2/19
Breakfast begins with ‘Zucaritas’ (Frosted Flakes), scrambled eggs with cheese, plantains (a caramelized banana fruit dipped in sugar), and fresh fruit. We all walk down to the dock and board a double-decker Ferry called Victoria. I sit up top in the open air. It’s another bright clear day with very little clouds. We set out for Santiago Atitlan on the opposite side of the lake at the base of San Pedro. The hotel shrinks from view as we slowly make our way across the dark blue water peppered with small whitecaps on this breezy day. The ride takes about an hour, during which we learn the lake was formed 80,000 years ago when a lava flow under the ground supplying the nearby volcanoes collapsed, leaving a gaping hole in the earth that eventually filled with water.
There is a local woman on board named Lola. COED has invited her specifically for these boat trips. She also invited several of her friends and family members, and together they try to sell their embroidery and trinkets. Lola speaks seven languages, including Japanese, Hebrew and German. I do want a small tapestry, but I hold out. Another woman comes around with different designs. She says she has shirts too. I’m interested, so I go down below with her to see. I’m now “trapped” in a back area as she shows me runners, blankets, shirts, everything she has. I see the same shirt the woman held up to me in the market yesterday. I wonder if this is the same woman. It’s definitely the same shirt. I consider this a sign that I was meant to buy the shirt. I also get two throws. Her patterns are more appealing to me than Lola’s. Plus, I like the little bambino she has wrapped onto her back. He’s a good baby—until she takes him out so I can get a picture of them together. I go back up top with my new purchases and pass Lola. She’s mad.
“Maybe later,” I tell her, using a catchphrase uttered often by seller and buyer alike around here. “I’m not done shopping.”
I also buy a woven belt, black and white, with simple designs and faces, which look like skulls. I liken it to the icon used by my favorite comic book character, The Punisher. No one else on board makes the connection.
We arrive in Santiago and head toward the large church there, which, like the other towns, is near the town’s main square. We climb a steep street lined with rocks and corrugated metal sheets formed into shacks. The townsfolk live in these huts. There are sticks bound together forming a door across the opening of one shack, and a skinny dog sleeps lazily on the steps leading into another shack. The smell of an open fire is ever present. We pass many locals carrying bundles of wares or groceries. Many men have on the traditional dress here.
Along the way, we walk right up the main market street. This market isn’t for tourists either. Large gray plastic tarps are stretched over the street to keep the sun off the vendors. Displays of nuts, fruits, dried fish in small barrels, along with socks, underwear, and plastic baskets line both sides of the street, creating a narrow walkway barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. It’s as close to a bazaar as I’ve ever seen, and we must navigate it in order to reach the church.
The church has open sides, and small children play in the courtyard right next to the openings of the church while the service is in progress. It’s noisy outside. There is also a man selling ice cream, helados, from a cooler attached to a bicycle, and he rings a bell to attract customers. The church is packed. Most everyone is in traditional dress, and the clothes are very clean. The priest is chanting in Spanish as we are invited by Jeff to go in through one of the side openings to observe or stay if we like. The priest soon goes into a long talk that I assume is the homily. I show my respect to the church by removing my hat and genuflecting.
Soon, the majority leaves and heads for a villager’s home to see the tribute to the Mayan god Maximon. Every so often one family in the town receives the shrine in their home. It’s a great honor for them. There is a plaster, full color statue from the waist up of a man and a glass casket with a mattress and flowers. Candles line the floor. Visitors to the shrine pray for Maximon’s protection and offer up their beer and cigarettes. Jeff and Joe explain it is supposed to be so that Maximal takes away the evil those vices represent, but they think it’s just to keep that family well stocked in those items for the duration. The home smells like church incense, and it’s very stuffy inside the small dark room. Three family members are inside as well. To enter, visitors must pay Q2. To take a picture of the shrine, it is Q10. People are openly praying and kissing the statue. A lit cigarette sticks out of its mouth. The mix of Christianity and Mayan beliefs here is interesting. The two are combined in such a way to foster both religions. Maximal has his Christian equivalent as St. Peter.
A small group of us kill some time waiting by an outdoor basketball court on the concrete next to the “town square,” covered in shade by many trees planted about. Around twenty boys are on the sun-drenched court. It looks like there are three games going on at once, and they’re all overlapping and intertwined. It’s like “Keep Away” with soccer moves. I can’t tell how one can keep straight who’s on whose team and which ball to follow. It’s fun to watch though. After a while we get up and join the rest of the group for our next adventure.
This is something new from previous visits COED has done in Santiago with previous tours. We are going to visit a nearby town right up the mountain, Panabaj, which was devastated by the round of mudslides that occurred last October. It’s too far to walk, so we’ve arranged transportation in the form of three pick-up trucks, and a Tuk-Tuk, a small three-wheeled taxi. About twelve of us fit in the bed of each truck. We’re packed in tight, holding onto to a special bar mounted across the center of the bed. This is the standard mode of mass transportation for the people here. We pay Q15 each for the ride. And, what a ride! First, we get a ferryboat ride with no known life preservers in sight and no reviewed safety plans, and now this. But, I’m not complaining.
We travel up a winding dirt road out of Santiago. It kicks up so much dust that it’s hard to see and breathe. When we go around the curves, if someone’s not hanging on, he or she would surely fall out. A bus and a truck come down the hill toward us so close, that if I didn’t lean in, one of them would have knocked the backpack right off my back. We pass coffee bushes in small fields, something I’ve never seen before. They’re not thick, but they grow to about ten feet tall. They’re planted in the shade of gravilea trees, like large banana trees, for optimum growth.
