La Reina de la Traigo

Oh how I've been avoiding writing on the blog. It's been 2 weeks! I used to write almost an entry a day! I will sum up to say that the week before last was depressing for me. I was unhappy with a lot of things involving my health, the city, the organization, the project. I don't want to focus on any of that, and I don't want to yell to the world all my complaints with none of the redemption. I've felt better this week, not a little because I went to Tejutla with Claudia's family last weekend which returned some good warm feelings.

If I could even remember much of the week before last I'm not sure if I'd tell it. Most of my discomfort was caused by realizing that I can never escape the business world, even as I'm trying to focus on art and creativity, I will always have to work and deal in the world of money. There's something dirty about it to me, some people not earning enough of it for reasons hard to understand, and others being given too much for reasons even more difficult to comprehend. Claudia's father, Don Cesar in Tejutla, sat Hugh and I down and asked "why is gas Q36 here? Why does your president make a war? Why is your country deporting our relatives and friends? Why is the dollar falling? We can't compete in the world of the Euro. Don't you know that your money is our money? I can't know these things because I live so far away, but you can tell me." Of course we can't tell him. We're educated, and have common sense, and know the difference between life in the 1st world and life in the 3rd, and there was no way we could even begin.

And then there's the life of a non-profit organization, which I admire, but hope to never have to deal with from the business end. How does AMA get the money to do its projects? How does HSP support itself? How do Lupe and Ben and their two sons eat? Who pays the rent here, what money buys my super expensive materials? I learned a little bit of it recently, which is what started the business depression. There isn't any money. That's what it's all about. The only way for one of these things to function is to always be living in the red. AlterNatives, the store HSP works through, burned down last December. All the merchandise and the entire interior. Where does the money come from to put in the new floors and walls, to buy all new merchandise, to reopen it? Apparently quite a lot of it's on a credit card. My earrings, and this I knew from the beginning, were supposed to be something that the store could make money off of. And that's where I started. I knew AlterNatives was in trouble, the rent in CaryTown is so expensive, and if I could make something to help the store get back on its feet, that was good enough. And then I came down here, made so many relationships with so many people, all of my students, and the focus changed to helping them make all the money. So when I found out the ratio of how much money went to the girls and how much was absorbed, I got really, really sad. And then I was brutally reminded by Lupe when I fought so hard that how much of that went to materials, which hasn't even been paid off the credit card yet, and how much of that went to my plane ticket, how much of that goes to my rent and expenses and food here, and then, after all that, how much goes to rebuild the store that offers the market to a group of people who would have no market at all without it. So both of those things hurt my heart badly. And I don't know where the limit is. I don't know where the business starts and the charity ends. Something's got to keep this house down here running, something does, it's just too good to go under, and since anything like this can very easily go under, I guess I've got to let go of the money thing. It's not my battle.

Now I'd like to completely change the mood and subject by describing our trip to Tejutla. Last weekend was the Fair of Tejutla, the biggest event in the town all year, and lots and LOTS of people come there to see it. We left Xela after Claudia's english class at 10 am, and suffered something like 3 chicken busses to get there. Not till 2. The first bus we had was probably the nicest chicken bus I've ever been on. The whole front panel was decorated, from velvet tasseled drapes to gilded crucifixes to a novelty license plate from New York with the word BITCH on it.. I know. Also, above the driver's seat was one of those portable dvd players playing Hispanic music videos while the stereo piped the music through the whole bus. So on the 25 minute drive to the main bus station to the north of Xela, we got to watch an overweight, greasy dude sing a very happy-sounding, almost polka influenced song in with extreme, almost heartbreaking body language at the loss of his clearly out of his league girlfriend. Then the guy in the yellow 3 Amigos suit, with the cartoon mustache and the Speedy Gonzalez sombrero, then the song about being on the road, with the music video of a guy in a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off driving a semi. It was good fun. The rain was terrible when we got out, plus it was mid morning on a saturday, so when we got on the next bus to San Marcos, it was totally packed. We all sat 3 in a seat, just like when you were 10 on the school bus, except we're (almost) all adults and jamming a bunch of grown Guatemalan butts on a seat made for 10 year olds just doesn't work all that well. I was lucky, and landed a seat with 2 small butts. Hugh sat with Claudia, another butt, and Luie's butt on Claudia's, which wouldn't have been so bad if the seat across from him wasn't overflowing. In this way, there was absolutely no space between he and the person on the other side of the row (to the point where I times I think Hugh might have been supporting her side that wasn't on the seat) and whenever new passengers got on, he had to stand up to let them through, which often meant when he sat back down, the standing passenger he just let through has taken advantage of the extra room evacuated by his back, and he couldn't really sit back down again. So an hour of that, and then we got off at San Marcos and jumped on another bus to Tejutla. This one was not crowded at all, so we rode in relative comfort for the rest of the way there. Yanessi's two adolescent brothers had been in Xela the night before, so the three of them were riding along with Hugh, Claudia, Luie, and me. I was somewhat surprised and definitely heart warmed by the way siblings here act. Everyone is just so warm here. And personal space (obviously) is just not a big issue. I mean, this is a group of people that kiss each other every time they meet (I get 8 kisses every wednesday in Xela with my class, 4 when they come and 4 when they leave) and, of course, ride 3 in a seat for hours at a time. Yanessi and her younger brother Cris (who's around 13) cuddled the whole way to Tejutla. In the same way Luie was leaning on his mom's shoulder, Yanessi and Cris would trade off sleeping on the other's shoulder, with one arm around the other to keep them from falling out of the seat. Just not anything that ever happens in the states. I mean, there have to be some very affectionate families that do, but it's not all that normal. And the opposite is normal here. I like it, though I know when I was her age I never EVER would have let anyone cuddle with me on a bus. Cultural differences.

