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Guatemala

I've linked to photos in the below as appropriate, but to view all of them, visit my flickr site for photos tagged with Guatemala.

We came to Guatemala to spend time with some of Eric’s friends from his landscaping job who had spent several years in Kansas but had recently gone back. The five brothers bought a coffee plantation with the money they had saved and were now reportedly living a comfortable middle class Guatemalan life. Eric was excited to see them again and understand how their culture drove some of the unique attitudes and personalities he had grown to love about the brothers.

I was here mostly for the ride and adventure of it all, and to see the Festival of the Black Christ, the largest religious pilgrimage in Central America. Various Internet accounts of the festival put the number of people in a wide margin of between 20,000 and 250,000 who descend on the small town of Esquipulas to view a slightly smaller-than-life black wooden Christ sculpture. The festival attracts everyone from wealthy religious tourists from Mexico City to the Mayan indigenous people who come by foot or crammed bus.

We heard the Guatemalan airport was large and hectic, but when we arrived it was to a smallish, dimly lit room. Before we could get our bearings we were ushered through a bunker-like concrete hallway that angled downward. It got so narrow our elbows were touching the sides. It finally opened up to a wide baggage claim area with other passengers and a welcoming crowd of eight xylophone players. They wore a uniform of sorts – short-sleeved button downs with matching ties, and were grimacing thru their performance like they were factory workers churning out cog wheels. It was a very easy flight in, only 2.5 hours from Kansas City to Houston, then a connecting flight for another two hours to Guatemala City.

Jorge, his girlfriend Ophelia, a very quiet sister (after spending a week with all of them, we never caught her name), and brother Wilbur, along with two drivers, picked us up in a rented van. We drove thru Guatemala City to the edge of town and stopped for lunch at a fast food chicken place that would become pretty familiar to us, Campero. The city is a weird chaos of people and cars and trucks that sprawls for miles and miles in all directions. Security guards are posted at most gas stations and restaurants with gleaming clean shotguns on shoulder straps. We could see the rooftops of large Spanish-style houses peeking out from 20 foot concrete walls while corrugated metal shacks and blue tarps were leaned against them. Cows, horses, dogs, chickens, and small children roamed freely, foraging in piles of garbage that seemed to be everywhere.

We drove about four hours, stopping a few times for cigarettes and Cokes. I'm fairly certain the major source of employment for Guatemalans is the production of concrete, which made sense given that not once did we see a building made of wood. Literally every few hundred yards the concrete industry had an outpost. Men covered head-to-toe in white dust were hacking at the sides of the hills with pick axes and shoveling piles of rock into makeshift screens, while others poured concrete into block molds, and still others hauled heavy-looking bags of the stuff into the backs of trailers and pickups and semis.

An hour outside the city we finally began to see some vegetation. Corn grew precariously on the sides of hills that were 60 and 70 degree angles. I don’t see how you'd be able to climb them on all fours, much less conduct a harvest. We drove by lemon and orange groves and a few tobacco fields. A family spread coffee beans across the parking lot of a deserted gas station to dry them in the sun.

We arrived in Esquipulas at about 6pm and found a clean hotel right across from the Basilica. The owner promised Jorge she would look out for us and the family departed. The room was about 10x15 with two twin beds and no furniture. It reminded me of a college dorm room more than any hotel room, but it was habitaciones con bano privado - a room with a private bathroom - which was a huge luxury here. I was actually kind of surprised at the expense of the hotel - about $80 a night, certainly not the 3rd world sort of deal I was expecting, but I was happy to pay it nonetheless. Later in the week I saw guests of other hotels in town sitting on the curb brushing their teeth and using a makeshift bathroom of sheet metal leaning against the hotel alley wall.

