15 April 2005
Last Saturday was a good day. I got two tasks accomplished – I braced the shelves that hold the pottery and went to Pastores to look at boots. The first part went pretty well. The 2x4 only cost 23Q, and I sawed it using the saw I purchased at the beginning of the season. I took it up on the roof to cut it, refusing offers of help. After about five minutes of struggling, I looked down and said "Hmm."
Matt and Ingrid both came running up the stairs. Ingrid later said that she had never before been around someone who said "Hmm" when they hurt themselves. The back of the saw had metal burrs on it, and in using my left thumb as a guide for the cut, I had sliced it open. The cut was pretty deep, and I am a bleeder. The paper towel was dripping onto the floor in 30 seconds. We used up most of the remaining gringo bandages (local band-aids, predictably, use Teflon as adhesive) trying to attach bandage to slick finger. And when something like this happens, I am always amazed at how many times I manage to whack my thumb during the day.
The trip to Pastores was, by contrast, completely without incident. We went into a half dozen or more shops, all with nearly identical boots. There was a pretty wide variety within each store, and you could get riding boots, cowboy boots, dress boots, or high-heeled boots. And they are also made to order, so if you have special tastes or wide feet, they will make the boots (by hand) for you. 250Q – roughly US30 - buys the basic cowboy boot. An alligator boot runs 1400Q. Expensive, but still cheap by gringo standards.
There was one store, obviously the most successful of them, where they sold, among other things, hooded cobra belts - they used the heads of the cobras for the belt buckle. The guy – get this - also had a pair of cobra boots. The head looked like a tassel on the top of the foot.
I didn't ask if it flopped around. Matt asked a guy about them last year, and was told that a local guy is raising them on a local farm for these belts.
Now Guatemala is home to a number of highly venomous snakes, including the very deadly fer-de-lance. Maybe it is just me, but the idea of introducing another deadly snake with no natural predators into an ecosystem that is ready made for such an animal…. well, it seems about as bright as swimming with a laptop. The good news is that once a couple of 'em escape, real estate prices in neighboring Antigua will quickly plummet.
Oddly enough, the town is not friendly at all. I am accustomed to being welcomed when I shop. I know it is crazy, but I figure that if I am in the store, perhaps to buy something, and if I smile a lot and speak politely, nice things will happen, New Orleans Winn Dixie notwithstanding. Not so here. In every store we went into, the people tending the store were grumpy and sullen.
It also makes no sense to me that there is no outlet in Antigua for the sale of the boots. Twenty stores located five minutes from Guatemala's tourist Medina (the hajj akbar is the pilgrimage to Tikal) known as Antigua. Each gringo, Guatemalteco, German, French and Cuban makes their way to Antigua on every trip to Guatemala, but never to Pastores, unless they know to go there to buy boots. Why not sell the boots in a kiosk in town, with a big sign, stating plainly "Boots Pastores"? How easily I forget that capitalist rules do not apply in Guate, and that the boot mafia puts its foot down, so to speak on the "export" of their products to the metropolis five minutes away. Go figure.
I am interested in talking to them about using some spare leather from their stocks for my microwear study. Cutting and scraping leather should be one of the items on my list of activities I am doing with the stone tools, and that would be the logical place to do work, just like Jades, S.A. would likely be the best place to work with jade here in town.
On the way back into town, we stopped at the ceviche stand down the street and had some really tasty seafood. Ingrid and Matt just got the shrimp, but I got the mixto, which had crab, shrimp, fish, mussels, all of which was delightful, and pulpo – octopus – which was a little on the tough side. Honestly, I am going to suggest to the guy in Pastores that octopus boots might be a big seller. If the meat is that tough when fresh, I can only imagine what curing it for a couple of days with tannin would do. And you already have the ink for a natural dye. I'll be the first guy on the block with octopus cowboy boots.
And probably will remain the only guy. But such is the price of being a fashionista.
Over dinner on Monday I felt my first earthquake. Pretty exciting stuff. Ingrid looked at me and asked "do you feel that?"
