we all had a ¨real¨day in the life of a Guatemalan, becuase there were thirty or so Guatemalan volunteers that came out to help. Short, sturdy men, they looked at us girls with the shovels and wondered. Some local police came by and examined the plastic handle on the pick axe I was using. They commented on how light it was and then looked at me quizically. Like I was sort of alien. Then one of them said something to the equivelent of: ¨The more you use this thing the better figure you´ll have.¨ He used his hands to make an hour-glass shape.
Matteo showed up on his Honda Motorcycle. He was wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with ¨I got dumped¨, which I suppose was the truth. We were all working on a trench five feet deep and unyieldingly long, and I asked him about excavators. Like, didn´t Comolapa have any? Matteo said something about Che Guevera, who liked to work with the people. He also said something like, if the excavator came, you wouldn´t have any work to do. And he also said that the excavator was against socialist ideals. (All this from a Texan alcoholic with a propensity for lewd comments towards women. It might also be interesting to note that he, the Che lover, stopped digging almost three hours before any of us did. Said he felt accomplished and went home. Got back and he was drinking Jack and Coke in his back yard).
Lunch time was a high lite. The women arrived in a tuk tuk, one of those little, covered motorcyle get-ups with the same food as the night before.
The school, predicted to be finished in four years, is supposed to offer mechanics, crafts and other workshop type classes. It´s basically Long Way Home´s sole project to date, and besides the tree nursery and the tire kitchen, digging is the only project one can contribute to. One return volunteer, a smoke jumper from Oregon who braided his hair and wore a john deer hat, said he was over it. That he used to come down to hang out with Matteo, but now it was like he was at work. Volunteers must log 40 hours a week, and do some weekends. And he added, ¨if this school doesn´t work out, Matteo is going to have a sick sick house.¨
The part about no shower comes in here too. Because as we were all filthy by the end of the day, the sun set and the cold came in, and the only shower was a cold one. We all went to bed with Guatemalan dirt stuck to us like a second skin.
Anyway, I came back this morning from checking out the first mentioned on the list--the gringo commune neatly labeled ¨A Long Way Home.¨ The short story is that this dude spent his two year peace corps stint in San Juan Comolapa, a beautiful mountain town about an hour north of Antigua. They wanted a park for the kids, but didn´t have the money, so this dude went back to his college town (Ashland, Oregon) and made some money and recruited some good old boys like himself, and came down and built a soccar field. and a basketball court. and a gringo commune-house. and then a nice little house for him and his girlfriend with a fence around it.
his house remains the only one with hot water for showers, but that´s a minor detail.
I think what Americans, and probably Europeans and definitely Canadians don´t quite admit to themselves is that ¨volunteer opportunities¨in developing countries might be better categorized as ¨eco tourism.¨ At least in my experience here in Guatemala in the places I have seen so far, where money is contributed for room and board and the eager, fresh faced volunteer is arranged into some form of work, and definitely given some compromising living conditions, and generally begins to feel like they´re getting a ¨real¨look into the country.
Enter in day two at Long Way Home, where an alternative school is being built in a corn field. I was supposed to leave that morning, but the night before we celebrated someone´s birthday, and el jefe Matteo was seeing his girlfriend off for the final time, so there was partying all around and the good people of the community showed up on the back of a pickup truck and a gaggle of women in beautiful embroidery opened up pots of stewed meat, rice, mayo salad and tortillas and served the men first. The local tienda, owned by the gregarious and nosy Fidelia, must make a fortune selling litres of Gallo by the caseload solely to the volunteers.
But anyway, the next day. the commune (seven people in all, all below the age of thirty) was slathered in sun screen. The good old boys, three other Oregonians in their mid-twenties with differeing degrees of poor spanish, drank coffee and smoked pot. Someone gave me a pack of saltine crackers for later. And then we packed the truck with tools (which everyone was incredibly uptight about. apparantly you are supposed to buy your own, so no one wanted to share. The commune-idea, i would soon realize, was not really desired by most) and we were off.
I suppose at the school site, it´s fair to say we all had a ¨real¨day in the life of a Guatemalan, becuase there were thirty or so Guatemalan volunteers that came out to help. Short, sturdy men, they looked at us girls with the shovels and wondered. Some local police came by and examined the plastic handle on the pick axe I was using. They commented on how light it was and then looked at me quizically. Like I was sort of alien. Then one of them said something to the equivelent of: ¨The more you use this thing the better figure you´ll have.¨ He used his hands to make an hour-glass shape.
Matteo showed up on his Honda Motorcycle. He was wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with ¨I got dumped¨, which I suppose was the truth. We were all working on a trench five feet deep and unyieldingly long, and I asked him about excavators. Like, didn´t Comolapa have any? Matteo said something about Che Guevera, who liked to work with the people. He also said something like, if the excavator came, you wouldn´t have any work to do. And he also said that the excavator was against socialist ideals. (All this from a Texan alcoholic with a propensity for lewd comments towards women. It might also be interesting to note that he, the Che lover, stopped digging almost three hours before any of us did. Said he felt accomplished and went home. Got back and he was drinking Jack and Coke in his back yard).
