20 de Mayo

Wilson

Wilson by the Lake.

Luis and Wilson and my shoe in Luis´s store.

view from my window a la noche

Update, 5-21: The power went out last night while I was updated this entry. That´s why the spacing is messed up and I didn´t get all the photos up. In this tiny substreet internet cafe, kids crowd around the two other computers and shout in Kaqchikel at Mario.

Que pasa: On Sunday I moved in with my homestay family. I am their seventh student to house from this program. We're having classes at different places around the lake; tomorrow I will probably take a pickup truck to class—it's about 5 miles away or so.

This entry is a whopper.

On Saturday morning we packed up three vans and rocketed out of the city. One thing I forgot to mention about Guatemala City was that I saw no traffic accidents, not one, and yet there is so much merging and swerving. I guess when you have to pay attention all the dive while driving, you crash less.

The vans zoomed around traffic up the mountains and to the altiplano, a large plateau north of the city. We passed a lot of agriculture here. Then, we turned off the Pan-American highway back into mountains as we approached Lake Atitlan. The air got noticeably cooler.

Off the highway, the drivers shot through switchbacks at twice the speed limit. The girls in the van with me would laugh from time to time at how intense the driving was... you know, the nervous laughter.

And this was my first impression of the real Guatemala, the Guatemala outside of the city, rushing by me at 40 miles per hour through dirty glass. Groups of people bent double over plants on the altiplano. Tuk-tuks (popular three-wheeled taxis) and slower pickup trucks full (full) of people and “chicken buses” (not what you're thinking – see the photo) moving over so we can fly by when our driver gives the horn a quick tap-tap. Closer to a town, a group of five very young girls, one only a little more than a toddler, dressed traditionally, sitting on a narrow grass embankment by a busy road to eat. A mother with her infant in its sling on her back (I forgot the name) swinging at plants with her machete. And the villages—dirt or cobblestone roads, tin roofs and solid color stucco or concrete walls, many blue walls stamped with the logo of tigo, a cellphone company that presumably paints your wall for free if you let them put their logo on it. The people: mostly women in the traditional dress walking around the villages, balancing baskets on their heads, some old, old ladies carrying piles of firewood back from the outskirts of town on their backs. Boys kicking a soccer ball to each other, deftly bouncing it off the roof. The idle ones stared at the van of gringos, no doubt a not-too-uncommon sight. One girl emerged in the doorway of a parked school bus as we rolled by and straight-facedly shot us with her squirt gun.

And the dogs! They trot around alone looking paranoid, dodgy, sketchy, on-edge, like they are all guilty of something, trotting quickly, heads low, never panting, some with limps. Most of them are a similar kind: short hair, upright ears, in between big dog and small dog size (by U.S. standards), just a little bigger than foxes, about the size of coyotes. Dogs in the street, dogs burrowing under fences, dogs asleep in the shade, dogs on walls, dogs on roofs.

Our first sight of Lake Atitlan was at a common roadside vista. All we could really see was fog, though, but it was a welcome break from the city. All of us sat around, gazing into the haze. Everyone had the nervous giggles. There was nothing to say: anything would be an understatement. We were at Lake Atitlan, and the moment that everyone had been anticipating for months had arrived.

Some of us standing, some sitting, no one moving. A group of three or four little girls in traditional dress moved among us, some carrying baskets of suckers at their shoulders in the same manner that waiters carry trays. “Compre,” (buy) they said simply to one of us at a time. “No, gracias,” we replied.

From what country, the leader of the girls implored Heather, declaratively, in simple Spanish. Her voice had the slightly broken tone that some girls get in between childhood and adolescence. In what country do you live.

Immediately, this became a simple exercise. Many of those within earshot gave their attention to the conversation. It was a group of American students talking to a group of Guatemalan girls through one spokesperson at a time.

In the United States, Heather replied.

In which country. Which country there.

Florida.

Ah.

Do you know Florida? I asked expectantly.

No! The girls laughed.

