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XELA PAGES GUATEMALAN NEWSLETTER http://www.xelapages.com/ Issue #14, February 07, 2000 Current Subscriber - 752 ====================================================== Copyright © 2000 By Tom Lingenfelter -- Xela Pages Please forward this Newsletter to 2 Friends and ask them to subscribe!!!
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http://www.xelapages.com/newsletter/ Read all the past issues plus other articles about travel in Guatemala!
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We never did make it to your fair city (maybe next time!), but thank-you
for
-Kurt Swanson 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 August 1999. San Andreas, Peten Well, so far so good. The only major difficulty to date is that
some of us
Even though people are poor, with almost no physical belongings, we
don't
And there are a LOT of kids. They are everywhere! There
is an 8 year
It was also fun to see our Erika playing soccer (on the basketball court,
By the way, the weather here is hot or hotter, and humid and more humid,
so
************************************************************************ After language school, we set out on a 3-day rainforest hike ending
at
We are certainly not horse people, but we survived a trip into Bryce
We spent the first night at El Zotz (Mayan for bats), which is a set
of
The hike through the most isolated part of the forest was extremely
Walking into "the back door" of Tikal with its towering temples and
ruins
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 After Tikal, we explored the Guatemalan highlands and rested up for
Kurt
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"Hamaoui, Dina" <dhamaoui@painepr.com> This is a fictional story written from my experience in Guatemala. For all of you out there in cyberspace who have not seen this beautiful
Visit! Visit now!
27 May, 1999
A SONG FROM GUATEMALA We would now like to start the selected movie for your viewing pleasure. Please turn off all overhead lights and enjoy. Thank you very much. The cracking voice over the intercom jolts me from a reverie filled with music. Perhaps it is the cheap jazz I hear from my console that has made me enter such a place. My foot taps a fast rhythm, making my entire left leg shake from the thigh down. I am conscious that this might bother the gray-haired gentleman seated beside me, so I try my best to stop. It isn't working. He looks over from his book of short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I had noticed it earlier and was startled to see it in the original Spanish form) and smiles one of those polite smiles that really means: You've got some nerve, lady. "Perdon," I say, which is the most useful word in Spanish I have ever learned. It's like that on planes for me. Anticipation takes over and I become a slave to my nerves. I get a bit asthmatic even though I don't suffer from asthma. My skin, fingernails, lips, and even gums feel dry and ready to shrivel up and fall off. I am constantly parched, even though I bring a full liter bottle of water with me on every trip. This, of course, frustrates my neighbors to no end as I constantly excuse myself to wait in the bathroom line at the back of the cabin. The only thing that helps is tomato juice. It's a trick my mother taught me on all those trips to visit my aunt in New York every summer. There is something about the wholesomeness of a good V8. Maybe it's the color. A rich red coats the sides of the plastic cup and drops slowly back down into a pool of tart nectar. The bobbing ice cubes sink as you lift the glass and tilt it towards you. The juice enters the mouth thickly, pricking the tongue and rendering it electric once more. I tell the truth when I say that the strangeness I feel on a plane is erased by a couple of glasses of tomato juice. Nowadays, I seem to find it a little more helpful if I add a little bit of vodka. The anticipation is worse now because I am supposed to be going home. My ears hurt from the plastic gray earphones issuing elevator jazz for five hours straight. It's evening, maybe eight o'clock if you were on the ground somewhere and living. But in the air, who can tell? Time suspends itself when in flight. I believe that if you wanted to find the drug for eternal youth, well, you wouldn't have to look much further than those great blue skies overhead. Just keep flying around, in and out of the clouds, and don't come down - you'll be the same age when you get back on the ground as you were the day you took off. We are flying east over Cuba towards Miami, and from my tiny porthole
I see a thunderstorm indicative of the oncoming wet season. Most
people prefer the dry season in Guatemala, when the sun is hot and the
quetzal birds - blue and green iridescent wings flapping - fly about.
But I like the purifying feeling of rain for four hours straight in the
afternoon. It has helped my soul sing again.
