At the Xela school that morning I was told to get off the bus at Santo Domingo, but since I had no idea what Santo Domingo looked like I stayed on the Chicken bus too long and went into Colomba, the nearest town. It was all my fault as I didn´t specify to the money collector guy (el ayudante) that I was a gringo who didn´t know where I was going and that he should tell me where to get off. So we came to a mega traffic jam and he got off and I got off too to ask where I should go to get back to Santo Domingo and he told me to stay on the bus and catch a pickup back to the village when we got to Colomba. So I did just that. When we got into town I jumped off the bus and the ayudante jumped on the roof and slid my backpack down to me and I grabbed it and headed over to the pickups and got in the one that was going in my direction. That little wiener voice in my head was saying "This is DANGEROUS!!!" but it was the only way to get back to the school, unless I waited for another bus going back and, what the fuck, I´m in Guatemala and the locals do it like it´s their horribly low-paying job. So off we went and, good God, it was awesome. All those years of wearing a bike helmet while cycling were erased and now I´m not the safe-nick that you once knew. I subsequently rode a pickup 2 more times like a regular Jose-seis-paquete. Unfortunately my corduroy hat fell victim to the pickup gods and flew off my head at 45 MPH. Alas. So I arrived at the school at 1 PM just as my lesson was to start and I was hungry and tired and didn´t know WTF was going on, but I got
a short tour and got on with my lesson. My teacher was this cat named Misael who wasn´t worth shit as a teacher, but he was a nice enough guy and told me that he was told by (a very reliable source) a pickup driver that George Bush is of Jewish descent. I assured him that that was not the case and to tell his piloto buddy that an in-the-know American assured him that GWB is no Jew. I chalked it up to anti semitism/anti evangelicalism because they´re super Zionistic. He also was unaware that WWF wrestling is fake and asked if I believed in UFOs and I said I believe that there are flying objects that are unidentified. I guess things aren´t so transparent in Colomba. After my class I was introduced to the neighborhood and my meal family with whom I would be eating. My mom was 23 year old Elisa who had one eye that was white and somehow useless. She had 4 kids ranging in age from 1y 7m to 9 (she had that one at 14). She lived in a one room tin shack with a bed which was more of a full sized ottoman with a hunter´s jacket print with deer where I assume all 5 of them slept. The floor was the dirt. There was one lightbulb that hung from a cord which was connected to another cord that hung from the ceiling with a piece of wood attached to the plug with a bunch of rusty nails sticking out at eye level on her 9 year old daught
er, Maria. There was also a rack of dished and an armoire. To contrast the furnishings there was a massive stereo system and tv. The stereo was one of those monsters you can buy at Best Buy for $300 with everything in one with massive detachable speakers. I couldn´t figure out what the hell it was doing there until one morning I went for breakfast and was greeted by booming reggaeton. She told me that her husband was working in Houston at some factory where they package stuff including stereos (maybe that´s where she got it?) and that he has been there for 3 years. I don´t think he´s come back at all because it´s real tough to get back in. As soon as I was introduced Maria grabbed my hand and dragged me off to play. The kids were pretty damn filthy and they were all over me and grabbing my hands and climbing on me until I got up and tried to engage them in some game where they wouldn´t be all over me (Hey, look over there!). We played around with neighborhood kids, including this one kid in overalls, about 9 with a slightly retarded look about him who always had one index finger in his nose. I kept my distancia from him. Janelle, the student Elisa´s parent´s house next door had some purell and gave me a squirt before I ate, thank Christ. I brought my own from then on. I went in to eat and sat at a little table with a plastic stool while the kids sat on the bed and watched me eat, curiously. Every meal was served with a stack of fresh tortillas (with some lime on them, the mineral, not the fruit) which tasted a lot better than the ones I was served in Xela, but on a couple of occasions I found a hair or pieces of polyester stuffing in em. That put me off a bit, but hell, this nice lady was the only person who was gonna feed me and she and her kids were alive so I figured her cooking wouldn´t kill me. Generally it was pretty tasty, but the portions were usually small. A lot of dishes had Chicken seasoning in them because that´s not considered to be in violation of vegetarianism. So I ate the shit and grinned instead of asking her to cook without seasoning of any kind. One day she served my a plate of textured vegetable protein to my shock and amazement and I ate it despite the fact that I don´t handle soy well. It was the best meal she mad
