Off to Todos Santos

I´m taking a break from my classes next week to check out the Day of the Dead festival in Todos Santos. I´ll also be in San Cristobal in the Chiapas region of Mexico for a few days. I´ll be scribbling the whole time, so hopefully I can post about my adventures early next week. Have a great Halloween, everyone!

And a Good Morning to You As Well - 9.28.2006

At 7:03 AM, mom trots past my bedroom door with a pair of long flaming logs that she has removed from the stove. She waves them around vigorously under the lines of clean laundry - one blazing sword in each hand - but the flames won´t go out. So, she lays them on the concrete floor of our courtyard and splashes a bit of water on them from the wash basin. Within seconds, there is smoke everywhere.

I have stopped, and I have dropped, but I have not yet rolled when she cheerily hollers for me to come get my breakfast.

The Emptiest of Feelings - 9.27.2006

The neighbors were screaming this evening. At first I tried to study through the noise, but soon it was too loud, so I slipped out of my room into the tiny courtyard of our home. I stood next to Mom, who had wandered away from the kitchen and towards the discord. She didn´t dare say anything out loud, so she quietly smacked her fist into her palm to tell me what was going on. We stood silently together as the sounds sank through the sheets of metal that form our roof. She wrung her hands every time she heard their children crying.

Transport

Here is how the chicken bus system works. People that want to ride a bus gather by the side of the road. When the bus approaches prospective riders, the driver beeps the horn twice as a warning. If a bystander wants a ride (the bus´s destination is painted on the front), she´ll hold her hand out a bit, extend two or three fingers, and tap downward a few times. The bus will slow down, but not stop, and as it passes the rider will sling herself aboard by grabbing a pole that has been welded in front of the door.

And then there is this. Each bus comes equipped with a person I call a ´barker.´ Barkers are usually teenage boys. They ride on the steps of the bus, often with their heads peeking out of the open door like collies. When barkers spot prospective riders, they bark out the bus`s destination, just in case the bystander can´t read.

At prime locations - intersections usually - the buses stop and the barkers grab bystanders and shove them on board. Then they grab the bystanders´ possessions and sling it onto the roof rack. As the bus begins moving again, the barker climbs up the ladder to the roof and ties down all the packages so nothing is lost.

Barkers can be a wee brusk, but they´re very helpful. Tell them your destination, and they´ll make sure you don´t miss your stop. They´ll make sure you don´t forget your bags. The good ones will even shove you in the direction of the right bus when it comes time to transfer.

Between stops the barker walks the isle collecting fares. It may take him 15 or 20 minutes to return your change, but in the end he always makes things right.

Bye-Bye Bratwurst - 10.7.2006

For one thing, Sammy kept hucking the poor fella across the living room, and the bratwurst just coulding learn to land on his feet for all the milk in Michigan. And then one day my baby sister, Ruthie, ate some of his poop that she found on the floor. What I´m saying is that it wasn´t particularly surprising that my family decided to pass him off to a gentler, less poop-eating family.

He left for his new home on Saturday, October 7, 2006. He was only four weeks old.

While he was with us, his name was Clifford (nay, Cleeeeford.)

While he was with us, I think he gave me fleas. (SOMEone sure did.)

While he was with us, he hid behind the washing machine all day long, and wouldn´t come out to play with anyone but me.

I loved him.

Fun Things To Do On Your Motorcycle

• - Carry a box of pizza in your left hand while driving with your right!
• - Carry your baby in your left hand while driving with your right!
• - Take your wife and two kids to the store! (Mom will sit behind you holding the baby! Your little girl will ride on the gas tank!)
• - Take your girlfriend on a date! Make her ride sidesaddle!
• - Take your puppy to the vet!
• - Deliver tanks of propane to law-abiding citizens!
• - Talk on your cell phone!

Gin

Went to a bar last night. Ordered a gin and juice. Received a gin... and... Tang.

Bratwurst - 10.4.2006

My family got a puppy yesterday! He´s about the size of a bratwurst.

