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.