As I sit here, the sound of the rain is drowning out all other sounds. And we are expecting five more days of such. Tropical Storm Alex, which allegedly battered the north, including Tikal, was downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it reached the highlands. So we have been left intact, but drenched.
This weekend, I had big plans. And thanks to Alex, Stefan and I were forced to resort to Plan B.
On Friday, I said two goodbyes, which put me in a sour mood. After classes wrapped up, I badefarewell to Olivia, who left for Canada by way of Antigua on Friday afternoon. Later that day, I met Steph and Cassandra at a little chocolate shop for fried plantains and chocolate and ice cream and to bid farewell to Cassandra, who is heading home to Chicago, also by way of Antigua and Tikal. Steph and Cassandra were students at my first school, but they had since transferredto another school here near the Parque Central. On Friday night we didn't have our usual graduation dinner at the school, because we held it during the break. So I spent Friday night inbed, reading. And it was luscious. After saying goodbye to Cassandra I hiked up to Zone 3 andthe super market that is located there and withdrew some money and bought a sparetoothbrush because my Chacos were covered with 7 weeks of Xela street funk, and needed to be scrubbed something fierce. On the way home I stopped by Vrisa Books (just to look!!!) andhappened upon a lovely textbook titled, "Globalization, Spirituality and Justice: Navigating thePath to Peace." I have only read 2 chapters but so far I love it. Although it has been a fierce, sobering read.
Saturday the great big plans were to climb an extinct volcano, by the light of the full moon, in order to catch a view of a not-extinct volcano at sunrise. I was very excited. And very nervous. In true Rachel fashion I obsessed about whether I should climb it or not. The travel guide at our school made a point to say, three separate times, how hard the climb was when he was talking about the trip. And several weeks ago MRM climbed Acatenango near Antigua and it was hellacious. So I was worried and googled all sorts of things about climbing volcanoes and talked to everyone who would listen to me about whether or not I should attempt it. I didn't have pants, I don't have pants here. That was another packing mistake that I have come to regret. I have capris, but no pants. Because who needs pants in a tropical country? Also, I have no hiking boots. So I was going to climb in capris, and Chacos, with socks, on the first day of my period. All the warning signs in my head that said maybe this isn't a good idea were overruled by how romantic it sounded to climb a volcano under a full moon.
So, Stefan had been in Guat City celebrating Pride but was coming back on Saturday for theclimb. When he got back in town we determined that he needed a headlamp and went aboutlooking for one. By this point on Saturday, I had chatted briefly with MRM who was in Belize, and directly in the path of Tropical Storm Alex. We discussed whether or not she should leave orstay put, she decided to stay put, and the last thing she said was, "OK, it's starting to rain, gottago." Having lived through lots and lots and lots of rain with her, I took this to mean, "I am in themiddle of a hurricane, must get offline." So a good deal of my weekend was spent worrying abouther as it rained more and more in Xela, and I assumed it was a bazillion times worse in Belize.
So, Stefan and I stepped out into said rain to look for a headlamp, which I skillfully asked for as a "lampera para tu cabeza?" from the clerks of several stores near the Park and they all had no idea what I was talking about. After giving up in town, we decided to walk to the mall. It costs 1.25Q to ride to the mall, which is something like 15 cents, but for some reason, we decided to walk rather than take the bus. So we arrived, soaking wet. Me in my saran wrap, leaking rain coat, Stefan in his also leaking, knock off Adidas rain coat, that he paid an ungodly sum for at the local market. We squelched our way through the mall until we found this random "outdoor goods" store that sold guns, rafts, swimming caps, and headlamps! The clerk tried to sell Stefan 2 flashlights in addition to the headlamp, and Stefan loves to spend money, but I kindly reminded him that he probably didn't need a headlamp and 2 flashlights. So having purchased that, we still needed water for the climb and chocolates for the altitude. But by now I was really cold from being so wet, and the thought of climbing all night long, and possibly not being dry for another day was a little depressing. So I called the tour company to see what the status of the trip was and was told it had been cancelled, because mudslides and switchbacks aren't the safest combination. I was both relieved and disappointed. A whole Saturday night. And nothing to do.
Stefan asked if I wanted to go to the mall. The other mall, the big one. I said sure, and then westarted off. Again, walking. Again, I have no idea why. The big mall, Hiper Pais, is about an hour walk away, but we had already covered half the distance. So off we went, walking down the highway that has no shoulder during Saturday traffic, in the rain. On the way there you pass the Templo de Minerva which is literally a giant replica of the Greek Parthenon that one of the dictators had built to encourage the population to appreciate education. Next to Templo de Minerva is a smaller outdoor market that we detoured through. Markets are a little gross to begin with, what with no running water and lots of animal carcasses for sale that have been sitting there for hours, and the food that is rotten or not fit to sell has been tossed on the ground, which is also where people deposit all their trash. But after hours of rain, markets are another thing entirely. I had retired my Chacos for the weekend because they were so dirty, and was wearing a flimsy pair of flipflops, wading through the filth, while skin and bones dogs picked among it all. Beyond the market is a zoo. Yes, we have a zoo. I had no idea. Suddenly I noticed we were in the middle of a small forest, but in a parking lot, with long low buildings ahead of us on one side and the largest playground I have every seen (it is seriously like three stories tall) ahead on the other side. Stefan said the animals in the zoo are as skinny as the dogs on the street and it is incredibly depressing. Noted.
Once we passed through the zoo, we were back on the highway and a quick walk from Hiper Pais. This was my first time there, and I am sorry to admit, it thrilled me. It was like being in America again. And not even America, it was like being in California. The mall is huge and has a WalMart attached to it and a dozen restaurants and went on for acre after glorious acre. I was giddy. And then I felt terrible and ashamed for feeling giddy. We wandered around, checked out what was playing at the cinema, and then had dinner at the food court. It was like being a preteen again. We circled the food court a few times and Stefan decided, based on the advertisements, that Taco Bell would be the most food for our money, so we got crunch wraps and nachos and once our food appeared Stefan was extremely underimpressed and complained about how little it resembled the photos on the menu.
After dinner I begged him to go to a movie with me, but he said we had to save the movie forSunday, since there we still had another whole day to fill. So, we wandered some more. We wentto two stores and I almost bought a knock Broadway DVD of "Sweeney Todd" before thinkingbetter of it. Guatemala was still celebrating MJ's life, and every store was playing his hits, whichwas fun. I asked if there was a bookstore and Stefan took me to this bizarre place that was halfPier 1 Imports, half New Age head shop. A row of Chinese Buddhas. A row of Indian Buddhas. A row of Wiccan goods. A row of Samurai swords. A row of everything you could ever want for a Christmas manger. Icons imported fromRussia. Didgeridoos imported from Australia. Indigenous this, indigenous that. Incense. Candles. Books on yoga and diabetes. It was all a littleoverwhelming.
After the head shop we took a bus home, and Stefan was going out to the club, I was not. But he talked me into coming back to his place to look at photos of his travels while he got ready, and I am glad I did. He has lived one of those lives that I feel I can't relate to, but am fascinated by nonetheless. He is young, rich, brilliant, cultured, gay, fluent in 5 languages, comfortable in an additional 4. He causually mentioned his family's second estate on the Aegean Coast and said he would "be happy to host" me there or in Istanbul. He showed me photos of summers on the Dalmatian Coast, winters in Persepolis. Syndey. Sarajevo. Shiraz. Thousands of photos. I was enthralled, and incredibly jealous, and not a little bit sad. The pictures of Iran were so gorgeous and I felt a tightness in my chest that I may never get to see it for myself. The photos of the graffiti in front of the American embassy in Tehran were ... we are not very popular over there, I'll say that.
series " Sunday I got up, showered, and got back in bed. It was raining too hard to leave. But hunger won out, and I met Stefan at a cafe called El Cuartito (the little room) for the Mexico v. Argentina game. We ended up spending most of the day at the Cafe, him on his computer, me slogging my way through homework. We had discovered in one another an equal obsession for the HBO series "True Blood," especially a shared appreciation for the actor who plays Sheriff Northman, Alex Skarsgard. If you haven't seen "True Blood," don't watch it. It is incredibly graphic. But also, it is wonderful. It's a Southern vampire show, by Alan Ball, who graced us with "Six Feet Under" and "American Beauty." Though it is a vampire show, it is wholly original, treating vampires like a minority social class, who are "out" and fighting for equal rights rather than being the freaky undead. As such, the show is incredibly campy and can get away with a lot of really intelligent social commentary about the minority experience in America. So, when I wasn't doing homework, we were watching clips from Season 2 and trying to find somewhere to watch the premiere of Season 3, which began in Latin America last night.
In the end, after walking around and asking everyone, we found one cafe and one bar that agreed to play it for us. We settled on the cafe, who was going to charge us 20Q to watch it in a private room. We inhaled our dinner and made it to the cafe at 6:45. I had to reexplain to the guy what we wanted them to do for us, what his wife had promised us earlier in the day. He ended up attempting to hook up the cable in three different rooms and none of them worked. He refunded our money. All day long, I had shifted between excitement and temperance, acknowledging that nothing here goes according to plan. Once our money was refunded, we had six minutes to make it across town to the other bar that had agreed to play it.
We took off. Stefen in tennis shoes with his laptop case flapping behind him, me in flip flops and my school bag jerking behind me. We ran, through the rain, across slick cobblestones. Looking back, we shouldn't have made it intact. I was literally dodging traffic, traffic that doesn't slow down for pedestrians to begin with. We darted from sidewalk to street, sidewalk to street, running uphill and down, me yelling as I fell behind, "Just go, go! Don't wait for me!" Stefan yelling back, "I won't leave you!" I hadn't yet run at elevation before, and I was wheezing by the time we blew into the bar, perspiring and frantic. We got there with a minute to spare, only to find out that HBO has been cancelled in Xela for a year. Why no one bothered to tell us this before then, I will never know.
Defeated, we stumbled out onto the street and for the first time since I have been here, a straydog growled at us and chased us down the street. We dodged into a tienda, where Stefan boughtsmokes and I cursed everyone I could think to blame for no HBO. Resolving to still enjoyourselves, we decided to go see a movie after all. Only, since it was Sunday, there was no bus service from the park. Stefan said we could catch a bus in front of the cemetery. But I had lived over there for weeks and never saw buses on Sundays. We argued about where to go to find a bus, finally headed up to La Democracia, the largest market here. It was all but deserted and there were no buses, but we did find one a few blocks past it at the McDonald's.
We arrived at the theater and I decided to see "The Backup Plan" or "Plan B" in Spanish, and Stefan wanted to see "The Hurt Locker" aka "Zone of Fear." I had already seen Zone of Fear twice before, and couldn't handle the tension again. I needed a terrible J-Lo romcom. And terrible it was. Awful! But Alex O'Loughlin is not difficult to look at for two hours, and neither is Manhattan. So all told, I was happy. Except that here, people not only leave their phones on during movies, but answer them, and have conversations.
After the movie, we had to walk around to the other side of the mall for a cab. We knew it was too late for buses to run, but I was expecting a row of taxis lined up. There was one. Stefan's first language is Russian, and every once in a while he will say something in English that makes no sense to me.
As we approached the taxi he said, "Close your face."
"Excuse me?"
"Close your face, I don't want him to see your blond face."
Oh, OK. I ducked further under my umbrella while Stefan asked the price to be taken back to the Park. 30 seconds later, he stalked towards me. "He said 40Q." Oh, good, I thought. I was used to paying 25Q for rides around town and 40Q seemed rather low for the extra distance we needed to cover. I was quite pleased with the price, and reached for my wallet. Stefan stopped me and said, "I told him no." "Why?" "Because it's too much. I will only pay 25Q." "Then go tell him we'll give him 25Q." There was no one else around. It was late. I figured we were this guy's only hope for business and he was our only hope for a ride, so surely we could work something out. Stefan consulted with the driver and then waved me over as he opened the door. We both settled into the cab and the driver looked at me and said, "35Q?"and Stefan and I both said, "No, 25Q"and then he motioned for us to get out.
We exited the cab and then stood there for a moment. Then Stefan said, "Come on, we'll find another." We crossed the empty highway and then proceded to stand in the mud on the other side of it, waiting for a cab to drive by. It rained on. After a half dozen cars drove by, none of them cabs, Stefan suggested we walk towards the next roundabout, near the zoo.
After a few moments he said, "It's because of your physique."
"My what? What are you talking about?"
"Your physique. You're a typical blond American. It's why he wanted more."
"But," I began, having several retorts and not sure which one to choose. Finally I just went with the obvious. "But I'm not blond."
"It doesn't matter. They can see you're American from a mile away. And they become theives."
I felt insulted. I wanted to say, "Well you look like a freaking terrorist. And they're not thieves, they are just trying to survive. And they suspect -- rightly -- that a safe ride home is worth 40Q to me." I said nothing. We walked in silence, nearing the zoo, which was large and spooky at night.
After a few more minutes Stefan commented, "This isn't safe, what we are doing."
"Walking?"
"Walking here, so late. Especially with my laptop."
"Well, let's go back and take the cab."
"No, I will not. It's a matter of honor."
I thought, are we then going to spend the next hour, honorably and dangerously walking home?
