The Wormlips Scrapbook

Body: My large stomach and I are leaving Guatemala tomorrow. Mercedes came over and gave me a foot massage as a goodbye present. She also gave me candles and a little pouch with magic stuff in it. Then she did a little Maya-influenced ritual to ensure safe travels for Maria and me. Sadly for my pocketbook, she brought more pocketbooks to sell. I bought all but the one Maria bought. I’ll tell you right now: you’re either getting a scarf or a pocketbook. Sadly for me and luckily for you, everything I buy is truly handmade. I say truly because people usually claim their stuff is handmade, but most isn’t. All these pocketbooks were made out of traditional Maya fabric and pieces of embroidered huipiles.

Mind: I usually see the parts of Guatemala that other tourists see. I wanted to learn about a different side, so I went on a walking tour of Ciudad Vieja.

Let me tell you about Ciudad Vieja. In 1527, it became the second capital of Guatemala (after Tecpan). Its reign was brief. Fourteen years later El Volcán Agua unleashed massive amounts of water and rock that demolished the city except for one building. (Antigua was the next capital until it was destroyed by an earthquake as massive as the flood. Since then, the capital has sat still in Guatemala City.)

The tour was led by Niños de Guatemala, a nonprofit that runs a school for the poorest in the community. There were about six of us, and all but moi were fluent in Spanish. The guide asked if I’d like her to do an English version, but I said no because I didn’t want to be a pain. She proceeded to careen through sentences like a chicken bus through alleys, while my brain held on for dear life. Once I asked her to slow down but that didn’t last. Still, I understood this:

Our tour began as we boarded a chicken bus bound for the cuidad. (This local route, like the one I rode yesterday, is safe.) It was a fitting start to our trip, since our first stop was to one of the two big businesses in town: chicken bus conversion.

When the U.S. gets tired of its big yellow school buses, they sell them down south. The buses arrive here with the school name still emblazoned on them, black on bright yellow.

It’s not easy to become a chicken bus. American school buses are too long for Guatemala’s narrow streets, so the workers take a slice out of the middle and splice the halves back together. All the two-person seats are stripped out and new seats fabricated that fit three across. These are placed much closer together than in the original configuration. So even though the bus has a smaller footprint, it holds more people. The aisle is literally eight to ten inches wide. You sidle down it. After that, the boring yellow paint is covered over in the typical blinding array of brilliant colors. The colors don’t represent anything. They’re just what the bus owners request.

You won’t be interested in this, not having watched thousands of the colorful things roar by spewing black smoke as their conductors lean out the open door and shout the destination to attract riders: Guate Guate Gaute! But I’m interested, and it’s my blog, not yours.

All the buses in Guatemala are owned by one of only about four people. It’s their wives’ names that are emblazoned on the front: Esperanza, Esmeralda, Etcetera. The owners rent the buses to drivers. Each day the drivers have to meet a minimum number of fares or they don’t break even. They also have to get places on schedule or they don’t get paid. That’s why the buses are so crowded and go so fast.

As you know, the murder rate has skyrocketed here, and bus robbery is a major contributor. Being a chauffeur is the most dangerous profession in the country. In the big cities like Guatemala, many districts are controlled by different gangs. If a bus goes through one route, that gang demands that the owner pay them a protection fee. If it goes through multiple districts, several gangs try to exact payment. If the owner pays, all is well. If the owner doesn’t pay, the bus driver often gets killed.

And that brings me to the other major industry in Cuidad Vieja: coffin-making. Guatemalans joke that it’s a good line of work these days because you have plenty of customers. It’s usually a family business, and there are jobs for everyone, from son to abuelita: sawing and gluing and sanding and polishing and painting and varnishing, and cutting fabric and sewing and button-tucking. We visited a busy workshop with coffins in all stages of development.

In the U.S., hilly neighborhoods are often the wealthy ones, while lower down may be more modest. As often, the opposite is true here. In Cuidad Vieja, just up the hill from the main part of town the houses change from concrete block and stucco to tin, rubber tire, bamboo and other lashed-together odds and ends. There’s a lot of trash because the people can’t afford the trash collection fees. Next to some houses are small, arable patches of land that people rent. When they get home from their day jobs, often in the fields, they tend to small crops of coffee or corn for a little extra cash. The soil and climate here produces outstanding coffee.

Enough background for the photos. Here they are. The first two are of a man who has a little ceramics shop half a block from me, yet I’ve never noticed him before today. I stopped in this afternoon and asked him to make me something in particular. He immediately set to it and will have it finished by tomorrow morning. Then I leave.

