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I don't think anybody can go to a third world country and have it not challenge one's definition of everything, of happiness, of wealth, of the contours of what we consider to be real.

How is it that the Comalapan people seem more genuinely happy then the average American Joe or Jane despite of the poverty and mud and trash and work from grade school age until your back is the same shape as a crescent moon?  It's not poverty in their minds, it's poverty in my mind, relative to what I consider to be the definition of poverty and wealth, a horribly anthropocentric tendency I have to hurl these concepts onto everything I see.  And what are these things, poverty and wealth?  Is it only in relation to finance?

The Comalapan people, from my experience don't attach the latter to the former.  Their concepts are simple, un-muddied and elegant and their happiness is not connected to any of the parts that make up the whole of the definition of any word resembling wealth.

Every aspect to their lives is at the core of experience.  Experience itself, the thing done and ingested.  It happens and is taken in and that's it, no analysis paralysis, no preconceived notions or expectations to skew the outcome of the experience.  A kid falls flat on his or her face and gets up to shake it off, no over-comforting from the parents, the experience is done and over with, no need to add extraneous baggage and dependency to it afterwords.

Conversations are at a genuine and real as rain level because there aren't any abstract or over thought players in the conversation.  The conversation turns into a conversation akin to talking to a peacock without getting lost in the iridescence of it's wings and finding out it's inner most basic all sharing and simple qualities by looking at it in the eyes.  Kind of a stretch but it works.

With our technologic development, like out of a movie about the future made ten years ago, with our university and medical systems, with all these glittering perks of a first world country, with all our delicious drugs and some mind altering athletics, there is something inside and universally muddied to the point where it, the most instinctual of Homo sapian shared qualities, is lost.  Gone.

And at what cost.  Everything is relative to what you know and understand.  The curse of knowledge.  The curse of the tortured genius, with the opening of avenues of thought comes vulnerability to their destructive capabilities of hurting something that was not there before the avenues were opened in the first place.  The more you know, the more you know you don't know anything.

Another core gut like need share by everyone under air is companionship and community, with it's microcosm found in the family.  Rugged individualism has dynamited this emphasis on family, the building blocks to any notion of community, into a pile of shrapnel.  Think for yourself is as necessary as a good beer, but to much can make you look like you swallow pumpkins for breakfast, lost jobs, and body dented couches, and just enough - not only tastes great but can lead to a productive buzz.

But, I have to use these sort of opaquing abstract concepts to write and say everything I just said.  To make order of the cultural differences I have to diffuse and deconstruct and add more floating and possibly irrelevant concepts to create a definition that I can not only write, but chew and swallow and actually enjoy the taste.

So much for that.

From here to there back to here

            I went to one of the local schools this morning in Cuhol, a ten minute walk up and through meandering mud and trash paraded roads, cows standing in filth, tied to posts with six foot ropes, kids in doorways who smile or look at us with complete aw, past a pila (a three foot walled bath like sink fed by rainwater) where women and young children wash their clothes and hair.  I say “Buenos dias” in the sing-songy Comalapan way and they sing it back.  Sometimes they say it with emphasis on the last syllable of “buenas” and “dias” like a church bell.  Sometimes it comes out only “bue-dias,” sometimes only “dias” and sometimes all muffled and melted together in a gurggly duck call.

            We helped an English class today.  I started by going through the class and saying “good morning, how are you,” and they would reply, “good morning, I am well” or “I am sleepy” in a slow concentrated way, where you could see they were trying so hard with an eagerness to learn not familiar to my experience in teaching American kids.  They’re faces would light up like roller-coaster’s when they knew that they got a word or a phrase right.

            “My name is Kyle” I would say, “O en Espanol, Carlos”, “or in Spanish, Carlos”.  “Cow” they would reply.  Almost.  I would then ask them their names and how old they were in English, “My names is Antony.  I am twelf,” “my name is Fedlia, I am fourteen.”

