7 January 2006
We arrived in Guatemala at the end of February last year. Since then, the crew has endured a near-miss with a poisonous snake, a foiled kidnapping/shooting/robbery/attempted murder, and a near-death experience resulting from malaria (I watched watch as mosquitoes would bite Matt, who was shivering with fever from malaria, and then fly towards me - I am still twitching from that). I saw a woman whose son died from intestinal worms, and one of my friends left town with his family when his uncle was killed in a revenge killing. I have grown to love the people we work with, and have had some of the most amazing experiences ever. And now I am back, to experience it some more.
Hopefully, it will be less, well, exciting.
Monday we drove from South Carolina, where we had spent Christmas and New Year's with my folks (and the grandkids!). As soon as we completed the 10 hour drive (which started at 5am to make sure we arrived before dark), we began the process of getting the bathroom finished. The tile guy came Tuesday morning, and cut and pasted the remaining two tiles in place and helped me put the sink in place – two of the last things remaining before the house is completed. Tuesday was spent running like mad to complete as much as possible before I left. And on Wednesday morning I hit the air.
Can anyone tell me why PJ's coffee house at the airport does not open until 7? Seems to me that the earliest risers have the greatest need for caffeine. Hmm.
At midnight, the trip from New Orleans to Atlanta, Atlanta back to Houston (passing over New Orleans in the process), Houston to Guatemala City was completed.
By the way, customs in Guatemala is the only place where the bureaucracy is lax. Nobody cares what you bring into Guatemala. The uniformed customs officers collect the aduana forms without even glancing at them, almost as if they are encouraging the laundering of money through Guatemala.
During my time in the US, my car had to be moved, and it died in the process. When I arrived, my first order of business was to locate the car and get it brought to the mechanic's shop. Anamaria, the lady who cares for the house, arrived and we looked through the phone book for an hour to find the towing company, and make the appropriate arrangements. Then I sit at the mechanic's and wait for an hour. Time is of the essence – I have to get the car fixed before I can go to the border. And the border trip has to be done by the end of the day Friday, or I lose my car to the bureaucracy in a nasty Catch-22 – I have to drive the car to the border to re-up the papers, but I can't drive the car because the papers are not re-upped.
And the tow truck does not come. At midday, the daily trip to the capital by the mechanic came and went, still no car. Finally it arrives, and they find the problem – the recently-replaced starter has failed again. The word used to describe it to me is "forceado", which I eventually have explained. It means that the key was turned and the starter ground down until it didn't work any longer.
After a long discussion about whose fault the problem is – it was a brand-new starter – the mechanic agreed reluctantly to send the part out to be fixed that night. It would be picked up in Guatemala around midday on Friday, the day the car papers expire.
OK. I have until midnight on Friday to get to the border with a car that might be ready by that point. And the part will arrive around 3:30 pm.
The car was fixed at 5:30. The guys were amazing – they fixed and checked everything before I hit the road in a mere two hours, but the timing could not have been worse. I was now set to go through Guatemala City at rush hour to get to the border in a car I did not trust. And, predictably, I took a wrong turn.
Wrong turns in New Orleans are bad – you can get really lost very quickly. Wrong turns in Guatemala's capital are deadly during the day, and doubly so at night. I had made this wrong turn before, and the moment I took the ramp, I realized my mistake. Suddenly I am plumbing the depths of my Spanish for new curse words. The traffic was horrific and there was nowhere to turn around for miles.
I even stopped and asked for directions at a gas station. He told me how to get back, but then thought of a short cut. "If you turn right here, go one block and turn right again, you will go straight through a light. That road will go through Zone 9, and will eventually lead you to the road to the Salvadoran border."
I got to the traffic signal he mentioned. There was no way of going straight. After a heated internal discussion, I turned to Gilberto, my friend who had joined me for the trip, and said "We're not going that way. I don't know it, and we can't afford to get lost."
The problem is, the way I had planned to go took us twenty minutes in the wrong direction.
