At 4:26 am I got four simultaneous phone calls.

It was my from my school director. The school secretary, Ana Marta, told me they would pass right by my house. So I was pendiente to wake up around 4:20 and wait by my door. But they were down at the market waiting for me. The directora was pressing me: hurry up because we are waiting for you. Was it even worth me explaining that the Secretary told me yesterday to wait at my house?

I brushed my teeth, threw my clothes on and picked up her second phone call 3 minutes later. “Dónde estás?” followed by “qué?” “qué?” She couldn’t hear me. How you gonna call me while you’re next to a camioneta engine? So I had to practically scream into my phone that I was coming, probably waking up the whole house. I knew then that this was a bad idea.

I had thought “Go Natalie. Last year you did not go on an excursion for Quince. Be invested. Go with Paquip. You will be glad you did.” You see, every year on the day before Independence Day (15 of September), the students go on an excursion and they “llevan las antorchas” home to their pueblos. Now understand me when I say that I thought an antorcha was a torch. And I thought it was ONE BIG TORCH (a la the WORLD Olympics) but I was sorely mistaken. The antorcha is simply fire in a metal can tied to a stick. And everyone carries a torch, you bring your own torch like Tiki Tuesday. And you run down the streets chanting something about independence. Seeing that I live on main street, I get to listen to all the honking and chanting all through the night.

But no one explained any of this to me. I had to live it to learn it last year. This year I was living and learning the excursion that led up to the torch-bringing. When I got to the bus and the directora hardly greeted me but hurried me onto the bus, she gave me her seat (thank God because I was not willing to stand all the way to Antigua- 3 hours away). I squished myself onto the edge of the seat, the metal bar meeting my butt crack, and I wavered from one cheek to the other depending which way the bus was turning. I listened to Seño Juana and Profe Diego speak K’iche’ mixed in with Spanish and I knew I was salty when I got grumpy about K’iche’. “If I lived in a Spanish-speaking pueblo, my vocabulary would be so much better…” I thought. I didn’t have the early morning strength to combat my negativity, but just enough to lambaste myself for thinking such a thing.

I took note of the number of students on the bus and realized that the kids on this trip were the ones with (more) money. I imagined them begging their parents for Q100 for this day trip to buy food, pay to get into the parks and shop. I took note of the kids who weren’t there, imagining they didn’t have the money. They were at home cutting firewood in the monte, wondering about their compañeros in Antigua. I did not want to be on this bus but I definitely didn’t want to be hauling firewood either. What about the bloqueos? Peace Corps security was messaging us the past three weeks. There is a golpe de estado, a coup de tat (I can’t spell in English much less French anymore so you’ll have to forgive me if that is spelled incorrectly). Apparently the roads would be blocked today going into the city. Eventually I bobbed off to sleep.

I woke up at Tecpán where many got out to use the bathroom. I was groggy and annoyed. We kept going. When we arrived to Antigua I was excited about a titch of familiarity, no bloqueos apparently, but annoyed that I had not planned better for my visit. Trips to Antigua are few and far between, 4 hours from my site, and I can’t stay the night in the town for security reasons which indicates I have to go home the same day I came (8 hours en route). I could have gone to my boot maker, zapatero, and showed him that these boots would still not fit my sister or my mom. I could have planned to meet up with that Tinder guy in Guaté. Instead I sat in Café Barista charging my phone, menstruating, and feeling sorry for myself. I watched a parade go by, very confused by figures cloaked in black who echoed Klu Klux Klan. Or maybe the KKK had fashioned their costumes after these medieval figures, but nevertheless I was confused. At 9:35 I unplugged myself from the wall and my comfort and walked back to the bus. I stopped and picked up some earrings of tela that I had been looking for, maybe I would give them to the teachers as gifts. Some students stopped and said: “Invita, Seño! Buy me something!” Buzz off, I thought. But I said: “I don’t have enough to buy for everyone” and I got to the bus at 9:58am.

I sat down, surrounded by already smelly, damp teenagers who didn’t really talk to me nor I to them. At 10:40 we left. This is what I don’t understand about punctuality in Guatemala if we say 10, and we know that we don’t mean 10, when should we get there? I saw the profes and students who were responsible for our lateness and I wanted to give them all a piece of my mind but instead I sat, silent. Some students asked me: “What’s wrong?” Should I respond: “Remember those charlas I gave you on menstruation?” but instead: “No me siento bien” and we sidled out of Antigua. An hour later we stopped at a place called Los Aposentos. I don’t know what the word means. I was the only white person in this park for a long time until I saw an older couple walking along with Guatemalan hosts. Ten to one says they’re here in the name of the Lord. I’m here in the name of health insurance (see: why I joined Peace Corps). I call my sister on my phone that wouldn’t charge. My charger is playing this game where it only charges my phone when I’m staring at it, and when I turn away, the green battery turns white and it stops doing it’s job. This phone is on it’s last leg and so, I feel, am I.

