13 de Junio

a local taking a break from the festivities in San Antonio

So I`ve been praising the joys and comforts of time off in Panajachel, but I have found that Catarinecos are not without pleasures of their own.

Last night, after a dinner of big blue grilled mushrooms with tomato sauce and tortillas, we got in the temascal. Wearing only my scivvies, I crawled into the four-foot-high brick chamber after Luis and sat on the bench next to him. Except for the glowing embers, I could see nothing. First Luis handed me some kind of good-smelling tree branch, and we patted ourselves with these while he periodically poured water onto hot stones over the embers, making the air thick with steam like a sauna. Then we scratched ourselves all over, you know, to get the dead skin off. Then he drew water out of a cauldron heated by the fire, and we bathed ourselves with this and with soap. From then on it was just like a hot bath sitting on a bench, all steamy and aromatic. “Ah, it's rico, huh?” Luis said a few times. Rico literally means rich, but it's usually used for food, something like delicious, “bien rico,” or like Puerto Rico (“Rich Port”). A temascal is definitely that.

Afterwards, Wilson and Catarina insisted that I rest. It's best to sleep, they said, but to avoid being sick, I should lie down for about ten minutes because the temascal is very hot. It's makes Catarina's head hurt. Either way, it felt really nice with my skin smelling clean with a trace of the sweet incense smell of the firewood.

Luis came into my room and sat down and asked me if my head was okay. I said that it was fine, but he twirled his finger around his head making the loco sign and told me that he felt a little crazy because of the heat. He smiled and laughed some more. “You have anything like this in the United States?” I described to him a sauna, which is in fact very similar, and I told him that I thought those originated in Europe and that they are usually public, not personal. “Ahh, it's so nice, very good for you” he said. “It's like medicine.” He says we'll do it again in ten days.

I want to interject here the fact that Catarina works very hard. She prepares fires for cooking before every meal she makes, which is two to three per day. Last night, she crawled into the temascal to prepare the ashes, unphased by the smoke. Tonight she burnt her hand and sent Wilson to ask me for a bandaid, which doesn't surprise me given that she flips every tortilla by hand and carries the coffee pot with her bare hands when the boys hesitate to touch it.

For dinner we each had a bowl of beans (like kidney beans) with a hard-boiled egg sitting in it. And tortillas and coffee. I would call this meal exactly average, a good indication as to what I'm eating down here. I have lost weight; Dr Wallace commented on this the other day, and the temascal photo might indicate this. Nonetheless, I still feel totally healthy, Mom, even though I do look forward to eating when I get back. (She knows this. We email.)

Sometimes after dinner I go down to the campo with the boys and maybe some of their friends and we play soccer and basketball. It's hard to see, which is part of the fun. I think I should look for a glow-in-the-dark all-purpose ball to get for them as a going-away gift.

Something else. My Spanish has had a huge spike over the last week or so. I've suddenly realized that I rarely feel limited by the language anymore when I speak with my family; I can explain anything I need to or make a joke when I want without thinking about it. After about a month, you become comfortable with a certain word bank and you get used to the way people talk. The most trouble I've had recently was explaining to Luis that I didn't want Catarina to go to the trouble of washing a pair of pants that I had forgotten to give her unless she was already going to wash a load of other clothes as well. After three or four tries, I got the idea across. I guess that's kind of a complex situation. That was maybe five days ago, and thinking about it now, I'd probably have an easier time saying it now than even then.

This morning Luis and the boys and I went to San Antonio's town festival, one town over. It was great for photos. There were more convites, those dancers in the crazy costumes; I have pictures this time. Afterwards, Luis told me that he thought the convites were much better at Santa Catarina's festival. He said it was because they danced better.

I'm continuing my reading binge. I'm kind of on a classics/literature thing right now because I feel like there are a lot of staples that I haven't read, especially being that I'm a literature major, so I read Animal Farm. As a novel, it's okay. The writing is kind of boring, but then again, it's supposed to be a kind of fairy tale, with flat characters and such. The story is good, and it's best if you're into the whole historical context of it, which I know about an average amount about, and this makes the preface and the introduction the most interesting parts. To read today, it's a fun way to get an idea about what happened to communism, which is why it's on junior high reading lists. I'm unenthusiastic about it; I guess Hemingway spoiled me. I really loved For Whom the Bell Tolls. Zach brought The Shining with him and highly recommends it, so I think I will read that next. Stephen King is supposed to be a great writer, so that'll be cool.

This is, by the way, the most consecutive pleasure reading I have done in my entire life. It's always school, and then in the summers it was always summer reading, and then in my spare time I always run to some other kind of stimulation. Here, there are fewer distractions.

