No entiendo.

Spanish 101: Lo siento pero no entiendo. Affectionately, I´m sorry but I do not understand you. Necessary terminology for our lives at Casa Guatemala where everything is more than we hoped and desired, though the language gap has widened somewhat, and we became slapped in the face with our thirty-something state of being. Their´s a shitload of young folks here, and along with that comes amazing 20 year old linguists with the energy and stamina of an everlasting gobstopper, and of course, the drama of the typical reality tv show. Welcome to our island.

We got off the boat first to find that we weren´t tucked way back into the thick of the jungle. But yes, we´re in the jungle non the less, where our nightly dinner bell is the howler monkey, our walk home in the dark accompanied by the largest fireflis in life- yes, the size of the usual american hummingbird. And yet, from the orphanage dock you can see others anchored, a few thatch grande homes, the whispering reed grass, the smoky mountains in the horizon, and still only a 10 minute launcha to town.

So, our new home, our cuarto is a coveted spot. Only 4 couple rooms total in the whole place and by the ill fate of a relationship we bequethed the room. It´s decent in size, we have some shelves, floorspace and a bed. There´s a kitchen, bathroom, shower. The only thing we want for is light. Though the house appears wired with bulbs in a few sockets, nothing was ever hooked up and so it is merely a tease. Candlelight is a delight, yet a full day of children and the flickering light sirens one to sleep way early. Now, if we were in the main volunteer house with over 35 volunteers, things would be different.

We´re the only married folks. Figure that.

Funny, only our first day at the orphange and already we find ourselves embroiled in controversy. Normally, new volunteers work at the back packer hostel for the first week, before being moved to the island, but there is a surplus of volunteers presently and the wait is longer. We`ll they granted us a quick pass because they need another nurse, and so that ruffled some feathers. Additonally, most volunteers at the orphanage live in this one overcrowded house sleeping on singlewide bunkbeds. Thirty five altogether. The other place to stay is a couples joint, which has four private rooms but nobody gets into there forever. Well the morning we arrived a couple became splitsville and they gave us the room but the others had moved their stuff out. Needless to say, we were making friends fast.

Anyway, we love our new digs and our new mosquito nets, though to be honest, the bugs have not been bad yet. It is the dry season after all, like it has only rained 48 hours straight, but hey, it was sunny when we got here. And so far our new roomates do not mind shacking with us long in the tooth folks.

Overall, the orphanage is overflowing with beautiful children that want to come up to you and hug you, hold you. We are still figuring out our place, our job and duties, but we think we are going to like it and maybe even love it.

The wellspring

The dining room of the Hotel Posada Belen is something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel - it seems to stradle that line between the real and unreal in a setting that could only come from old magic. Outside in the 500-year-old streets of Guatemala City the air is loud and carcinogenicly choked on bus fumes, but behind the walls lies this tranquilo garden with three gregarious hombres cooking us up dinner, singing and laughing, oregano and candlelight filling the air and it feels like you could just sit here in their home, in time, forever. The house is full of paintings, weavings, artifacts that would delight the carbon dater. Handmade tiles lie underfoot and curved adobe archways rest above. All is good here.

I attempted to write a blog before we left Lago Atitlan, and in the last sentence all power was lost to the wind. Seems to be the theme here - throwing it all to the wind and seeing what comes your way. There is something about this country that gets at you, that strikes the core. It makes you shiver with delight and fear, it makes you feel vulnerable yet full, and, like we wanted, it makes you feel alive. Since coming to Guatemala my emotions lie right under the skin. All it takes is the right sound, smell, sight or tree branch to scratch through the epidermis, and I'm gone. The emotions just flow. I'm getting used to it, it's my new shadow, but some days I just want it to take a rest. I'm reading this book about Rigoberta Menchu and all the horrendous violence exerted against the Mayans. It's all so recent - in my lifetime, the sorrow, the rage, the struggle, you can feel it in the people, the earth here. And yet, everyday I am greeted with wide smiles.

