29 March 2005
The Guatemalan equivalent to the telemarketer is the door-to-door salesman. I am convinced that if I wait long enough, everything will eventually come to my door. None of the salesmen are offensive. Some are inexplicable, some just bizarre, and some just out and out funny. This morning, a man rings the doorbell and offers Ingrid an ironing board. A door-to-door ironing board salesman. I wonder what the demand for those is, and just how often he makes a sale.
Also this morning, a truck drives up with a loudspeaker blasting some guy's voice, shredding the nice quiet of the morning. Problem is, there is not a word of the noise that is intelligible. There are no real consonants, just long quadripthongs: "IIIIOOOOAAAAOOOp," the speaker says. "IIIIAAAAAAAAOOOEEEEOOOOp."
Apparently, translated from Universal Unintelligible into Spanish and then to English, that means "Get your fresh pineapples, straight from my garden to your door!" The truck was filled with beautiful pineapples.
The flower vendor comes by on Mondays. The tortilla lady is a regular fixture in the neighborhood. The bread truck comes by every afternoon. Another loudspeaker truck came by announcing announced something, and a bunch of dog owners ran out, dogs in tow, to get a shot for their dogs. Yet another loudspeaker places a single consonant in the middle of the message: "G." "IIIAAAAGAAAAA!" does not translate, but it is, apparently, the propane vendor.
The colmo, however, was a guy who was a door-to-door buyer. He knocked on the door and offered to buy empty perfume bottles, and showed her a price list for how much he would pay for each kind of bottle. What a racket – buying empty bottles of Chanel No.5 and refilling with Eau de Antigua! Ingrid said she didn't have any to sell. I fully expect him to come back, now that he knows she doesn't have any. That is what free enterprise is all about – making a market and/or demand for what you have to sell. I also found a woman who sells brass doorknockers and other brass pieces in the neutral ground in front of the market. I went to talk to her, and she also had a gold Guatemalan coin from 1860, a couple of silver Guatemalan pesos from 1863, and a piece of eight, that she admitted was fake. There were also pieces of obsidian, including an artifact – a prismatic blade made of obsidian. And then there were the pieces of jade.
Well I found some jade. My last entry ended with our hero having a good meal in the German bar and restaurant. What I didn't share in last week's entry was that on the way there, I spotted, in the cobblestone street, a cobble of beautiful greenstone. I went back the next morning, and tried to pry it out of the street – with my good knife. In an odd combination of not wanting to break my good knife and not wanting the sidewalk-sweeping shopkeeper across the street to come over and investigate, I decided to postpone my mining activities for a less-heavily trafficked time. Which, for those of you who are not familiar with my schedule, comes naturally when I wake up in the morning. Usually around 5:00 a.m.
So the scene is set. I grab the archaeologist's trusty Marshalltown™ trowel, and head out before breakfast to abscond with a street cobble. Turns out that they are cemented in place. Fortunately, the cement bond at the base is pretty weak, and it pops out within 20 minutes of when I started. It would have been sooner, if I had been able to work steadily at its removal. But due to the surreptitious nature of the task (and questionable legality – is it illegal to steal a street cobble? Machelle? Oregon?) I decided to play the part of "Gringo Asleep Beside the Road" (a non-speaking role) every time someone would pass.
But when I brought it home and cleaned it up, I have a large cobble of really lovely greenstone. I suppose it is serpentine – true jade is found in another highland Guatemala location, not near Antigua – but serpentine was also used in the same way that jade was.
Of course, that has made me keep my eyes peeled for more. And though there are some more, few of them have good color, and they are spread far and wide across the city. A few more recon missions through the city, and I'll have enough for my replica experiments on jade.
Tuesday afternoon, I had driven back from the internet café, leaving Matt there to do some more emailing. When he got in, he told me to go back and check my email. Again. Between when I left and he left, the director of the National Science Foundation emailed him to say that, based on his reviewer letters, Matt was going to be recommended for
funding through NSF. All of it. A proposal that had only been submitted 2 weeks before. I have never heard of anyone ever getting it pushed through that quickly. Just amazing.
