Plans to travel to Caribbean coast of Guatemala and Belize were late in forming. I waited until the Monday before I wanted to go to talk to Patrick, the travel agent who had succesfully arranged my travel in January. He was really busy and didn´t get an agenda to me until Friday morning, for travel beginning the next day. The first stop was Rio Dulce, at the eastern end of Lake Izbal, a haven for tourists and yachties from all over the world. It is reputed to be one of the most beautiful places in Guatemala, and the trip down the river to the coast is famous, passing through an ecological preserve, manatee territory and some gorgeous tropical scenery. The plan was that I would take the agency´s own bus 3/4 of the way,and then pick up a luxury tour bus at the El Rancho junction. Patrick´s bus would turn north to Coban, and I would wait to pick up an east-bound bus to Rio Dulce. Patrick assured me that there would be ¨no problem¨ flagging a tour bus, as they go through there more than hourly. He assured me that Lucas, his driver would wait with me and see to it that I made a secure connection from El Rancho to Rio Dulce. I was skeptical because I have learned that buses run often early in the day, but are ususally not available after 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. My nightmare was that I would end up on some local bus, unable to understand the driver or where we were going and facing all those stony Guatemalan faces that seemed to resent my presence as much as I hated being there. I knew Lucas to be conciencious and careful, and so with serious reservations I agreed to making the trip in one day instead of waiting in Guatemala City overnight and catching a first-class tour bus the following morning.
We set out at 8:00 am, twenty of us headed for Antigua, Guatemala City, Coban, and me, leaving at El Rancho for a Rio Dulce connection. Half of the passengers were French Canadians headed for Coban. They never shut up, telling stories and even singing songs from what turned out to be the children´s TV they watched. I think it would have been annoying in English, but it was really annoying in Canadian French. I realized that I was not feeling well, and that the intestinal distress that had been bothering me for the last few days was not going to just clear up, but might actually become a real problem on this extended day of bus travel. Of course. We were two hours outside of Xela, less than 1/4 of the way when Lucas pulled into a restaurant and announced that there was a demonstration up the road that had blocked the highway, and we were going to have breakfast and wait for half and hour for the road to clear. It started to rain.
After a breakfast of pancakes that helped to settle my stomach and an hour wait, we were off again, but the rain began to be a serious downpour. Traffic was already backed up because of the demonstration, the rain made it worst. We did not arrive in Antigua to drop off our first passengers until almost 2:00 pm. It normally takes about 4 hours to get there. The people in the back seat with the 4:00 flight out of Guatemala City were beginning to panic, as Antigua was filled with tourists for a big festival, and what should have been a quick drop-off took 45 minutes. Lucas managed to get the air passengers to the international airport by 3:00, plenty of time, but then there were several stops in Guatemala City for drop-offs, too. It was nearly 5:00 by the time we waited through the huge traffic jam headed east out of the city (construction and rain). and stopped at a Burger King for dinner. I was sure I would never find a tour bus by now, but Lucas assured me that they travel that road all the time and that it would be ¨no problema.¨ My stomach hurt.
It was nearly 6:30 by the time we got to El Rancho and it was still pouring rain. The road down the mountains from Guatemala City had been slow and running with mud. Lucas connected me with a micro-bus in pretty good repair whose driver said that he could take me to Rio Hondo where there was an ¨oficina¨ and that I could make a connection there to Rio Dulce. It would cost 30 Queztales. Where is Rio Hondo? Lucas began to draw me a map on the muddy ground, but I was impatient. I didn´t really care as long as it would get me where I was going. Lucas advised that going with the local micro-bus was the most secure way to get there, the other option being to stand at the corner next to the fruit stand in the rain and hope that a luxury bus would still come by. I took the micro-bus.
At about 7:30 we arrived at a series of food stands at a fork in the road. The driver hopped out and ran across the road to a stand and waved for me to follow. It was the öficina¨and a bored young man said that it would be another 40 Quetzales to Rio Dulce. The bus was due at 8:00, and would take 3 hours to reach Rio Dulce. I asked if he had a phone I could use to call my hotel and tell them I was on the way. No. I asked if there was a bathroom I could use. No. It was still pouring. I ran across the road to the big Texaco station down the highway and a woman generously let me use the inside bathroom. I noticed that the dark-skinned woman from Belize who also came over to use the bathroom had been directed to the one outside. The privileges of white skin are everywhere.
