Today was shopping day. I decided to leave Jarret and Stephanie in Sepacay, with the task of sorting out the vegetable seeds to be divided among the four q’eqchi communities (Sepacay, Chichicaste, Covadonga, and Xochela). I would travel into town to purchase the stove supplies.
A truck pulled up at 5:40 and as soon as I got on, I felt foreign – which doesn’t usually happen to me. As promised, Ramiro got on the truck with me at his stop in Chichicaste. He asked me why I wasn’t seated in the front seat with the driver and I said I didn’t ask, and it was no big deal. Like always, I wanted to endure just the same as everybody else. I hoped that my insisting on being treated like everybody else would be appreciated.
Eventually we made it to Tucuru and to the parish, and to my great surprise, Juan Tzib was right there waiting for us! I asked him if he had a headache (from the hangover) and he smiled and said “A little.”
The driver (Alfredo) got out to stretch his legs and asked if I wanted to ride up front and I reluctantly, but with a smile, agreed. Everyone smiled.
We set off for Tactic, a town nearby with all the hardware stores we needed to purchase the stove supplies. I sat in between the driver and Ramiro, and the seat was not as soft as I had hoped. I kept thinking to myself that I felt more foreign than usual. Perhaps it was that foreign feeling that inspired thoughts like, “I want to do this in Colombia” and “These are not my people.” I felt guilty about the latter. Of course these are my people! But I just didn’t feel the warmth that I felt on previous trips.
We went to the hardware store “El Obrero” [The Laborer] and I had my next moment of panic as a leader when I found out they didn’t have enough stove stops for us because I hadn’t confirmed that I was coming, so he didn’t order them from a third party. However, we quickly realized that we needed to cut our order in half because the last trip, in January, had many more participants, hence a much bigger budget, and they had bought twice as many stoves as I was counting on this time. This was an oversight on my part, but one that ended up being positive because I was no longer worried about going over budget!
We ended up buying 4 stove tops that were on display. Juan Carlos “saved us money” by recommending we buy the cement blocks at another store. We went there and made our order. While they loaded our truck, the owner struck up a conversation with me.
“Where are you from?”
“How long have you been here?”
“I thought you were from the US.”
It’s always the same conversation for me here.
The owner then started saying how bad he felt for the people who were kidnapped in Colombia (and I once again thought how it doesn’t make sense for me to be doing this work in Guatemala) and that he was in the military in the 70’s before Guatemala’s crazy violent period in the 80’s when kids and old people were locked in churches and burnt to the ground.
Then he complained about corruption in Guatemala’s government and that they shouldn’t just give handouts, that they should make people work (which made me feel bad about the donations we were giving people with the stoves). He kept looking at Ramiro as if he knew I was there giving him free stoves. Because I felt awkward, I tried to remain neutral and inoffensive to both, so I said people are trying to work, but there just aren’t jobs. The owner then shared that when he tried to donate his wife’s old clothes to “poor” people their reaction was to say: “If you’re going to give me clothes, give me new ones.” I assured him that not everybody has that attitude. There was just the slightest racism/xenophobia in his speech, and I tried to be as careful as possible.
Once the bricks and cement blocks were loaded, we headed to another hardware store and bought chimney hoods. The pretty lady at the counter with hazel-green eyes and dirty blonde curly hair waited about 5-10 minutes before she asked where I was from. I stuttered with my response. She was surprised and praised me when told that I was traveling alone, to which I replied, “I’m not alone, I’m with my two friends,” as I pointed to Juan Tzib and Ramiro.
Looking back, I felt only a tiny bit of relief at having these men accompany me. Mostly, I felt awesome because I was in charge and I was a woman in charge. I discovered it’s easy, if not instinctual, to turn to men for advice or help. But when they don’t come through, you can be surprised how well you can handle things on your own.
Then we headed back and it was an awfully long ride. We got stuck in the mud for two hours, until a tractor was hired to help pull us out. I was of no help, except to pay the tractor guy. There were some moments when it looked like I was going to sleep in the truck and I was nervous that my sister would think I died or something. But, I should know by now that there’s always a way. Maybe it was good luck. Some people would thank God. I’m just grateful, in general, that we rescued ourselves out of that. Plus I couldn’t endure another minute of the swarm of flying ants that decided to visit us.
With Ramiro’s help, we distributed what was left of the supplies (because bags of sand were used to give the truck’s wheels some traction in the mud), and dropped off the final pieces well after dark. I gave the driver 200 quetzales more than what he asked, to make up for all the gas lost trying to escape from the mud. He was very grateful.
Once back indoors, Jarret told a ghost story, which I translated into Spanish. That was really sweet of him, but it was awkward to translate a story like that, and most of the kids didn’t really speak Spanish. My sister and I were laughing, too, which really messes up a ghost story.
With the stove supplies purchased and the seeds sorted, we went to bed excited to begin working on our projects the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment