Week 2 and 3 in Xela, Guatemala: amoebas are not your friends. September 1st to 14th 2008.

 

An evangelical missionary from the United States told me in the local gym I recently joined not to eat at cheap places in Guatemala because “they come with friends.” He explained that these friends were actually amoebas that would end up living in your intestine and cause stomach cramps and diarrhea. They stem from an array of poorly sanitized food products, such as unwashed lettuce where snails can leave mucus behind, which spawn amoebas. The lettuce used in the three tortillas that I bought during the night out drinking with Marcos and Andy could have contained this mucus, because they gave me a fairly horrendous few days spent mostly on the loo. But after having ridden out the runs after my day on the volcano, I was fairly confident that I had merely suffered a case of food poisoning.

 

What worried me however, was that the next time I drank the local beer, a week or so later, the exact same thing happened. I was up all night and ill the next day with stomach cramps and diarrhea. Could I be allergic to Guatemalan beer? Please, God, anything but beer. I managed to walk slowly to school that morning only to tell my teacher that I was too ill to study that day and had to return home. He asked me to tell the head teacher, who then told me that I had an amoeba. She explained that amoebas can attack but then lay dormant in your intestine for a couple of weeks ago before they attack again. Having been at the school for over 20 years and seeing foreigners like me get bugs like this no doubt all the time, I trusted her and took the prescription name that she gave me to the pharmacy. There I received 12 blue pills (4 per day) for the princely sum of 10 Quetzals, or $ 1.40. At that price, I should just take them all the time I thought. That was a bad thought. I found out that these pills are designed to totally flush you (and your amoeba) out. It was a horrendous three days, while I felt weak and had to endure fairly painful stomach cramps.

 

To add to this, on day one of the pills, I had one of the strangest encounters of my life with another human being. During the morning while I was attempting to watch television in Spanish, and wanted nothing more than to be left alone, Aida (sister of the father of my family who does all the cooking/cleaning/washing and has more facial hair than Santa Claus) tells me someone is outside to see me. Confused as to why anyone would come to see me (I hardly know anyone in Xela aside from a handful of people at my school) I step outside, to be greeted by no one. I tell this to Aida and ask her to describe the person to me. She said he was Chinese (here, there is no such thing as Asian; everyone from Asia is called Chinese, even if they are in fact Japanese or Korean or from any other Asian country) and that he might have run round the corner. I go outside again, and try to find the character. I managed to catch a glimpse of an Asian guy I recognize from walking by him couple of times on my walk to school each day. Most students do the same walk every morning so it is not uncommon to see the same people a few times. He looks at me, but then walks away.

 

I go back into the house and explain to Aida that I have never met the guy and he must have been mistaken. Wrong. That evening Aida again tells me someone is there to see me. This time the same guy is standing outside my house, talking to someone. I take another look at him and he doesn’t say anything so I go back into the house once more and again explain to Aida and my host family mother that I have no idea who the guy outside is. I return to my room only to be followed by my host mother who hands me an envelope from the man outside. Without opening it I go downstairs to confront the mysterious person to find out what an earth is going on. We speak in English and I ask him what the letter he gave me is about. He tries to explain but I still don’t understand what his purpose is. I couldn’t work out whether it was his bad English, or the fact that he was incredibly bad at explaining what he was up to, or a combination of the two, which made it so difficult for me to understand what the fuck he was on about.

 

Slowly I began to realize why the message wasn’t getting across. I started to pick out the words “project”, “pictures”, “model”, and “you”, and realized this absolute knob wanted to take pictures of me as a model for some alleged project he was doing. It all sounded a bit fishy to me. I then opened his letter in front of him and it confirmed what I had thought I understood. On the front were the words “Estudiante Extranjero” which means “foreign student”. Here is the letter, in full, word for word [aside from my little inputs]:

 

Hi, I have recently ran into you on the street here in Xela and I am wondering to see if you are ever interested in photo shooting as a model for me. I know you are a foreigner [well done Sherlock Holmes], well me to, just that I am not so sure whether you are from North America or Europe [not sure what the fuck that has to do with anything]. I am from Japan and my name is Ryan Ibuki [and I am a rapist], 25 yrs. Old.

 

Anyway, my cell number is as follows: 4265-4778. Just give me a call so that we could arrange the event then.

 

Wish you luck on your study.

 

Friend,

 

Ryan I.