Finally, ten miles and one illegal u-turn later, we had righted the course, and were headed toward the border. In the dark.
Night driving in Latin America is stressful. Unseen dangers lurk on every corner, from livestock sitting just beyond the crest of a hill, to children darting out into the road without notice (sidewalk soccer is a common game). Make it a Friday night, and the dangers get tripled, as recently paid workers all blow off steam at the same time - intoxicated chapines everywhere. I do not like night driving at any time – my night vision is not particularly good. I also am a ridiculously early riser, which means that I got up at 4:15 that morning. This time I got to add a new kink. As I left Guatemala City, I tried my bright lights. They came on, but would not dim. There are a lot of Guatemalan drivers that are pretty ticked off at me at this point. Add a touch of near-narcolepsy (this explains my sleeping in your class, Will) and you have a formula for disaster.
No disaster occurred. At the border, my papers were processed when we arrived, at 9:00 at night. By 9:15, we had turned and were headed back to Antigua.
During this whole time, I shared the car with Gilberto, who is many wonderful things, but not a scintillating conversationalist. We shared the ride in a comfortable, companionable silence. I would have wished for less comfort and more conversation.
The trip ended well. We arrived at the house just before the Blazer turned into a pumpkin, and headed off to bed.
The next hurdle involves fighting the bureaucracy for the permits.
C.S. Lewis wrote a book where hell is portrayed as a bureaucracy where demons fight to consume humans and each other. In a book of a different genre, Douglas Adams created a race of aliens who formed a bureaucracy as an evolutionary device to protect against original thought.
And neither Lewis nor Adams ever dealt with Latin American bureaucracy.
Now mind you, New Orleans is no model of efficiency, especially now. I know that bureaucracy everywhere is ponderous and slow-moving. But there is a special level of Xibalba (the Mayan version of hell) reserved specifically to torture those who participate in the bureaucracy in Guatemala. It is something special.
In mid-November I applied for the permits to undertake salvage excavations at a lithic production facility. Meanwhile, both Matt and Christina applied for permits to take obsidian and figurine fragments, respectively, out of the country for chemical analysis. Matt got permission for the obsidian, Christina was denied.
The main problem was one bureaucrat who has been causing problems for us since the beginning. As soon as he heard that the permission letter was forwarded to her, Matt turned to Christina and said, "Forget about your export permit." Sure enough, the letter came back denying permission to export the frags based on their iconographic content. Untrue – the fragments are not very special, except in the information we can obtain about their sources – but it does not matter. Nor does it matter that you can buy a dozen of the pieces - like the ones she is looking to take out – for sale in any market in all of Guatemala. But she is back to her starting point.
Meanwhile, my permission got kicked up the ladder, and was denied – I had to submit a whole new project, hire a co-director, and provide more documentation. In a shocking move, however, the bureaucracy broke down along lines of seniority. For once, the lower echelon of the bureaucracy recognized how ridiculous the ruling was, in a quiet aside overruled the higher-ups, and suggested a couple of amendments that would make it palatable. But I have to be careful to avoid having it kicked up the ladder again, because it is currently being slid under the radar.
But, of course, the original five copies I provided in mid-November have disappeared. Can you just fax us three copies, and add a cover letter and a revised timetable, and….
And, predictably, they were closed on Friday. Please send it on Monday, between the hours of 10:58 and 11:00 am. Ugh.
Tonight I get to go to a wedding of two friends whom I met separately, and then found out that they were courting. The wedding is at one of the most beautiful churches in Antigua, and I can't wait. The only concern for me is that I am never sure about the hour. I was told 5:30, and 7:00 pm, respectively, for the civil and church ceremonies. I even asked whether that was Guatemalan time or gringo time, since there are about 4 hours' difference between the two. I was told that it was "siete - cabal" – exactly seven o'clock. But I've been there before….
Happy New Year to everyone, and Happy anniversary to my darling wife.
