In the morning I sit in the sun and read and listen to my surroundings, waiting for my friend to wake. There is a bird here with a loud whistle – I have heard it once or twice in Antigua, too – and there are many other birds around in the trees and on the power lines overhead. The church not far from her house begins to boom out its morning sermon and there is a lot of choral singing. A little boy - playing or working on the roof of his house, visible behind hers - keeps calling to his brother. There are even the loud pops of occasional bombas (firecrackers.) For an idyllic place, it seems rather noisy this Sunday morning. When she finally joins me we talk about that – I’ve referred to it before as Imperfect Perfection. But we also talk about it in terms of the spiritual exercise we both follow – that you have to be able to Do Your Thing no matter what’s going on around you, and resisting some annoyance or intrusion only increases the hold it has on you. Essentially one has to accept Guatemala (and anywhere else) for what it is…..and continue to go your way and do what you do, which may or may not affect your surroundings. We talk about her struggles building this place over the years (she no sooner got a huge long retraining wall built around the back part of the property – hiring many men from the community to help her – than Hurricane Stan came along, the water poured off the newly constructed soccer field a ways above her house, and her wall came tumbling down - for instance) and how she feels that a house built in Norway (which she has done) would last a hundred years, but because of the heat and humidity in Guatemala nothing lasts more than ten years. Already one wall of one house is cracked because the foundation has settled, two large trees with roots under the house are buckling the porch, etc. etc. She has become somewhat discouraged, especially after she discovered that some workmen she had trusted were cheating her. So we talk about all this, about creativity, about our experiences with and because of the latihan, and about our relationships with our parents and with our children, as the sun rises in the sky and eventually the inevitable clouds begin to gather. We decide to have some late breakfast before I leave, and she makes me some scrambled eggs with veggies cooked in, and spreads on top of it some sort of red-orange “caviar” out of a toothpaste-type tube she had brought from Norway, made of codfish roe; not really caviar, but a little salty and very delicious. Then about two o’clock we set off to walk me to the truck stop so that I can return to Pana in good time for my shuttle to Antigua, and sort of by surprise she decides to go to Pana for the afternoon, too. I am a little glad that she is with me, as this second pickup has no framework around us (some have a sort of peaked roof made of pipe, which I presume is covered with a tarp when it rains) and therefore there is nothing to hold onto. There are just two low benches down each side, and when the truck starts up it is going twice as fast as the first truck – (i.e downhill) – and I am terrified….each twist and turn of the road at this speed seems to threaten to toss me over the side. I have to just hang on tight to the edge of the truck and look straight ahead into the bottom of the truck so I won’t be as aware of the speed. She suggests I look out at the lovely view toward the lake, but then sees I am pretty tense and says, “Just breathe.” Well, I AM “just breathing” and have gone back to my former mind-set of just giving myself over to God, [the back of the Guate chickenbuses are usually painted with signs like “Cuidame Senor” – Take care of me, Lord] but I wasn’t about to look down at the lake. I decide that if I come back again, and I imagine I will, I’m going to take the INSIDE side of the truck on the way down, and maybe even take the position of one of the little girls in this truck, with my back up against the window. So THIS ride isn’t too fun, at least until we get most of the way down the mountain side so I can enjoy the vistas again (usually I love riding in the back of a truck.)
Then we walk back into crowded Pana, in the throes of their big weekend fiesta (replete with carnival rides and shooting galleries.) We walk down the stalls of bagged bagels (unfortunately vendedores here don’t seem to have learned the basic principles of good business and have set all their stalls out one after another with the same items, whether textiles and crafts or food, which of course undercuts prices and bores the customers.) I find some wonderful fresh homemade bagged potato chips, she gets some hard chunks of almonds drenched in molasses, and on we go thru the maze of streets, looking for the hotel where I am supposed to meet my shuttle. Of course I see 10,000 textiles and carved items and handbags and so forth that I would like to buy, but I am not in the money-spending mode these days. After locating the shuttle, we walk down to the lake, and see that gorgeous sparkling blue entity stretching out for miles and miles, with a few people bathing themselves on the water’s edge below us, replete with soap, and then swimming, and unfortunately the usual flotsam in the grass below us, ten feet from the water. You do see signs around about putting your trash where it belongs, but noone seems to pay attention – but at least that’s a start. We decide to eat, since it could be seven pm before I get home; but unfortunately choose an Americanized restaurant because it is across the street from my shuttle, and get a not-great meal, but for only $6. At the restaurant is a whole clutch of young Norwegian women, whom she says – after a brief conversation with them – are going to Spanish school in Antigua and starting to volunteer in a kindergarten; something set up by their school. Then my shuttle comes, I say goodbye for now to her, and I have another opportunity to spend three very close hours with nine strangers.
The girl next to me and I start talking; she is of course going to Spanish school in Antigua and starts tomorrow volunteering in a hospital here where she says babies with cleft palates whose parents can’t afford to take care of them stay until they are three months old and can have the operation! With all my concerns about the importance of touch and about early bonding and it’s affect on later behavior (proclivity to violence, inability to feel empathy, or have good relationships, etc.,) you can imagine how this sounds to me. On the shuttle TO Pana, a girl had mentioned that she had taken a tour of this hospital and that “babies” (she didn’t say what sort or what problem they were in the hospital for) are kept in sort of cages…..! I have been thinking off-handedly about going in to volunteer to hold babies, as volunteers do in hospitals in the US for extra care, but having heard these stories I am determined to go to the hospital this week to learn what I can about volunteering with them until my Spanish gets better. This second shuttle driver is younger and more reckless than my teacher’s husband, (although at least all these shuttles are enclosed vans – usually appearing and sounding in good mechanical order): at one point he is passing busses on a curve, and I make a comment to the other passengers in the back with me, and a young man sitting behind me speaks up to the “chauffeur” in perfect Spanish asking him not to pass on curves and to take care of his passengers. When the guy doesn’t respond, the young man says, “Did you hear me?” and the driver slows down. The hippie guy sitting directly behind me says to the other man that he has been all over C. America and thinks this is the most dangerous road – way worse than Chiapas. I had heard in that parts of Mexico the drivers are crazy and always thought I couldn’t go there on a bus because of that – now I know I’ve already been through the worst!! Although I would NOT do this trip on a chicken bus. Those guys are insane!As you travel you see wrecked and ruined buses over the edge of the cliffs. With all of these “possible danger” issues, however, my feeling is that if I’m not willing to take these occasional risks…………what then? Stay in my house all my life? I will be reasonably cautious, por supuesto! But some risks are necessary to see this incredibly beautiful country and to learn more. All along the highway on my way home are families in the beautiful reds and blues against black or indigo of the traditional clothing, walking back miles and miles from the regional markets. Mothers with wrapped babies, small children, old men…..walking,walking, chatting with each other, carrying things. Such amazingly strong and resilient people!
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