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

Mud and Tuk Tuks

I arrived in Guatemala City with about four hours of sleep in 24 hours, grabbed my bags and walked out the airport doors to a wet humid humping your leg sort of humidity and a giant group of people waiting for arrivals.  Completely foreign to the place I was in, lost, and alone, but as soon as I walked out of the airport I heard "Kyle!" and Rebecca - the volunteer coordinator - was waiting for me with a cab driver Donal.  It sounded like a light house, comforting.
We ate some Pepion - traditional Guatemalan dinner - beef in a pumpkin seed marinade and made our way 2 hours west to San Juan Comalapa, or known as Comalapa to the locals.  Crazy cab drivers, chicken buses from hell, horses, vacas, tuk tuks (three wheeled taxis a la Thailand), there are no emission tests in Guatemala, anthropocentric is a useful term here.  Saw a kid kicking a cow.  Saw a woman walking with a propane tank on her head.
Time to play Durak, so more to come and pictures.  It's actually not raining right now, don't know if I'll be able to go to sleep without "chipa chipa" on the tin roof.

just set up

hola amigos, just set up my blog in downtown comalapa in an internet room or whatever you would call it, do you call them internet cafes if they don´t serve coffee or cafe paraphenelia?  anyways expect more, when i actually bring what i have written so far and pictures, plenty of pictures of beautiful guatemalans to come.  as for now, i was as out of my element as a fat man running at first, but i can feel myself settling into central american lifestyle here on day three or whatever it is.  it´s all a little shocking at first, the mud and poverty but there is something beautiful and simple down in the bodies and souls of these people here.  despite their living conditions they smile more then north americans.  relative is the word of the week.

buenas tardes and goodluck.