14 May 2005
In Belem, Para, Brasil, there lived a woman who took care of a lovely apartment rented by an American company for its employees when they were in town. She was wholly unremarkable – now almost 30 years later I cannot conjure up any physical impression of her at all. But she made the world's best pudin de leche (flan, for those of you with a more Hispanic than Portuguese background). It was simply awe-inspiring.
That coveted position of world flan gold medalist, held now in Brasil for 26 years, has now been stripped from the Brasilians. It now belongs to a grandmother in Antigua, Guatemala.
For our last dinner together Wednesday night, Kathe and I went again to Casa Santo Domingo. The food, service and ambience were, as always, unparalleled. It is still just an amazing place. We ate our fill, then ordered coffee and dessert. I ordered a chocolate messiness that was delicious, but my lovely wife outdid me. She ordered flan de la abuelita – grandmother's flan. Ordinarily, I order flan whenever I can, just to introduce another contender. I am not sure why I had not ordered it there before; I will never miss another opportunity to do so. This bit of silky self-indulgence transcended natural laws. I have no idea whose grandmother she is (the waiter claimed it was his grandmother, but I am not so sure), but she needs to be canonized. The dessert was simply decadent.
Kathe got off Thursday afternoon after a torturous drive into the capital city.
Driving in Guatemala City is never fun, and I haven't done it enough to know the city. There are always problems, and this was my first semi-solo flight – the passengers knew about as much as I did about the city. The roads simply look different coming from the backseat of a cab than they do from the driver's seat. In my defense, I only took one wrong turn, but one wrong turn in Guatemala City is disastrous. All roads funnel into the two worst possible crime zones imaginable. Guatemala City is known for violent crime, and every wrong turn transports you back to gangster Chicago.
Fortunately, the other passenger was another project member, Cristina, who was going to stay with a friend. Her experience was also from the back of a cab, so she knew only a little more than I did. But after about thirty seconds of travel in the wrong direction, she asked, "Um, er, Crorey…. Do you know where you are?", hoping to prevent me from entering the Zone of Death.
I happily admitted that I had not a clue, and so we stopped for some good hand gesture magic from the locals, asking the simple question, "How do you get to the airport?" The trick to interpreting the answer is to watch the hands. The words that you receive are not true – your informant will tell you to take four lefts in quick succession. Or, more likely, will tell you that it is a straight shot to where you are going. But his hands won't lie – they tell a different story altogether. It is simply a matter of translating.
North Americans will change hands when giving directions. "Go two blocks (points down the road), turn right (signals with one arm) then left at the end of the block (signals with the other)." Guatemalans use only one hand to signal both directions, using a lovely disjointed hand signs and vertical motions to indicate a cutback or a fork in the road. Hand gestures indicate relative direction and distance. So, for example, you watch his hands for first turn direction, then extrapolate direction of second turn by distance from first hand gesture, distance measured by how far the hand travels in arc from in front of face to behind the head. If the forearm rests on top of the head (finger pointed directly behind him) at the end of his explanation, it is a long way to where you are going.
Three sets of hand gestures (from three informants) later, we got back on the road we wanted to be on, but facing the wrong way. No problem – I'll just look for a convenient place to do a U-turn. No. Every U-turn locus was barricaded more completely than a murder scene. There was nowhere to turn. Either walls or trees or concrete barriers stood in our way as we continued going away from the airport. There were no traffic lights and no cross-overs and no patches of grass to cross. We watched with envy as a motorcycle snaked between two concrete-filled barrels. What they have accomplished along this strip is what New Orleans attempted on Tulane Avenue, but failed to do – to create a street with no way out. Fifteen minutes later, we finally hopped a curb to make an illegal turn over uneven ground without even first looking for the police, and headed back the way we came.
Cristina gave me a left-handed compliment as we were driving around: "Wow, Crorey, you certainly have, er, picked up the local driving techniques." At the time, I was flattered, thinking that she was complementing me on my driving skills and reaction techniques in the face of pretty treacherous and hostile terrain. Looking in the back seat later, where her fingers had dug grooves into the vinyl, I am not so sure it was intended as a compliment.
We finally arrived at the airport, Cristina found a cab, and Kathe and I went to spend our last few minutes together in the lovely Guatemalan City airport concourse.
Anyway, Kathe arrived back in New Orleans (despite the cornflower-blue terrorist threat level that delayed her in Houston) to a wonderful welcoming committee of Don and Edna. And I am now trying to distract myself from missing her by re-writing my NSF proposal.
