Checkpoint

I’ve lived in San José, a sleepy little lakeside town, for the past three weeks. In order to get to the ProPetén office in Flores, I catch the bus (a van) from the town center. I’m fairly well situated on the bus route. San José is the second to last stop on the road that the buses follow (the last stop being an even smaller town). I get on in the morning as the bus heads to the end of the line, empty of passengers. This is important, because I get to choose my seat, ideally way in the back. I don’t get off the bus until the other end of the line, and if you’re sitting too close to the door, you have to get out of the van every time someone behind you wants to get off. The van drivers are great in that they will drop you off or pick you up at any point along their route, but this means passengers are always changing. The van drivers will also never turn down a passenger for fear of overloading their van. The record currently stands at 30 people and one chicken crammed into in your standard 18-seat van.

The journey takes me around the near corner of the lake, to the bridge they’ve been building “for the past 4 years” according to Elma, my host mom. There’s a one-lane dirt causeway built alongside the bridge that traffic takes turns crossing, and the time spent waiting in line is well used by the driver to collect his fares. Yesterday, after we passed the bridge, we ran into an army/police checkpoint on the road. There were about a dozen guys in various uniforms and camouflage, holding Israeli Galil assault rifles and checking cars as they passed. While I haven’t heard anything about the Guatemalan police, I have heard some fairly awful things about their Mexican counterparts, and I stowed my iPod and other valuables before they got to our van and made us get out.

Standing in the hot sun on the side of the road, I recalled the last military checkpoint I had driven through. I was twelve, and my friend’s mom was driving us back from a week at camp in Vermont. She honestly tells this story much better than I do, because it stands out rather strongly in her memory as an example of my terrible sense of humor. I turned twelve in 2002, while the nation was still coming to grips with the new state of our homeland security. While I was fairly unaware of the this whole process, I had picked up on a few key points, which, though I understood them completely out of context, seemed to indicate that it would be funny if I wrapped a towel around my head, turban-style, as we passed through the checkpoint. I even came up with a "comedic line", and in my excitement I jumped the gun, turning to my friend David and saying “Achmed, do you have the package?” before we were anywhere near the police. This premature deliverance was without a doubt what saved our entire van from strip searches. David’s mom heard me and, seeing little comic value in my impromptu skit, made me take off my towel and pass through the checkpoint like the nice little America boy I was.

Nine years ago, the sight of uniforms and weapons hadn’t phased me at all. Yesterday, on the dusty Guatemalan road, I stuffed my valuables into my bag, nervously acted like I wasn’t a little nervous, and tried to guess what type of rifles they held. I have no idea what they were looking for at this checkpoint – the most likely options were drugs or migrants, but it didn't matter. I had such complete faith, back in Vermont, that the uniformed men holding guns were there to help, at the very worst their checkpoint would delay our journey by a few minutes. Confronting the uniformed men of a foreign government, I looked for that same faith in the eyes of those around me. I might not be entirely comfortable, but I’m out of my comfortable American element. I was glad to see those around me appear unperturbed, and we were quickly waved on our way, without anyone pulling out a pack of powdered sugar and rubbing it under their nose.

As for my sense of humor, I blame my Dad – that Achmed line is his.

Exhausted Thoughts

My first day of work with ProPetén was this Monday. It was also my first day of practically uninterrupted access to the internet. Luckily, my work was interesting, and my conscious didn’t have too much trouble bullying me away from constant interactions with friends (except during lunch), but it was a temptation. Opportunities to share my thoughts and feelings on the fantastic and interesting things surrounding me have been thin on the ground this past week for two reasons.

First, most of the things that catch me attention, and ordinarily would prompt an exclamation (of surprise, delight, disgust…) are things that the people that surround me have lived with their entire lives. I can’t bring myself to comment excessively on how rustically pleasant I find it that people and clothing are washed in the lake, or how I can’t stand the god damned dogs that bark all the time. I have to limit my comments on these cultural differences, or I risk sounding condescending, or whiny. Second, saying anything in Spanish requires significantly more work than saying it in English, and I sometimes get lazy. Yes, I think it’s wonderful that there are iguanas on the roof, but I can’t remember the word for roof right now, so I’ll just think it to myself “que bueno” I’ll think “hay iguanos en la roof! Y ellos estan haciendan noises like a bird!” After spending four hours translating information pamphlets, this allows me to pretend that I’m still practicing my Spanish without doing any actual work.