Lunch time was a high lite. The women arrived in a tuk tuk, one of those little, covered motorcyle get-ups with the same food as the night before.
The school, predicted to be finished in four years, is supposed to offer mechanics, crafts and other workshop type classes. It´s basically Long Way Home´s sole project to date, and besides the tree nursery and the tire kitchen, digging is the only project one can contribute to. One return volunteer, a smoke jumper from Oregon who braided his hair and wore a john deer hat, said he was over it. That he used to come down to hang out with Matteo, but now it was like he was at work. Volunteers must log 40 hours a week, and do some weekends. And he added, ¨if this school doesn´t work out, Matteo is going to have a sick sick house.¨
The part about no shower comes in here too. Because as we were all filthy by the end of the day, the sun set and the cold came in, and the only shower was a cold one. We all went to bed with Guatemalan dirt stuck to us like a second skin.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
To Antigua, and beyond
Traveling on Sunday mornings has to be the best. No one is in a hurry, buses aren't packed and the chicken bus vendors are out in force. This morning at Minerva, the market around the bus station hadn't even really picked up yet, though it was almost ten.
I asked for Antigua, and got ushered to what must have at one point been a Linea Dorada bus (first class), but had since been banged around a little bit more, the overhead reading lights were smashed, and there were little plastic stools in the aisle to accomodate overflow. We stopped at every little town.
As per usual, never a dull moment. The man sitting next to me was eating churasco, and once he was done he reached across, opened the window and through out his styrofoam plate. Meanwhile the whole bus began to stink like sewage though there was no bathroom. People began to hold their nose. It took me a minute to figure out that a poor sick little kid had gone in his pants a couple seats down, and his parents were desperately trying to clean him up with newspapers.
The kid hung across his dad's shoulder looking glassy eyed (and he wasn't young, he was probably eight). His dad ended up ripping an extra shirt up for rags. The kids' mom looked miserable.
Eventually, with new pants on, the boy fell asleep and we descended into the warm valley that is Antigua. More about that later.
The price of my ride was actually pretty equivelent to my Linea Dorada trip from Guatemala City to Xela, so I suppose I was paying for character.
I asked for Antigua, and got ushered to what must have at one point been a Linea Dorada bus (first class), but had since been banged around a little bit more, the overhead reading lights were smashed, and there were little plastic stools in the aisle to accomodate overflow. We stopped at every little town.
As per usual, never a dull moment. The man sitting next to me was eating churasco, and once he was done he reached across, opened the window and through out his styrofoam plate. Meanwhile the whole bus began to stink like sewage though there was no bathroom. People began to hold their nose. It took me a minute to figure out that a poor sick little kid had gone in his pants a couple seats down, and his parents were desperately trying to clean him up with newspapers.
The kid hung across his dad's shoulder looking glassy eyed (and he wasn't young, he was probably eight). His dad ended up ripping an extra shirt up for rags. The kids' mom looked miserable.
Eventually, with new pants on, the boy fell asleep and we descended into the warm valley that is Antigua. More about that later.
The price of my ride was actually pretty equivelent to my Linea Dorada trip from Guatemala City to Xela, so I suppose I was paying for character.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Chichicastenango, the man with the dentures and the shoe shine boy
Saturday night, after a bottle of rum, Madeline, Tommy (spelt and pronounced ¨tomy¨here) and I decided to meet Sunday at a reasonable hour (8:30am) and take a bus three hours to Chichicastenango, the market town to rival all market towns (well, considering the markets at Momostanengo, San Francisco del Alto, and even Xela´s Democracia, you might easily rival it).
Sunday, we straggled together, got fresh squeezed OJ in a bag and made it to Minerva station more like 9:30, where the red chicken bus with flames on the side was supposedly leaving by 10am. Tommy promptly disapeared and Madeline, on a quest for something hot, reported that he was stationed at the fried chicken stand, eating chicken, potatoes and rice. Madeline is a pharmacist back in Australia, and has certain standards that we make fun of her about. To her benefit, she is the best disenfected salad chef I have met in Xela. (First step, douse everything with chlorine. Next step, wash the chlorine off with purified water. Next step, repeat. Finally, pat dry). When she brought back two styrofoam cups of something that looked like coffee but tasted like sugar (Guatemalans have an intense case of diabetes. Once you visit, it´s pretty easy to figure out why), she screwed up her face and said she would never eat street chicken, she wasn´t about to get Salmonella. (remember this for later on, when I describe the best meal of my life). She promptly went and bought a hot dog complete with cabbage and hot sauce. Apparantly not all meats are the same.
The bus didn´t leave for another hour, just sat there and an endless stream of vendors came on and off: Fruit in a bag, soda (affectionately called agua), little candies, big candies, prepared sandwiches, tamales, tortillas, peanuts with hot suace, pens that came with a little pen demonstatration, and caramel.