Yep. I got turned down, but managed to finagle a concession to resubmit, allowing me to address the issues brought up by my reviewers. Only one of the three was strongly negative, but I can use the insight from what all three suggested to make it a better proposal. It has made me rethink a lot of things in my proposal (as well as a lot of things in my career path), and I think the eventual outcome will be positive.
Not that I am not disappointed, mind you. It was a tough body-blow to the ego. And I had counted those eggs very carefully, and I had very specific plans for all twelve thousand chickens. But it will all be fine; it will just require some creative accounting to make it work. And a lot of hard-core writing before we head to the field by the end of next week. Provided our permits come through.
So yesterday Matt and I went in to the capital for three reasons: to meet with IDAEH (Guatemalan government agency in charge of archaeology) officials to try to expedite the permit process, to meet with the project co-director, and to open a Guatemalan bank account for me (for which the co-director had to sign). So after a day in the capital on Thursday, I went back Friday, just to see if I liked it any better this time.
The meeting with IDAEH was a bureaucratic mess. Another project had come in a few months ago, asked for permits to work, and thrown around weight until the permits were signed, two days later. The people who had been stomped on in the process were justifiably upset, and proceeded to "circulate" a letter to all foreign project directors, stating that all requests for permits have to be submitted two months in advance of the project start date, to allow time for the bureaucratic process to take place.
The "circulation" of this letter extended to the outbox of the copy machine, which meant that we walked in requesting permits a week after the offending projects (a month ago) with no knowledge of the letter, asking for permission to start six weeks after the submission of the paperwork.
The woman we met yesterday looked all three of us straight in the eye and told us that there were NO projects getting their permits in less than two months, and that the rule actually requires submission of these requests six months in advance. Our project would be delayed another half month beyond the two-month time frame; she's sorry, but that is the rule. As Matt turned a few shades of purple, but held his tongue, Jeanette, the co-director, leaned forward and asked quietly "And The Lookout site?"
The bureaucrat responded, "They submitted their paperwork on February 10."
Baloney. That project requested permits after ours, and received them two weeks later, through some nifty political maneuverings and well-placed outbursts of wrath. They did not submit on the tenth, regardless of what the paperwork now says. The truth is, we are a small project with very little political pull, and so we are able to be bullied, where larger projects have ways around the mess we are in. Our papers were filed earlier this year than the MSJ project has ever filed, and we will be arriving in the field later than the project ever has. If nothing else, this project has helped me understand how wonderful that aspect of the Costayuc project was.
So, following one example of bureaucratic doublespeak and governmendacity, we went to open a couple of Guatemalan bank accounts for Cristina and me, with Jeanette co-signing both. The first was an ordeal – the service manager that we got when opening Cristina's account was sullen and grumpy, and was looking for someone to share her mood with. She succeeded. Jeanette produced a copy of the bank statement on her account – the one she had with that bank - and the manager looked at it and told her that there was no house number on the address, and that she could not look it up – for security's sake. What Jeanette needed to do was bring in an official piece of correspondence from the bank with her full address on it, or she would not be able to do anything.
Protestations that this was official correspondence, or that she could look up any of the three accounts Jeanette keeps at this bank, were all brushed aside. She needed the house number to look up the account. Poppycock, of course, only intended to delay and frustrate. She succeeded, and then proceeded to make the rest of the process as difficult as possible. She succeeded at that, too.
By the time Cristina had gotten her account set up, we just wanted to be out of there. Matt, meanwhile, was writing a bureaucrap letter that had to be submitted before Monday's meeting of the IDAEH heads, and we met up with him for a few minutes before Jeanette and I went to open my account.
It was easier than Cristina's, since we were at a different bank with a friendly service manager that smiled sweetly when she told us that she couldn't accept the photocopy of Jeanette's electrical bill as proof of residence, that she needed an original.
In other words, more of the same.
Jeanette finally proposed that she could bring the original the next day, if we could fill out the rest of the paperwork immediately, so that we didn't all have to come in again to repeat the process. The rest of the process was pretty straightforward, and I deposited my Q500 in her hands, and got a receipt in return. So I am now an official member of the banking community of Guatemala. Now I just need to do something to fill up the account with NSF funds, to keep the checks from being returned NSF.
After dropping Jeanette off at a bus stop, we followed her directions to the wrong side of town, spent another hours stuck there in traffic before extricating ourselves with the help of another set of very elegant hand gestures, and dropped Cristina off at another project's house where she is staying. We then fought our way through Guatemala City rush-hour traffic (Guatemala City has 3 million residents, and they were all in front of us) the rest of the way home. Twelve hours from doorstep to doorstep.
Sleep last night felt really nice.