Ahead of us, on the other side of the highway, a car approached. Stefan ran across the road to stop it if it was a cab. I kept my typical American blond self hidden. It was a cab. Stefan hustled him. He was told, again, it would be 40Q and he walked off. I ran across the highway then and the driver honked at us, and said he would take us for 25Q.
We climbed in, and then realized we might not have enough money. I had 2 100Q notes, but the driver didn't have change for that. We scraped and scrounged and finally came up with either 27.25 or 22.50, I couldn't count the coins in the dark. I thought, if we don't have enough, what will he do, it's late and there are no witnesses. Then I checked myself for being so paranoid.
We arrived safely back at the park. Stefan walked me home and my room greeted me with the ever present rain, singing against the tin roof.
Right now, I am feeling a wee bit sick of Xela, and sick of classes, even though I adore my teacher. Tomorrow my bestie Natalie flies in for a week. She arrives in Xela Tuesday night. She will be here all day Wednesday and then I will put her on a bus on Thursday for Antigua, where she will meet up with MRM and our friends Tara and David, who are also flying in. Then I will meet the four of them on Saturday at Lago Atitlan, for four days in a stone cottage on the shore. I cannot wait.
Sorry so long in between posts. I have other posts in drafts, but haven't gotten around to finishing them. Thank you, as always, for reading. XOXO
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
From the Highlands to the Coast, Part 3
Update: I forgot to mention that when Susannah and I were talking to the owner of Johnny's Place and trying to find the best way home, the owner said, "Oh but you must be very careful to leave early, if you don't, you might get stuck in this terrible place called Escuintla that is very dangerous, even for us." When we told him Escuintla was where we spent the previous night, his eyes got huge and then he laughed, a lot.
Before we settled into our beds on Saturday night, Stefan announced, "I will not want to get up in the morning. I will roll over and pull the covers over my head and tell you all to go without me. Make me get up." Come 5am, we all shared that sentiment. I felt greasy and gritty from the heat, the bug spray, the sand. But it was the absolute most comfortable bed that I have slept in so far in Central America. I longed to carry the mattress home of top of the buses.
We rose, dressed, and walked groggily onto the beach, where the surf continued to rage. The world was damp. Sand, dirt, tree, shrub. We walked down the beach to the turtle sanctuary and met our guide, who walked us back onto the dirt road that wound between concrete, thatch and tin houses that at daybreak already had fires going. There were many chickens about, busying themselves in the wet earth. And ducks. A few dogs, lots of pigs. One thing I love about Guatemala: there are hardly any cats about. We cut off the road and walked down a trail that led to the lagoons, where a dozen wooden canoes were tethered to the muddy bank. The canoes were soaked and the wood was swollen from being soaked often, and the paint was peeling off them, and our guide climbed in and began scooping the water out of the bottom of the boat with an old plastic bottle of vegetable oil that had been cut in half.
I spent a lot of time obsessing about what clothes to bring here. Everyone I consulted had different opinions. And because there are dozens of climates throughout the country, it was hard to pack. Still, I knew I would be living here during rainy season. And for some unknown reason that knowledge didn't prompt me to invest in a jacket that was actually waterproof. Instead, I found one whose color I loved -- eggplant -- and that could be stuffed into its own tiny pouch. And even though it was only water resistant and not waterproof, and even though the clerks at REI advised me not to buy it, I did, and have lived to regret it again and again and again. Most recently on a hour and half tour through lagoons in the rain.
So, with the boat empty, we climbed in and launched off. Mangrove lagoons are quiet, dark places, even in daylight. Mangroves, I have been told, can live in salt or freshwater, and their elaborate root systems grow out of the water into labyrinths of tree and leaf and sky. The mangrove tour is supposed to be a bird watchers paradise, but the birds were smarter than us and knew better than to hang out all morning in the rain. There are allegedly caimans that inhabit the lagoons as well, but we never saw any. We did see turtles, and egrets, and herons, and small red and purple crabs that passed time on the mangrove roots.
Despite the wet and the rain and the mosquitoes, it was really beautiful in places and I figured there are worse ways to spend an early Sunday morning. After about 30 minutes we exited the mangroves and found ourselves in open water, surrounded by forest and mist and mountain. It was incredibly breathtaking. The mountains rose through the cloud cover and egrets circled overhead and from a long way off I thought they looked a little like pterodactyls must have.
By the time we returned to our bank, my water resistant rain jacket was entirely soaked and clung to my skin like saran wrap. We headed back to the hostel and on the way there were two huge toads that had been run over. They were the flattened to the size of dinner plates and looked like they had been pressed, like flowers, between the pages of a very large book. Stefan went back to bed immediately, but Susannah and Olivia and I took breakfast on the beach before Susannah and I left.
We had pieced together what we felt sure was a quicker way home. A boat to La Avellana, and buses from La Avellana to Taxisco to Escuintla to Mazatenango to home. We asked for directions to the dock and were told to go back to the center of town and make a left. Doing that deadended us onto the beach, and the wind and rain had picked up and the beach was empty except for a tiny fishing canoe and about 30 men surrounding it. I thought, surely this is not the boat we are supposed to take, and not into the sea, which could be easily described as violent. So we turned around and headed the opposite direction that eventually deadended into a small pavilion on the canals, where again, about 30 men loitered about. We were told we could take a private boat for 50Q or wait 20 minutes and take the public boat for 5Q. We opted to wait.
By the time the boat arrived (shaped like a canoe, twice as long as a limo, with rotting floorboards, two wet rows of seats and a canopy overhead) the dock had filled up, and as more and more people and chickens and baskets of goods and car engines were loaded on, the rim of the boat sank lower and lower and lower into the water. This did not inspire confidence. I began mentally preparing myself for life without my iPod should we sink. We set out, the little engine straining, and before long, the driver reversed us and we headed back the way we came. We came back to pick up two more men and something wrapped in brown paper and plastic twine that was very, very heavy. And thus, the lower we sank. The trip took about 25 minutes, and once I realized we probably wouldn't sink, it was very pleasant. There was a Japanese guy on board, the hippest and most attractive person I have seen in a while, and he spoke perfect Spanish, and he held court at the front of the boat while two dozen men laughed and egged him on.
Again, there was forest on either side of us and gorgeous, cloud rimmed mountains in the distance. And egrets. And crabs. And every once in a while a concrete house that looked flooded and abandoned. Near the end of our trip I noticed in the distance a very strange and beautiful bird, bobbing in the water. I made a note to remember it and to tell my mom about its strange plumage, but as we neared I realized it was only a 2L Pepsi bottle. We arrived in La Avellana and right on the dock was a small green house/tienda with a metal scale hung from the rafter and two parrots swinging themselves back and forth in it. We loaded onto the bus and headed for Taxisco, which the guidebook had said would only be a drop off point along Hwy 2, but turned out to be an actual town with somewhat of a depot. The ride to Taxisco featured the best driver of the entire trip. And by best, I mean the most dangerous. He couldn't have been more than 18 years old. He wore a backwards baseball cap, with long dark hair curling around the rim, and he subjected us to really loud, vulgar rap music. He reminded me of my brother (who I hope has cleaner taste in music) and I loved him immediately. He drove the bus like the hounds of hell were too close for comfort and we were slung around inside. I remember thinking, "thank goodness he knows how to drive." We arrived in no time at all. We had about a 10 or 15 minute wait until a bus arrived with our next destination painted on the top, Escuintla. Boarding the bus, Susannah and I both asked the driver, "This bus is going to Escuintla, right?" and were told yes.
Once we were on the way, the ayudante passed through to collect our fares. We told him we were going to Escuintla and he started talking very excitedly and from what we gathered, we weren't in fact headed there. We got agitated, he was agitated, and we explained to him that both the bus itself and the driver stated we were going to Escuintla. He said, no, we weren't and so we refused to pay him. Instead, we went to a very small place called Chiquimulilla, which wasn't even on our map. Once there, at the smallest bus "station" ever, featuring 2 buses, we were told to get off, and board another bus whose route made no mention of Escuintla. I was, shall we say, pissed at this point. And I mentally took it out on everyone I saw. The sweet women who boarded the bus trying to sell us tortillas. The clerk at the tienda next door. The driver. The ayudante. I listed all the reasons I had to dislike Guatemala and wished I knew how to explain to someone that I had no desire on earth to go back to Escuintla, but I had to, because it was the only way home.
It took an hour for this next bus to leave and I was seething inside. I was seething because I had the not entirely irrational fear that we would get stuck for one more night in Escuintla and have to stay at that dreadful "hotel." As we were finally leaving on this bus, the ayudante kept yelling, "Guat!" and from our map, it looked like the route to Guat totally bypassed Escuintla and would put us some 4 hours east of Xela. I thought, to hell with it. I'd rather be in stuck in Guat than Escuintla anyway. So I began listening to my iPod. Once the engine starts on a bus, it is reasonable to assume that you are almost on your way. The ayudante will generally try to entice more passengers on board until you pull out of the depot, but from there, the bus has left. Not so with this driver. We CREPT along through town and at one point parked in the middle of a 4 lane road and waited for more passengers, while other buses' horns screamed at us as they flew by. I should have been too weary to be angry at this point, but it too angered me.
Finally! we we off. We paid our fare onboard and a few hours later, were dropped off in Escuintla. Que bueno! But we were dropped off at a different location than two nights before, and since there is no map of the town in Lonely Planet, because Lonely Planet acknowledges that the town sucks, we didn't know where we were. We asked several drivers of different buses where to find the bus to Mazatenango and they kept telling us that there was none, but would be happy to take us to Antigua. You get this a lot. Sometimes other drivers are very helpful and accomodating and sometimes because they want your business they will lie to you and tell you the bus you need doesn't exist. I got really irritated at these drivers and for the first time since I have been here I yelled at someone in my unintimidating Spanglish. We then asked someone else where the center of town was and headed that way. Once there, there was no bus to Mazatenango either, and we just kept walking until we found someone who looked trustworthy enough to ask. We ended up asking 3 or 4 different people where to find the bus, and with less and less crude directions each time, we finally ended up in a place that looked somewhat familier and behold there were 3 buses and they all said Mazatenango on them. Such relief!
We got on that bus, and because it was both muggy and rainy and I had my saran wrap raincoat zipped up and we had been running around desperately for the past half hour, I was drenched in sweat. And did I mention how hot it is on the buses? I thought I might never dry out. The ride to Maza was uneventful, if climbing back into gorgeous mountains can be considered such. And the ride home from Maza to Xela was lovely. Tranquil and quiet. Lots of farmland. Mules but no donkeys, which perplexes me.
The Minerva bus station is Xela is maybe the ugliest part of the whole city, but I have never been as happy to see it as I was last Sunday. I disembarked and meant to head to the mall for more cash but on the way I discovered my shampoo had exploded in my bag on the trip, including all over the library book I had borrowed from school. At that point the only thing I had the energy for was to head to my favorite pupuseria and get my bearings again. I was able to clean the book mostly off while I waited for my pupusas (a delicious corn tortilla filled with beans and cheese, then grilled, then served with slaw and salsa). After dinner and a stop by the grocery for new shampoo, I headed home and took a longer shower than we are really supposed to, and collapsed into my rickety, lumpy twin bed, happy to have been near the ocean and totally OK with never seeing the Guatemalan Pacific coast again.
Before we settled into our beds on Saturday night, Stefan announced, "I will not want to get up in the morning. I will roll over and pull the covers over my head and tell you all to go without me. Make me get up." Come 5am, we all shared that sentiment. I felt greasy and gritty from the heat, the bug spray, the sand. But it was the absolute most comfortable bed that I have slept in so far in Central America. I longed to carry the mattress home of top of the buses.
We rose, dressed, and walked groggily onto the beach, where the surf continued to rage. The world was damp. Sand, dirt, tree, shrub. We walked down the beach to the turtle sanctuary and met our guide, who walked us back onto the dirt road that wound between concrete, thatch and tin houses that at daybreak already had fires going. There were many chickens about, busying themselves in the wet earth. And ducks. A few dogs, lots of pigs. One thing I love about Guatemala: there are hardly any cats about. We cut off the road and walked down a trail that led to the lagoons, where a dozen wooden canoes were tethered to the muddy bank. The canoes were soaked and the wood was swollen from being soaked often, and the paint was peeling off them, and our guide climbed in and began scooping the water out of the bottom of the boat with an old plastic bottle of vegetable oil that had been cut in half.
I spent a lot of time obsessing about what clothes to bring here. Everyone I consulted had different opinions. And because there are dozens of climates throughout the country, it was hard to pack. Still, I knew I would be living here during rainy season. And for some unknown reason that knowledge didn't prompt me to invest in a jacket that was actually waterproof. Instead, I found one whose color I loved -- eggplant -- and that could be stuffed into its own tiny pouch. And even though it was only water resistant and not waterproof, and even though the clerks at REI advised me not to buy it, I did, and have lived to regret it again and again and again. Most recently on a hour and half tour through lagoons in the rain.
So, with the boat empty, we climbed in and launched off. Mangrove lagoons are quiet, dark places, even in daylight. Mangroves, I have been told, can live in salt or freshwater, and their elaborate root systems grow out of the water into labyrinths of tree and leaf and sky. The mangrove tour is supposed to be a bird watchers paradise, but the birds were smarter than us and knew better than to hang out all morning in the rain. There are allegedly caimans that inhabit the lagoons as well, but we never saw any. We did see turtles, and egrets, and herons, and small red and purple crabs that passed time on the mangrove roots.