The other trigger for me here, that's held it's hand steady on me is all the people, the children, the women with their fullsome bellies, the swollen tits of the stray dogs, the sweet smell of the watered earth. They've all made me wanton. And so as I scrunch on a chicken bus between 2 women cluching children on their laps, or I pull myself up a mountain trail being passed by a young woman with a babe swadled to her back, or when I bask in the sun on the rocks that balance above the rim of the lake - I stare down at my tight abdomen, my ribs poking through the skin, the small new scar that leads out from my womb and ponder my journey, the unknown that somehow makes my womaness seem so separate from theirs. I am not like them, my body doesn't bring forth life. And yes, my rational side soon kicks in, soothing me that it all is possible, that I have so many choices and opportunities than most of these women. I cope, I grab my composure. But it doesn't burn out the want and sometimes I'm just wrung dry. It's all around me. I'm soaked in it. And tomorrow, we leave for the orphangae. Welcome to our wellspring.

Well, the last few days have been more tranquilo, since we decided to enjoy the geological splendor of the surrounding hillsides, cliffs and, of course the lake, and stopped worrying about from where or when the next hussler will pop out of the brambles. We also did a fair amount of meditation and soul searching, trying to think about why we came here in the first place, and remind ourselves of the few lessons already learned. Yesterday, with nearly empty pockets and a liter of agua, Heather and I set off in a easterly direction along a dirt road that, ultimately, turns to a narrow foot path. We winded along the steep hillsides, high above the waterline, past modest homes and farms with wicked views of the volcanos. And the ever present, or under construction, gringo houses that seem to defy gravity, multitired and glued to the sides of cliffs with what usually appears like a splendid little bay all to themselves. As we´ve said before, the disparity between the haves and have nots really are exagerated in the vacations spots, and stand out even more in a country like Guatemala. The first new village we came to, forgive me but I think it was called Tzunia or something, was nestled into the notch of a canyon, sitting a few hundred feet above the water, with stark and steep cliffs stretching probably another thousand feet above that. The women dress differently there compared to San Marcos, most with a black skirt and simple embroidered red blouse, topped off with a colorful head rap. We made our way up into the village and were gazed upon by the entire community. Heather tried a few Holas here, but it seemed like most people did not speak Spanish. By the lake, there were a few fisherman in their dugout canoes, and some women washing their clothes on the rocks, as is common here, flushing the soap out into the lake. The trail climbed vigorously from here, at times just a foot wide, and one could easily have slid down the hillside a halfmile. Needless to say, there were more stunning vistas and high moutain farms. It was somewhere along here that an idigenous woman and her little girl caught up to us and asked Heather for a quetzal. Now, my friend Derek might have said fuck off right there, but when the lady has a machete in her hand resting on her head and isn´t taking no for an answer, the simplest thing to do was for me to smile and fork over the quetzal, which I´d been saving for precisely that situation. They smiled and moved on, and believe it, we looked at each other and actually smiled too, thinking maybe this is more like a toll. Eventually, about a half mile from the village of our destination, Heather finally succombed to the heat, and we had to sit down in the shade for a while. We´d already run out of water, so she was bit washed out. She recovered nicely in the breeze, and then we made our way to the tiny village of Jabalito. It was amazing the place was still standing. There were signs of the tremendous mudslides and flooding from November´s hurricanes, the open remains of a church lay in the gulley pit of rocks. But of course, the town seemed be going about their usual business. With business including women carrying 60lb rocks on their backs with a small carrying strap pressed against their foreheads. Just a little to the east of the village we found Casa de Dos Mundos, the fancy hotel perched miraculously on the side of the cliff, built by people from Alaska. We finally settled down here for some great nachos and water. And then, eventually, sauntered to one of the cozy nooks by the lake where we rested from our journey and contemplated a swim in the choppy water. Two hours later, we took our last 20 quetzals and caught a tricky, wet boat ride back, which was probably over capacity by at least 10 passengers. Never a dull moment here.

Learning how to grow up again.