In Belem, Para, Brasil, there lived a woman who took care of a lovely apartment rented by an American company for its employees when they were in town. She was wholly unremarkable – now almost 30 years later I cannot conjure up any physical impression of her at all. But she made the world's best pudin de leche (flan, for those of you with a more Hispanic than Portuguese background). It was simply awe-inspiring.
That coveted position of world flan gold medalist, held now in Brasil for 26 years, has now been stripped from the Brasilians. It now belongs to a grandmother in Antigua, Guatemala.
For our last dinner together Wednesday night, Kathe and I went again to Casa Santo Domingo. The food, service and ambience were, as always, unparalleled. It is still just an amazing place. We ate our fill, then ordered coffee and dessert. I ordered a chocolate messiness that was delicious, but my lovely wife outdid me. She ordered flan de la abuelita – grandmother's flan. Ordinarily, I order flan whenever I can, just to introduce another contender. I am not sure why I had not ordered it there before; I will never miss another opportunity to do so. This bit of silky self-indulgence transcended natural laws. I have no idea whose grandmother she is (the waiter claimed it was his grandmother, but I am not so sure), but she needs to be canonized. The dessert was simply decadent.
Kathe got off Thursday afternoon after a torturous drive into the capital city.
Driving in Guatemala City is never fun, and I haven't done it enough to know the city. There are always problems, and this was my first semi-solo flight – the passengers knew about as much as I did about the city. The roads simply look different coming from the backseat of a cab than they do from the driver's seat. In my defense, I only took one wrong turn, but one wrong turn in Guatemala City is disastrous. All roads funnel into the two worst possible crime zones imaginable. Guatemala City is known for violent crime, and every wrong turn transports you back to gangster Chicago.
Fortunately, the other passenger was another project member, Cristina, who was going to stay with a friend. Her experience was also from the back of a cab, so she knew only a little more than I did. But after about thirty seconds of travel in the wrong direction, she asked, "Um, er, Crorey…. Do you know where you are?", hoping to prevent me from entering the Zone of Death.
I happily admitted that I had not a clue, and so we stopped for some good hand gesture magic from the locals, asking the simple question, "How do you get to the airport?" The trick to interpreting the answer is to watch the hands. The words that you receive are not true – your informant will tell you to take four lefts in quick succession. Or, more likely, will tell you that it is a straight shot to where you are going. But his hands won't lie – they tell a different story altogether. It is simply a matter of translating.
North Americans will change hands when giving directions. "Go two blocks (points down the road), turn right (signals with one arm) then left at the end of the block (signals with the other)." Guatemalans use only one hand to signal both directions, using a lovely disjointed hand signs and vertical motions to indicate a cutback or a fork in the road. Hand gestures indicate relative direction and distance. So, for example, you watch his hands for first turn direction, then extrapolate direction of second turn by distance from first hand gesture, distance measured by how far the hand travels in arc from in front of face to behind the head. If the forearm rests on top of the head (finger pointed directly behind him) at the end of his explanation, it is a long way to where you are going.
Three sets of hand gestures (from three informants) later, we got back on the road we wanted to be on, but facing the wrong way. No problem – I'll just look for a convenient place to do a U-turn. No. Every U-turn locus was barricaded more completely than a murder scene. There was nowhere to turn. Either walls or trees or concrete barriers stood in our way as we continued going away from the airport. There were no traffic lights and no cross-overs and no patches of grass to cross. We watched with envy as a motorcycle snaked between two concrete-filled barrels. What they have accomplished along this strip is what New Orleans attempted on Tulane Avenue, but failed to do – to create a street with no way out. Fifteen minutes later, we finally hopped a curb to make an illegal turn over uneven ground without even first looking for the police, and headed back the way we came.
Cristina gave me a left-handed compliment as we were driving around: "Wow, Crorey, you certainly have, er, picked up the local driving techniques." At the time, I was flattered, thinking that she was complementing me on my driving skills and reaction techniques in the face of pretty treacherous and hostile terrain. Looking in the back seat later, where her fingers had dug grooves into the vinyl, I am not so sure it was intended as a compliment.
We finally arrived at the airport, Cristina found a cab, and Kathe and I went to spend our last few minutes together in the lovely Guatemalan City airport concourse.
Anyway, Kathe arrived back in New Orleans (despite the cornflower-blue terrorist threat level that delayed her in Houston) to a wonderful welcoming committee of Don and Edna. And I am now trying to distract myself from missing her by re-writing my NSF proposal.