I'm frightened of going home. I've had this heavy feeling in my chest since I stepped onto the airport shuttle this morning in Guatemala City. It's not the plane asthma, either. It's fear. It's fear of going back to Ohio to be part of nothing again. At least before I left I was hidden in half-truths and trickery. Now, what will be left? It's been four months since he told me he was leaving. He had a pregnant girlfriend to think of now. She was barely a child herself but I suppose she was giving him what he wanted. He couldn't stay with me anymore, he said. He couldn't handle us anymore. It was too much: the drugs and the doctors' visits and the poking and prodding. It had become unimportant to him, he said, he didn't want the pressure anymore. I repeat the last thing he said to me before he walked out the door that Saturday morning with a box full of underwear and golf balls. "It's better this way, Caroline. Happiness is just around the corner for you," he said to me as I say in my head at least five times a day. Why? Perhaps to convince myself that he is really gone. Or that somehow, he is right about it all. Oh my loving Guate, rescue me again! Green fields of cocoa and coffee blanket rolling hills towards Chichicastenango. The smell and taste of burning incense guides me and I go willingly. I follow it through the buzzing villages where, at the many open-air markets, I find chickens and pigs in small wire cages and bags of corn every color of the rainbow. I walk on the sides of rocky dirt roads and am careful to stay out of the way of second-hand American school buses, now brightly painted with reds, greens and blues and put to use as public transportation. On I walk, up the steps of the Spanish colonial churches where offerings of flowers and fruit are left for the Holy Mother - the new Catholic faith mixed with ancient superstitions and rituals still striving today. I hear the sounds of the Mayan tongue chanting through the day and through the night. The song is the same: Mother we are thankful, bless us with your wisdom. On to the jungles of Tikal in the northern Peten territory, hiding the ruins of an ancient city that must be pried from the living roots. Still, it does not give up the bricks so easily. Not even with our technology and lack of faith pushing us along. No, the jungle is far too strong for that. It breathes and sighs, but only if you are listening. And if you are not careful and respectful of the jungle's power, it will swallow you whole. Craggy mountains to the west venture you through no man's land. The spiraling road tosses and turns until you are faced with Lago de Atitlan below - a giant and ancient volcanic crater many eons since collapsed and filled with the cleansing tears of the Mayan gods. Small villages dot the immense and watery landscape, some at the foot of baby volcanoes birthed from Atitlan's demise into the watery depths. San Pedro, Santa Maria, Santa Catarina, San Juan; the names of the villages echo a reminder of God at every turn. It is here that I healed myself, or at least tried. On the shores of Atitlan in the village of Panajachel on the southeastern side of the lake. An American woman with no future and no desire to discuss the past. "Just traveling through," I said. The little ones all knew my name and yelled it as we played with the stick and ball on the cobblestone avenue. Not so far out of sight of their parents, who bustled around their mounds of fabrics and jewelry, looking to sell something to the morning mass of tourists. I would sit with the children and sing or tell tales or just hug and kiss them, giving them something to do for a while before they were roped into working again by their mothers - girls hardly out of childhood themselves. How heartbreaking it was to see the young ones with their bags of bracelets or shirts piled onto their heads begging for a dollar here, two quetzales there. "Yo tengo los cosas peceynas! Por favor, Senora," they sang with their mouths downturned in poverty and fatigue. Five year old children, their eyes dense with more wisdom than I could fathom at their age, carrying their own body weight upon their heads of brightly woven pants and shirts for people to take home and claim with pride in the safety of their own countries. We would sit together on the side of the avenue, watching the tourists gather near air-conditioned buses ready to quickly leave. Perhaps they had had their fill of poverty for the day. Off they would go, leaving us in the street to enjoy carnes-filled empanadas as the afternoon clouds moved in. There is no emptiness in Pana. When something leaves, as all things do, something else -maybe different or maybe the same - replaces it. The children know this as well. They are born from it. And my special one, Franco. A boy of four with scars on his legs from where his mother hit him. He said it was because he had left the butter jar open and the flies had gotten in it. He had smiled when he said that, as if distracted by the call of the howler monkeys in the jungle behind us. He looked up at me with