The situation is this: you´ve have just sat down on the edge of the lake and divided your only sandwich into two, and handed half to your charming wife. Then, amazingly, out of nowhere a rough unkempt looking indigenous fellow-- but not skinny or anything, suddenly appears, standing over you. He asks if he can borrow a cigarette, in broken Spanish we say we don´t smoke, and we can´t anticipate what happens next even though we know the encounter is not over. He sits down uncomfortably close, comments on how beautiful the lake is and then demands some of my half sandwich. Mind you there are probably a dozen people, half grinos and the rest mayans on the same beach. I´m unepectedly perturbed and just say no, and we stare each other for a couple of minutes, at which point he says something to me in K´iche, we can assume something not nice, and then goes a few feet away to talk to some local ladies.

For the next hour I find myself royally pissed off, and don´t eat my sandwich at all. I sit there fuming, talking, mumbling to myself about how inconsiderate some of these people are, constantly coming up to me for money, trying to hussle me, to the point were I´m constantly on guard. And consequently, working myself to the point till I´m not much fun to be around. This was building in me for a few days, until I realized that maybe the problem is more with my perception of right and wrong and not with them. Even though I´ve been to Latin America several times, never have I been here to live, and it feels different then being a total turista. I need to except their culture, learn to understand and grow from it, instead of them excepting mine, which is generally the case in most heavily touristed places like Costa Rica.

Really, what did I gain by not giving this guy my sandwich. We both went hungry over a 2 dollar sandwich, which isn´t any money to me at all. The mayans sense of space is very different than ours. They are constantly very near to you, all around your stuff, all around the door of your room for instance. And being that my wife is an avowed peaceful person, and never had one playground fist fight, and rumors swirl constantly around here about people being robbed, I had become overly paranoid about our stuff, our safety.

Stupid. When you do get hassled, most of the time, you can get off by given them 5 quetzals, that´s about 70 cents. And look at me, blond, curly hair with glasses, which by the way no one has except rich people like me, and my dumb 8 dollar watch from K Mart that every Guatemalan man seems to think is a rolex and wants to stop and talk to me about it, and how much it costs. I have stopped wearing the watch. Can not do much about the glasses. I now keep a few quetzals in my pocket, to give to people, and not much else. I´ve have calmed down a lot. I expect them to start burning trash outside my window at 6 a.m. I expect them to show up in the dark and check the waterline to my room. I expect to hear the nightly church service with singing broadcasted out to the village, which is beautiful by the way. I expect to have a hard time bargaining with the lady who has the only tienda, grocery store in San Marcos -- the tienda ladies are much friendlier in San Pedro because there is lots of them. Economies of scale of course. These are reasonable things here.

The truth is, I´m looking forward to making our way to the orphange in the jungle next week. For sure, it will be harder there. But there, I hope, I can be part of something instead of being a spectator. For those of you who plan to travel to guatemala, this is a weird place to vacation. Give us an email, let me know if I´m crazy.

matthew

God drinks beer and smokes cigs

With all my vital organs back to hunky dorey after 10 days of Cipro, thank you Bayer Corporation, Heather and I are ready again to contemplate our wiley adventures. We slipped out of Xela on Tuesday morning by hitching a ride with a our new friends, John and Harriet from Houston, Texas, in their camper van. They were gracious enough to lend a hand to Heather and her invalid husband, saddled as we were under the weight of backpacks and such, and me without much strength. I´m learning to like Texans again, and the fat splendor of a mobile home. We four along with their sweet dog Brindle inched out of the city and up to a tiny hidden hamlet - San Andreas, backing the wide load into a corner that stared out into the Xela and at this magnificent whimsical church painted yellow decorated with somersalting fairy persons. John then tracked down Saint Simon and we had a personal visit with the great mayan god. He was dressed in Texas style with a hat, bandana, an open can of cerveza, and a lit cigarette fuming from his mouth. He listened to our prayers, but didn´t indicate if a milagro was possible or not. But from where things stand today, I believe in the dear god. After we embarked to Lake Atitlan with the possibility of riding with Harriet and John on their wagon train to El Salvador.

