The dispatch from El Cuartito
I have now been living in Xela for close to six weeks and am more or less getting accustomed to the rhythm of life here…suffering daily linguistic breakdowns, perfecting my sign language (”Quisiera algunas…{frantic hand gesture toward object of desire}, por favor? No…no…este, alli!”), searching in vain for clothes and shoes that fit (this is a country of tiny people), the daily rainstorms, and getting used to sights that used to seem somewhat whimsical, like watching two girls in K’iche dress racing up a dirt road on their motorcycle, the one in back balancing a basket of plantains on her head.
Despite the State Department website’s hand-wringing over the Honduran coup, H1N1, and gang violence in Guatemala City, I have felt as safe here as I do in any city, provided there are enough people around to hear me let loose with my favorite Peruvian curse (thanks, Jorge) when a particularly lovestricken Guatemalteco attempts to fondle and/or whisper sweet nothings in my ear (”Delicioso,” purred a cross-eyed muchacho one day, as he led his wife and two children into a tienda across the street). When I produced my passport and one-way ticket at the counter in the St. Louis airport, the agent, a man probably close to my father’s age, patted my hand and said with undisguised concern in his voice, “You be careful now.” I don’t want to structure my life around the fear of dismemberment or rape, but I also know the statistics and don’t want to be foolish. So after changing my money in Miami ($180=1185Q, approximately), I went to the bathroom and stashed wads of crisp new Quetzales all over my person. Bra: 50Q apiece. Shoes: 400Q apiece. Pocket: 10Q. And so forth. My discretion was shot to hell when, upon arrival in Xela, I dropped 350Q on the ground while handing a wad of sweaty bills to my taxi driver. He grandly picked them up for me. I grandly stuffed them back into my underwear.
Living here has produced a strange combination of feelings both invigorating and exhausting. By all accounts tradition and a strong sense of sur-occidental nationalism (Quetzaltenango is the onetime capitol of Central America) are the strongest here, in the western highlands of the country. The absence of development ensures a breathtaking and unspoiled countryside where cell phones are more common than toilets in some of the villages, and decommissioned school buses from the U.S. belch diesel fumes into the crisp mountain air as they tear down narrow gravel byways. People reuse everything out of necessity (I have seen many a wall reinforced with plastic soda bottles bound tightly together), but since trash collection is an expensive service for which most people lack the income, roadside ditches littered with refuse and children who throw their cookie wrappers on the ground automatically are the norm. Women engage in the same backbreaking work as men, lugging enormous carts or baskets of vegetables to markets and cultivating maize on plots of land so steep you can practically bite the ground in front of you, but they continue their status as second- or third-class citizens, suffering domestic violence, total economic dependence on their husbands, and strict social mores governing their sexual and reproductive lives.
Inside Xela, which is about as cosmopolitan as one can get in Guatemala outside the capitol, ladinos and Mayans co-exist or at least cross paths fairly seamlessly in certain parts of the city. During the Feria on September 15, Guatemala’s Dia de Independencia to celebrate their convoluted not-really-a-victory from Spain in 1821, teenagers groped and kissed and played Wack-A-Mole whether they were boys in heavily cologned hip hop clothes or girls in modest flowered tunics and ankle-length woven skirts symbolizing the earth and feminine energy. I don’t know enough–about the culture, about the language, about anything–to ascertain whether there is social stigma or generational tension between the ladino kids and their more “modern” ways and those of Mayan heritage or rural backgrounds whose older relatives may have died as a result of the class and ethnic strife during Guatemala’s 30-year civil war.
I live and work in Zona 1, a ten-minute walk from the neoclassical Parque Central and a dizzying variety of shops, gringo-oriented bars and restaurants, banks, and internet cafes. My job involves a hodgepodge of responsibilities that I share with another Northern/Western coordinator, including but not limited to the following: supervising and/or babysitting the rotating crop of volunteers who come to our center to study Spanish and staff our service projects while doing so; grantgetting; creating and developing programming for the kids and their families who receive services from us; coming up with fundraising ideas here and abroad, and reviewing volunteer applications daily, assuming the internet in our office works. And somehow, learning enough Spanish to communicate with my boss and the language instructors. By way of studying I have been fagging through the first Harry Potter book with limited success (one chapter down, 37 more to go).
However, the biggest adjustment required of me so far is not really the language, the altitude, the shitty beer and comida tipical, the non-sidewalks and ever-present, open-mouthed staring (people will unabashedly stroke my arm and ask if my tattoo is a painting). It’s navigating this place all on my own, more or less, with some occasional support from my two Western coworkers (one Canadian, one Austrian): getting lost, tripping over mangy street dogs and petite abuelitas, trying and failing to get the vendors at the market to come down on the price of wormy avocados, and feeling completely isolated or insulated from the outside world–whatever that means. There is a strange peace about being able to feel totally alone yet not quite lonely in a place where you will always be the stranger.*
*Sorry, I’ve also been rereading Camus by way of rewarding myself for the aforementioned fagging through Chapter 1 of “The Philosopher’s Stone.”
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September 21st, 2009 at 11:43 pm
i got in trouble for saying ‘America’ instead of Estados Unidos. Because they’re American and in America too.
I’m super-jealous… you’re doing such great stuff!!