 

PS. Do give me a call because you’ve really got the potential, okay?

 

 

 

I was pretty stunned by the whole thing, and obviously wanted nothing to do with it. But to complicate matters, there was a homeless man just outside the house who wouldn’t stop interrupting us in complete gibberish. When the mother of my family tried to tell the homeless person to go away, he carried on. She therefore invited the Japanese guy into the house until the other guy left. Oh shit. Thank goodness homeless gibberish man went away pretty sharply because I was feeling very awkward being in the same room as someone who had stalked me to my house. Ryan, who incidentally claimed to be enrolled in a university in Xela, left shortly after. I was left to explain to my host family the entire situation, which they first found confusing and then found amusing. It has become somewhat of a running joke now when I tell the family that I am leaving the house to go to a café to study because they will always ask me “con su amigo de Japon?” (with your friend from Japan?). It was a good joke initially, and one that I in fact preemptively cracked, saying one day that I was going to meet up with the guy as a joke. Now I wish I had never said that because they still think it is hilarious and I was over it before I cracked it the first time.

 

I have also made my first Guatemalan friend, who was partly to blame for what aggravated my amoeba the second time. It is currently world cup football/soccer qualifying season. As such Guatemala has been playing in qualifying group with the United States, Trinidad and Tobago, and Cuba. I had seen Guatemala draw with T and T the week before, but tonight was an important match against Cuba. Guatemalans are madly keen on football so I thought it would make a fun night if I headed to one of the local bars to watch the match. I sat myself at the bar and ordered a Gallo. I ask a rotund Guatemalan sitting by himself at the table in front of me what the score is. 0 – 0. He asks me if I am rooting for Guatemala, to which I reply “por supuesto” (of course). From that moment on he treated me like a younger brother for the rest of the night. Beers were bought, other family members arrived, Guatemala were scoring goals, I was being hugged by my new friend and the bar was going crazy.

 

This guy, named Victor, plus his enormous gut, could seriously put away some beers. He teased me because I wasn’t drinking enough, so I told him to look at the size difference between us, which he found relatively amusing. At the end of the night he gave me his number and told me he wanted me to come and watch a local football match that weekend with his whole family. I said I would love to and two days later I found myself at the local stadium with three other students whom I had recently met, with Victor’s number in my hand. I used one of the student’s cell phones to dial the number in the hope of getting through to Victor. There was no way I would find him because the stadium was packed. However, through some pretty poor Spanish on my part and some excellent luck, I located Victor and his family and encouraged the three others to join me. He had saved us the best seats in the stadium and even put down plastic trash bags so we wouldn’t get our arses wet on the seats. He introduced me to his wife and two children and later explained that he had another wife and another two children. At 36 years old, this was fairly impressive. He was only 18 when he was married and his first wife gave birth to his first child.

 

The football match itself was a combination of football and a pyrotechnic show. Huge numbers of fans brought their own fireworks and flairs and would set them off at various stages during the match. It was absolute mayhem but a very good fun and certainly an experience. Xela, Guatemala’s second largest city was playing Guatemala city, who are ranked 2 and 1 in the national league respectively. Xela held off Guatemala City for the first half, but then goals started streaming in in the second, with a full-time score of 4 -1 to Guatemala City. The fans weren’t best pleased and throughout the match offered some less than polite words to the Guatemala city team and referee.

 

As the game came to a close I was happy that I would soon be returning to my house because my feet were soaking wet and cold. I also felt rather good that I had finished my last dose of amoeba pills and had survived.

 

The next day I intended to finally find an outdoor running route without enormous amounts of dangerous and pollution-causing cars. I thought that if I ran toward the nearest mountain and up it, it would give me a better chance of being out the way of cars. Thankfully, this plan worked. I now have a pretty decent and hilly running route with some ok scenery, farms, and cattle/horses/goats along the way. The only real problem is that there are quite a number of dogs that line the path, some of who seem to be guarding particular bits of land. Most are fairly benign but some are pretty unfriendly.

 

Today I ran the same route but a little bit further and on my way back I was confronted by two rather fierce looking dogs barking at me and staring me down. I had to go past them; it was the only way back, so I decided the best idea would be to pick up a large stick in case they got too close. As I neared, their barking increased and they didn’t seem to back away. I threatened them with the stick and managed to scare them back a bit and nip around them. They then began to chase me but I used the same stick trick technique to scare them off. I thought my adventures were over, but on a fairly steep downhill part near the end of my run, a dog came at me from behind out of nowhere and scared the absolute shit out of me. It almost bit my fucking leg amidst loud barks but I turned towards it and raised my fist and shouted as loudly as I could at it which seemed to do the trick. Not the most fun route, but certainly better preparation for the marathon than running in the gym.