And you? Where do you live? Mary Beth asked.

France! she replied. The girls laughed again.

This whole exchange continues to fascinate me. Even when they were going around asking “Compre,” I felt a very subtle vibe that was something like mockery, although a little more passive. Maybe it was the kind of smile on the leader-girl's face, but I felt that we were on the outside of a joke.

It was time for us to go. “Good luck with your...” I motioned to the candy and stuff “...things.”

“Adios,” they responded a few times each, just a little bit too sing-songily, with inflections that rose just a little too sharply, and as if they were reciting it to themselves instead of to us, not looking at any of us but walking around and dallying off. “Adios! Adios!”

Later, I mentioned that the Spanish of those girls (along with that of an elementary school teacher talking to her class at one of the museums) was the easiest to understand of any Spanish I had heard so far. Derek pointed out that it could be because these girls' first language was probably a Mayan dialect. Maybe this could account for the vibe I got from the girls as well... the Spanish was just a little too simple and sing-songish for me to think they were taking us seriously, but maybe it's because they only speak Spanish to tourists.

........................................................

When I sat down on the night of the 18th to journal, this is about all I came up with:

I'm having a lot of trouble writing. Culture shock is aptly named: I feel paralyzed, numb. Today, the only thing that kept me from just sitting and staring at things was the fact that it might trouble my family to see me looking bored or sad.

By today, the 20th, I am able to write, but I may have lost some of the initial wonderment. Part of it is just that there is so much to write about.


“I thought you said Santa Catarina was a one-road town,” I said to Linda, Dr Wallace's wife and the head of the social work program, who was riding shotgun. Rounding the mountain had shown me a place much bigger than I expected: a mass of densely packed buildings down below that appeared to be creeping up the sides of the bowl, like some beautiful, colorful fungus. The population here is about 3000, and I have since come to find that most of what I saw there were houses.

“It is,” she replied, and went into more detail. I thought about the ramifications of this: all these houses and only one road, the road we were driving on, which cuts the town into maybe one-sixth of it on the right towards the shore and the other portion to the left, up the slope. Sure enough, all these houses are accessible only by foot. The dense and sporadic sprawl is riddled with alleyways only a few feet wide that wind in between houses. The paths are sometimes concrete, sometimes cobblestone, sometimes stairs, rarely dirt. The whole elevation thing is bizarre: you pass someone's roof below you on your right, someone's floor above you on your left. As you trek through the maze, you hear children laughing and talking in Kaqchikel.

It is time to drop me off. To the left, there is my family—the two boys and the father (technically, grandfather: Luis) on my left. All the girls in my van ooh-ing over the boys. Luis owns an art gallery, which is literally a hole in the wall: linoleum type floor, one room that runs about thirty or forty feet deep, kind of like stores in malls in the U.S. in that instead of a door there is an open wide with a cage/grate thing to pull down when you are closed. The paintings are done by his three brothers, and they all line all the walls and hang from the ceiling. There are no lights—he is open only in the daytime—and there is a desk on the left where he sits. All the paintings have something to do with Lake Atitlan.

I step out, grab my bags, say hi to everyone. Then it is hello to Luis! A nice guy—friendly, outgoing, short, late forties or early fifties maybe? although it is difficult to tell with many locals, stocky with a muscular frame (built like a running back), mustached. He tells me to give one of my bags to his oldest son, Wilson. Then he asks me:

“Y como te llamas?”

“Ah! Daniel.”

“Adanyal?”

“No no, lo siento, Dan-yull.”

“Danyoo?”

“Da-nee-ell”

“Ah si si! Da-nee-ell!”