Despite the wet and the rain and the mosquitoes, it was really beautiful in places and I figured there are worse ways to spend an early Sunday morning. After about 30 minutes we exited the mangroves and found ourselves in open water, surrounded by forest and mist and mountain. It was incredibly breathtaking. The mountains rose through the cloud cover and egrets circled overhead and from a long way off I thought they looked a little like pterodactyls must have.
By the time we returned to our bank, my water resistant rain jacket was entirely soaked and clung to my skin like saran wrap. We headed back to the hostel and on the way there were two huge toads that had been run over. They were the flattened to the size of dinner plates and looked like they had been pressed, like flowers, between the pages of a very large book. Stefan went back to bed immediately, but Susannah and Olivia and I took breakfast on the beach before Susannah and I left.
We had pieced together what we felt sure was a quicker way home. A boat to La Avellana, and buses from La Avellana to Taxisco to Escuintla to Mazatenango to home. We asked for directions to the dock and were told to go back to the center of town and make a left. Doing that deadended us onto the beach, and the wind and rain had picked up and the beach was empty except for a tiny fishing canoe and about 30 men surrounding it. I thought, surely this is not the boat we are supposed to take, and not into the sea, which could be easily described as violent. So we turned around and headed the opposite direction that eventually deadended into a small pavilion on the canals, where again, about 30 men loitered about. We were told we could take a private boat for 50Q or wait 20 minutes and take the public boat for 5Q. We opted to wait.
By the time the boat arrived (shaped like a canoe, twice as long as a limo, with rotting floorboards, two wet rows of seats and a canopy overhead) the dock had filled up, and as more and more people and chickens and baskets of goods and car engines were loaded on, the rim of the boat sank lower and lower and lower into the water. This did not inspire confidence. I began mentally preparing myself for life without my iPod should we sink. We set out, the little engine straining, and before long, the driver reversed us and we headed back the way we came. We came back to pick up two more men and something wrapped in brown paper and plastic twine that was very, very heavy. And thus, the lower we sank. The trip took about 25 minutes, and once I realized we probably wouldn't sink, it was very pleasant. There was a Japanese guy on board, the hippest and most attractive person I have seen in a while, and he spoke perfect Spanish, and he held court at the front of the boat while two dozen men laughed and egged him on.
Again, there was forest on either side of us and gorgeous, cloud rimmed mountains in the distance. And egrets. And crabs. And every once in a while a concrete house that looked flooded and abandoned. Near the end of our trip I noticed in the distance a very strange and beautiful bird, bobbing in the water. I made a note to remember it and to tell my mom about its strange plumage, but as we neared I realized it was only a 2L Pepsi bottle. We arrived in La Avellana and right on the dock was a small green house/tienda with a metal scale hung from the rafter and two parrots swinging themselves back and forth in it. We loaded onto the bus and headed for Taxisco, which the guidebook had said would only be a drop off point along Hwy 2, but turned out to be an actual town with somewhat of a depot. The ride to Taxisco featured the best driver of the entire trip. And by best, I mean the most dangerous. He couldn't have been more than 18 years old. He wore a backwards baseball cap, with long dark hair curling around the rim, and he subjected us to really loud, vulgar rap music. He reminded me of my brother (who I hope has cleaner taste in music) and I loved him immediately. He drove the bus like the hounds of hell were too close for comfort and we were slung around inside. I remember thinking, "thank goodness he knows how to drive." We arrived in no time at all. We had about a 10 or 15 minute wait until a bus arrived with our next destination painted on the top, Escuintla. Boarding the bus, Susannah and I both asked the driver, "This bus is going to Escuintla, right?" and were told yes.
Once we were on the way, the ayudante passed through to collect our fares. We told him we were going to Escuintla and he started talking very excitedly and from what we gathered, we weren't in fact headed there. We got agitated, he was agitated, and we explained to him that both the bus itself and the driver stated we were going to Escuintla. He said, no, we weren't and so we refused to pay him. Instead, we went to a very small place called Chiquimulilla, which wasn't even on our map. Once there, at the smallest bus "station" ever, featuring 2 buses, we were told to get off, and board another bus whose route made no mention of Escuintla. I was, shall we say, pissed at this point. And I mentally took it out on everyone I saw. The sweet women who boarded the bus trying to sell us tortillas. The clerk at the tienda next door. The driver. The ayudante. I listed all the reasons I had to dislike Guatemala and wished I knew how to explain to someone that I had no desire on earth to go back to Escuintla, but I had to, because it was the only way home.
It took an hour for this next bus to leave and I was seething inside. I was seething because I had the not entirely irrational fear that we would get stuck for one more night in Escuintla and have to stay at that dreadful "hotel." As we were finally leaving on this bus, the ayudante kept yelling, "Guat!" and from our map, it looked like the route to Guat totally bypassed Escuintla and would put us some 4 hours east of Xela. I thought, to hell with it. I'd rather be in stuck in Guat than Escuintla anyway. So I began listening to my iPod. Once the engine starts on a bus, it is reasonable to assume that you are almost on your way. The ayudante will generally try to entice more passengers on board until you pull out of the depot, but from there, the bus has left. Not so with this driver. We CREPT along through town and at one point parked in the middle of a 4 lane road and waited for more passengers, while other buses' horns screamed at us as they flew by. I should have been too weary to be angry at this point, but it too angered me.
Finally! we we off. We paid our fare onboard and a few hours later, were dropped off in Escuintla. Que bueno! But we were dropped off at a different location than two nights before, and since there is no map of the town in Lonely Planet, because Lonely Planet acknowledges that the town sucks, we didn't know where we were. We asked several drivers of different buses where to find the bus to Mazatenango and they kept telling us that there was none, but would be happy to take us to Antigua. You get this a lot. Sometimes other drivers are very helpful and accomodating and sometimes because they want your business they will lie to you and tell you the bus you need doesn't exist. I got really irritated at these drivers and for the first time since I have been here I yelled at someone in my unintimidating Spanglish. We then asked someone else where the center of town was and headed that way. Once there, there was no bus to Mazatenango either, and we just kept walking until we found someone who looked trustworthy enough to ask. We ended up asking 3 or 4 different people where to find the bus, and with less and less crude directions each time, we finally ended up in a place that looked somewhat familier and behold there were 3 buses and they all said Mazatenango on them. Such relief!
We got on that bus, and because it was both muggy and rainy and I had my saran wrap raincoat zipped up and we had been running around desperately for the past half hour, I was drenched in sweat. And did I mention how hot it is on the buses? I thought I might never dry out. The ride to Maza was uneventful, if climbing back into gorgeous mountains can be considered such. And the ride home from Maza to Xela was lovely. Tranquil and quiet. Lots of farmland. Mules but no donkeys, which perplexes me.
The Minerva bus station is Xela is maybe the ugliest part of the whole city, but I have never been as happy to see it as I was last Sunday. I disembarked and meant to head to the mall for more cash but on the way I discovered my shampoo had exploded in my bag on the trip, including all over the library book I had borrowed from school. At that point the only thing I had the energy for was to head to my favorite pupuseria and get my bearings again. I was able to clean the book mostly off while I waited for my pupusas (a delicious corn tortilla filled with beans and cheese, then grilled, then served with slaw and salsa). After dinner and a stop by the grocery for new shampoo, I headed home and took a longer shower than we are really supposed to, and collapsed into my rickety, lumpy twin bed, happy to have been near the ocean and totally OK with never seeing the Guatemalan Pacific coast again.
Friday, June 18, 2010
From the Highlands to the Coast, Part 2
To continue...
So, according to the Lonely Planet, which is 10 years old now, we should have arrived in Escuintla around 7:30pm. From there, we were allegedly 1 hour from the coast. Olivia was nervous that there wouldn't be a bus out of Escuintla so late in the day, but I was comfortable and had been listening to lovely music and at that time had the utmost faith in Guatemalan transportation. At 7:30 we arrived in a more populated area. We had a brief conference to determine who out of the 4 of us had the best Spanish and would help navigate us to our next bus. I allowed that it wasn't me seeing as how I sound like a Spanish dictionary that has been run through the blender. Nevertheless, I asked the man across from me if we were in Escuintla and he said no, but soon.
The rule here is don't travel after dark. Even if you're male. Even if you have dark skin. By the time we rolled into Escuintla it was very much dark. We were dropped off at a 5-way intersection and had no bearings whatsoever. I tried my broken Spanish on the man from teh bus once more, and I was stuttering and finally he put his hand on my shoulder and said in English, "where are you trying to get to, dear?" When I told him he cringed and said we had missed the last bus out of here by 3 hours. Escuintla is the 3rd largest city in Guatemala, and also we learned one of the most dangerous outside of La Cuidad, but it doesn't even rate its own map in The Lonely Planet because the only purpose it serves for tourism is catching the next bus. Not knowing what street we were on, we asked some folks loitering in front of a nearby tienda, and knowing what street we were on helped us not one bit since we didn't have a map. We were finally directed to the center of the town and from there we stood under a streetlight to see what Lonely Planet had to say. It did not inspire confidence that LP said this place is nowhere you want to be stranded, but if so, head to the only safe hotel, Costa Sur. We took a taxi to the hotel, checked into two rooms and were going to meet in the lobby in a half hour. I shared a room with Susannah and the "air conditioning" turned out to be a fan and the TV that was supposed to be locked in a metal cage, like a circus animal, had been stolen. It was hot, too. Very, very hot. And there was bird crap in between my sheets, and the shower curtain was 6 inches too short. And there was no showerhead, only a spigot, with a gush of ice cold water, and because the curtain was too short I ended up flooding our nasty, moldy bathroom.
I tried to call my mom, because I knew she would be worried, but my phone wouldn't make international calls for some reason. So I called MRM and said, "we are stranded in what my roommate has not so affectionately called "the hoodest place on earth" and we don't know when we'll get out of here, but for right now, I am alive. Only, don't tell my mom that. Tell her we missed our bus and checked into a nice hotel and will be back on our way at daybreak."
When we met downstairs the owner told us not to leave the hotel, not to even cross the street, because it is too dangerous here at night, even for locals. Still, there was a bar across the street and a bar might mean food, so we set out. It was a hot cramped space with plastic chairs and tables and a jukebox that played music so loud you could feel the fillings rattling in your teeth. In the back was a bathroom that reeked and a stovetop and a grill top and a cooler of beer. The woman asked me what we wanted and she said they had shrimp and some other word that none of us knew. I thought I told her we only wanted a drink, but after we had been sitting there for a few minutes, drenched in sweat and drinking ginger ale, she came to the table with 4 plates of grilled shrimp and frijoles and grilled onions. The shrimp were intact, you had to first behead them and strip the membranes in order to eat them. Olivia was feeling sick and the sight of the shrimp plus the water they were "washed" in sent her over the edge, and she bailed on us. The rest of us accused everyone else of ordering food but none of us had. Still, for all the dump-ness and creepiness of that place, it was the best seafood I have had in Guatemala yet, including the coast.
After dinner we walked across the street, avoiding the man on the curb who had passed out and looked like he'd peed at least a liter of urine on himself and the sidewalk. We headed to our separate rooms and I tried to sleep, but it was hard, having found bird crap in my bed, and it was such an oven in our room that I cracked the window, and below us on the dirt street kids were playing soccer with empty plastic bottles. Things you never have reason to think about until they are keeping you awake: how profoundly loud is a plastic bottle on a dirt road. I became a little enraged. It was after midnight and they were kids. Kids who were not at home in bed where they belonged. Somehow, I fell asleep, and awoke to a sweltering brightness. Susannah and I decamped and went to see if the others had made it through the night. They were still in bed and said they didn't want to leave so early. Susannah and I wanted to get the hell out of there and decided to leave without them, but in the end we didn't have to.
We trundled down one of the main streets in search of the Scott 77 gas station and the bus station behind it. We were escorted to our bus rather quickly and then sat there, waiting for it to fill. I don't think I have ever sweated so much in my life. All the windows on the bus were closed, I was sitting in the sun and almost melting from the heat. I don't think anything makes me as uncharitable as heat. I become almost homicidal in it. Soon enough however, we were off. After about an hour, on a paved highway and near a closed waterpark, we were dropped off on the side of the highway and told to wait for the bus to Ixtapa. That bus was soon to arrive, but it wasn't a bus, it was a van, and it was already full. There was about 8 inches in the last row that I was motioned towards, and there were already 4 people in the row. To get to I had to work in stages, manuevering my body this way and that until I finally was able to get one hipbone lodged into the seat. Let me tell you, we were all up in each other's business in the back of that van. The others got the jump seats which were slightly less crowded. We got into Ixtapa and proceded to drive people personally to their houses. Ixtapa is tiny and there are no roads, only dirt lanes and most of them were flooded. The cement and tin houses are right up on the lanes and it felt incredibly intrusive scuttling through them as we did, and being witness to the private Saturday morning rituals of peoples' lives. After leaving the residential section of Ixtapa we were dropped off at a tienda and told to wait another half hour for our last bus. At this point everyone was exhausted and hot and irritable and we wandered down the dirt lane, looking for a place to sit down. Only, we passed about 6 places to sit down, but no one was happy with them, and in the end we turned back around and settled at the original tienda we were dropped off at. I bought an agua pura and a bag of potato chips and Stefan and I split the last of the Bake Shop cookies and sure enough, a half hour later, a new van pulled up and we loaded into and then waited and then headed out. We were allegedly 1km from the coast at this point, but the drive from Ixtapa to Monterrico took anouther hour. But it was pretty, and the van wasn't crowded.
