Dontcha just hate it... ?

When you're abruptly woken up waaaay too early be a coconut falling off a tree and slamming to the ground just outside your bedroom window? And then with all the roosters crowing and pigs oinking, it can be tough to get back to sleep. Yeah...

Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN!!!

The price of tortillas went up today. Yesterday it was 5 tortillas for 1 Quetzal (about $0.13) and today it is 4 tortillas for the same price. Diversion of foodstocks for biofuel production? Couldn't tell you.

Uuuugh!

It took me a little while to figure out what I was seeing last night, but I witnessed a cockroach molting. At first I thought it was a very long white and brown bug, then I thought it was an albino cockroach and a normal cockroach humping (hey, if that's what you're into...), then as the fresh cockroach got a little distance from the shell of its former self, I finally figured it out. It's somewhat less inspiring than watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon, as far as metaphors for transformation go. But the new fella sure looks fresh, doesn't he? I evicted him.

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurelsuter/2007_11_26BugEncounter

A Very Guate Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was coming up and everyone around Memo's household was looking kind of glum (apparently the tax-man stopped by) so I offered to make a Thanksgiving dinner for the family. They have been very generous with me, with free internet, food, and hugs so this was my chance to give something back. I figured since there were turkeys clucking around in many yards I could get us a real country turkey, so I arranged with a guard at the office to bring me one slaughtered and cleaned, though the cleaning was extra. I didn't want to add the additional challenge of de-feathering a bird (please refer to the Paulie Shore movie Son-in-Law). And this may sound cruel, but the other American at the office, José, knew I was making a Thanksgiving dinner since the whole turkey deal went down right in front of him, but I didn't invite him to join us. Based on a conversation I had with Zaira after his drunken tom-foolery, it appears he might have been the one Memo kicked out of their hostel a few months beforehand for bad behavior, and plus I'm just not that keen to spend time with him. The guard wasn't 100% sure he could get the bird, though, since people are already hoarding them in advance for Christmas, but another source told me I could get a frozen one at Maxi-Bodega, the new mega super store on the outskirts of town. So on Wednesday I went to the office not sure if there was a turkey awaiting me or not. I couldn't find the guard when I got there, so I looked in the fridge and didn't see it, but then the other guard told me that, sí, it was there. I'd known better than to expect a pumped-up turkey on steroids like what we have in the US, but I also hadn't expected what appeared to be a large chicken. I knew this wouldn't be enough, so I jumped in a tuk-tuk and we raced off to Maxi-Bodega. Turns out it's Wal-Mart owned. Hmm, I wonder if they're going to put a McDonald's out there too, I don't think there is one in all of Petén. I just asked Zaira if she's ever been to a McDonald's in her life and she says no. Well, I picked up a medium-sized frozen turkey, a Carolina original, and brought it back to Memo's place and he was like, "oh no, we need at least another bird, all of Angelica's relatives from the country-side are coming over for this," so I jumped into another tuk-tuk and raced off again to Maxi-Bodega. And thus began a long afternoon of fast-defrosting two turkeys and cleaning my new place. This morning I came over to their place at 7am and got to work, and without going into too much detail let's just say it's a lot of work to put together a whole Thankgiving oneself, though the kids Reyna and Wilso were invaluable assistants, chopping, peeling, and fetching for me, all very cheerfully and of their own free will. When it became apparent that not as many relatives could make it as had been thought, I took one of the Maxi-turkeys out to make more room in the oven. While I was cooking Memo and Angelica took the opportunity to satisfy their own curiosity and cruise on out to Maxi-Bodega. Loved it. It turns out that I undercooked the country-turkey, maybe because I thought it was so eensy-weensy I thought it'd cook really fast, so we ate pretty much all of one Maxi-turkey and returned the country turkey to the oven, followed but the other Maxi-turkey. So in the end we dined on a pretty typical pilgrim platter: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, bread, but because of the oven bottleneck my roasted carrots weren't done in time. The only really Guatemalan substitution I had to make was I couldn't find celery for the stuffing so I put in huisquil instead. I'd never handled it before, and fortunately I discovered it needs to be soaked in water before I added it to the stuffing, to get rid of a stinging liquid it produces. Of course I discovered this when my hand became discolored and stinging, followed by a slow chemical peel on the palm. So that was that, every one was happy and it made the tax-man blues go away for at least a little while.