 

I have also found a local hospital that I would like to volunteer at. It offers free care to people with severe pulmonary disease, such as tuberculosis, and also to aids patients. Work will be three times a week for 4 hours each time, for a minimum of a month. It will be hands on, cleaning, bathing, feeding the patients and so on. I meet with the head nurse on Wednesday, and will start work then if all goes to plan.

Week 1 in Xela, Guatemala: A shock to the (gastro-intestinal) system. August 25th to 31st 2008.

 

Am woken up on my first morning in Spanish by the very small, and fairly old, Edwardo (father of the family I am living with) who sports an absolutely awesome white mustache. Eat a breakfast which was essentially exactly the same as supper the night before, plus some food they call moush (oatmal/porridge type stuff but without many oats and with a lot of watery liquid stuff). I virtually crap myself when Edwardo hands me a map and points out my Spanish school (which looks pretty far away), thinking I am going to have to find the place all by myself. I am grateful when Edwardo steps out the door with me.

 

The school is about a 10-15 minute walk away, which isn’t in itself bad. The fact that there is more traffic here than in Manhattan, but with roads a quarter of the size, and ‘drivers’ who ‘drive’ with absolutely no concern for pedestrians makes it a pretty horrible journey to and from school every day. That, coupled with the fact that black smoke spurts out of every car/bus/van exhaust pipe and hangs in the valley that Xela sits in, makes it unpleasant to say the least. Last point of complaint: the sidewalks are only wide enough for one person to walk along. Locals never move to make space, even if they are walking two abreast, so if there is an oncoming pedestrian or two, you have to get off the sidewalk and step into the road which is a pretty hairy experience given said quality of the ‘driving’.

 

Arrive at school and see a group of locals outside, whom I assume are teachers. Edwardo shares a few words and one of them speaks to me in Spanish. Another embarrassing effort to explain that I speak no Spanish ensues. I feel a bit better when the teacher says “no hay problema”, which I assume means, it’s not a problem. Meet my teacher, and spend the next two and a half hours desperately trying to speak Spanish with her. It is a struggle, but I assume being thrown into it this way, and having one on one lessons, is the best mode of learning Spanish quickly. A half an hour break ensues where I meet the other students, teachers and staff. They have a ping pong table which I am pleased about, plus bread and tea is provided during the break. It is a welcome food-type, after all this fried stuff I have been served.

 

Back to the classroom for two more hours of painstaking Spanish. I am given homework and head back to my house for a 1.30 p.m. lunch. Lunch, which happens to be the biggest meal of the day in Guatemala, is much better than breakfast and supper. For a start, I am given some kind of meat, and even some vegetables, accompanied by rice. I am still offered tomales (the maize things) which I decline. I feel completely awkward because, for the first time in my life, I am unable to contribute anything to the conversation at the table. It is a strange feeling, but something I will have to get used to before my Spanish improves.

 

Go up to my room/prison cell and try to do my homework. Not a great environment to work in, but at least I have a desk. Realize I am still hungry. The portion sizes in my family are freaking tiny, and it is certainly not the right thing to do to ask for more, given that they, like most families here, don’t have a huge amount of money to live on. Would love to go out and buy some food or eat at a restaurant but come to the conclusion that a) I don’t know where any supermarkets/restaurants are and b) even if I did, I don’t know enough Spanish yet to let people know what I would like. It is a tough situation, but one that motivates me to crack on with my homework so I won’t starve.

 

I get the picture of what the food will be like here when I have supper. Exactly the same as the night before: friholes fritos (refried beans), huevos (eggs), arroz (rice) and chili (chili, obviously). Am absolutely knackered so I hit the sack shortly after eating, with a kind of “oh fuck me in the face” type of feeling about the next 8 weeks.