We got to Tejutla, walked only a few blocks and came to Claudia's house. This is the same place where their parents raised Lupe, Claudia, and their other 3 sisters- Irma, Chiki, and Lourdes. Dona Melida and Don Cesar have one side of the compound, a living room and two bedrooms attached to a beautiful small patio with the bathroom and kitchen on the other side of it, so that you have to walk through the rain to take a shower. On the other side, connecting through a doorway on the patio, is Irma's house, where Yanessi and her 3 little brothers live with their mom. On the other side of Don Cesar's house is his work shop and showroom, where he carves marble for gravestones and commemorative plaques. He gave us a tour the next day, which was super exciting. He has a machine from Italy that carves out the letters using a guide system, and in the only second floor room in the house he has a shop where he uses air compressors to hand carve the sculptures of flowers or angels that people want. He gave us a demo, I wanted to play with his tools but didn't feel appropriate asking. Claudia's already told me about her time right after she had Luie that she forced her dad to let her work in the shop. He didn't want her to, so she taught herself how to do everything, and still wants to return to take over his business, but he insists it's not the right work for her, she should go to school and be an accountant and work at a desk. She did, and she hates it and she still just wants to carve marble. She talks about it all the time.

Anyway, after we got there, we ate some unbelievable lunch, made-with-love style, and tried to recover from the bus ride. We laid down, Hugh took a nap, and I read, then we had a tamale for dinner, and a long conversation with Don Cesar. At first he didnt' think we spoke Spanish, so he kept repeating the few phrases he knew in English. "What is your naaame?" and then after a few moments "What is your naaame?" in the same inflection.. We couldn't tell if he couldn't remember or if he just didn't have anything else to say. We finally explained to him that we've lived here for 3 months with Claudia (we've also met him at least twice before this) and we know enough Spanish, it's ok if he wants to speak it. He never really got it though, I guess because we speak worse than we understand, and when he was showing us around the marble shop he kept saying "Thees ees my work." "Thees ees my work." " I work with marmol." "Thees ees my work." This is also the point where we had that hard and dark conversation about north american politics and economics. None of us were prepared with enough spanish words for that one.