We arrived in Guatemala at the end of February last year. Since then, the crew has endured a near-miss with a poisonous snake, a foiled kidnapping/shooting/robbery/attempted murder, and a near-death experience resulting from malaria (I watched watch as mosquitoes would bite Matt, who was shivering with fever from malaria, and then fly towards me - I am still twitching from that). I saw a woman whose son died from intestinal worms, and one of my friends left town with his family when his uncle was killed in a revenge killing. I have grown to love the people we work with, and have had some of the most amazing experiences ever. And now I am back, to experience it some more.
Hopefully, it will be less, well, exciting.
Monday we drove from South Carolina, where we had spent Christmas and New Year's with my folks (and the grandkids!). As soon as we completed the 10 hour drive (which started at 5am to make sure we arrived before dark), we began the process of getting the bathroom finished. The tile guy came Tuesday morning, and cut and pasted the remaining two tiles in place and helped me put the sink in place – two of the last things remaining before the house is completed. Tuesday was spent running like mad to complete as much as possible before I left. And on Wednesday morning I hit the air.
Can anyone tell me why PJ's coffee house at the airport does not open until 7? Seems to me that the earliest risers have the greatest need for caffeine. Hmm.
At midnight, the trip from New Orleans to Atlanta, Atlanta back to Houston (passing over New Orleans in the process), Houston to Guatemala City was completed.
By the way, customs in Guatemala is the only place where the bureaucracy is lax. Nobody cares what you bring into Guatemala. The uniformed customs officers collect the aduana forms without even glancing at them, almost as if they are encouraging the laundering of money through Guatemala.
During my time in the US, my car had to be moved, and it died in the process. When I arrived, my first order of business was to locate the car and get it brought to the mechanic's shop. Anamaria, the lady who cares for the house, arrived and we looked through the phone book for an hour to find the towing company, and make the appropriate arrangements. Then I sit at the mechanic's and wait for an hour. Time is of the essence – I have to get the car fixed before I can go to the border. And the border trip has to be done by the end of the day Friday, or I lose my car to the bureaucracy in a nasty Catch-22 – I have to drive the car to the border to re-up the papers, but I can't drive the car because the papers are not re-upped.
And the tow truck does not come. At midday, the daily trip to the capital by the mechanic came and went, still no car. Finally it arrives, and they find the problem – the recently-replaced starter has failed again. The word used to describe it to me is "forceado", which I eventually have explained. It means that the key was turned and the starter ground down until it didn't work any longer.
After a long discussion about whose fault the problem is – it was a brand-new starter – the mechanic agreed reluctantly to send the part out to be fixed that night. It would be picked up in Guatemala around midday on Friday, the day the car papers expire.
OK. I have until midnight on Friday to get to the border with a car that might be ready by that point. And the part will arrive around 3:30 pm.
The car was fixed at 5:30. The guys were amazing – they fixed and checked everything before I hit the road in a mere two hours, but the timing could not have been worse. I was now set to go through Guatemala City at rush hour to get to the border in a car I did not trust. And, predictably, I took a wrong turn.
Wrong turns in New Orleans are bad – you can get really lost very quickly. Wrong turns in Guatemala's capital are deadly during the day, and doubly so at night. I had made this wrong turn before, and the moment I took the ramp, I realized my mistake. Suddenly I am plumbing the depths of my Spanish for new curse words. The traffic was horrific and there was nowhere to turn around for miles.
I even stopped and asked for directions at a gas station. He told me how to get back, but then thought of a short cut. "If you turn right here, go one block and turn right again, you will go straight through a light. That road will go through Zone 9, and will eventually lead you to the road to the Salvadoran border."
I got to the traffic signal he mentioned. There was no way of going straight. After a heated internal discussion, I turned to Gilberto, my friend who had joined me for the trip, and said "We're not going that way. I don't know it, and we can't afford to get lost."
The problem is, the way I had planned to go took us twenty minutes in the wrong direction.