The man with one and a half legs that sat behind me didn´t smell so hot, and he wasn´t improving with age. But as Tommy said, if you have only one and a half legs, you have somewhat of an excuse for not washing. I on the otherhand, he continued, needed to get over my homestay´s constant lack of shower water, (currently the kitchen is a pile of rubble where someone has been digging into the tile and dirt for some long lost bit of plumbing) bite the bullet and pay for the public bath. Or something.
A little old man sitting in front of Madeline wanted caramel. He bought a piece for 1 Q, and tilted his white cowboy hat. Then, looking furtively from side to side, he reached into his mouth and pulled out his dentures and stuck them into the breast pocket of his jacket. Automatically, his whole jaw sunk inward, like a sinkhole. He put the candy into his mouth, and looked out the window, sucking on his cheeks.
Like many chauffers on public transit, when our driver left Minerva he drove like the road was his superhighway, and the rocks that crumbled down and sat in the road from the surrounding cliffs were his personal obstacle course. It was a rough ride. The most exciting part was when, because of roadwork, the road became one lane for two, opposite lanes of traffic. Our speedy bus was passing everybody, trucks, cars, cement carriers, and then an oncoming car would force the driver to throw on the brakes. We flew around, the bus ground down to a slower forty miles an hour, and the oncoming car passed by.
It costs about 25Q to get to Chichi, which is situated northeast of Xela.
When we arrived, the helpful center of tourism helped us find a budget hotel that had a hot shower (I try to wash on weekends), with an owner who saw Tommy and laughed ¨We´ll get in an extra bed for the fatty.¨ Being called fat, or gordo, here is not supposed to be a diss. The man looked at Madeline and I laughing and said, somewhat apologetically, ¨fat like me! fat like me!¨
There is a beautiful old church in Chichicastenango, and on Sundays, there are pilgramages up a local hill where Mayans burn copal and sacrifice roosters. Madeline and I took one look at the wooded bump that at home on the east coast I would be psyched to run up, and said ¨thanks but no thanks.¨ Something about being mugged once doesn´t exactly get you roused up to try for it again.
People selling their crafts at Chichicastenango know tourists. A lot of them know english ¨Hey! I got what you want!¨and, as the woman who sold me a piece of embroidery (and who personally escorted me to the ATM machine because she knows a tourist never comes back) said sort of in jest, ¨Americans like our textiles, but they don´t like our prices.¨
The market is a wooden framed, tarp covered affair, and it begins and ends at the church where there are buckets of flowers, burning incense and old ladies swing tin buckets of smoke around. Here, kids, hell even the women patting tortillas over gas grills, ask for 5Q if you take their photo (wouldn´t you?), and a little kid with a grubby shirt decided he was going to shine Tommy´s shoes, no matter how many times Tommy said no. Tommy was wearing skater sneakers. The kid´s shoe shine kit had stickers on it, like some sixth grader´s social studies binder. Finally he slunk away.
The middle of the market is dedicated to food. We finally settled onto a picnic table deep in the dark belly of the market spread with crafts, vegetables and burned CD´s and had fried chicken, fried papas, rice and tortillas. The tortillas were the fresh kind, sort of crispy on the outside, soft in the inside. The kind you could eat and die right after and feel satisfied with life. Madeline didn´t get chicken, she got a caldo of tough beef with potatoes. And I, after initially spitting out my chicken in a flash of reading-too-much-Lonely-Planet-Panic (¨it´s just fresh,¨ Tommy assured me. He had already ordered another piece. ¨It´s cooked, it´s just so fresh.¨) I forgot about any salmonella worries, and boy was that good. Like you could imagine your mom making if you were from the deep south sometime in the 50´s, and your brother had just wrung a chicken´s neck the hour before, I was licking my fingers.
That meal cost 22 Quetzeles, almost the same as our three hour ride. There are a lot of things that cost inbetween 20-25Q here. (inbetween 2-3 US dollars). I bought shampoo (the smallest baby bottle) that cost 30Q. Sometime back last week I went out to the new gringo bar and paid 20Q for a mojito. And then, on some nights, when it´s somewhat late (anytime after 10pm) and I take a six minute taxi ride from the center of town to my house, that´s 20Q as well.
Pictures to follow. Especially the one where Tommy holds up a Mayan mask over his face. And the whole family of mask vendors does the same.
Sunday, we straggled together, got fresh squeezed OJ in a bag and made it to Minerva station more like 9:30, where the red chicken bus with flames on the side was supposedly leaving by 10am. Tommy promptly disapeared and Madeline, on a quest for something hot, reported that he was stationed at the fried chicken stand, eating chicken, potatoes and rice. Madeline is a pharmacist back in Australia, and has certain standards that we make fun of her about. To her benefit, she is the best disenfected salad chef I have met in Xela. (First step, douse everything with chlorine. Next step, wash the chlorine off with purified water. Next step, repeat. Finally, pat dry). When she brought back two styrofoam cups of something that looked like coffee but tasted like sugar (Guatemalans have an intense case of diabetes. Once you visit, it´s pretty easy to figure out why), she screwed up her face and said she would never eat street chicken, she wasn´t about to get Salmonella. (remember this for later on, when I describe the best meal of my life). She promptly went and bought a hot dog complete with cabbage and hot sauce. Apparantly not all meats are the same.
