Noche de Gala

The other half

One of the evenings during the feria was reserved for the “Noche de Gala.” This is the exclusive yearly dinner/dance open only to the high society of Tactic. I was invited because, well, I’m a gringa.

There was a marimba ensemble and a band. The tables and chairs were meticulously decorated and placed. Gorgeous flower arrangements graced the tables. Guests arrived in sparkly dresses and crisp suits. Bowtie wearing waiters served wine and handed out bottles of Johnnie Walker. The Tactic “royalty” of the feria were all honored as well as the visiting mayor from Tactic’s sister city in El Salvador and a handful of local writers and poets. Couples danced to marimba while reporters filmed, took pictures, and conducted interviews.

It was definitely not a typical night in Tactic.

I attended the event thinking it would be fun and interesting to see, but I left kind of repulsed. My mood did not result from having to listen to windy speeches and the marimba for five hours nor from the fact that I had unwisely decided to wear a pair of high heels with a broken toe. I was disgusted by amount of money the municipality poured into one evening for the rich of Tactic most liking at the cost of having funds to do projects for the poor.

A campesino laboring eight hours a day in the fields would have to work more than a week to even afford one bottle of the whiskey that was served. If added up, the cost of the event—band, flowers, waiters, table decorations, marimba, audio equipment, food, alcohol—would easily run more than a typical indigenous family in an aldea could earn in a year.

It’s not that the rich here are incredibly rich (in comparison to the states) but that the poor are incredibly poor. The Noche de Gala wasn’t that fancy. (It actually had somewhat of a prom-like aura.) But against the backdrop of wooden shacks, dirt floors, and child malnutrition, to me it seemed horribly excessive. I felt guilty just being there.

Cachorro Robado

Perdido

For three agonizing hours today Mapache was missing, and I was an absolute wreck.

The disappearance happened early this afternoon. I had spent the whole of the morning in and out of different meetings, and therefore Mapache spent the whole of the morning chewing on a Kong (Guatemalans think I’m crazy for giving my puppy peanut butter) in the house. When I got home around 1:00 pm, I fed him lunch and then let him out to play.

Now, there is a known breach in the fence surrounding my house. It is the place where Houdini used to escape but had since been patched up by my groundskeeper, Quique. Mapache discovered the weak point in the perimeter a week ago and managed to squeeze through the gaps in the barbed wire. The morning of this first escape, I had two houseguests, Gini and Eric (friends of a friend of the brother of the wife of my brother who stopped to visit me during their trip to Guatemala), who, using a large rock and the broken pieces of a poorly made rake, were able to plug the hole. Gracias a los Magnusons.

But being the necio puppy that he is, Mapache soon learned how to maneuver around the obstacles and was out in the neighboring lot again within days. I was concerned at first, but Mapache never ventured out of viewing distance and always returned when called. Mostly he just enjoyed bothering the calf and horse next door. Harmless fun.

Today after being pent up in the house all morning, Mapache immediately went out through the opening to explore the adjacent yards. As he was burning his excess energy, I was busy working on the script for a television announcement. Every so often I would call him just to make sure he was still near the house. At the sound of my whistle and voice he would come running back to the door. But one time I called and whistled and he didn’t come back.

Only 10 to 15 minutes had passed since I had last seen him, so I assumed he had just ventured a little too far away. I grabbed a handful of treats and headed out behind my house to find him. He wasn’t in the adjacent lots, and when I reached the street (I knew to use the gate this time instead of trying to squeeze through barbed wire) I started asking everyone I encountered if they had seen a white puppy. No one had seen him. I called and whistled and knocked on doors. No sign. I spread the search out to a two-block radius surrounding my house. Nothing.

I started crying. Bawling actually, but I was able to hold the worst of it in until I reached the privacy of my home. The reason for my outpouring of tears was that the only reasonable explanation I could think of for Mapache’s complete disappearance was that he had been stolen.

Mapache is a purebred that could easily sell for more than Q1000. From the moment I got him, I had been warned that he is a hot commodity to steal. That is why when he is not with me, he is shut up in the house. But he is with me a lot and consequently has quite a large fan base in town. (He is definitely more popular than I am.) So when the dozens of people who live nearby and know Mapache told me that they hadn’t seen him, I knew that he had to be tied up in someone’s house.