So what I realized, as I sat at my desk, puzzling out how to best translate yet another word I’ve never seen used like this before, is that it’s a good thing I don’t have access to twitter down here. I think the temptation to communicate every little novelty I discover living here - in english, to people who might be interested - would be irresistible. Then I started imagining the things I might say. In the spirit of Roland Hedley, the status of my underwear came to mind: “Should have brought lighter boxers – these cotton bastards are having their way with me”. Maybe I’d throw some linguistics in there: “Kids around here express their appreciation for things by saying “¡Calidad!” (Quality!). I think it’s the equivalent of cool. Pretty calidad, no?”Then things started to go downhill: “I have accepted that I will doubtless pee on a rat before I return to the United States.” In all likelihood I already have, given the number of times I’ve shone my flashlight down into the outhouse behind my family’s house and seen a few fat grey rats scampering off into the shadows, and the number of times I’ve been unable to find my light at 4am, and gone without flashing a warning to those below. I haven’t confirmed any hits, but those probabilities aren’t good. Apologies, rats, it was nothing personal.

I’d love to have some deep cultural lesson to bring away from this little thought exercise I went through, but I really don’t. Instead of cultural understanding, how about some pictures instead. I'll throw them up on Flickr, because they really don’t have much to do with this blog post. I can’t imagine any of you wanting to see the pictures that would be associated with this blog post.

Keep an eye out for an exciting post about working for ProPetén (coming once I actually have some experience working for PrePetén – later this week!)

[Edit - the new pictures are all the way at the bottom, in my Flickr feed [Edit, I lied, I put them on Picasa, because it works better! It's right below Flickr]]

What a first week!

A day of traveling ended with a quick flight over Petén, to Santa Elena/Flores. I caught a shot of the Capital on my way out, huge and lit up, the brightest thing in the country. 15 minutes north of La Ciudad, I couldn't see any lights when I looked down.

It was hot and moist when I landed; my body immediately protested this rapid change of climate. I caught a ride to San José with Freddie, who works for the school and the Bioitza Reserve, and coincidentally is the cousin of Rosa Maria Chan, director of ProPetén. ¿Qué nifty, no?

The next morning I awoke to a gray haze. Everything was hot. My first host family, Doña Elsa and her son Jimmy, were very nice, but Jimmy was 14, and an only child, and sulked in his room with the TV most of the time, emerging only to eat. It was a weird family situation, but since I've moved I've realized that, as far as housing goes, I had it pretty good. I moved in with a new family this week, and I've noticed the absence of things in my (smaller) room - like individual lighting (I rely on a light shared with the other room), electricity (the plug is out in the living room, and privacy (I have a window, but when it's open for ventilation the kids all line up and watch whatever I'm doing). At least I'm having more fun interacting with these folks.

San José is a quiet town. The kids go down to the lake on the hot afternoons and jump off the dock, there's a few tiendas (one actually has internet!) and a tiny mercado de frutas. Getting to and from the lake, however, is a bit of a challenge, as San José is a vertical town. San Francisco has nothing on this place - and the people zoom around on motorcycles like it's nothing. I will have legs made of steel and thunder when I come back, if I don't trip and break my neck rolling down the street.



Here's a quick introduction to the inhabitants of San José. Perros. I haven't bothered to take a picture of a dog yet, because I haven't found one I like. In addition to being flea-ridden, noisy, horny, aggressive bastards, they're also dogs - definitely not my favorite animal. Nonetheless they are a crucial part of San José. Without them, the streets would face a deficit of sleeping bodies, poop, fights, barking and public fornication. More to my liking are the pigs and the chickens.












Pigs roam the streets much like stray dogs (thought I've since discovered that people actually own the pigs on the streets, while no one is willing to claim responsibility for the dogs). It was a bit of a shock walking to school and running into a 200lb cerdo rooting around on the side of the road. The other non-human inhabitants are chickens, almost as common as the dogs. The chickens sort themselves out, one rooster with a hen or three, and their chicks claiming different patches of territory. I'm determined to make friends with this one gallo, he's got one hen, one chick, and he's always strutting around proudly in front of the school. I don't think he likes me though...

My first week here was made much easier by a group of students from Augustana College, S. Dakota. They're here for an ecology J-Term class, and we all struggled with our Spanish, jumped in the lake, complained about the hills, got up to see the sunrise, and played tag with the local kids. They're a great group of people, and they had a crazy story to tell about their adventure through the Bioitza reserve. Their group got separated by an overzealous (and potentially hungry) guide bent on getting back to camp as fast as possible, and while one half got particularly well lost, machete-ing their way through a "short cut", the other half ran into a Jumping Pit Viper, which caused considerable excitement, since my buddy Rob almost stepped on it. Luckily, everyone made it back safe.
























We all went out to dinner a few nights ago, and this little girl, noticing we had cameras, came out and sat with us, telling us "ok, you can take a picture of my now.... ok, you can show it to them now!" She brought out her coronita and scepter, told us how she would set up her own camera on a table to take pictures of herself, and made Rob wear the crown. Super-adorable, and definitely destined to be an actress or something. Kids around here love cameras, and pictures. I was showing my host family pictures of my friends and fam back home, and all the snow we got. These two kids, Luis and Danny (who were hosting some of the other students) ran up to me in the street, dragged me back to their yard, and made me take pictures of them. Then they ran off and killed a bird with their slingshots, or so they told me later that night, when we played tag.

