The bus didn´t leave for another hour, just sat there and an endless stream of vendors came on and off: Fruit in a bag, soda (affectionately called agua), little candies, big candies, prepared sandwiches, tamales, tortillas, peanuts with hot suace, pens that came with a little pen demonstatration, and caramel.
The man with one and a half legs that sat behind me didn´t smell so hot, and he wasn´t improving with age. But as Tommy said, if you have only one and a half legs, you have somewhat of an excuse for not washing. I on the otherhand, he continued, needed to get over my homestay´s constant lack of shower water, (currently the kitchen is a pile of rubble where someone has been digging into the tile and dirt for some long lost bit of plumbing) bite the bullet and pay for the public bath. Or something.
A little old man sitting in front of Madeline wanted caramel. He bought a piece for 1 Q, and tilted his white cowboy hat. Then, looking furtively from side to side, he reached into his mouth and pulled out his dentures and stuck them into the breast pocket of his jacket. Automatically, his whole jaw sunk inward, like a sinkhole. He put the candy into his mouth, and looked out the window, sucking on his cheeks.
Like many chauffers on public transit, when our driver left Minerva he drove like the road was his superhighway, and the rocks that crumbled down and sat in the road from the surrounding cliffs were his personal obstacle course. It was a rough ride. The most exciting part was when, because of roadwork, the road became one lane for two, opposite lanes of traffic. Our speedy bus was passing everybody, trucks, cars, cement carriers, and then an oncoming car would force the driver to throw on the brakes. We flew around, the bus ground down to a slower forty miles an hour, and the oncoming car passed by.
It costs about 25Q to get to Chichi, which is situated northeast of Xela.
When we arrived, the helpful center of tourism helped us find a budget hotel that had a hot shower (I try to wash on weekends), with an owner who saw Tommy and laughed ¨We´ll get in an extra bed for the fatty.¨ Being called fat, or gordo, here is not supposed to be a diss. The man looked at Madeline and I laughing and said, somewhat apologetically, ¨fat like me! fat like me!¨
There is a beautiful old church in Chichicastenango, and on Sundays, there are pilgramages up a local hill where Mayans burn copal and sacrifice roosters. Madeline and I took one look at the wooded bump that at home on the east coast I would be psyched to run up, and said ¨thanks but no thanks.¨ Something about being mugged once doesn´t exactly get you roused up to try for it again.
People selling their crafts at Chichicastenango know tourists. A lot of them know english ¨Hey! I got what you want!¨and, as the woman who sold me a piece of embroidery (and who personally escorted me to the ATM machine because she knows a tourist never comes back) said sort of in jest, ¨Americans like our textiles, but they don´t like our prices.¨
The market is a wooden framed, tarp covered affair, and it begins and ends at the church where there are buckets of flowers, burning incense and old ladies swing tin buckets of smoke around. Here, kids, hell even the women patting tortillas over gas grills, ask for 5Q if you take their photo (wouldn´t you?), and a little kid with a grubby shirt decided he was going to shine Tommy´s shoes, no matter how many times Tommy said no. Tommy was wearing skater sneakers. The kid´s shoe shine kit had stickers on it, like some sixth grader´s social studies binder. Finally he slunk away.
The middle of the market is dedicated to food. We finally settled onto a picnic table deep in the dark belly of the market spread with crafts, vegetables and burned CD´s and had fried chicken, fried papas, rice and tortillas. The tortillas were the fresh kind, sort of crispy on the outside, soft in the inside. The kind you could eat and die right after and feel satisfied with life. Madeline didn´t get chicken, she got a caldo of tough beef with potatoes. And I, after initially spitting out my chicken in a flash of reading-too-much-Lonely-Planet-Panic (¨it´s just fresh,¨ Tommy assured me. He had already ordered another piece. ¨It´s cooked, it´s just so fresh.¨) I forgot about any salmonella worries, and boy was that good. Like you could imagine your mom making if you were from the deep south sometime in the 50´s, and your brother had just wrung a chicken´s neck the hour before, I was licking my fingers.
That meal cost 22 Quetzeles, almost the same as our three hour ride. There are a lot of things that cost inbetween 20-25Q here. (inbetween 2-3 US dollars). I bought shampoo (the smallest baby bottle) that cost 30Q. Sometime back last week I went out to the new gringo bar and paid 20Q for a mojito. And then, on some nights, when it´s somewhat late (anytime after 10pm) and I take a six minute taxi ride from the center of town to my house, that´s 20Q as well.
Pictures to follow. Especially the one where Tommy holds up a Mayan mask over his face. And the whole family of mask vendors does the same.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
On mascots
I still can´t quite figure out dogs here.
There is this dog that lives in a certain part of sidewalk in Zona Uno. I think he must have chosen his favorite restaurant, and stayed out in front. He´s sort of shaggy and dirty and stray. He doesn´t flinch when people step over him, but then again, that´s most dogs. They´ll lie down anywhere, like in the gas station parking lot in front of the diesel can.
