I had to take 4 buses and 5 hours to get to Tanya for her birthday. To get there I walk out of my house on the corner (after saying bye to Abuelita, Host Mom and Host Sister), take a right when I come to the first intersection and walk straight down to the bus stop. My host mom took me there for the first time back in December 2016. She said: “It’s 12 quetzales to Sololá. If they tell you it’s 15, don’t believe them and tell them that you know that everyone else pays 12.” Guardian angel.
Saturday is market day, which means booths, vendors and foot traffic clog the streets. If I am traveling, it is almost always on a Saturday and it takes longer to get where I need to if it means going into town (you know, a 6 minute walk). My favorite Ayudante, Pablo, is at the bus stop loading all the passengers. I hear him bellowing “Sololá Cuarenta y Ochooooo” from his gut. He gives me a knowing smile: “Para dónde?” “Sololá” I reply and I peer into the bus to see if there is space for my nalga (butt cheeks) and thankfully, there still are. “Hay espacio para mis nalgas?” I always say. Everyone laughs. I tell him we will get married as soon as he gives me an engagement ring and he says: “It’s coming.” It’s not coming. Just the jokes you develop with people you see everyday, I suppose. Or it’s my best attempt to engage with machismo without injuring anyone (myself included).
There is one person, usually a man, who is responsible for making the bus stop run. On Saturdays, this is Pablo. He keeps all the buses on schedule and tells the driver when to go. The buses rotate, leaving every 15 minutes. I think the drivers do two round-trips a day, to and from Sololá. That’s about 6 hours of driving stick-shift through the winding, bumpy, rainy streets between site and the province capital Sololá.
After 10 minutes of waiting while people pile in “Saqirik, Ka ta joooo”/Good Morning, Come on in I say to each person, some of whom smile and others who shyly dismiss me with “Buenos Días,” off we go from Santa Clara in a full bus. Reactions to me are more varied on a Saturday because more people come from different places (market day) so they are less likely to know how to react. Winding through the familiar hills and passing the same cows, churches, houses, dips and bumps, I listen to the music divined by the driver and don’t bother with my headphones. 30 minutes later, we get to Kilometer 148, my portal to the outside world, I hop off, walk over the ‘pasarella’ and wait for the first bus to take me to Cuatro Caminos and another bus from Cuatro Caminos to the Huehuetenango Terminal and another bus from the Huehuetenango Terminal to Parque Central. Every time I switch buses, I have to get all of my stuff from the narrow storage rack overhead, my blue sleeping bag, my thin, gray backpack with weekend gear (weekend toothbrush, weekend toothpaste, weekend deodorant, hair mousse, underwear, pajamas, day clothes). These items are a second set in my backpack because I am so often going on visits. I make sure my water bottle and purse are also somehow attached to me, and walk off without hitting my head or hitting someone else with my stuff or Jennifer Lawrencing out of the bus.
Busing, for a foreigner in Guatemala, is a whole new world.
The bus gods gave me odd buses that day, one bus with wooden benches instead of the upholstered leather double seats. It was like a 1950s classroom on wheels, I’ve never been on a Guatemalan bus like it. This is how it feels to be in service: you have certain expectations and when anything unlike them is presented, it’s even more confusing than when your original expectations are met. But you realize that the only thing that feels normal about your expectations is that you are accustomed to them, but the results are just as weird even if they are expected or a surprise. If that doesn’t make sense, then you are probably a sane person. Simply put: all the buses are an experiment and a risk, so if you are traveling on wooden stools or sitting on a plastic, overturned bucket because there are no seats left, it’s all unusual even if you know it’s coming.
On top of the fact that drivers and passengers and speed limits are always a toss-up, it’s so odd to be on a bus that I used to ride to school as a kid. US retired school buses are transported through Mexico to Guatemala to serve as public buses. When they get to Guatemala, the buses get a fresh coat of paint, retooled engines and a the bus line name scrawled across the side like Esmeralda, Juanita, Veloz Pedrana (The Fast San Pedro), Gusano (because it looks like a bug), Carolina, and so forth. The buses are decorated with the family name on the outside, and proof of their religion by the appearance of a crucifix in the center of the windshield. If there’s no crucifix, it means the owners probably aren’t Catholic. That means you will probably be listening to evangelical music. I recognize many of the songs from my childhood except with Spanish lyrics.
