anecdotally yours

I've recently been accused of thinking too much. This isn't a new concept, nor is it one I'd make any studied attempt to deny-- especially because if I did I would doubtless come up with so many justifications for my level of brain activity that I'd prove my accusers right. Such is life.

Still, the most recent suggestion led me to realize that I've gotten so wrapped up in my theories and predictions that I've entirely neglected to tell you any actual anecdotes about my time here. My friend and fellow volunteer Becca always has an anecdote. Always. My personal favorite is the time when, on November 5th, she asked her 5-6 year old kids if they knew there was going to be a new president of the United States. They chorused "siiiiiiiiiii" as though she'd been foolish even to suggest they weren't intimately familiar with U.S. politics, so she thought a follow-up question was in order. She asked who this new leader might be, and received a unanimous response: "El Hombrecillo de Jengibre!"

So now you know. Our next commander in chief will be the Gingerbread Man.

But anecdotes like that have not been dropping into my lap. Maybe it's because I work with older kids, not as prone to sacrificing their adolescent dignity for my gratification, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that I just haven't been looking right. Because here: I'm going diving. I'm dredging the last seven weeks, sifting through the silt, tossing aside the nonlinear or the conceptual or the mundane, dodging the temptation for little flourishes of extended metaphor like this one.

Last week in Santa Maria, we were learning about weekends. That might be a cruel topic to introduce on a Tuesday. Tough. We talked about getting up, eating breakfast, playing football, going to church, doing the dishes-- the stuff of weekly routine. After an hour and a half of this sort of thing, reviewing the present simple or practicing speaking by interviewing partners about their average weekends, it seemed like time to give them a bit of a break. I asked them, then, to come up with an ideal weekend and ask me whatever vocabulary they wanted to fill in its blanks. The first suggestion came from Zonia, I think, but soon they all took up the cry: Pizza. How do you say Pizza in English? No frets, thought I. I even tossed in a quick explanation that the word is Italian, so it's the same in all languages. Lest I get cocky, though, they ask another: How do you say ooch in English? Ooch? I didn't think I'd ever heard that one before. I imagined it was a word in kaq'chikel (this region's indigenous language), the name of some local delicacy or spice. I asked them to spell it for me. H. Okay, the silent H, fair enough. I could have guessed there would be one of those. U. Once more, quite logical-- I'm constantly battling their urge to pronounce up oop, so it's natural I should struggle in the other direction. T. Those hide before Cs and Hs often enough, at least in English, and everyone's always saying kaq'chikel is more like English than Spanish, so why not? I'm poised for the next letter. Moira, fellow volunteer, catches my eye from the back of the class. "Leslie. Look at the board." I do. Hut. Pizza. Of course. Nothing like the Mayan deep dish special. Caught exoticizing a bit, I was. It happens to the best of us.

Whew. That was harder than I expected. I'm going to take refuge in something truer, less convenient, and probably more familiar to those of you who've corresponded with me over the years.

Yesterday I finally went to my first barbecue. Barbecues are meant to be a Friday tradition, an initiation of new members and an opportunity to mingle with the whole crew, but due to various chaotic elements beyond GVI's control the last seven have been canceled. We've been meeting instead in various restaurants, taking over massive blocks of tables, welcoming newcomers and hearing speeches from those perched on the edge of departure, ossifying into the furniture where we sit and into the people we know. I was looking forward to the first real barbecue, largely because of the mingling element. I'd apparently entirely forgotten who I am. Do I like mingling? Is there any part of me that takes pleasure in a room full of half-strangers sniffing around, establishing the degree to which they will like or dislike one another, comparing ethics size or adventure girth like they were some more bodily sings of superiority? Fortunately, I had beautiful ingredients that let me bury my fingers and my social being in them. The barbecues become potlucks of sorts, so I'd managed to span Antigua in search of the components of tabbouleh. I actually found bulgur, in a little deli behind a chocolate shop called Chocotenango (cleverly named after Jocotenango, the next town over.) I sought green onions in the supermarket, and then headed over for the covered-ish market for the rest of my fresh goods. Tomatoes and limes were easy, as was parsley and a cucumber. I was getting a bit worried about spearmint, though. I'd asked at three stalls piled high, one with chiles and cilantro,  one with oranges, one with bell-like peppers that made me feel sheepish for having bought mine in the supermarket, and each woman overlooking her vegetables pointed me onward. Finally the woman who sold me the cucumber and five small oblong tomatoes suggested one particular corner. I rounded it to see a tangle of herbs over my head, deep and musty like the most aromatic of tumbleweeds, scored down the middle to create a niche for a woman. She was white-haired, had about five teeth, and spoke almost unintelligible Spanish. She seemed more a part of her plants than the world of the market, stabbed as it was with cascades of leather belts and chains of pirated DVDs and plastic detritus and shouts of recognition and teenagers multitasking, making out over the counters of their parents' stands, and reggaeton weaving through the whine of off-kilter musical Christmas lights. Her curtains of herbs warded off the tumult, and I recognized myself exoticizing again, and I didn't much mind. I was half waiting for her to mutter or murmur or muddle some cryptic key to my future, some incantation or riddle whose import would only be revealed months or years later, but I left charmless, with a simple Que le vaya bien. Her power came clear only when I installed myself in a corner of the kitchen where the barbecue bustled, evading conversation as I slivered onions and cubed cucumbers and constricted my fingers around limes, living through my nose and my nerves, banishing the people around me to the sphere of the random market and wriggling into the peculiar calm and order of cooking. The tabbouleh turned out pretty well, too.

Que les vaya bien.