Please enjoy photos here.

This morning, however, the day after, I was a bit unwell and while my suspicions were on some tacos I ate the day before yesterday, I thought maybe I had food-poisoned everyone. But fortunately everyone else is fine and I can go back to hatin' on that taco stand. Never again!

Cribs II

I got fed up with not having a kitchen and with being awakened early every morning by the sound of tuk-tuks revving their engines, so I decided to move to the more bucolic San Miguel. It is a short jaunt across the lake from Flores, but it is worlds away as there are trees (Flores is entirely paved), very few vehicles (easily accessible by boat, but driving is the loooong way around), and pigs and chickens browsing about. And now I have a super-pimping pad, it has two bedrooms, a tidily tiled bathroom and kitchen, a living room, furnishings, a roof-top hang out, a lime tree, a smelly little dog who I plan to bathe, and I am surrounded by relatives of the owner so it is secure. Please note that in the aerial photo of Flores posted in Pueblo Pequeño, Infierno Grande San Miguel is the community on the peninsula in the top part of the photo.

In case you're unfamiliar with tuk-tuks, here is a picture of one. They are cheap, ubiquitous, and noisy, and according to Angelica they've only been in the area for the past year or so.

Please en joy photos of my house and new neighborhood.

Breaking news! My adviser in Santa Barbara, David, suggested that I spend a few months there when I come back at Christmas time instead of the few weeks I'd planned. This will be pretty much the first time that all of my committee and myself are in the same country at the same time in about a year, so he thinks we should take advantage of that before I run off to collect my data. Sounds reasonable and I'll enjoy being back in SB. So maybe you'll get to see more of me than you thought you would, because maybe I'll be sleeping on your couch. And before you get your hopes up, most likely Josie won't be joining me, though maybe she can put in a special appearance. We'll see.

Messing about in boats

I accompanied a sausage fest of dudes from various public and private organizations taking water samples from the Pasión River outside where the palm oil processing plant dumps its waste in the river. It was a good time being on the boat, cruising the river, acting covert so palm oil goons wouldn't come out and rough us up. This was a couple of hours south of Flores, not far from the town of Sayaxché, which also is not far from the lake Petexbatún where an acquaintance of mine, Otto, is the manager of a rustic guest lodge only accessible by boat. I took him up on his invitation to stay there and had my water-sampling companions hand me off to him and his 11 year old son Jorge, visiting his papa from Guatemala City. After a delightfully restful evening in the lodge, free of the noise of tuk-tuks racing around the streets that accompanies the life in Flores, we boated to Aguateca. This is a Mayan ruin on the edge of the lake, founded as an offshoot of Tikal (the crown jewel of the Mayan sites) and it is a site that Otto, as one of the archaeologists who worked on its excavation, knows very well. Nice to have an expert as a guide, and I am in love with his son. I have not spent this much time with an 11 year old boy since I was 11, and he is a wonderful kid, thoughtful, sensitive, kind, and funny. A great time, so nice to get away from Flores for a bit. They had to go to Flores to pick up supplies for the lodge so the return home for me was door to door service, involving boating, walking, and driving. Here’s a link to more photos from the river and lake excursions.