 

The rest of the week follows much the same pattern, except that I get up 5.50 a.m. to go running some mornings before breakfast with another Brit named Mark (Marcos in Spanish) in the same program as me. He is a nice chap and provides some good release from Spanish. Having said that, we attempted to practice our Spanish on each other while running during the mornings. If any locals heard us, they would have probably thought: what a couple of total phalluses, two totally English guys with a day of Spanish under their belts trying to converse in that over their mother tongue. In fact, that is exactly how I felt. Either way, it wouldn’t do any harm I thought. In any case, the runs in the morning are a good way to kick start the day and good training for the marathon I intend to run with my Dad in Sacramento, CA on December 7^th.

 

By the third night I come to the conclusion that I am no longer going to eat supper with my family because the portion sizes are too small, it tastes like dumplestiltskin, and I would rather slowly eat my own balls. This is good timing because I am beginning to get to know my fellow students, one of whom is leaving so we go out to dinner at a Parisian restaurant in town. I am so hungry that I order two main courses and the others are amazed/disgusted. I tell them that I eat more than anyone I know aside from the man/beast/string bean/streak of piss in the wind/pole that is Rob Neville. The table of students consists of 3 lawyers who had just finished the bar at NYU, Marcos a recently exed UBS man, and me. All are very amiable and have excellent Spanish compared to Marcos and me.

 

For the rest of the week I either eat with people or by myself at The Blue Angel Café, a very cheap place serving excellent food. I think I ordered Spaghetti Bolognese with garlic bread for four nights in a row, with limonada con soda (fresh lime soda). It came out to just over $ 4 each night, so I can fit it into my tight budget I think.

 

Still feeling fairly lost in terms of Spanish and my way around Xela, I decide to go out for a night on the town with Marcos on Friday. We hit a bar named, Pool and Beer (in English). The clue was in the name: when we got there, there was pool and beer. I meet an interesting and extremely friendly local named Juan Pablo with faultless English. He is 24 and has a 30 year old Argentinean girlfriend, Maria, who looks about 18. Juan Pablo attended a private local school and has spent the last two years traveling with his girlfriend around Latin America. He now runs a hotel (and delivers fruit on the weekend to Xela on the side) at a local tourist spot on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. After two years, his girlfriend is returning to Argentina, and they are uncertain about their future. I lend a sympathetic ear and he explains the whole story. In the end, I let him know that if it was meant to be, it will work, regardless of what country they were each in. If they were meant for each other, countries are merely places and their relationship will overcome the distance. What a sage, even at the humble age of 23, giving advice to these older people.

 

I get the picture that Juan Pablo is fairly well off for Guatemalan standards when he takes us in his brand new pick up truck to the next bar, a bar well known for Salsa dancing. He drops us off, giving me his email address and heads back to his place with Maria. The place is packed, and full of good salsa dancers. Hitting the dance floor would be suicide given that I have no idea how to salsa, plus I have two left club-feet. Marcos, a Canadian guy whom we met named Andy, and I buy another liter of Gallo, the local brew to try to muster up some Dutch courage. When the clock strikes 11, they finally start playing some music that even spastics like myself and the other two tourists can dance to. Fully lubricated with Gallo, we start making knobs out of ourselves on the dance floor. I can’t have been doing too badly, however, because the girls that I met on the bus weren’t too embarrassed to say hello when they saw me, and even surprised me with a four way hug, which was slightly too aggressive in my opinion, given that they made me spill my glass of beer all down my arm. Either way it was fun to see them and to introduce them to Marcos and Andy.

 

Incidentally, Andy has his own website: www.spandyandy.com where you can watch him dance in spandex in various spots around the globe. I recommend checking out this particular video shot in Vancouver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiQAnUkvrRM

Definitely worth I look. I’m just disappointed that he didn’t whip out that tight outfit that night.

 

We stayed at the bar until closing, and were in desperate need of some food to soak up the beer. The only place open was a “street meat” stall, one of the places you should avoid like the plague because they are notoriously unhygienic and the chances of you getting dysentery are about 2:1. Therefore we each bought three tortillas filled with disgusting shit-meat which we downed in about four seconds. Feeling temporarily satisfied, Marcos and I walk Andy to his hostel. It is fairly dangerous to walk alone late at night. For example, the other day we met two girls that had been robbed at knife point just outside the Blue Angel at 7 p.m. the night before. It is good luck that Marcos and I happen to live with families that live next door to each other.

