Life's a Zoo

In the midst of a coconut cake drought, galletas have reasserted themselves in my post-dinner dessert marches. Emperador® cream sandwiches -- vanilla cookies and filling; chocolate cookies and filling; and a corporate ode to diversity, combination flavor -- are nearly irresistable. But I've been hooked by Panaderia Peter Pan's footlong surfboard sugar cookies, a steal at Q$1 each.

I do feel something of a traitor, however, even tempting taste-buds at any Panaderia not named Panificadora Mana, home (literally) to my friend and dedicated purveyor of pan and pastel, Olga. Olga, who gifted me free pastel frio on my birthday. Who was slightly offended when I didn't appear to compart and feast with her family on Noche Buena. And who Friday night set a stool in front of her counter -- amidst metal prong-bearing breadshoppers plucking and placing pan from the glass display cases into their plastic baskets -- brewed me coffee, handed me the cellphone when her illegal daughter called from ATL, and fed me pastel and galleta while we chatted away an hour, eventually declining any sort of payment when I stood to exit.

I woke up early Saturday for a microbus-shuttled daytrip to Guate's zoo, chaperoning with Corazòn Maya's maestras a group of precious niñas involved in the school's outreach project. The project, spearheaded by schoolhead Marta, funded in part by a percentage from every extranjero's school tuition, but mostly by saintly Canadian Beth, assists twenty truly impoverished Pedronan families. The Mayan girls, who would otherwise be toiling spanking out tortillas or handwashing clothes, sitting on the curb with a basket of manderins, are provided occasional organized excursions, game-filled weekly gatherings and English instruction at Corazón Maya, and helping funds for life's staples: edibles (arroz, frijoles, y maíz) and (as the project's eminent contribution) public education.

The girls are adorable, loving and playful, so much it's easy to forget they're saddled with struggle daily, that every Quetzal their mothers imparted them for snacks represents a portion less of some essential at home. Many of these homes, some of which I've toured, are crude constructions of concrete and corrugated tin roofing; others gap-riddled, walled by vertically-arranged wooden slats. Uneven dirt floors aren't uncommon, sheen hanging cloths or sections of sheet metal for doors separate the family upon family crammed inside one or two small rooms -- littered, spaceless enclosures without the luxury of distinction between bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen -- from the biting, windy winter nights. Mattresses on the floor are fire hazards bumping the chimneyless comal, which chokes the air before every meal, a sheet of plastic hanging around a bucket feet away designating the bathroom. Agua pura, a few dollars every five gallons, is an unaffordable step up the sanitation scale.

A trip out of San Pedro is a world's-away jaunt for the girls; for whom, unaccustomed to travel, the ruthlessly winding road, obstacle-littered roads to the city are the recipe for motion sickness. Whipping around turns approaching 180º, the girls one-by-one began reenacting that unforgettable scene from "Stand By Me", the backseat retches and putrid odors wafting from the plastic bags the girls donned like oversized SARS-masks catalyzing a chain reaction. The girl beside me succumbed, twice belching projectile showers before someone handed her a cute, pink sack big enough for a bakery cookie. For me, the soundtrack of the trip was the crinkling of plastic bags and the soft plop, slosh and slop accompanying every subsequent purging, plus the chorus of laughter erupting every time another girl dropped a freshly-filled vomit-bomb out the window.

By the time we arrived at the zoo, health had been restored. We entered a train of kids and adults toting backpacks and shoulderbags, starving for stomachs recently emptied or yet empty. Sitting down on shaded benches, sirvilletas concealing cylindrical towers of tortillas and plastic containers of cold beef, fish, and chicken materialized beside every girl. With dirty hands we feasted, and I never thought twice snagging hunks of for-who-knows-how-long-unrefigerated-meat to enliven my tortillas (which just happened to be the delicious black bean-filled variety!).