So I called the police. Two officers were at my house within five minutes. They inspected the escape route and asked me about the approximate time when Mapache went missing. The chief of police, Fernando, is actually the owner of the mother of Mapache, so he and the rest of the police already knew what the little guy looks like and needed not ask questions to that effect. After they got all the necessary information, they told me they would do everything they could to find him.

During the officers’ visit I overheard two men talking in the lot behind the adjacent bakery, “She got the police to find a puppy!” You bet I did.

The police put all of their available resources on the case. Both patrol trucks were dispatched in search of Mapache and other officers were sent out on foot. As the police combed Tactic, I set to work on making a missing puppy flyer, of course with the promise of a reward.

About half an hour after the police had started their search, I got a call from Fernando. The patrol trucks hadn’t seen the puppy, but he had spoken with a couple of transit police officers who also know Mapache (como dije él es re popular) but had not seen him pass through their check point in the middle of town. Given that the corner where they work is a block down from the street behind my house, and I had already covered all the territory in the other direction, and the patrol trucks had searched all over Tactic, Fernando believed what I had originally feared—Mapache was being held captive in the one of the houses on the street behind my house.

Efforts were redoubled in that area. I made another pass of the street on foot knocking on the door of every single house and questioning every single passerby while the patrol truck crept behind me. Every so often the officers would flick on the sirens for an added effect. But our efforts were fruitless. Supposedly, no one had seen Mapache.

We came to the conclusion that my only hope was that the thief could be bought off with the guarantee of a reward for “finding” Mapache. The police were going to suspend their full effort search, but promised to keep an eye out for him. I returned to my house to put the final touches on the flyer to have it ready to be printed and taped all over Tactic.

My sitemate, Lorba, came over to my house to give me moral support. She entered my yard at the same time as Quique (groundskeeper). I had already given Lorba the sad spiel over the phone, so I just explained to him what had happened. Quique adores Mapache and was pretty upset at the news. He set out to do a search of his own, and within 10 minutes he came back with Mapache at his side.

After three hours and countless people searching by foot and in vehicles, Mapache turned up on the street behind my house. I had scoured that street twice and the patrol truck had made three passes. There is no possible way we all just simply missed him. Mapache had to have been in the house of somebody who got scared when he realized the gringa had the police looking for the puppy. Stealing an expensive puppy had become more trouble than it was worth.

So Quique did another patch job on the hole in the fence, and now Mapache’s days of exploring outside the confines of the yard are over.

Feria Banda

Here is a short (and poor quality) clip of one of the bands in one of the many parades during the feria. This band is from the private school La Enseñanza.

Princesa Poqomchi'

School of Pain

I noticed something amusing in the background of this picture I took during a parade.


The school of P.A.I.N. in the aldea of Tampó—a place where children learn the hard way.

The acronym actually stands for “Programa de Atención Integral al Niño” (Program of Complete Attention to the Child) in Spanish, and I imagine there is no real physical pain involved in the learning process.

P.A.I.N. for a school is funny, but my all time favorite acronym is that of a special forces unit in the French Army, “Les Commandos de Recherche et d'Action dans la Profondeur,” or C.R.A.P. for short. They changed the name in 1999. Do you think maybe they weren’t getting any respect from English speakers?

Vaquera

Feria '09

It’s feria time again in Tactic. Parades. Blocks of pure sugar. Dances. Sports activities. Carneys. Games. Thieves. Drunks. Fun.

This is my 3rd Tactic feria, and although it contains all the aforementioned things, it is definitely the smallest one I have seen. There aren’t jobs, so there isn’t money to spend on rides and candy. But regardless of if there is pisto or not, the feria must go on. So, I’ll be intermittently posting pictures of the festivities.

La radiografía

No, those are not fingers.

