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.