An hour passed with no bus. It was raining hard, the bored young man explained and the traffic was bad. Just as I discovered the pay phone that took coins next to the oficina, invisible in dark, and not offered by the official, the bus arrived. I was a huge Greyhound-sized vehicle, and was already filled with sleeping people. The lady from Belize, with baby in arms, and her daughter, who had promised to point out the proper bus to me, climed aboard with me. I thought that I might be on the overnight bus to Flores, because it was clear that everyone on board with a seat had been there for awhile,and were there for a long ride. Could it be that those standing would be required to stand through the night? Apparently so.
Suddenly, after more than an hour rushing throught the night, the bus stopped. 10 minutes to pee and get snacks from a roadside grill that was still open at nearly 11:00.
When we all got back on board, the generosity of the Guatemalan people began to emerge. One woman offered her seat to the lady from Belize with the sleeping baby in her arms, who gratefully accepted it. A woman next to me offered to let me sit in her seat for an hour. I was praying that Rio Dulce was less than an hour away, and turned down her offer, explaining that I would be getting off soon. The bus started up and we sped off into the night. I had learned that the bus was on it´s way to the Belizean border, and was expected to arrive at around 5:30 am.
Suddenly the lights went on and Rio Dulce was announced. Patrick had made it very clear that I was to take the bridge over the river to the far shore and ¨just stop into any tienda and call the hotel.¨ I had been panicked that the bus would leave me at some wide spot and that I would have to call the hotel in the middle of the night in tears telling them that I didn´t know where I was and to come find me. But the bus sped over the bridge as I was gathering my bags from the overhead and dropped me right where I needed to be. It was midnight and all that was open were roadside bars, no friendly tienda with a phone to call the hotel. A skinny young man and a scruffy looking older guy walked up to ask if I needed a hotel. No,I expallined, what I needed was to make a call to Tortugal, the hotel where I already had a reservation. Oh, Tortugal. OK. Since I didn´t have a phone card, the young man pulled out his cell phone (everyone in Guatemala has one on their person) and called the hotel, asking for the launch to pick me up. The men smiled and the younger one said he´d take me to the dock. He walked toward a dark, pebbled alley and motioned me to follow. Ok, I thought, here it comes, the final twist to this endless day will be being beaten and robbed in an alley. But, no, it was indeed the dock, just not lighted. The young man explained that the public launch down the river to Livingston, the collectivo, left the dock at 9:00 am, and that he was a driver and guide. He waited with me for the launch, telling me all about the services that were available in town, most of which I never understood. When I offered to pay him for the use of his phone, he said No, he was in the tourist business and it was his job to be helpful. The launch came, and in 10 minutes had me at the Tortugal dock and then into a lovely rustic room with a huge fan overhead.
Perhaps this trip from hell has finally freed me from my fear of being caught alone on local buses and not knowing where I´m going. After all, I have survived my nightmare, and woke the next day to sunrise over the river and breakfast in a beautiful place. No problem.
If you want to see pictures of this trip, please go to my albums at photobucket.com. The link is http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/ Enjoy.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Travels
This has been a summer of travels. I left Southern California on May 24, after spending two days with friends celebrating their 60th birthdays at Disneyland. That night I was in the Grand Canyon watching the sunset and two days later, checking into a cabin at the Flagg Ranch in Grand Teton. It was snowing, and continued to snow throughout my two days in Yellowstone Park. I spent a night with the family of Lara Janssen, a friend from seminary, in Volga, South Dakota. Never having seen the prairie, I was enchanted with the open skies, endless stretches of tall grass and open highway. I arrived in Champaign IL on June 2, in time for the wedding of friend from Portland, Mittens (Eileen Gebbie) and her partner Carla. I was able to spend a few days visiting before driving to Chicago to visit long-time friend D'On Voelzke. D'On's father, my former pastor, was also visiting her family there and we had opportunities to take an architectural tour, hang out in the city and catch up on life.