In the manic following hours the girls, fascinated by photography, took advantage of my inability to refuse their smiling faces, effectively keeping my camera out of my hands. Sure, fingerprints smudged the lens by the time I got it back and, because every girl was certain her photo of this or that animal from the exact same angle and with the exact same (lack of) zoom would be award winning, I had at least five identical shots of every exhibit. But the girls were also invaluable accomplices in the difficult quest to shoot cameraphobic Mildred, whose sixth-sense for covert-photo-detection is at full height when I'm fingering the trigger.

After the zoo, once each girl had removed any visible jewelry, we herded the girls into Guate's Constitutional Plaza, zona una's plaza central, where we enjoyed ice cream on the central fountain's steps among the milling vendors, visitors, and petty criminals, soon afterward enveloped in a white mass of marching thousands chanting for peace.

Here I am, in a foreign land, accumulating kids like Ghengis Khan, but without the fun in bed. Though, in the context of modern times, without the child support as well...

Mas Hermanitos

Rarely do I remember dreams -- twenty times a year being a generous estimate -- but yesterday I awoke from a midafternoon slumber with images indelible: In my slumber I was attending some sort of college reunion attended by nobody I knew, in a long, L-shaped arcade framed by food stands. The meal itself of no consequence, at some point while I was cleaning my plate the hall magically transformed into a dessert bazaar, walking space sandwiched between stands serving plated portions of every sort of pie and cake and orgasmic imaginary hybrids of pie and cake, pie crusts filled with cake, covered in neon-colored icings. Ice creams and cookies, brownies and lemon bars begged to be piled together in sink-sized bowls.

When I awoke I was still in feverish, a rude porcupine rambling about my stomach, my mattress an oversized sweatsponge, sheets and blankets wrapped around my shivering body like coverall sweatbands. My return to San Pedro La Laguna, until this morning, was tortured, night and day tossing in bed, unable to purge whatever demon plagued me (in what, although contrary to my beliefs, may be a divine reprimand for my return to false pre-meal prayer, my thrice daily ode to the Carolina Panthers and Davidson Wildcats). Yesterday I feigned focus in my four hour return to Spanish class, hoping the Ciproflaxacin would keep calm my screaming bowels until noon, pushing tortilla-tinted burps out the side of my mouth, away from Mildred.

I know my perception of Guatemala City is skewed for having passed my stay with the monied few, chauffeured about -- and thus kept clear of public buses which, statistically speaking, are as likely to lead you into armed robbery as they are your intended destination -- pampered as though wholly incapable, but I loved to contrast to San Pedro. Major cities are fascinating beasts, hubs where gang-controlled corridors of cracked concrete and graffiti and razor wire border zones of plush highrises and residences -- and the requisite razorwire!

December 7th, national event Quema Del Diablo is another Chapin excuse for drinking, fireworks and burning trash in the streets -- much like sports celebrations in West Virginia. At 6pm our party of adults and kids -- gathered at Ana Maria's for an unrelated fundraiser - congregated in the streets where several paper-machè devils strapped with belts of firecrackers were torched, flaming and exploding until only crude wire frames remained, kids running wild with sparklers, bottle rockets launching in quick procession. This, as was transpiring on our block, transpired across Guatemala, and Roberto assured my with considerably more mayhem (and excitement) when perpetrated by the less safety conscious.

Ana Maria and Roberto were gracious and accomodating beyond reason. Juanita cooked up delicious eats and her son, Hector, was quick to interrupt me and correct my Spanish pronunciation, help most adults eschew giving for fear I'll never complete a thought. Groundskeeper Simon's stable of loving youngsters (Neddy, Karin, Esmeralda, y Liliana, names as interpreted through conversation), plus Ana Miriam, the cute and sarcastic daughter of one of Ana Maria's school's working staff, are my newest adopted hermanitos. The days of escondidos, futbol, and tickling (which is great fun until a gang of kids incapacitate you with their fingers) flew past. If only I hadn't been so well sheltered from the harsher realities of Guate, perhaps I could've been mugged of my passport and thus required to linger longer, in proximity to the US Embassy. As it is, I promised my hermanitos I will return, and that was before Monday morning when I departed, Esmeralda, Neddy and Karin peeking from behind a window near the stairs descending into the carport for who knows how long, waiting only for my appearance to hug me goodbye. Adorably, Karin gifted me a Spongebob action figure, a gesture of kindness unquantifiable. From a family of less means than I'll ever know, from children who can't afford to simply replace toys, a gift I certainly don't need but with which I'll never part.

