On Sunday I read the writing on the intestinal wall, it’s gonna be a long one Guatemala. By 12:34 It occurred to me I should go outside. I needed first degree sunshine and I couldn’t find either site mate with whom to frolic. I packed up my coloring book, pencils, sharpener and headed out. By 1:30 I was sitting at a comedor. I’ve been pooping like it’s my sole profession and I needed some food that I wasn’t responsible for. My Alaska coloring book came in handy while I waited. After 30 minutes and the melody of mad chopping from the back room; a lady brought delivered a hard shell tortilla and a cup of something colorful. The girl torteaing said “no hooombre, hamburgueeesa.” The chef appeared from the back room “no lo pide ceviche?””No yo Dije que una mujer quiere hamburgueeeeesa.” And back and forth they went for 5 minutes between K’iche’ and Spanish. “I thought it was ceviche. She said she wanted the small size.. yes, of the hamburger! Ay hombre.” In another ten, the hamburguesa appeared on a plate. Grateful for bread protein and produce I didn’t have to barter for, clean, bleach and cook myself, I ate in peace with dead flies on coils of tape overhead.
I paid without a tip then walked around town a la Vanessa Carlton and bought a small ice cream. I opened the plastic taco chin rapper to find I was dealing with an icebox veteran, crusty and old. I ate it as I walked along “Buenas Tardes, Xeq’ ij” to passersby. I called Susy to catch up.
In this land I am not nervous. My bowels have been questioned three times a day St. Peter but I keep rolling on. Not a day goes by I don’t get giggled or gawked at on the street simply for being. And to that end I am not scared of being
abducted, deported, trafficked, framed, robbed, attacked or mocked. But as I approached a corner in sunny Barrio San Miguel, my worst and only fear in country caught up with me on four legs: I’m afraid of being chuchoed. I was platicando con Susy, another PCV, as my phone signal cut in and out when I heard a ferocious dog bark and saw another take flight. Oh god, I’m gonna get cut in and out too. 2 dogs came at me with barks a blazing and all I knew was not to run. So I yelled ‘no’ a la ‘don’t show fear’ and briskly walked in the unmistakeable direction called ‘the other way’.
Immediately I envisioned my Achilles’ tendons flossing their incisors and I knew this was it. They were hell-bent on two-timing my lower legs. I didn’t stop walking but I knew the stats, I know how many PCVs get bitten annually and I accepted my fate. I knew what was coming. It was my time. I found it oddly comforting to have Susy on the phone, powerless as she was, she loves chuchos and has adopted one herself. Maybe she was dog-whispering through my frijolito as it turns out that these dogs just wanted to protect their land from Skechers. As they finally abated, satisfied with my distance, I looked over my shoulder to see the chuchos trotting back to their pride land. The owners had come onto the street in response to the noise. I lifted a hand and waved feebly: “Buenas Tardes” and they quizzically responded in kind.
You might be thinking: why didn’t you avoid those chuchos? There are chuchos lichrally everywhere. If I avoided chuchos I would not make it from my house to the corner. And I live on the corner. There’s Lobo and Odi and Amy and those 2 cocker spaniels I pass on market day and those grimy skinny dogs and tiny dirty pups and every other mangy mongrel and mutt with fleas or utters swinging and hind legs scratching and tailing me from here to eternity out in these streets. Chuchos are to Santa Clara as Ms. Tasty’z Fried Chicken is to Dekalb Avenue. Most every chucho wants a bone and a puddle of sunshine, but for every Wall Street there is a 1%.
One more day has passed without a chucho attack.
It’s what I call success, Steve Jobs, so feature me in the next Ted Talk.
