28 May 2005
¡BUM!
Cannon to the right of themCannon to the left of them
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered
Stormed at with shot and shell
Yesterday, I walked out the door, and got shot.
Well, it wasn't so much that I got shot as I got shot
at. I hit the deck, and then looked
around. You'd think I would have gotten
used to the fireworks by now. After all,
the explosions are a daily occurrence.
But I never have gotten used to them, and I am not sure that I ever
will. When I awaken every morning to
gunfire, it is not terribly difficult to imagine a war-torn Guatemala
And still the answer is the same. "Who knows?"
It is somebody's birthday.
It is the neighborhood's saint's day.
It is Thursday. Mother's Day,
Arbor Day, Violence Free Day, My Kid is Still Drug Free at Age Three Day. All celebrated with as many fireworks as you
can find. I think I am going to set off
some bombs outside my neighbor's house on Monday when we leave. Just a little something to say "Thank
you". And because today is my
wife's birthday.
Yep, we're off. At
long last, we are actually headed to the field. Monday morning comes, and Matt and I will
take a loaded-down Chevy Blazer, complete with shovels and rakes and implements
of destruction (but without the half-a-ton of garbage, for all you Alice's
Restaurant fans) and head off toward the Petén. Only two things would keep us from reaching
the objective: getting lost in the capital, and mechanical problems.
We'll just keep our fingers crossed on both counts.
Matt worked this past week to liberate his car from
bureaugatory, with limited success (is it any surprise that C.S. Lewis characterized
hell in The Screwtape Letters as a bureaucracy?). He got the car, got it up and running, and
drove it back to the apartment. He met
with the tramitador to find out what he had to do to redeem the car, since it
had been in the country too long (sound familiar, Mr. Morgan?). He wants to register the car, so he can sell
it, but first he has to make it legal by leaving the country. The tramitador made all the right noises,
and came back with nothing. He had made
no progress whatsoever in accomplishing the basic mission: to get Matt's car
back on the road. So Matt got most of
his money back (minus a generous gift to the man who did nothing for him) and
contacted another.
This guy, by contrast, knew what he was doing. He imports cars for a living, and knows all
the legal, semi-legal, and seriously shady ways of getting done what needs to
be done to register a car. And he
worked on Matt's thing from the moment he got the case.
Turns out that all of the background the previous tramitador
had done was only of use for people who were trying to import a car
illegally. In that case, the money
(figures ranged between 1500 and 6000 dollars for a vehicle worth $3000) had to
be paid to turn it from a shady transaction to a "legal" transaction. In Matt's case, everything was already
legal, and the car actually belonged to him (the tramitador noted with
surprise). So he simply needed to submit
paperwork, wait 4 weeks, and the car would be registered. The cost?
Less than $100.
Unfortunately, Matt was not using this guy when he started
the process five weeks ago. As a result,
he has to make other arrangements. At
first, the guy was going to ride to the Mexican border to renovar the papers on
Sunday, carrying an official permit to transfer the unlicensed car. Now it looks like the permit will not be
signed until Wednesday.
But we are still planning on leaving on Monday; Matt will
simply ride with me, leaving his car behind, fly back in a week or so to sign
the final excavation permit, drive the car to the border, and head down to the
site to continue working.
Ahh, bureaucraziness…
I went Tuesday with Ingrid to renovar my car papers at the
border, and it was a pretty uneventful trip.
Other than one wrong turn, there was absolutely nothing that went
wrong. That wrong turn costs us about
three hours of driving time, but the scenery was pretty and I was in no
rush. We even stopped in Barbarena and
got a few more pieces of greenstone.
They are pretty small, but all are hard enough and should work for what
I need. Also took some interesting
pictures on the way there and back (to be posted at www.dixielumber.net later
this week). One of a warning of roadwork
ahead – instead of cones, they cut down a branch and stuck it, along with a red
cloth, in a pile of dirt. It looked like
they planted a tree in the middle of the street (I refer to it as the
Guatemalan Reforestation Project).