Sometimes the buses have TVs affixed to the windshield with a DVD player connected. You can get your fill of Spanish music videos in succession, always with a scantily clad woman and a weird dude mourning his heartbreak through the lyrics. It’s not much different than music videos from my culture, but I don’t watch music videos when I’m in the car or driving. The featured woman is ALWAYS in slow motion when she walks. It would be boring to watch a woman walk in normal time, that would be too much like real life.
Before I got on the unusual bus with wooden seats, the bus from Cuatro Caminos was more typical with plush green fake-leather upholstery. I scaled the three huge steps up, passing the driver (I have never seen a woman drive a bus in this country, in slow motion or otherwise), leaving the ayudante behind me yelling “Cuatro Caminos Cuatro Caminos Cuatro Caminos Cuatro Caminooooos” because the voice is nature’s free megaphone.
When you’re traveling by bus, you must understand the role of THE AYUDANTE. They can make or break your travel experience. The ayudante ‘helper’ is the one guy who is in charge of everything except driving. When the bus is filling up, the ayudantes stand outside of their particular bus and yell the bus’ destination in rapid fire, every thirty seconds or so: “Sololá Sololá Sololááááááá” in a particular cadence. You won’t really understand this type of audible throw-down until you have 5 men running at you rattling off destinations when you approach a bus terminal.
If you have heavy bags, cargo, or baskets with live chickens for sale (thus the nickname Chicken Bus), the ayudante runs the cargo up the ladder onto the back of the bus and ties it up above. He has to do this fast so he doesn’t waste time. You can often hear the ayudantes running on the roof over the music, the dents in the metal pronouncing their weight, to load or unload cargo. In the midst of loading passengers (and their stuff) offloading passengers (and their stuff), the ayudante is still responsible for yelling out the bus destination at every stop, alerting the driver when to stop to let off more passengers “Bajaaaa” they say, and then, the most obvious job of all, collect all the money. You would think they would collect the money as people get on, but I think this would take too much time, so they go down the aisle and collect ‘pasaje’ from each passenger during the ride.
The ayudante is a hustler, a weightlifter, a memory bank (they remember your stops and they remember your face to determine whether or not you have already paid). Sometimes the buses are so full that the ayudantes can barely squeeze through all of the people to collect money. Once I saw an ayudante walk across the rails of the seats to get to everyone. That’s right, he walked over the seats because there were too many people in the aisle to be able to pass. Depending on the relationship the ayudante has with the driver, they are also responsible for honking the horn when they try to pass other drivers. The ayudante also directs the driver when pulling out of tight spaces, parking or backing up. “Dale dale dale” they yell “Go for it, you’re good.” Ayudantes are what make camioneta rides function.
The Driver has one job: driving the bus. I’m not sure which job is harder, driver or ayudante, but I know which one gets a better workout.
Back to my journey: When I was a third of the way through the trip (4 more hours to go), I boarded the bus at Cuatro Caminos to see fake brownish upholstery over the seats. This is the type of bus I was used to rather than the weird wooden seats on the bus to follow. But there was something unusual about this bus nevertheless: a BEAUTIFUL MAN sitting next to an unoccupied seat. When I say beautiful, I think all people are beautiful but I don’t feel inclined to sit next to all of them. This guy caught my attention. It stands to acknowledge that culture informs standards of beauty, whether we admit it or not, and Rural Guatemala has a different aesthetic than what I am used to. That is how it should be as I am not from here. This man, however, fit a different aesthetic than what I see everyday in Santa Clara. I could tell that he was at least my height (a rarity at 5’7” in pueblos with high malnourishment rates), he had olive skin and his facial features reminded me of Matt Damon. His short-sleeved coral shirt exposed his ‘gatos’ (arm muscles) and cargo-style pants with a nice watch on his left wrist. I appreciate a nice wrist watch on a fellow. Maybe watches are an easy way for a guy to accessorize without having to admit that he is accessorizing. Maybe a watch is a way to have control. Or maybe they just want to know what time it is.