During my visit to Chicago, I flew back to Southern California to follow up on an interview with the call committee of Central Lutheran Church in Van Nuys. I met their church council and preached on Sunday morning. The congregation's vote the following week was not to call me as their pastor. I had a sense that it was not a good match, and once I got past the old ego need of having everyone love me, I was actually relieved that they had made the decision for me. I am sure they were right, I was not the pastor for them. After a short visit with SCal friends and with my kids, I flew back for a few more days with D'On before heading for Louisville KY. I had a chance to tour Churchill Downs, the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg KY (Four Roses Blended Whiskey was in my maternal grandmother's favorite whiskey sours), and then the Museum of Applachia in Clinton TN, before driving to Columbus GA to spend a few days with Mary Carlton Lull and her mother. Mary Carlton is the widow of Timothy Lull, who was our seminary president. He died suddenly following successful surgery. It was the same week in May 2003 that my mother died.
At the suggestion of Mary Carlton's friend Alice Ruth, I drove to the Florida Gulf Coast for a few days at the beach before arriving in Biloxi MS to work for a week with Lutheran Disaster Response, out of Bethel Lutheran Church. My brother, John, had been in Biloxi in December, following Hurricane Katrina, (Aug 2005) which destroyed somewhere between 80% and 90% of the homes and businesses in the area between Biloxi and New Orleans. John and his friend, Glenn Harris, who had been an insurance adjuster during Hurricane Camille (1969), met me there and we spent the week sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the church classrooms with 100 other volunteers who had come to rebuild homes, staff the free medical clinic and distribution center for clothes and household items for people who are still unable to gather the resources for living in the aftermath of the biggest hurricane on record. Katrina will be the standard by which to measure storm disasters for a long time, and the LDR expects that reconstruction of the Biloxi area, the hardest hit of all, will take at least 8-10 years.
It has taken me weeks to process and reflect on the Katrina relief week. We talked everyday about where we had seen the face of God that day. Sometimes it was in the stories of the people whose lives had been destroyed, who refused to give up hope, and who treasured the efforts of those volunteers who came to share their work of rebuilding. Sometimes it was in the faces of those who gave up time with family or at work to spend a week sleeping on the floor with a bunch of strangers and working in the miserable heat to do what they can to help rebuild homes and lives. It was an astonishing week, filled with people and stories that will live with me forever. It was joyful and heartrending at the same time, and a lesson in what community can be, knitting together the lives of strangers who share a life and hope through the love of Jesus Christ. Those who came as strangers are strangers no longer, they have become the face of living love to each other and those they came to serve. It was hard to leave such a community.
After a week in Lewisville TX (outskirts of Dallas) with brother Richard and sister-in-law Dianne, and children and grandchildren filling the house with noise and delight, it was off to Guatemala for three weeks of Spanish and a week of vacation. Not having used any of the Spanish I studied in January, I have spent the last two weeks reviewing, reviewing, and reviewing -- and feeling like an idiot because I can hardly remember my own name anymore. But this week is vacation again, and I wanted to spend my time somwhere hot and sultry after the weeks of cold and rain in the Guatemala highlands. So I have been in Rio Dulce on the shores of a beautiful tropical river and ecological preserve in Eastern Guatemala, having cruised down the river to Livingston, a tropical port on the Caribbean Sea, and am now at the beach in Placencia Belize, steps from the beach on the Caribbean. I have enjoyed the heat, cooling off in the sea or the shower several times a day, living in a sarong or shorts, sitting on the porch or in a hammock with a book. It is lobster season in Belize and so I have had lobster with every meal but breakfast, just as in the Mississippi Gulf Coast we ate shrimp every day. Life is sweet.
