guatemala--where school buses go to die

Nov. 28, 2005
I know some of you have traveled in Central America, but for those who haven't, I think the chicken bus deserves a little explanation, since it figures prominently in my daily life. Have you ever wondered where your elementary school bus is today? Odds are, it's having a second life traversing the streets of Guatemala. Only now, it's the primary mode of local and intercity transportion. It's fondly called a chicken bus because people are packed in like chickens, with three adults to every seat, plus a kid or three on laps if necessary, plus as many people as can cram into the aisles, occasionally with more people hanging out the door or clinging to the roof (I was offered a spot on the roof rack today, which I respectfully declined). Some say they're also called chicken buses because people have been known to bring live chickens on board. I haven't seen this myself...yet.

But you don't have the full picture if you're thinking of that yellow, lumbering, thoroughly uncool after-school vehicle. These buses now have STYLE. Step one: Add roof rack and ladders, important for carrying loads of absolutely everything, and for providing a useful alternate route for the ticket taker, who can climb out of the rear emergency door then crawl along the top back to the front door...while the bus is flying at top speed along the mountainous highway (this I HAVE seen). Step two: Add style. This can take the form of painted curtains, painted religious figures, painted soccer slogans, painted flames, painted dogs, painted mountains. On the inside of the bus, stickers are hot, too. My favorite is when the original signs ("Your children's safety is our business"--laughably untrue) are incorporated into the designs. I rode one the other day with neon-colored plastic covering the original flashing lights, so the driver could create a pseudo disco scene in the bus on demand. The horn gets replaced with a huge lanyard, and we're ready to roll.

I take a couple of these (or sometimes microbuses or, occasionally, the back of a pickup) each way to get to clinic in the morning. I pay only 13 to 39 cents, depending on distance. When I went to Lake Atitlan for the weekend, we took three each way, all packed to the gills. On that longer trip, we had to detour and occasionally walk across a section of road, since the hurricane/landslide took out more than two dozen major bridges around the country. It's quite something to see the road just end.

We've seen other effects of the post-Stan landslides, too. The school is technically a non-profit cooperative and it has developed a good scholarship program, which uses donations and regular income to pay the annual fees and school expenses for nearly 200 kids to attend primary and high school ($160 per year per kid, which is completely beyond many). One of the villages where a couple of the kids getting scholarships lived was destroyed in the landslide, and the whole town of 80 families had to pick up and relocate. They´re mostly still living in tarp shelters, high in the mountains, but the school has been helping out in various ways, initially with medical care and then with some building assistance. We brought a bunch of vegetables, fruit, candles, soap, etc, plus tons of warm clothes out there the other day. There were about 200 young kids and they all speak one of the indigenous languages, along with some Spanish. (First question from the braver ones, always: how old are you? Second question: how many children do you have?)

The town also asked us to field soccer teams for their festival. The men from the school lost handily, and we women thought we were off the hook, until a group of girls from the village materialized, having what looked like a team huddle in their traditional clothes. At the last moment, the woven skirts and colorful blouses came off and they were wearing shorts and t-shirts (more or less) underneath! We were all approximately twice as old, twice as tall, and three times as heavy as them, and we think they hadn't had many opportunities to play, since they were not very good, but they were very cute! We won, but we did let them score, without making it too obvious. They played the whole game, then had their skirts back on within 60 seconds of the final whistle.

On Sunday I went to a professional futbol (soccer) game in town. To be more precise, I got up at 6am, walked to the stadium, and waited in line with thousands of other people for more than 4 hours. Apparently, counterfeit tickets have been such a problem that absolutely no tickets are offered in advance. It´s first-come, first-served, and lots of poor souls don't get in at all. My friend and I got in at about 10:50am, which was lucky, since the main game started at 11am and no more people were allowed in after that. Every tree around the stadium had at least half a dozen boys and full-grown men precariously suspended, ALL wearing team jerseys, hats, shirts, pants, etc. The team here is the Super Chivos, which roughly translates to super sheep! My favorite banner at the game was one in English: "HOT SHEEPS"! Unfortunately, they weren't so hot and lost 2-0, but I learned lots of useful new words. ;-)

I've been shadowing a comadrona (sort of a midwife, who also does regular primary care for women) this week. She speaks an indigenous Mayan language with most of the women, but then always tells me what´s going on in Spanish. She takes great pleasure in having me guess how many weeks pregnant the women are, since I, of course, have absolutely no idea, especially since there is no ultrasound or even tape measure. But it's really interesting. One minute, she's telling me about her patient with 23 children, all of whom she delivered. Next thing I know, she's telling a woman that her nosebleeds are linked to her not having periods, and therefore recommending that she stop her DepoProvera (birth control) injections...but most of her advice seems good and she has amazing hands, as they say. I've actually been learning a bit about medicinal plants, since she has a garden full and prefers to use them first.