The answer was unequivocal. Yes, I felt it, and it got stronger over the next thirty seconds. Matt announced that if it got worse, we were headed out of the house. As soon as he said it, the house rocked with a little more force, and he yelled "keys!" and grabbed them and headed to the door.
We bumped into him from behind, as we were already headed the same way. But the impact of tectonic activity is exciting. It turned out to be a 5.4 quake originating 100km to the SW, near the border with El Salvador (where we headed to re-up the car).
The grant situation is no nearer a conclusion. I received a message from John Yellen, director of NSF Archaeology division. He basically told me to wait my turn. Two of the three reviews needed to make a decision had come in (he sends out six copies) and the typical wait was twelve weeks for all three to be returned to him. It has been five. Good news? Bad news? No news? I can't tell. Likely that the reviews were positive, or he would be waiting on more than a third review. But I don't know.
I did get my first bit of bad news on the grant front: I got turned down for the in-house Latin American Studies summer research grant. I had asked for money to hire a canoe builder to construct a canoe using traditional techniques and stone tools (which would be studied as part of my microwear analysis). The money was also to purchase a digital video camera to record the process of production. As other modes of transportation are becoming more readily available, fewer and fewer canoes are being built, and the craft is disappearing. Recording the process would be important for reasons beyond the value to my dissertation.
Will offered me money from MARI to help offset the expenses of this subproject. Electrons had scarcely traversed the wires before I had accepted the money – I am a grad student, after all. I am going to try again submitting the grant elsewhere, as soon as I figure out where.
Obtaining a flight to Atlanta to get to my grandmother's funeral was pretty tough. The agent of one carrier (the name of which is a greek letter) told my wife that bereavement fares were refundable, and therefore cost more than double a normal fare: $1195.
The travel agent on this end did a good job, coming up with a flight that was full (but we could come back and check for cancellations tomorrow) but that cost less than $400, and two others for $890 and $680. Matt's dad got pulled in and got me a fare for $520, and we bought it. I became a Matt's dad fan in a bigger way than I had ever been before, as of that moment.
All that remained was to get the car permit "renovated", an activity that can only take place at a border with another country. So Matt and I got up early Wednesday morning to drive through Guatemala City, with its terrific traffic and smog and crime and chicken buses (with their Pig Pen-esque plumes of black smoke) and make our way south to the border with El Salvador. The actual renovation of the car papers was a very straightforward affair. I think the fact that the car was still hooked up to the tow truck played a strong sympathy card for me.
Let me back up a little. After we finally escaped the black hole of the capital, we started doing some serious driving. And about 40 miles later we stopped driving at all. The exact cause of the problem is still up for debate, but it involves the rear differential housing, a leak, and a loud scraping noise that continued for as long as I was coasting or braking (which, among the volcanoes of Guatemala, is a large percentage of the time). It had gone from an odd whine that I had asked Matt about, to a sound of something being unequivocally wrong. I limped us into a gas station, where the attendant (with true Latin American nepotism) took us to his brother-in-law's business down the street. He fixed the problem by replacing the grease with heavier grease, and explained that we could probably get there and back, as long as we ignored the noise. And after riding around the block with me, he put us back on the road. I tipped him heavily, figuring we'd get him to check us out as we passed through on our way back.
We entered Barbarena, a dump of a village 75 km outside of Guatemala City, and about ten kilometers beyond where we stopped to refill our grease. The sound was getting worse, but was still manageable. Matt suggested maybe trying it in second gear instead, so we would be pulling instead of coasting a greater percentage of the time. It made sense to me, but the car did not agree to the plan and screamed in protest. There were no options. We stopped, pulled off the side of the road, and stared at the dash.
The thing is, the Guatemalan government is unforgiving about the timing on the permit renewal. If you are late by a day, it is this huge expense and bureaucratic hassle. And they don't care what the excuse is.
So we decided to hire a tow truck, not to take us back to the capital or Antigua, but to take us to the border first, and then back to the capital. Great. Now where do we get a tow truck?
The place where we stopped said that there was a grua three km back toward Barbarena. So we started walking, itself a pretty dangerous proposition, considering that we were carrying a fair amount of cash between us, and were very alone on a pretty empty stretch of highway.