We stayed on the top floor of the two story hotel, but saw that the stairway continued up to the roof. We climbed up to a nice view of the mountains to one side and the Basilica across the street. The roof was flat and concrete but was studded in exposed metal rebar. Like all the buildings we saw, several feet of rebar was left exposed in case they wanted to add another floor at some point. An alternate explanation I heard after I got back was that property taxes were gathered on only completed buildings, so there was a pretty good disincentive to make a building look done.

The city itself was gearing up the big festival. The streets were crowded with vendors for six or eight blocks around the Basilica. Almost all of it is crappy knock-offs of sports jerseys, t-shirts, CDs, shoes, handbags, and religious artifacts like candles and framed portraits of Jesus. In front of the tarped booths food vendors pushed for space with piles of fresh fruits and hand squeezers making juice drinks, large flat grills cooking pork, beef, and chicken, deep-welled woks filled with frying French fries, and taco stands with fresh tortillas cooking directly on burning coals. Loud Latin hip hop played constantly, mixing with the bullhorns of the vendors proclaiming their variety, quality, and value. Trucks and taxis angled for position with people walking the cramped streets and generally had their own music playing, too, either the same hip hop or the traditional Latin music that sounds like polka. All music in Guatemala seems to have just one volume: really stinkin' loud.

The Basilica is clearly the center of the town and all the activity. Its immaculate white, towering walls are a stark contrast to the surrounding area. A pleasant little park is in the front filled with trees and walkways. We were surprised at how dark and intimidating the inside was, though, with only a few dim florescent bulbs pointing upward in a few places. The soot from thousands upon thousands of candles made the walls and arched ceiling black to the eye and grimy to the touch. A few oil paintings hang on the walls, but were so blackened we could barely make out a few lines of paint here and there. It was several days until the festival really began, but already a few groups of pilgrims were on their knees praying to the sculpture at the far end of the church. Smaller alters were lined up on the sides with a few dozen candles surrounding them.

Yesterday was great. Jorge picked us up and we drove out to the small town he lived in. I never really saw a town, per se – we turned onto a dirt road and after a few minutes Jorge proclaimed we were in San Francisco as we began climbing briskly into the mountains.

We visited a few of Eric’s friend’s houses and were a bit surprised at their condition. No one here seems to bother with trash cans - plastic bottles and chip wrappers layered the ground and piled up in ditches on the side of the road. All the houses are concrete block constructions, and the nicer ones have a concrete-based plaster finish, both inside and out. The rooms are very small and most don’t have doors - even front doors - or any furniture other than a bed.

When we entered a house, usually a woman would shuffle off to retrieve a stack of plastic chairs for us to sit on. Jorge’s house had the only couch I saw the entire trip in front of a small TV with a VCR/ DVD player. They only had electricity from a generator for 2-3 hours a day, so I had no idea how they kept food without refrigeration. Most of the families still had sons in the United States working, and Eric had brought gifts from them of baby blankets, shoes, stuffed toys, and photos, making him an instant local celebrity.

Later we drove up further into the coffee plantations on roads that seemed to be not much more than trails. It was simply amazing. Coffee grows in almost every square inch possible, like the corn we had seen earlier. To us it seemed like Jorge and his brothers owned the entire mountain. They said if we had come in the morning, the clouds and mist would have made it impossible to see more than ten feet in front of us.

The indigenous workers they employed were spread out in groups picking the coffee berries as fast as they could. Jorge explained they paid about 6 quetzals, or about 80 cents, for every bucket they picked, plus free food and boarding for them and their families during the picking season. After they processed and dried the coffee beans, they stood to make about $10 for that same bucket. Wilbur excused himself to begin preparing the worker’s food for the day, some rice, tortillas, and soup.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost – while in the U.S., these brothers were considered the lowest class citizens possible, illegal immigrants working long, hard hours in the yards of wealthy Americans. But they saved every penny they made, and came back here to buy up huge swaths of land and employ dozens of day laborers themselves.