Finally, I had a few requests for updates on the school's Thanksgiving turkey. We ended up having TWO live turkeys (Jorge y Dick, named by the Americans...) happily gobbling in the courtyard of the school, at least until Wednesday, when they weren't so happy anymore. Considering that gringos aren't known for turkey slaughtering or plucking expertise; that we had to prop the oven door shut with a broom; that there was no oven temperature gauge (much less nifty pop-up timer); that the school doesn´t have any large pans; and that these turkeys were the textbook definition of "lean," I was impressed with the results. We actually ended up with 35 (!) people at Thanksgiving dinner, which included the well-known Thanksgiving classics of Chicken Vindaloo Soup, spaghetti, and fish sticks (potlucking with ex-pats is entertaining!) My curried fruit worked beautifully; thanks for the recipe, mom! Definition of success: Someone found pumpkin pie at the Mennonite bakery...and there was nary a bean to be found.

If you're still reading, may you dream of chicken buses.

eating around the beans

Nov. 21, 2005
I'm in Quetzaltenango, better known as Xela, Guatemala. I live with a family of ever-rotating characters. I never know who will be at any meal or whether there will be someone sleeping in any of the three bedrooms I walk through to get to the bathroom. The grandmother is the only constant, but she has three grandchildren who come to stay almost every day, since it's school vacation right now. They are 8 to 14 and LOVE to play games with me. Early on, they proposed poker and my first thought was that I really should have taken Meredith up on her offer to teach me in English. Luckily, "poker" turned out to be a kid variation that didn't take too much explanation. We also play "Bancopoly," which is more or less like Monopoly, except that all of the properties are different towns and states around Guatemala, and you're at a bit of a disadvantage if you don't know which city is in which state. I also bought a version of Jenga, now dubbed "bloques," since I was getting a little tired of cards, and that has been very popular. They even got me out to play soccer a few times, and it should give you some idea of how small kids are in Guatemala when
the 12 year old boy was very impressed with my skills and dubbed me a "buen jugador"! Yeah, sure. It helped that we were playing in a lot with very long grass/bushes so the ball couldn't go too far!

My Spanish classes are excellent. I have about 4 hours of one-on-one instruction a day, which is fantastic for finally nailing down the grammar I never really learned. I finished Harry Potter en espanol and it's now making the rounds, since the books never got to this town, even though the movie did. More about the school later, in a potential second email. It's a really interesting place, chock-full of people who have MPHs, so I'm happy!

The clinical experience is good, too. I'm working--mainly observing--with a Guatemalan doctor who works through the school, at clinics both within the school building and at various rural sites. Today, for example, we went back to a little village we visited last week. We set up camp in the school room and took all comers, from post-hurricane PTSD to chicken pox, scabies, colds, anemia, and sore knees, ankles, and backs. It sometimes takes longer for the women to unwrap their babies than it does to actually examine them. We carry two big duffel bags of medicine wherever we go and that equals the pharmacy. If it's not in there, it's not available today. We hand out albendazole, a parasite medicine for you non-med folks, like candy. All of the kids at the big day care we visit each week automatically get two doses every year. It's really interesting medicine, far removed from any technology. Later this week I'm also going to start working with a more traditional midwife, where another couple of students--one a nurse-midwife herself--have been for the past few weeks.
So that's about it for now. I was thinking that "Eating Around the Beans" would be a good title for a story that takes place in Guatemala. Of course, I can't actually eat around them, much as I might like to.

I like your emails, even if I don't always respond right away! Extra points to Abbey and Dave for writing en espanol, but big points to all who have sent messages into the email abyss. I hope you are all well. Happy almost Thanksgiving! One of the teachers has a neighbor lined up who is apparently going to let us buy and kill her turkey. Um, yeah, we'll see...

Gobble gobble!