Wilson and I make the trek up to the house. It's like the baby in the hospital thing—which one of these is my new sister? I barely notice when we have arrived—the stairs get a little steeper and we pass under a beam that I later see is the top of the retaining wall of the “yard,” a narrow strip of dirty gravel. The retaining wall is of cinder block and has a few columns of rebar sticking out of it at regular intervals. We walk up up a few steps through the kitchen (a tin roof on four posts covering a wood-fire stove) up to the house: a building of cinder block walls with the dining room on the left side and the grandfather's bedroom on the right. Low ceilings; I have to duck. The bathroom is another stucco building on the other side of the main building and up some stairs. On one side is the toilet room, on the other is the shower. There is a large tub overhead that collects rain water for the shower. Curtains for doors. We make our way around these buildings to the other side where there is a newish stucco building that is four square rooms stacked on top of each other. Luis has told me that he has had this property for three years if I remember correctly, and this building has only been finished for a few weeks. Wilson and I climb a few feet up a crumbling cinder block wall on the left—the stairs to my landing—where my bed is in one of these rooms. It's about 10w x 10l x 8h feet. I have a queen-sized-ish bed, a mattress on legs. I have bear stucco walls, one rock one, a bench for my things, and a desk/table in front of the window. All the bead spreads and tablecloths are very nice; I bet Catarina made them herself. My floor is gravelly dirt, like all the floors here. The view is incredible. I wake up and stare the volcano in the face across the lake.

In this house live Luis, Luis's daughter Catarina, and Catarina's two sons, Wilson, 10, and Luis Miguel, 8. Dr Wallace tells me that Luis's wife died some years ago, and I don't know about Catarina's husband.
There were some men and a boy putting a door on my room—I put my stuff on my bed and then left so they could continue with their work. They were all very friendly to the new gringo arrival.

I didn't really know what to do next. I decided to leave my camera in my room. We decided that I should go with Wilson to see the agua caliente, the hot water springs that emerge near the beach hear from under the mountain.

Wilson, the 10-year-old, is good-natured, polite, and very, very mature. After a few days, I have about as much respect for him as I do for someone my own age. The parents always call on him (“Weeeelson!”) for miscellaneous things. He is generally obedient, and it doesn't sound like he complains very much (I haven't heard any whiny-sounding Kaqchikel yet). When he does “back talk” to his parents, it is said quietly, without looking at them in the eyes. While Luis is at work, Wilson is the man of the house—one time we heard something in the bushes above the house and Catarina called on Wilson to investigate. We all stood around and awaited his report. After addressing everyone else in Kaqchikel, I asked and he told me it was the dueño, which means landlord, although this could be the name of a kind of animal? Or maybe he was lying to me because he didn't want me to worry about it.

Although he is only two years younger than Wilson, Luis Miguel is miles less mature. I suppose this is because Wilson has had to grow up quickly; Luis Miguel seems about as mature as the average eight-year-old, maybe even more so. He is light-hearted and affectionate towards me, and he smiles whenever I look at him. He gave me a gift on the first and second days, a sucker (“bonbon”) wrapped in wrapping paper so that it slides out—he reuses the paper. His Spanish is also not as good and is sometimes harder to understand. His describes things falling or crashing with “ploom” (instead of “boom” that we use.) He is the one who gets me to come eat, who tells me “Daniel, sentate!” (sit down or have a seat) before meals or to watch TV.

By the way, they have two TVs, a small one in the childrens' room and a large one (with a really nice six-speaker boom box / DVD player) in Luis's room. They have a DVD with Bambi 1 and 2 – I don't know if they have any more DVDs, but Luis Miguel always asks me not if I want to watch TV, but if I want to watch Bambi. The movies, as well as much of the American TV shows, have Spanish vocal track overdubbing.

On the way to the agua caliente, Wilson patiently answers my questions, although often with a Si that is a little more wistful or dismissive than I would like. There are many people at the hot springs, although it is Sunday. We talk about animals, sports, graffiti, etc., although at this point he is not really opening up to me. He writes in the sand to help me understand words.

The walk by the beach is beautiful—shaded by large tropical trees, little undergrowth, and big wealthier houses with many flowers in their yards. Wilson says that these are owned by gringos. Lake Atitlan is of course beautiful. It's been hazy so I've been holding off on many landscape photos. Do a google image search if you really want to see.

