the other side of yesterday

Lest my late-night list of grievances paint the current state of my being as too grim...

Yesterday was el Día de Trabajo, the Guatemalan equivalent of Labor Day, and so I had an unexpected day to myself. I stayed in bed, reading a rather-too-admiring biography of Hugo Chavez and working on cards for my kids. When I finally rose, I tackled the daunting task of a dry-run of packing, to see if it will even be feasible to get everything home. After having established that yes, it would just barely be feasible, I decided clearly the challenge had been too small and what I needed to do was go to the Mercado de Artesanías and up the ante. 

First quest: get the glorious leather bag, the platonic form of purses, that my mom passed down to me fixed up. Its strap had finally buckled after 30-plus years of honorable service, unstitching around the bit that held it to the bag. So I wandered into the bowels of the market. Finding the shoes, I asked around, got misdirected, asked more, until an only-slightly-sleazy knight in shining footwear whisked me off deeper among the groves of clothing and hillocks of shoes. He deposited me in front of a small counter in front of a cavern full of old fashioned shoe molds, yellow leather sandals, an old fashioned pedal-pump sewing machine, smells of glue and leather, and Miguel Angel. Miguel Angel was to be the hero of the day. He stitched the bits, fixed the zipper, refastened the edges, and made a zipstop to keep the zipper from breaking again, and charged me 10 quetzales (less than two dollars), all while verbally abusing the claimants on a court show on his small TV about a mexican girl who'd convinced her boyfriend to fund her joining him in the U.S., then left him for a guy she'd met on the internet before leaving. Then he undertook to convince me to stay in Guatemala forever. 

After leaving his side, I rambled through as-yet-unexplored sectors of the market: the nylon rope sector, the garlic onion and dogfood sector, the flowers and candles sector. And then across the way to the artesanías market, where I proceeded to laugh and bargain with the women for a good hour. I think I could happily live in marketplaces. I would just have to climb up among the beams from time to time and look down on it all, or carve out a space among the empty stalls to reflect now and again. 

And speaking of the market, remember the herb lady from months and months ago? Her daughter (I think) has taken a shine to me, and every time I go by we talk about cooking and she tells me how to use herbs. This last time she suggested grinding parsley, cilantro and thyme to make a marinade for turkey. I wonder if it would work as well on tofu. Hmmm...

So yes. Life unfolds around and among the rusting forms of legislation. Today after I pick up a new volunteer at the airport (for the last time... YES) I get to go the quinceañera of Blanca, one of my students in Santa Maria. Things are okay. Really rather good. Here's to that.

no seas coche

for a while now i've been depending on the countdown. for months i've known a solid unit of time between me and my departure, a dependable (as much as anything along the time-space continuum can be dependable) fallback both for the days when i urge the time past and the days when i hold it as a buffer against the reentry into the US. As the units get smaller i've complexified the countdown to include probable details of the weeks and days that remain; planning out the time has been a major tool for coping with the altibajos of life here. i wield it against the loneliness that comes with watching the vast majority of my acquaintances come and go, and against the anxiety that still tinges my teaching experience, and against the despair that comes with the realization that no matter how much i do there is so much more that needs to be done, and against the frustration of sleepless nights. and now this bloody swine flu has interrupted almost every element of my plans. 

there was to be mexico. i had bought my plane ticket days before the first outbreak hit the news, with shining plans to see the km-deep cañon del sumidero in chiapas, and visit sergio and asela, the wonderful family i met in san cristobal earlier this year, and then wend my way up to mexico city to chase some much-needed catchup with my friend mique. clearly that one is now off the docket. i filled the travel-shaped hole in my heart with hopes of nicaragua, of working on a farm on the isla de ometepe and exploring granada and deciphering another accent. then ortega declared a 60-day preemptive health emergency in that country. there's the prospect of my catherine, katie and grace visiting, but i haven't heard a word from them since all this broke out (ladies, if you're reading this PLEASE tell me what you're thinking-- the not-knowing is driving me slowly insane). and now the 'rents dangle the possibility that borders or airlines might start closing and they might want me to come home early. and on some level it makes sense. it would be wretched to be stuck in guatemala so close to the end of the stay, to have missed the opportunity to get home because of stubbornness or a few days. 

but here's the thing: it is all bureaucracy. everything that scares me, everything that stands in my way, is officials on various levels trying to cover their own asses from being blamed for something that is outside of human control. i am not scared of the flu because it is useless to be scared of a virus; they follow their own rules, spread where they will, and rarely pay much attention to the limits we think we place on them. but people. shutting down borders, quarantining, canceling flights, forbidding handshaking and cheek-kissing and going to school and so on... none of it is irrational and of course you would be haunted if you had the power to place those limitations, didn't place them, and then saw a spike in cases of whatever it was you were trying to limit. but i can't dodge the impression that this is a massive game of evading blame, of making a show of safety in order to keep governmental/institutional hands clean. 

i suppose it is unforgivably selfish that i should resent a virus for impeding my travel plans when it has taken lives. so be it. i am a little bit heartbroken that all this fear-based legislation and information has interrupted at least two of the things the thought of which had kept me going these last months.  and i can't help wondering where it ends, whether i'm being wise or buying into the system of control through fear, whether playing it safe isn't depriving me of glorious adventures. and yet the thought of sitting for days in quarantine, or worse, of somehow not being able to return home for weeks or months, haunts me enough that i'm not ready to take unnecessary risks. i hate it. i really really hate it. and i don't know what to do.