Afterwards we went to the main event of the fair, which is a 4 night long festival, the beauty pageant. Actually, there are 3 different pageants, Friday night the Queen of the Maiz, Saturday night the Queen of the Wheat, and Sunday night the Infant Princess (roughly translated). Tonight was the Queen of the Wheat, and the biggest of the pageants. It was completely, utterly, jam packed. They don't just stop selling tickets here. They don't just quit letting people on the busses. As long as someone wants to suffer enough to stand on someone else's feet to watch, they will take your ticket money. We were lucky enough to get a seat, on the back row, so there was a lot of pushing and shoving, but still better than the alternative. The pageant was SO WEIRD. First the 5 contestants came out, wearing a long sleeved belly-shirt and a miniskirt out of metallic red and gold fabric, along with a marching band style hat and white boots, as if they were majorettes or something, and all of them marched their dance number, a 5 minute long ordeal to some bad american hip-hop,-holding a trumpet behind their backs. I will never understand what they were going for except sexy-marching-band, which just blows my mind with oxymorons. After that was over, the first outfit change act came on- a greased up man in a suit with a cravat who sang emotional songs and used hand motions and body language that my friends and I use when we sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at parties. Then there was the swimsuit section. Which was horrible, and I always hate it. These girls were hardly 17, they just looked gangly. Then the next act was this girl group from El Salvador who had their own stage and everything off to the left side of the stage. They had a live band, which was great, but they were.. well kind of gross. It was four girls in short-painted-on-shorts, tube tops, and those stupid fuzzy boots, and they danced and sang. At this point the crowd was overflowing, and the whole section behind the chairs standing was almost completely young men, who turned into nasty little boys as their numbers increase and the show got more and more sexed out. It made me increasingly uncomfortable. When that was over, and the crowed completely whipped up into a frenzy, men especially, another solo singer took the stage in some super tight pants, which spurred the crowd in the back to chant "vuelto! vuelto!" "turn around! We wanna look at your butt!" Which she mostly ignored. She was more or less professional. Lots of technical problems with the sound equipment, but she kept up with it. Then there was another solo woman, who was completely different from everything else that had come on before her. She was old and large and wore this huge flowing mumu type dress made out of a dozen layers of hot pink tulle and lace. She was my favorite singer, with a voice that only a 40 year old obese woman could have, blowing you off your seat. My favorite part of it, though, was when some guy in the rowdy back section yelled "mucho ropa!" which basically means "too much clothes!" and she didn't even need to blink, just basically said "oh, so you wanna be my boyfriend?" After that I couldn't stay awake. It had been like 3 hours of this, and after that bus I just couldn't do it. Hugh and I both fell asleep, along with Luie, and Claudia got us all up and out of the hall before the winner was announced. What I heard the next morning was that the crowd didn't like the winner, and shouted "fraud! fraud!" when they crowned her. Oi.

We had planned on leaving early Sunday, but decided to stay and enjoy the next night of fair activities instead. Claudia showed us around the town on a walking tour. It is so beautiful. On top of it's own little hill, and seemingly surrounded by valley on all sides then abruptly ringed in by huge, green forested mountains after the plunge. The people also were so nice, everyone says hello. There were plenty, not a lot but plenty, people in the streets, which Claudia said was really unusual for the fair. Usually it's completely quiet. I can see why she comes here every weekend, despite the bus ride.

Then we helped cook lunch, which of course was delicious, and I love how the meals are a family affair. There were 3 sisters there, the parents, and Yanessi, Hugh, and I, and we all peeled potatoes and steamed corn and sat around the warm stove. Dona Melida cooks on a wood-heated stove like the women in the villages. It's the warmest part of the house. Then I sketched the patio some, and took a nap, and we went to the little girl pageant, which was, if you need any description at all, just like Little Miss Sunshine. How terrifying. 6 year olds in a swimsuit competition? Yikes. And the costume change act was this grown woman in a college girl halloween costume style superhero outfit. Complete with super short skirt, white high heel boots, and long black wig. She lip synced retarded kids songs and played awkward games with the kids in the crowd. It went on intolerably long. She was awful. Jon Carlo-Yanessi's little brother and Luie's cousin, was an escort for one of the little girls at the end in the "evening wear" competition, and his partner ended up winning, which made the family very happy. I liked her the best, too, if for the only reason that in the dance numbers, all the other little girls looked at her to remember their steps.

The next morning we got up at 5:45 and I didn't even have enough time to use the bathroom before the bus-honking insanely for the approaching ten minutes- picked us up directly outside the house at 5:55. I assume I got everything that was mine before we ran out the door. I haven't missed anything yet. The lucky thing here is that that early in the morning the bus goes directly to Xela, so we didn't have to stop off and wait at San Marcos, and it was only a 2, or more, hour ride to Xela. Oh how sweet was the house and my bed after that. We had to sit towards the back of the bus, behind the last set of wheels, through the duration of the ride, which meant every cobblestone we went over sent us through the roof. The other interesting and beautiful thing that happened to us on this bus is that we finally experienced the reason for which chicken busses are named as they are. When we sat down in Tejutla we just noticed that it smelled kind of bad, and figured it was the bus. Who knows what happens on these things. and then we just figured that the seats in this one were especially squeaky. And then we hear scuttling over our heads, and finally figure out that we're sitting under a cardboard box full of baby chickens. So I can now leave Guatemala feeling fulfilled. I have ridden on a chicken bus with the chickens.