            I was working with sixth graders, ranging from ages 11-14, some dressed in traditional colorful traje, some dressed in American Eagle, some dressed in whatever clothed coverage they had.  The sixth grad is the last grade of the school and this will be the end of 95% of their academic careers and the beginning of their lives carrying corn and digging trenches and pounding tortillas.  It breaks my heart.  They all want to learn and this is all made more painful in contrast to American kid’s mirrored philosophy towards education.

            These kids are tough as sledge hammers.  Recess began and the teachers gathered for a meeting and it was on.  They went bezerk.  The courtyard/basketball court turned into a running pulsating cackling smile torn war-zone.  Kids colliding into each other, running in every direction at once, about 15 basketballs flying around in all sorts of unpredictable trajectories, boys fighting for money, girls pummeling and tackling each other for possession of one of the many basketballs.  They were having the time of their lives, smiling and laughing uncontrollably.

            I played basketball and soccer and tag with them.  “Me amos es Carlos” and I would spin the ball on my finger and I’d quickly have a group of 20 of them surrounding me, hypnotized by the way the multi-colored ball transformed into one undulating color as it spun suspended on the tip of my finger.

            In the 7^th grade we had two lesbians visit class to talk to  us about alternative sexuality and to these kids I was probably just as exotic, not in the sexual referent way, but different to anything they’ve seen so far in their lives.

            I saw at least five kids just get completely taken out, hit in the face or head by these cannonball projected basketballs that flew in every direction, sometimes knocking them of their feet, and they would just get up like was nothing and start marauding in gleeful spasms again.

            They would call “Colocho” and want me to flex my muscles for some reason.  I felt cool.  Some little girls would take my hand by the finger and bring me no place in particular, but just walk with me.  Some boys would throw balls or shoot tiny pebbles out of straws at me like snipers from rooftops, I’d feel one hit me in the back and turn to locate the assailant and there’d be nobody there.  Sneaky.

            And they’re going to carry corn for the rest of their lives.

            All these kids happy like nothing else, running in extacy with ragged boots and scandals, eating simple tortilla or fruit snacks, smiling smiles that will melt your face, free-wheeling around, intoxicated by this brief moment of unsupervised mayhem.

            There is a missing demographic in Comalapa.  It is nearly impossible to identify young adults or the entire decade of 20-30 for that matter.  You’ll se a mother with a couple of kids on her lap and another older kid carrying the third youngen’, and the mother’s glazed eyes which resemble stoicism betray her youth and you realize you’re not looking at an older women but you’re looking at an underclassmen, younger than I am, surviving in the way only humans slowly survive.

            The people are beautiful here, but of course I notice the women first.  There are a lot of beautiful young women but the locals talk about something that happens to this beauty in the twenties, it just somehow goes away.  But then something more profound and undetectable and really, to my brooding, un-analyzable grows within to replace the exterior aesthetics.  Something that is beyond words like music.  Something that you can catch it’s presence, like a dim star, but disappears when you try to look at it.  The slow survival, the memories of boundaryless playground mayhem, the wick of a child’s smile seem to be the waters to the growth of this ethereal something.  It is smoke.  It has images.  It imagines what it can define as it’s boundaries.  It imagines it’s childhood and muddy toes and just projects, that’s it.

            And the kids will carry corn for the rest of their lives.

8/Sunday back from Antigua

            I got worms.  Maybe.  Definitely probably.  The local Comalapan doctor thought I had Guardia but I don’t think he gave the worm scenario proper consideration because of my translators embarrassment towards describing the sphincter tickling and general down there movement I told her to tell the doc.

            Just drank some liquid worm egg killer that came in a box with a clown on the label and tasted like pink chalk, we’ll see if it works.  It doesn’t feel right.  I feel violated and disconcerted.  It’s all kind of funny in that twisted laugh-out-of-nothing-else-to-do sort of situation, like in a pathetic self-preservation and copping kind of laughter where you wince a little more than smile.  Kind of funny.  Not really.

            I feel like a swallowed a dancing feather laced flag and it’s windy down there.

            My fellow volunteer Bella said “it could be worse,” and I paused for a while, trying to think of something specific that could be worse and I said “death would be.”  She said, “you could be pregnant,” and I said, “I basically am.”