It was a very bright day. Again, I wish I knew plant names. But from what I have gleaned from the guidebooks I think what I was marveling at was jacaranda or possibly bouginvilla. Who knows. There were lots of palm trees, and volcanoes in the distance, and though it was hot, the air felt clean. We finally arrived in Monterrico and were dumped at a 3 way stop on a black top road, again, with no bearings. We said, "la playa?" and people pointed, and we followed. We walked for about 20 minutes, passing this tiny dirt lane, and soon after passing it a man approached us on bicycle and informed us that we had left Monterrico and were now headed inland. We should have taken the unmarked tiny dirt lane. So we turned around and about half way down the dirt lane was an enormous pelican that began to charge us and snap at us. I had my daypack clipped on my waist and out of fear Stefan grabbed it and hid behind me and put me directly in the path of the raging pelican. We made a run for it and soon our little dirt lane dead ended into a sand path and on that sand path was our hostel, Johnny's Place.
Johnny's Place is right on the beach, with little bungalows and fresh water pools and hammocks and an outdoor restaurant and bar and a covered patio with couches and loungechairs and more hammocks. Also, being the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, the beach was black volcanic sand and this was endlessly cool to me.
We checked in, scored a private bungalow with a private bath, and walked to the restaurant for lunch. Johnny's Place is home to the worst fish tacos I have ever had, a major disappointment. But they had one of the best piña coladas ever, with fresh juices and that made up for it. From lunch, I headed straight to the hammocks on the beach and remained there for hours. About an hour before sunset I began walking down the beach collecting bits of rock and driftwood, and headed back in in time to watch the sunset from the patio. I am my parents daughter. The Pacific is incredibly loud in Monterrico. During my walk, I looked up because I thought jet planes were flying overhead and I thought that was really weird, and then I realized it was the sound of the surf. It is not a very good swimming beach because the undertow is so powerful, but it sounds so incredibly gorgeous. Also, coconuts wash ashore! I thought that was the greatest thing ever.
After sunset I showered (in salt water, muy sticky, ew) and we went to dinner at the Lonely Planet's top pick. The restaurant was cozy and airy at the same time, and turned out to be the home of the pelican from earlier that day. Also living there was a grey cat that looked exactly like my sister's cat, and 3 dogs. I ordered the risotto del mar and it was a little on the gross side. The seafood tasted like it had freezerburn and the risotto was undercooked. Strike two, Monterrico. But we went back to Johnny's Place for piña coladas on the patio which almost made up for the insanely expensive and yucky dinner. If you like to party, the best thing about Johnny's Place is that it is right next door to a discoteca. If you prefer to fall asleep before 4am, the worst thing about Johnny's Place is that it is right next door to a discoteca. Also, we were in mosquito country, and malaria country at that. So we had to shut the doors and windows of our bungalow at dusk. This made for an incredibly hot, loud night. And we had a 5am wake up call because we had booked a sunrise boat tour of the lagoons.
Late for dinner again, will finally wrap this sucker up this weekend. Ciao!
So, according to the Lonely Planet, which is 10 years old now, we should have arrived in Escuintla around 7:30pm. From there, we were allegedly 1 hour from the coast. Olivia was nervous that there wouldn't be a bus out of Escuintla so late in the day, but I was comfortable and had been listening to lovely music and at that time had the utmost faith in Guatemalan transportation. At 7:30 we arrived in a more populated area. We had a brief conference to determine who out of the 4 of us had the best Spanish and would help navigate us to our next bus. I allowed that it wasn't me seeing as how I sound like a Spanish dictionary that has been run through the blender. Nevertheless, I asked the man across from me if we were in Escuintla and he said no, but soon.
The rule here is don't travel after dark. Even if you're male. Even if you have dark skin. By the time we rolled into Escuintla it was very much dark. We were dropped off at a 5-way intersection and had no bearings whatsoever. I tried my broken Spanish on the man from teh bus once more, and I was stuttering and finally he put his hand on my shoulder and said in English, "where are you trying to get to, dear?" When I told him he cringed and said we had missed the last bus out of here by 3 hours. Escuintla is the 3rd largest city in Guatemala, and also we learned one of the most dangerous outside of La Cuidad, but it doesn't even rate its own map in The Lonely Planet because the only purpose it serves for tourism is catching the next bus. Not knowing what street we were on, we asked some folks loitering in front of a nearby tienda, and knowing what street we were on helped us not one bit since we didn't have a map. We were finally directed to the center of the town and from there we stood under a streetlight to see what Lonely Planet had to say. It did not inspire confidence that LP said this place is nowhere you want to be stranded, but if so, head to the only safe hotel, Costa Sur. We took a taxi to the hotel, checked into two rooms and were going to meet in the lobby in a half hour. I shared a room with Susannah and the "air conditioning" turned out to be a fan and the TV that was supposed to be locked in a metal cage, like a circus animal, had been stolen. It was hot, too. Very, very hot. And there was bird crap in between my sheets, and the shower curtain was 6 inches too short. And there was no showerhead, only a spigot, with a gush of ice cold water, and because the curtain was too short I ended up flooding our nasty, moldy bathroom.
I tried to call my mom, because I knew she would be worried, but my phone wouldn't make international calls for some reason. So I called MRM and said, "we are stranded in what my roommate has not so affectionately called "the hoodest place on earth" and we don't know when we'll get out of here, but for right now, I am alive. Only, don't tell my mom that. Tell her we missed our bus and checked into a nice hotel and will be back on our way at daybreak."
When we met downstairs the owner told us not to leave the hotel, not to even cross the street, because it is too dangerous here at night, even for locals. Still, there was a bar across the street and a bar might mean food, so we set out. It was a hot cramped space with plastic chairs and tables and a jukebox that played music so loud you could feel the fillings rattling in your teeth. In the back was a bathroom that reeked and a stovetop and a grill top and a cooler of beer. The woman asked me what we wanted and she said they had shrimp and some other word that none of us knew. I thought I told her we only wanted a drink, but after we had been sitting there for a few minutes, drenched in sweat and drinking ginger ale, she came to the table with 4 plates of grilled shrimp and frijoles and grilled onions. The shrimp were intact, you had to first behead them and strip the membranes in order to eat them. Olivia was feeling sick and the sight of the shrimp plus the water they were "washed" in sent her over the edge, and she bailed on us. The rest of us accused everyone else of ordering food but none of us had. Still, for all the dump-ness and creepiness of that place, it was the best seafood I have had in Guatemala yet, including the coast.
After dinner we walked across the street, avoiding the man on the curb who had passed out and looked like he'd peed at least a liter of urine on himself and the sidewalk. We headed to our separate rooms and I tried to sleep, but it was hard, having found bird crap in my bed, and it was such an oven in our room that I cracked the window, and below us on the dirt street kids were playing soccer with empty plastic bottles. Things you never have reason to think about until they are keeping you awake: how profoundly loud is a plastic bottle on a dirt road. I became a little enraged. It was after midnight and they were kids. Kids who were not at home in bed where they belonged. Somehow, I fell asleep, and awoke to a sweltering brightness. Susannah and I decamped and went to see if the others had made it through the night. They were still in bed and said they didn't want to leave so early. Susannah and I wanted to get the hell out of there and decided to leave without them, but in the end we didn't have to.
We trundled down one of the main streets in search of the Scott 77 gas station and the bus station behind it. We were escorted to our bus rather quickly and then sat there, waiting for it to fill. I don't think I have ever sweated so much in my life. All the windows on the bus were closed, I was sitting in the sun and almost melting from the heat. I don't think anything makes me as uncharitable as heat. I become almost homicidal in it. Soon enough however, we were off. After about an hour, on a paved highway and near a closed waterpark, we were dropped off on the side of the highway and told to wait for the bus to Ixtapa. That bus was soon to arrive, but it wasn't a bus, it was a van, and it was already full. There was about 8 inches in the last row that I was motioned towards, and there were already 4 people in the row. To get to I had to work in stages, manuevering my body this way and that until I finally was able to get one hipbone lodged into the seat. Let me tell you, we were all up in each other's business in the back of that van. The others got the jump seats which were slightly less crowded. We got into Ixtapa and proceded to drive people personally to their houses. Ixtapa is tiny and there are no roads, only dirt lanes and most of them were flooded. The cement and tin houses are right up on the lanes and it felt incredibly intrusive scuttling through them as we did, and being witness to the private Saturday morning rituals of peoples' lives. After leaving the residential section of Ixtapa we were dropped off at a tienda and told to wait another half hour for our last bus. At this point everyone was exhausted and hot and irritable and we wandered down the dirt lane, looking for a place to sit down. Only, we passed about 6 places to sit down, but no one was happy with them, and in the end we turned back around and settled at the original tienda we were dropped off at. I bought an agua pura and a bag of potato chips and Stefan and I split the last of the Bake Shop cookies and sure enough, a half hour later, a new van pulled up and we loaded into and then waited and then headed out. We were allegedly 1km from the coast at this point, but the drive from Ixtapa to Monterrico took anouther hour. But it was pretty, and the van wasn't crowded.
It was a very bright day. Again, I wish I knew plant names. But from what I have gleaned from the guidebooks I think what I was marveling at was jacaranda or possibly bouginvilla. Who knows. There were lots of palm trees, and volcanoes in the distance, and though it was hot, the air felt clean. We finally arrived in Monterrico and were dumped at a 3 way stop on a black top road, again, with no bearings. We said, "la playa?" and people pointed, and we followed. We walked for about 20 minutes, passing this tiny dirt lane, and soon after passing it a man approached us on bicycle and informed us that we had left Monterrico and were now headed inland. We should have taken the unmarked tiny dirt lane. So we turned around and about half way down the dirt lane was an enormous pelican that began to charge us and snap at us. I had my daypack clipped on my waist and out of fear Stefan grabbed it and hid behind me and put me directly in the path of the raging pelican. We made a run for it and soon our little dirt lane dead ended into a sand path and on that sand path was our hostel, Johnny's Place.
Johnny's Place is right on the beach, with little bungalows and fresh water pools and hammocks and an outdoor restaurant and bar and a covered patio with couches and loungechairs and more hammocks. Also, being the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, the beach was black volcanic sand and this was endlessly cool to me.
We checked in, scored a private bungalow with a private bath, and walked to the restaurant for lunch. Johnny's Place is home to the worst fish tacos I have ever had, a major disappointment. But they had one of the best piña coladas ever, with fresh juices and that made up for it. From lunch, I headed straight to the hammocks on the beach and remained there for hours. About an hour before sunset I began walking down the beach collecting bits of rock and driftwood, and headed back in in time to watch the sunset from the patio. I am my parents daughter. The Pacific is incredibly loud in Monterrico. During my walk, I looked up because I thought jet planes were flying overhead and I thought that was really weird, and then I realized it was the sound of the surf. It is not a very good swimming beach because the undertow is so powerful, but it sounds so incredibly gorgeous. Also, coconuts wash ashore! I thought that was the greatest thing ever.
After sunset I showered (in salt water, muy sticky, ew) and we went to dinner at the Lonely Planet's top pick. The restaurant was cozy and airy at the same time, and turned out to be the home of the pelican from earlier that day. Also living there was a grey cat that looked exactly like my sister's cat, and 3 dogs. I ordered the risotto del mar and it was a little on the gross side. The seafood tasted like it had freezerburn and the risotto was undercooked. Strike two, Monterrico. But we went back to Johnny's Place for piña coladas on the patio which almost made up for the insanely expensive and yucky dinner. If you like to party, the best thing about Johnny's Place is that it is right next door to a discoteca. If you prefer to fall asleep before 4am, the worst thing about Johnny's Place is that it is right next door to a discoteca. Also, we were in mosquito country, and malaria country at that. So we had to shut the doors and windows of our bungalow at dusk. This made for an incredibly hot, loud night. And we had a 5am wake up call because we had booked a sunrise boat tour of the lagoons.
Late for dinner again, will finally wrap this sucker up this weekend. Ciao!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
From the Highlands to the Coast
Well, we made it to the beach. And back. This school week is already half way over, which is hard to believe. Time is funky, here. It drags and races simultaneously.
So on Friday, we met at the school around 2pm and had several errands to make along the way to the bus station. The bus station is in Zone 3 and we all live in Zone 1. We could have taken a microbus from the park to the bus station, but we needed to go to the Bake Shop and the mall for cash. The Bake Shop is only open on Tuesdays and Fridays and has American pastries and we were all very much in need of them. Olivia and I bought donuts filled with fruit and Stefan bought an assortment of cookies for all of us and Susannah bought some apple muffins. From there we walked to the mall, one street over, and then had about an 8 block walk to the Minerva bus station.