I walked past him to the seats at the end of the bus: “Why bother?” Is what I think 9 times out of 10. But then Why Bother? met What the Hell? and I turned on my heel, walked back up the aisle, and filled the space next to him. At most I knew that he already noticed me because I am a Live Zebra in a Toys ‘R Us; I don’t go unnoticed in this country. But what kind of notice did he take?: “Oh She’s Pretty, Oh She’s Foreign, Oh She’s Different, Oh She’s Tall.” These are all different reactions, but only the first one implies interest.
“Buenos Días” I said with a smile, bracing myself for fast Spanish (City Folk speak Spanish so fast that I am syllable-scrambling at best). “Buenos Días, de dónde eres?” in the same breath, he replied. “Pues soy de Atlanta pero llevo más de un año de vivir en Sololá cómo voluntaria.” “Ahhh Sololá que belleza” As always, Sololá to most people means that I live on the lake, and I don’t. Lake Atitlán has an island, ex-patriot hippie vibe and my life is nothing like that. I am here to work, not play a bongo and smoke weed. Plus I live 2 hours from Panajachel, the ex-pat and lake hub for visitors on tour. My skin color indicates that I am a tourist, despite my opening line, so they assume I live in one of these cushy lake towns, not in a pueblo. My skin color indicates a lot of things that aren’t true, and some that are.
The mysterious man and I got to talking: He works in Guatemala City but his family lives where I was headed: Huehuetenango. That is a long commute, I tell him. “Yes, I left at 4am” he says. We swapped work details: he works for the government, the Ministerio de something, and I work for an extension of the US government as a volunteer. Because of this, I can’t go to Guatemala City because of safety and travel restrictions.. And I explain the travel restrictions: No travel after 6pm, no staying in Xela after sundown, nor Antigua, and no entering into Guaté (Guatemala City) unless I want to be sent home. Essentially the rules suck the fun marrow right out of the bones of this country. Lake Atitlán is one of the few attractions that we can enjoy.
He said: “Yes. I work for the government, but it is very dangerous working in Guatemala.” I have learned this because my host mom is fascinated by the nightly news. I thought that news was over-the-top in the US, but we are more sensational with government and politics. News like violence, drugs and immigrant status rotates in a whole different biosphere in this country and the publication regulations are not quite like in the US: images of dead bodies are broadcasted nationwide covered in sheets stained with red, or the actual dead bodies with blood from head to toe. It’s not just a beautiful life in Guatemala City, it is a dangerous one. Santa Clara has none of this violence or you better believe I would not be allowed to live there.
Yet the hub of commerce is Guatemala City and access to paying jobs is scarce outside of the city. (Note: This is my perspective as a foreigner who does not have a paid-by-Guatemala job. My view is limited and skewed, but this is what other Guatemalans have told me and what I have come to observe). This Matt Damon fellow seems to have a wider perspective on Guatemala than some; while all Guatemalans realize that the capital is dangerous, not all recognize it as a unique problem to Guatemala. Maybe he has been to the States or traveled elsewhere. I was already beginning to imagine myself moving to Guatemala and changing my name to Mrs. Coral Shirt. He asks my name.
I feel his arm pressing against mine as we turn corners, and I go in for the question: “Do you have a family?” And he says: “Yes, I am going home to visit my son because he is sick.” Well the cords tied tightly to my dreams above the bus just snapped and my fantasy rolled into the ditch somewhere between Cuatro Caminos and Huehuetenango.
What makes matters worse is that his honesty only made him more appealing, because honest men are not commonly-stocked in this culture. In this country, many married men can live as single, independent, childless units the second they step out of their homes. Or some will say: “I’m married, but I cheat on my wife” in so many words. These words have been said to my friends before in Guatemala. So it made me like him more: not only was he beautiful, he was a good guy. Double bummer.
