I will admit it: I can’t gift wrap and I can’t cook. I don’t have patience for either one. But I do have patience to hold the camera while someone at SIMAN does. SIMAN is like the Macy’s of Guatemala and just like the Macy’s you are confronted with over-helpfulness on all sides. Sales reps move towards you a little too quickly with small bottles of perfume and fragrant lotions spilling out onto a weary shopper’s hands (for someone allergic to scents I shun fragrance like vampires and the sun). The third floor, however, was a paradigm of efficiency and well-placed helpfulness.
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The Beauty of Gift Wrapping
Posadas Pasadas
In Guatemala you learn to live not knowing what’s around the corner. As we headed home last night we were about to turn on the corner of Seventh Street when we saw the ethereal glow of the statues of Mary and Joseph surrounded by floating candles and propped up on the shoulders of four young boys in the center of a large group moving as one large unit of candlelight, soft chatter and anxious children bursting out in song before they approached the door of a neighbor. It was our first posada in Antigua and quickly I rushed out of the car with my camera.
Posadas are different in many Latin American countries as Rudy writes in AntiguaDailyPhoto back in 2006. Having seen them in Mexico and Spain I was surprised at how quiet and small the posadas here can be, with very little in the way of histrionics or the building of the psycho-drama before the nacimiento when the pequeño Cristo is then added on to all the floats and nativity scenes. This progression is described well here. Perhaps by the time they get to the ninth house the momentum has built up and the fireworks will be ready to roll. I can tell you that from Chiquimula we’ll be adding some noise to the mix.
La Virgen en Chiquimula
The sleepy town of Chiquimula is not so sleepy on La Virgen de Guadalupe Day when La Virgin is paraded around town to much firework fanfare and brought back to La Catedral to be lavished by hundreds of candles placed by her feet by women. Children await her return dressed as inditos y inditas and get pictures taken in front of altars that combine Christmas trees, marimbas, and tortilleria and nativity scenes. You pick the best alter since you’re going to pay to have their pictures taken, but it usually takes a few rounds around the park which you share with food vendors, hundreds of other children and their mothers pulling them along as they inched their necks like geese to find the best one.
My two cousins were decked out in Esquipulas (burgundy striped) and Chiquimula traditional (solid cream colored) linen outfits that matched their clothes and caites, or sandals. Our family are pro’s at this, so we avoided the double circuit, cut to the marimba-Christmas Tree-Nativity hybrid altar, and then we headed to see La Virgen while a quinciañera was going on (I figured the bright orange ruffled dress at the entrance of the church had nothing to do with La Virgen, but who knows).
On the way there we made a pit stop at the rows upon rows of ametralladoras, bombas, quetes, every imaginable illegal firework you only dreamend about lighting up in the United States. Brad’s fingers itched, so we bought one bomba for La Virgen, Q2, and paid our due respects in my aunt’s backyard later that night much to the dismay of the chickens, the dogs, the cats and everything else that crawled out from the courtyard.
The Guatemalan Wall of People at GUA
Mi mama and mi abuelita made it back to Guatemala City this weekend after more than seven years of threatening to come back. I’ve been waiting for this moment since we drove over the La Mesilla border when I could almost imagine the crowd at the airport gate in December. Except, I really had no idea that amid the modernism of the airport there was still that element of total chaos at the door when you’re confronted by a wall of Guatemalan faces, an unbroken blanket of black hair, brown arms waving at you, yelling, whistling, honking, signs dangling crookedly in the air with some pretty bad misspellings.
In cop speak it would be some kind of “functional zoning” to keep the chaos outside the airport doors and give the arriving passengers some time to get it together before the leap. I got my first whiff of it when I returned from visiting mi mama in Florida and it was freefall –I was grateful I didn’t have to pick someone out from the crowd. Brad and I did our usual “hey just park outside the airport and I’ll call you drive-by style” that we’ve perfected by now. I ducked, took cover of flying signs and found a corner where I waited five minutes and slipped right into the car.
I pulled the same move with the folks and it worked well. A lot of it is the timing. So important things to remember:
(1) Have a pre-arranged meeting spot with the arriving guests BEFORE they get on that plane and prepare them for that Leap Into the Guatemalan Wall of People.
(2) Always check the status of the airplane. The last three flights I have either flown on or waited on have been at least 40 minutes late.