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurelsuter/SayaxchPetexbatN

Pueblo pequeño, infierno grande

Living on an island the size of Flores is both a blessing and a curse. There is a saying, “Pueblo pequeño, infierno grande” meaning “Small town, big hell” which is something I experienced today, and unfortunately it was an ugly American (not this one here, a different one) who caused it. When I arrived here, I found out I was not the only gringo in the area with a taste for conservation. There is a young fella from the States named Joseph, locally known as José, who is looking to do a one year professional master’s degree in international development and conservation at Cornell in a few year’s time. One of the requirements for applying for this program is having two years of experience abroad in international development, and through the contacts he made with The Nature Conservancy in the US he landed a spot tagging along with the technicians on community development programs for Defensores de la Naturaleza, the NGO that co-administers the Sierra del Lacandón National Park. From what I understand, he goes with them to communities and sometimes helps with the labor of their various development projects and sometimes lounges in a hammock and reads while the technicians work. As it happens, these technicians of Defensores are also my primary gateway into the communities living and farming in the park, the communities where I am doing my research. Currently, however, I am also actively cultivating other contacts with sway in those communities, such as with the Pastoral Society of the Catholic Church in the area, which behaves as the good cop to Defensores’ bad cop in dealings with the communities and generally serves as a buffer between the two. So the blessing of the small island is that as I was strolling around on Sunday I happened to run into a gentleman from the Pastoral Society as he walked with his lady friend and he invited me to have a beer with them. We ended up having a good discussion of development projects in the area, and the great behemoth that threatens the small-scale subsistence agriculturalists and thus conservation areas, foreign-investor backed land consolidation. In this particular instance, city people with international backers come into what had been primarily a subsistence farming community and with their big money and dirty bargaining methods (apparently a useful phrase when pressuring a reluctant seller is “Sell to me today or I’ll negotiate with your widow tomorrow”), acquire all the land in a community and plant African palm for biodiesel production in place of what had been subsistence corn production. The now landless peasants, with a couple of bucks in their pockets, then go to the places where there is land for the grabbing, conservation reserves. So goes the story. Anyway, this was our topic when José, the ugly American, came into the restaurant by himself and, drunk as a skunk, started hollering “Laurel!” at me and offering to translate. I admit, I probably only understand about 90% of a complex conversation, but I don’t think his Drunklish to Spanish translation would have been a big improvement, and as I was only newly acquainted with these folks myself I wasn’t in a big rush to align myself with José in their eyes. So I told him that we were doing okay and he drifted off. Later, when he thought we were talking about corn fields, he asked if he could join us and I said that if it was okay with him, we’d like to continue our conversation about export-agriculture without him. He drifted off again, but caught our attention when he accidentally stepped on the resident dog’s tail, causing the dog to growl and nip at him and causing him to kick back at the dog in defense/offense. The waitress of the restaurant ran up to José, scolding him with, “That’s not your dog, you can’t kick at him like that!” and José and the dog continued to menace one another around her legs. Apparently José does not have a way with the dogs, as I’d already heard a story about a dog biting José in the leg as he and a field technician were walking by in one of the park communities. He eventually did join our conversation for a while, and said he was a man of corn, which is what Mayans say of themselves, and that he was Nicaraguan, which isn’t true, he’s from New Jersey and not of Nicaraguan origin, though he did learn his Spanish in Nicaragua. Eventually he drifted off again, and when it was time for him to pay his bar tab there was an additional conflict and my colleague from the Pastoral Society said he expected the police to show up at any minute. Anyway, the long and the short of it was because of the small island I had the happy event of running into the gentleman from the Pastoral Society, and he invited me to attend a meeting about water resources with him today, which turned out to be very interesting. And because of the small island I came close to being shamed by a fellow countryman, though in the end my new acquaintances and I just laughed the whole thing off. But something tells me that this is not the last instance of the small island leading to misadventure, whether it involves José or any other of the several hundred people who walk it daily.

Update! I saw José about a week later and he apologized for his behavior and asked me to apologize to my companions for him. Apparently he'd been having a frustrating time. Well...

El Chapo de Sinaloa

Little did I imagine when I saw the advertisements that El Chapo de Sinaloa was coming to town for a show that I would attend it. I had never heard of him before. But yesterday I met with gentlemen who work for the Pastoral Society of the Catholic Church and who help mediate interactions between the organizations that co-administer the Sierra del Lacandon National Park and the people living and farming there. At the end of the meeting some of them invited me to come along with them and I said sure, why not. It turns out we were going to watch the performance from a restaurant that is right next to the stadium where the show took place, since as friends of the owner of the restaurant we were VIPs (their words, they said VIPs and they even pronounced the letters like we do in english, vee-eye-pea, as opposed to how it would be in spanish, vay-ee-pay) and so we got to have a private party on the terrace and enjoy the show. The crowd that had actually bought tickets and were in the stadium really wasn't that large, and according to my companions this was because the last time that a ranchera style concert had been in the stadium it had been extremely full and that some of the men in the audience had fired their guns in the air to show their appreciation for the performance. This frightened the audience, causing everyone to dive to the grown (except Zaira, Memo's sister-in-law, who didn't want to get her clothes dirty), and thus I guess many people decided to put the CD on and drink in their living room. Apparently this ranchera style music attracts the drug-trafficking population of Petén and they like to walk around with this guns in their belt and then show off once they've gotten a bit drunk. Fortunately there were no shots last night, we watched the show placidly from the terrace, and though I had no idea who El Chapo was before the show, I definitely recognized many of his hits from the radio around here. And it was good because I also met some men who work in the Public Ministry on environmental affairs and who are involved in the bureaucratic process of forcibly removing (apparently usually without success) communities illegally settled in the park. Networking!