Matt kept his eyes peeled for a bus to take us the three km to the grua, I kept my eyes open for more jade.
And we both found what we were looking for. I have two beautiful pieces of jade, one a gorgeous blue-green color, the other a lime green. They are both harder than knife steel (the serpentine I have been finding in Antigua is much softer) and very dense.
Matt, meanwhile, had flagged down what appears to be a combi – a van taxi. As we get in, he asks one of the guys "is this a combi?" The reply, a 'yes, but no' answer does not instill confidence. He took us the remaining two kilometers to a dirt road and let us out without charging us for the ride, and told us the grua was down that road.
With very little humor, Matt and I joked as we trudged up the hill, that the taxi driver had not robbed us himself – he had just sent us to his brother-in-law's house to get robbed. I can imagine the cell phone conversation: Hey, chulo! I sent you some juicy specimens!
We finally got there and met the owner of the towing company. He was a short man, a little over five feet tall, had a huge belly and a fat head. Perched on top of his head was a shock of grizzled hair that had been carved into a wide Mohawk. The skin along the sides had been shaved, leaving a couple of moles protruding out of the side of his head.
We approached him, and he looked up, a little surprised at the appearance of a couple of gringos who were obviously out of their element. We explained the situation to him, and Matt asked if it was possible to do it the way we needed – tow us to the border for the paperwork, and then back to the capital. While towing the car backwards to avoid further damaging the differential. I interjected with one of Matt's pithy sayings – "This is Guatemala! There is always a solution!"
Don Oswaldo shook his head. "Here," he said, "here there is always a solution. But those guys down there," he pointed down the road where another tow truck company was based, "they would just be scratching their heads. But here, we can do it!"
He bellowed at the kids to pull this thing and push that thing and disappeared down the road in a tiny Nissan truck (bumper sticker in the rear window – Los Ladrones Prefieren Victimas Desarmadas -- Thieves prefer unarmed victims) hauling a small trailer. We sat for about half an hour and waited, occasionally trying to make sense out of the confusing array of events that confronted us by asking questions of his son (also sporting a Mohawk, but one that was not so tightly trimmed). He explained that we would be towing it with this truck (pointing to a Toyota 4-runner) and not the Nissan, and that we would be hauling it backwards. During this time I called MARI to begin breaking the news to Will that I was in need of more money, and I found another piece of jade, right in front of the house.
Finally he speeds up the hill with a slightly larger trailer and slaps on his brakes, sliding to a halt in front of us. After a few minutes of beehive-like activity, the trailer is attached to the Toyota, a small girl comes out and feeds him a huge pill with a large glass of water (he's on meds? High blood pressure? Bipolar? Narcolepsy? Should we be worried?) and we are off.
We get to the car and spend another half hour backing it onto the trailer using methods that would not be endorsed by even a 19th century version of OSHA. After he bellows instructions I cannot understand in a dialect I don't speak, pointing to things I cannot see, Matt steps up and tries to translate the bellows into some semblance of order. Finally the truck is straight on the trailer, and is trussed up, complete with ropes tying steering wheel to frame; the chains used to secure the bumper are, in turn, secured by strings to hold them up off the ground. And we are off to the border, Chevy Blazer in tow, two teenagers holding on through the back window of the 4-runner.
He proceeds to tell his life's story, full volume mumble, to Matt in the front seat. I am in the back seat with the engine noise and hear little and understand less (how does he manage to project such an amazing voice with no enunciation whatsoever?). But the story Matt later relates to me is pretty astonishing.
Since becoming a Christian, he no longer robs, murders, rapes or assaults anyone. He turned down a drug-running deal (he would have received a woman, money and cocaine in the deal) from the local organized crime syndicate and they are extorting him for 300,000 quetzales. If he doesn't pay, he dies.
Hence the Mohawk, to scare off ladrones and to show them he means business. And the weapons? They are to kill any member of the mafia that comes to pay a visit (no 'turn the other cheek' in his Bible).
He tells of how he hasn't had a drink in 8 years, hasn't smoked or chased women in all that time. He then proceeds to relate how God is rewarding him for his good behavior, that when he needs money, God sends him someone who needs his services (he must have really needed money on Wednesday).