Guate on the spot

Post-Aruba I'm back in Guate, again in the many caring hands of Ana Maria y Roberto, her hilarious preacher husband, and the saintly housekeepers and their shy but playful kids. Again imprisoned in their classy fortress each night, barred from venturing outdoors lest the ladròn-fed hounds gnaw and chomp off my limbs, this is containment I'd not mind never escaping. Ana Maria y Roberto are a kind and patient pair, lugging me through the city, introducing me to coworkers, friends, and family -- a number of whom are chicas bonitas! -- worried every ten minutes that I might be bored or hungry, prepared to go to any lengths necessary to return me to a state of perfect satiation. The price of admission into this charmed life: Me dijo Ana Maria, "Que intentas platicar."

And I do nothing but. Chatting days away with any of the legions of females Ana Maria forces to expend time entertaining me, I haven't glanced at my notes on Spanish tenses and conjugations and usages and exceptions in two weeks, instead content to butcher the language and hope my conversation slaves find it "charming." And sometimes I'm actually funny, like when I forget that Spanish is a gendered langauge and casually disclose my deepest secrets: "Cuando era niña..."

I'm returning to San Pedro La Laguna Monday morning to further my studies and flirtations, but I'm going to miss Guatemala City. As is customary in Central America, and just as in San Pedro, in Guate I've been catered to like a long-lost and limbless war hero son escaped from the cruelest of POW camps during his first day home. (If you're wondering how a brainy torso escapes from a POW camp you're missing the point.) I wouldn't be permitted to spend a dime if I torched the residence with a flamethrower.

Everyone in Guate is impressed with my eating prowess, both the sheer quantity I can hide inside my lean frame and my unwavering appreciation of everything edible. I've been introduced to more of natures' exportation-eluding gifts, orange-fleshed tropical fruits nisperos y sapotes; today I encountered my favorite brand of enchilada, a la tostadas, served openfaced and piled high in pyramidal reverence to Tikal with layers of lettuce, seasoned beef, onions and beets, topped with slices of hardboiled egg. Taking advantage of a household where alimentation isn't limited by economics, I'm eating weeks' worth of fiber at every meal, cleaning bowls of black bean tracks with every last crumb of flaky toasted bread, feeding my so-far resultless routine of pushups with slabs of protein stacked to small animals stature. And during an afternoon outing to Antigua I was encouraged to pacify my pastel pangs, ordering a cold two layer beauty: the upper layer fluffy yellow cake, the lower moist-to-the-point-of-oozy and fruit-filled, a juice saturated cakebase bleeding blackberry purple onto the plate with every silver prong's puncture, all wearing a dense offwhite cream cheese coating, a separatory slab splitting the layers as well.

These perfect memories -- coupled with my broken conversations and games of futbol and escondida with the housekeepers' kids and those at the Colegio -- are enough to outweigh my thirteen pound nightmare: Boliche. Until two nights ago I hadn't bowled in ten years, that distant assault on my confidence consecutive losses to goobers I was babysitting, managing to miss the pins even with the gutters buffered by bumpers. The recent debacle was worse, turning to face a table full of cute girls after each and every gutter-bound throw, forcing a thin, quivering smile, all the while praying a bowler worse than me in any adjacent lane would lose his ball in back swing and, with luck, that its trajectory would mercifully crush my cranium. After the first game, Patrick USA's on-screen scoring row displayed a doubletake-worthy 59. Four frames into the second game -- aware the bowlers in the surrounding lanes were operating sans ball-flinging spazz, instead spinning balls into strikes, maneuvering their legs on release with professional flair -- I'd unseated just 19 pins. All hope evaporated, having failed to pick up even a spare all evening, I unleashed consecutive strikes. Wearing my first genuine smile of the night, time on the lane expired and we exited. Unlikely to ever again throw consecutive strikes outside of Wi Sports, I've officially retired from bowling.