Who´s the happiest boy in the world? Me. My 3 year old Guatemalan brother, Sammy, is a close second.

Tajumulco - 9.30.2006

We walk on a rolling dirt road through small Mayan farms for a quarter mile. Children peek out of the houses, and upon seeing our white skin they ask us for candy.

The road attempts a direct assault on the mountain, climbing straight up the steep slope. But within a few hundred yards it fails, and all that remains is a footpath that has sunk 16 inches below the sod. We walk in small gullies like this for most of the day.

Similar gullies cut the meadows all over the lower slopes and my guess was that they are cow paths. The guerrilla corrects me. They are the remains of footpaths left by farmers, who once grew wheat and potatoes here. The farmers have left now. The soil was only rich enough for two or three harvests, and then it was barren. Also, once the trees were removed, the soil was left to the mercy of heavy rains.

****

But there are, indeed, cows on the mountain, and at mid-morning we walk through a small herd. They are grazing in an upper meadow surrounded by a thin forest of scraggly pines. The herd is guarded by a sturdy older man wearing a checkered shirt and a white cowboy hat. He has a weathered, creased smile, and he tends to look at the ground. He holds a machete calmly in his right hand. Occasionally he rests it lightly, blade up, on his right shoulder. He reminds me of my Grandfather.

When he sees us approach, he slowly moves the herd uphill, using a series of casual threats and encouragements. One cow refuses to move until the man slaps her stiffly on the rump with the broad side of his machete.

The herd ambles into the trees above the meadow, and soon I lose sight of them. Still, for the next few minutes I can hear him calling to them.

****

The guerrilla and I wait there with a few other hikers for the rest of the group to catch up. It is cold and misty, and we quickly put on jackets and hats to ward off the chill. The meadow is slightly above the clouds that sift through the mountains. There is a sturdy breeze from the southeast that rapidly carries forward new clouds, and pushes out the old.

From time to time the clouds break apart, and I can see the valley below us and the ridge beyond it. Small towns hide in hollows of the ridge, and garden plots measure out each family´s share of the lower slopes. Reddish brown scars mark the many places where roads slice across the hillsides.

****

The others arrive and we settle down to a quick lunch. The Danes eat hard-boiled eggs. The guides scooped spoonfuls of avocado from their husks. I eat banana bread and handfuls of granola.

****

Our other guide is the guerrilla´s father, Pedro. He´s a chuckling, winky old man with big teeth that are frequently unveiled by happy grins. My guess is that he´s the kind of Grandpa who knows how to give a heck of a horsey ride to his grand kids.

During the war, Pedro was kidnapped by the Government, imprisoned in a hole in the ground, and tortured for 15 days. He was allowed to live so he could serve as a warning to the village. It took him two years to recuperate.

Today, his job is to walk behind us to make sure none of the slower hikers get left behind.

****

The guerrilla, of course, leads our caravan. In his left hand he carries a small radio from which flows a steady stream of Latin pop songs.

****

When we start hiking again, I drift to the rear of the pack to find new people to talk to. This is a good decision, for soon I get to see one of the Danes stick her hand in a cow pie while she struggles to keep her balance.

Then I too slip a little bit. Pedro laughs and tells me I almost ´bought it´. I tell him that in the States we use the phrase ´bought the farm.´ He says it´s the same basic idea. That gets me thinking about funny sayings, and so I ask a friend if her family took any funny proverbs over to America when they immigrated from India. She says that her mom used to warn her that if she kept kicking her brother, God would curse her by putting worms in her feet.

We walk in silence for a bit.

Then I tell her that as far as I can tell, the best phrase ever born of the English language is ´...(he fell) ass over teakettle.´

****

The guerrilla leads us to a small peninsula on the ridge we are traversing. Below us is a valley we haven`t seen yet, and on the valley floor is a village. In that village, the guerrilla tells us, 80 unarmed men were rounded up by the government and massacred for aiding the movement.

He then talks about the military importance of this mountain - a dormant volcano, actually - and of the firefights that took place here, and there, and there. The guerrillas had a radio on the mountain, and from here they were able to broadcast all they way down to Argentina, because the summit is the highest point in Central America.