great big cocoa-colored eyes and a smile too big and wide for his small and fragile frame. Above us on the hilltop, the village was beginning the morning mass. We heard the Mayan chants tumble down the hill into our laps and began our own dance for God. Franco, clapping his hands for me, helped me understand the rhythm and the pace. It was born in him. Yes, the Mayan spirit was reborn in my Franco. This little one and I would sit for hours and talk about the bird song we heard above us, or the sound of the rippling waves chasing the lakestones away. We would close our eyes and listen to the boat taxis zooming by, judging how far they were by the loudness of the motors. And as the afternoon rain rose to meet us at the banks of the lake, we would run to it, faces upturned and waiting. "Carolina! Nosotros juntos para siempre, si?" he would say. "Claro, mi Franco. Para siempre." I would answer. Forever, my friend. You are in my heart, at least. The coward in me refused to say goodbye. Instead, I left with the cover of early morning darkness for the bus bound for the airport. Here now, on this plane filled with college kids looking for adventure or families returning to their cities and towns in America after tearful reunions, I sit and look out at the black night. I could be swallowed by it and never go home. My hand reaches absently to the bit of string tied around my neck - Guatemalan cotton woven into a rope from which to hang a little pouch of herbs. A lady in Pana had given it to me when I had caught the flu. She said I was unsettled, which is why I had fallen prey to the virus in the first place. She urged me to drink hot water and lemon juice and hold the herbs to my nose at least four times a day. The scent, she said, would calm the angry spirit inside and heal me. Franco, nearly always at the cuff of my jeans would reach for the pouch and smell it, savoring the lavender, anise seed, and wild tamarind root. And then he would climb, up my legs and stomach until I was carrying him like a baby. And to my hut we would go and wait out the rain if we didn't want to play. I would read to him even though he could not understand the story, or we would play war taking sides with little sticks and pebbles. And we would talk, using not cumbersome words but smiles, gestures, and laughter. Thank you for flying with us and have a nice stay in Miami. My
carry-on weighs me down from my chest to my knees. The man
next to me has put his book away and begins to move up the aisle.
We will soon be off the plane and back in familiar territory.
So why do I feel so foreign?
The mugginess hits me right away as I go out the doors. I feel oppressed, as if jailed in a place without walls or windows. I am more strangled by sadness than anything else. I drag the chains within me. The busy rush overtakes me at once. I have an hour left until my connecting flight to Columbus. Perhaps I will stroll around and get a hot dog. That is one thing I have missed from home. I pay for my dog and sit in one of the blue plastic chairs lined in a row down the center of the waiting area. All airports have a sense of familiarity, it seems. I pick up the paper lying abandoned on the seat next to me. I'm not as interested in the news as in looking and feeling busy during my layover. To wait is to think. To think is to cry. That has been my story for longer than I remember. The woman and her son are also sitting in the terminal. They too are waiting, but for what I can't tell you. The boy looks at me through still sleepy eyes, eyes so big and brown that I faint into them. Franco's voice echoes in my head as I begin to hum the song of the old women in front of the church. I see them in my mind for an instant - gray hair down their backs, bright faldas swaying in the breeze, and bowls of leaves burning for the Holy Mother. Mother I am thankful, bless me with wisdom and happiness. Return the dying flowers to the earth and let new ones be born. I must stop thinking. The ticket counter is just to my left so I don't have far to walk. I check in, get my boarding pass and walk to the gate, humming the song with every step. Pretty soon I am on the plane and checking my carry-on baggage in the overhead compartment. All of this is old hat by now. It is another window seat as luck would have it. I prepare myself to see the lights dissipate into dark night and the sky take over yet again. Perhaps there will be more lightening to watch as the hours tick by. Click goes my lap belt as the intercom begins to buzz and crackle. Thank you for flying American Airlines Flight 217 to Guatemala City. We hope you enjoy your flight with us this evening. Please fasten your seatbelts as we will be taking off shortly. Perhaps I will stop in Guate City and buy a real toy for Franco. A little bear perhaps, or a toy soldier? No, I think. I have already been gone far too long. Dina ===============================================
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Have a great trip!! Tom Lingenfelter - Editor
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