The station itself is half market and half parking lot. I can't remember if I have mentioned chicken buses here, but they are the way you navigate the county unless you have the cash to spend on a private shuttle. Chicken buses are US school buses that have been retired. I have no idea how many miles they have to have before they are retired in the States, but eventually they end up here and they are refitted with larger engines and longer bench seats and luggage racks. What we have learned is that the more flamboyant the bus, the better shape it is likely in. Because if the owner can afford disco balls and airbrushed flames he can probably also spring for new brakes. So you arrive at the bus station and the back half is people selling all kinds of food and drink and trinkets and the buses are lined up in long rows with the routes painted on the front and you're immediately accosted by lots of drivers who, more than they want to know where you want to go, want to take you where they are going. And you never go anywhere directly here, so you need to know what the next connection is. We thought we had 2 connections, but it turned out to be six. Or maybe 8. I can't remember. So amid the hustle and bustle and exhaust, we found our bus and climbed on and set out. Well, almost set out. Before you go anywhere, vendors climb on the bus while the driver waits for it to fill and they try to sell you things. Newspapers. Tortillas. Empanadas. Water in a plastic bag with a straw tied to it. Gum. Also, the seats are designed to fit two adults each, but that is really just where it all begins, because you could have 3 or 4 adults in each seat and also people crammed into the aisles, and because the seats are longer than they were in the States, there really isn't much aisle left. When we headed out of Minerva I was sitting with Susannah and Stefan and Olivia shared a bench. But we didn't have that much room for long. Our route was Xela to Mazatenango to Escuintla to Ixtapa to Monterrico. But we didn't know that then.
The drive from Xela to Mazatenango is my new favorite in this country. It is absolutely gorgeous and I spent a good deal of those hours in awe of the scenery. I felt like I was, once more, in Avatar, or the opening of Jurassic Park, or even Land Before Time. When I think of mountains, I think of being above the timber line, but here in the highlands you are surrounded by the the most radically green mountains I have ever seen or imagined. And there are so many different greens up here, and the textures are so rich. I wish I could convey the beauty of it all. And I wish I knew plant species, but I am pretty sure I saw every species of tree at some point over the weekend. So there is much green here and there are mountains you can't see the tops of through the bus windows without sticking your head out of them. And there are clouds everywhere because you're up that high. And incredibly steep cliffs and rivers flowing through canyons and tiny towns sheltered at the the bottom. And amidst all this are buses racing precariously along the mountainsides, passing each other around curves, getting air over bumps in the road.
The trip was just a rush of images and scents for me, because the buses go so fast. A woman and a girl washing laundry in a canal. The bloody corpse of a dog, stuffed in a clear plastic bag, thrown into a ditch. Barefoot, sooty children standing in dirt yards. A thick, almost smoky twilight as we descended into more warmer climes. Rivers of mud. Destroyed homes. Men soldering water pipes after the storm. A colorful cemetery perched on the slimmest bit of cliff, overlooking the town below. Someone coming on the bus, selling something in a cooler that smelled exactly like soggy dog food that had been heated up. A dry valley of lovely boulders, a dog picking his way among them. The wet feel of the weather changing, becoming tropical. The damp weight of other peoples' bodies swaying into you around turns. The lushness of the rain forest, things growing on everything that is already growing, giving the scenery this wonderful carpeted feel. The scent of charcoal and burned meat.
Guatemala looks like everywhere. Texas. Kenya. The Carolinas, especially the Low Country. Coming down out of the highlands, the air began to change before the scenery did. But soon there was more field, less forest, and when we slowed down you could hear the dry clatter of palm branches. It got humid, which was not exactly good news on a bus crammed with people. But even so, it was nice to be moving. I didn't even really care where we were going, only that we were going.
We arrived in an empty parking lot in Mazatenango around 5:30 and were shooed off the bus and onto a coach. Now, this coach was probably older than me, with cracked leather seats and this saggy, beaten look to it. But I cannot begin to tell you how absolutely First Class it felt after the chicken bus. There was room for us all to have a private seat. And they reclined! I was in heaven. At this point we were headed to Escuintla, and were told it was an hour or so away. It was beginning to get dark and I was keen to arrive and make our next connection as quickly as possible, but also, I was so comfortable and a little drowsy from the heat that I didn't care what happened. And this would be, of course, where things got a little wacked, but that is to come, because I am now late for supper.
So on Friday, we met at the school around 2pm and had several errands to make along the way to the bus station. The bus station is in Zone 3 and we all live in Zone 1. We could have taken a microbus from the park to the bus station, but we needed to go to the Bake Shop and the mall for cash. The Bake Shop is only open on Tuesdays and Fridays and has American pastries and we were all very much in need of them. Olivia and I bought donuts filled with fruit and Stefan bought an assortment of cookies for all of us and Susannah bought some apple muffins. From there we walked to the mall, one street over, and then had about an 8 block walk to the Minerva bus station.
The station itself is half market and half parking lot. I can't remember if I have mentioned chicken buses here, but they are the way you navigate the county unless you have the cash to spend on a private shuttle. Chicken buses are US school buses that have been retired. I have no idea how many miles they have to have before they are retired in the States, but eventually they end up here and they are refitted with larger engines and longer bench seats and luggage racks. What we have learned is that the more flamboyant the bus, the better shape it is likely in. Because if the owner can afford disco balls and airbrushed flames he can probably also spring for new brakes. So you arrive at the bus station and the back half is people selling all kinds of food and drink and trinkets and the buses are lined up in long rows with the routes painted on the front and you're immediately accosted by lots of drivers who, more than they want to know where you want to go, want to take you where they are going. And you never go anywhere directly here, so you need to know what the next connection is. We thought we had 2 connections, but it turned out to be six. Or maybe 8. I can't remember. So amid the hustle and bustle and exhaust, we found our bus and climbed on and set out. Well, almost set out. Before you go anywhere, vendors climb on the bus while the driver waits for it to fill and they try to sell you things. Newspapers. Tortillas. Empanadas. Water in a plastic bag with a straw tied to it. Gum. Also, the seats are designed to fit two adults each, but that is really just where it all begins, because you could have 3 or 4 adults in each seat and also people crammed into the aisles, and because the seats are longer than they were in the States, there really isn't much aisle left. When we headed out of Minerva I was sitting with Susannah and Stefan and Olivia shared a bench. But we didn't have that much room for long. Our route was Xela to Mazatenango to Escuintla to Ixtapa to Monterrico. But we didn't know that then.
The drive from Xela to Mazatenango is my new favorite in this country. It is absolutely gorgeous and I spent a good deal of those hours in awe of the scenery. I felt like I was, once more, in Avatar, or the opening of Jurassic Park, or even Land Before Time. When I think of mountains, I think of being above the timber line, but here in the highlands you are surrounded by the the most radically green mountains I have ever seen or imagined. And there are so many different greens up here, and the textures are so rich. I wish I could convey the beauty of it all. And I wish I knew plant species, but I am pretty sure I saw every species of tree at some point over the weekend. So there is much green here and there are mountains you can't see the tops of through the bus windows without sticking your head out of them. And there are clouds everywhere because you're up that high. And incredibly steep cliffs and rivers flowing through canyons and tiny towns sheltered at the the bottom. And amidst all this are buses racing precariously along the mountainsides, passing each other around curves, getting air over bumps in the road.
The trip was just a rush of images and scents for me, because the buses go so fast. A woman and a girl washing laundry in a canal. The bloody corpse of a dog, stuffed in a clear plastic bag, thrown into a ditch. Barefoot, sooty children standing in dirt yards. A thick, almost smoky twilight as we descended into more warmer climes. Rivers of mud. Destroyed homes. Men soldering water pipes after the storm. A colorful cemetery perched on the slimmest bit of cliff, overlooking the town below. Someone coming on the bus, selling something in a cooler that smelled exactly like soggy dog food that had been heated up. A dry valley of lovely boulders, a dog picking his way among them. The wet feel of the weather changing, becoming tropical. The damp weight of other peoples' bodies swaying into you around turns. The lushness of the rain forest, things growing on everything that is already growing, giving the scenery this wonderful carpeted feel. The scent of charcoal and burned meat.
Guatemala looks like everywhere. Texas. Kenya. The Carolinas, especially the Low Country. Coming down out of the highlands, the air began to change before the scenery did. But soon there was more field, less forest, and when we slowed down you could hear the dry clatter of palm branches. It got humid, which was not exactly good news on a bus crammed with people. But even so, it was nice to be moving. I didn't even really care where we were going, only that we were going.
We arrived in an empty parking lot in Mazatenango around 5:30 and were shooed off the bus and onto a coach. Now, this coach was probably older than me, with cracked leather seats and this saggy, beaten look to it. But I cannot begin to tell you how absolutely First Class it felt after the chicken bus. There was room for us all to have a private seat. And they reclined! I was in heaven. At this point we were headed to Escuintla, and were told it was an hour or so away. It was beginning to get dark and I was keen to arrive and make our next connection as quickly as possible, but also, I was so comfortable and a little drowsy from the heat that I didn't care what happened. And this would be, of course, where things got a little wacked, but that is to come, because I am now late for supper.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
A Prison, an Orphanage and a Trip
So, where were we?
I have moved schools and moved families. I cannot say enough good things about my new school, Celas Maya. I wish I had been here three weeks ago, but then I wouldn't have met Erin. And if I had been happy at my old school, I never would have known that Celas or Pop Wuj, my next school, existed. So all in all, I have no complaints. But in a word, this school is exactly what I wanted. It is big, but I am on a first name basis with the staff. It is gorgeous and pleasant and homey. It has an internet cafe on site, a tour company on site, a hostel on site, and a volunteer coordinator on site. I have been impressed again and again by the professionalism of the staff and the teachers, who all have degrees in teaching Spanish as a Second Language. We filled out our weekly evaluations today and they asked us to rate every aspect of our experience with the teachers, staff, homestays, properties and Xela, including "Do you feel safe at the school and in the city?"
My homestay is the polar opposite of my first family. I am living with a single woman who has a darling granddaughter and a male relative that lives in the house during the week, because he can't find work in the rural area he lives in and must work in Xela. My room is small but tidy and I have a bedside table and can turn out the overhead light from bed. It's amazing the things I get excited about now. I have a twin bed, which was hard to get used to, but I will only be sleeping in it another few weeks. I also live with a Chihuahua named Boom Boom. Boom Boom pees in the shower, which grosses me out a little bit. But I think that my housemom isn't able to walk him at night because it isn't very safe. Mostly the pee is washed down the drain but sometimes she forgets, and I find it in the morning. Our house is located across the street from the school. So I leave for my 8 o'clock class at 8 o'clock. We live three blocks from Parque Central, which is a perfect location but can get a little loud at night. We don't have near as much interaction as in my first homestay. If I would have let her, A. would have moved into my room with me. It was good to feel like I was part of their family, but I also felt a little smothered, and I always felt rude when I shut my door. The new homestay feels like a hostel in the off season, where the owner has the time to take meals with you. I am happy with it. But the whole concept of homestays in general can be off putting. It is very strange to be an adult guest in a stranger's home and have no control over when you eat, what you eat, if you want a cup of coffee, etc. I really want to come back to Xela to study and work in the future, but I think I will rent an apartment next time. I feel like once you've had the homestay experience there really isn't a good reason to do it again.
Oh! The best part about the new school is Tom. Tom is my Robin. Allow me to explain. In Antigua, MRM lived in a homestay with another student, Robin. Robin was a Southern grandmother on an 3 month layover in Antigua before moving to Honduras for the next three years. We fell in love with her. She was so sweet and so earnest and so inviting and welcoming. And I was sad that I hadn't met my own Robin here in Xela. But my sadness evaporated this week when I met Tom, who is probably in his late 50s and has this wonderful bushy moustache and messy hair and this thick Southern accent. He is lovely. He talks very loudy and is so excited about EVERYTHING and loves to practice his Spanish and refers to everything about his time here as "ex-cel-ahn-te". He went to the womens prison with us today and was asking one of the women if he could buy some earrings and the ladies thought he wanted the earrings for himself and got the biggest kick out of him. I am really happy that in a universe as enormous as the one we live in, Tom and I happened on the same school in the highlands this summer. He really is fantastic.
So, today was a normal class day until break, at which point some of us went to the local womens' detention center for the rest of the morning. We donated money this week to buy them things like toilet paper and soap and sanitary napkins, none of which are supplied by the government. We arrived there and I thought I had never seen a more depressing "office." I am not a huge fan of detention centers, especially in developing countries. The front office was painted this suffocating teal color and it was lit by one naked light bulb and a single flickering fluorescent tube. Both of which unnerved me immediately. There was a desk and a metal filing cabinet and a small TV in the corner playing a squiggly Adam Sandler movie. We had to line up and have our right forearm stamped twice and then we were patted down, a lot, and then allowed to enter into the area where the women live. There were 40 women being detained, for everything from shoplifting to homicide. They remain there while their investigations are ongoing. This can last months, or years. At which point they are either freed, or sent to the maximum security institution in Guat City. They are allowed to have their children there with them if they are babies, but all of the women I talked to had anywhere from 3 to 9 kids that were being raised by relatives. They live in two dorm rooms, and they are locked in those rooms from 6pm to 6am. There is one toilet with no seat and no toilet paper and no sink to wash oneself. The women take classes in English and on the computer when there is someone to teach them. There is a clinic on site that featured one bed, no sheets, and one glass fronted cabinet with no medicines or supplies of any kind in it. I asked them what they do when they get sick, and where do the medicines come from and they said, They don't. The women make small handicrafts and that is their sole source of income. I bought a pair of earrings and a cloth bracelet. After our tour, we just split up and talked to the women and learned their stories. I talked to about 8 women and basically just asked the same 6 questions that I could think of. I heard several Mayan languages for the first time while there, which was really neat. When a woman has misbehaved in some way, she is put in solitary, and the solitary cell put the fear of God in me. The whole experience was interesting and not a little depressing. No one can afford a private attorney. They are there with no idea how long their investigations and trials will take. Many of them had scars from what I imagine was some form of partner abuse, and most of them were illiterate. Our money bought each woman one roll of toilet paper, a toothbrush, a bar of soap and 4 sanitary napkins.