Spirit: Well, that kind of bombed. In this portentous year in the Mayan calendar, Maria and I were going to consult with a notable Mayan priest and member of the Guatemalan Elders Council, to see what might lie ahead for us. He called this morning to schedule for early this evening. An hour after he was due here, Maria called him to see qué pasó. His voice, amplified by speakerphone, had that distinctive tippling sound. I wish he could told us this morning what lay ahead for this evening so we could have made other plans.

I’m tired. I have to go pack. I’m leaving tomorrow. This is likely to be the last entry but time will tell, since prophecy won’t.

Tags: Guatemala

It’s been a while, but I’ve ridden a lot over the years, I told the English woman on the phone last night. I’d thought a two-hour ride through the hills above Antigua would be fun. You do use Western saddles, don’t you?

In her polite British accent, she set me straight: only English riding there. You may know that English-riding enthusiasts look down on Western: You call those saddles? They’re armchairs. If English riding is an American president, Western riding is his drunken backwoods brother.

Still, Paula didn’t dismiss me right out the gate. We spent a lot of time talking about horses and riding, and she finally determined that, even as a Western rider, I possess enough intrinsic horse-sense to ride her horse. I even meet the weight limit of under-145 pounds. I’ll write you down as an experienced rider, she concluded.

Paula runs a stable with her husband, but they’re down to only two horses now: one for a guest and one for the guide—a perfect situation for this solitary traveler. My biggest hope for the adventure was that we’d get to lope and gallop. In the U.S. you can’t ever do that on a day ride, so I haven’t galloped since summer camp in Wyoming.

Don Isra picked me up at 8:30 this morning and drove me to the stables in the nearby aldea of San Juan del Obispo. He is such a kind man. I apologized once again for my terrible Spanish. He said, But you understand Spanish. You just need to practice. And speak more slowly. He’s exactly right. I just want to shove the words out of my mouth as fast as I can and get it over with.

When he rang the bell at the portón, eleven dirty dogs barreled into us. Paula and her husband are Animal People. Animal People, when capitalized, refers to those who love animals and scorn people. I can’t entirely fault them for the sentiment. They found most of their dogs in the street, looking like limp pink rags because they were starved and mangy. One collie mix won my heart for her sweetness. A wild-haired poodle-something cross couldn’t get close enough to me.

Oh, I didn’t know you’d be so tall, Paula said as she led me to the tack room. She’s not the only one who was surprised by appearances. I sometimes picture Brits as proper sorts. Paula has a fountain of wild orange hair with a white skull-cap of roots, and a blurry, cross-shaped black tattoo between her eyes. She’s in her mid-sixties.

I was wearing clothes perfect for Western riding, but Paula said they wouldn’t do for today. She dug out a pair of skin-tight riding capris. I’ll never fit into those, I warned her. They stretch, she said. She loaned me her Italian leather boots and some chaps and gloves. As I dressed, she told me all kinds of complicated things about her world of riding: how you give commands, what horses understand, how you hold the reins, how you sit in the saddle through each of the gaits. All were completely different than what I knew from my Western world. After an hour of preparation and exacting verbal instruction, I was starting to get a little worried.

All suited, I stood up. She stepped back appraisingly. You have the perfect body for a rider: tall and thin.

A leather-and-lycra goddess, I stepped outside where Paula’s 81-year-old English husband stood, looking striking in jodhpurs and knee-high boots. He said You have the perfect body for a rider. For a moment, I thought that I might end up pretty good at this English-riding stuff.

And then I saw the saddle. Or, I tried to see the saddle. It’s a tiny speck of a thing. I already knew I’d have to ride with my knees practically in my chest, but—I mean—no saddle horn, only little wispy tin bits for stirrups, no ridge to keep you from sliding off the back. They told me that with English riding, there’s little between you and the horse, so there’s a lot more interaction between rider and ridden. The horse knows what you’re feeling and who’s in charge. They respond even to small cues. You’re always in communication. If you want speed, all you do is squeeze your calves into its side.

You mean I don’t just kick it to make it go faster? This question was answered by a wince.

As we clop-clopped out the portón and up the cobblestone street, I wasn’t paying attention to the scenery. I was looking at my hands and my feet and my knees. Are my arms going forward and back with each step like they’re supposed to? Is there a straight line from my head through my shoulders through my heel? Am I hinging properly at the hip? Am I holding the reins too high? Too low? Whoops, my little finger isn’t where it should be.

We got to a dirt path and my leader, Paula’s husband, called back to me, Let’s trot!