He talks a bit about other villages being destroyed by the government. In one village, the men were locked in the church. The women were separated from the children. The women were raped and then shot. Then the children were disemboweled. Then the men were shot.

He points to a distant ridge where he served as a guerrilla and promises to tell us more when we reach camp. Then he leads us back to the path.

As we fall in line behind him, he flips on his radio again. On comes Kylie Minogue singing ´´Can´t Get You Out Of My Head.´´ The guerrilla starts grinning like crazy, and pretends to dance a little. A few Danes follow his lead and start singing boisterously.

A couple of us look back toward the village, but the wind has carried in a new bank of clouds and it has disappeared.

If I had to guess, I´d say that we were probably 1,000 meters above it.

****

After battling all morning long, the sun finally succumbs to the clouds around noon, and the afternoon becomes frigid and dark. We are inside the clouds when we reached our camp, and the mist and the wind only make things worse. I´m already wearing all of the clothes I brought, so I hop around to stay warm.

After our tents are up, the guerrilla gathers us around to talk more about the war. His father, meanwhile, hacks the dead limbs off trees with his machete. Everything is wet but soon he coerces a smokey fire from the timber.

****

The guerrilla was 18 years old when he joined the movement. He fought for five years before the peace accords were signed. While in the field he was allowed two hours of sleep per day. His bed was a single sheet of canvas. He was allowed two meals per day - each meal was a small cup of rice that he would boil on a fire no bigger than a pancake.

When firefights would break out and he would have to go for as many as five days with no food or sleep at all. The biggest fight he was in was near Zunil. He was one of 75 guerrillas engaged in a running battle with more than 1,000 government soldiers. This was in 1995.

We shudder as he tells us about washing his clothes in the winter. He had to put them back on while they were still wet, because he couldn't risk lighting a fire to dry them.

He briefly mentions losing friends in the war, but doesn´t go into detail about it.

****

We gather around the fire for supper. The guides place boiled potatoes and tamales on the coals to warm them up. The guerrilla offers me a bit of potato, and I give him some cheese in return.

In Guatemala all of the trash, including plastic and metal, is burned. There is no point carrying it back to Xela. We throw it on the fire, and then hold our breath until the flames are no longer green.

****

It is too cold to sleep comfortably, and I don´t have a sleeping pad, so my night is nothing by a series of 15-minute naps. At 4:30am I awake to the sound of two nasally tenors bleating about godonlyknowswhat. It is the guerrilla´s radio. This is his way of telling us to get ready for the predawn hike to the summit.

As I pull on my shoes I notice that there is ice on the outside of the tent.

At the fire, the guerrilla is cheery. He says he really only needs about an hour of sleep to be ready for the day, and last night he got four.

****

The Danes are slow getting ready, and we start late. It is difficult to find footing among the loose rocks by flashlight, but the guerrilla is impatient and walks quickly up the slope. Soon he is far ahead of us. When we can no longer see his flashlight, we follow the sound of the merengue music that floats from his radio.

A few of the stronger hikers separate from the others and catch the guerrilla. We ask him to wait for the others. Their flashlights snake up the slope toward us as we sit and rest.

****

From here we can see the lights from all the towns around the volcano. White street lights in Guatemala. Red lights in Mexico. I´m reminded of my descent into London - looking out the window of my plane, seeing all of the chaos as it is coerced into orderly, luminescent rows. But here the lights are not organized into battalions. Here they are more fluid, following the shape of the ridges.

We talk to the guide a bit. He says that 10 years ago, he could never have imaged tourists walking on this mountain. At that point it was hard for him to imagine anything but war. Then he talks about how beautiful it is up here and how nice the air is.

****

We reach the crater and the wind is insistent, nearly violent. The sun is not up yet as we circle the crater to reach the summit. The path is very narrow, but I think a fall would be survivable. We are about 14,000 feet above sea level. We are well above the clouds. It is freezing.