After lunch today my friend Olivia and I headed to the orphanage to see about volunteering. I was expecting a tour, which we got. And then we were put in a room with 12 unsupervised kids, aged 1 to about 4. We spent several hours there, and decided to work there 3 afternoons a week while we are both students here. It was fun and a little harrowing. Most of the kids in the orphanage still have families, but their families are so unsafe that (in a country that isn't known for child advocacy) they are being raised in state custody for their own protection. It was hard for me to imagine a more traumatic environment than the orphanage itself. The youngest child was less than a year old, and he is a true orphan. The older children were in their teens. Olivia and I spent most of our time with the "babies" and I think maybe the hardest thing I have ever done is put the little one in his crib before I left, watched him scream and cry at our departure, and leave the room, knowing that there wasn't anyone to stay and look after them all once we had left. The is a staff of maybe 5 people, who are wonderful, but they are spread so thin and have so much work, that the kids are on their own for a good portion of the time. There was a girl there, I never learned her name, who was a new addition. I don't think I have seen, before now, a child that I would classify as clinically depressed. But she seemed just numb with grief. There was another little boy there who is also a true orphan, who has spent his whole life there, and it just boggles my mind that people grow up in these places. I feel like I want to say a whole lot more about the experience, which was so incredibly exhausting but simultaneously rewarding, but I don't know how to communicate it. I am excited about getting to know these kids better, and at the same time I never want to see them again, because they make my heart ache.
Last night was my graduation dinner at my old school. It was really special, and I wasn't expecting that. It was wonderful to see Joaquin again (who has promised to go see Eclipse with me when it comes out) and be with Erin for one last night, but it ultimately reaffirmed for me that I have made the right decision in leaving the school. I met two other students there who I think will become friends. One is also planning on becoming a midwife and the other is a sexual assault crisis counselor, like me, and is really interested in issues of womens advocacy and reproductive justice. I also met a pediatrician last night and we had a really good talk about maternal health and international practice etc., etc. The night ended with one last evening at the school playing drinking games with the guys and Erin. I don't think it is possible to find guys who are more immature than the ones at my old school. And alcohol only makes them that much more childish. I enjoyed Erin's company tremendously, but was so happy to finally call a taxi and escape to the boring comfort of my new homestay and my bedside table and my books.
Tomorrow, Olivia and I have decided to go to the beach for the weekend. I think another student, Susannah, is coming with us. Susannah is in Boston University´s (my almost alma mater) Master's of Public Health program, and is down here doing an internship working with giardia, which is a nasty little parasite. Also joining us on the beach is Olivia's roommate, Stefan. The plan for the weekend is to do as little as possible, and to do it from a hammock, with a drink in hand. It is baby turtle releasing season, so we are going to try to do that. And we have been told that there is a lovely sunrise tour of the lagoons by boat that is worth getting up in the dark for.
Hope this finds you all well! I will be in touch next week. XOXOXO
I have moved schools and moved families. I cannot say enough good things about my new school, Celas Maya. I wish I had been here three weeks ago, but then I wouldn't have met Erin. And if I had been happy at my old school, I never would have known that Celas or Pop Wuj, my next school, existed. So all in all, I have no complaints. But in a word, this school is exactly what I wanted. It is big, but I am on a first name basis with the staff. It is gorgeous and pleasant and homey. It has an internet cafe on site, a tour company on site, a hostel on site, and a volunteer coordinator on site. I have been impressed again and again by the professionalism of the staff and the teachers, who all have degrees in teaching Spanish as a Second Language. We filled out our weekly evaluations today and they asked us to rate every aspect of our experience with the teachers, staff, homestays, properties and Xela, including "Do you feel safe at the school and in the city?"
My homestay is the polar opposite of my first family. I am living with a single woman who has a darling granddaughter and a male relative that lives in the house during the week, because he can't find work in the rural area he lives in and must work in Xela. My room is small but tidy and I have a bedside table and can turn out the overhead light from bed. It's amazing the things I get excited about now. I have a twin bed, which was hard to get used to, but I will only be sleeping in it another few weeks. I also live with a Chihuahua named Boom Boom. Boom Boom pees in the shower, which grosses me out a little bit. But I think that my housemom isn't able to walk him at night because it isn't very safe. Mostly the pee is washed down the drain but sometimes she forgets, and I find it in the morning. Our house is located across the street from the school. So I leave for my 8 o'clock class at 8 o'clock. We live three blocks from Parque Central, which is a perfect location but can get a little loud at night. We don't have near as much interaction as in my first homestay. If I would have let her, A. would have moved into my room with me. It was good to feel like I was part of their family, but I also felt a little smothered, and I always felt rude when I shut my door. The new homestay feels like a hostel in the off season, where the owner has the time to take meals with you. I am happy with it. But the whole concept of homestays in general can be off putting. It is very strange to be an adult guest in a stranger's home and have no control over when you eat, what you eat, if you want a cup of coffee, etc. I really want to come back to Xela to study and work in the future, but I think I will rent an apartment next time. I feel like once you've had the homestay experience there really isn't a good reason to do it again.
Oh! The best part about the new school is Tom. Tom is my Robin. Allow me to explain. In Antigua, MRM lived in a homestay with another student, Robin. Robin was a Southern grandmother on an 3 month layover in Antigua before moving to Honduras for the next three years. We fell in love with her. She was so sweet and so earnest and so inviting and welcoming. And I was sad that I hadn't met my own Robin here in Xela. But my sadness evaporated this week when I met Tom, who is probably in his late 50s and has this wonderful bushy moustache and messy hair and this thick Southern accent. He is lovely. He talks very loudy and is so excited about EVERYTHING and loves to practice his Spanish and refers to everything about his time here as "ex-cel-ahn-te". He went to the womens prison with us today and was asking one of the women if he could buy some earrings and the ladies thought he wanted the earrings for himself and got the biggest kick out of him. I am really happy that in a universe as enormous as the one we live in, Tom and I happened on the same school in the highlands this summer. He really is fantastic.
So, today was a normal class day until break, at which point some of us went to the local womens' detention center for the rest of the morning. We donated money this week to buy them things like toilet paper and soap and sanitary napkins, none of which are supplied by the government. We arrived there and I thought I had never seen a more depressing "office." I am not a huge fan of detention centers, especially in developing countries. The front office was painted this suffocating teal color and it was lit by one naked light bulb and a single flickering fluorescent tube. Both of which unnerved me immediately. There was a desk and a metal filing cabinet and a small TV in the corner playing a squiggly Adam Sandler movie. We had to line up and have our right forearm stamped twice and then we were patted down, a lot, and then allowed to enter into the area where the women live. There were 40 women being detained, for everything from shoplifting to homicide. They remain there while their investigations are ongoing. This can last months, or years. At which point they are either freed, or sent to the maximum security institution in Guat City. They are allowed to have their children there with them if they are babies, but all of the women I talked to had anywhere from 3 to 9 kids that were being raised by relatives. They live in two dorm rooms, and they are locked in those rooms from 6pm to 6am. There is one toilet with no seat and no toilet paper and no sink to wash oneself. The women take classes in English and on the computer when there is someone to teach them. There is a clinic on site that featured one bed, no sheets, and one glass fronted cabinet with no medicines or supplies of any kind in it. I asked them what they do when they get sick, and where do the medicines come from and they said, They don't. The women make small handicrafts and that is their sole source of income. I bought a pair of earrings and a cloth bracelet. After our tour, we just split up and talked to the women and learned their stories. I talked to about 8 women and basically just asked the same 6 questions that I could think of. I heard several Mayan languages for the first time while there, which was really neat. When a woman has misbehaved in some way, she is put in solitary, and the solitary cell put the fear of God in me. The whole experience was interesting and not a little depressing. No one can afford a private attorney. They are there with no idea how long their investigations and trials will take. Many of them had scars from what I imagine was some form of partner abuse, and most of them were illiterate. Our money bought each woman one roll of toilet paper, a toothbrush, a bar of soap and 4 sanitary napkins.
After lunch today my friend Olivia and I headed to the orphanage to see about volunteering. I was expecting a tour, which we got. And then we were put in a room with 12 unsupervised kids, aged 1 to about 4. We spent several hours there, and decided to work there 3 afternoons a week while we are both students here. It was fun and a little harrowing. Most of the kids in the orphanage still have families, but their families are so unsafe that (in a country that isn't known for child advocacy) they are being raised in state custody for their own protection. It was hard for me to imagine a more traumatic environment than the orphanage itself. The youngest child was less than a year old, and he is a true orphan. The older children were in their teens. Olivia and I spent most of our time with the "babies" and I think maybe the hardest thing I have ever done is put the little one in his crib before I left, watched him scream and cry at our departure, and leave the room, knowing that there wasn't anyone to stay and look after them all once we had left. The is a staff of maybe 5 people, who are wonderful, but they are spread so thin and have so much work, that the kids are on their own for a good portion of the time. There was a girl there, I never learned her name, who was a new addition. I don't think I have seen, before now, a child that I would classify as clinically depressed. But she seemed just numb with grief. There was another little boy there who is also a true orphan, who has spent his whole life there, and it just boggles my mind that people grow up in these places. I feel like I want to say a whole lot more about the experience, which was so incredibly exhausting but simultaneously rewarding, but I don't know how to communicate it. I am excited about getting to know these kids better, and at the same time I never want to see them again, because they make my heart ache.
Last night was my graduation dinner at my old school. It was really special, and I wasn't expecting that. It was wonderful to see Joaquin again (who has promised to go see Eclipse with me when it comes out) and be with Erin for one last night, but it ultimately reaffirmed for me that I have made the right decision in leaving the school. I met two other students there who I think will become friends. One is also planning on becoming a midwife and the other is a sexual assault crisis counselor, like me, and is really interested in issues of womens advocacy and reproductive justice. I also met a pediatrician last night and we had a really good talk about maternal health and international practice etc., etc. The night ended with one last evening at the school playing drinking games with the guys and Erin. I don't think it is possible to find guys who are more immature than the ones at my old school. And alcohol only makes them that much more childish. I enjoyed Erin's company tremendously, but was so happy to finally call a taxi and escape to the boring comfort of my new homestay and my bedside table and my books.
Tomorrow, Olivia and I have decided to go to the beach for the weekend. I think another student, Susannah, is coming with us. Susannah is in Boston University´s (my almost alma mater) Master's of Public Health program, and is down here doing an internship working with giardia, which is a nasty little parasite. Also joining us on the beach is Olivia's roommate, Stefan. The plan for the weekend is to do as little as possible, and to do it from a hammock, with a drink in hand. It is baby turtle releasing season, so we are going to try to do that. And we have been told that there is a lovely sunrise tour of the lagoons by boat that is worth getting up in the dark for.
Hope this finds you all well! I will be in touch next week. XOXOXO
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
From Xela with Love & Laziness
If it didn't take 60 seconds for this page to load, count your blessings. There is no bandwidth here today and it is infuriating.
Sorry for my absence. I am beyond exhausted. Have changed schools. Love my new school, but have been really emotional lately nonetheless.
There was a beach trip this weekend but it doesn't look like it will pan out because only 3 people have signed up for it.
So, I have moved and am safe and not sick and enjoying my school and mostly enjoying Xela and the whole concept of a homestay is awkward, even in the best of situations. More later and soon, I promise.
Hope you are all well. XOXO
Sorry for my absence. I am beyond exhausted. Have changed schools. Love my new school, but have been really emotional lately nonetheless.
There was a beach trip this weekend but it doesn't look like it will pan out because only 3 people have signed up for it.
So, I have moved and am safe and not sick and enjoying my school and mostly enjoying Xela and the whole concept of a homestay is awkward, even in the best of situations. More later and soon, I promise.
Hope you are all well. XOXO
Friday, June 4, 2010
Weekend Rambling
I'm at the internet cafe around the corner from my house, and it is possible that the radio is playing a Spanish pop version of U2's "Running to Stand Still" and if that is the case, it makes today one of the greatest days ever.
I apologize if I wasn't clear in my last post about why I am transferring schools. As you all know, the homestay situation was not ideal. It really is luck of the draw here. One of the students at our school is living with a family who has a private, separate apartment with two bedrooms and a living room and dining room and that is where he lives. I am the only student in my school to have gotten as sick as I did, as well as the only student who is living with a family as poor as mine is, ie. no way to safely prepare and store food. Thus, I was eating out for every meal. Besides being expensive and lonely and annoying, it was also a slap in the face to my family, whose hospitality is their livelihood. I discussed the situation with anyone who would listen, and was encouraged to change families, but that felt incredibly uncomfortable to me. I adore them. They are the nicest people on the planet, but I couldn't bear the thought of not being able to eat at home for the next 11 weeks. Cooking for myself would have been fine, but that would have been even more of an insult.