But that's not to say you won't catch me at a bowling alley chugging pitchers of brew, maybe hovering around some kid's birthday party begging for crumbs of cake, lumps of icing stuck to the serving tray.

"Does it say slavery?"

Aruba’s first world finery is two worlds ahead of Central American anything, the disparate locales linked only by gargantuan tropical fruit, each home to freakish papayas larger than any infant not scion of Shaq. And, I guess, relaxed standards of public toileting: exploring Aruba we passed a cute, naked three-year-old girl, standing on the side of the road, hands on her hips, pelvis thrust slightly forward, almost sassily, like a professional model at practice, at first glance presumably peeing, actually taking a standing dump.

Aruba is almost perfect: sweaty weather and turquoise seas; unlimited drink-and-eat access spanning a ½ mile of beachfront resorts (“Yes, I need six White Russians made with Stoli, and fourteen of the seared tuna appetizer. Make it snappy and you might land two Washingtons.”), including dietary essentials lacking in my Central American diet: vegetables, protein, and soft-serve ice cream; big screen TVs with multiple sports and movie channels; and my beloved parents and brother, aunt, uncle, cousins and a boyfriend. The only imperfection in the fantasy for our trio of single twenty-somethings is that were not twelve, the Divi All Inclusive crawling with families toting preteen princesses but nothing legal for us, even by possibly permissive Aruban standards. We’ll see how many days and drinks it takes to transform sun-wrinkled, pudge-bellied tourist moms into eye candy.

The last few days in Guatemala leading up to Aruba saw changes of scenery. There was a shuttle bus connection to Chichicastenango’s sprawling Sunday market, a massive, tourist marketed maze of vendors selling some essentials and many more lengths of intricately patterned fabrics and traditional clothing, bags and crafts, all fashioned by impoverished hands and all accompanied by the same shouted encouragement to purchase (which is the official phrase of Chichi and, traditionally, the first phrase spoken by infants): “¡Buen precio!” The competition between vendors and the necessity of feeding one’s family make Chichi a bizarro eBay, sellers undercutting each other's already low prices to win access to tourist wallets. The ride to Chichi also featured an incomprehensibly heavily guarded checkpoint, randomly placed on a mountain road, at which an armed man among many threw open the sliding van door, bent at the waist until his head was even and parallel with the floor, and demanded, while his eyes scanned beneath seats, “Algunas frutas?” Not drugs. Not weapons. Not children we might be smuggling for international slave trade. Grapes. And if you don’t give 'em up, you’re gonna need ‘em to plug the holes in your chest.

After Chichi I spent a final night in San Pedro La Laguna, enjoying as usual the variety of death metal shirts international aid services have distributed in hyper-religious countries, leaving legions of young men oblivious to the irony of their satanic Sunday’s finest. And after a brutal four-hour chicken bus ride across unpaved Guatemala highway and mountain passes -- the driver testing every bolt in the bus’ construction by hitting every meteoric-crater-sized “pothole,” enduring a lengthy sermon from one of the all-too-common obviously mentally tortured travel-preachers, always exhibiting at least one serious physical defect as well, who suddenly stand up in the middle of a packed bus, holding a bible in one hand and an overhead rail in the other, arching their backs and embarking on an animated screech fest, “Jeeeeeeeeesus Chriiiiiisto!” – I made it to Guate, La Capital, where, again, thanks to international aid, it’s not unlikely to be robbed by a thug wearing a neon-colored Looney Tunes hoodie.

For a family friend’s thoughtfulness and her friends in Guatemala, I landed in the generous care of Guatemalan elite, living in an every way modern and first world palace just outside the city. My bags were carried and my meals prepared by the live-in family of house- and groundskeepers. The huge garden- and tree-filled property is surrounded by a military-grade brick wall topped with razor wire, five or six massive, trained attack dogs prowling the premises at night. In order to keep my throat from resembling a platter of pulled pork bathed in tomato sauce, I wasn’t allowed out of the house once the roaming killers were released for the night.