I was happy and relieved to find that Eric spoke much more fluent Spanish than he had given himself credit for in the U.S. and could get us around with very little problem. Arriving in Guatemala I expected that since the guys we were visiting had all lived in the states for 3 to 6 years apiece, they would know a little English and together with my one semester of 9th grade Spanish, we could carry on at least rudimentary conversations. Now that I’m here I realize I clearly overestimated both my Spanish and their English abilities. None of them can say my name, so we came up with a new one for me, 'Juan Diego.' When in groups I smile and nod a lot. To pass the time while the grownups talk, I entertain all the children outside with my digital camera. They had never seen anything like it and crowded around after each picture to see themselves on the little TV in my hand.

At about 5pm we headed back to Esquipulas with Jorge, his girlfriend Ophelia, and her six year old son Carlos and another young niece I never caught the name of. Everyone drives 4x4 pickup trucks here, so all the boys climbed in the back. Along the way we stopped and picked up two more teenagers walking down the highway. I think the rule in these parts is that if you had room, you were obligated to stop. We came up to a woman walking on the road and Jorge stopped to introduce us to the only American he knew living in the area, a woman doctor from San Francisco, USA.

We found a place to eat and ordered some tacos. Eric and I were a bit nervous about the preparation – the cook stood behind a grill with a large beehive-looking mass of compressed layers of pork and beef hung from a string above it. As we called out our orders – there was only one thing on the menu – he carved off shavings from it to cook and continually slice into smaller bits. He heated up a double layer of small tortillas, scooped a pile of meat onto them, and put a spoonful of diced onion and cilantro on top. On the table was a choice of an avocado-based sauce or a Chile hot sauce. It was by far the best meal we had the entire trip, and since we didn’t get sick afterward, we ended up coming back for two or three more meals later in the week.

Another guy who had worked for Eric in the states came wandering up to join us for dinner. Renee was immediately and obviously different from the others I had met – very outgoing and loud, slapping backs and waving to honking motorcycles and trucks filled with friends passing by and grinning widely, revealing his gold-capped teeth.

An aside on dental hygiene: almost all the Guatemalans here had missing teeth or they were capped in silver or gold. Jorge had recently had all his upper front teeth taken out, making his already soft-spoken muttering hard to understand. Wilbur had a set of false teeth that had his initials W.A.P. embedded in gold. I tried to get him to smile for a picture of them, but I think he was self-conscious I was making fun of him. While I saw several dentist offices in Esquipulas, I think they were largely used for post-problem sorts of issues, pulling teeth and implanting metal.

Renee wore a large cowboy hat and matching belt buckle with his name on it, and shockingly, a large hand gun in a holster attached to his belt. He proudly showed us his license and said it entitled him to wear up to three more guns. Renee was the first person to try speaking English to me, asking if I enjoyed it here and if the hotel had hot water. His gesture was very much appreciated.

He tried to get us to go to a bar where he knew some prostitutes would be, saying they cost only $5. After telling him I wasn't really interested, he said he knew another bar where they were much, much prettier and cost $7, maybe. He was clown and a lady’s man and I liked him instantly, but I didn't’t necessarily trust him.

After dinner we walked to the carnival. It was pretty similar to other carnivals I had been to – a Ferris wheel, carousels, bumper cars, and rows of games, though everyone was a lot more enthusiastic about it being an event than back home. Hundreds of people lined the bumper cars pointing and laughing and jostling for a seat when the music stopped, like a game of frenzied musical chairs. The indigenous Mayan people, with their distinctive round facial and body features and traditionally colored clothing, stood out but were clearly enjoying the spectacle of the carnival, too, jumping on to the little roller coasters as quickly as the others.

Later in the night a man selling bottles of cologne and perfume grabbed Eric and started talking to him. Eric, being Eric, didn't’t want to be impolite. We all stood a bit away and laughed as we waited for the sales pitch to end. After a few minutes he shoved the cologne in Eric’s hand and refused to take it back. The man started crying and dropped to his knees, tugging on Eric’s shirt. It became not so funny anymore. Ophelia got her phone out to call her brother, Renee. Jorge stepped in and pushed the man away as I grabbed Eric and walked fast in the other direction. He kept at it, though, catching up to us and grabbing Eric’s shoulder hard.