Saturday we all took a boat to Flores, the island capital of Petén. Out on the lake, I got a few pictures of San Jose. Saturday was La Ferería, a festival where all the towns in Petén bring an image of their patron saint to the church in Flores. The church holds el Cristo Negro del Petén.

The story goes that back in the day, the black Christ (a blackened wooden image of Jesus) was made in Antigua, and sent to the church in Mexico that had commissioned it. On the way north to Mexico, the porters stopped in Flores. The next day, they found the Cristo Negro too heavy to lift. The statue had miraculously gained weight, and the porters decided it wanted to stay in Flores, where it has been ever since. Whether the story of a miracle, of lazy porters sick of carrying a statue through the jungle, or of savvy locals with lead weights and drills looking to claim a work of art for their town, it's a good one.
While we were in Flores, I found a cafe I had visited the last time I was here, on my way to Tikal with Nikki and Rihanna. Their liquados (huge fruit smoothies with milk or water) were just as delicious as I remember.

While the rest of the group dawdled in trinket shops, Rob and I headed back to the central square. We found a bit of a gazebo/tower, went up to the balcony, and spent the last hour before our boat left watching the people below. Rob is from South Dakota, and studies journalism at Augustana. His dedicated journaling of his experience here inspired me to do the same, and it's making writing this blog much easier. He's the kind of person who always seems to be doing the right thing, the right way, with his heart in the right place. We'd talk and joke about everything from photography to hamburgers to what home means (the object of our discussion being the Australian woman at the school this week. She's riding her bike from Alaska to Argentina, and has clearly been running from her home/family/history/Australia/something for her entire life. She's quite the character). Having just watched Munich, a powerful story about Israeli retribution for the Munich Olympics, and what it means to fight for a place to live, and being away from my own home and those I hold dear for so long myself, it was fascinating to find all these different perspectives on the same topic colliding in this sleepy Guatemalan town.

Adorito (works for the school) and K'ush


We got back to the boat a little early, and I had a chance to chat with our pilot, a septuagenarian named K'ush. He's a card. He loves to sing, and out on the water he led us in choruses of La Bamba and La Cucaracha, at a tempo only he knew. He would take the solos, making a humming, trumpet sound, as though he were buzzing his lips, but his mouth was open. He was clearly making the sound in the back of his throat. It was incredibly strange to hear a familiar sound so obviously made in a completely alien way. While on the dock, I admired his bright green, spit-shined converse. He quickly told me that he hadn't worn shoes his entire life, until last year, and that he is now the proud owner of four pairs of chucks: green, yellow, red and black. He even told me where I could pick up a pair of my own in Santa Elena. I might have to take his advice.


I just finished dinner – pasta y frijoles (beans) y los ever-present tortillas, and I had to open this back up and talk about my family a bit. They’re great. I’m terrible with names, but the mother is working on the last of her three exams to enter school for teachers, and the father has taken over all the cooking. They were explaining how in machismo culture, men don’t like to cook because they’re men, but he and I had a conversation about the importance of making food for our friends and families, and I really like him. They call each other "mi amor" and are all kinds of adorable. The eldest kid sneaked off to go visit his girlfriend’s parents, and the younger ones ran off to watch another 90’s kids movie. While I was in here, writing, one of the youngest kids ran up to the window and asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing a story for my blog, and then started explaining what a blog is. I’ve never seen someone get bored and bail on a conversation faster. “Yo me voy ahora” he said, with a desperate look in his eyes, and was gone. I think I’ll bring up my blog whenever I want some quiet time, and just hope that it doesn’t provoke the same reaction in the readers.

Hasta luego,

-Sam

I'm back in worcester, and I've decided to make a post about packing. On the typical travelblog, the purpose of this post is to impress you all with the efficiency of my packing, and the niftiness of the miniature versions of everyday objects I've purchased to make everything fit into my bag. I should talk about the space-age materials and manufacturing that have gone into the creation of my travel washcloth, travel hat, travel diningset, and miniaturized travel shaving kit. The high point of my post should extoll the virtues of the all-in-one, super-light gadget I've purchased that will be sure to save my life. I'll finish with a picture of all my gear laid out, impressing everyone with the minimal list of material goods on which I will be surviving.

Here goes....

Adventure Survival List Highlights:

Quinine - Malaria is a serious concern in the lowlands, and who drinks tonic water without gin? Certainly not David Delaney, and he kindly made sure I wouldn't either.

Collection of Knives - Shaving, cutting fruit, knife fights... the uses are endless.

Bag - I've done away with the "traditional" backpacking backpack, and opted for the local Burro Bag. My trusty steed Lafayette will handle the shlepping parts of my adventures.

Isn't he cute? (Photo courtesy of Google Images)

So there we have it. I'll be traveling light, defending myself from jaguars, and providing you with tales of adventure and intrigue from El Petén!