The rest of our group arrives and finally Pedro appears. He has a long green bath towel tied around his head, babushka style. He is wearing two pairs of jeans, but the waist on the outer pair isn´t big enough so it goes unbuttoned, held in place only by his leather belt. He holds a purple and white checkered blanket around his shoulders.

As usual, he is happy, almost giddy. He points out to me the town where he lives.

****

The sun comes up, and the shadow of our mountain is cast well into the Chiapas of Mexico. It is a black pyramid that seems to me to be hundreds of miles long.

****

We prepare to return.

The guerrilla is ecstatic. The volcano gives him energy, he says. He flexes his arms like a superhero, fists by his ears.

He pauses on the edge of the crater for a few moments, letting us pass. A gaudy song by Shakira bounces out of his radio. He watches as we descend slowly, picking our way among the loose stones.

Then suddenly he howls like a wolf and hurtles down the slope, leaping from rock to rock. As he rushes past us, he is laughing like a child.

Photos of Tajumulco

Electricity

There is a small fuse box on the shower wall. Two wires extend from this box. They are spliced into two other wires with a conservative amount of electrical tape. These two wires run into a plastic box on top of the shower head. This box contains coils through which the shower water flows.

That is how my shower water is heated.

Every week or so, one of the students here gets shocked, but I hear that it´s not enough to kill you.

The biggest risk comes when you touch the spigot to turn on the water. So, I have a lucky routine that has protected me so far. First I politely ask the spigot for mercy. Then, I clap my hands together a couple of times to build up courage. Then I reach for the spigot, and pull back. Reach and pull back. Reach and pull back. This is not out of fear. This is to trick the electricity. I don´t want it to know when I´m going to make my move.

San Fransisco - 9.22.2006

The first thing I see as I step off the bus is a flock of turkeys resting quietly, almost comfortably, under the weight of a cargo net.

One block up the hill the market begins and from this distance it is difficult to distinguish individual objects. I´m not going to be flowery here. It simply looks like a bag of Skittles blew up.

At first, Noah and I stick with the guerrilla, but soon he loses us in the crowd and we are alone. We walk uphill.

There are handwoven textiles everywhere we look. The colors are almost too much for the fabric - 15, 20 different shades on a single cut. I find myself drawn to the simpler patterns. I ask a man how much he wants for a 20x5 foot section of thick dark green cloth. He tells me 200 Q ($32.) That´s the pre-bargaining price for gringos. My guess is that I could get it for half of that.

It is difficult to walk. There are too many people. (Some say this is the biggest market in all of Central America.) A Mayan woman and her child brush past us. With one hand, they steady the baskets on their heads. With the other they nudge their way through the crowd. In the mother´s basket a chicken rests quietly under a net. My guess is that the child is 10 years old. In her basket she carries a bushel or so of vegetables. She has a hard time keeping up with her mom because she keeps turning around to stare at me.

Just behind them, a women drags a disgruntled pig on the end of a stout rope.

At the top of the hill we find a collection of butchers. In each shop hang hind quarters of cows. The hide has been removed and the meat is now purple. On a small table in front of one shop the lower portions of a cows legs lie side by side. The hooves have not been removed. Neither has the hide, and it is a creamy yellow, like unripe corn.

At the top of the hill we reach a collection of vegetable sellers. Over the next 30 yards or so are piles of potatoes, beans bananas, plantains, small onions, and, and, and.

We turn from the vegetables, and immediately encounter rows of fake American jeans and shirts. And there are piles of fake gold chains with fake gold crosses.

And then there is a weathered old man selling hats. His skin is a deep coffee color, but somehow it has a silver sheen to it. Like a lot of older Guatemalans, several of his front teeth are capped in gold. He grins when I approach his booth. I ask him for a tiny hat to fit my tiny head. He laughs and picks one out of his pile. It fits perfectly. I look like an idiot. He protests as I walk away, and I try to tell him that it´s not the hat´s fault. It doesn´t make him any happier.

We make our way back to the bus.

In one alley, we spot a barber carefully trimming a man´s sideburns with a straight razor.

Photos of San Fransisco