I pulled him off and saw that we had begun to make quite a spectacle. A food vendor got out of his booth and shouted to watch out for the gringos, which was really confusing and reminded me of a passage from the Lonely Planet guide I read on the way over where a tourist was killed a few years ago in Guatemala after a mob thought he was trying to steal a child. Finally the man’s sales partner showed up to corral his friend and apologize, saying they were both drunk. Thank God it had been resolved before the gun-toting Renee showed up. Eric later translated for me that the man was desperate and wanted us to take him back with us to the United States.

I haven’t had a chance to write in a few days. On Friday Eric and I were on our own. Renee said he would come by at three or four to take us out to meet a few of his girlfriends, but we knew him to be unreliable and didn't’t plan on him showing up. That’s the way most things operate here – you don’t so much make firm plans with people, but discuss things in terms of ideas. Sometimes everyone follows through with an idea, other times one person might but the others don’t, but no one gets mad if things don’t work out.

We goofed around most of the day in the shops buying cheap knock off soccer jerseys and other trinkets to take back home. We met another American wandering around the Basilica taking pictures with a camera sporting a huge zoom lens. She was from Colorado but had been touring Central America alone on a ‘personal project’ to document religious pilgrimages and it was her third time here. She told us to be careful of pickpockets – last year a group had swarmed around her, slicing her bag open with a razor blade and emptying the contents before she knew it. After that experience, she had double-stitched all the seams of her side bag and had reinforced the sides with cardboard.

A few hours later, we ran into two women from Scotland of all places. They cut the conversation short though, saying they had some tequila and beer to drink, and disappeared into the crowd. I think the kind of people you meet here in Esquipulas are off the beaten tourist trails on purpose and aren’t real interested in making small talk with other English-speaking people.

Later we found a pool hall to relax in and have a few beers. We challenged some high school boys at another table to a game and were introduced to a new game where you could hit either the high numbered ball or the lowest numbered ball. It was really confusing for them to try to explain it to us. Eric had an easy time with Spanish so long as people spoke slowly and simply, but when we got into a group of locals all talking over one another, it became pretty difficult to keep up. After being smashed in the new game, we took a few pics of our new young friends and headed out. One of them followed saying he drove a taxi and offered to take us around town. All the taxis here are weird three-wheeled contraptions, a mix of a motorcycle and rickshaw. Most had nicknames decaled across their windshields and after a few days I started becoming familiar with them – Bugs Bunny, Alberto, Jaime, Poison, El Pollo, etc.

Eric talked at length with the driver after he asked about work possibilities in the U.S. For some reason it was difficult for Guatemalans to obtain legal work permits to the U.S., much more difficult than for Mexicans or Hondurans, despite the fact that one in ten Guatemalans now live in the U.S. If he was a hard worker and committed, he could earn $80-90 a day in the U.S., compared to the $15 he made as a cab driver here. If he had to enter the country illegally, he would have to pay for a coyote to smuggle him across Mexico and thru the U.S. border at a cost of $3-5,000, then rent an apartment and maybe buy a car. He could break even after a year or two, then begin making real profits and sending them back home. Currently the U.S. government estimates Guatemalans send $1.6 billion annually back to their families. Eric took his name and number and promised to let him know if something came up he could use him for.

After exiting the cab, we headed back to the Basilica to see the growing crowds of people. Inside, hundreds of indigenous people had curled up on the floor of the church wrapped in tarps or towels or blankets. It seemed like thousands of candles were burning now and stuck into the floor. After burning all the way down, they left enormous piles of wax everywhere, making what was a day earlier a smooth tile floor a slippery, volcanic rock-like surface. A group of uniformed workers were now working around the clock on their knees with putty knifes scraping the wax away, but it was really to no avail. Outside the steps a stage had been set up and a traditional band was playing. After having had a few cervazas at the pool hall, we hopped and danced to the music, causing more than a few stares. Stupid gringos!