(3) If you’re in Antigua and driving, leave 10 minutes right before the plane is scheduled to land and you’ll get there right around the time your arriving guests have exited the plane, made it past customs, picked up their bags and queued up to exit.
(4) Bring food, anything, your guests will love you for it. If not, plan on a pit stop at the Hiper Paiz after the Miraflores Mall because mi mama highly recommends the Q16 buffet. “El pollo con arroz esta bien bueno, mija.”
(5) Have soothing music to make the long drive back. It took us two hours to get back from GUA to Antigua on Dec. 5!
(6) Try to talk some sense into your family so they don’t schedule two flights back to back so you’re stuck in Friday AND Saturday December airport traffic. I dropped the ball on that one.
(7) Pay attention to the door and not the stream of passengers poring out. If you keep your eyes on the door you can make a run inside the iron bar barricade and catch your family member before the GLAZE of confusion sets in and then you have no chance of them noticing you waiting and waving your arms at them.
More on the return of the clan and reverse acculturation in the coming days.
Sometimes a Woman Has to Drive Back Alone From Coban
Guatemala is hard on the system. From Coban I bring back a cold and chills, as if having internalized the rainy, smokey mountain terrain. I tell mi mama that I am like a baby learning the new bacteria, germs and the underbelly; she tells me I have a lot to learn. I drive back alone from Coban listening to Miles Davis and Doc Watson, Blue Ridge Parkway Tennessee style with my two powerbars, my Nalgene water bottle, overly sweet coffee made by las doñas at the church, and almonds. In the seat next to me is my old Nikon with my telefoto lens for the long mountain shots. There is no shoulder the entire way to stop so I stop in the middle of the road with the few roving cows and take shots. Before I left Santa Cruz all twenty of the women in the radio training crowded around my car and asked me where I was headed. I told them: Guatemala City.
“¿Sola?”
Si, en veces hay que hacerlo. They nodded and that was my blessing, mi agua santa. So I slipped out the street parallel to the calle principal for obvious reasons.
It’s a quiet winding wet road with dense fog that lifts slowly to reveal an expanse of green mountains that raise you thousands of feet above the ground. I share the road with the tractor trailers making their way up the coast and the trees, always the trees towering steeply on both sides where children, older women and frail men carry large bundles of wood from a leather strap wrapped around their foreheads. I want to shuttle them to their homes everyday. Every town has speed bumps which make an awesome opportunity for passing trucks; every town has children by the side of the road watching in the distance, their fingers in their mouths or in their pockets, watching the cars go by. I wave and they stare at me, I think of how strange it must look to them to see a stranger waving so I shift to second gear and pass the next truck. I turn on the CB radio and start chatting. I pass another truck with yet another guy staring at me like he’s never seen a woman drive. I honk and inch my way to El Rancho where it’ll all change.
After El Rancho I’m out of the mountains and I’ve entered pocket-marked roads, narrow stretches through the final cerros and trucks as far as the eye can see. I brace up, eat the first powerbar and put the car in third to pass three trucks in a row. I don’t think el porque tener miedo, I just become a driving machine and roll right into Guatemala City’s Saturday mercado day, rush hour periferico transito where la cuesta, the steep drop into Antigua seems like the driveway to our house.
Giving Thanks
Thanksgiving slipped in today, somewhere between the thickening green canyons of the Maya Biosphere Reserve protected lands which marks our entrance into Alta Vera Paz and the colorful plastic plates lined up under the light of one bulb, black beans, scrambled eggs and tortillas, held by young indigenous women laughing and listening to the radio. Tired and hungry they huddle next to each other and keep warm like small birds on a wire. They came down from Peten at three in the morning for the first time to Coban to learn how to do radio in their communities and I put one of my small shortwave radios in their hands and they know every station on AM/FM. The Comppa cooperative trainers also journeyed, 14 hours from Honduras; I picked them in Guatemala City from a youth cultural center in Zone 1, three women, one pregnant, backpacks, a big silver bullet suitcase for their training gear, and fearlessness. I drank my cold coffee and watched them load the Tule and took my orders.
I didn’t sleep last night before because I was terrified of making the leap alone into Guatemala traffic, roads, chaos and utter randomness. I put one foot out before I went to bed and the other foot hung on the wing of the plane just waiting for the leap. I tossed in between. In the morning, I had decided. There was only one way I was going to find out who was winning this one. Pues me tire al aire, a los elementos. I stepped out of the shower and said, “Today, I leave the roost.”