And I ran to check my email. Nothing. And every day since, also nothing. I even emailed Will at one point, and he must have heard the panic in my tone. Matt and I submitted at the same time, and even though I know the process by which grant recipients are chosen, I got to feeling concerned that I still hadn't heard. I asked Will if I should be concerned, or whether, as I already knew, the reviewers had simply not returned the reviews yet. After all, the web site says to allow six months, and the archaeology division turns it around in less than three. Will wrote me while he was on vacation to talk me off the ledge. It worked. I am still anxious to hear, especially now that I know it is possible to hear results so quickly, but the panic is subsided.
Holy Week was interesting. From the descriptions I had heard, I thought that people would be jamming the streets, and the whole of the highlands would empty as throngs packed the narrow cobblestone streets, with endless fireworks being set off. But the reality was quite different.
One firework incident did get to me. I was working on the lithics one morning, and my laptop informed me that I needed to plug in the computer to avoid losing my work. Which was fine, but it was plugged in. After checking all the connections, I unplugged it and went to plug it back in. The moment the connection was made, fireworks went off right outside my window. Five seconds into the assault, my brain started sending frantic messages to the hand: "JUST FIREWORKS! JUST FIREWORKS!" The hand, of course, knowing that the brain had no idea what was going on, continued to twitch in the death throes of non-electrical electrocution. And is twitching still.
But the majority of the week was calm. On Palm Sunday, after Mass, I walked with the crowd of people to follow the procession down the street. It was pretty moving. Ingrid, my roommate, spotted me in the crowd, and we walked down to another crowded intersection to see the procession pass by. Years of New Orleans Mardi Gras have made me feel more comfortable in a jostling crowd, and this was not a particularly bad one. In the middle of the wait, Ingrid started talking to one of the brightly dressed Maya ladies. She turned to me and said that the woman had caught a man with his hand in Ingrid's purse. But she had seen it and scared him away.
A couple of minutes later she realized that her camera was missing. His hand had gone through the hole he had cut in the bottom of her bag. But he had not gotten the wallet or, more importantly, Matt's Nicorette we had picked up for him. The camera was a ph,d model (push here, dummy) and was not worth much, but it is still a weird feeling to be robbed. She was amazingly philosophical about it.
We wandered back to the house and put in a good afternoon of work. Unlike New Orleans, which completely shuts down for Mardi Gras, Antigua didn't change much. There were more people, and hotels were booked, but even on Good Friday, shops were open and people were working, with a few exceptions.
We waited until late morning on Good Friday to go out. There were processions that began at 3:00 am. We worked until we smelled the incense through the window, and walked out to join the party. Mostly, it was more of the same, with alfombras of pine needles or sawdust (not sand, as I thought) decorated with numerous motifs. The processions were interesting; the teenage girls carrying the float was still poignant, but perhaps not as shocking the seventeenth time as it was the first. It was interesting to note, however, that the Virgin float (she always follows the Jesus float) depicted her has having a sword stuck through her chest, from above the shoulder almost straight down.
We went to the square for the crucifixion scene. I was under the impression that they put a person up on the cross. Not so. Between the two thieves they raised the carved wooden statue of Jesus.
Meanwhile, Ingrid and I ate our way across the square. We stopped first for some ceviche, a wonderful concoction that some of you are familiar with, made of some combination of uncooked seafood and a lime salsa - the lime actually cooks the seafood. Those of you who have had it know – it is wonderful. But it is also food typical for the beachfront – the fishermen bring raw materials in, the cooks add lime, tomato, cilantro onion and pepper, and you sit overlooking the beach. Matt and I have been daring each other to try highland ceviche – our form of Guatemalan roulette, since Antigua is not anywhere near a beach. Ingrid and I got some from a vendor on the square, and it was actually quite good: a delightful blend of shrimp, shark, and salsa. Two odd things about it – one was that the shrimp and shark were stored on ice, the other was the presence of Salsa Ingles (Worchestershire sauce) in the finished product. The salsa ingles was actually OK – it provided a nice salty touch to the tartness of the lime. But the shark on ice thing meant that it was prepared in lime elsewhere and then put on ice, then replaced in lime for the ceviche.
Odd production, but I suppose it keeps lime from sloshing all over the truck on the drive from the coast to the highlands. And it was quite tasty. And I haven't had a need for the antibiotics yet, so it must have been OK.
