Usually, I take a taxi home from Chamelco. After walking to town, taking a bus to Bezaleel, working, taking a bus back to town, and navigating my way through a bunch of market purchases, I just want to get home as fast as possible. But yesterday, I didn’t have too much stuff in my market bag—just some tostados, two avocados, six hairbands (bought individually, of course), and a small bunch of cilantro—and I didn’t feel like tracking down a taxi and then sitting politely in the back seat, making small talk with the driver, and then digging out the exact change, so I slung my bag over my shoulder and struck out for home.

It wasn’t until I was leaving town that I remembered I had my camera in my backpack. Which then led to this internal debate.

Me: Yay! You can take some pictures!
Self: But no one else is with me and what if someone decides to snitch my camera.
Me: It’s so gorgeous today!
Self: I’m an easy target for a hit and run robbery.
Me: You’ve gotta take pictures of the road home. This is Your Life.
Self: Eh, I don’t know…
Me: No one is around! It’s broad daylight!
Self: I really like my camera. I’d like to take it back home with me.
Me: Look. Just loop the camera around your neck and tuck it into your bag, like so. There! Isn’t that nice and discreet?
Self: Well, if you say so…

We don’t know the exact address of where we are living. What we tell taxi drivers is this: Take us to the road of Casa de San Juan (Saint John’s House). A little bit beyond that, turn right into Rancho Santa Fe (Ranch Saint Faith). (Or something like that.)

We live in a well-off part of Chamelco. You might say we live in the fancy suburbs. Casa de San Juan is a big establishment that hosts all sorts of parties and events, though I have yet to see anything be hosted there. Some dignitary lives in our general area. There’s an upscale restaurant, or there used to be—not sure which. There are houses with armed guards, though I rarely see them along the road—they slink around back behind the high hedges (I presume).

Big SUVs drive back and forth on the hand-swept paved road. Hired men clip the hedges by hand and cut the grass with machetes. (Though once, on our walk to church, we passed a man mowing a lawn with a mower. The smell of gas mingling with freshly cut grass, the putt-putt of the small motor, and the fact that it was a Sunday of all days combined to transport us back to a Sunday afternoon in the States.) Villagers, women with baskets on their heads, men bend double with homemade wooden tables that they’re hoping to sell in market, school kids, and boys on bicycles are constantly streaming by. But because it’s a wealthy area—because of the sharp separation between rich and poor—it’s an extremely safe neighborhood. Which is weird.

At our first house in Carchá, we were told we shouldn’t even open our front door because people would ogle our stuff and eventually rob us of it. But where we are now, way back in and perched on top of a hill, there are no such worries. Sure, we lock our door when we leave, but when we’re home, we leave the doors gaping open. We don’t have an armed guard on the property (that I’m aware of), but the hired men keep a sharp eye out and interrogate any strange faces that show up, and there are the three dogs that strangers are (rightfully) terrified of. Heck, the Big House is completely open to the elements via the porch and living area, and they leave all sorts of stuff like power tools (!) sitting around outside. We feel perfectly comfortable keeping our washing machine and dryer on our porch and leaving clothes drying on the line while we go to work.

When I first came here, I said that of our two situations—work and home—only one could be a challenge. At least, that was my hope. If they were both difficult situations, then I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stick it out. In retrospect, I’ve decided that the home situation isn’t optional. It has to be safe and comfortable. I need, we need, a place to unwind, to be ourselves, to be at home. We have that, and it’s even better than I thought it could be. For this, I am supremely grateful.

But back to the walk home. Here’s the entrance to our property, Rancho Santa Fe.

I can never get over the bougainvillea. It’s lush and vibrant and makes me feel like skipping.

Except that by the time I reach the entrance, I don’t skip because I’m hot and tired and just want to get home as quickly as possible.

To the right of the entrance is a soccer field.

With its sloping sides, soccer “bowl” is a more apt name.

Up in the distance, to the left, is the gardener. This old (40s? 60s? it’s impossible to tell a person’s age here) man is a hard worker to beat all hard workers. He shows up early and works steadily all day long, machete-ing grass, transforming overgrown fields into orderly gardens, planting and hauling and raking.

There’s a creek that they’ve been walling up and shaping into a little pond of sorts, I’m not sure why. (My husband says it’s for a water source for the animals.) I think it may make a good cool-down spot, one of these hot days.