If you’ve ridden, you know that trotting is a nasty gait that should be abolished. It feels as though your horse is on a pogo stick. It’s impossible to stay seated, so you rise up in the stirrups and sit-stand-sit with each landing. Easy for me in a Western saddle. And then we broke into a canter, a lovely experience as long as you don’t go off-balance. If you do, I realized there’s not a thing anywhere on that stupid saddle that you can grab onto. I was thinking, Am I going to fall off? I’ve got the reins all wrong. I’m still on. Does the horse know I think I’m gonna fall off?

Luckily, after a few hundred feet we slowed to a walk. Horse and rider were still in close contact. I leaned over and patted the horse’s neck. Good horse. I’m in control. Be a good horsie. I hoped this communication would override previous nonverbal exchanges.

At another open stretch my leader said, You go in front of me. I want to see how you ride. Start off with a trot and then go to a slow canter. He might as well have said, Fix me a five-course gourmet meal out of these dead cornstalks here in the field. Plus, I didn’t want him to see me fly out of the saddle. Better to do that when he wasn’t looking, and say it was the horse’s fault. Do I have to? I pleaded.

Off I went, a rag doll in the wind. The leader caught up.

That was really bad, wasn’t it? I asked.

Yes, it was, he said. Do you want to gallop now? I couldn’t believe my ears. Do you know how hard it is to ride a galloping horse? It is not for the beginning or even intermediate rider.

No, thank you. I said.

So we walked along and he talked. And talked. He had strong opinions about everything, from Newt Gingrich (he likes him) to how Guatemalans work their small farms. F***ing idiots don’t even rotate their crops. They’re violent and they don’t know how to run their own country.

¡Buenos dias! called out a guy in the field, removing his hat, wiping his brow and smiling. My leader barely nodded. I smiled and called out in reply.

I grabbed a red coffee berry off a plant as I rode by, and popped it into my mouth. It’s a little bit sweet.

He went on. If I were dictator of America, I would send all the immigrants, especially the Muslims, into the Bermuda Triangle because they’re all ruining the country. Jews are okay, though.

About his mother tongue: People are butchering the English language… text messages… Shakespeare… blah blah blah.

Finally, one I’d never heard before: People should have to pass history tests before they can vote. There should be three votes for each wealthy person to one vote per common citizen, because the aristocrats have more at stake in the country.

I realize that stuff like this comes from ignorance, but why does ignorance have such a loud and strident voice?

But I was stuck with this guy, and my safety depended on him.

He continued to give me riding instructions as we rode up and down hills, across fields and over rocks. Ready for a gallop? he asked at the next flat stretch. No, I replied. Off we went: trot, then lope… and then gallop.

Picture a rider leaning forward and gripping her horse’s mane as she’s been told to do, as the horse lopes along, kicking up dust. Looking good. The rider smiles and waves at a worker in the field. The rider’s foot slips out of one of the stirrups. The horse breaks into a full gallop. Have you ever seen a dog trying to break the neck of its toy (or a live animal)? I was that toy. But, I stayed on.

After that there were other unannounced lopes and gallops. I’ve ridden enough that I wasn’t in a blind fear during the moments of losing balance. Instead, I was running down the list of the injuries I might sustain: broken arm, internal bleeding, no injuries, broken back. All things considered, it seemed much wiser to stay on horseback.

I don’t know if I’ll ever take another stab at English riding. It is really difficult. You might think a horse is a horse. (Of course.) But it’s almost like a different kind of animal when it manifests Limey ideology.

I rode back to Antigua with a nice woman who’s a friend of the stable owners. She’s a veteran English rider. You were very brave to go on that ride, she told me. More like ignorant, methinks.

It’s hard to take pictures from horseback. I love the one after our return with the horse getting a shower. When the guy sprayed water on him, the horse opened his big horse mouth in delight.

On the walk home I saw a fabulous t-shirt I really wanted to get Adi: It had a gorilla in a Che Guevara hat with the inscription, Viva La Evolución.

I decided to try one last time to get lost in the mercado. I wanted to look for a present for Emmy. I wound deeper and deeper into the dark ocean of stalls, but the next thing I knew I had emerged, Jonah from the whale. But I kept going back in.

I have a personal theory of mercado shopping: once you stop to talk to someone in their booth, you’re in danger of buying something. If you pase adelante to look at the goods more closely, it’s hard to pase back out without a purchase. But it’s not impossible. If you spend more than a minute there, you’re in serious danger. And if you have some friendly conversation with the proprietor, you’re dead in the water. You might as well give yourself over to the shopping experience. I made the fatal “friendly conversation” error, so I took my time and looked through her toys and pocketbooks and fabric and wallets and trinkets and clothes. Despite language barriers, the small, rounded woman and I had some good laughs (she got the Spanish words for bee and butterfly confused, and I had to correct her!). She gave me a hug and kiss when I left, and handed me an extra little present on my way out. While I hate bargaining (and thus I always pay too much) these tiny cross-cultural exchanges are fun.