There is a subtle smell of garbage as we approach the town, or what’s left of it. But still, little kids on the roadside smile and wave to us as we pass. We stop and exit the trucks, and the first thing I notice is the Red Cross symbol of the local hospital, which is still only a one-story cinder block building. The symbol is now at ground level. That’s when we’re told we are standing on about eight feet of deposited mud. The police station is semi-buried as well. It’s just a dirt-laden wasteland all around. There is debris every so often and crumbling cinderblock scattered about. The trees are all gone. We can trace the mud all the way out to a nearby mountain and up to its top.
One rainy night last October about 1 a.m., the mud let loose during the heart of rainy season and tackled the village of Panabaj. 275 people died. 500 people are still unaccounted for. Thousands more died across the country as numerous landslides hit all at once. Crews have already come and cleared out all the fallen trees, mulching and chopping them. Most of the debris from the crushed houses is gone. Occasionally, I see a twisted shirt, or a cup or a box. They say the first rescuers had to use the metal roofs of corrugated metal as plank boards to reach the stranded and those literally stuck in the mud. Jeff translates words from a local man who was one of the first responders during the rescue efforts.
We pass a large settlement after loading back up. There are rows and rows of cinderblock buildings where the government put about 1000 displaced villagers. And, as if this town hadn’t suffered enough, we pass a memorial site where soldiers on behalf of a corrupt government, massacred thirteen villagers in 1990 for standing up to the soldiers who had wronged their village.
Then, a few hundred yards up the road, there is a beautiful and well-run restaurant with a deck and pool overlooking the lake. We eat there. It’s run by two ex-patriates, Dave and Susie, who are Americans now living in Guatemala. They grow their own coffee and mill it right from the hillside nearby. We have fresh bread and small blue corn flour tortillas. There are three kinds of salsa—tomato, vinegar, and Very Hot! We each are served a half a chicken, like a Cornish hen, corn on the cob and rice. There are a group of men selling wooden spoons and hand carved kitchen utensils from the various downed trees of the area, including the coffee bush. The craftsmanship is remarkable. The men, assisted by a former North American, call themselves Los Cuchareros, and use some of their proceeds to assist the elderly in their community. I buy two spoons. I like the idea when I see something original and know where it comes from and who made it.
After lunch, we walk down to the shore near the restaurant. Our boat meets us there. On the way back to Panajachel, Lola doesn’t forget about me and corners me. I do want to buy some more embroidery, like a small one for framing. I check with two of the ladies in our group who bought earlier to see what they paid so I won’t have to barter much. I use Anne Stieritz’s (Jess’ sister-in-law) price of Q250 because Robin paid Q285. I can’t get Lola to go any lower than Q250, even though my item is slightly smaller than Anne’s. I ask Lola if I can stay at her house since I won’t have any money left to get home on.
I use COED’s international cell phone to call home again and get the answering machine—again. I call my dad and at least get to talk to him. He tells me a little about the Daytona 500 that’s happening right now. Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon were leading, touched, and wrecked each other. Ha!
Joe encourages me to sit in the shade as he says I’m looking a little pink. It’s a good opportunity to talk to him and his brother on the way back.
Once back at the hotel, I play ping-pong with John and Diana. I win against Diana, even though it’s really close, and John beats me then Diana. I actually work up a sweat playing.
I’m now suffering a sunburn. My forearms and neck got it good today. I don’t mind though. It just shows I actually went somewhere. It’s another “souvenir” I can take home.
To cool off, I join Jeff, Joe, Holly, Howard, Mary, Mike, Robin, and her son Nick in the pool for a fun game of “Quetzal-Ball.” It’s a made up game in which we keep bouncing a beach ball up in the air and try for as long a volley as possible between all of us. We make it to 48 hits before it splashes out of reach. Of course, that was after many, many attempts.
There’s another meeting later where we learn more about what we’ll be doing at the schools. I knew ahead of time I’d be the one giving the speech at the school my church is sponsoring, Nuestra Senora Del Carmen, but I’m also the “Delegation Leader.” Upon announcement of this fact as my name is read off first, I get a thunderous applause.
John, Diana and I feel a little awkward about how we are to present the extra gifts to the school brought from home—the hanging rosary and the rosaries made by our St. Albert students. It’s not officially part of the program, and we really didn’t feel prepared in how it all fits in with our church’s sponsorship and the process behind getting and giving the gifts. I wish I knew more about how all this worked before getting into it. I feel like I’m just going with the flow. I also realize I have to now tweak my speech that I had worked on the last week or two now that I know there are other team members helping us with distributing pencils and other tasks. I’ll have to recognize them within the speech.
After the meeting, we take the vans to Circus Bar. The atmosphere in this restaurant is very authentic for this town, which we’re told is a refuge for ex-hippies and other foreigners. There is a lounge act here with a heavyset Caribbean woman and a burned out Mick Jagger type. They’re good though. Robin joins them on stage playing the bongos. We are all served pizzas, and they keep coming. The table where I’m sitting is near the kitchen, and I see the native women pulling pizzas out of the oven with the long paddles and forming the dough for the next pizzas. We have four different kinds of pizzas delivered to our table over the course of the dinner. I have five pieces.
On the way back to the hotel, an egg is thrown at our van. That’s an unexpected first. Everyone’s turning in earlier tonight as we get started at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. I get to the room and have to revamp my speech then spend the next hour and a half trying to capture everything that happened today in my journal. What a full day. A lot of learning and experience gained. Lights out at 11:30 p.m. on day 3 in Guatemala.