*Note: Wedding rings are not a custom here. In the States a wedding ring is a helpful, occasionally disappointing, stop sign. Here I see wedding rings de vez en cuando, sometimes, rarely enough to wonder if it’s even a wedding ring or a fashion statement. And you read above, safety is an issue so walking around with precious metals on your fingers is a cordial invitation for a stick-up. Another difference to note in this country is that you don’t ask: “Are you single? Do you have a girlfriend?” You ask them if they have a family. And, as far as I know, there is not a single person in the world who got here without a family, whether the parents are together or apart. But that is what you ask: “Do you have a family?” Notice that this question allows men to respond about their marital status without using the word ‘wife.’ “Yes, I have a family.” The word wife is implied but never uttered, heaven help us all if we were to refer to our wives which men rarely do in conversation here. Women at home looking after their kids. Women are their assistants, not partners. Women don’t get a place in the conversation of married men.
The line here is made out of breadcrumbs. As I have observed, men here are of the mindset that “If you don’t ask me, I won’t tell you that I am married and we can go on pretending that two single people are having a chat on a bus going from somewhere to somewhere else and we can believe that this conversation might take us to somewhere, too, even if it doesn’t, even if it won’t.” As a single woman who wants to respect the boundary of marriage, this can be crazy-making.
But I ask you: how many men volunteers get treated like pieces of meat by the women? My bet is not nearly as often as the women volunteers.
(When I talk about this, I am talking about rural parts of Guatemala. The city is very different so know that I am not painting a picture of the entire context of this country but simply my experience in one pueblo based on stories I have been told time and time again).
“Se cuida” César says, extending his hand to shake mine, and he takes his muscles and his wristwatch with him. He even had a classy name. My What the Hell should have just as well let me sit three rows behind my failed attempt at matching myself. I am all for vulnerability if it means a potential greater return on investment, but then the chances are next to none to meet a single, normal dude, no vale la pena. It’s not worth the trouble and misconstrued upper arm contact. But I wasn’t disappointed by his relationship status (okay, a little) so much as the fact that I had an inherent respect for him for being honest about his relationship status. Honesty, to me, is a requisite for society. I am not saying that there aren’t lying philanderers in my country, men and women, and I’m not saying that there aren’t honest, faithful people in Guatemala, I’m just acknowledging that when a man starts talking to me in this country, my guard is up faster than the guillotine falls. Usually before he opens his mouth. The guard I put up is built on story after story about unfaithful men, violent husbands and the single moms I meet every day whose men have left them for work, another woman or for any other reason.
I’m not angry at men at this country. Okay sometimes I am. But mostly I feel sorry for the situation and how it effects everyone. Everyone deserves respect and it sounds like neither side knows how to give nor demand it. Again, I am treading a delicate balance as a visitor and my own country has it’s issues, scars and horrors.
Women are the ayudantes of this country, men are the drivers.
On another day, on another bus:
“Do you know where we are?” I eventually asked the man to my left. This time I was the one sitting next to the window next to an empty seat when he saw me and sat down. My headphones were already in, I didn’t want to get into a conversation or an origin interview. I wonder if he noticed the white lady on the bus maybe and thought “What the hell?” as he sat. I keep the headphones in, decidedly to myself, and eventually call my host sister to prove I’m not a tourist. “I am speaking a Mayan language and fluent Spanish, bet you weren’t expecting that” I think. I notice that this guy is cute even though I’ve only taken peripheral inquiry. But I know the numbers (his age multiplied by his height divided by how many nieces and nephews he has), he’s not single. All the dudes I meet in these parts are married by 22.
Eventually I ask him where we are: “Where are we now?” And he says “Ya pasamos Palestina entonces sería Juan de Algo-Algo” I don’t remember. “Ah, vaya” say I. Slight pause.
“De donde eres?” I should carry a pamphlet. “Bueno soy de Atlanta pero llevo más de un año de vivir en Sololá cómo voluntaria.”
This guy, not César, has a different story. He wears a hat, cargo pants, is also taller than most. He continues with the typical questions and with each answer I provide I feel like I’m slowly being honed in on like a cancer cell under a microscope. I’m used to the questions, truthfully it’s part of my job to answer them here and in the US, and conversation in Guatemala is a part of the culture. You can sit on a bus and not say a word, but you can talk for 2 hours to a stranger just the same. The fascination with the US and English only further incites the curiosity.