Fractura

When the urine slipping, wall kicking incident happened two Saturdays ago, I thought for sure I had broken my toe. I almost cried. But by the end of the day I had stuffed my bruised and swollen foot (even though only my pinky toe made contact with the concrete wall, the swelling and bruising extended down into the outer part of my foot) into a shoe to kick around a soccer ball. Such is my competitive nature.

The following Monday one of the trainers for the men’s soccer team had a look at my toe. After quite a bit of time poking, prodding, pulling, and pinching, he determined that it was not broken reasoning that no one would be able to put up with the pain of that treatment with a broken bone. Although it wasn’t the most scientific of methods, I was pleased with the diagnosis, so I didn’t question it. I was cleared to play.

And play I did. But a week of sports with the kiddies, four soccer games, and a basketball game later (4 Ws and a tie), it turns out that I really do have a broken toe. Damn.

I actually would still be playing had not the head coach of the men’s team taken a look at my toe this past Monday and insisted that I get an x-ray. The trainer was trying to massage out the swelling, but the coach noted there shouldn’t even be that much swelling 10 days after the fact.

So Tuesday morning Peace Corps sent me to Galeno, the private hospital in Cobán, to have the toe checked out. I waited nearly two hours for the doctor to take one look at my toe and then send me to get an x-ray. Now in the states getting an x-ray would simply involve being escorted to another floor or room, but of course it is not that quick and easy in Guatemala. I was given a slip of paper with the name and address of a radiologist some seven blocks away from the hospital with the instructions to go there, get an x-ray, and return with the results…on foot…with a possible broken toe. Okay.

Despite its close proximity, I don’t spend a lot of time in Cobán so I needed a bit of help to make sure I was heading in the right direction to get to the radiologist. I stopped to ask a guard outside a bank but he had no clue where I trying to go (surprisingly he told me as much; usually people here will give you directions regardless if they know where the place is or not), so he sent me inside to consult with two other guards.

“I’m looking for this clinic, and I just need to know if 6th avenue is that way.” I showed the two men my slip of paper.

Guard 1: “Ah. This is the place where they give ultrasounds.”

“Actually it’s my toe. I think…”

Guard 2: “Yes, it is. You can get an ultrasound there.”

“I kicked a wall. It might be broken.”

Guard 1: “To get to the ultrasound place, you need to go…”

The guards proceeded to give me directions to where I could get an ultrasound, I mean x-ray of my toe. Ironically enough I might never need an ultrasound since the technician didn’t bother to cover up my lady parts during the x-ray. Or I might have a child with three arms.

The technician was also rather confused as to why I would bother to have a toe x-rayed.

“You want an x-ray of your little toe?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Just a toe?”

“Yes, just a toe.”

I guess he couldn’t understand why I would waste $20 getting an x-ray of my toe when nothing could be done for it even if it were broken. But for me the results of that toe x-ray were to be the deciding factor of whether I should continue to play through the pain or stay off my right foot. It looks like I am going to be sidelined for a while.

The doctor was very concerned that after 11 days there was absolutely no sign of any healing taking place. Hmm, I bet I know why. Here is his diagnosis:

Edema de tejido blando a nivel del dedo chiquito del pie derecho. Lo anterior es secundario a fractura oblicua y alineada del vértice externo y distal de la falange proximal del dedo chiquito, la cual tiene componente intrarticular.

Roughly translated as:

Edema of the soft tissue of the little toe of the right foot. The preceding is secondary to an oblique fracture that is aligned from the external apex and distal of the proximal phalange of the little toe, which has an intra-articular component.

And further translated and paraphrased as:

I have an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the soft tissue of my pinky toe on my right foot caused by a fracture that cuts across the first bone of the toe and extends into the joint where the first bone meets the second.

So not only do I have a broken toe, I have the kind of fracture that meets a joint (intra-articular), which frequently causes long-term posttraumatic arthritis. I am currently on 2400 mg of ibuprofen a day to reduce the swelling and edema and staying off my foot and keeping it elevated whenever possible. If the swelling and edema don’t subside within the next couple of days, I’ll be making a trip to the capital to see a foot specialist.

And all this pain and suffering because I didn’t see a pool of dog urine.