Aug 26th

            I sifted rocks like a gold mining manica, who’s name was Bill or Jed or something, for hours yesterday ‘till my biceps throbbed like golden nuggets rumbling down a river bed.  We were sifting to separate the pebbled sized rocks from the sand sized rocks to make concrete for the poring of the third roof on the schoolhouse today.

            I was trying really hard to impress the Guatemalan workers, as if to say “see, this gringo can do more than just take pictures.”  I don’t know if it worked.  They laughed a lot.

            Four o’clock came, usually quitting time, when the electricians came to install three, two ton concrete posts, spire like and about 50-60 feet long.  So I carried them up the mile long mud ridden road to ensure the impression I was to make upon the workers.  Well not really.

            It took everybody we had, probably 40 people to haul these big bastards up the hill.  This was one of the craziest tasks/things I have ever done.

            We rolled the columnular post onto a meandered rope on the ground, lifted one end up so the electricians could blance it horizontally on this two-car-tired-wheeler-device, that we then attached the same 100 foot rope to, to all grab and haul and pull this thing up the mud and rain diveted and trenched out road, up up up, the hill to the land were the school was being built.

            The wheels would get stuck on rocks and in trenches and the Guate electricians would yell “One, too, free” and everyone would cuss and dig and pull as hard as they could to get the momentum up again to haul this monstrosity up the hill.  The head electrician didn’t know much english, but he had perfected “Common bebe!”

            Once up the hill we had a 50 foot section of downhill, towards the dug post holes and that was interesting.  40 people hanging on to this thing for dear life, or the life of those below it, feet skidding down the mud and hands white-knuckled around the rope like a first time water skier in a lake of mud, sliding, cursing, laughing for lack of any other expression to make.

            Once to the hole, we then had to lift the post up vertically, while Common Bebe propped a 10 foot iron fork like device under the end that was being lifted, so we could make upward progress rather then the opposite, which the flimsy hard hats of the workers probably wouldn’t have helped much if the ladder were to occur.

            Once up to a 45 degree angle, four lasos were unleashed and we slit up into quarters to guid this thing up to a 90 degree angle.

            The whole time, the post flirting with the heads of those below it, tilting and falling from side to side.  But we did it, only two more to go.

            The first was adrenaline filled and kind of un because of how unsafe it was, doing this without any motors, man/female power only, but the fun slowly dwindled with the second and died with the third.

            But we did it.

            Finally at about seven, we finished and went to a fiesta the bombardos threw us (Long Way Home, the non-profit I’m volunteering for) for bringing them the firefighting equipmnt they now use from the States.  Anreas and I crushed them at foosball, I slid down the fire pole, watched a live marimba band and ate grizzly looking meat served simply with tortillas, homemade of course.

            No rain on the tin roof but I still slept like a drunkard at a distillery.  I dreamt of people I knew.

Back From Xela

            I was the meat in a Guatemalan sandwich on the packed chicken bus, in one seat, one small bench like “seat”.  Back sweating like a fat kid eating cheese, shoulder to shoulder, flying around cliffed out corners, closing my eyes to get rid of the terrible hot sense of clausterphobia and thinking of happy places, like untouched powder fields, on mountains, in lakes, whatever.  I now know how to turn off my brain, it’s actually not to hard if you have to.  Sometimes it does it when I don’t have to.

            We had one bus change in Chimal and we sat there for about twenty minutes.  Buses would fly in and the door guys would see us gringos and yell, “Xela Xela Xela”, which sounds like, “Shayla Shayla Shayla!” or “Antigua Antigua!” because those are basically the only two places in Guatemala that gringos go, and when they would find out we were goint to Comalapa they wore this facial expression that was either respect, befuddlement or mockery, sometimes all three at the same time.

            Pedro, me compadre, ran across the street to get a couple cups of coffe and as soon as he got back the bus we were looking for rolled up, so I took a swig, burnt my tongue, set it down on the trash strewn street and began to run after the bus, which barely slowed to a sprinting speed.

