A Really Good Monday

It started with me meandering through the bus terminal (a dirt lot with a bunch of chicken buses everywhere) looking for the bus to San Antonio Aguas Calientes, a small town outside of Antigua. I am meeting my friend Carlos for breakfast, a walk in the country to a finca de macadamias, and to chat with a nutty old gringo who has owned and run the farm for over 30 years. I am fortunate as the bus is not crowded and so no one sitting on my lap. Literally. We cruise out of town and into the country and finally into San Antonio Aguas Calientes where the bus driver aggressively drives through the narrow streets. At one turn, he perfunctorily, with the help of his assistant in the street yelling and giving hand signals, makes a nine point turn to clear a sharp corner. A nine point turn in a school bus. After about 40 minutes of driving the assistant announces my exit and I walk a block to the central park where I am to meet Carlos. As is always the case, a church sits at one end of the square and there is some kind of special mass in progress and the large white-washed building overflows with people. I sit on a concrete bench in the park listening to the sermon. I understand quite a bit of what the padre is saying (in Spanish) as preachers tend to talk slower and enunciate more for emphasis and to ensure their message is received. Across from me an old man dressed in a short sleeve tan button down shirt tucked into brown pants walks with his two dogs and sits on a bench. He pulls out a bag of rolls and feeds the dogs as they patiently take turns receiving the bread (no religious metaphor meant here). I have wondered about the dogs in Guatemala. They are often healthy looking and trot through the villages with intention as thought they have appointments to keep and people to see. And the boy dogs always have their balls, something that still looks so odd to me since in the US, poor boys, most of them do not. Carlos arrives and we greet each other with big smiles and a hearty hug. We head to the modest street restaurant across the park and order a Guatemalteca typica breakfast of eggs, beans (I didn´t know! Carlos ate mine) and tortillas. It comes with coffee which is really bad and Carlos explains that, although there is coffee growing all around us, a good cup of coffee can not be bought in San Antonio. It is loaded with sugar. Everything one drinks in Guatemala is loaded with sugar. Carlos is a good, gentle, kind man. He is a lawyer from Tennessee who has been living in Guatemala for the better part of more than 4 years. He runs the book store Dyslexia, next to Cafe No Se (see picture). He also volunteers doing community organizing to help implement the peace accords signed over a decade ago. Carlos and I settle into serious conversation. We talk about Central American politics and history and his work. He confirms my general understanding of things and then fills in many of the details. We talk of Che Guevara and his time in Guatemala and how what he saw in this country was seminal in his conviction that armed revolution was necessary in Latin America. We talk about the reverberations of singular decisions such as the US embargo of Cuba and contemplate what the world would look like if such decisions had not been made. What would the world be like if Che had not come to Guatemala and become so radical...what if he had not gone to help Castro and influence him with his radicalism?We talk of the genocide of the Mayan people. We talk about the villages that were destroyed and how the small hopes of reform in the 1950s were displaced by the US backed coup and 35 years of fighting. We talk about the systematic killing of Mayans and the destruction of their villages in the "scorched earth" policy of the Guatemalan military...poor people with few resources slaughtered like animals. We talk and our eyes fill with tears...and then we are both crying. Carlos and I harbor few pretenses with each other regarding our sensitivity. It is a very sad story. "Mer, you bring it out in me" Carlos suddenly accuses. With tears rolling down our faces we start laughing and I return the blame. I imagine the Mayan women who is serving us thinks we are nuts crying over our eggs. Carlos eats my frijoles (which I have used incredible mental discipline to ignore as I ate my eggs). We walk through the town and onto a country road towards the finca. It is a beautiful day and we walk at a leisurely pace and look at the volcanoes. After about 30 minutes a jet-black crew cab Sacatepeqez truck pulls up behind us and stops (they are the PNC, the Police National Civil). Using formal Spanish, Carlos greets the four men inside and they ask what we are doing and where we are going. Carlos answers and the driver hesitates and then says, "pelegruso" (dangerous) and offers to drive us to the finca. Carlos looks at me and I smile and say "Si." The two men in the back of the truck quickly jump out and head for the bed of the truck offering us their seats. Carlos and I try to protest but they insist. I don´t think they would ever let a woman sit in the back unless absolutely necessary. I am struck by how deferential Carlos is to the men and note his use of the formal Spanish. All of the men are very young, early 20s at most. At last we reach the finca and thank the men profusely, smiling and shaking hands with each of them. We walk through the macademia trees and head towards the garden where we will eventually have lunch (yes this is an eating day!) of macadamia flour pancakes with macadamia-nut-butter and organic blueberry compote. But this is not the true highlight of this visit. Lorenzo is. Carlos leans into me and whispers, "I was going to warn you but decided you should just experience him." The "him" is Lorenzo. Lorenzo is an American expat who owns the macadamia farm and is brilliantly crazy. He is 69 years old and has lived a very interesting life. I am his audience and he is very happy to perform. The next few hours I listen and ask a few questions as Lorenzo tells story after story peppering things with really bad jokes...fart jokes and whore jokes. I respectfully laugh and wait for this nutty raconteur to move into the next substantive story. Lorenzo was a firefighter in Redwood City, CA, in the 1970s and was hurt on the job several times and was finally forced into a medical retirement at age 32. At the request of a friend he headed to Nicaragua to plant macadamia trees citing, "I was uniquely qualified as I knew nothing about trees and I did not speak Spanish." During his stay in Nicaragua he learned everything he could about macadamia trees and eventually bought the finca in Guatemala. That story is much wilder and interesting but this is the upshot. There is no way to sensibly recount all that was said by Lorenzo that day. But I can give some sense of the stories he shared. There was the driving trip from Guatemala to the US in his old Pontiac trailering a Land Rover...it took over 200 days and included a very serious accident that somehow left he and his vehicles unscathed save for a broken safety chain and sheared trailer hitch pin. There was the close encounter in a jungle swimming hole, nude, at night, with a deadly snake which smelled his balls then decided to let him live. There was the magic mushroom picking in a cow pasture, blending them up and drinking them and going on a 3-day "trip" in the middle of the Peten. There was the encounter with the Guatemalan government officials who suddenly appeared in his back country camp in the middle of the Peten (i.e. nowhere) to ask him if he knew about farming pot. There was the time he had to light a big fire on the finca so the helicopter could see where to pick him up to take him to Coban to talk to potential investors. And on and on he went. During his colorful raconteuring Lorenzo would suddenly stop, look me squarely in the eye and assert something like, "What we need to do is just love each other. That´s what it all comes down to, we just need to love each other.¨ I nod and vigorously agree with him. At last Carlos indicates it is time to go and we begin our parting which actually lasts another half hour. Lorenzo insists I sit for young Vivian to give me a facial with macadamia nut essential oil. Sweet Vivian massages my face with the salutary oil and when finished hands me a mirror and asserts, "muy joven" (very young). I look and nod, "Si, muy joven." Carlos gets a facial too and we both tip Vivian generously. I buy a t-shirt and Lorenzo walks us towards the road. He slows a bit and sincerely thanks us for the company. He turns to me, hugs me big and hard and says, "If you are ever all fucked up you have some place you can come to. This is your home. You are always welcome here." I smile, look him in the eye and thank him. I know he absolutely means what he is saying. Carlos and I wait on the road for the chicken bus. Carlos gets off in the nearby Ciudad Vieja and I continue on to Antigua, smiling, feeling content. It was a very good Monday. PICS coming soon!