Our house is on the top of that there hill. You can see a little of the big house. Ours is off to the right and back a little ways. The driveway goes to the left, out of the picture, and then winds across, up, and around that hill.

Here I am, up past the house that’s being built. (Want to move here and be neighbors?) The side of the hill is planted in some sort of flowering bush, and then the gardener went back through and planted beans and cilantro.

A little further up the hill and here I’m looking down on the field that’s been planted with pine trees. Planting trees instead of crops is something the wealthy do—poor people have no option, and not enough land, to do anything but plant food.

See that not-so-little patch of bare earth? The gardener cleared that by hand in a day and a half an then planted beans (or corn or something). Makes my back hurt and my hands blister just thinking about it.

These Dr. Seuss trees crack me up.

Some of them have spiky straight hair.

And others have hair that gets all curly at the bottom, just like human hair. When it rains, the curls frizz up into wild kinky happiness…or maybe I’m just imagining things.

And then I finally come to the top of the hill and there is our squat little red barn of a house waiting for me.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Several weeks ago, my younger daughter turned nine. Or rather, two and a quarter, since she’s a Leap Year Baby.

We made whoopie pies to share with her class (and a taxi driver and the neighbor kids and another volunteer who was celebrating a birthday), and that afternoon we had a piñata, in honor of both the February birthdays. There was a chocolate cake and a few little gifts—a recorder for school, a fake Barbie, a stuffed Pooh Bear, etc.

However, it wasn’t until yesterday that she got her real gift. We weren’t sure it was all going to work out, so we downplayed the whole thing: we said that her uncle was bringing one of her birthday presents when he came, but it wasn’t any big deal. Which was a lie and I think she knew it.

See, a ways back when I wrote this post about her one and only toy, I alluded to her great, persistent and vocal longing for an American Doll. My cousin-in-law read the post and immediately announced, She can have mine. And then she, bless her heart, bent over backwards to travel to her parents’ house, dig it out of their attic, and mail it to my brother.

Yesterday after school, we called everyone together and handed her the box.

When she opened it, there was a loud gasp followed by much hollering.

Hers is the Felicity doll, the girl from Virginia, which is fitting, I think. I read all about her online the night before—how she was the first doll to be added to the collection in 1991 and how she was discontinued in 2002 and how there was such an uproar that they re-introduced her a couple years later.

My daughter, however, doesn’t care about all that. She has an American Doll of her very own and that’s all that matters. She has opted to call her “Lily,” which is probably some type of American Doll sacrilege.

Lily has her own bed under the night table. My daughter goes into her room and shuts the door and I can hear her happily chattering away to her new friend.

Thank you, Kate. You have made one little girl (and her mama) very, very happy.

Good morning!

The sun is shining, the sky is blueblueblue, and there’s a cheerful breeze. This morning, I washed my sheets, dried them on the line, and had them back on the bed by 9:15.

Yesterday, my husband traveled into Guatemala City and this morning he is picking up my brother at the airport, our first international guest, wheee! They will arrive home this evening, hopefully before the kids’ bedtime. Because, see, the children are so excited that there is no way I’ll be able to make them go to sleep if their adored uncle hasn’t shown up yet. (And it may be impossible to get to them to bed even if he has, though the fact that he will be dead on his feet might help speed things up.) I did warn the children that they would not be going through his bags tonight. (I did not add that I will be going through them after they are all asleep. Rumor has it that chocolate is in one of those bags, and where chocolate is involved, I can not be expected to wait!)

I woke up at five this morning. Laying in bed, listening to the wind terrorize the tin roof, I thought about the weather. And then I wrote a post in my head. It was very good and very profound. Too bad for all of us that now, a few hours later, I can’t remember exactly how it went.

Oh well. I’ll do my best. (Clears throat.)

Even though the weather is much more extreme in the states, it’s much more noticeable here because there is no buffer. In the states we have things like AC and central heat and cars with windows that work and insulated houses with rugs and no reason to be outside if we don’t want to. Funny thing is, we fuss about the weather all the time.

Here, whatever it’s doing outside, it’s doing inside, too (though hopefully the roofs are doing their job and keeping the rain out). Most walls are concrete block, or simply slabs of wood nailed to posts with great big cracks between the pieces. The roofs are tin, as are some of the walls. Therefore, if it’s cold outside, it’s cold inside. If it’s hot outside, it’s a furnace inside. If it’s wet outside, it feels (and sometimes is) wet inside. And no one hardly says a peep about the weather!