It’s not long before the conversation veers in an unfriendly direction: “How often do you come to Xela?” and when he asks it more than once through the course of chat, I am done. I already know what he is softly implying and I’ve already asked him his datos/his credentials. He’s already asked if I have a family, then if I have a boyfriend, “Not back in the States either?” they always ask. “No, not back in the States either.” And what do you like to do in your free time, he asks. And do you like to dance? he asks. Do you like to play sports? he asks. This sport I’m less interested in playing, dodging this conversation.
He told me he has a family: 4 children. He’s already halfway to having enough bodies to carry his casket. When César told me he had a family, my questions became almost professional, respectful of the boundary of marriage. When this guy told me he had a family, I wanted the conversation to end but he wanted it to continue. I did not want to feel his arm brush against mine.
It’s not even that I felt trapped, I felt uncomfortably stuck. I could have put my headphones in, or changed seats or left the bus. But none of his actions warranted such a response. So I was suspended in an awkward conversation with a man who I didn’t much care for simply because I’ve seen it too often. The gray area of over-interested conversation about my schedule and my hobbies. His questions implied: “We could get together.”
Thankfully he got off the bus. And I have conversations like this a lot.
On another day, in another country, I was stuck in Fort Lauderdale for a 5-hour layover. Ft. Lauderdale and I are on a short-term relationship that better end when Peace Corps is over. I went home on a last-minute visit to see family and I found myself, in a matter of hours, on a bus to Pana to take a 5am shuttle to the airport. I was not prepared for the US, the culture, the height difference, plumbing suited for toilet paper or White Men.
I was not ready for Straight, White Men.
And as I sat down at a bar and ordered a beer, draft beer in Guatemala is a true rarity. Immediately I hear the conversation guided by the TV- “What is Lebron doin’ this year?” and I wanted to vomit. It’s not because I have anything against Lebron, it’s the subtle undertones of power in the way Straight White Men say things, if it’s about Lebron James or their fishing boat or their work. Their tongues are spatulas dishing out dominion over the world around them through their conversation. When lubricated by alcohol, it’s even worse. A group of sunburnt men in khaki shorts and visors occupied the seats to my left while two married couples to my right talked about their vacations.
The man next to me in his 50s did not seem to pay attention to me one way or another. I was waiting an eternity for my burger and my beer was already beginning to hit me. Yes, I am a skinny white woman who ordered a burger with bacon and cheese and everything else imaginable on it and I felt no shame. All of the women around me probably calculated the calories in their minds as they aim to look good in their tennis skirts. The hobby fishermen joined three women drinking, also in visors, and they began to chat. One woman, drunk and droopy-eyed, seemed very propelled to speak with one of the visored men.
Eventually I looked at the guy to my left, my barstool next to his, and I said: “I am in Peace Corps and I am experiencing intense culture shock.” I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have changed seats so that I wasn’t sandwiched in between drunk, white people talking about their vacations and fishing boats (Florida). What makes matters worse is that I am from Florida, I was born in this land of retired and deteriorating grandparents and angry Ex-New Englanders who don’t have any clue how to drive. I am connected to the problem by my very birthplace, the first oxygen I inhaled being Florida air.
Let’s call it what it is: I felt threatened. I am always the minority in Guatemala no matter where I go, but this time I was the minority for entirely different reasons that physical features did not indicate. Which is why I think I needed to tell the man: I am not like you, I am in a frying pan of cultural confusion and you are turning up the heat on the deal. Why did I care what strangers thought? I shouldn’t have. But oddly enough, with 6 months in service left, this moment felt like a practice run for when I am back in my own culture for good. How will I hold my own, tell myself apart, from what my fellow citizens are like and HERE’S THE CLINCHER: How will I tell myself apart from the old version of myself, pre-Peace Corps.