On the way back, we meet up with Luis Miguel. He and his friends are hanging out in a big plaza just uphill from the road that has a large Catholic church, a few shops and houses surrounding, and a dry blue and orange fountain that some kids are climbing on.

They ask me if I want to come buy some limones with them. We visit a house on the main road and Wilson begins to call out. Standing on some stairs from the road, he calls about three times, and nothing happens
Maybe no one's here, I said.

“No,” he said, and rapped on the gate with a coin and called out again.
Then an old lady (with the typical wrinkled face, wearing a huipil, hunched over) emerged from the house and walked down some stairs so that I could no longer see her behind the fence/wall, which begins at about five feet above the street anyway. Then I noticed the faces of about five little girls staring at me from over the fence/wall and through the gate. “Buenos dias” from about two of them. I returned their greeting. Some of them giggled. Wilson and I readied some coins. Then I saw a long broomstick-like stick with a two pointy tips being held by the lady's hand. The long stick poked the branches of the lime tree and a few fell. We gathered them into a bag. She did this about three more times, each time with more limes falling, some hitting us, some bouncing in to the street. It was remarkably cheap—about a Quetzal (15 cents or so) for a bag of maybe a dozen. The limes were for our salad.

The food is quite good, especially considering the living conditions. I am generally a fan of freshness and texture instead of really rich taste. Meals consist of some combination of the following: eggs, beans (red or black), some kind of green pea in its pod, chicken, tomatoes, onions, peppers, potatoes, sometimes noodles, and coffee with sugar or Coca-Cola, which they call “agua.” And with every meal, tortillas. I have seen the total production of tortillas: Catarina buys corn that is grown in the mountains above town, takes it to the mill in town (electrically powered—it grinds the corn with water into dough in a matter of seconds a costs a few centavos), brings the dough back, fires up the oven, and begins hand-making the tortillas. She grabs a wad of dough, rolls it into a ball, and then begins smushing it into a circle with quick claps—about four per second, it´s amazing to watch, the tortilla rotates slowly the whole time—until the tortillas reach hand size, maybe six inches in diameter, much smaller than in the U.S. (By the way, I'm pretty sure that the flour tortilla, like pizza, was invented in the U.S.) She places them on the oven and flips them with her hands. Tortillas are made before each meal, and you use them like edible utensils to gather your food and sop up the sauce or juice. Sometimes I help make tortillas before the meals, and you can tell which ones are mine because they are a little misshapen and fat, but the family likes this, and I'm getting better at it.

The fact that I can speak Spanish (kind of) means only that I can give and get information from people whom I engage directly. This town is 99% indigenous Maya who all speak Kaqchikel, so there is no eavesdropping or anything like it. During meals, there are two different conversations going on, the one with Daniel in Spanish (open to anyone) and then another one in Kaqchikel (open to everyone but Daniel). I know four Kaqchikel words, and I have told them that I would like to learn one each day. It's enjoyable to listen to with its quick fricative and guttural consonants, especially when the parents scold their kids. It sounds to me like a cross of Hebrew and Japanese.

To summarize, I am enamored by the way of life here. I don't want to get much into it right now because I have only been here a day, but here are my first impressions.

To set it straight, these people live “in poverty.” That is, they appear to have little money. But words like poverty and impoverished carry with them images and connotations: dirty kids drinking dirty water, exposure to the elements, maybe sickness. This family is healthy, happy, clean, and proud. The women of the town make their own clothes which are really, really beautiful, and so you see the local women walking around town elegantly dressed.

One way to look at culture is that it is the glue of society. There is an entire school of thought (called cultural ecology I believe, part of neofunctionalism) that began around the middle of the twentieth century that describes culture as a kind of feedback mechanism, like a thermostat, that serves to preserve society through changes in its environment. The Kaqchikel Maya have stayed alive through volcanic eruptions, through a Spanish conquest, and more recently through globalization and an influx of tourism. Markets can come and go, but Catarina will make her tortillas the same tried-and-true way every day. She has compromised a little bit towards more efficient yet more volatile methods—for example, the electric mill may break, so she would have to hand-grind the flour.