The new face of licuados?

As I've mentioned, I am friends with a family that runs a hostel here in Flores, and the other day Memo took photos of me and some other gringos enjoying licuados (blended fruit, sugar, ice, and water... a smoothie but with fewer bells and whistles) to promote their sale amongst the internet café crowd. Will the ad campaign have the desired effect?

Election Day

One of the things that I was congratulating myself on before coming to Guatemala was that I would be absent from the US for most of the run-up to our presidential elections, therefore avoiding most of the campaigning, which gets old fast. There's nothing like slipping out of the country to avoid our political skirmishes, I felt equally satisfied when I was in France for the year during the Clinton impeachment and only had a cursory knowledge of the happenings. Little did I realize, though, that I would be stepping into Guatemala right in time for their second round of Presidential elections. Apparently there was something like 14 candidates for the first round around 2 months ago, and two candidates were eligible for the second round, which just took place on Sunday. I was pretty convinced that the candidate promoting himself as "La Mano Dura", the Firm Hand, was going to win. Maybe this was because it was his theme song that was stuck in my mind from the trucks driving around blaring it throughout the day. In fact, one of the best things about being at Lucky's house is that she lives on the outskirts of her town and so there were no promotional trucks tooling around and I got a little respite from the song. It is pretty catchy, though, while I didn't even know what the other candidate's theme song was. Maybe I thought he would win because I spent considerable time around Guatemala City, which turns out to be one of the few areas where he did win, and which is also where the primary newspaper is published. Well, whatever the cause, I thought Mano Dura would win, meaning the return of military power to Guatemala since he was a General. According to my landlady, this meant soldiers would go into villages again and do whatever they wanted such as raping young girls. The election called for tough measures, though, such as the prohibition of the sale of alcohol from the evening before the election until the morning after. I suppose they figure that will increase the voter turn-out, or decrease the possibility of buying votes. And in addition to signing their names when they went to the polling place to avoid people voting twice, everyone also rubbed their index finger in a dark ink to mark themselves as having already voted. Well, in the end, much to my surprise and perhaps to the surprise of the capital dwellers, the other candidate won, the one from the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza party. There were firecrackers in the street, there was hooting and hollering, flag waving, people were happy. It seems like another of case of voting for the less worse candidate, but that can result in a big difference.

My mother was right

I just got back to Flores after a fortnight of zipping around Guatemala. Two weeks ago I went to La Capital for a couple of meetings, and, very exciting, to welcome Esteban as my first visitor. Well, it was a lovely time together, we started out in the colonial jewel of Antigua, and in an attempt to escape the rain headed up to Cobán. Here’re pictures from our trip to Semuc Champey, a limestone bridge on the Cahabon river a few hours from Cobán. Hiking to this overlook point turned out to be the last activity I felt good for, because after this I started to succumb to a general malaise. I guess when I was shivering in bed with multiple blankets despite the fact that according to some “it’s not cold” and I had very little appetite despite being very hungry, it was apparent something was wrong. But after a week together our time came to end and Esteban headed back to UCSB and I went off to Quetzaltenango (Xela) to visit my old Spanish maestra, Lucky, and her 9 month old daughter Montserrat (Moncie). That is when the itchy itchy on my legs and feet began, and let me say that while it felt so good to scratch them, it felt so bad to stop, so I started making up itching rules which I would alternately stick to and then violate. No itching with my hands. Okay, as long as I don’t use my fingernails. Okay, fingernails, but lightly. I can rub my feet on the bed. Okay, I can only rub my foot with the other foot, but no toenails. Okay, just stop completely. Mmm, maybe just with one finger. Despite the times I would be scratching my shins and wanting to cry, I had a nice time with Lucky and Moncie. Moncie is so funny, if she’s awake she is eating and Lucky keeps a constant stream of different foods flowing her way which Moncie demolishes with her two bottom (and only) teeth. She seeks out food too, we were all lying on the bed when she woke up from her nap and I guess she sensed the cake lying in foil that some neighbors had dropped off, because she went for it. Did she smell it? Does she know food comes wrapped in foil? Well, she wrested it from the foil herself, and she does not get kicked out of the bed for making a mess and I admit to having rubbed my legs in the crumbs on the bedspread to get in a surreptitious scratch. While I was visiting there was a special treat, because my first full day in Xela Moncie’s preschool put on a production of Blanca Nieves y los Siete Enenos (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves) , in which Moncie appeared as a little bunny rabbit. So… cute… Ah, and all those who spoke out in outrage will feel satisfied to hear that at one point Lucky casually asked me who else in my family is a redhead. Hear that? Who *else*, as in who in addition to me.




