Life of contradictions

The highly anticipated (on my part) arrival of high-speed wireless internet to Tactic has really made me think about the paradoxical world in which I live. Tactic is definitely poor by American standards and its aldeas, where the women with which I work live, are extremely poor, but at the same time there are many goods and services available to which I never thought I would have access in Peace Corps. The means to purchase these goods and services is what separates the small (almost exclusively Ladino) elite from the masses. Even in a small indigenous town in rural Guatemala there are the “haves” and the “have nots,” though the vast majority of the population falls into the later category. Here are just a few of the inconsistencies of which I have taken note in my everyday life:

I have visited many a house with dirt floors and rudimentary outhouses, while the mayor lives in a house surrounded by an electric razor wire fence (a recent addition after the failed assassination attempt) that would be considered large by American standards but easily could be labeled as a mansion here.

Using the pila is the customary way to hand wash clothing, but for 40Q (about $5) I can have my clothing picked up at my house, washed and dried in a washing machine and dryer, and returned the next day.

I walk by an area on the way to work where hired men train expensive horses that are probably worth more than half of the houses here.

Tactic is located on the paved highway to Cobán with transportation readily available at all times during the day, but it has many outlaying communities that can only be reached by foot.

I can buy deli sliced turkey breast at the Wal-Mart owned Paiz in nearby Cobán, or I can raise and kill my own turkey with a machete.

To get to Cobán I take overflowing micro-buses packed full with machete toting men going to and returning from the fields, baskets full of produce, and the occasional chicken, while I have seen at least two BMWs in town.

I live in a simple block house full of mold and bugs…but I have wireless internet.