Power!

This blog entry is being handwritten by candlelight, despite all current appearances to the contrary.  Internet connection here in San Pedro is a fickle, elusive beast, easily scared away by an overcast sky or perhaps wearing the wrong shade of purple.  Usually if you wander from bar to cafe to school to restaurant (…not necessarily in that order) with internet device in hand you can track it down somewhere.  Or get distracted and stop caring somewhere along the way.

This afternoon, however, as we were enjoying the delightful combination of an uninterrupted internet signal and $1.25 mojitos, the wind whipped up out of a clear sky and started throwing things about, and somehow knocked out power for the whole town.  Walking home this evening we could see clusters of lights along the far-off shore across the lake, but the streets of San Pedro are dark except for a few windows glowing yellow with candlelight and the intermittent headlight of a passing tuk-tuk.*  Our house mother met us with a candle of our own, and happily exchanged it for one of our headlamps to cook dinner with.  Which then ended up on the forehead of her youngest daughter, who charged around the yard with it, drunk on the god-like power of lighting up the world everywhere she looked.  Or maybe I’m projecting – I’ve never had a headlamp before, and I’m slightly overexcited about this technology.

*To be clear – the tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled lawnmower-powered taxis driven at high speed on every street that might possibly be wide enough for them, are everywhere.  Functioning tuk-tuk headlights, however, are not quite as common.

Speaking of technology – good lord.  The men working in the lot behind the school are making gravel by hand.  With a hammer.  From rocks.  Which are slowly, painstakingly being reduced to smaller rocks.  I thought the lizards were distracting enough, but I cannot stop staring at these guys.

Hopefully sometime soon the power will reappear and I can type this out and post it, but for the time being if you want to turn out the lights and light a candle while you read this it would totally add to the authentic atmosphere.  For added realism, you should probably be eating a brownie.  Not that I’m eating one right now, tragically, but there’s a restaurant in town that will fill your plate with a warm brownie and ice cream for about two bucks, and thanks to their generous portions I estimate I am currently 17% brownie.

We’ve been here for two weeks now and there has been plenty of time for blogging.  Theoretically.  But there have been some snags.  First of all, I think I mentioned cheap mojitos?  Secondly (and this is going to sound HIGHLY improbable after the previous sentence but I swear it’s true), we’ve been spending almost all of our free time on afternoons and weekends studying, doing homework, and researching the next leg of the trip.  And then at nights there are awesome fellow students to talk to, and those brownies aren’t going to eat themselves, and, well… here we are.  It’s been a while.

We have four hours of one-on-one class in the morning, in little tropical-looking huts overlooking the lake.  The school is fantastic; the teachers are great and it’s run as a cooperative, which among other things means the teachers get paid more than in most other schools in town.  They also use some of the money to help out several local families.  We’ve learned a lot, not only Spanish but about Guatemala.  Did you know that avocados can take up to 18 months to ripen?  And according to San Pedro culture I’m on husband number three?

It’s also been strange to see how often the US is referred to in the newspapers, and in what light.  Before doing the research for this trip, I knew little about Guatemala’s recent history beyond the fact that there had been a war between the government and the native people.  Apparently that government was helped into power by the US in an attempt to protect its financial interests.  Also, the teachers haven’t mentioned this but a recurring theme in the papers is the fact that we’re seen (legitimately, I guess) as the source of all the guns.  Guatemala’s murder rate is now one of the five highest in the world, along with neighboring El Salvador, and many people hold the US’s gun exports and drug consumption responsible for that.  In fact, the recently elected president just proposed legalizing drug trafficking here, and perhaps in all of Central America.  It may just be a tactic in response to the US’s proposed budget for next year, which would cut ‘drug-war’ aid to Guatemala by 2/3, but the papers have been taking it seriously.

Like most students here, we’re staying with a family.  Not only is it cheaper than a hotel and eating out but it forces you to practice Spanish outside of class.  And they cook such cool things!  Our house mom won my heart completely when she presented us with chocolate-covered pancakes our first morning.  There have been a few other meals that probably don’t qualify as traditional Guatemalan fare, such as noodle-filled omelettes (surprisingly tasty!) but much of it is food we’d never get a chance to try in a restaurant.  The mom, Tina, makes tortillas from scratch every day, and we’ve eaten fruits that I’ve never seen before and still can’t pronounce.  Zach found one in the market that was the size of a grapefruit, shaped like a football, covered in a leathery brown skin (also football-y!) and inside had orange-red pulp around one enormous seed that looked like it had been plucked from under a rock in a tide pool and was only waiting to be dropped back in so it could poke out legs and scuttle away.

 

POWER! Part the second.

The electricity was out for three days.  Apart from the obvious inconvenience of needing to use candles or headlamps for the few hours between sunset and bedtime and the lack of internet, things were pretty much unchanged.  The ice cream all melted, and most places that make coffee use an espresso machine or electric percolator so Zach was going through slight withdrawal, but this morning he pulled out our own coffee grinder and made a cup strong enough to eat the enamel off his teeth so I think he’s better now.  Apparently the culprit was a fire in the mountains that the wind whipped up out of control, knocking out a bunch of transformers.

Usually these posts get written around the pictures, but we haven’t taken many here since the first day.  I feel awkwardly tourist-y walking around town with a camera bag.  The fact that I’m about a foot taller than every Guatemalan in town and completely the wrong color flies under the radar, I think, but that little black camera bag totally gives it away.

…and apparently this connection is so slow that photos won’t upload, so when you finish your brownie and blow out your candle please take a moment to picture a mile-high lake surrounded by volcanoes and ringed with towns where tiny women wear colorful, intricate skirts with matching aprons and lavishly embroidered tops, men wear T-shirts from the 90’s and jeans, and dogs have no shame.