Días Cuatro-Seis

On Day Four, the sun was finally showing up. We decided to take advantage and drove up to the nearest city, Mazatenango. The drive shouldn’t be nearly as long as it is—especially considering what I’ve observed as a general lead-footed-ness among Guatemalans—except that whole sections of the road are riddled with enormous potholes. I imagine that driving here is sort of like playing a video game, swerving around trying to avoid the holes, people, motorcycles, bikes, and various animals. There are very regular tumulos, or speed bumps, and their very existence in spite of all the other obstacles already provided by this road serve as nothing if not a testament to how fast people drive around here.

We checked out the mall in Mazatenango, including their version of Wal-Mart. Then, we went into the densely packed downtown area. Silver and I followed his abuelita into a large indoor market area where we picked out some flowers to bring to leave at the veritable tomb of his abuelito. We picked up some fish, sour cream and pan dulce as well, but at that point it was raining. Again.

Trapped inside, we continued with our ritual evening cafécito at the big table with abuelita. This time, we migrated into the small TV room adjacent to my bedroom, because abuelita’s telenovellas were about to come on. Interestingly, the Mexican news was covering breaking news on the assassination of one of its presidential candidates just days before the election. They were showing vans with the glass shattered and bodies on the ground covered with bloody sheets, their feet poking out pitifully at the ends. I’m not sure if it’s because those things don’t really happen in the US, or because they wouldn’t show it if it did, but it was sort of jarring for me. Not jarring in the horrifying way, but jarring because of just how different it was. Jarring like getting a plate of shrimp that are cooked, but still have eyeballs and feelers and legs. You absorb the newness of it, and carry on.

So, we settled in and watched “Soy Tu Dueña,” which turned out to be fantastic. “La Usurpadora” back in Spanish 115 may have turned me on to telenovellas. All the characters in the good ones are incredibly attractive, and it’s so cheesy and predictable that it’s fun and easy to follow even when I can’t understand all the dialogue. As for following dialogue in real life, the learning curve here is super-intense. Every day I can speak more coherently and understand more, and that’s exciting.

After the telenovella, we were standing around the table talking with abuelita and getting ready for bed (the nearest sink to the bedroom is in the dining room) and Lorena, her fairly large parrot whose cage is in the dining room as well, began to talk. Silver’s mom has an absolutely ridiculous laugh—the kind of laugh that you just have to laugh at, you know? Well, Lorena picked up on that while she was here, and so this parrot is laughing outrageously, and the three of us were cracking up in turn.


Day Five dawned promisingly; the air finally felt balmy and the sun was shining. My hair curled up just enough that my bangs looked ridiculous, but it was fortunately far enough into the trip that I didn’t care. We ate the same breakfast as usual—black beans, scrambled eggs, tortillas, and fried plantains—and then rushed to get out of the house.

We brought the flowers to the cemetery. Imagine the cemeteries in New Orleans, all raised up tombs, and replace the elaborate stonework with incredibly bright colors. The cemetery is all turquoise and yellow and pink and green. They showed me the tomb and space for the Bartolon Maldonado family, and began to arrange the flowers. And then I was nearly eaten alive.

I look like I have some kind of disease. The mosquitoes—los sancudos—LOVE me. Everyone says they like the gringa blood; it’s like a rare treat for them or something. I am miserably itchy. Thank God my room is bug-free.

When we got back to the house, I rubbed alcohol all over my legs to get rid of the itchiness, loaded up on the bug spray, and off we went again. We drove down the main street of La Maquina, so I finally got to see the town I’ve spent the last few days in.

To clarify the living situation, the youngest of the three daughters, Mariana, lives here in the school/house complex with her husband Luis and their 6-year-old son, who is adorable and likes me very much, in spite of the fact that I struggle to understand his 1000 mph-Spanish. The middle daughter, Teresa, and family live just a few blocks away in their newly built house. Mamá Gonzalez is the only one en los Estados Unidos.

We stopped by Teresa’s house—which I like very much, by the way—to check it out, and ended up staying there for a while. Silver and his abuelita got comfortable in their hammocks and Teresa brought out some lemonade, so we sat around talking for a while with her and her husband, Rudy. They don’t talk quite as fast as Mariana and Luis, so I was really active in the conversation, and was really proud of my Spanish abilities. We even discussed how Guatemalan Spanish is one of the best to learn from, as it is one of the “cleaner” dialects. I laughed about watching Cuban and Argentine movies for school, and not being able to understand a single word that was said because of the accents and differences in those versions of Spanish.

We left there and drove out to Tulate, the closest beach. I quipped that it’s no wonder the town a little ways south of Tulate is called Chicago—the beaches are pretty similar as far as being dirty and only objectively appealing. It’s not like, Naples or anything, but if you want a beach, it is definitely a beach. We had a nice little afternoon though. The rain has churned up the water, so those big Pacific waves crashing on the black sand looked like, “pura chocolate,” in the words of abuelita. The sky was clouding over, and the layers of color were pretty striking. The black sand, brown waves, soft blue and grey and purple sky—it may not have been traditionally pretty for a beach, but it was a kind of exquisite scene.

We had lunch at one of the little places lining the main path up to the water. It was there that I ate a whole fish for the first time. There was the plate, with the tail and eyes and teeth and everything, and I ate it. The fine little bones were hard to deal with, but it was a delicious fish, so I soldiered on. It was raining—again—by the time we were finishing our meal. We headed back to the house and settled in for the rest of the day. Teresa and her family were there, so we sat around and talked. After they left, abuelita made our evening cafécito and we headed into the TV room to watch the next episode of “Soy Tu Dueña.”

Apparently Tropical Storm Alex is now a hurricane. Fantastic, no? More rain, potentially putting a damper—ha, ha—on any travel plans for the rest of the week. Additionally unhelpful is that there isn’t even another World Cup game to keep us entertained until Friday. The hope is that I get hooked up to the Internet today to post this and let you all know that I’m alive.