6/20/01
Hello from a lost lamb in a foreign land.
Time to tell the last part of my Guatemalan trip before it’s washed away like the amoebas that I carried home in my stomach. After being chased by monkeys I went back to the island town of Flores and met up with Sarah and Michelle. Their trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal only became frightening when a Mayan man read their palms and declared that they had a short life ahead of them. The man invited them into the secret society of the Maya only to find out that Sarah and Michelle already know many things about the religion. He didn’t understand how they could already know insider information about the religion, and he had no idea that some people in the US have been practicing the Mayan religion-oddities of the information age.
Michelle and I decided to head for Honduras to find my friend Laura who is working for Peace Corps, and fearless Sarah chose to strike out on her own. Michelle and I took a miserable all night bus trip back to Guatemala City and then failed to find a bus to Honduras. Wanting to get out of Guatemala City as fast as possible, we caught a bus towards Lake Atitlan, a lake in the Guatemala Highlands. I planned to spend a week at a Spanish school located along the lake.
While climbing towards Lake Atitlan a new world emerged. We wound around steep hillsides where every bit of land was cultivated, forming a hand-sewn quilt of crops: patches of corn, stitches of onion, beans, and tomato. The indigenous people could be seen farming in their traditional clothes of reds, yellows, green, and blues. The men with their white cowboy hats and the women dressed in their long skirts. The indigenous Guatemalans appear to be a very hardworking people with a pattern of their own that they fight to preserve…resisting assimilation…resisting becoming one fallow field, one color, one language. I saw an old man who smiled with wrinkles under his eyes. He wore red and green striped pants, a bright multi-colored shirt, and a white cowboy hat. He walked past me along a cobblestone street with a thick bound bundle of long white lilies and orange gladiolas draped over his shoulder. I also saw and eighty-year-old man stooped over and walking forward with three twenty pound rocks on his back. With his ant-like strength and endurance, he didn’t seem to notice the weight.
I stayed in San Pedro, a little village next to Lake Atitlan, for a week and attended language school. The lake fills an enormous caldera and is surrounded by three volcanic peaks. It is life for the people. Early in the morning and in the afternoons, the villagers can be seen bathing and washing their clothes along the lakeshore. Water is pumped form the lake to irrigate the terraced lakeside gardens of chive, corn, beans, and Santo lilies. Come mid-afternoon, Michelle and I would take a footpath through the towering corn and onto the lake where we would bathe aside the locals.
We stayed with a Guatemalan family of eighteen while attending language school. The abuela of the house had the energy of a young filly and ran around taking care of four grandchildren during the day, cooking for us, and running a small restaurant. The unfortunate part of our home stay was the toilet, which was something you’d expect to find in a third world prison. This might have been tolerable had Montezuma not taken serious revenge. While suffering from Montezuma, I also came down with a fever. When I went to the pharmacy to get medicine for my fever, I could see a mix of indigenous and western culture. The pharmacy contained aspirins and western medicines on one wall as well as jars of herbs lining another wall. I asked the attendant if she had any herbal remedy for a fever. She disappeared from the store and came back with a bowel of freshly cut assorted herbs. She offered to boil them down to make a tea that would heal me. I accepted, she left again, and then came back 10 minutes later with a hot tea made from the herbs.
My other favorite cultural interest came when I was at a restaurant and asked for a doggy bag. The woman wrapped my leftovers in a palm leaf.
At my language school my private teacher, Tosho, set me straight on the main points of Guatemalan history. This was very important because I had previously been getting my information from a ten-year old guidebook and the guidebook was written while Guatemala was still having a civil war. No wonder I was so scared. He explained that during the civil war the guerrillas fought for the rights of the indigenous people who make up seventy percent of the countries population. They were fighting for equal rights to health care, education, and the right to speak their language, and preserve their culture. According to Tosho it was a dark time with no future, but now, he says, “ A future is possible.” The indigenous are now allowed to preserve their culture and have better access to education and health care. However, there is terrible corruption in the government and he believes that it’s getting worse. He explained how the people work so very hard for so little money and this leads to banditos and corruption. He doesn’t excuse it, but explained part of the reason why it exists.
I met a Swiss man who had a great bandito story. He and his friend had decided to hike up a volcano without a guide. They tell tourists not to hike in Guatemala without a guide, because the chances are high that you’ll be robbed. He said that at the top of the mountain two men jumped out of the bushes with masks on. One had a machete and the other had a gun. The banditos robbed them of everything except for bus fair back to town.
A real danger is riding the funky chicken buses. Guatemalans sometimes cross themselves before entering the buses. The macho driver barrels down the road trying to pass as often as possible. The man in the cockpit assists the driver by leaning out of the open door of the bus and trying to peer around the upcoming corner to see if the bus will hit oncoming traffic. Sometimes the assistant miscalculates and while rounding a corner on two wheels, the bus suddenly swerves back to its side of the road, barely missing oncoming traffic.
The last thing that I can say about Guatemala is that it will make a shop-aholic out of any tight-pursed penny pincher. On Sundays the artisans come down out of the hills carrying their goods and sell them in street markets. Incense wafts through the air of the market. Fresh vegetables, herbs, and flowers are interlaced between indigenous clothing and crafts. Most things are handmade and have the bright colors and intricate designs of the indigenous people. For better or worse, everything is astoundingly cheap. Sarah, Michelle, and I spent every last penny we had. I even missed my bus to the airport because I had to run back and get one more thing from the market. Guatemala was not the most comfortable country to travel in, but I’ve been left with rich memories and some great handmade blankets. Hope all is well in the US of A,
Laura
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