We left after a few songs and hit a bar called Taberna de Che that had the iconic portrait of Che Guevara lit up with Christmas lights on its side. We arrived as they were starting an outdoor showing of the new King Kong movie. It took me a second to realize how odd it was that I had just seen it myself in the theater the week before, yet here it was in Guatemala, dubbed in Spanish. Eric hadn’t seen it so as I was catching him up on it when I noticed they had cut almost all the scenes of straight dialogue and provided just enough to get from one action sequence to another. It was a masterful and much needed editing job. Give that Guatemalan a job, Mr. Jackson! We watched for a while longer, but lost interest when a bus pulled up and idled between our seats and the makeshift screen across the street.

Jorge picked us up today at 6am to head out to Rio Dolce, a river and home to a 1500s- era Spanish fortress. Jaime, who was either a friend or relative of Jorge’s, I wasn’t sure, was driving, with Ophelia, the niece, and Jorge’s sister in the cab. Wilbur, 6 year old Carlos, Jorge, Eric, and I were piled into the bed of the truck on a foam pad. If you’re counting, that’s nine people. We spread out as best we could, but it was mighty tight and uncomfortable – I was not looking forward to the four hour drive to Rio Dolce. An hour in we stopped at a roadside vendor and I risked eating some local food with the others – tortillas stuffed with black refried beans and dowsed in a homemade salsa. Bueno! When we got back on the road I switched places with Eric so he could sit against the cab and get out of the howling winds for a bit.

Soon after it began to mist, then bam! A full-on rainstorm hit us hard. Eric, Wilbur, and Carlos had a great laugh, protected from the rain and wind against the cab, as Jorge and I scrambled to get coats on. Luckily I had brought my rain jacket but struggled to get into my backpack and get it on while navigating over several other bodies in the pickup, which hadn’t slowed down a bit, flying through the single lane mountain road at over 70mph.

After a bit, the truck slammed hard to the side of the road and stopped. Jaime got out and ran back down the road and came back with the remnants of a windshield wiper that had flown off. The Guatemalan guys formed a heated circle and debated how to fix it as I took my turn laughing at Eric, who was now just as wet and miserable as I was. Sweet revenge was mine.

The huddle broke and someone grabbed a plastic bag from the cab and tore a small strip off. Jaime used it to neatly tie the wiper back into place through the gap caused by the missing screw. Eric said, “You think that was creative, you should see what these guys can do with a piece of string.” With a working wiper, we were back in business and soon back up to top speed.

Rio Dolce itself was a little disappointing after the crazy trip. It’s pretty, but reminded us both of the Ozarks. We ate an excellent lunch of fresh, lightly fried chicken and the rain began clearing up. We rented a boat and driver and took a tour of the river. Big yachts are docked in private harbors, some hailing from Florida or California. Wilbur pointed to one house along the river and said the ex-president of Guatemala lived there. We pulled up alongside some fishermen to watch them swim out with nets and then pull them back in loaded with fish. The family bought 10 or 15 fish from them and stuck them in a plastic bag.

We stopped and got out to visit the Spanish Castillo, a small fortress built on a key river juncture to control the river. It was complete with a watch tower, drawbridge, and dungeon. Cooool.

We headed back at about 3pm. We stopped at a roadside vendor to pick up about a dozen coconuts to pile in the back with us. In another few hours we were on the homestretch back to Esquipulas. We rounded a corner as it was beginning to get really dark and Jaime swerved inward as a man in a dark outfit appeared out of nowhere on the side of the road. In doing so he nailed three or four orange cones that were set up down the middle line of the road. With the cones underneath the tires he struggled to gain control of the truck again and I think we were lucky to avoid being thrown.