 

Wake up the next day with what can only be some hybrid form of dysentery. I describe it to my family as an upset stomach, but it was more like a fucking upside down volcano erupting out of my bumhole. I kid you not, one session the eruption was so forceful that it actually displaced some of the water from loo, into the air, and then onto the floor in front of me. It was the most amazing achievement of my dumping career. Spend the entire day getting lighter, as it were, and become increasingly nervous about the hike which I agreed to go on the next day with my fellow students up Santa Maria, a local volcano. I had already seen enough eruptions, but in all seriousness, I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it because I was feeling fairly awful.

 

At 4.30 a.m. the next day I had to make a game time decision: spend the day at home crapping in my loo, or spend the day on a volcano, crapping on a volcano. I didn’t want to let the guys down (dropping out would have meant that they couldn’t go because the trekking company sets a 4 person limit per guide) so I take the longest dump of my life and head out the door to be met by Marcos. We arrive at the meeting point outside the place we had booked the hike just before 5 a.m., the meeting time, and are met by Jason and Kim, two of the NYU lawyers. No guide. Fifteen minutes later we see lights in the distance, and our guide casually rolls up in his ancient SUV.

 

A short drive and we are at the base of the volcano. I glance up and it looks fairly unimpressive and small as the sun rises. This is deceptive, as it is a tough three and a half hour hike to the summit, and in my state I struggled a bit. Thank goodness Marcos and Kim were fairly unfit because it meant at least 3 of us walked at around the same pace. Jason, who is a runner, had no problems. I hadn’t been able to buy water the day before because I was so ill, but thankfully the guide gives me one of his spare bottles. I don’t want to drink too much though, because I am scared it will go straight through me and upside down volcano may meet reel volcano.

 

Even in my weak state, I couldn’t fend off the boyish/immature desire to be the first one to reach the peak, so I started running about 30 feet below the highest point. Instead of feeling elated when I stood atop the tallest rock on the volcano, I felt so out of breath that I thought I was going to faint and crap myself at the same time. The altitude made everything worse. I was standing at 3772 m or 12 375 ft. The view, however, made up for it. It was utterly magnificent. You could see the city of Xela, and all the surrounding volcanoes.

 

What stole the show, however, was a nearby volcano which Santa Maria looked directly down onto, which erupted every 45 minutes. Huge plumes of steam emanated from its crater and it sounded like a jet plane going past. I couldn’t but help draw the parallel between it and my unfortunate situation.

 

Another interesting sight on the summit was a group of 30 or so people praying. They appeared to be some Christian group, involved in much wailing and crying. One man kept on crying/saying the words “Padre lo siento…” (father, sorry…). It was a strange sight but I was impressed by the fact that they must have been up earlier than 4.30 a.m. to reach the summit before us.

 

An hour or so was spent on the top of the volcano, giving us time to take pictures and soak in the wonderful 360 degree view of Guatemala, which included its Pacific coast.

 

The hike down was much easier in terms of strain on the body, but more treacherous because the paths were steep and slippery. We all slipped a few times and I, for one, bit the dust at least once, but we all arrived safely back at the car in one piece. During the hike down I came to realize what an intelligent bunch I was with. They each explained to me in extreme detail the credit crunch, how irresponsible lending was the major cause of this, and about America’s current economic situation in general. The two Americans, who claimed not to know much about politics, then proceeded to flesh out the Barack vs. McCain political race for the next hour. Art was also discussed, including the controversial Jeff Koons whose exhibition I saw this summer at the MET in New York. Religion was the next topic and so on. It was a fascinating series of discussions and made the trip down an easy and enjoyable one.

 

We decided not to end our action packed day there. After a quick turnaround, we went with the same guide to agua caliente (literally, hot water). We thought these geothermally heated pools of water might make our muscles feel better after our long hike. As soon as we arrived it started raining and we were freezing. A group decision was made to go into the lowest, and least warm, pool first. It was fucking boiling, especially as I had a bit of sunburn on my legs from the hike. After a while we acclimatized and attempted to get into the middle pool. More burning feeling on the legs but it was a good pain. Onto the final pool and I felt like I my legs were being cooked. I couldn’t get in and was afraid that if I did, I would ever be able to have children. But I took the risk and my balls are still in tact. Didn’t want to get wet, so I took out an umbrella to fend off the rain:

 

It was a fun experience and a great way to relax after a day on the volcano.

 

And speaking of fun experiences, joy of all joys, that night, Sunday 6 p.m., (1 a.m. GMT) I laid the first solid dump I had seen in 48 hours. Volcano had cured volcano, and I was in the clear.