As far as my project, I think I'm about on track, although all this talk of pleasure reading makes me feel as though I'm behind. I've been watching things around town a lot, and I always read in at least a semi-public place, which is a solid way for people to get comfortable around me in such a small town and for me to passively observe things. Yesterday, for example, I was just reading in Luis's galeria while he and this really old local guy chatted about something in Kaqchikel. Eventually they must have started talking about me because Luis addressed me in Spanish. We all talked for a bit, and the conversation turned towards languages, and then it turned into a Kaqchikel lesson for me. The old man seemed very eager to teach me Kaqchikel and taught me eye, ear, tooth, hand, nose, and bread. He may come by tomorrow, and I may have another lesson, and I may ask him his name and what he does, etc. The next time, I'll ask him if I can interview him about dogs.

Sitting in Luis's galeria, I run into many more tourists too. Some days there are no groups of tourists, some days there are five or six. Maybe 60% of the tourists that stop by speak English. The most popular are the young backpackers, either large groups of girls, a group of two or three guys, or a couple. The couples never talk to me. My favorites are always the families, I guess because it takes a somewhat entertaining family to travel together. There are the Spanish-speaking families with the women wearing tight, tight pants and usually curly hair-dos, the reserved father with slick hair, the quiet teenager who doesn't want to be there, and the talkative and whiny little kid.

I especially liked one family: a brown-eyed, olive-skinned, bilingual bunch from Florida, originally from Cuba, who talked like they were from New York. They stopped by Luis's on one day and then I ran into them in Panajachel on the next. In order from most to least talkative: the mom's brother who seems sly and slick but interrupts to make a good joke and asks good questions, the mom who would perfectly fit the role of the mom in a family-based sitcom (Home Improvement, Raymond) if you cut her talking speed in half, the late-teens daughter who was just like her mom, the good-natured dad with thin sweaty curly hair, the early-teens boy whiz-kid with glasses, and the aloof late teens-boy with a baseball jersey and basketball shoes. The dad was always like, “Yeah we checked out those ruins too, hey Ronny (whiz kid) what was the name of those ruins?” And then “No last night, last night we stayed over at that town across the lake, hey Ronny what was the name of that town we stayed at last night across the lake?” The dad and the uncle smoke cigarettes together.

Another piece of conversation from them:
“Ohh I really like this painting how much is this?”
“No honey we don't have enough on us right now. We're coming back here tomorrow remember so we can get some more cash from the ATM.”
“No but if I don't buy it now then I won't buy it. We have enough look I've got five-hundred qet-salls right here.”
“No mom remember we still have to pay this guy!” The daughter pointed to a short man in a collared shirt standing in the middle of them who had not said a word and whom I had not noticed at all until then.

Today there were missionaries from Nova Scotia, a handful of men in button-downs and dark pants and shiny shoes who talked to me with welcoming faces. There were one or two women in long, canvassy skirts. We witnessed a short dog fight, and I told them about my project. After bidding me farewell, the leader of the bunch left me with, “Don't let your life go to the dogs. Give it to the Lord Jesus instead.”

Honestly, I have an easy topic. Some students have to seek out certain populations: Sarah has to hunt for families who have been divided by religious conflict, Nicole has to find people who control access to computers. For me, if you live in Santa Catarina, then you know about the dogs. My only problem is finding people willing to have an interview; I have been politely or cleverly turned down more than a few times. It's better if it's someone who at least knows who I am, like the lady at the internet cafe or the bread guy. If not that, then it's good to have an intermediary, which is where Wilson comes in, because he knows a lot of families. Basically, I have no excuse for a shortage of interviews.

In other news... I mentioned in passing at one point that Valerie was sick. She actually had appendicitis and had an operation done down here. Her mom flew down to be with her through the operation, and afterwards they hung out in Panajachel while she recovered. They've since decided it would be best for her to go back home. Best of luck recovering, Valerie. We'll miss you.

To end on a less somber note, it's worth mentioning again how gorgeous Santa Catarina is. Walking back into town from the beach area, I am overcome by the sheer steepness of the mountain wall that holds the pueblo. It's similar to the feeling you get when you stand at the entrance of a skyscraper and look up to the top of it and feel as if you're going to fall over backwards. And what's more, the slope is grassy like a meadow and speckled with trees that grow out of the face at a slanted angle, so that if you concentrate on only this section of it and then suddenly consider the whole view, it throws off your vertical perspective, like a cubist painting.

``Una fota?`` one of them asked, and another told her, ``It`s foto, idiot.`` It`s a good deal for me because all they want is to see themselves on the screen afterwards.

in Santa Catarina

L to R: temascal, me. It`s very short.

San Antonio, on the way to the festival

L to R: local who apparently thinks he is San Antonio, San Antonio

some convites taking a break from dancing

Luis chases away some perros from his tienda. They had been fighting.