(http://laurel-guatemala.blogspot.com/2007/01/pelirroja-nunca-mas.html)

Anyway, after 3 days I headed back to Guatemala City with the intention of immediately catching another bus back to Flores. It should have been all day and two buses, but I missed the second bus and decided to spend the night in Antigua instead of waiting around in Guatemala City until the night bus. Coincidence is a funny thing, because me and this one guy have it big time, and while at some point he probably counted it as destiny now he might see it as bad luck. When my parents visited me in February, I went with them to Lake Atitlan and while crossing the lake on a boat I met Fernando, a man in the thread business who happened to be reading, of all things, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” (http://laurel-guatemala.blogspot.com/2007/01/7-or-8-habits.html). He gave me his business card, and that would have been the end of the story except the day after my parents left I was walking by myself in Antigua and he and I came to the same street corner at the same moment. Thus we went on a date last February, the night before I was leaving to go up to Flores, and while we had a nice time I didn’t feel particularly compelled to continue it over the phone and eventually stopped answering his phone calls. On this recent trip visiting Lucky I even told her this story and she called me a rompe-corazón, a heartbreaker. Well, as destiny or luck would have it, I got a chance to break his heart a second time because on this recent trip which should have been from Xela to GC to Flores in one go, when I decided to spend the night in Antigua instead of attempting to continue on that same day, I got off the Xela to GC bus at a GC McDonald’s to use the bathroom, and who is sitting there in a booth when I walk by? We were both surprised, though I only stood there gaping for a minute before I excused myself to continue on to the bathroom, having just gotten off a bus after 6 hours. When I came back, though, we chatted, and I ended up telling him that I’d stopped answering his phone calls because I’m not much of a phone talker in general, I’m even less of a phone talker in Spanish, and, well, I kind of had the feeling he might have taken our relationship potential a little more seriously than I had. He was like, “well, you know, I live in the moment,” but then he went on to tell me that remembering that I was coming back in September, when September came around he called me repeatedly (I had to buy a new phone chip with a new phone number when I got here, though) and went to Antigua multiple times and looked around in the places where he thought I might hang out in the hopes of seeing me. In my mind I was like, “um, yeah, that’s kind of what I had in mind when I said you took it seriously,” but because I felt bad I invited him to come to Antigua that night and hang out, which we did, though I’d already told him that there was no chance between us. This did not prevent him from feeling a certain hopefulness as we said goodnight, however, which I squashed on the spot and then apparently squashed again the next day when he called me while I was on the bus to Flores and I didn’t answer. I guess after his previous experience with me, this time he’s giving up earlier. And thus I came back to Flores, where I did get the bienvenida from Memo and family, who were all happy to see me and I was happy to see them. He and I were talking and to catch me up he told me that he’d had dengue fever while I was gone and started to list his symptoms and I was like, “Gee, I had pain around my kidneys too… wow, I had a bad headache… shivering you say? Sounds familiar… Rash?” My case apparently was much milder than his, though, because I never asked God to strike me dead nor did I start getting my affairs in order, but it was bad enough. Apparently it has a two week incubation period, so I think a mosquito passed it between us and he and I were sick at the same time, 500 km apart. Well, it feels kind of good to know that I weathered my first tropical disease, and to have a name for it instead of just being some weak-sauce tourist suffering from unfamiliar food. I am practically all better, though I am still occasionally alternating between ecstatic moments of scratching my ankles, followed by a steeling of my resolve to not touch them. And I should have listened to my mother and gone to the doctor when she suggested it instead seizing on her anecdote about the time the doctor told her to take Benedryl to clear up a rash. For her, it worked like a jiffy. For me, it made me sleepy, unable to conjugate Spanish verbs, and didn’t relieve my itchiness, though hopefulness made me try two times.