Whistles started blowing from both sides of the street from parked SUVs marked with Polica insignias. We stopped, and the policemen took Jaime for 15 or 20 minutes. Just as we began to get nervous, Jaime came back and talked in low tones with the others as they fished for their wallets.

He later told us that the police demanded he pay them 150 quetzals now for hitting their cones, or they would write him a ticket for 600 q. and he’d have to drive the four hours to Guatemala City to pay it. As we were driving off, they had thought of a better and less dangerous way (for them) to get people to hit their cones by lighting a small fire near the curb.

We got home at about 7pm and were still soaking wet from the morning rain shower despite dangling our feet and socks over the side of the truck. We ate some great chorizo and eggs at a cousin’s restaurant and hit the carnival again before the family headed out at about 11pm. We had a difficult time sleeping, though, as the festival was definitely in full swing and fireworks lit our entire room up and the booms rattled the windows all night.

Yesterday we took it pretty easy. I found an Internet café and was surprised to meet the girl behind the counter – an American from California. She was having some family problems and came here to live with her retired grandfather for a while. When she arrived in September she didn’t know any Spanish but was picking it up quickly.

We went back to the carnival area to have a bit of our favorite dessert, churro, but our vendor wasn’t there yet. We jumped into a small-sided soccer game with some local teenagers and kids being played on a concrete basketball/soccer court behind the trucks used for hauling the carnival rides around. We had a blast. One kid who was about ten was very good, juking and nutmegging and gliding through the others like a professional. He later gave us his phone number and address in Guatemala City and said if we ended up staying there to give him a call and he would introduce us to his dad, who played in one of the lower professional divisions there.

We were absolutely filthy from playing – when the ball went off the court, it mostly got stuck in the muck and piles of trash that were all around us. It was instinctive to head the ball if it came my way, but each time I did I had a thick layer of grit and mud and God knows what else to wipe off my forehead. At one point I chased the ball between two semis to find it had rolled up to the feet of a man leaning against one of the tires puking. Throughout the game people were wandering across the court heading to and from the carnival, making for annoying but at times funny obstacles. During one play I was near the sideline and had only to beat the goalie. I looked back and called for help from my teammates to misdirect the goalie and struck the ball with an outside of the foot curved shot to the far corner of the goal, deflecting it off the back of a guy walking by and into the goal. The kids just about fell on the ground laughing at the cheeky move. We took a pic of our teammates and headed out.

We came back to the hotel and cleaned the gunk off. Jorge never showed up so we decided to check out the zoo near the edge of town. As we were walking, a very pretty woman pulled up and asked if we wanted a ride in her truck. It ended up being a lot further away and on the other side of a very steep, long hill, so we were lucky she came along. It turned out she was the owner of the zoo and the surrounding park as well as the side of the mountain near it that was covered in coffee plants. Riding in her truck, we were waved on through by the security guard sporting an automatic rifle and avoided the admission fee.

The area was beautiful – a small valley that had a zoo, volleyball, soccer, and basketball courts, park benches, and lake with a man-made waterfall. There was a weird cave that had vegetation and rock for 20 feet around it charred and smoking with a strong odor of incense. From the mouth of the cave we could see candles and more smoke pouring out, as well as small groups of people sort of stumbling out into the open air covered in sweat, tearing up from all the smoke and gasping. We went about 30 yards or so into the increasingly dark and enclosing space before I couldn’t take it anymore. We never did figure out what it was about, but in the Campero local fast food restaurant, I later saw a poster-sized picture of the same cave entrance on the wall near the cash register.

We walked back to the hotel and convinced the hotel owner’s son to take us out for a beer at one of his favorite places. He ordered a grande pitcher of beer and chatted with us for a bit about his veterinary studies in nearby Chicamula. I looked up to see the American girl from the Internet café sitting a few tables over with some of her teenage friends. She came over and talked with us for a bit. I offered her a glass of beer, but then asked how old she was. There was no drinking age here, but I was glad she didn’t accept my offer as she turned out to be only 14. She left with her friends and the son had to leave to take care of a problem at the hotel, so we took off to have another look at the pilgrims in the Basilica.