Warnings

I find product warning labels rather amusing. It is as if there are people whose sole job it is to think up stupid ways in which consumers could harm themselves and to make little illustrations to prevent that from happening. This may lessen the number of injuries, but more importantly (for the company) it lessens the number of lawsuits: “Your case has no grounds because we put a drawing right on the package showing that this curling iron is not to be used on eyelashes.”

Anyway, these labels are from a retractable dog leash my mom sent me from the states. Perhaps no one else will find them as humorous as I do.

The whiplash effect.

My personal favorite.

Broken toe?

The result of running barefoot through my living room, slipping on a pool of undetected bish (thanks Mapache), and ramming my toe into the door frame.

Carro de mareros

I'll venture to bet that when those in the marketing department of Kia decided to run this ad in Guatemala they were completely oblivious to the fact that tattoos are almost exclusively associated with gangs here.

Beat it

My neighbors, Emerson and Cristian, aged 7 and 6, have a penchant for popping into my house unannounced. Well, it is not completely unannounced. Emerson will usually say, “¡Con permiso!” after he is already in the middle of my living room. Denying a kid entrance into your home is a lot harder after he is already in it.

There is much to be written about these two characters, but this post is just going to be about an incident that occurred last Friday.

Late Friday afternoon my sitemate, Lorba, and I were watching a movie. Emerson and Cristian brought over seven other kids who all wanted to play with Mapache. I had never even seen these kids before, but I told them it was fine for them to play with Mapache in the yard. About five minutes later, Emerson was in my bedroom.

“Con permiso.”

“Yes.”

“We want to take Mapache for a walk.”

“That’s fine.”

I got Mapache into his halter, attached the leash, and handed it over to Emerson. The pack of children left for the street, and my home returned to its usual tranquility. But that child-free calm ended up lasting for only less than ten minutes. The dynamic duo had managed to ditch the rest of the kids and just the two of them returned with Mapache. Once again Emerson was in my bedroom.

“Con permiso.”

“What do you want now?” (After three interruptions in the past 20 minutes, my patience was running a little thin.)

“Can we play in the yard?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

Once again the kids went back out into the yard and once again we resumed watching our movie. But, of course, they weren’t content to just play in the yard. Within minutes they were in my room.

“Con permiso.”

“What?” (My patience was on its last thread at this point.)

“Can we watch Michael Jackson videos on your computer?”

“No. We are watching a movie.”

“But…”

Emerson was unable to get any more than that out before Lorba yelled, “Children! Outside!” and escorted them both out of the house.

I really expected them to be back in my room with another request in under ten minutes, but surprisingly we were able to watch the rest of the movie without any further interruptions. They apparently got Lorba’s message loud and clear…or not.

When I went outside to see Lorba off, I noticed my hammock lying on the porch. This hammock was set up by the volunteer who lived in this house before me and has supported the weight of countless adults, yet two skinny little boys somehow managed to rip it out of the 10-foot high support beam. That’s a challenge. They left in such a rush after tearing down the hammock that they forgot to collect their toy cars.

I was angry. No, the hammock was not broken, although it will be a bit of a hassle to borrow a ladder and a power tool to hang it back up. But I wasn’t angry about the hammock; I was angry about the fact that the kids didn’t tell me they tore it down. It’s not as if I wouldn’t know who did it.

I thought about going over to his house to discuss what happened, but I realized his parents would be infinitely angrier about the situation than I was. I didn’t want to be responsible for the misery of a child, so I decided to wait to bring up the hammock until I caught him alone in the street or away from the house.

Sunday presented that opportunity as I ran into Emerson at the Tactic soccer game.

“What happened to the hammock Emerson?”

“What?”

“The hammock. How did you and Cristian tear it down?”

“We were spinning in circles and it fell down.”

“Okay. Why didn’t you tell me what happened?”

“We thought you were going to beat us.”

So the frightened Guatemalan children ran away because they thought the angry gringa was going to beat them. I guess I can’t be upset about that.

Chopping

Drawing from my knowledge of deciphering rudimentary English, I believe this sign is meant to say something like, "Well to come in shopper," or a little better said, "Welcome to come in shopper."