Anyway, we drove for the first night to a camping spot, they were checking out for the second issue of their book on RVing in Central America, a decent area that sat right on the waters edge of Lago de Atitlan. A huge natural lake, that is situated in one of the deepest volcanic craters in the world, surrouded by three sentinal dormant volcanoes that tower over the place. A nice vista to say the least. And best of all, as far as Heather and I felt, about three thousand feet lower than Xela and consequently much warmer.

We had a nice night with John and Harriet, and as I was still feeling a bit dodgey, we decided to part ways with them and hunker down here for a while and rest. We have rented a crazy yet beautiful room carved out of a cliff in the tiny village of San Marcos. We have are own bathroom and shared access to a cocina, kitchen, a necessity of course with a my delicate innards. You can only get to his place by a half hour boat ride, as the village is tucked into the side of a mountain, with the Mayan section of town higher up, and the quasi-hippy come lately section taking the low road, where we are of course.

Our amazing accomodations, complete with gigantic views of the lake and volcanoes, was crafted by a German fella, I´m learning to like Germans again too, utilizing adobe and recycled trash contruction (plastic bottles filled with trash) and composting toilets. He is also a genius with stained glass mosaics, they are everywhere in this place, covering windows, tables and doorways. Each is its own work of art, really. And to top it off there are no roads in this place, only foot paths between bannana plants, rotting oranges, massage huts, hustling juveniles, and many, many dogs. Today, we rented the room for a week and decided to use this peaceful spot to get back on track with our studies, sneak in a massage and head off to the orphange in about 10 days. And did we tell you, today, we actually got to eat a stone fired pizza with tempeh and pineapple. Thank you Saint Simon.

IMG_0130

IMG_0130
Originally uploaded by dickensmatthew.

Heather and Ruth, one of the beautiful kids I told you about.

IMG_0199

IMG_0199
Originally uploaded by dickensmatthew.

Volcan Santiagito Erupts.

IMG_0075

IMG_0075
Originally uploaded by dickensmatthew.

Volcan de Agua, Antigua

Not for the weak

Guatemala is not for the weak, or the asthmatic or bronchial-challenged. It is a country soaked in suffering and survival charmed with volcanoes and beautiful people. Xela (where we are now) in the Western Highlands is a town waving in heards of tourists longing to speak Spanish and whispering upon them all sorts of fatigue. Unlike most tourist destinations, where you spark up a conversation of the best beach, best hike, adventure or place to eat - Xela draws comradery with stories of shared sickness, good antibiotics and where to find a good, clean meal. Of course, there is more to this land of beautiful people and intrigue, but this week, we got a first hand dose of the crap, and so we´re reveling in it a bit.

After 3 weeks here, mi esposo´s body let go to a wave of vulnerability that hit him up with a soupfull of sickness. He´s on the mend now, after 3 doctors visits, multiple antibiotics, mucho weakness, and crazy night fevers. Our spanglish has either left him with the diagnosis of samonella, infection of the gut, or typhoid fever. We´re cheering for samonella, and he goes again to the doctor tomorrow to double check on his recovery. I´ve been using up all of my positive thinking trying to heal him, and he´s been taking heavy doses of antibiotics, so we´ll see.

If we get a thumbs up from the doctor, we´ll motor out of Xela. In a frantic night fever Matthew begged me not to let him die in this bed in Xela and to take him to warmer, better-breathing ground. And so we go without looking back or feeling bad about it. It´s all part of the adventure, all part of learning, all part of being alive-good and bad. We´ve met 2 motor-homing folks in their 60s that offered us a ride to Lake Atitlan and the beaches in El Salvador. Jumping aboard the gas-guzziling motor home with an oil engineer doesn´t seem so demonic at the moment, and much more like rolling into the arms of mom and pop. And so, if my husband can rise to the occassion and surmount the forces of natural selection, we´ll blow off spanish school this week and take some time to heal, clear up the lungs, and warm up the bones.