And because I didn't want to insult them, or threaten their livelihood in any way by complaining to the school and asking to change families, I had decided to leave Xela altogether, and pursue studies at the Lake. And then I was strongly requested not to do that for safety reasons. And so that is where I found myself last weekend in Antigua. While I was there, feeling I had no choice but to leave Xela, and not wanting to move to the place I had been asked not to, I began to look for a school in Antigua. Found one, paid a deposit, and got on the bus to Xela thinking I was moving in 2 weeks.
You all know what happened at that point. I realized that I didn't want to leave Xela. That I had unfinished business here. And so I spent last week touring new schools and interviewing students and trying to find a good fit for me. I ended up finding two schools, more on the second one to come. The school I am transferring to on Sunday is much larger than my current school. It is located in a gorgeously restored Colonial house and the classes are held around the tropical garden in the center of it. It looks like the school I had pictured in my mind so many months ago.
So beginning Monday, I will be taking classes in a beautiful garden, sipping fair trade Guatemalan coffee. But it was more than the coffee and the garden that drew me in. The school operates an internet cafe that students have access to, as well as two libraries on campus and numerous quiet and pretty places to study. I have done very little studying so far, and longed for a quiet and comfortable spot I could go that didn't cost money. There are plenty of cafes here, but there was nowhere to study at my current school, and the desk and chair and lamp that was supposedly guaranteed in my homestay never materialized. At the new school, you take a survey each week about your teacher and your homestay family, which I appreciate. In addition, their libraries were incredible, and included a copy of the abridged OED, and I will go ahead and admit that that went a long way in helping me make a decision. The second school I found had "Amores Perros" in their library and is located across the street from a pupuseria and that made me really happy as well.
While I am excited to move, it was an incredibly bittersweet final day of class. I have been on the verge of tears all week at the thought of losing Joaquin as my teacher. You meet some people and know immediately that there is something different about them, and they become instantly dear to you, and that is how I felt about Joaquin. He felt like a sibling to me almost immediately. We have had so much fun together these past two weeks. We work really hard and my brain is exhausted at the end of each day, but we have a blast as well. Today we sang ABBA and Queen most of the day and took our lessons on the road and went in search of americanos and empanadas and parfaits. And because I actually studied for this week's exam, there was much less red pen all over it today. Yay. But for the past three days, I have felt on the verge of tears constantly. I teared up when I told my family I was leaving, and teared up when I told Joaquin I was leaving, and almost teared up again today when our final lesson ended. But I must keep moving forward. And I believe I have made the right decision for me, no matter how dear these people have become to me these past three weeks.
Tomorrow night I am taking my family and Joaquin out to dinner by way of thanks. Eating out is something that people so very rarely do here. So it is something of a big deal. I will try to get pictures uploaded sometime in the near future.
In other news, it is raining here. Because Mother Nature must have thought, "You know what Guatemala really needs right now? More torrential rain." On our way home from the coffee shop, Erin and I were walking through the local river, also know as our street. I don't even want to think about what is in the water that I slosh through each day.
Tomorrow the big agenda is to head up to Zone 3 for an ATM for me, a bus ticket out of here for Erin, and La Democracia, which is a huge 8 city block outdoor and indoor market that sells everything from fresh Mayan produce to dancing goats. Well, maybe not goats. But it is huge and bustling and fun. We are also going to swing by one of the used bookstores in town, to look for a grammar book for me, because it took me way too long yesterday to figure out the difference between direct and indirect objects in Spanish, and which one precedes a verb and which one precedes an adverb. This is the same bookstore that keeps loading me up with kombucha. The guy who brews it was so happy to have found a "true" kombucha lover in me that he gives me several bottles for free every time I stop by to return my empty bottles.
This morning, one of those bottles fell off my table and sprayed the entire room in kombucha, which smells like apple cider vinegar. I was really upset about it until I came home for lunch today and almost passed out from the smell. My house mother was frying fish, only it smelled the same way animals do that have died on the beach and are half way dried out. I don't know what kind of fish it was, but it was really bony. And I have an irrational fear of choking on fish bones. So lunch was an exercise in meditative eating in which I tried not to have a panic attack at the thought of dying in Xela from a fish skeleton. Following lunch was a conversation with A.'s father. He loves talking to me and gets really animated and the only thing I have really understood out of his mouth is that he thinks I need to drink more whiskey. I haven't had any whiskey at all in this county, and that is my problem, according to him. In today's conversation I recognized the words for "how many?" "baby" and "bones" and I thought he was asking how many bones humans have at birth vs. adulthood. But he kept saying, "no, no, pequeño" and holding his fingers up with an inch width between them. So I looked up the word for fetus and that still wasn't what he was after. I never did figure it out, but this went on for a while with him gesturing and me alternately nodding and looking very confused.
Very often I feel like the only people I will ever understand in Spanish are the teachers who talk to me so slowly and who are so animated. I know my family slows down their speech for me, but I still am having such a hard time understanding them. And speaking of not understanding people, Joaquin and I have had some hilarious misunderstandings, the worst of which happened today. He asked me what I had for breakfast and then I asked him what he had and he said he had two chicken sandwiches and I asked him why not eggs or something more breakfast-y and he said that eggs are more often eaten for dinner here. So I asked him how he fixes them, and as he was telling me, I thought they sounded really delicious, and so I tried to communicate that, except what I said translates colloquially to "I want your balls." He was laughing so hard he could barely breathe and kept saying, "No, chica, no you don't." It was rather embarrassing.
Last week he had said to me "You want to play hymen?" and my eyes got really big and I said, "COMO?!" He put both hands around his neck by way of an answer and then it clicked, Hangman. Today we were talking about the States and then Las Vegas and he kept talking about a "game over" which I couldn't understand in the context of our conversation until I realized he meant a hangover.
My goodness, this has been a rambling post. Sorry about that. Hope all of you are enjoying a lovely Friday night. I must get home now. I have a date with Harry Potter.
I apologize if I wasn't clear in my last post about why I am transferring schools. As you all know, the homestay situation was not ideal. It really is luck of the draw here. One of the students at our school is living with a family who has a private, separate apartment with two bedrooms and a living room and dining room and that is where he lives. I am the only student in my school to have gotten as sick as I did, as well as the only student who is living with a family as poor as mine is, ie. no way to safely prepare and store food. Thus, I was eating out for every meal. Besides being expensive and lonely and annoying, it was also a slap in the face to my family, whose hospitality is their livelihood. I discussed the situation with anyone who would listen, and was encouraged to change families, but that felt incredibly uncomfortable to me. I adore them. They are the nicest people on the planet, but I couldn't bear the thought of not being able to eat at home for the next 11 weeks. Cooking for myself would have been fine, but that would have been even more of an insult.
And because I didn't want to insult them, or threaten their livelihood in any way by complaining to the school and asking to change families, I had decided to leave Xela altogether, and pursue studies at the Lake. And then I was strongly requested not to do that for safety reasons. And so that is where I found myself last weekend in Antigua. While I was there, feeling I had no choice but to leave Xela, and not wanting to move to the place I had been asked not to, I began to look for a school in Antigua. Found one, paid a deposit, and got on the bus to Xela thinking I was moving in 2 weeks.
You all know what happened at that point. I realized that I didn't want to leave Xela. That I had unfinished business here. And so I spent last week touring new schools and interviewing students and trying to find a good fit for me. I ended up finding two schools, more on the second one to come. The school I am transferring to on Sunday is much larger than my current school. It is located in a gorgeously restored Colonial house and the classes are held around the tropical garden in the center of it. It looks like the school I had pictured in my mind so many months ago.
So beginning Monday, I will be taking classes in a beautiful garden, sipping fair trade Guatemalan coffee. But it was more than the coffee and the garden that drew me in. The school operates an internet cafe that students have access to, as well as two libraries on campus and numerous quiet and pretty places to study. I have done very little studying so far, and longed for a quiet and comfortable spot I could go that didn't cost money. There are plenty of cafes here, but there was nowhere to study at my current school, and the desk and chair and lamp that was supposedly guaranteed in my homestay never materialized. At the new school, you take a survey each week about your teacher and your homestay family, which I appreciate. In addition, their libraries were incredible, and included a copy of the abridged OED, and I will go ahead and admit that that went a long way in helping me make a decision. The second school I found had "Amores Perros" in their library and is located across the street from a pupuseria and that made me really happy as well.
While I am excited to move, it was an incredibly bittersweet final day of class. I have been on the verge of tears all week at the thought of losing Joaquin as my teacher. You meet some people and know immediately that there is something different about them, and they become instantly dear to you, and that is how I felt about Joaquin. He felt like a sibling to me almost immediately. We have had so much fun together these past two weeks. We work really hard and my brain is exhausted at the end of each day, but we have a blast as well. Today we sang ABBA and Queen most of the day and took our lessons on the road and went in search of americanos and empanadas and parfaits. And because I actually studied for this week's exam, there was much less red pen all over it today. Yay. But for the past three days, I have felt on the verge of tears constantly. I teared up when I told my family I was leaving, and teared up when I told Joaquin I was leaving, and almost teared up again today when our final lesson ended. But I must keep moving forward. And I believe I have made the right decision for me, no matter how dear these people have become to me these past three weeks.
Tomorrow night I am taking my family and Joaquin out to dinner by way of thanks. Eating out is something that people so very rarely do here. So it is something of a big deal. I will try to get pictures uploaded sometime in the near future.
In other news, it is raining here. Because Mother Nature must have thought, "You know what Guatemala really needs right now? More torrential rain." On our way home from the coffee shop, Erin and I were walking through the local river, also know as our street. I don't even want to think about what is in the water that I slosh through each day.
Tomorrow the big agenda is to head up to Zone 3 for an ATM for me, a bus ticket out of here for Erin, and La Democracia, which is a huge 8 city block outdoor and indoor market that sells everything from fresh Mayan produce to dancing goats. Well, maybe not goats. But it is huge and bustling and fun. We are also going to swing by one of the used bookstores in town, to look for a grammar book for me, because it took me way too long yesterday to figure out the difference between direct and indirect objects in Spanish, and which one precedes a verb and which one precedes an adverb. This is the same bookstore that keeps loading me up with kombucha. The guy who brews it was so happy to have found a "true" kombucha lover in me that he gives me several bottles for free every time I stop by to return my empty bottles.
This morning, one of those bottles fell off my table and sprayed the entire room in kombucha, which smells like apple cider vinegar. I was really upset about it until I came home for lunch today and almost passed out from the smell. My house mother was frying fish, only it smelled the same way animals do that have died on the beach and are half way dried out. I don't know what kind of fish it was, but it was really bony. And I have an irrational fear of choking on fish bones. So lunch was an exercise in meditative eating in which I tried not to have a panic attack at the thought of dying in Xela from a fish skeleton. Following lunch was a conversation with A.'s father. He loves talking to me and gets really animated and the only thing I have really understood out of his mouth is that he thinks I need to drink more whiskey. I haven't had any whiskey at all in this county, and that is my problem, according to him. In today's conversation I recognized the words for "how many?" "baby" and "bones" and I thought he was asking how many bones humans have at birth vs. adulthood. But he kept saying, "no, no, pequeño" and holding his fingers up with an inch width between them. So I looked up the word for fetus and that still wasn't what he was after. I never did figure it out, but this went on for a while with him gesturing and me alternately nodding and looking very confused.
Very often I feel like the only people I will ever understand in Spanish are the teachers who talk to me so slowly and who are so animated. I know my family slows down their speech for me, but I still am having such a hard time understanding them. And speaking of not understanding people, Joaquin and I have had some hilarious misunderstandings, the worst of which happened today. He asked me what I had for breakfast and then I asked him what he had and he said he had two chicken sandwiches and I asked him why not eggs or something more breakfast-y and he said that eggs are more often eaten for dinner here. So I asked him how he fixes them, and as he was telling me, I thought they sounded really delicious, and so I tried to communicate that, except what I said translates colloquially to "I want your balls." He was laughing so hard he could barely breathe and kept saying, "No, chica, no you don't." It was rather embarrassing.
Last week he had said to me "You want to play hymen?" and my eyes got really big and I said, "COMO?!" He put both hands around his neck by way of an answer and then it clicked, Hangman. Today we were talking about the States and then Las Vegas and he kept talking about a "game over" which I couldn't understand in the context of our conversation until I realized he meant a hangover.
My goodness, this has been a rambling post. Sorry about that. Hope all of you are enjoying a lovely Friday night. I must get home now. I have a date with Harry Potter.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
This is getting old
For the second time this year, I have been alerted by World Vision that one of my sponsor children´s communities might have been affected by a recent act of God.
Would appreciate prayers for Lucia and her family and her home and her community as I wait for more news.
Gracias!
Would appreciate prayers for Lucia and her family and her home and her community as I wait for more news.
Gracias!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
After Agatha
So. I have been back in Xela for 2 days. And getting home was nothing short of miraculous.
All day Sunday and Monday, I blew up my tour company´s mobile, asking for updated road conditions. I was told everything was fine, and the shuttles were still running, but after hearing about Thy´s boyfriend Ben and the troubles he had getting into Guatemala from El Salvador, I decided to push back my departure by a day. I called them again several times on Monday and was assured that the shuttle that left Xela at 8am had made it, with delays.