There are dogs at night on most streetcorners attacking giant bags of trash.
Kids smack dogs over the heads with sticks.
And then there are dogs that Guatemalans put leashes on and take for walks around the neighborhood.
Hugo and Maria are planning on getting a new puppy. I asked if they would get it neutered. Hugo said something to the effect of ¨it´s not natural for a dog not to have sex!¨and then Maria said ¨We don´t want puppies. That´s why we´re getting a male.¨ Obviously.
Claudia, one of my teachers, said she doesn´t let her she-dog out of the house. ¨Maybe she can have puppies once¨, she says generously. ¨But no more!¨
There is this dog that lives in a certain part of sidewalk in Zona Uno. I think he must have chosen his favorite restaurant, and stayed out in front. He´s sort of shaggy and dirty and stray. He doesn´t flinch when people step over him, but then again, that´s most dogs. They´ll lie down anywhere, like in the gas station parking lot in front of the diesel can.
There are dogs at night on most streetcorners attacking giant bags of trash.
Kids smack dogs over the heads with sticks.
And then there are dogs that Guatemalans put leashes on and take for walks around the neighborhood.
Hugo and Maria are planning on getting a new puppy. I asked if they would get it neutered. Hugo said something to the effect of ¨it´s not natural for a dog not to have sex!¨and then Maria said ¨We don´t want puppies. That´s why we´re getting a male.¨ Obviously.
Claudia, one of my teachers, said she doesn´t let her she-dog out of the house. ¨Maybe she can have puppies once¨, she says generously. ¨But no more!¨
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The Presence of Guns and the Finca Santa Anita
¨I was going to the bank,¨says a guy named Dave on a hike at the finca de Santa Anita where I went this weekend. ¨And there was this sweet little old lady in front of me. And at the door, they put you through a metal detector, and this old woman takes a silver pistol from her bag and hands it over to the guard. He put it in a box, and she went in. Just like that.¨
I thought this vignette summed up a little about Guatemala, where not very long ago, whole villages were armed to the teeth to combat government-perpetrated genocide. The banks are guarded by police with long shot guns. Bars are sometimes gaurded, trucks with any kind of worth on board are gaurded, and most of the time, men in uniform are just hanging around, not guarding anything. But they have guns too. And the finger of these men is always right next to the trigger.
And then there are the men with guns on top of Mount Baúl, (the hill of trunk, strangely named in english) the mountain/park in Xela. Those men are scarier, and three of them robbed my friend Madeline and I on Friday afternoon. Nothing like a gun waved in your direction to make you realize how little you care about cash, phones, cameras. And nothing like a gun waved at you to realize how quickly you´ll relinquish control.
Luckily, these dudes just wanted something of worth, and they gave me back my earrings that my cousin Carolyne had brought me from Turkey. (Sorry Cayo, guess they look cheap). They tried to get off the ring I´d made at the Maine College of Art a couple springs ago, but it was stuck on and anyway, not worth it either.
Later, I eyed the family heirloom engagement ring that a girl from NYC was wearing at the finca this weekend. ¨I´d take that off if I were you,¨I said. ¨I know, I really should,¨she said sheepishly.
I guess you don´t get it until you get it.
At the The Finca Santa Anita, a cooperatively owned coffee and banana plantation, the treasurer, Sergio, had half a finger missing from his part in the campesino movement. His trigger finger. He didn´t talk about it. Willy, the guy that brought us there, a guatemalan who told his parents he was guiding hikers in Pétan back in the early nineties and instead was helping the guerillas out behind volcan lacandon, said Sergio wouldn´t talk about the war because he was sick of talking about the war.
¨He´d rather talk about the coffee finca, and what they´re doing to have a better future.¨ Talk he did. Boy does that Sergio talk. Doesn´t even mind that you only half understand spanish.
The finca is owned by 32 families, though they don´t farm it together. They each have a part of the property, and the families bring in their coffee harvests seperately. Santa Anita does have its own school, library, store and eco-tourism hostel, which is all part of a plan to diversify (here you go dad) the plantation. They have a permit to export only unroasted coffee, and it is sent to a fair trade, organic coffee company in Madison, WI. The bananas go even less farther afield, being sold domestically only. During the off season, when the harvesting is all done (now), the community harvests wood to sell. Our group split up to eat with different families for the night´s dinner. Most of them live on five quetzales a day. The current exchange rate is 7.7 Q to 1 US dollar.
Murals are a big thing at the finca, and we helped paint one. The members are all unabashedly Che Guivera fans, and his face or movement is painted everywhere.
¨You´ll notice,¨says Willy, who has a son back in Madison, WI, where he lived for 12 years, ¨that all the pupils painted in that mural are left handed.¨
This is of course, not by accident. ¨Izquierda, siempre izquierda!¨Willy likes to say, laughing.
The small pueblas in the state of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala´s western highlands, were badly hit in the thirty plus year civil war. Many of them were guerrilla sympathetic, and were especially flattened in the 1982-1983 era of Rios Mont, a dictator that wreaked most havoc among indiginous people and who even the Reagan administration saw as too right wing for his continuation as president.