We get to the border, and, as I related before, the process went very smoothly. On the way back, both Matt and I slept. Over lunch, Don Oswaldo relates that he sometimes gets sleepy while he is driving, because he is a diabetic (he lifts his second glass of Kool-Aid in salute before draining it). The diabetes, he explains, is because he drank fourteen bottles of Pepsi every day when he was a young man.
His diet confirmed that it was the Pepsis that got him, and not the fourteen tortillas and four glasses of Kool-Aid and rice and pasta and… well, you get the picture. His statements were all bellowed at full volume and without the least concern for whether we would be able to understand. At one point, he bellowed at his nephew and his son that "They don't understand Spanish!" I felt like asking if he spoke Spanish, but for once in my life, I held my tongue. I think it was the Mohawk that convinced me.
We were on final approach for Guatemala City, with the car on an overwide trailer with no reflectors. It is at this point in the narrative that Matt spotted two motorcycle cops eyeing the operation.
They seemed particularly interested in the presence of two gringos in the cab of the truck. Surprise, surprise, fifteen seconds later I was pulling out my vehicle registration. And passport. And picture ID (driver's license will do). And the title. And I listened in fascinated silence as he asked me, in perfect English, what had happened. I am not sure he entirely believed what sounded like a cock-and-bull story about breaking down, but was enough impressed by our ability to tell a good story that he let us go. As we started to get into the car, he said "After all, it is our obligation to serve you."
We got to the capital without further incident, arriving at about 6pm, a mere 12 hours after beginning the trip. We paid for the tow (1600Q) and left the car with the only mechanic open at that hour in that neighborhood. The mechanics watched in astonishment when we chugged into their driveway. One mechanic whispered to Matt "I can't believe you survived the trip".
By now it was dark, and we waved goodbye to our Mohawk and our money, and called a cab. Matt and the owner of the mechanic shop started talking about work that both had done in Petén, Guatemala, swapping stories. In passing, Matt also (smoothly, I thought) mentioned that he was looking for a place where he could bring his Toyota – a semi-subliminal message inviting good treatment in exchange for a future relationship. They accepted it in stride, and seemed ready to have a new customer. We'll see what the result is when I get back from the US.
The taxi arrived and we climbed in, waiting to finally get back to the apartment. The taxi driver was entertaining, and over the last hour of our long day, we learned first that Don Oswaldo had vastly overcharged us – a 500Q charge would have been more appropriate. We later found out that it was a fair price - Alejandro finally realized that we had not just been towed back to the city, but to the border and then back to the city. He laughed at the antics we had to put up with, but then asked how we had come to decide on that mechanic. We explained that Oswaldo had suggested the mechanics barrio in Zone 13, and that we had circled until we found one that was open. Alejandro then told us that we had chosen well (got lucky, is more like it) --- a regular client of his took her car there, and was always treated fairly.
And when we finally got home, Ingrid had already made dinner for us.
All things considered, if we had to have bad luck, we had the best run of good luck to accompany it we could have. We found a great character who towed us around the entire countryside for a fair price. We found a mechanic who has the reputation of fair treatment. We got jade, and we got home. A few hours more than we expected to spend, but not too bad.
Second bit of bad news on the grant front: I found out about the Sigma Xi grant, but I didn't find out much. Using a typical form letter, they announced that I was not to receive the grant because of one of the following reasons: (and then listed the most general reasons why people don't get the grant). Who knows? I have not found a good reason why they would give or not give a grant. All I can do is guess, and reapply next go around. The good news about the grant is that I am waiting on the third pitch.
If it comes in positive, that will be a bottom of the ninth grand slam to win the game, and the first two missed pitches are quickly forgotten.
On another note, my uncle Paul spent two hours trapped under his flipped tractor. He has large areas of second degree chemical burns and his two legs were pinned, cutting off circulation. He was unable to move either leg when he was admitted to the hospital.
This morning, he has regained some movement in one leg, and is frustrated that the other is not responding. They will be putting him under anesthesia so they can clean his burns later today. Now, a day later, his kidneys have also failed and he has had the legs cut open to reduce swelling. A really tough situation.
Please keep him in your prayers.