Matthew, here, folks. I just thought you all might want to hear from the accursed himself. I´m alive, and this isn´t an elaborate life insurance scam my wife cooked up to off me. She loves me well. I don´t know how it happened but it happened. We came here to eventually go and help the needy and sick. I knew we, too, we´re going to garner our share of the plagues, but I just didn´t think I´d catch something horrible before we had time to exit the airport terminal. This is my fifth trip to Central America, and I suppose I thought, idiotically, I was immune to what wipes out armies. Dude, I´m dumb, but also on the mend, and I think Poncho from Chips, my doctor, is up to the task. It seems the los Dioses (gods) still want me around after all.

Soy Emferma

In Guatemala, when a person goes to the bathroom they say, ´´Salud George Bush.¨ Which is to say, to his health, when you drop an undesirable in the toilet or roadside ditch. These have been a trying four days for us and the State of Our Bowels Address is as such:

Our enemies, the Amebas, have lauched a decisive and victorious attack. Casualties have been heavy for the good guys. Heather has withstood multiple running bombs for six days, and she is the better of the two. Matthew, after a couple of small flanking victories, has secumbed to a massive intestinal infection and a case of the amebas, to boot. Yikes, GOD or O Dios. Mamamia.

Let me just say, while I never have experienced the indignity of what my lady friends go through during a gynecological exam, I now have a obtained a new level of embarassment. Our Spanish instructors accompanied us, Heather and I, on a field trip if you will, to the laboratory where we gave the stool samples for analysis. The results of which were negative across the board. But the el doctor, after hearing our story, and poking and prodding my gut, seeing my fever, and just general acknowledgement from the pain of the alien trying to come out of stomach, wrote out the scripts. Cipro and one of the zoles.

Of course, in my stupor, I got totally hosed at the pharmacy, over charged by about 40 dollars American, and this got my wife, instructors and fellow classmates in an uproar. Which in turn, in my delicate state, made me fly into a rage at them, shaming myself and everyone involved. Not a good day.

Hoy, today, my stomach doesn´t hurt hardly at all and the diarrhea has stopped, but I´m still running fevers and just feel totally like shit. And on top of all that, the air in Xela is horrible, and now I have a cold. The honeymoon is over and this is our blog, our chance to bitch a little.

Meanwhile, mi esposa Heather is tired of being cold all the time, and has been having a somewhat difficult transition to memorizing a couple of thousand new las palabras, words, in just five days. She´s also trying tea tree oil in place of the prescription drugs and it seems to be working for her more vital state of vigor.

First off, the elevation here is about 8,000 feet, and nobody has heat. Period. Not in your house, school, etc. Insulation, forget it. Many do not have walls. Fear not, we have walls. People only burn things like wood, if they´re poor or traditional, to cook their food, and trash, because everybody does and there´s so much of it. For instance, for those of you who have never traveled to lands this far south, you don´t throw the waste paper in the el inodoro, toilet, you save it and burn it. We have not tried this yet, but I´m mulling the idea. Anyway, it´s about 35 degrees during the night and warms to about 55 or 65 in the sun, in the afternoon with no humidity. In truth, we are cold almost all the time. Heather, in her ingenius, homey sort of way, has bought us a bunch of candles, and we are now using these to try and heat up the cuatro de dormir, bedroom.

Just a little more about the houses here. Most are simple one-story, cement block affairs, with corrugated or flat cement los techos, roofs. Most of the outer walls touch the house next to yours, and if your are lucky enough to have a courtyard or something, it is enclosed in either a cement wall or iron fence with razor wire, or crushed glass lining the top, much the same you see in the old fancy houses in Charleston, S.C. Funny thing is, occassionally the gate is open and might get a glimpse of somewhat pleasant garden or courtyard. Some of the houses, of course, have two stories, and all have the infrastructure, giant rusty rebar sticking up everywhere, like bug antennas, just in case you have the dinero to go higher.

more to come, adios,
matthew and heather