Another stop was to photograph a sculpture on the side of the road –
apparently it had been a fountain at one point.
Odd looking – some kind of a cross between a stylized zombie and a
headless dog.
The coolest things, as always, were the roadside
stands. They sell everything at these
stands, from furniture (wicker chair, anyone?
how about an armoire?), to oranges, to wire shelving. Sometimes the stands are formal, with posts
and walls delimiting sales space; sometimes not. But it is always interesting.
On the way to the border, we passed a stand where women were
selling some vegetable that looked vaguely like a cross between a green banana
and an ear of corn. It bulged like
corn, then tapered off. They were sold
in bunches.
On the way back, I pulled off the road and asked how much
they were.
"Fifteen quetzals, sir, but if you want two bunches, I
can give them to you for twenty-five."
"One will be enough, I think. One question, if you don't mind."
"Yes, sir?"
"What are they?"
She thought that was the funniest thing ever - buying something without knowing what it was. She explained that it was pacaya, a vegetable that you grilled and served with lime, salt and chile (like nothing else in
The fritters were wonderful.
Pacaya is the male flower of the pacaya palm tree, and it gets trotted
out for Semana Santa (the fronds are used on Palm Sunday) and for All Saint's
Day, and eaten in quantity then. I
remember seeing the pods during Holy Week and wondering what they were, but
made no immediate connection when I saw them at the roadside stand. The consistency of the pacaya is similar to
the miniature corn garnishes that you buy in jars, and the taste is pretty
similar to artichoke (Goya sells cans of it, if anyone wants to go to Union
Grocery to try it out). Doña Ana made a
spicy tomato sauce to go with the batter-fried pacaya, and served it to me and
Ingrid the next day. It was quite tasty,
albeit a bit bitter as you got close to the stem. Pictures of the pacaya will also be
available later.
In addition to his car registration issues, Matt also got
hit with some other rough stuff on Friday at the bank. He got robbed. Well, it was an officially sanctioned
robbery.
Let me back up. To
reclaim his car from the mechanics shop, where it had been serviced, oiled,
lubed, cleaned out the gas tank, checked the brakes, flushed the radiator,
reconnected the headlights, and basically re-worked everything in the car, Matt
had to pay the guy. So he went to the
ATM to withdraw about $300, enough to pay the mechanic and still have $210 left
over ($90 for all that work!).
The ATM machine, once he had requested the money, blinked up
a message, "This machine has lost communication with the bank. Please try again later." So he moved to the next machine down, and
tried again. The response was "You
have already withdrawn the maximum amount permitted for the day. Please try again later."
The thing is, he had not made the withdrawal. So he had to go inside, where the teller told
him it was not unusual for this to happen, but that they required a request to
look into it. Otherwise, there was no
checking it. And a 10-day wait. They did look through his account activity
for suspicious double withdrawals, and he had several. Most of the time, he withdraws Q1000 at a
time, and if the machine fails, he doesn't notice. This time he withdrew the limit – Q2000, and
when it failed, he moved to the next one, only to be rebuffed. It had happened several times before, but
since he was under the daily limit every time, it had not ever registered with
him. Or, apparently, with the bank,
either. Basically, the bank has been
stealing money from the customers, and only investigating it once it was
brought to their attention.
Sounds like health insurance companies in the US
So before we leave on Monday, I have to pack up all my stuff
from both places – from the apartment and from Jeanne's place where I have
crashed while working. It has been a
wonderful place to write, and it has been a real treat to wake up in such a
beautiful place every morning. For that
reason alone I am a little reluctant to leave – the peaceful setting is simply
hard to beat. But I am champing at the
bit to get down there and start work.
And the writing is pretty much done. I rewrote the grant proposal, incorporating
the reviewers' comments, and sent off copies to some professors and friends who
have something to say about my work. It
is not polished, but it is done. And
once the comments are in, I can update it, input my figures and my
bibliography, and send it off again to NSF.
Fingers crossed on that one, too.
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