Last Saturday was a good day. I got two tasks accomplished – I braced the shelves that hold the pottery and went to Pastores to look at boots. The first part went pretty well. The 2x4 only cost 23Q, and I sawed it using the saw I purchased at the beginning of the season. I took it up on the roof to cut it, refusing offers of help. After about five minutes of struggling, I looked down and said "Hmm."
Matt and Ingrid both came running up the stairs. Ingrid later said that she had never before been around someone who said "Hmm" when they hurt themselves. The back of the saw had metal burrs on it, and in using my left thumb as a guide for the cut, I had sliced it open. The cut was pretty deep, and I am a bleeder. The paper towel was dripping onto the floor in 30 seconds. We used up most of the remaining gringo bandages (local band-aids, predictably, use Teflon as adhesive) trying to attach bandage to slick finger. And when something like this happens, I am always amazed at how many times I manage to whack my thumb during the day.
The trip to Pastores was, by contrast, completely without incident. We went into a half dozen or more shops, all with nearly identical boots. There was a pretty wide variety within each store, and you could get riding boots, cowboy boots, dress boots, or high-heeled boots. And they are also made to order, so if you have special tastes or wide feet, they will make the boots (by hand) for you. 250Q – roughly US30 - buys the basic cowboy boot. An alligator boot runs 1400Q. Expensive, but still cheap by gringo standards.
There was one store, obviously the most successful of them, where they sold, among other things, hooded cobra belts - they used the heads of the cobras for the belt buckle. The guy – get this - also had a pair of cobra boots. The head looked like a tassel on the top of the foot.
I didn't ask if it flopped around. Matt asked a guy about them last year, and was told that a local guy is raising them on a local farm for these belts.
Now Guatemala is home to a number of highly venomous snakes, including the very deadly fer-de-lance. Maybe it is just me, but the idea of introducing another deadly snake with no natural predators into an ecosystem that is ready made for such an animal…. well, it seems about as bright as swimming with a laptop. The good news is that once a couple of 'em escape, real estate prices in neighboring Antigua will quickly plummet.
Oddly enough, the town is not friendly at all. I am accustomed to being welcomed when I shop. I know it is crazy, but I figure that if I am in the store, perhaps to buy something, and if I smile a lot and speak politely, nice things will happen, New Orleans Winn Dixie notwithstanding. Not so here. In every store we went into, the people tending the store were grumpy and sullen.
It also makes no sense to me that there is no outlet in Antigua for the sale of the boots. Twenty stores located five minutes from Guatemala's tourist Medina (the hajj akbar is the pilgrimage to Tikal) known as Antigua. Each gringo, Guatemalteco, German, French and Cuban makes their way to Antigua on every trip to Guatemala, but never to Pastores, unless they know to go there to buy boots. Why not sell the boots in a kiosk in town, with a big sign, stating plainly "Boots Pastores"? How easily I forget that capitalist rules do not apply in Guate, and that the boot mafia puts its foot down, so to speak on the "export" of their products to the metropolis five minutes away. Go figure.
I am interested in talking to them about using some spare leather from their stocks for my microwear study. Cutting and scraping leather should be one of the items on my list of activities I am doing with the stone tools, and that would be the logical place to do work, just like Jades, S.A. would likely be the best place to work with jade here in town.
On the way back into town, we stopped at the ceviche stand down the street and had some really tasty seafood. Ingrid and Matt just got the shrimp, but I got the mixto, which had crab, shrimp, fish, mussels, all of which was delightful, and pulpo – octopus – which was a little on the tough side. Honestly, I am going to suggest to the guy in Pastores that octopus boots might be a big seller. If the meat is that tough when fresh, I can only imagine what curing it for a couple of days with tannin would do. And you already have the ink for a natural dye. I'll be the first guy on the block with octopus cowboy boots.
And probably will remain the only guy. But such is the price of being a fashionista.
Over dinner on Monday I felt my first earthquake. Pretty exciting stuff. Ingrid looked at me and asked "do you feel that?"
The answer was unequivocal. Yes, I felt it, and it got stronger over the next thirty seconds. Matt announced that if it got worse, we were headed out of the house. As soon as he said it, the house rocked with a little more force, and he yelled "keys!" and grabbed them and headed to the door.