After the ceviche, we still had time to kill before the hoisting of the Christ. So we walked around until we found a girl carrying a tray of 15 or so individual ice cream cones. It was pretty warm, and we decided that ice cream would be just the sort of treat we wanted.
Followed her back to her home base, and got the cones from the man with the cart.
Ice cream carts are everywhere. And all of them have infernal little bells that get rung incessantly. After this vendor gave the girl refills for her tray, he turned to us. We had to ask what flavor it was – I have never seen ice cream quite that shade of yellow.
Vanilla. Who knew that vanilla came in day-glo yellow? No flavor to speak of, but fun nevertheless. After the ice cream was gone, it occurred to me that the ice cream the girl was carrying around did not melt while she made her sales. 80° and more, and the dang things were not melting. I guess it makes a difference how much lard you put in the mix.
The amazing thing along the parade routes, as in the neighborhoods, is the vendors. They are interspersed among the crowds, no big deal. But between the last anda and the sweepers (who remind me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle parade where the guy is sweeping up afterwards) is a parade of vendors. Right behind the Virgin are guys with candies on poles, cotton candy, sunglasses, balloons, water, cokes, ice cream, Spongebob Squarepants puppets, they have it all. There was even a guy carrying three nets filled with hand-painted kickballs.
Now, you would think that kickballs would not be an ideal item to try and sell in a crowd setting. Beach balls, sure. Balloons, no problem. Sunglasses, cokes, food: yes, yes, and yes. But something you are supposed to kick? Hmm. Seems like a formula for disaster to me.
I sought one of the vendors out before the crucifixion scene to buy sunglasses. Bought a pair of scratched Nike sunglasses for 25Q (~$3) and sat down. It was the most expensive pair of sunglasses I have ever owned, pro-rated for use. Fifteen minutes later, I am walking out of a store and put on the glasses – SPRING! – the arm falls off in my hand. I found a safety pin in the street to put them back together (it didn't work) but never found that vendor again.
Another odd thing that I saw happened just before one of the processions came our way. It was still about 30 minutes out, but suddenly there was a horde of ice cream vendors all coming towards us at the same time. Ingrid looked over, and said "Do you think they
know something we don't?"
It really did look like rats leaving a sinking ship, or the animals fleeing in advance of an earthquake. All moving as fast as they could (which, given the crowd, was admittedly slow) and dinging their bells full blast. Still haven't figured out what they were fleeing.
After the processions went by, we grabbed more food. It was a bit like Jazz Fest in New Orleans in that regard – you do something, then eat. Do something else, eat something else. We bought a mixed grill – pork adobado, beef, two kinds of sausage, guacamole, salsa, handmade black corn tortillas and salad – all for less than I paid for my defunct sunglasses. All cooked on la plancha, with some grilled green onions for good measure.
I have some pictures that will be developed this week (disposable camera – keep your fingers crossed) of one entire procession, from the creation of the alfombra to the clean up afterwards.
At the hour that Christ died, all of the purple in the city turned to black. Flags and pennants all over were exchanged; robes of purple were turned inside out or exchanged. It was a pretty moving spectacle. The other thing that struck me was the hanging of Judas in effigy. There are a number of elements here that I don't pretend to understand, but basically effigies of Judas are hanged around the city, usually with a handwritten sign over his head. He is, I am told, a conflation of a number of different individuals, including San Simon, Judas, Maximon, and the ladino landowner.
After the excitement of Holy Week, its culmination at Easter was a bit of a let down. There were no processions, and everything seemed to be back to normal. The week then settled down to a pretty heavy work schedule, to make up for the time we took off to see the processions. Matt left yesterday for Utah to go to the national meetings for archaeology. He is giving two papers at the conference – one on soil classification, the other an overview of the site.
I, meanwhile, have been measuring my rocks. And dreaming of jade. I have a new target, as green as the one I picked up last week. The problem is its location on the busiest thoroughfare. That means that even at 5 a.m., every car, bicycle and pedestrian funnels into the city via this route. I am working up a plan that will pop it out without me having to hammer through all the concrete. I'll let you know how it works.
And then I'll have something that I can sell door-to-door. Excuse me, ma'am? Would you like to buy a piece of jade? How about a set of ginsu knives? It slices, it dices! Look at that tomato! I have to go now. There is a vendor at the door, and I have to go find out what I need.