As we climbed higher on a two lane road shared by motorcycles, truckers, pedestrians, the occasional sinkhole and car riddled by 20 or more bullets, along with national police doing random checks, I marveled at the drop off straight down into pine, cedar and raw terrain. I avoided head on collisions at steep curves passing camionetas carrying people, animals or beer and did not think for a moment, until now, of how close we always are to death in Guatemala. “En Guatemala hay que vivir a verga,” performance artist Regina Jose Galindo told me during an interview. A verga. A hard word to translate, but in Guatemala you have to live as if you’re getting screwed.
Now I write from a church cultural center in Coban, a big triangle made of cedar. I’ll sleep in the attic with three other trainers in a room full of bunk beds. One floor below are the girls and tomorrow at six our day begins. But in my head there are only triangles because I am sitting on the left wing of the triangular building, writing on a wooden floor that has seen many feet rest their body’s weight and trust. I think of things coming together in the same way, how things mundane become sacred. How we decide to enter the unknown and to trust others. Because of this I’m thankful for presence, for the small lights in the darkness that guide our way.
Race for Lights
Our neighbors on the corner are decked out. They’ve got the double-stroke blinking lights that drip over the upstairs porch, the reef with a big red bow on the door, the velvety poinsettias lined up exactly in a straight line in the window ledges, and, of course, inside: the notorious pine tree caresses the top of the white ceiling and extends halfway into the living room. Presents have started collecting underneath. At night I snuck over there to marvel at their glory:
It’s contagious because the neighbors next door have a tree in place as well. Is it a coincidence that its the native Guatemalans who have it together enough to get the tree up before Black Friday? An online search for “Where to buy a pine tree in Antigua?” produces all kinds of random things, including Hiper Paiz’s (our Walmart) upcoming Christmas specials. I close the window and sigh. I want a tree farm, I want to plant a tree for the one we kill with one fell swoop with our Salvadorean machete. I want to hike up a mountain to pick the right one and throw it over our shoulders and triumphantly descend with pine needles scraping our skin until a rash becomes our medal. I want my hands to smell of bark. Am I asking for too much? Tomorrow, I will knock on the neighbor’s door and praise their tree and their foresight, but mostly I will ask them where they got it. It’ll be my first Christmas in Guatemala since I was a kid and the tree is the harbinger. How can I just walk past it without paying due respect?
It’s Called Monterrico
Monterrico, originally uploaded by newmaya.
My people are coastal people. They are from the Caribbean side of Guatemala, out by Puerto Barrios, so close to the border with Belize that the saunter is equally slow and unyielding. I tell people in Antigua I was born by the coast because I identify with the blanket of heat, sun and salty air that makes coastal people a little more extroverted, easy going and more open like the flip-flops they wear to embrace the elements.
Today we headed south to Monterrico, where the ocean floor drops off very steeply after only 20- 40 feet, and the endless stretch of black volcanic beach is like moon rock that causes your feet to melt with the heat. The sun blared, the Pacific swelled and the shade was the crook in your arm as you lay your head on your towel. Raw and intense and in many ways it also reminded me of Key West and that 7-mile bridge that lifts you up above water and suddenly plops you back into small stretches of land and marsh. We lasted about an hour and then headed over to Johnny’s for cold batidos, fish tacos and ceviche and watched the ATVs speed by with four or five people sprawled over every inch of it. As the sun set we made our way back drinking a chilled coconut, driving through numerous fires from garbage being burned, car accidents, flares and finally pitch darkness where the outline of Pacaya was a reminder that we were headed inland again.
My Welcome Back Sunset
I’ve been gone for a week from Guatemala and already I missed the laneless Roosevelt drag, the fearless pedesterians zizagging between car pile ups, the “va pues” between sentences, the unbroken green canopy of the elephantom drop leading into Antigua, and, of course, the sunsets. Brad and I stared in awe at this one today:
Tampa Bay Does Free WiFi
Tampa International airport has free WIFI, laptop workstations, and an integrated domestic-international terminal that makes life easy at 5:15 AM. By the time my plane is called, I have downloaded five TED episodes, All Songs Considered, the NY Times Front Page and a few documentaries from the BBC , blogged and done my first fix of online news. I’ll be back in Guate in a couple of hours and have much to write about. Here is my scene of airport paradise (note the boiled eggs, pear, apple and a copy of the New York Times in a plastic bag):