La Capital is unlike rural Guatemala, it is modern, marred by US fastfood, marked with malls and at least one Hooters too, and the people, on average, stand taller than my waist. I indulged in Guatemala’s most popular street eats, pollo frito y papas fritas, at the ubiquitous Pollo Campero chain. And I drained a few hot mugs of homemade Atol de Elote, a delicacy with the color and consistency of snot from a winter cold, spotted with bits of corn kernels, a liquid version of Pan de Elote. I toured the city with a family friend, Eddy, and enjoyed sights like El Mapa en Relieve, Plaza Mayor de la Constitución, a museum documenting and displaying historical artifacts and another tracing the history and evolution of ropa tìpica.

Then I flew away, but not before tormenting everyone in my smell radius at the Guatemala City airport’s security checkpoint (and again in Miami) when I had to remove my one well-past-well-used pair of all-purpose sneakers. (For the benefit of everyone I have encountered since, I succeeded in washing my well-exercised, sweat-stiffened wardrobe here in Aruba, the first wash in a month.) Family fun commenced immediately upon reuniting in Miami International Airport, the extended family waiting for the same connection to Aruba. As reports were breaking about the outbreak of coordinated and deadly terrorist attacks in India, CNN was reporting the rather unnewsworthy in a bottom-scrolling text bar: “President Elect Obama Condemns the Attacks.” Kerry, Tony, and I exchanged “No shit” glances and discussed headlines that would actually be newsworthy: “President Elect Obama claims responsibility for the terrorist attacks!”

On the flight to Aruba, while we were filling out our immigration cards, my cousin Tony and I wondered aloud where the “Slavery” checkbox was located in the “Purpose of Visit” section, our stated purpose finding a Venezuelan slave trader interested in purchasing my brother. My cousin Lindsey, in one of those classic lapses of thought everyone -- save the blessed mute -- experiences from time to time to the delight of anyone in earshot, asked, quite concerned, “Does it say slavery?”

Since landing, we’ve enjoyed sun, sand, snorkeling, and, for the three young-lads searching for an elixir to induce hallucinations halving or quartering the age of drunk tourist moms and grandmas dance-lurching as nightly entertainment, a horrible day-after blackout, for me a Top 20 all-time hangover that even endless bowls of soft serve burying mounds of chocolate cake couldn’t cure. As reported by my aunt and uncle with whom I reportedly shared a lost conversation -- while awaiting a pizza and panini I’d ordered in a fit of B.A.C. overwhelming consideration for my stomach’s next-morning wellbeing -- a few minutes into our exchange I suddenly raised a hand to my lips and began poking and tracing the flesh, slurring, “Are my lips moving? Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” Meanwhile Kerry milled around, holding two drink cups in one hand, one upright and filled, the other parallel to the ground, empty. All this after an impressive day of productivity and exercise and avoiding the bar; I'd remained alcohol-free and vegetable-full until 8pm, yet I was unconscious and bloated on greasy junkfood by midnight. I blame it on SoCo and lime. I'd ordered two Soco and limes and two White Russians for me and Kerry to share, and when the bartender asked if we'd like ice in our SoCo and limes, of course I replied no. Who puts an ice cube in a shot glass? When he returned with two cups filled with warm SoCo and a wedge of lime hanging from each rim, I realized I'd missed obvious clues.

I’ve only been quick and sober enough to document a few of the hilarious conversations and exchanges in my omnipresent pocket notepad, like my mom’s description of the daily lives of scallops: “They go around clappin’ their clams.” And her imaginative extension of logic, concerned because my father hadn’t informed the credit card company he would be vacationing in Aruba: “They’re going to call the house (to verify a foreign purchase), nobody will answer, and they’re gonna think we’re stabbed.” Or when Tony and I argued age-appropriateness in the pursuit of females, Tony claiming he, being twenty-one and three years younger than me, is subject to different basements and ceilings in target ages; I countered with typical sleaze, adamant we share the same basement and ceiling ages, coining my new mantra in the process: “Eighteen to the grave.”

Como siempre, time with my family is absolutely priceless. Now back to Guatemala, enjoying my occupational travel and Spanish language acquisition, counting the days until the next reunion.