It would be wrong to say that not having money means that you suffer. A lot of the poor communities of the U.S. suffer because they have no culture to hold on to, no resource of age-old wisdom that tells them what to do when things change. Although, we have just read an article that criticizes the view of Mayan culture as a timeless monolith.

I could go on with specific examples—ask me if you are interested—but instead, an episode:

Yesterday we had class at the gardens just north of Panajachel, about an hour's walk from here. Walking back from class I heard a girl calling out from the woods by a bend in the road, “Un poquito agua pura!” I shouted back that I already had some, thanks. She shouted the same thing again, and I shouted basically the same thing back. I could barely make out her figure in the woods. A third time, she yelled for a little agua pura as a gift.

Oh, for you?

Yes!

Ah, sure, but I don't have much.

I am not used to locals asking for things from me. And I had figured that a local wouldn't be shouting for agua pura (available only as bottled water here), seeing as only foreigners needed to drink this. I guess maybe because they call Coca-Cola “agua,” agua pura means drinking water.

This is all I have, I said, giving her my two water bottles, one a plastic one and my metal one. There were probably three gulps between the two. She was about 11 or 12 and had two other older girls with her. I got an idea: I'll give it to you if you let me take a photo, okay?

Sure, the oldest of the three said. “Esta bien.”

After I took the picture, I told the girl, That bottle is yours.

It's mine? -- Yes. -- Thank you.

Where are you all going?

Santa Catarina.

Oh, me too.

Who is your mother? the little one asked. One of the other ones spoke to her in Kaqchikel, then asked me for my name. I told her. Then the little one asked again:

Who is your mother?

My mother? My mother lives in the United States.

No, the mother of your house. So even this little girl knows of the American students who come to her town each summer.

Oh. Catarina. Do you know her?

Wilson? she asked.

Yes, Wilson, her son. Do you know him?

Yes.

Silence followed, about six to ten seconds. I saw that they were collecting wood. I was wondering if I should to ask if they needed help, but decided against it. I thought that I might walk with them, but then realized how ridiculous that idea was: three females with a foreign man was not acceptable. I have been told to avoid even asking women for directions.
Suddenly, the young one said, in English, “Goodbye!”

“Adios!” I replied. Then, I thought I should say the Kaqchikel, and I told them so... but it was on the tip of my tongue, and I couldn't remember, so I was just kind of mumbling some Spanish about how I knew it but forgot, then remembered at last and told them, “Ba'na! Chuakchik!” (Kaqchikel for “thank you” and “see you tomorrow.”) They half-smiled back at me, not returning my salutations and looking generally unimpressed. But all of my homestay family really likes it when I speak Kaqchikel, I thought. I felt kind of stupid.

I am reminded of the German law professor whom I met at a pub in New Zealand last summer. His English was good but very German, as if he was used to reading a lot but not speaking with native English speakers. He was probably in his early thirties and had a wife and children. He was very polite and apparently rich, eager to buy all of us drinks. Even though he was much older, I felt as if he was my equal at most, mostly because of his insecurity about his English. One time he attempted a joke: soccer was on TV, and one of my friends and I were describing to him the different leagues there are. At one point I was going through the different types, saying sing-songily, “Professional, collegiate... mural... intramural....”

“Rural,” he chimed in with a snicker. What a weird joke! I wonder how he learned that word. I still laugh about this sometimes.

On that note, that's enough for now. No, I did not write all this in one sitting.

Chuakchik.

Wilson by the lake

walking on the outskirts of Panajachel

The agua pura gang

Walking back from class from Panajachel to Sta. Catarina

We had class in the botanical gardens one day.

Parts of Panajachel

The non view.

Dr Wallace at the gardens... I don´t know why these are all out of order.

Next four··driving through the altiplano and in between Guatemala City and Lake Atitlan.

a chicken bus