I find a place to hole up at Los Aposentos, an available charger next to the bathrooms and lockers. This is why I go to theme parks, to sit by the lockers and pissers. Did I know we were coming to a theme park and that I should bring a bathing suit? No. Did I ask about where we would be going? Yes. Did Ana Marta tell me? No. I sound like my Nana but IT’S ALL FRUSTRATINGLY TRUE. I see young kids walking around, some drunk at 11:30am, and it makes me sad. I teach my students about the effects of alcohol and here is a reminder that some of them will drink underage no matter what I say. No matter what anyone says. I walk around the park once. I text the guy from Tinder. (I never meet this man, we plan to meet up two weekends from this day and he doesn’t call, doesn’t show. I haven’t heard from him since). But at that moment I needed someone to bitch to and if it’s a Tinder Ghost then so be it.

Eventually I decide to buy lunch. I know this is going to come at a cost to me. As I am eating caldo, my least favorite thing but the cheapest item on the menu, a group of students pass by and say: “Invita! Seño!” Yes, I am going to pay for all of your lunches…? And I feel awkward but resigned to not buying them food. They come stand by me and when I don’t cough up any dough they leave me, eating, alone, which is a thing you don’t do in Guatemala. You don’t leave people to eat alone. See ya guys around. But another thing you don’t do is not offer what you are eating. Was I supposed to hand one vegetable from the soup to each señorita?

I finish, pay, and walk away with a full belly but feel no less comfortable. Where’s our next stop? I decide to pay for a bathroom, take my roll of paper and do what I need to. I walk over to some students and teachers having a good time in the shallow pools. I know many of them don’t swim. I see Seño Magdalena with her 22 pound baby tied to her back. She doesn’t complain and she is in between breastfeeding and entertaining a chubby, grubby 11-month old. I see Seño Juana, herself and her son both wet. It occurs to me that I will be getting back on that bus to God-knows-where with smelly, stinky, WET teenagers. This was a mistake. I call my sister and tell her just that. She tries to sympathize but it makes me feel worse. It’s too difficult to complain about anything in Peace Corps because it’s too hard to explain or it makes you sound like your life is tragic, when really you’re just annoyed and need to vent. None of it is cataclysmic, it’s just frustrating and confusing. As we walk out, more students ask me to buy them things. Chicle, chips, whatever it is that I am buying. I tell them I don’t have enough to buy something for everyone.

I get on the bus and instead of asking where we are going next, I just sit. Resigned again. The engine starts and we are off, from what I remember overhearing long ago, we were going to a zoo. I imagined myself observing poorly kept animals in cages and let the thought sink in. I think back to the pools in Aguacatán, the caged monkeys in the entrance. Tanya said: “These monkeys are completely illegally caged. Like, they’re not supposed to be in Guatemala.” I’m assuming their Mexican monkeys. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.

But we don’t make it the zoo. We stop at a convenience store, is anything convenient anymore?, and I think it’s 3:30 at this point. This day has already lasted for almost 11 hours and the end is nowhere in site. For reasons no one explains to me I hear “Santa Lucía!” as we head to the bus. In the convenience store I saw my favorite coffee, a Starbucks-type iced, glassed thing. But it costs Q16 so I pass. We leave again. Goodbye Tecpán. As the road begins to wind and curve, I reoccupied my brooding at the window seat. I have this neurosis around touching corners. Corners are where dust and hair and bacteria collect and where forgotten things go and I just prefer to not be pushed onto them. But here I was, sharing a school bus seat made for elementary school kids with two other bodies, and I was getting hot and heavy with this corner against my will.

I couldn’t help myself, asking the question, though I know it was like asking a compass to translate a language, “Where Are We Going Now?” Dylan, the school principal’s 8 year-old son, looked at me and said: “I don’t know.” I nodded, knowingly, and looked back out the window like it represented the only hope I knew: the world outside of this bus.

We made it to Santa Lucía, 30 minutes from site. I can do this, I thought. I can. 30 minutes is so close to the end. It was so close and yet. The bus stopped and I pushed myself off. For some reason everyone else lingered. Apparently we needed to find a place to park that was not going to piss-off an owner. Santa Lucía was in their Féria. If you are a stranger to this blog, you know that I do not have positive feelings for féria. Féria is like the Town Fair and it corresponds to the Saint’s Days in each town. Our Saint in Santa Clara is Santa Clara de Asis, and her Saint’s Day is August 11, so our féria falls on the days leading up to August 11 (8-10). It means we have loud firecrackers, fireworks, rickety carnival rides that travel from town to town, popcorn, pizza vendors and special breads and corns for sale. The breads are rounded, hardened breads for dipping in coffee called Roscas. You can buy a bag for 10Q. Peanuts are for sale by the bags and bolos (drunks) abound in the streets, dancing and lost in the music, escaping and making me want to escape too.