Willy is promoting a documentary that I saw last week, all about the finca Santa Anita, the community members´part in the civil war, and history about the civil war itself. It´s called Voice of a Mountain, and it´s quite good.
I thought this vignette summed up a little about Guatemala, where not very long ago, whole villages were armed to the teeth to combat government-perpetrated genocide. The banks are guarded by police with long shot guns. Bars are sometimes gaurded, trucks with any kind of worth on board are gaurded, and most of the time, men in uniform are just hanging around, not guarding anything. But they have guns too. And the finger of these men is always right next to the trigger.
And then there are the men with guns on top of Mount Baúl, (the hill of trunk, strangely named in english) the mountain/park in Xela. Those men are scarier, and three of them robbed my friend Madeline and I on Friday afternoon. Nothing like a gun waved in your direction to make you realize how little you care about cash, phones, cameras. And nothing like a gun waved at you to realize how quickly you´ll relinquish control.
Luckily, these dudes just wanted something of worth, and they gave me back my earrings that my cousin Carolyne had brought me from Turkey. (Sorry Cayo, guess they look cheap). They tried to get off the ring I´d made at the Maine College of Art a couple springs ago, but it was stuck on and anyway, not worth it either.
Later, I eyed the family heirloom engagement ring that a girl from NYC was wearing at the finca this weekend. ¨I´d take that off if I were you,¨I said. ¨I know, I really should,¨she said sheepishly.
I guess you don´t get it until you get it.
At the The Finca Santa Anita, a cooperatively owned coffee and banana plantation, the treasurer, Sergio, had half a finger missing from his part in the campesino movement. His trigger finger. He didn´t talk about it. Willy, the guy that brought us there, a guatemalan who told his parents he was guiding hikers in Pétan back in the early nineties and instead was helping the guerillas out behind volcan lacandon, said Sergio wouldn´t talk about the war because he was sick of talking about the war.
¨He´d rather talk about the coffee finca, and what they´re doing to have a better future.¨ Talk he did. Boy does that Sergio talk. Doesn´t even mind that you only half understand spanish.
The finca is owned by 32 families, though they don´t farm it together. They each have a part of the property, and the families bring in their coffee harvests seperately. Santa Anita does have its own school, library, store and eco-tourism hostel, which is all part of a plan to diversify (here you go dad) the plantation. They have a permit to export only unroasted coffee, and it is sent to a fair trade, organic coffee company in Madison, WI. The bananas go even less farther afield, being sold domestically only. During the off season, when the harvesting is all done (now), the community harvests wood to sell. Our group split up to eat with different families for the night´s dinner. Most of them live on five quetzales a day. The current exchange rate is 7.7 Q to 1 US dollar.
Murals are a big thing at the finca, and we helped paint one. The members are all unabashedly Che Guivera fans, and his face or movement is painted everywhere.
¨You´ll notice,¨says Willy, who has a son back in Madison, WI, where he lived for 12 years, ¨that all the pupils painted in that mural are left handed.¨
This is of course, not by accident. ¨Izquierda, siempre izquierda!¨Willy likes to say, laughing.
The small pueblas in the state of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala´s western highlands, were badly hit in the thirty plus year civil war. Many of them were guerrilla sympathetic, and were especially flattened in the 1982-1983 era of Rios Mont, a dictator that wreaked most havoc among indiginous people and who even the Reagan administration saw as too right wing for his continuation as president.
Willy is promoting a documentary that I saw last week, all about the finca Santa Anita, the community members´part in the civil war, and history about the civil war itself. It´s called Voice of a Mountain, and it´s quite good.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
San Andres Xecul
Today, instead of school, we went to the church at San Andres Xecul, a giant church painted a primary color yellow, with blues and greens and saints and doves and all sorts of designs. From the school bus, decked out with silver grill and flashy colors, we got into the back of a pick-up truck, where we held on and had the wind in our hair for a few minutes until San Andres. Great way to travel.
Once in the town, I talked to a man shelling peas, who hailed from Xela, but who asked me a million questions while laughing good humourdly, and laughed especially I think when I left him and said ¨buen provecho¨, which you are only supposed to say after a meal. From the giant yellow church, full of bloody, white saints, we walked up the steep town road, past an open building where girls washed clothes at cement wash boards (and who laughed at us) to a second, smaller yellow church (blue, green, moss, doves) where Luis, our teacher told us, it used to be indiginous (small church) verse Spaniards (big church).
There was a cross at the top, where a group of people burned incense and had a pretty big fire going. There was a tienda too, and japanese peanuts, salty corn and funny chocolatey things were bought. Plus juice boxes shaped like triangles. Then we walked back down and went home.
Once in the town, I talked to a man shelling peas, who hailed from Xela, but who asked me a million questions while laughing good humourdly, and laughed especially I think when I left him and said ¨buen provecho¨, which you are only supposed to say after a meal. From the giant yellow church, full of bloody, white saints, we walked up the steep town road, past an open building where girls washed clothes at cement wash boards (and who laughed at us) to a second, smaller yellow church (blue, green, moss, doves) where Luis, our teacher told us, it used to be indiginous (small church) verse Spaniards (big church).