During my visit to Chicago, I flew back to Southern California to follow up on an interview with the call committee of Central Lutheran Church in Van Nuys. I met their church council and preached on Sunday morning. The congregation's vote the following week was not to call me as their pastor. I had a sense that it was not a good match, and once I got past the old ego need of having everyone love me, I was actually relieved that they had made the decision for me. I am sure they were right, I was not the pastor for them. After a short visit with SCal friends and with my kids, I flew back for a few more days with D'On before heading for Louisville KY. I had a chance to tour Churchill Downs, the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg KY (Four Roses Blended Whiskey was in my maternal grandmother's favorite whiskey sours), and then the Museum of Applachia in Clinton TN, before driving to Columbus GA to spend a few days with Mary Carlton Lull and her mother. Mary Carlton is the widow of Timothy Lull, who was our seminary president. He died suddenly following successful surgery. It was the same week in May 2003 that my mother died.
At the suggestion of Mary Carlton's friend Alice Ruth, I drove to the Florida Gulf Coast for a few days at the beach before arriving in Biloxi MS to work for a week with Lutheran Disaster Response, out of Bethel Lutheran Church. My brother, John, had been in Biloxi in December, following Hurricane Katrina, (Aug 2005) which destroyed somewhere between 80% and 90% of the homes and businesses in the area between Biloxi and New Orleans. John and his friend, Glenn Harris, who had been an insurance adjuster during Hurricane Camille (1969), met me there and we spent the week sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the church classrooms with 100 other volunteers who had come to rebuild homes, staff the free medical clinic and distribution center for clothes and household items for people who are still unable to gather the resources for living in the aftermath of the biggest hurricane on record. Katrina will be the standard by which to measure storm disasters for a long time, and the LDR expects that reconstruction of the Biloxi area, the hardest hit of all, will take at least 8-10 years.
It has taken me weeks to process and reflect on the Katrina relief week. We talked everyday about where we had seen the face of God that day. Sometimes it was in the stories of the people whose lives had been destroyed, who refused to give up hope, and who treasured the efforts of those volunteers who came to share their work of rebuilding. Sometimes it was in the faces of those who gave up time with family or at work to spend a week sleeping on the floor with a bunch of strangers and working in the miserable heat to do what they can to help rebuild homes and lives. It was an astonishing week, filled with people and stories that will live with me forever. It was joyful and heartrending at the same time, and a lesson in what community can be, knitting together the lives of strangers who share a life and hope through the love of Jesus Christ. Those who came as strangers are strangers no longer, they have become the face of living love to each other and those they came to serve. It was hard to leave such a community.
After a week in Lewisville TX (outskirts of Dallas) with brother Richard and sister-in-law Dianne, and children and grandchildren filling the house with noise and delight, it was off to Guatemala for three weeks of Spanish and a week of vacation. Not having used any of the Spanish I studied in January, I have spent the last two weeks reviewing, reviewing, and reviewing -- and feeling like an idiot because I can hardly remember my own name anymore. But this week is vacation again, and I wanted to spend my time somwhere hot and sultry after the weeks of cold and rain in the Guatemala highlands. So I have been in Rio Dulce on the shores of a beautiful tropical river and ecological preserve in Eastern Guatemala, having cruised down the river to Livingston, a tropical port on the Caribbean Sea, and am now at the beach in Placencia Belize, steps from the beach on the Caribbean. I have enjoyed the heat, cooling off in the sea or the shower several times a day, living in a sarong or shorts, sitting on the porch or in a hammock with a book. It is lobster season in Belize and so I have had lobster with every meal but breakfast, just as in the Mississippi Gulf Coast we ate shrimp every day. Life is sweet.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Guatemala Summer, July 18, 2006
While planning my journey back to Guatemala this summer, I found a guesthouse online owned by a Lutheran Church in Xela. I made a reservation (in Spanish) and arrived on Sunday night the 9th of July. I was horribly disappointed by the spare room and the filthy bathroom, and confused by the two women who greeted me, apparently knowing nothing about my arrival and no more fluent in Spanish than I was. Things improved on Monday morning when I came downstairs to breakfast to be greeted by Sebastiana, who introduced herself graciously and invited me to sit down to a breakfast of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, tortillas and black beans. Though young and dressed in the same traditional dress as the other women, she was obviously the mistress of the house. We were joined at table by a young man in clerical garb (without the white insert in his shirt) and a large silver cross on a chain around his neck. He introduced himself as Pastor Ignacio, and said a blessing over our breakfast before digging in. I had already made up my mind to find other lodgings as soon as possible, and when he asked how long I would be staying, I muttered, ¨maybe three weeks.¨ In the course of introductions I mentioned that I was ¨una pastora luterana.¨ I thought Pastor Ignacio was going to jump out of his seat. ¨¿Es verdad?¨ he kept asking.