Yep. I got turned down, but managed to finagle a concession to resubmit, allowing me to address the issues brought up by my reviewers. Only one of the three was strongly negative, but I can use the insight from what all three suggested to make it a better proposal. It has made me rethink a lot of things in my proposal (as well as a lot of things in my career path), and I think the eventual outcome will be positive.
Not that I am not disappointed, mind you. It was a tough body-blow to the ego. And I had counted those eggs very carefully, and I had very specific plans for all twelve thousand chickens. But it will all be fine; it will just require some creative accounting to make it work. And a lot of hard-core writing before we head to the field by the end of next week. Provided our permits come through.
So yesterday Matt and I went in to the capital for three reasons: to meet with IDAEH (Guatemalan government agency in charge of archaeology) officials to try to expedite the permit process, to meet with the project co-director, and to open a Guatemalan bank account for me (for which the co-director had to sign). So after a day in the capital on Thursday, I went back Friday, just to see if I liked it any better this time.
The meeting with IDAEH was a bureaucratic mess. Another project had come in a few months ago, asked for permits to work, and thrown around weight until the permits were signed, two days later. The people who had been stomped on in the process were justifiably upset, and proceeded to "circulate" a letter to all foreign project directors, stating that all requests for permits have to be submitted two months in advance of the project start date, to allow time for the bureaucratic process to take place.
The "circulation" of this letter extended to the outbox of the copy machine, which meant that we walked in requesting permits a week after the offending projects (a month ago) with no knowledge of the letter, asking for permission to start six weeks after the submission of the paperwork.
The woman we met yesterday looked all three of us straight in the eye and told us that there were NO projects getting their permits in less than two months, and that the rule actually requires submission of these requests six months in advance. Our project would be delayed another half month beyond the two-month time frame; she's sorry, but that is the rule. As Matt turned a few shades of purple, but held his tongue, Jeanette, the co-director, leaned forward and asked quietly "And The Lookout site?"
The bureaucrat responded, "They submitted their paperwork on February 10."
Baloney. That project requested permits after ours, and received them two weeks later, through some nifty political maneuverings and well-placed outbursts of wrath. They did not submit on the tenth, regardless of what the paperwork now says. The truth is, we are a small project with very little political pull, and so we are able to be bullied, where larger projects have ways around the mess we are in. Our papers were filed earlier this year than the MSJ project has ever filed, and we will be arriving in the field later than the project ever has. If nothing else, this project has helped me understand how wonderful that aspect of the Costayuc project was.
So, following one example of bureaucratic doublespeak and governmendacity, we went to open a couple of Guatemalan bank accounts for Cristina and me, with Jeanette co-signing both. The first was an ordeal – the service manager that we got when opening Cristina's account was sullen and grumpy, and was looking for someone to share her mood with. She succeeded. Jeanette produced a copy of the bank statement on her account – the one she had with that bank - and the manager looked at it and told her that there was no house number on the address, and that she could not look it up – for security's sake. What Jeanette needed to do was bring in an official piece of correspondence from the bank with her full address on it, or she would not be able to do anything.
Protestations that this was official correspondence, or that she could look up any of the three accounts Jeanette keeps at this bank, were all brushed aside. She needed the house number to look up the account. Poppycock, of course, only intended to delay and frustrate. She succeeded, and then proceeded to make the rest of the process as difficult as possible. She succeeded at that, too.
By the time Cristina had gotten her account set up, we just wanted to be out of there. Matt, meanwhile, was writing a bureaucrap letter that had to be submitted before Monday's meeting of the IDAEH heads, and we met up with him for a few minutes before Jeanette and I went to open my account.
It was easier than Cristina's, since we were at a different bank with a friendly service manager that smiled sweetly when she told us that she couldn't accept the photocopy of Jeanette's electrical bill as proof of residence, that she needed an original.
In other words, more of the same.
Jeanette finally proposed that she could bring the original the next day, if we could fill out the rest of the paperwork immediately, so that we didn't all have to come in again to repeat the process. The rest of the process was pretty straightforward, and I deposited my Q500 in her hands, and got a receipt in return. So I am now an official member of the banking community of Guatemala. Now I just need to do something to fill up the account with NSF funds, to keep the checks from being returned NSF.
After dropping Jeanette off at a bus stop, we followed her directions to the wrong side of town, spent another hours stuck there in traffic before extricating ourselves with the help of another set of very elegant hand gestures, and dropped Cristina off at another project's house where she is staying. We then fought our way through Guatemala City rush-hour traffic (Guatemala City has 3 million residents, and they were all in front of us) the rest of the way home. Twelve hours from doorstep to doorstep.
Sleep last night felt really nice.