The Guatemalan equivalent to the telemarketer is the door-to-door salesman. I am convinced that if I wait long enough, everything will eventually come to my door. None of the salesmen are offensive. Some are inexplicable, some just bizarre, and some just out and out funny. This morning, a man rings the doorbell and offers Ingrid an ironing board. A door-to-door ironing board salesman. I wonder what the demand for those is, and just how often he makes a sale.
Also this morning, a truck drives up with a loudspeaker blasting some guy's voice, shredding the nice quiet of the morning. Problem is, there is not a word of the noise that is intelligible. There are no real consonants, just long quadripthongs: "IIIIOOOOAAAAOOOp," the speaker says. "IIIIAAAAAAAAOOOEEEEOOOOp."
Apparently, translated from Universal Unintelligible into Spanish and then to English, that means "Get your fresh pineapples, straight from my garden to your door!" The truck was filled with beautiful pineapples.
The flower vendor comes by on Mondays. The tortilla lady is a regular fixture in the neighborhood. The bread truck comes by every afternoon. Another loudspeaker truck came by announcing announced something, and a bunch of dog owners ran out, dogs in tow, to get a shot for their dogs. Yet another loudspeaker places a single consonant in the middle of the message: "G." "IIIAAAAGAAAAA!" does not translate, but it is, apparently, the propane vendor.
The colmo, however, was a guy who was a door-to-door buyer. He knocked on the door and offered to buy empty perfume bottles, and showed her a price list for how much he would pay for each kind of bottle. What a racket – buying empty bottles of Chanel No.5 and refilling with Eau de Antigua! Ingrid said she didn't have any to sell. I fully expect him to come back, now that he knows she doesn't have any. That is what free enterprise is all about – making a market and/or demand for what you have to sell. I also found a woman who sells brass doorknockers and other brass pieces in the neutral ground in front of the market. I went to talk to her, and she also had a gold Guatemalan coin from 1860, a couple of silver Guatemalan pesos from 1863, and a piece of eight, that she admitted was fake. There were also pieces of obsidian, including an artifact – a prismatic blade made of obsidian. And then there were the pieces of jade.
Well I found some jade. My last entry ended with our hero having a good meal in the German bar and restaurant. What I didn't share in last week's entry was that on the way there, I spotted, in the cobblestone street, a cobble of beautiful greenstone. I went back the next morning, and tried to pry it out of the street – with my good knife. In an odd combination of not wanting to break my good knife and not wanting the sidewalk-sweeping shopkeeper across the street to come over and investigate, I decided to postpone my mining activities for a less-heavily trafficked time. Which, for those of you who are not familiar with my schedule, comes naturally when I wake up in the morning. Usually around 5:00 a.m.
So the scene is set. I grab the archaeologist's trusty Marshalltown™ trowel, and head out before breakfast to abscond with a street cobble. Turns out that they are cemented in place. Fortunately, the cement bond at the base is pretty weak, and it pops out within 20 minutes of when I started. It would have been sooner, if I had been able to work steadily at its removal. But due to the surreptitious nature of the task (and questionable legality – is it illegal to steal a street cobble? Machelle? Oregon?) I decided to play the part of "Gringo Asleep Beside the Road" (a non-speaking role) every time someone would pass.
But when I brought it home and cleaned it up, I have a large cobble of really lovely greenstone. I suppose it is serpentine – true jade is found in another highland Guatemala location, not near Antigua – but serpentine was also used in the same way that jade was.
Of course, that has made me keep my eyes peeled for more. And though there are some more, few of them have good color, and they are spread far and wide across the city. A few more recon missions through the city, and I'll have enough for my replica experiments on jade.
Tuesday afternoon, I had driven back from the internet café, leaving Matt there to do some more emailing. When he got in, he told me to go back and check my email. Again. Between when I left and he left, the director of the National Science Foundation emailed him to say that, based on his reviewer letters, Matt was going to be recommended for
funding through NSF. All of it. A proposal that had only been submitted 2 weeks before. I have never heard of anyone ever getting it pushed through that quickly. Just amazing.
