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.