Finally, ten miles and one illegal u-turn later, we had righted the course, and were headed toward the border. In the dark.
Night driving in Latin America is stressful. Unseen dangers lurk on every corner, from livestock sitting just beyond the crest of a hill, to children darting out into the road without notice (sidewalk soccer is a common game). Make it a Friday night, and the dangers get tripled, as recently paid workers all blow off steam at the same time - intoxicated chapines everywhere. I do not like night driving at any time – my night vision is not particularly good. I also am a ridiculously early riser, which means that I got up at 4:15 that morning. This time I got to add a new kink. As I left Guatemala City, I tried my bright lights. They came on, but would not dim. There are a lot of Guatemalan drivers that are pretty ticked off at me at this point. Add a touch of near-narcolepsy (this explains my sleeping in your class, Will) and you have a formula for disaster.
No disaster occurred. At the border, my papers were processed when we arrived, at 9:00 at night. By 9:15, we had turned and were headed back to Antigua.
During this whole time, I shared the car with Gilberto, who is many wonderful things, but not a scintillating conversationalist. We shared the ride in a comfortable, companionable silence. I would have wished for less comfort and more conversation.
The trip ended well. We arrived at the house just before the Blazer turned into a pumpkin, and headed off to bed.
The next hurdle involves fighting the bureaucracy for the permits.
C.S. Lewis wrote a book where hell is portrayed as a bureaucracy where demons fight to consume humans and each other. In a book of a different genre, Douglas Adams created a race of aliens who formed a bureaucracy as an evolutionary device to protect against original thought.
And neither Lewis nor Adams ever dealt with Latin American bureaucracy.
Now mind you, New Orleans is no model of efficiency, especially now. I know that bureaucracy everywhere is ponderous and slow-moving. But there is a special level of Xibalba (the Mayan version of hell) reserved specifically to torture those who participate in the bureaucracy in Guatemala. It is something special.
In mid-November I applied for the permits to undertake salvage excavations at a lithic production facility. Meanwhile, both Matt and Christina applied for permits to take obsidian and figurine fragments, respectively, out of the country for chemical analysis. Matt got permission for the obsidian, Christina was denied.
The main problem was one bureaucrat who has been causing problems for us since the beginning. As soon as he heard that the permission letter was forwarded to her, Matt turned to Christina and said, "Forget about your export permit." Sure enough, the letter came back denying permission to export the frags based on their iconographic content. Untrue – the fragments are not very special, except in the information we can obtain about their sources – but it does not matter. Nor does it matter that you can buy a dozen of the pieces - like the ones she is looking to take out – for sale in any market in all of Guatemala. But she is back to her starting point.
Meanwhile, my permission got kicked up the ladder, and was denied – I had to submit a whole new project, hire a co-director, and provide more documentation. In a shocking move, however, the bureaucracy broke down along lines of seniority. For once, the lower echelon of the bureaucracy recognized how ridiculous the ruling was, in a quiet aside overruled the higher-ups, and suggested a couple of amendments that would make it palatable. But I have to be careful to avoid having it kicked up the ladder again, because it is currently being slid under the radar.
But, of course, the original five copies I provided in mid-November have disappeared. Can you just fax us three copies, and add a cover letter and a revised timetable, and….
And, predictably, they were closed on Friday. Please send it on Monday, between the hours of 10:58 and 11:00 am. Ugh.
Tonight I get to go to a wedding of two friends whom I met separately, and then found out that they were courting. The wedding is at one of the most beautiful churches in Antigua, and I can't wait. The only concern for me is that I am never sure about the hour. I was told 5:30, and 7:00 pm, respectively, for the civil and church ceremonies. I even asked whether that was Guatemalan time or gringo time, since there are about 4 hours' difference between the two. I was told that it was "siete - cabal" – exactly seven o'clock. But I've been there before….
Happy New Year to everyone, and Happy anniversary to my darling wife.
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