e me. Elisa was a very matter of fact when she spoke. She´d say "Cena es bien" to confirm that my dinner was good as if it were a fact rather than a question. Most everything she´d say was a statement. Maria insisted on playing rock, paper, scissors, but seemed to miss the point of the game as she would choose her weapon after the fact everytime. My first dinner Elisa whipped it out and breastfed her littlest child, a girl whose name I can´t rememeber. My favorite kid was 2+ year old Filipe who had a bright personality and like playing with me. He usually had snot running out of his nose and peed on the floor of the house once as I was eating. Not what I wanted to see. Elisa voluntarily told me (matter of factly) that she had 6 sisters living and one dead. I didn´t ask how. There was the body of a rusty hacksaw on the floor and Jose,
4 was playing with it one day as if it were a gun, cocking it and I asked him if it was a gun or a saw and Elisa said it was only a saw, but Jose could have fooled me. Infront of their shack was a cemet wash bin with a reservoire and scrubbing tubs on either side which were used to do the dishes. There were turkeys and ducks hanging out in and around their house. Their neighbor had a bull hanging out under a tin leanto for what purpose I did not figure out. Elisa had a cell phone to call her husband. I had a really tough time making conversation with Elisa and Maria. "So, what do you want to be when you grow up? 80% unemployed without hope?" Somehow I don´t think astronaut or president are usual responses round those there parts. Do desperately poor Guatemaltecos have asperations, hopes, and dreams. We don´t know...frankly we don´t care. Or something like that. I didn´t want to impose my über-privilaged norms on them by asking such a Q so I abstained. With Elisa I had nothing to talk about except to ask her questions about things that were new to me, but once I understood that which I didn´t I wasn´t about to ask her how her sister died or what it was like to get knocked up at 13. It´s hard to talk about anything with someone from such a different background without risking alienating them. Or maybe that´s because I don´t know a damn thing about relating to people who aren´t relatively shitting money.The school the kids of the barrio went to was sponsored by Tigo, one of 3 cell phone companies available in Guatemala (the others are Claro and Movistar). When I say sponsored by I mean the entire structure
was painted Tigo-blue and had giant Tigo ads/logos all over.Across the street from the shack was the street´s only tienda and I bought some cookies one day and the package said they were "enrobed in chocolate." I thought it very strange to use such a word to describe the way the cookies were coated in chocolate, especially since they weren´t really enrobed, but coated on one side. Even so, that kind of fancy pants word-use could only have been to convince any English-speaking person that they were especially decadent cookies worthy of such queer word usage and worthy of purchase.
I left the mountain school on friday morning skipping my class because it was useless and I wanted to get to Lago Atitlan as early as possible and here I am and I left in such a hurry that I forgot my SHOES!!! I´ll be walking around in my hiking boots for a while. On the bus from the school to Xela this dude sat behind me and asked if I was American in good English and told me that he left Guatemala when he was 5 and moved back 5 years ago when he was 27 to work his mom´s land growing grass for cattle. He was on his way to Xela to take some class that wo
uld give him a diploma (he lost his HS 
one from the US) so that he could be a tour guide in the Capital. He had resident status in the US and I was ethnocentrically confused as to why he had returned, but I guess he had a hell of an up on the rest of his countryfolk able to go back to the US on a whim to see his P&M in Tucson. He was surprised that I was travelling alone becuase he always see gringos travelling in pairs or groups. I have to say the the act of travelling alone is not my cup of tea eventhough I can do whatever I want. When he got off he wished me happy travels and told me to be safe.I ate the best seitan of my life in Panajachel.
Why are there no bands like this in Chicago?
Mago de Oz
Put that in your (oh, this is a bit of a stretch) corrugated tin-roof skull-bong and smoke it.
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