            We jumped on the two vertical ladders on the back of the bus, chocking on black smoke and thin air, huge bags on our back and opened the back door to the bus with one hand, the other hand the only thing keeping us from becming gringo roadkill, or some sort of pseudo human-asphalt-burnt-pancake.

            So there I was, in the very back of this cluster-packed chicken bus, standing in the isle, back against the hopefully sturdy locked back door, three people in the seat to my right and three in the one to the left, completely squashed and surrounded by people and sweating and laughing at the general absurdity of the situation, which is completely an everyday sort of melt-into-the-back-of-your-mind kind of thing for the locals.  Not this gringo.

            Then the dude to my left needed to get out.  I told my buddy to hold my bag, opened the back door, the bus still flying, skirted out the door and onto the ladder on the back of the bus, one hand on the ladder, the other holding the door open for the Guatemalan getting off, pavement blurring beneath my soles barely visible in my lower peripherals and really not the thing I was trying to acknowledge.  The guy was impressed and said “Woa,” and jumped off the moving bus and I jumped back in and shut the door.

            Dat-dada-da, dat-dada.

P.S. on the way to Xela nobody wanted to sit next to the gringos

To Xela (a bigger city in Guatemala)

Riding a chicken bus is kind of along the same sadistic lines of riding a carnival ride that cranks and squeaks, and you know it's probably not safe but there is something to the twinkle in the carni's eye that is either wisdom or the aftershocks of a 72 hour meth binge, or both.

A chicken bus is the infamous central/south American school bus type public transportation that usually has humans and chickens and bags and all sorts of cantankerous and cumbersome objects overflowing out the cracks of the windows and rambles at demented speeds down curvaceous roads that don't have guard rails.

Pedro and I got on one of these chicken buses, humid with condensation on the windows and locals staring at conche and colocho (blonde kid and curly haired kid) to go to Chimal were we would then jump on another bus to Xela.  With a sort of pseudo-white-light-disco-central-american-brass-and-rhythm-music pumping from the buses blown out speakers, I stared out the window down the hundred to thousand foot drop to the canyon floor next to what we rambled by at star-reaching speeds, separated from the edge by no more than a tortilla.  I started to think of how many of these buses tumble to their metal contorted deaths a month as we flew down the snake like roads.

We got to Chimal safe and sound, wired with adrenaline and had to run after a wake of black smoke that came from a bus, already leaving, with a guy hanging out the door yelling "Xela Xela!".  We caught up to the bus and jumped on, the entire time the bus never stopping but accelerating and motor chugging like a kid laughing while running in a game of tag.

The bus smelled terrible and was armpit hot and I felt queazy from the cheap bologna type chorizo and black smoke I had ingested earlier.  Just don't puke, they will not stop for you.  Just don't think about it, pretend like you're in Jurassic Park, look over there see, it's the exact terrain of J. Park, da-de-da, there's the J. Park theme song, are those pterodactyls?

We made one stop on the way to Xela, a fork to either Xela or Atillan, the giant lake in the middle of the country, and 8-10 people, old, young, men, women, kids, jumped on the bus with nuts, lime, tomatilos, chochitas, french fries, drinks, candy, yellin' and sellin' like thier life depended on it, which it did.

The chicken buses have two employees, one driver, who is usually extremely talented and psycho reckless and a guy who stands at the door to open it for passengers and collect money.  The key to this operation is speed, hence the Daytona speeds and the lack of stopping.  The bus only slows down to a gurgle and you jump on like a Indiana Jones.  To ensure this speed obsessed game plan the guy at the door will climb out the door and onto the roof while the bus is going sixty and flirting with the edges of cliffs and your basic common sense, scuffle around up ther and grab the bags of the passengers, who are jumping off the moving bus, and launches the bags off the bus, sometimes hitting their targets, sometimes not.

As we were rolling into Xela, the door guy started talking to us, asking how many beers it would take us to get drunk, how much a liter of beer costs in the states, if we like coucha (homemade Guatemalan moonshine, which we do), if we wanted to have a good time (if we knew what he meant, wink, wink).  All that was in Spanish and when we got off the bus he said "Bye homies".

pictures

here are some pictures, I think they speak for themselves