Guatemala: 6 de Julio

Allie and Zach at a nice cafe in Santiago

I wrote this entry around July 6 on my laptop, so this is what I was thinking then. A lot has happened in between now and then, and I will write another update in the next few days about Monterrico, etc.

About five or six nights ago, I was suddenly leaving “next Sunday,” and then we saw everything in this light: the last time for her to wash my clothes, the last time I would go to the hot springs with the boys. You could hear it in people's tones of voice. I felt it when I woke up or when I rode a pickup back into town.

All the business to be taken care of made everything kind of unceremonious; I spent less time doing things with my family because I had to finish all my work, go to Pana and Santiago for presentations, etc. It's like man, I've spent most of my summer here. All of the sudden the next school year is upon me, and I've been doing what, eating tortillas and being a stranger? Living with Indians, dude. Maya! Daniel lived with the Mayans last summer! How was it, man?

And then there are my classmates. All of us have our own lives, none of which really coincide, except maybe Erin's and Darja's (who go to the same school and didn't know that they were both coming here). We all treated each other with this “hey lets be best friends for two months” attitude. Which with this group is friendly, generally honest, respectful.

On top of this, I've just made plans to go to the beach with a friend from the social work program and some friends I made in Panajachel. With programs and flights and scheduled things and returning to the States all kind of jumbled together in my brain, there's little room for sentiments. Allie's birthday is tomorrow: she invited those few of us who will still be around to eat a birthday lunch with her and her mom and her aunt in Santiago. I have not even eaten lunch with the mom and the aunt of some of my best friends from home. “So, you're studying anthropology too? And what was your project on? Yeah Allie has been saying the same thing!”

When you make friends with people, do you consider how long you will be able logistically to be friends? College: four years is a long time, enough time to be friends with someone and then go your separate ways, because most friendships that end do so by just dying out instead of because of different flight times back to the U.S.

What it comes down to is that I have my own life with its own roles and regularities. I am a North American, I have a family and a college, I grew up somewhere. I speak certain language, and the Ordoñezes speak another, and we can live next to each other and watch each other and speak through a third-party language. But they have very little idea of my history or of what life is like for me. This is apparent when they ask about my things, my books or my tape recorder or my computer. And it's probably safe to say something similar to me about them, even though I lived in their home for nearly two months.

Today I was leaving, hanging on to my last pickup (perhaps), my backpack heavy on my shoulders, and I was thinking not about how this was my last time to take in this view or see these people (I have given up trying to savor “last times”) but about what this place was like in the 1970's or something. Were there street vendors? Did people go to Panajachel as often? Did they have pieces of U.S. culture sitting around, like rap music and batman shirts? Did nineteen-year-olds read about the Vietnam War and see pictures of white men in green helmets and hippies at rallies?