Been a while. Apologies. I've been burning too much time lately dealing with the incompetents over at DHL to get my maldito package liberated from customs. I finally got sick of this mess so took the 3am bus to the capital yesterday. God so tired. I arrived in Guate around 9am with that empty pit in your stomach you have when you're overly tired, kinda like when you've just been kicked in the nuts. But I knew what to do. Got off the bus, headed two blocks down and to the right. Meat Street Money. Yeaaahh. The street is lined with vendors selling all kinds of grilled meats - ribs, carne asada, pollo asado, pork chops, all kinds of sausages, etc. I went for the mdm standard, plate of chorizo and eggs with refried beans and queso fresco and obvi a side of tortillas. After some sustenance and soaking up the early morning sun, felt energized to take on the tards at DHL.
Cabbed to the Customs office where an overly helpful Customs official walked me through the process. Hit a wall, bussed to the DHL office. Side note, the level of security on the bus made it feel like I was riding an armored truck full of treasure. Dealt with the dickheads at DHL, paid exorbitant customs fees and then the Customs official turns to me, says he's gonna leave and then "uno". "Oh right, I thought, here's the 1 Quetzal for your bus ride back to the office."
"No, one hundred," he shyly corrected me. Hmm, first time I've been asked for a bribe from a government official. I told him I didn't ask for any of his help and I just couldn't pay him. He softly insisted and then I just started to feel bad. Here he was, a man of my Pad's age, likely with a family, begging a 25 year-old foreign punk in a corporate office for $12. It's also interesting that the same word for "bite" is slang for "bribe" in this country. So I gave him a few bucks for his troubles, said farewell to the DHL dimwits and made the afternoon bus back to Xela...without my package. But apparently tomorrow's the day.
Other than that escapade, I've been keeping pretty mel and living the life here. Aquaponic gig continues, still running the after school program in the afternoon and teaching some English on the side. Teaching English is surprisingly fun, I think mainly because I don't wear shoes and I teach like Cheech in "Born in East LA". So don't be surprised if you meet a Guatemalan traveling in the US saying stuff like, "Yo sup dude, ain't no thing but a chicken wing."
Met some new people through the school on both spectrums - some super awesome and others horrifically pathetic excuses for human beings. It always surprises me when people come to a place like Guatemala and just complain about everything. Sorry, this isn't princess-fun-land ya'll. But it's amazing how easily you can get acclimated if you're open to it. My life here has become as routine to me as chugging coffee as I rode the 22 to an office of rich white people to stare at a computer screen and feign importance all day.
I generally wake up around 730 to a breakfast that can vary. Sometimes it's an amazing BCB (blue collar breakfast) including eggs, sausages, beans, cheese and tortillas. Other times, I eat cereal or moshe (corn mush) which I euphemistically call baby vomit. I skip bfast at least once a week, usually when I'm hungover, and I come to the school to make my hangover ramen.
Yes, there are packs of feral dogs that roam the streets here. And yes, cats chase rats on my tin roof at night making it sound like some bat out of hell is trying to pry his way in to my room. Sometimes when it rains, slugs creep their way into my baño to hide from the elements, so yeah, sometimes I step on slugs on my way to the toilet in the middle of the night.
True, hot water comes and goes at times and the option to take a bath is a public bath located in the mountains, located next to a shrine to a drunken, adulterating Mayan idol dressed as a cowboy. Electricity is really quite expensive here compared to local wages so people actually conserve electricity in Guatemala. And when a student demands more power for their hair straigtener, sorry, but the family doesn't really understand the point.
Wearing heels here sucks because, well, so does the quality of the streets. And sure, people throw trash on the streets because, well, there's no infrastructure really to collect and process all the trash.
But when foreigners come here and make comments like "omg, why don't they just hire people to clean the streets?" or "awww, poor homeless dogs, they're sooo hungry. How dare someone leave them like that?" I just cringe. This is a country where over half the children are chronically malnourished - the 3rd worst in the world. Only Yemen and Afghanistan have higher rates of chronic malnutrition. This is a place where seeing 6 year-olds dig through trash with their parents looking for scraps and recylcing instead of attending school is commonplace. Groups of kids 8-10 make a living on the streets, shining shoes, hauling firewood, etc. Kids are genuinely happy playing with a used, one-legged Barbie doll and an old cereal box that's been "renovated" to be a Princess Castle. It's normal to see a 70 year old woman lugging 30 lbs of clothes for miles, trying to sell just a couple items to buy food later.
So don't tell Sarah McLaughlin, but no, I don't feel bad for the dogs here. Sorry, but they're living better than most of the people in this country. Oh, and they do have street cleaning here if you would wake up early enough. Between 5am and 7am teams of "volunteers" from rural communities clean the streets here in exchange for a bag of food (some beans, rice and oil).
But it's not all bad. The market 10 feet from where I work sells 20 kinds of fresh fruit and barrels of perfectly ripe avocados for pennies on the dollar. They sell carnitas and chicarrones by the pound on the street. Markets here are a sensory overload of smells, sounds and activity - how can I buy a delicious tamale next to a stand selling panza (cow stomach) and then walk to another stall to buy bootleg DVDs?
Despite being poor, people aren't trying to rip you off left and right. There's an overwhelmingly strong sense of pride and dignity in this country. Of course, not always, like when bus drivers tell you they're going to your destination just cuz they want your money, but it's humbling to see some of the great lengths parents take to care for their children here.
Among all this, Guatemala's natural beauty continues to amaze me. Like riding through the mountains back home yesterday - just surrounded by huge forests with volacoes poking up in the distance. For such a green country, it's crazy to me that so many people starve. And that because of the lack of infrastructure, many people think the best place for trash is the side of the highway, scaring mountainsides with derrumbes de waste.
If you couldn't tell, I love the life here. All of it. I'm not sure if Ina Garten would approve of it, or if she would say that one could find "good tomatoes" or "good olive oil" or "good butter" here but I like living here because it opens my eyes. This is how most of the world lives. Not lounging in the Hamptons buying $18 hydroponic butter lettuce to merely decorate a dish for your closeted gay husband (I mean comon Ina! It's sooo obvious). But it puts things in perspective, makes you appreciate what you have and what it takes to acquire what you don't.
vaya con dios viejos.
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