And I ran to check my email. Nothing. And every day since, also nothing. I even emailed Will at one point, and he must have heard the panic in my tone. Matt and I submitted at the same time, and even though I know the process by which grant recipients are chosen, I got to feeling concerned that I still hadn't heard. I asked Will if I should be concerned, or whether, as I already knew, the reviewers had simply not returned the reviews yet. After all, the web site says to allow six months, and the archaeology division turns it around in less than three. Will wrote me while he was on vacation to talk me off the ledge. It worked. I am still anxious to hear, especially now that I know it is possible to hear results so quickly, but the panic is subsided.
Holy Week was interesting. From the descriptions I had heard, I thought that people would be jamming the streets, and the whole of the highlands would empty as throngs packed the narrow cobblestone streets, with endless fireworks being set off. But the reality was quite different.
One firework incident did get to me. I was working on the lithics one morning, and my laptop informed me that I needed to plug in the computer to avoid losing my work. Which was fine, but it was plugged in. After checking all the connections, I unplugged it and went to plug it back in. The moment the connection was made, fireworks went off right outside my window. Five seconds into the assault, my brain started sending frantic messages to the hand: "JUST FIREWORKS! JUST FIREWORKS!" The hand, of course, knowing that the brain had no idea what was going on, continued to twitch in the death throes of non-electrical electrocution. And is twitching still.
But the majority of the week was calm. On Palm Sunday, after Mass, I walked with the crowd of people to follow the procession down the street. It was pretty moving. Ingrid, my roommate, spotted me in the crowd, and we walked down to another crowded intersection to see the procession pass by. Years of New Orleans Mardi Gras have made me feel more comfortable in a jostling crowd, and this was not a particularly bad one. In the middle of the wait, Ingrid started talking to one of the brightly dressed Maya ladies. She turned to me and said that the woman had caught a man with his hand in Ingrid's purse. But she had seen it and scared him away.
A couple of minutes later she realized that her camera was missing. His hand had gone through the hole he had cut in the bottom of her bag. But he had not gotten the wallet or, more importantly, Matt's Nicorette we had picked up for him. The camera was a ph,d model (push here, dummy) and was not worth much, but it is still a weird feeling to be robbed. She was amazingly philosophical about it.
We wandered back to the house and put in a good afternoon of work. Unlike New Orleans, which completely shuts down for Mardi Gras, Antigua didn't change much. There were more people, and hotels were booked, but even on Good Friday, shops were open and people were working, with a few exceptions.
We waited until late morning on Good Friday to go out. There were processions that began at 3:00 am. We worked until we smelled the incense through the window, and walked out to join the party. Mostly, it was more of the same, with alfombras of pine needles or sawdust (not sand, as I thought) decorated with numerous motifs. The processions were interesting; the teenage girls carrying the float was still poignant, but perhaps not as shocking the seventeenth time as it was the first. It was interesting to note, however, that the Virgin float (she always follows the Jesus float) depicted her has having a sword stuck through her chest, from above the shoulder almost straight down.
We went to the square for the crucifixion scene. I was under the impression that they put a person up on the cross. Not so. Between the two thieves they raised the carved wooden statue of Jesus.
Meanwhile, Ingrid and I ate our way across the square. We stopped first for some ceviche, a wonderful concoction that some of you are familiar with, made of some combination of uncooked seafood and a lime salsa - the lime actually cooks the seafood. Those of you who have had it know – it is wonderful. But it is also food typical for the beachfront – the fishermen bring raw materials in, the cooks add lime, tomato, cilantro onion and pepper, and you sit overlooking the beach. Matt and I have been daring each other to try highland ceviche – our form of Guatemalan roulette, since Antigua is not anywhere near a beach. Ingrid and I got some from a vendor on the square, and it was actually quite good: a delightful blend of shrimp, shark, and salsa. Two odd things about it – one was that the shrimp and shark were stored on ice, the other was the presence of Salsa Ingles (Worchestershire sauce) in the finished product. The salsa ingles was actually OK – it provided a nice salty touch to the tartness of the lime. But the shark on ice thing meant that it was prepared in lime elsewhere and then put on ice, then replaced in lime for the ceviche.
Odd production, but I suppose it keeps lime from sloshing all over the truck on the drive from the coast to the highlands. And it was quite tasty. And I haven't had a need for the antibiotics yet, so it must have been OK.