We bumped into him from behind, as we were already headed the same way. But the impact of tectonic activity is exciting. It turned out to be a 5.4 quake originating 100km to the SW, near the border with El Salvador (where we headed to re-up the car).
The grant situation is no nearer a conclusion. I received a message from John Yellen, director of NSF Archaeology division. He basically told me to wait my turn. Two of the three reviews needed to make a decision had come in (he sends out six copies) and the typical wait was twelve weeks for all three to be returned to him. It has been five. Good news? Bad news? No news? I can't tell. Likely that the reviews were positive, or he would be waiting on more than a third review. But I don't know.
I did get my first bit of bad news on the grant front: I got turned down for the in-house Latin American Studies summer research grant. I had asked for money to hire a canoe builder to construct a canoe using traditional techniques and stone tools (which would be studied as part of my microwear analysis). The money was also to purchase a digital video camera to record the process of production. As other modes of transportation are becoming more readily available, fewer and fewer canoes are being built, and the craft is disappearing. Recording the process would be important for reasons beyond the value to my dissertation.
Will offered me money from MARI to help offset the expenses of this subproject. Electrons had scarcely traversed the wires before I had accepted the money – I am a grad student, after all. I am going to try again submitting the grant elsewhere, as soon as I figure out where.
Obtaining a flight to Atlanta to get to my grandmother's funeral was pretty tough. The agent of one carrier (the name of which is a greek letter) told my wife that bereavement fares were refundable, and therefore cost more than double a normal fare: $1195.
The travel agent on this end did a good job, coming up with a flight that was full (but we could come back and check for cancellations tomorrow) but that cost less than $400, and two others for $890 and $680. Matt's dad got pulled in and got me a fare for $520, and we bought it. I became a Matt's dad fan in a bigger way than I had ever been before, as of that moment.
All that remained was to get the car permit "renovated", an activity that can only take place at a border with another country. So Matt and I got up early Wednesday morning to drive through Guatemala City, with its terrific traffic and smog and crime and chicken buses (with their Pig Pen-esque plumes of black smoke) and make our way south to the border with El Salvador. The actual renovation of the car papers was a very straightforward affair. I think the fact that the car was still hooked up to the tow truck played a strong sympathy card for me.
Let me back up a little. After we finally escaped the black hole of the capital, we started doing some serious driving. And about 40 miles later we stopped driving at all. The exact cause of the problem is still up for debate, but it involves the rear differential housing, a leak, and a loud scraping noise that continued for as long as I was coasting or braking (which, among the volcanoes of Guatemala, is a large percentage of the time). It had gone from an odd whine that I had asked Matt about, to a sound of something being unequivocally wrong. I limped us into a gas station, where the attendant (with true Latin American nepotism) took us to his brother-in-law's business down the street. He fixed the problem by replacing the grease with heavier grease, and explained that we could probably get there and back, as long as we ignored the noise. And after riding around the block with me, he put us back on the road. I tipped him heavily, figuring we'd get him to check us out as we passed through on our way back.
We entered Barbarena, a dump of a village 75 km outside of Guatemala City, and about ten kilometers beyond where we stopped to refill our grease. The sound was getting worse, but was still manageable. Matt suggested maybe trying it in second gear instead, so we would be pulling instead of coasting a greater percentage of the time. It made sense to me, but the car did not agree to the plan and screamed in protest. There were no options. We stopped, pulled off the side of the road, and stared at the dash.
The thing is, the Guatemalan government is unforgiving about the timing on the permit renewal. If you are late by a day, it is this huge expense and bureaucratic hassle. And they don't care what the excuse is.
So we decided to hire a tow truck, not to take us back to the capital or Antigua, but to take us to the border first, and then back to the capital. Great. Now where do we get a tow truck?
The place where we stopped said that there was a grua three km back toward Barbarena. So we started walking, itself a pretty dangerous proposition, considering that we were carrying a fair amount of cash between us, and were very alone on a pretty empty stretch of highway.
Matt kept his eyes peeled for a bus to take us the three km to the grua, I kept my eyes open for more jade.
