I hate to use this site as a clearinghouse for all my old work. I’ll try to post something more spontaneous next time. It might even be about somewhere closer to home.

Gua tem ala

The bus rides the road like a drunken surfer, leaning clumsily around corners and crowding the oncoming traffic—tiny, aged Toyota pickups honk hopelessly, then resignedly pull onto the shoulder. The cargo on the roof shifts with an ominous groan, and I expect to see my freshly-red North Face pack tumble over the edge, my belongings left alone on the Guatemalan highway for the stray dogs to pillage. I’m shouldered into the corner watching the immediate roadside hurtle by. The view passes more slowly the farther out you look, so the furthest mountains—cultivated fields stretching patchwork up their steep flanks—seem to anchor the whole speeding landscape.

The rock under my left foot anchors whirling surroundings like a far-away mountain; I grip my sides as if they’re considering escape, frantically clinging to the outside of my body as its inside revolts. I’m hunched in the scrubby bushes and steam near the pool intake, volcano-hot water flowing through the rough clay pipe above my head. My throat and nose burn, my shoulders ache, and my calves cramp, their knotted nerves shrieking pain. I worked too hard today—nine hours in the sun at ten thousand feet, sledge-hammer and pick swung relentlessly at a decrepit, determined concrete-and-rebar structure that stood in the footprint of an unrealized school—and I know it now.

The parade of gaily colored plastic dishes continues, piled with steaming, husked tamales, festive salsa, slick, vinegary salads, unadorned rice, and meat in thick mole sauce. The tamales accumulate and then cool quickly; their bland, mealy contents are simply too much for our appetites. Glass bottles of Coke litter the tables. The table tilts erratically on the uneven packed dirt floor, pictures of Jesus torn out of magazines are pasted haphazardly on the unpainted concrete walls, and a dying lightbulb hanging from the corrugated green plastic roof flickers. Small children run round the table, crawling between our legs with the hungry cats and chattering in a cheerful combination of Q’iche, the local Mayan dialect, and Spanish. A wood burning stove blasts and pops from the kitchen. The next morning we will learn ashamedly that the locals eat one or two tamales per day, that meat is a remarkable luxury.

Every turn brings a more stomach-churning drop, cliffs that seem to crumble under the weight of this overloaded, ponderous aging American school bus. The driver surrenders to gravity on the down-hills, and the doddering chicken-bus accelerates in terrifying fashion, blasting by trucks and flocks of sheep and groups of old ladies on their way to market and farmstands and traffic accidents and astounding vistas immediately swallowed up by another foothill. We navigate a riotous roundabout and make our way through the tired old city of Quetzaltenango. Our destination, Pasac Segundo, is next. We pull up across from a rutted dirt path that constitutes Pasac’s main drag. The daring luggage boys toss our packs down and as the bus pulls away they cross the roof and clamber in the tiny windows. A stubborn burro is our welcoming party.

I regain my balance with a shudder and slowly stand upright—the world decelerates. I find my way back to the terrace, the row of bathhouses on my left, the steaming, murky freshwater pool behind me. Concerned classmates see me, shaking and drained, and walk with me back to the truck. The ride back to Pasac Segundo is a remarkably refreshing one; thirteen adolescents standing in the bed of an old Toyota pickup, racing around those unforgettable Guatemalan highways, the mountain air whipping our hair and cooling our clean, young bodies. Giggles and hoots echo off the steep canyon walls, and we huddle together, the guys self-consciously flexing any limb that comes into contact with a girl, the girls snuggling breathily under our taut arms.

As we leave Rosario’s home, groups of children approach us, mugging for cameras and demanding “una foto” in adorable, cheeky voices. When we cave, they climb unabashedly into our arms, onto our shoulders and around our legs, and we are suddenly engulfed. It is a wonderful night, illuminated by the same moon that rises in Vermont, and the spicy smoke from one of many trash-fires wafts past us on our long walk up the hill. The rich Guatemalan soil has stained our nostrils black, and most of us are wearier than ever before, but we will eagerly anticipate the next morning and its work, for we believe.