It was starting to finally thin out a bit there. I got some good pictures of the huge piles of wax accumulating everywhere. We stopped to sit on the steps outside to watch the pilgrims all walk slowly backward away from the entrance, as many never turned their backs to the Black Christ. They all wore these ridiculous cheap straw hats that were adorned with little pink baubles and bits of tinsel. Later I found out the hats were a symbol of their long pilgrimage to the Basilica. Before paved roads and buses, the Mayans would walk up to three months a year to make the trek and would pick up bits of the road as mementos of the journey – some bird feathers, scraps of clothing, etc. and hang them from their hats. Now I think most of them just bought the hats once they pulled into town, but we did see some pretty authentic looking ones, too.

As we sat there, I pulled out my camera and started flipping through my pictures so far. I noticed a little girl of not more than three had wandered up behind me trying to see what I was doing. I showed her the LCD screen and took her and her sibling’s pictures. She was absolutely enthralled with it – she was a movie star! Before I knew it, she was climbing all over me, holding onto my fingers and dancing to the music, touching my face and beard, and hugging my chest tightly. She was murmuring and cooing in Spanish, but I picked up ‘Papalito,’ or ‘little father.’ Her aunt was sitting next to us, talking with Eric. I looked over at her and she smiled and sort of shrugged as the little girl climbed into my jacket and promptly fell asleep as I rocked her. The aunt asked if I had any babies back home, and I said, no, but apparently I just acquired one here in Guatemala. After the girl was sound asleep, I handed her over to the aunt and we left.

The experience was an unbelievable affirmation of how the Guatemalan people treated their children. Despite there being many, many of them - half the population is under 15 - I never once saw a child cry or throw a temper tantrum. I could also never pick out which child belonged to whom in a crowd. Everyone watched them equally, scooping them out of harm’s way in the streets or paying for a bottle of juice or toy if they were closest. It was easy for us to fall into the same pattern and both Eric and I treated Carlos and the other children around us as our own.

Yesterday morning I woke up with terrible stomach cramps at 4am. I don’t think the pizza I had at the neon lit, faux American style New York Pizza Burger Diner the night before was settling with me. I broke open the antibiotics my doctor had given me and hoped for the best.

At about 9am Jorge pulled up to the hotel unexpectedly, saying some friends were playing soccer at the nearby stadium, and we were welcome to come watch and maybe kick around a bit ourselves. We packed some shorts and sunscreen and jumped in the back of the truck.

We walked into the stadium and realized this wasn’t a pickup game like what we played at the carnival the day before. There were several teams warming up on the sides, thirty or forty people in the concrete bleachers, two concession stands, and uniforms, coaches, and referees.

We didn’t understand how this many guys could be playing soccer on a Monday afternoon. Didn’t they have work? Renee laughed at our questions, saying most of them worked hard for four months of the year and took it easy the other eight. He boasted that he himself really only worked one day a week. This revelation clicked with Eric and he came up with the theory that there were two speeds all these guys had – U.S. and Guatemalan. While in Kansas, they all worked extremely hard and were very reliable, but after paying their dues there they all came back here to the good life and only worked when absolutely necessary to sustain themselves.

Jorge’s friends played for the Esquipulas soccer team, and they had an opening for one of us in the game against arch rivals Chicamula. Two of the players we had actually met before – one was a neighbor we talked to for a while the other day, and another played with us back at the carnival. Since my stomach was still doing somersaults, Eric stepped up to play. Jorge ran into town to buy him some proper cleats. The game was pretty intense, and of course Renee was thrown out for punching another player. They lost 2-1, but had an opportunity to redeem themselves as apparently we were in a round-robin tournament and playing the same team again in ten minutes.