There was a cross at the top, where a group of people burned incense and had a pretty big fire going. There was a tienda too, and japanese peanuts, salty corn and funny chocolatey things were bought. Plus juice boxes shaped like triangles. Then we walked back down and went home.
Project Warm, meet Plan Frío
This morning, as I laboriously worked out a 300 word newspaper entry in el Nacion, I found out that Project Warm in Bridgeton, Maine, would be pleased to know that in Guatemala, Plan Frío is entirely the same. Handing out blankets to those in need, the plan extends until March, helping poor people and older people through the winter here. And you may laugh, as this is Guatemala, and the temperature only goes to just below freezing at night in the Xela mountains, BUT. Project Warm didn´t actually have deaths on their hands. Here, where murders grace the front page every day, there have already been two deaths from cold in the new year.
Prensa Libre
Indeed, this morning was frigid. Maria and Maia and I sat in a cold kitchen with salvia leaf tea. It´s every morning that Maria says ¨Que Frío!¨and wraps her shawl tighter around her while heating up water. The day time was probably in the high sixties under the sun
Meanwhile, as I sit here in my jacket in the internet cafe most close to mi casa (half a block) that most resembles a garage with the pull down door, about 8 middle school students are playing World of War Craft around me. Maria comes her to instant message her son in Norway, and I use it almost every day. Otherwise it´s primarily the nerdstar computer game corner.
Prensa Libre
Indeed, this morning was frigid. Maria and Maia and I sat in a cold kitchen with salvia leaf tea. It´s every morning that Maria says ¨Que Frío!¨and wraps her shawl tighter around her while heating up water. The day time was probably in the high sixties under the sun
Meanwhile, as I sit here in my jacket in the internet cafe most close to mi casa (half a block) that most resembles a garage with the pull down door, about 8 middle school students are playing World of War Craft around me. Maria comes her to instant message her son in Norway, and I use it almost every day. Otherwise it´s primarily the nerdstar computer game corner.
Friday, January 16, 2009
The student life in Xela, Zona Uno
Last night, like the night before, we stayed up late at the house drinking rum. Gabby, the daughter of Hugo and Maria, lives in Burlington, VT, and has been visiting since Christmas. Last night was her last. Maria, after feeding the students and her daughter´s friends (artists, graphic designers, yoga teacher who loves tofu etc) tamales at the kitchen table, Maria began pouring rum and cokes in the comedor. She´s a short woman who speaks sort of like a fast motorboat, and she´d painted her eyelids sparkly purple. One minute she was laughing, the next she was crying into her daughter´s shoulder, loud, bitter tears.
Today at breakfast, over the ever present oatmeal and banana, I think Maria told me that she doesn´t like Juan, Gabby´s Argintinean boyfriend who was also visiting. Though honestly, she could have been saying she doesnt like Juan´s shirt. I spend half the time in the dark.
So Hugo sits quietly, sometimes smoking, while Maria talks and Sylvia, her friend, an english teacher tells me in English that you can´t hide your problems by drinking them away and looks meaningfully at Maria. ¨It´s been tried!¨she laughs loudly. ¨No one can do it!¨
Maria sometimes teaches at our spanish school, Educion Para Todos, and always houses students. Some of my fellow students arrive to drink beers and Maria tells us over and over again how much Educacion Para Todos is like her family. ¨Sarah sabe!¨ She says, gesturing at her body. ¨My family.¨ Gabby and her friends get ready to go out, and one of them promises a trip to the nearest beach next weekend, the one that doesn´t ache of tourists.
The other part of student life is of course, the school. I spend five hours a day, from 2pm until 7pm at the little, unmarked school, Educacion Para Todos. It involves a tiny front office with tea and coffee, a tiny courtyard, tiny bathrooms and then tiny classrooms with bare wood tables that come off the courtyard.
Javier is my teacher. He´s 24, and studies civil engineering at the University of Guatemala in Xela. He wears a necklace that reminds him to follow el Señor´s footprints, and giggles when he asks me if in the United States, on Halloween, guys dress in drag? He giggles a lot, and especially giggles when I mispronounce words that sound like bad ones. I asked him what he thought about the current president. He told me he can´t listen to him because there is something wrong with his throat. Javier pinches his nose and tilts his head. ¨Él hable commo una rana.¨ (little frog). He´s a patient teacher though, a good one. We methodically go through the book. He corrects my accent. ¨Preguntas?¨he asks. And then it´s time for some instant coffee.
The school gets a bit of sun through the courtyard, but like Maria´s house, nothing is heated and everything is made of cement. The last hour of the lesson, after the sun sets, is freezing, and we wear jackets and hats while conjugating verbs. Just like at home, where i wear long underwear, thick socks, pants, sweater, fleece jacket and hat to bed.
Xela´s winter weather is like the desert.
Conan, the tiny little attack kitten, has apparantly attracted admirers. Hugo roams the house at night with a sling shot. The neighborhood cats yowl and call for Conan from the neighboring patios and rooftops. They join in the rousing dog chorus when dark falls.