So, yes, we stopped for Santa Lucía’s féria. It was early yet and there was nothing going on. I kept walking around to look for signs of life, vendors that interested me, sunglasses, food, anything, but I just kept passing this lonely, creepy clown. I felt like the clown, and that the universe was torturing me. His face was creepily painted and he was standing behind a wooden display with a hole cut out for his face. He had a microphone (there is always a microphone) repeating in the most cloying, high-pitched voice “Pruebe tu suerte” Try your luck… along with other monologue. I think you were supposed to throw something at his face and you win if you hit it. He assumed this character who was pathetic, sad, and desperate for clients. Would someone hit me in the face with a blunt object and put me out of my misery. This is the moment when I retreated to the tienda, far past the end of my rope. I bought Chokis Rellenos (this is the purple variety), a tienda staple. They are no Chips Ahoy! but they get the job done. And I just went on a carb rampage as the safest form of rebellion in reach. I bought cookies, peanuts, whatever interested me. I tempted myself: “I’ll just jump on a passing microbus home without saying a word… I’ll just disappear and go home.” But I kept passing the clown, passing the students playing carnival games, and trying, once more, to engage. Eventually I walked back to the bus, my phone dead. I talked with some teachers, the one with the baby on back. Seño Graciela told me she liked Los Aposentos but didn’t like Antigua. I didn’t tell her how I felt about any of it.

At 6:30, we were all back on the bus, the dark setting in, and I wondered about the next and final (dear God let it be final) phase of this 14-hour hell-on-wheels: the antorchas. I noticed Dylan had a “torch” in his hand earlier in the trip. In the tin can was fabric, I am assuming to be burned. But when would these come into the picture? And most pressingly, how much longer would it take? We wound down and around and through the road to Santa Clara, in the dark, taking each curve like a necessary layer of red tape. The bus was moving along, honking, and the students had whistles and horns in their mouths, some approximately inches from my ears. The teachers were happy, the students electric, and myself, miserable. A student looked at me and said: “Licenciada: Le gusta la bulla?” and I looked back at him as clear as public breastfeeding in Guatemala and I said: “No.” I don’t think even think I said a Spanish no, I said an English one. The true, most tortured and genuine NO I could render from my haggard self.

When we arrived to the entrance of Santa María (right next door to Santa Clara) I knew that I could do anything. I could scale a mountain, sing from the rooftops, dye my hair chartreuse and tattoo the face of Stanley Tucci across my ribs if I wanted: I was within walking distance to my home, and that was the miracle of this day, the fact that it was about to relinquish me from it’s sweaty, cooped-up, awkward, out-of-place, uncertain claws.

At the entrance arch of Santa Clara we stopped, of course we did. And the students began to get off. Whatever is about to happen is still a mystery to me. The students arrange themselves, 2 of them holding a flag of Guatemala and the others lining up behind them. Fire comes into the picture. At this point I am out of the bus and walking home. Some passersby greet me in K’iche’. They will never know the day I had or how happy I am to be on this road, the same road on which my home sits. But then I stop. Goshdangit I’ve come this far. And my students are going to run all the way to Paquip (a 50-minute walk that I know and love, I actually mean that). They’d probably be running and switching off for another hour, but I was almost home. I might as well stand and take pictures.

I had borrowed Seño Graciela’s portable battery and the blue cord lit up that represented: “charging.” So I was able to text my sister and a fellow volunteer about the fresh hell I was enduring, and also, take pictures. So, I stood, I cheered, I took pictures, the bus passed by honking, my prison cell for a day, and the students were soon a faint chanting in the distance.

I sighed out of relief and regret that I didn’t do better, and I walked home and pulled the rope that opens the gate that leads me to the stairway that opens the door that opens another door that releases me to my bed and ends this day, in reckless abandon, with a head crashing to a pillow.

I listened to hours more of a honking in the same rhythm, chants for Guatemala’s Independence, firecrackers, bombas and celebration.

I’m not sure if I could chalk this excursion up to more than a Pyrrhic Victory. I pushed myself to go, and maybe it would have been better to stay in site than be a grump on the move. But I tried, friends, I tried, Paquip, I woke up at 4:20am and I boarded a mystery bus and I ate survival Chokis and I got off at every stop, however recalcitrantly, and I rode many miles with you. And I did it. And one day I will look back on this experience and smile.

Many people in the States admire Peace Corps Volunteers. They think we are changing the world, making it a better place, helping those in need. But I am here to tell you that, según mi experiencia, most of the time we are on buses going to places we don’t know and wondering what the heck for. So don’t get carried away romanticizing experiences that are less than romantic. We are all out here trying to find our way, wherever “out here” may be.