When I got to the school I asked if it were still possible to live with a family for the first two weeks of my studies, and the office coordinator was happy to fix me up. I thought that nothing could be worse than the dirty bathroom and bare room at Casa Concordia. I was wrong. I went back to the guesthouse to pack up my bags, pay Pastor Ignacio and move to the home of Doña Doris, the lovely woman who cleans the school. As I left, Pastor Ignacio gave me the address of the church and invited me to Sunday services.
The home of Doña Doris is a good example of how many Guatemalans live in the city. She has raised three children by herself since her husband died 14 years ago. The oldest, Jorge, is now studying to be a lawyer. Lilian, who I met in January when she worked inthe office at PLQE, is studying at the University and working part-time, as well as helping Doris clean at the school, and the youngest, Lesbeth is in her last year of Diversificado, like a combination of high school and junior college. She will go to the University in the fall to study to be a nurse. Everybody works in this house, except Fifi, the silly little terrier/chihuahua combination. Their house is reached through a dingy passage through an auto shop. All rooms open onto a courtyard. The living room, storage room, tiny kitchen/dining room, and bathroom downstairs. Three bedrooms are upstairs looking out onto the highest point in Xela, ¨El Baul.¨ It is wonderful on sunny days when I walk out on the balcony into sunshine and the clouds that always make the skies of Guatemala so interesting and beautiful. But it´s pretty miserable when it´s cold and raining and you have to go down the open stairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
The house is crowded and not particularly clean, but I love the family. They are proud and hardworking, and have done very well for themselves against difficult odds. Life is very hard here, and keeping a house clean is complicated by the constant dust, grime, car exhaust, and summer rain. There are no screens, no heat, everything is open to whatever lands in your house, on your clothes, gets embedded in your shoes. I have taken over the dishwashing in the pila in the courtyard, calling myself the Queen of Clean Dishes. Doña Doris laughs. I have come to love Doña Doris´s cooking and her gentle good humor in spite of her demanding, underappreciated job. And I have become very comfortable in her home, a big surprise to me, who started out so picky. It´s the people who make a home, right?
When I got to the school I asked if it were still possible to live with a family for the first two weeks of my studies, and the office coordinator was happy to fix me up. I thought that nothing could be worse than the dirty bathroom and bare room at Casa Concordia. I was wrong. I went back to the guesthouse to pack up my bags, pay Pastor Ignacio and move to the home of Doña Doris, the lovely woman who cleans the school. As I left, Pastor Ignacio gave me the address of the church and invited me to Sunday services.
The home of Doña Doris is a good example of how many Guatemalans live in the city. She has raised three children by herself since her husband died 14 years ago. The oldest, Jorge, is now studying to be a lawyer. Lilian, who I met in January when she worked inthe office at PLQE, is studying at the University and working part-time, as well as helping Doris clean at the school, and the youngest, Lesbeth is in her last year of Diversificado, like a combination of high school and junior college. She will go to the University in the fall to study to be a nurse. Everybody works in this house, except Fifi, the silly little terrier/chihuahua combination. Their house is reached through a dingy passage through an auto shop. All rooms open onto a courtyard. The living room, storage room, tiny kitchen/dining room, and bathroom downstairs. Three bedrooms are upstairs looking out onto the highest point in Xela, ¨El Baul.¨ It is wonderful on sunny days when I walk out on the balcony into sunshine and the clouds that always make the skies of Guatemala so interesting and beautiful. But it´s pretty miserable when it´s cold and raining and you have to go down the open stairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
The house is crowded and not particularly clean, but I love the family. They are proud and hardworking, and have done very well for themselves against difficult odds. Life is very hard here, and keeping a house clean is complicated by the constant dust, grime, car exhaust, and summer rain. There are no screens, no heat, everything is open to whatever lands in your house, on your clothes, gets embedded in your shoes. I have taken over the dishwashing in the pila in the courtyard, calling myself the Queen of Clean Dishes. Doña Doris laughs. I have come to love Doña Doris´s cooking and her gentle good humor in spite of her demanding, underappreciated job. And I have become very comfortable in her home, a big surprise to me, who started out so picky. It´s the people who make a home, right?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Guatemala Summer
July 13, 2006
Here I am back in Guatemala. It looks very different in the summer. The patchwork of brown fields covering the mountains along the Interamerican Highway are now filled with waving fields of corn, bright green and as high as the men who cultivate it. There are fields of squash dotted with deep yellow flowers. It looks as if the harvest will be good, and I pray that it is enough to help mend the damage from Hurricane Stan last October. The storm took out cities along the lake, washed out bridges which still have not been repaired and destroyed the harvest leaving families with damaged homes and no food, I had almost forgotten the damage from ¨El Stan,¨ having spent a week in the Gulf Coast working with people who are just beginning to dig out from Katrina. So much damage, so much loss makes my heart hurt. I don´t know where to put the sadness.