After the ceviche, we still had time to kill before the hoisting of the Christ. So we walked around until we found a girl carrying a tray of 15 or so individual ice cream cones. It was pretty warm, and we decided that ice cream would be just the sort of treat we wanted.
Followed her back to her home base, and got the cones from the man with the cart.
Ice cream carts are everywhere. And all of them have infernal little bells that get rung incessantly. After this vendor gave the girl refills for her tray, he turned to us. We had to ask what flavor it was – I have never seen ice cream quite that shade of yellow.
Vanilla. Who knew that vanilla came in day-glo yellow? No flavor to speak of, but fun nevertheless. After the ice cream was gone, it occurred to me that the ice cream the girl was carrying around did not melt while she made her sales. 80° and more, and the dang things were not melting. I guess it makes a difference how much lard you put in the mix.
The amazing thing along the parade routes, as in the neighborhoods, is the vendors. They are interspersed among the crowds, no big deal. But between the last anda and the sweepers (who remind me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle parade where the guy is sweeping up afterwards) is a parade of vendors. Right behind the Virgin are guys with candies on poles, cotton candy, sunglasses, balloons, water, cokes, ice cream, Spongebob Squarepants puppets, they have it all. There was even a guy carrying three nets filled with hand-painted kickballs.
Now, you would think that kickballs would not be an ideal item to try and sell in a crowd setting. Beach balls, sure. Balloons, no problem. Sunglasses, cokes, food: yes, yes, and yes. But something you are supposed to kick? Hmm. Seems like a formula for disaster to me.
I sought one of the vendors out before the crucifixion scene to buy sunglasses. Bought a pair of scratched Nike sunglasses for 25Q (~$3) and sat down. It was the most expensive pair of sunglasses I have ever owned, pro-rated for use. Fifteen minutes later, I am walking out of a store and put on the glasses – SPRING! – the arm falls off in my hand. I found a safety pin in the street to put them back together (it didn't work) but never found that vendor again.
Another odd thing that I saw happened just before one of the processions came our way. It was still about 30 minutes out, but suddenly there was a horde of ice cream vendors all coming towards us at the same time. Ingrid looked over, and said "Do you think they
know something we don't?"
It really did look like rats leaving a sinking ship, or the animals fleeing in advance of an earthquake. All moving as fast as they could (which, given the crowd, was admittedly slow) and dinging their bells full blast. Still haven't figured out what they were fleeing.
After the processions went by, we grabbed more food. It was a bit like Jazz Fest in New Orleans in that regard – you do something, then eat. Do something else, eat something else. We bought a mixed grill – pork adobado, beef, two kinds of sausage, guacamole, salsa, handmade black corn tortillas and salad – all for less than I paid for my defunct sunglasses. All cooked on la plancha, with some grilled green onions for good measure.
I have some pictures that will be developed this week (disposable camera – keep your fingers crossed) of one entire procession, from the creation of the alfombra to the clean up afterwards.
At the hour that Christ died, all of the purple in the city turned to black. Flags and pennants all over were exchanged; robes of purple were turned inside out or exchanged. It was a pretty moving spectacle. The other thing that struck me was the hanging of Judas in effigy. There are a number of elements here that I don't pretend to understand, but basically effigies of Judas are hanged around the city, usually with a handwritten sign over his head. He is, I am told, a conflation of a number of different individuals, including San Simon, Judas, Maximon, and the ladino landowner.
After the excitement of Holy Week, its culmination at Easter was a bit of a let down. There were no processions, and everything seemed to be back to normal. The week then settled down to a pretty heavy work schedule, to make up for the time we took off to see the processions. Matt left yesterday for Utah to go to the national meetings for archaeology. He is giving two papers at the conference – one on soil classification, the other an overview of the site.
I, meanwhile, have been measuring my rocks. And dreaming of jade. I have a new target, as green as the one I picked up last week. The problem is its location on the busiest thoroughfare. That means that even at 5 a.m., every car, bicycle and pedestrian funnels into the city via this route. I am working up a plan that will pop it out without me having to hammer through all the concrete. I'll let you know how it works.
And then I'll have something that I can sell door-to-door. Excuse me, ma'am? Would you like to buy a piece of jade? How about a set of ginsu knives? It slices, it dices! Look at that tomato! I have to go now. There is a vendor at the door, and I have to go find out what I need.
No comments:
Post a Comment