I was picked up at 3pm from my hostel and as we pulled out I asked the driver how many people were scheduled for the way home and he said, ¨Solamente tu¨(only you) except I heard ¨Solamente two¨and kept waiting for us to stop for the final passenger. A little slow on the uptake, I am.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and once I realized I had scored private transport back to Xela, I stretched out, found The Beatles on my iPod, opened the window and enjoyed the countryside. It didn´t take long to begin to see the effects of Agatha, but for the most part it was a smooth ride in the beginning (isn´t it always?). We were detoured in Chimaltenango, though. All the traffic was diverted down what were basically alleys, but I never saw the damage that necessitated the detour.
After we were out of Chimaltenango, the road opened up to mile after mile of fertile field. The sun was still out and the air felt post-rain clean and at this point it was a very pleasant journey. However, as we began to climb into the highlands, there was more and more evidence that Agatha had raged over western Guatemala. Prior to this summer, I had never had reason to think about the concept of a river of mud, or even a mudslide at all. But the road from Antigua to Xela was absolutely devastated in many places.
From a purely clinical perspective, it was fascinating. Rivers. Of mud. With huge trees. And rocks. Huge rocks. There were places were the road had buckled or collapsed, including bridges. Including bridges we crossed. That was scary. There were houses, actual ¨houses¨and shanty type dwellings, where the mud rivers had just plowed over. There were uprooted trees that had been jammed, branches down, into the earth, so their roots were towering above us, looking like enormous spiders on their backs.
The mud wiped out entire settlements and towns. We passed people wandering around what was once their home, looking for anything of value in the detritus. There was so much trash, too. Tons and tons and tons of trash, accumulated, and then dumped in a great heap with trees and rocks and former houses.
It takes four hours to get home. Nearly four hours of witnessing devastated region after devastated region. I kept thinking, ¨that was someone´s home¨,¨that was someone´s livelihood,¨ ¨there´s no FEMA here.¨ There is really no infrastructure at all. And with that in mind, it is amazing that the road was passable at all, only 48 hours after landfall.
It is true that what was once a four lane highway had been reduced to a single lane in many places. And we slalomed that one lane highway the whole way home. And there were places where we drove uphill through a shallow mud river. And places where we drove through a newly carved out mud mountain that had previously blocked the entire highway. And places where two days earlier there had been mountain, mountain that was now displaced all the heck over the place. But what I found more fascinating than the new landscape, and the miles of destruction, was that we were able to get through at all. Because in four hours there wasn´t a single work crew. Instead, there was a dude here with a shovel. And a few miles later, a few people with a shovel and maybe a wheelbarrow. And that´s how it was the whole way home. One person, maybe two, rarely three, slowly, oh so slowly, but so deliberately tackling this enormous mess.
Like I said earlier, when I left Nashville, Nashville looked worse than it has in 100 years. And in many ways, Nashville was nothing to what I saw here. And that we got through, thanks to the tireless work of ordinary people with few tools, still blows me away.
The higher you climb into the highlands, the greener the landscape. You feel like you´re in Avatar, it is that green. Almost fluorescent. And it gets really foggy, too. You´re driving straight through clouds in many places. To me, this is incredibly beautiful. But as we rose higher, and the landscape looked so different from what it had looked like just days before, I felt like I was riding around on the surface of the moon. In so many ways it was barely recognizable.
I listened to my iPod the entire trip, and had turned on Shuffle. At one point, just when the mist was picking up, the Rolling Stones´ ¨Gimme Shelter¨ came on, and it was one of those very clear, pure moments when I realized that for the rest of my life, when I hear that song, I´ll be carried back to Guatemala and the experience of driving home to Xela and feeling, for the first time, like it actually was home.
And that is the very curious thing that happened on this trip. I had spent the whole weekend in Antigua in a mental funk. As you all know, Xela hasn´t exactly been a four star layover, and I had put many many hours into devising a way out of the mess, and had decided (and felt really good about it, too) to cut my losses, move to the Lake in two weeks, and continue my studies there. Then, arriving in Antigua, I received an email from MRM´s mom, who is not only from Guatemala but has traveled throughout the country a good deal, asking me not to move to the Lake alone. Suddenly, I was facing 11 weeks in a country and no idea how to spend it. I couldn´t stay in Xela, because I had to leave my homestay. At the time it felt less awkward to leave Xela entirely than to simply leave the homestay. I couldn´t go to the Lake, because I had been asked very kindly not to, and the asking was done with my safety in mind. I couldn´t come to Antigua because that wasn´t the original plan, dammit. So, on the inside, and maybe on the outside to those who know me well, I was really really dejected all weekend. I felt cornered, and I felt like I had done it to myself. It´s nothing against Antigua. Antigua is gorgeous. It´s like the Epcot Center version of a Central American city, super beautiful and clean. But almost everyone in Antigua is on vacation, and I didn´t want to be in a vacation city all summer when I wasn´t exactly on vacation. Still, I reasoned, it would be brilliant to be near MRM all summer. So I went about trying to make myself feel like I wasn´t being sentenced there. I researched schools, visited schools, and then found one and made a deposit on it, intending to move back there in two weeks.
So I got on the shuttle feeling really out of sorts and a little depressed that the summer was turning out so far from how I had hoped it would. And then the closer I got to Xela, the more I got this weird feeling of, I am almost home. It freaked me out at first. And then I slowly began to grow accustomed to it. When I arrived, it was raining, of course. Raining really really hard. And my family wasn´t home, which has never happened before. So I arrived to a cold, dark house in the pouring rain, and I could not have been happier. And since then, I don´t know what it is, but I am feeling really content here. And excited to be here. Not only excited, I am feeling incredibly blessed to be able to be here for as long as I get. Who knows how long this feeling will last. But for now, I am totally digging it. Xela is still Xela. Ugly, dirty, so much pollution. But also beautiful and exciting and inviting all of a sudden.
I have spent the past two days touring and interviewing new schools here. In this regard, Agatha has been very, very good to me. Schools that were booked for the whole summer last week now have openings, because some crazy people aren´t keen on spending time in a country that got hit with a volcano eruption and a hurricane in the same weekend. So everywhere I have visited has had openings, including a very coveted opening at a school that Doctors Without Borders uses. I have submitted my application for that slot this afternoon and am anxiously waiting to hear if I have been accepted.
So. The plan is to stay here. Stay here and get over myself and love it and study hard and hopefully do some meaningful volunteer work. Each day I like it a little more. I am finally, three weeks in, beginning to feel about this place the way I had hoped to feel from day one. Better late than never.
All day Sunday and Monday, I blew up my tour company´s mobile, asking for updated road conditions. I was told everything was fine, and the shuttles were still running, but after hearing about Thy´s boyfriend Ben and the troubles he had getting into Guatemala from El Salvador, I decided to push back my departure by a day. I called them again several times on Monday and was assured that the shuttle that left Xela at 8am had made it, with delays.
I was picked up at 3pm from my hostel and as we pulled out I asked the driver how many people were scheduled for the way home and he said, ¨Solamente tu¨(only you) except I heard ¨Solamente two¨and kept waiting for us to stop for the final passenger. A little slow on the uptake, I am.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and once I realized I had scored private transport back to Xela, I stretched out, found The Beatles on my iPod, opened the window and enjoyed the countryside. It didn´t take long to begin to see the effects of Agatha, but for the most part it was a smooth ride in the beginning (isn´t it always?). We were detoured in Chimaltenango, though. All the traffic was diverted down what were basically alleys, but I never saw the damage that necessitated the detour.
After we were out of Chimaltenango, the road opened up to mile after mile of fertile field. The sun was still out and the air felt post-rain clean and at this point it was a very pleasant journey. However, as we began to climb into the highlands, there was more and more evidence that Agatha had raged over western Guatemala. Prior to this summer, I had never had reason to think about the concept of a river of mud, or even a mudslide at all. But the road from Antigua to Xela was absolutely devastated in many places.
From a purely clinical perspective, it was fascinating. Rivers. Of mud. With huge trees. And rocks. Huge rocks. There were places were the road had buckled or collapsed, including bridges. Including bridges we crossed. That was scary. There were houses, actual ¨houses¨and shanty type dwellings, where the mud rivers had just plowed over. There were uprooted trees that had been jammed, branches down, into the earth, so their roots were towering above us, looking like enormous spiders on their backs.
The mud wiped out entire settlements and towns. We passed people wandering around what was once their home, looking for anything of value in the detritus. There was so much trash, too. Tons and tons and tons of trash, accumulated, and then dumped in a great heap with trees and rocks and former houses.
It takes four hours to get home. Nearly four hours of witnessing devastated region after devastated region. I kept thinking, ¨that was someone´s home¨,¨that was someone´s livelihood,¨ ¨there´s no FEMA here.¨ There is really no infrastructure at all. And with that in mind, it is amazing that the road was passable at all, only 48 hours after landfall.
It is true that what was once a four lane highway had been reduced to a single lane in many places. And we slalomed that one lane highway the whole way home. And there were places where we drove uphill through a shallow mud river. And places where we drove through a newly carved out mud mountain that had previously blocked the entire highway. And places where two days earlier there had been mountain, mountain that was now displaced all the heck over the place. But what I found more fascinating than the new landscape, and the miles of destruction, was that we were able to get through at all. Because in four hours there wasn´t a single work crew. Instead, there was a dude here with a shovel. And a few miles later, a few people with a shovel and maybe a wheelbarrow. And that´s how it was the whole way home. One person, maybe two, rarely three, slowly, oh so slowly, but so deliberately tackling this enormous mess.
Like I said earlier, when I left Nashville, Nashville looked worse than it has in 100 years. And in many ways, Nashville was nothing to what I saw here. And that we got through, thanks to the tireless work of ordinary people with few tools, still blows me away.
The higher you climb into the highlands, the greener the landscape. You feel like you´re in Avatar, it is that green. Almost fluorescent. And it gets really foggy, too. You´re driving straight through clouds in many places. To me, this is incredibly beautiful. But as we rose higher, and the landscape looked so different from what it had looked like just days before, I felt like I was riding around on the surface of the moon. In so many ways it was barely recognizable.
I listened to my iPod the entire trip, and had turned on Shuffle. At one point, just when the mist was picking up, the Rolling Stones´ ¨Gimme Shelter¨ came on, and it was one of those very clear, pure moments when I realized that for the rest of my life, when I hear that song, I´ll be carried back to Guatemala and the experience of driving home to Xela and feeling, for the first time, like it actually was home.
And that is the very curious thing that happened on this trip. I had spent the whole weekend in Antigua in a mental funk. As you all know, Xela hasn´t exactly been a four star layover, and I had put many many hours into devising a way out of the mess, and had decided (and felt really good about it, too) to cut my losses, move to the Lake in two weeks, and continue my studies there. Then, arriving in Antigua, I received an email from MRM´s mom, who is not only from Guatemala but has traveled throughout the country a good deal, asking me not to move to the Lake alone. Suddenly, I was facing 11 weeks in a country and no idea how to spend it. I couldn´t stay in Xela, because I had to leave my homestay. At the time it felt less awkward to leave Xela entirely than to simply leave the homestay. I couldn´t go to the Lake, because I had been asked very kindly not to, and the asking was done with my safety in mind. I couldn´t come to Antigua because that wasn´t the original plan, dammit. So, on the inside, and maybe on the outside to those who know me well, I was really really dejected all weekend. I felt cornered, and I felt like I had done it to myself. It´s nothing against Antigua. Antigua is gorgeous. It´s like the Epcot Center version of a Central American city, super beautiful and clean. But almost everyone in Antigua is on vacation, and I didn´t want to be in a vacation city all summer when I wasn´t exactly on vacation. Still, I reasoned, it would be brilliant to be near MRM all summer. So I went about trying to make myself feel like I wasn´t being sentenced there. I researched schools, visited schools, and then found one and made a deposit on it, intending to move back there in two weeks.
So I got on the shuttle feeling really out of sorts and a little depressed that the summer was turning out so far from how I had hoped it would. And then the closer I got to Xela, the more I got this weird feeling of, I am almost home. It freaked me out at first. And then I slowly began to grow accustomed to it. When I arrived, it was raining, of course. Raining really really hard. And my family wasn´t home, which has never happened before. So I arrived to a cold, dark house in the pouring rain, and I could not have been happier. And since then, I don´t know what it is, but I am feeling really content here. And excited to be here. Not only excited, I am feeling incredibly blessed to be able to be here for as long as I get. Who knows how long this feeling will last. But for now, I am totally digging it. Xela is still Xela. Ugly, dirty, so much pollution. But also beautiful and exciting and inviting all of a sudden.
I have spent the past two days touring and interviewing new schools here. In this regard, Agatha has been very, very good to me. Schools that were booked for the whole summer last week now have openings, because some crazy people aren´t keen on spending time in a country that got hit with a volcano eruption and a hurricane in the same weekend. So everywhere I have visited has had openings, including a very coveted opening at a school that Doctors Without Borders uses. I have submitted my application for that slot this afternoon and am anxiously waiting to hear if I have been accepted.
So. The plan is to stay here. Stay here and get over myself and love it and study hard and hopefully do some meaningful volunteer work. Each day I like it a little more. I am finally, three weeks in, beginning to feel about this place the way I had hoped to feel from day one. Better late than never.
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