So you see, I am being very judgmental of these people who I do not know but who I am really judging deep down is simply myself, a part of myself I fear. Sure I didn’t wear visors before (Dios guarde/God keep us) but I had the apathy, cluelessness and insouciance I see in my pre-peace corps self. And it haunts me when I come smack in the face with my culture which has hardly changed since I left or perhaps worsened, while I feel very much like a new being on the inside in the same, slightly wrinklier skin.
This must be why volunteers talk about post-Peace Corps depression.
But I’m not there yet. Where I was on this random Saturday in May was an airport bar sipping draft beer like I’d never tasted it before. Before you know it, I am in a conversation with the old white guy with the visor and fishing shirt. You know the kinds that have vents in the back. His accent was palpably southern. But it wasn’t southern, it was country. Turns out he was from a part of Virginia that run just under Kentucky. Well, I guess Virginia is the South. But it doesn’t matter. We had a conversation from two different parts of the universe.
He told me he works outdoors, he installs things (I think maybe he works for a phone company). I could tell his friends noticed that he had found the youngest, least drunk woman in the bar to have a conversation with and they were seated next to inebriated Betties in tennis skirts. I was more lost than ever, which is oftentimes when you find yourself in a bar saying “What the hell?” as you begin to have a conversation with an unlikely stranger.
The people to our right were talking about things far too elevated to dignify a glance from me (or the opposite, I’m not sure). But I wondered how I could co-exist with this people who speak English but who don’t speak the same language as me. Finally my burger came and WOVG (White Old Visor Guy) said: “Whoaaaa” as the meat was lowered in front of me. He has no idea the culinary journey I have traversed the last year and a half. He said: “I hope you don’t have a meat coma!” and I just started eating it.
I heard all about this man’s grandchildren, and when he furnished an iPad the size of a computer screen, I almost fainted. I dragged him: “What the hell is that?” and his friends actually joined in. I could tell this guy was the butt of jokes with his buddies, but I didn’t care. This ipad offended me. It is the most unnecessary electronic I have ever seen. He was a little embarrassed but explained that he wanted an ipad that would make his computer unnecessary. Then he said: “When I retire, I’m buying a jitterbug” which made me laugh. I really needed to laugh.
He told me about his wife at the very end of the conversation. He bought me another beer before he left, he didn’t want anything from me and I had 2 more hours to wait. He described people from Central America as being “actually very clean people.” I was very, very happy when he was gone.
When I got on the flight, I knew my breath was Blue Moon and burger: unpleasant for everyone except for my tummy.
And the male pilot took off, another man controlling my fate. The woman next to me was from Guatemala, and oddly enough she sat next to me on the first flight. We were flight buddies! We caught up with our conversation. I had tried to help her at customs but everyone kept asking: “Are you two together?” and I said: “No I am helping her..” but that wasn’t sufficient for Ft. Lauderdale Airport Staff. Don’t get me started. We got separated and, while I waited for her at luggage for a while, eventually I found the bar and that’s where I found WOVG.
She told me about her family she was going to visit in Chattanooga. She told me about her son-in-law, who doesn’t speak Spanish, and she told me about her husband who is not a good man. They are divorced but he still lives in the house. She runs an heladería (ice cream shop) and a store where her coffee farm is. She told me where she lives, and I have been to the general area but not specifically to her town. She invited me to her home someday.
I reminded myself not to feel bad for being lonely, because that’s better than a frustrating marriage and a painful divorce.
I much prefer to sit next to divorced women than married men, even the attractive, faithful ones. Women want to hear my stories to know me, men want to hear my story to hear what they want to hear.
I can’t say that this experience has won any points on the side of men.
Women in this country are like ayudantes: they do all of the leg work, the sweating and dealing with people. Men sit comfortably in seats and drive the bus. They have the ultimate power but hardly break a sweat, but they have all of our fates in their hands.
I just want to be equal. I want to be sufficient on my own. I don’t want to be treated as a buddy, I want to be treated as a competent professional. I don’t want to be asked why I don’t have a boyfriend, or why I don’t want to have children, or bothered about my appearance.
I don’t want to have pena every time a man sits next to me on a bus or in a bar.