And we both found what we were looking for. I have two beautiful pieces of jade, one a gorgeous blue-green color, the other a lime green. They are both harder than knife steel (the serpentine I have been finding in Antigua is much softer) and very dense.
Matt, meanwhile, had flagged down what appears to be a combi – a van taxi. As we get in, he asks one of the guys "is this a combi?" The reply, a 'yes, but no' answer does not instill confidence. He took us the remaining two kilometers to a dirt road and let us out without charging us for the ride, and told us the grua was down that road.
With very little humor, Matt and I joked as we trudged up the hill, that the taxi driver had not robbed us himself – he had just sent us to his brother-in-law's house to get robbed. I can imagine the cell phone conversation: Hey, chulo! I sent you some juicy specimens!
We finally got there and met the owner of the towing company. He was a short man, a little over five feet tall, had a huge belly and a fat head. Perched on top of his head was a shock of grizzled hair that had been carved into a wide Mohawk. The skin along the sides had been shaved, leaving a couple of moles protruding out of the side of his head.
We approached him, and he looked up, a little surprised at the appearance of a couple of gringos who were obviously out of their element. We explained the situation to him, and Matt asked if it was possible to do it the way we needed – tow us to the border for the paperwork, and then back to the capital. While towing the car backwards to avoid further damaging the differential. I interjected with one of Matt's pithy sayings – "This is Guatemala! There is always a solution!"
Don Oswaldo shook his head. "Here," he said, "here there is always a solution. But those guys down there," he pointed down the road where another tow truck company was based, "they would just be scratching their heads. But here, we can do it!"
He bellowed at the kids to pull this thing and push that thing and disappeared down the road in a tiny Nissan truck (bumper sticker in the rear window – Los Ladrones Prefieren Victimas Desarmadas -- Thieves prefer unarmed victims) hauling a small trailer. We sat for about half an hour and waited, occasionally trying to make sense out of the confusing array of events that confronted us by asking questions of his son (also sporting a Mohawk, but one that was not so tightly trimmed). He explained that we would be towing it with this truck (pointing to a Toyota 4-runner) and not the Nissan, and that we would be hauling it backwards. During this time I called MARI to begin breaking the news to Will that I was in need of more money, and I found another piece of jade, right in front of the house.
Finally he speeds up the hill with a slightly larger trailer and slaps on his brakes, sliding to a halt in front of us. After a few minutes of beehive-like activity, the trailer is attached to the Toyota, a small girl comes out and feeds him a huge pill with a large glass of water (he's on meds? High blood pressure? Bipolar? Narcolepsy? Should we be worried?) and we are off.
We get to the car and spend another half hour backing it onto the trailer using methods that would not be endorsed by even a 19th century version of OSHA. After he bellows instructions I cannot understand in a dialect I don't speak, pointing to things I cannot see, Matt steps up and tries to translate the bellows into some semblance of order. Finally the truck is straight on the trailer, and is trussed up, complete with ropes tying steering wheel to frame; the chains used to secure the bumper are, in turn, secured by strings to hold them up off the ground. And we are off to the border, Chevy Blazer in tow, two teenagers holding on through the back window of the 4-runner.
He proceeds to tell his life's story, full volume mumble, to Matt in the front seat. I am in the back seat with the engine noise and hear little and understand less (how does he manage to project such an amazing voice with no enunciation whatsoever?). But the story Matt later relates to me is pretty astonishing.
Since becoming a Christian, he no longer robs, murders, rapes or assaults anyone. He turned down a drug-running deal (he would have received a woman, money and cocaine in the deal) from the local organized crime syndicate and they are extorting him for 300,000 quetzales. If he doesn't pay, he dies.
Hence the Mohawk, to scare off ladrones and to show them he means business. And the weapons? They are to kill any member of the mafia that comes to pay a visit (no 'turn the other cheek' in his Bible).
He tells of how he hasn't had a drink in 8 years, hasn't smoked or chased women in all that time. He then proceeds to relate how God is rewarding him for his good behavior, that when he needs money, God sends him someone who needs his services (he must have really needed money on Wednesday).
