Guatemala

I recently finished my two weeks in Guatemala, and I have two distint impressions about the country (or at least Antigua and Guatemala City, which is where I was exclusively). Firstly, there are a lot of guns in Guatemala. Secondly, (and completely unrelatedly) that country sure does love Lent!

I have never seen so many guns in my entire life (possibly put together). And I´m talking big guns. Every policeman, security guard, and even one random guy in regular clothes walking down the street, was carrying a shotgun. At banks, jewelry stores, street corners... everywhere. One day, when arriving back at my homestay, there was a delivery druck dropping supplies off at the little shop across the street, and standing next to the truck was a guy with a big gun. There were even armed guards at the amusement park we went to with the kids from Safe Passage. It was slightly disconcerting seeing big guns around small children. My favorite gun moment (if there can be such a thing) was when we saw a police car rear-end (quite gently, as they were inching along in traffic) another car. The cops got out of their car, bearing machine guns, and, surprise surprise, the whole incident seemed to be taken care of in about 15 seconds.

The ridiculous number of guns made me feel neither safe nor unsafe, merely bewildered. (I haven´t any idea, I´m happy to say, whether the guns were ever put to use, or if they were even loaded.)

As to the country loving Lent, well, Antigua is reknowned for their Holy Week celebrations. Although I left right as Holy Week was beginning (but not before I got to see Jesus walk down the street in front of my house on Palm Sunday), I did get to see quite a bit of pomp and circumstance. They had processions every Sunday, in which families paid (!) to have their son(s) dress in purple satin robes and help to carry around a monstrous float. Presumably this is a bit of a status thing, as well as a way to do penance. The floats were accompanied by a big brass band playing funeral dirge after funeral dirge. During the week I was there (the week before holy week), there were loads of processions as well. While wandering along, the float and band and all the guys in purple walking alongside, and anyone else that wanted to follow the procession, walked over ´carpets´ that people made (out of flowers and pine needles, or really elaborate ones out of dyed sawdust). Hours are spent making these, and then they just get pulverized. (I particularly liked seeing the cleanup crew and garbage trucks following along sweeping up and getting rid of the debris.)

It was all quite a trip. As I've left Guatemala now, I will share with you the other random things I saw, heard, and thought.

Only 18% of students in Guatemala finish elementary school.

Guatemala (or Latin America in general) is where school buses go to die. They get all pimped out and turned into what is affectionately called chicken buses. While there were no chickens on the bus we went on, there was way over the legal capacity of people! We were sitting three to a seat. On field trips with kids, that is no problem. But three to a seat with adults means that the third person has maybe one cheek on the seat and is being propped up by being smooshed into the third person on the opposite seat. (Lucky for me, it was a strapping 24 year old lad...) The chicken buses have loud, booming horns that they like to use. They use them when they think someone might cross the street in front of them or need picking up or when they get to a street corner or whenever they damn well feel like it. (My bedroom faced a large Avenue, and the honking started at about 5 am.) AND the chicken buses don't seem to have to have any emissions testing. The black smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe was exactly like (in color and size) the scary black smoke in the first season of Lost. (What WAS that?) I couldn't have the windows open in my room, because of the fumes. (And yes, I could smell them starting at 5 am also.) Blowing my nose emitted some lovely black stuff. Ick.

I got to feel two earthquakes while in Guatemala... one while I was skyping my brother (although he wouldn't have known it unless I pointed it out to him).

You are supposed to barter with the people peddling their wares. But when it is only $3 to start with, and that three bucks means way more to the Mayan woman who is selling it than to you, who cares? I bought myself a headband, and didn't blink at the price. She must have felt bad, for she threw in a bracelet for free. It reminded me of that haggling bit from Monty Python.

In wandering aimlessly around town one day, I went into a jade jewelry store. (Apparently, as in New Zealand, jade was big Guatemala.) I was totally followed around the store by a clerk the whole time. Yes, I had a back pack, and yes I looked scruffy, but really? (Welcome to racial-- or socio-economic-- profiling, take two!)

I saw a boy of about four swishing along one day in snowpants. It was about 75 degrees.

At an ATM one day, yet another armed guard made me wait outside while the (apparently incompetent) tourists attempted to work the machines. Eventually he went over to help them punch buttons.

At my homestay, the elderly and very deaf mother of my host lived with them. One night she was apparently ill, for I was awoken at about midnight by the most awful series of noises. Moans, retching, yells, and some other noises that I can't quite describe, but I'm pretty sure have been used in zombie movies. It was the only time in my entire trip that I have actually been scared. (I was very glad I had locked my door.)

In Spanish class one day, my teacher gave me a worksheet that had all sorts of kitchen implements on it (some of which I didn't even know the name of in English). On that sheet was the very useful vocab for 'meat grinder'. How often does one use that word? Well, it gave me the opportunity to wade my way through the story (in Spanglish) about the time that I was looking for an apple peeler/corer in my kitchen and couldn't find one, but found five (no, I'm not exaggerating), FIVE meat grinders.

I made flashcards for all the vocabulary I had been learning (not the kitchen stuff, for when will I use that? I did put down the phrase "I broke..." though). I went through them the next day, and the pile of stuff I knew was actually larger than that I didn't. (Probably wouldn't be now, if I did it again.)

Upon entering the security area in the Guatemala airport, these words actually came out of my mouth (hopefully not too loudly): "Why are they all green? And putting their pants on?" (It was a soccer team all wearing matching shirts and putting their belts back on after security.)

My flight to Costa Rica had a layover in Nicaragua. There's another place I never in my life I thought I'd be....