Life is rawer here. There is not a buffer to cushion us from the scrappiness of being alive. For most people, it’s hand to mouth every day. It’s taken me awhile to catch on, but this is why fruit and vegetables are sold ready to eat this very minute. Because that’s why people buy them—to eat NOW. There’s no storing up 50-pound sacks of oats (oh, how I miss my big sacks of oats!) or bushels of apples. There is no canning or freezing or preserving. There is no need to because fruits and veggies are in season year round, yes, but it’s also because the people don’t have the resources for such investments.

The other week, I stepped into a pharmacy in search of bandaids. The guy behind the counter placed a single band aid on the counter. “Twenty-five cents,” he said.

“Oh no!” I said. “I’d like a whole box, please.”

He looked at me like I was addled—who in their right mind needs an entire box of bandaids?—but then he got a calculator and figured out the price of the whole box.

Like band aids, everything is sold individually. One light bulb, one pen, one piece of candy, one banana, one ounce of coffee, etc. You buy what you need this day, right now, period.

Here are some other examples that illustrate this Lack of Buffer.

Things
In the States: it’s expected that things will work when you buy them. If they don’t, we are indignant. And returning them is such a stinking headache!

Here: it’s the norm for things not to work and there is NO return policy, not ever. (Why yes, the use of italics and all-caps do indeed indicate an elevated level of frustration, you astute reader, you!) The post-it notes don’t stick. The tape doesn’t stick. The envelopes don’t stick. (So NOW what, if there is no sticky tape with which to close the envelope?) Clothing falls apart. Extension cords don’t conduct electricity. Earphones don’t work. Therefore, it’s the norm for all electrical products to be tested in front of the customer (much like servers in fancy restaurants pouring a bit of wine into the glass for the patron to sample before making a final decision) to prove that they do indeed work, from hand saws to light bulbs. Also, always test pens before buying them.

Taxis
In the States (where I live, anyway): we all have our own cars, at least one per household and maybe three or four.

Here: not many people have cars and if you want to get around—and opt not to go by foot, bike, or bus—you take a taxi. This is a luxury, but the taxis are not.There are taxis that funnel exhaust directly into the back seat. Go above 25 mph, and many fishtail all over the road because the wheel is bent. (You know what’s worrisome? Sitting in a taxi and having a passerby point to the tire and yell some warning at the driver.) The windshields are cracked. The door handles don’t work (so you have to wait till the taxi driver gets out and opens the door for you—taxi drivers are the most chivalrous people in town!) The taxis have no shocks so they drive across the crazy-high speed bumps at an angle, and even then the cars sometimes get stranded, all four wheels spinning frantically like an upside down bug. (Okay, so I’m exaggerating. But only a little!) (And I’m not exaggerating when I say that we can sometimes feel the speed bumps with our feet as we pass over them!) Once, we rode in a taxi that had to back up and start over to make it up a little hill, and then, on the hill up to our house, it really didn’t make it up, so we all had to get out and walk.

Trash
In the States: trash is removed quickly and quietly disappears to Who Knows Where.

Here: trash is visible everywhere. We pass the dump on our way from Chamelco to Carcha. It’s a  whole side of a mountain, covered in smoking, steaming trash. The workers (and the people who live there) pick through the toilet paper and rotten food and leaky batteries in search of the recyclables, and at the entrance there are often big bales of plastic waiting for pick-up. (Recycling in reverse.)

Trash lines the roads, surrounds the houses, and coats the cornfields like mulch. People throw trash down, not out, even in their own houses. Then, once or twice a day, they sweep their living area, pushing the trash out into the yard or the street.

This post feels garbled, incoherent, repetitive, and clumsy. I am, however, leaving it as is because there are other things to say and I’m sick of polishing the same old thoughts over and over again. (You: That was polished? Me: SHUT UP.) Therefore, I’m making the executive decision that, for right now, anyway, it is better to write things down and get them them Out There than it is to hold on to them. Besides, my hunch is that the more I write, the more clarity there will be. I mean, if I talk about the dump today and then I post pictures of it in July and then you catch a glimpse of a loaded and low-hanging garbage truck (like a baby with a poopy) in a September post, it will hopefully all come together to present something that gives a good representation of Taking Out The Trash In Guatemala According to an MCCer. (Oh bother. Now this paragraph is one convoluted mess. I give up.)

Written on Monday, March 18. My brother arrived and my chocolate basket is overflowing!