Yesterday I asked Doñas Rosa and Justa to talk to me in Spanish so that I could videotape the conversation. I wanted to show my students that I know first-hand their struggle to learn a language. I also wanted to give them an idea of what to expect in the class, so when I edited it I added little subtitles. Here it is in its draft form. I am mortally embarrassed to show it to you or anyone because I want you (and for some reason, especially my mother Small) to imagine that I’m really good at Spanish. Who knows why. Small: Do not show this to your new Spanish-native friend.

Tags: Guatemala

You know what’s a pretty word? Madrugada. (It means dawn.)

Poor Eleni. Every time we video chat, I give her a cursory greeting and then it’s Where’s Emmy? I want to talk to my baby! The good girl that she is, Eleni produces for the camera one perfect grandchild. I open my mouth as wide as I can. So does Emmy. Emmy wiggles her two index fingers at me, redrum style, and I do the same. Emmy and I talk about dogs and big babies and feet and other feet. We do bora bora and Emmy laughs when I tickle her virtual stomach. Poor Eleni tries to get in the occasional word, but really, I have so many games to play that I just don’t have time. I hope Eleni realizes how much I adore her, and how I acted as stupid with her 32 years ago, and how pretty I think she always looks, and what a good job she’s doing. Does she know that when I look at Emmy, I often see her, particularly when Emmy gets Mischief Face? Does she know that I’m every bit as proud of the life she’s forging as I am of Molly’s choices? I hope so.

I should tell you about what’s going on in Guatemala these days, but I’m embarrassingly ignorant. I do know this: Last time I was here, Álvaro Colom was coming into office as president. Last week he stepped down to his rival in the last election, Otto Pérez Molina. As I wrote back then, Pérez Molina—la mano dura, or strong hand—is closely associated with atrocities committed during the civil war. Guate now has one of the highest crime rates in the world (Honduras is the highest of all, by a wide margin), but then again, the U.S. isn’t many countries behind.

Still (or maybe in consequence) you always see Guatemalans laughing and joking. I don’t know if road rage exists as it does in the U.S. During one of my trips, there was a terrible driver who kept cutting in front of our van dangerously. All our driver did was laugh lightheartedly each time; not worth getting worked up about.

Today was a nothing day. There’s a nice museum (La Azotea) in Jocotenango with displays about Maya music, clothing and more. I sat in Antigua’s Parque Central to wait for the shuttle. Since we’re on Guatemalan time, it was half an hour late. When we arrived, I wanted only to go to the little gift shop because there was something I wanted to get Emmy. I convinced the ticket guy to let me in without paying the large entry fee, but I was allowed to stay just eight minutes, until the next van departed. I shopped fast.

Every day I buy fresh cookies at Doña Luisa panaderia, and a bag of chips and a diet Coke at La Bodogona. All that walking doesn’t counteract the dietary impact of my purchases. This is the first time I’ve gained weight on a trip to a developing country.

The last few days I haven’t gotten lost. Well, hardly ever. I tried to lose myself in the vast market today. I just started walking without even attempting to keep my bearings. As I’ve said before, I don’t like to document the market photographically, but it is a rich place for the senses. Hundreds of vendors chant loudly about what they’re purveying, and there’s music, and kids squawking, and buses roaring, and who knows whatall. People in bright clothing move among colors and shapes and textures of vegetables and legumes and ground spices. And the smell: some good, some not. I decided to amble down a row of meat, its guardians casually swatting away the persistent flies. Above the entry of the stalls, bloody carcasses are suspended in a row like beaded curtains. The smell started to get to me. I tried not to breathe as I made my way for the end of the long row. It reminded me of my youth when we kids would try to hold our breath all the way through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel (7,650 feet, as I recall). Each time we all lied that we had. Anyway, I don’t have that much breath any more so I was pretty much gasping as I bustled past massive bloody livers and spines and tongues and to better air.

Still, I like it there. And the strangest thing was that, despite my having reached the darkest bowels of the place without paying attention, I walked straight back out that maze as though I’d built it.

Before heading home, I went through the artisans’ mercado again. I bought two things for Emmy, and by mistake something for myself, and one other thing for Emmy.

I look one of my Livingston braids out. Here’s the other.

I made a reservation to spend the last of my money going horseback riding tomorrow for two hours, in the hills above Antigua. Then there’s the day after that. Then the day after that I head home. I wish I knew what classes I’m to start teaching on Monday.

I never cease to amaze myself. How can I produce so much verbiage to describe a day in which I was bored because I didn’t do anything?

Tags: Guatemala