We get to the border, and, as I related before, the process went very smoothly. On the way back, both Matt and I slept. Over lunch, Don Oswaldo relates that he sometimes gets sleepy while he is driving, because he is a diabetic (he lifts his second glass of Kool-Aid in salute before draining it). The diabetes, he explains, is because he drank fourteen bottles of Pepsi every day when he was a young man.
His diet confirmed that it was the Pepsis that got him, and not the fourteen tortillas and four glasses of Kool-Aid and rice and pasta and… well, you get the picture. His statements were all bellowed at full volume and without the least concern for whether we would be able to understand. At one point, he bellowed at his nephew and his son that "They don't understand Spanish!" I felt like asking if he spoke Spanish, but for once in my life, I held my tongue. I think it was the Mohawk that convinced me.
We were on final approach for Guatemala City, with the car on an overwide trailer with no reflectors. It is at this point in the narrative that Matt spotted two motorcycle cops eyeing the operation.
They seemed particularly interested in the presence of two gringos in the cab of the truck. Surprise, surprise, fifteen seconds later I was pulling out my vehicle registration. And passport. And picture ID (driver's license will do). And the title. And I listened in fascinated silence as he asked me, in perfect English, what had happened. I am not sure he entirely believed what sounded like a cock-and-bull story about breaking down, but was enough impressed by our ability to tell a good story that he let us go. As we started to get into the car, he said "After all, it is our obligation to serve you."
We got to the capital without further incident, arriving at about 6pm, a mere 12 hours after beginning the trip. We paid for the tow (1600Q) and left the car with the only mechanic open at that hour in that neighborhood. The mechanics watched in astonishment when we chugged into their driveway. One mechanic whispered to Matt "I can't believe you survived the trip".
By now it was dark, and we waved goodbye to our Mohawk and our money, and called a cab. Matt and the owner of the mechanic shop started talking about work that both had done in Petén, Guatemala, swapping stories. In passing, Matt also (smoothly, I thought) mentioned that he was looking for a place where he could bring his Toyota – a semi-subliminal message inviting good treatment in exchange for a future relationship. They accepted it in stride, and seemed ready to have a new customer. We'll see what the result is when I get back from the US.
The taxi arrived and we climbed in, waiting to finally get back to the apartment. The taxi driver was entertaining, and over the last hour of our long day, we learned first that Don Oswaldo had vastly overcharged us – a 500Q charge would have been more appropriate. We later found out that it was a fair price - Alejandro finally realized that we had not just been towed back to the city, but to the border and then back to the city. He laughed at the antics we had to put up with, but then asked how we had come to decide on that mechanic. We explained that Oswaldo had suggested the mechanics barrio in Zone 13, and that we had circled until we found one that was open. Alejandro then told us that we had chosen well (got lucky, is more like it) --- a regular client of his took her car there, and was always treated fairly.
And when we finally got home, Ingrid had already made dinner for us.
All things considered, if we had to have bad luck, we had the best run of good luck to accompany it we could have. We found a great character who towed us around the entire countryside for a fair price. We found a mechanic who has the reputation of fair treatment. We got jade, and we got home. A few hours more than we expected to spend, but not too bad.
Second bit of bad news on the grant front: I found out about the Sigma Xi grant, but I didn't find out much. Using a typical form letter, they announced that I was not to receive the grant because of one of the following reasons: (and then listed the most general reasons why people don't get the grant). Who knows? I have not found a good reason why they would give or not give a grant. All I can do is guess, and reapply next go around. The good news about the grant is that I am waiting on the third pitch.
If it comes in positive, that will be a bottom of the ninth grand slam to win the game, and the first two missed pitches are quickly forgotten.
On another note, my uncle Paul spent two hours trapped under his flipped tractor. He has large areas of second degree chemical burns and his two legs were pinned, cutting off circulation. He was unable to move either leg when he was admitted to the hospital.
This morning, he has regained some movement in one leg, and is frustrated that the other is not responding. They will be putting him under anesthesia so they can clean his burns later today. Now, a day later, his kidneys have also failed and he has had the legs cut open to reduce swelling. A really tough situation.
Please keep him in your prayers.
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