As I expected, I have forgotten almost everything I learned in five difficult weeks last winter. I promise myself that I will not make the mistake of not using Spanish every chance I get. I want to find a language partner who needs my English as much as I need their Spanish, so that I will not lose it again. So I am back in the present tense, practising those irregular verbs. My maestra Ana Maria is an expert teacher and has a more organized way of presenting lessons, so that it makes much more sense to me than I remember. Maybe I just needed a second time around. I find that much of what was lost is coming back in our conversations.
I originally arranged to stay in a guest house owned by a Lutheran Church here in Xela. I hated the room I was assigned, and arriving at the end of a week-end, I found the bathroom to be so dirty that I hated to use it. I went right to the school on Monday morning and asked to stay with a family. When I got the guest house to pick up my bags and pay for one night, the duena had returned and maids were scrubbing everything. The family I got lives in a small apartment behind an auto shop. It is not very clean either, and my room is tiny. But I like the family and I have a second-story view that I love. I´m unpacked now, and so I´ll stick it out for the two weeks I am scheduled to study before my week of travel. I hope to arrange a room in the sparkling clean guest house across the street from the school for my final week in school.
All in all, it is lovely to be back. I feel at home here.
Here I am back in Guatemala. It looks very different in the summer. The patchwork of brown fields covering the mountains along the Interamerican Highway are now filled with waving fields of corn, bright green and as high as the men who cultivate it. There are fields of squash dotted with deep yellow flowers. It looks as if the harvest will be good, and I pray that it is enough to help mend the damage from Hurricane Stan last October. The storm took out cities along the lake, washed out bridges which still have not been repaired and destroyed the harvest leaving families with damaged homes and no food, I had almost forgotten the damage from ¨El Stan,¨ having spent a week in the Gulf Coast working with people who are just beginning to dig out from Katrina. So much damage, so much loss makes my heart hurt. I don´t know where to put the sadness.
As I expected, I have forgotten almost everything I learned in five difficult weeks last winter. I promise myself that I will not make the mistake of not using Spanish every chance I get. I want to find a language partner who needs my English as much as I need their Spanish, so that I will not lose it again. So I am back in the present tense, practising those irregular verbs. My maestra Ana Maria is an expert teacher and has a more organized way of presenting lessons, so that it makes much more sense to me than I remember. Maybe I just needed a second time around. I find that much of what was lost is coming back in our conversations.
I originally arranged to stay in a guest house owned by a Lutheran Church here in Xela. I hated the room I was assigned, and arriving at the end of a week-end, I found the bathroom to be so dirty that I hated to use it. I went right to the school on Monday morning and asked to stay with a family. When I got the guest house to pick up my bags and pay for one night, the duena had returned and maids were scrubbing everything. The family I got lives in a small apartment behind an auto shop. It is not very clean either, and my room is tiny. But I like the family and I have a second-story view that I love. I´m unpacked now, and so I´ll stick it out for the two weeks I am scheduled to study before my week of travel. I hope to arrange a room in the sparkling clean guest house across the street from the school for my final week in school.
All in all, it is lovely to be back. I feel at home here.
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