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.