With Renee’s ejection, I was asked to play. They threw me a very itchy orange jersey two sizes too small. The ref took a liking to me for some reason, trying his English on me: “Hey! Very good! Yes!” and “Only ten minutes!” I told him in the U.S. I played small-sided soccer with five person teams and small goals, so playing in Guatemala on a regulation sized field was killing me. He thought that was damn funny. Despite my stomach, the altitude, heat, and poor conditioning, I didn’t play too badly and we won 1-0. The coach was quick to credit the additional gringo with the win, which was nice but not really all that true.

I couldn’t believe Eric was still standing after playing very well in two hard fought games. It was nearly 4pm and he hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. We stopped by a bank to withdraw from the ATM on the way home and it took him six tries to get his money out, despite the instructions being in English. We came back to the room and collapsed into bed. I curled up with worsening stomach cramps and heat exhaustion for about four hours as Eric recovered quickly after eating a Compero chicken sandwich and left to buy more trinkets.

I lay in bed tried watching a movie on cable – Mean Girls. Just as I was getting into it, the cable went super fuzzy as it had intermittently all week. When Eric returned, I joked about heading up to the roof to fix it, and he took me seriously. I went up to the roof and started tracing down the cabling that was sticking out of holes for each room. As I suspected, it was a crazy mish-match of splicing, with likely a single cable spliced several dozen times for this hotel and probably all the ones down the street, too. We took turns standing outside the door calling out if it was getting better or worse as we connected and reconnected the cable lines. Twenty minutes into the operation we realized we had been in Guatemala for a while when it seemed perfectly logical for us to be on the roof of our hotel rewiring their cable system.

Today I took it easy at the hotel, though my stomach had improved dramatically and I probably could have done a lot more. Eric decided to head back to San Francisco to visit with Jorge and the families and try to spend more time up in the coffee fields. It was in the middle of the harvesting season and though they weren’t working the fields themselves, they had to tend to their workers and take of small issues that came up. He went to the bus depot down the street, which was really just a corner packed with vans and men yelling out destinations at passersby, and negotiated a ride to the gas station where Jorge would pick him up 15 minutes outside of town. He got into the van which was already packed with people, finding a makeshift space between two fold out seats, not being exactly on either. Another 15 minutes passed and another ten people boarded the mini-van, making for a total of 24 passengers plus the driver. After the van lurched onto the road, he found out the driver didn’t exactly know where San Francisco was and had a minor panic attack. I think a few others in the van did, though, and were able to get him to the right spot. He said the van was like a grade school bus, pulling up to individual people’s houses that were more or less along the unplanned route.

While Eric spent the day visiting the families and hanging out with his friends, I took a nap and did some reading for my upcoming graduate class I was teaching in a few days. Eric came back a few hours later than planned, and despite being in Guatemala and knowing not to expect people at the designated time, I had my own little panic attack as I tried to think of how on earth I could get a hold of Jorge or, for that matter, anyone that spoke English to help if something had happened to him.

The next morning Jorge came at about 7am with a rented van to take us back to Guatemala City to catch our flight. We had an uneventful trip into the city and arrived in just enough time to make it thru customs and get to our seats. My carry-on was flagged going through the x-ray machine and a guy sifted through all the contents, giving it the most thorough searching I had ever experienced. I called uneasily over to Eric to come over in case he asked me anything I couldn’t understand. Eric thought the whole situation was pretty funny and took out his camera and got a few pictures of me standing there as my backpack was patted down and emptied for everyone to see. He got bored watching, and wandered off to look for more trinkets to put in his already overstuffed bags just as a security officer toting an uzi under his arm became interested in my bag search, too, and came over to start drilling me in rapid-fire Spanish. I finally understood he was just asking me where I was from and where I was going, and after the guy pulled out a nail clipper and wagged his finger at me for having it, I was on my way and onto the plane.