Today at breakfast, over the ever present oatmeal and banana, I think Maria told me that she doesn´t like Juan, Gabby´s Argintinean boyfriend who was also visiting. Though honestly, she could have been saying she doesnt like Juan´s shirt. I spend half the time in the dark.
So Hugo sits quietly, sometimes smoking, while Maria talks and Sylvia, her friend, an english teacher tells me in English that you can´t hide your problems by drinking them away and looks meaningfully at Maria. ¨It´s been tried!¨she laughs loudly. ¨No one can do it!¨
Maria sometimes teaches at our spanish school, Educion Para Todos, and always houses students. Some of my fellow students arrive to drink beers and Maria tells us over and over again how much Educacion Para Todos is like her family. ¨Sarah sabe!¨ She says, gesturing at her body. ¨My family.¨ Gabby and her friends get ready to go out, and one of them promises a trip to the nearest beach next weekend, the one that doesn´t ache of tourists.
The other part of student life is of course, the school. I spend five hours a day, from 2pm until 7pm at the little, unmarked school, Educacion Para Todos. It involves a tiny front office with tea and coffee, a tiny courtyard, tiny bathrooms and then tiny classrooms with bare wood tables that come off the courtyard.
Javier is my teacher. He´s 24, and studies civil engineering at the University of Guatemala in Xela. He wears a necklace that reminds him to follow el Señor´s footprints, and giggles when he asks me if in the United States, on Halloween, guys dress in drag? He giggles a lot, and especially giggles when I mispronounce words that sound like bad ones. I asked him what he thought about the current president. He told me he can´t listen to him because there is something wrong with his throat. Javier pinches his nose and tilts his head. ¨Él hable commo una rana.¨ (little frog). He´s a patient teacher though, a good one. We methodically go through the book. He corrects my accent. ¨Preguntas?¨he asks. And then it´s time for some instant coffee.
The school gets a bit of sun through the courtyard, but like Maria´s house, nothing is heated and everything is made of cement. The last hour of the lesson, after the sun sets, is freezing, and we wear jackets and hats while conjugating verbs. Just like at home, where i wear long underwear, thick socks, pants, sweater, fleece jacket and hat to bed.
Xela´s winter weather is like the desert.
Conan, the tiny little attack kitten, has apparantly attracted admirers. Hugo roams the house at night with a sling shot. The neighborhood cats yowl and call for Conan from the neighboring patios and rooftops. They join in the rousing dog chorus when dark falls.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Hola Xela
If San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico, is Montreal's Westmount, then Xela, Guatemala is just at that line where Westmount turns into NDG. That line is where all the manicured grass, good sidewalk, and well watered impatiens end, and the trash, dust and highway show up.
Or maybe it's like this: San Cristobal is like a trip to Disneyworld, and Xela is the tour of your local paper factory. I'm only comparing them because the windy mountain bustrip, five hours of dynamited cliff, steeply cultivated fields of corn and cabbage and sickening switchbacks reminded me a lot of our trip last winter to the mountain town in Chiapas. There are also a lot of women walking around with traditional Maya dress, balancing bowls of tortillas and tamales on their heads.
Maria and her husband Hugo, who I'm living with here, are not your common Guatemalans. Yesterday, over a breakfast of sweet, milky oatmeal, ginormous banana and good coffee (!) Maria told me no mi gusta la religion. She is emphatic about everything, but this is a passionate subject, and though Hugo has gone through about as many religious fads as exist (my source is a guy at the school who stayed with her last year...we're talking hari krishna, mormanism and the ever popular catholicism) Maria is not into church. She thinks it's done a lot of harm to her country, and puts people in their shivering places.
There are two other students living with us. The house is rambling, my room is by far the most creative, and sometimes Maria and Hugo rent out a front studio room to a random painter.
At night, a chorus of barking dogs (domestico y no) sings me to sleep.
Or maybe it's like this: San Cristobal is like a trip to Disneyworld, and Xela is the tour of your local paper factory. I'm only comparing them because the windy mountain bustrip, five hours of dynamited cliff, steeply cultivated fields of corn and cabbage and sickening switchbacks reminded me a lot of our trip last winter to the mountain town in Chiapas. There are also a lot of women walking around with traditional Maya dress, balancing bowls of tortillas and tamales on their heads.
Maria and her husband Hugo, who I'm living with here, are not your common Guatemalans. Yesterday, over a breakfast of sweet, milky oatmeal, ginormous banana and good coffee (!) Maria told me no mi gusta la religion. She is emphatic about everything, but this is a passionate subject, and though Hugo has gone through about as many religious fads as exist (my source is a guy at the school who stayed with her last year...we're talking hari krishna, mormanism and the ever popular catholicism) Maria is not into church. She thinks it's done a lot of harm to her country, and puts people in their shivering places.
There are two other students living with us. The house is rambling, my room is by far the most creative, and sometimes Maria and Hugo rent out a front studio room to a random painter.
At night, a chorus of barking dogs (domestico y no) sings me to sleep.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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