Last night I slept with don pancho
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- Chapter 21: Cooking up Ideas
| It was after midnight when the plane touched down in Guatemala City. The streets were clear of traffic and the moon had risen high above the jacaranda trees silhouetting Pacaya volcano, with its molten lava spilling out the cone. A short winding ride later, we neared my hotel in the town of Antigua. The streets were empty, the wrought-iron gates of the colonial homes locked up tight and the air chill as the driver jumped out and rang the buzzer. And rang and rang and rang. The sleepy owner finally woke up and led me past a lantern-lit courtyard to my room. I learned later that it was the doorman’s first day and he was a sound sleeper.
My plan was to take a crash course in Spanish so I could communicate with Javier’s family more easily. It sounded like a crazy idea to everyone but me. After all, said everyone you have a willing live-in teacher back home, don’t you? From my perspective it seemed more efficient to learn with a stranger. By following an organized lesson plan I was more likely to expand my vocabulary beyond what Javier and I were inclined to talk about. My ad-hoc home schooling with Javier had resulted in huge gaps in vocabulary. I could talk about politics and kitchen ingredients but if the conversation branched into religion or business I was lost. I just didn’t have enough words to work with. It was embarrassing that, living with a person whose first language was Spanish, I still had such rudimentary language skills. It took days for people in his family to understand me. My accent or sentence construction just didn’t connect and Thelma or Lorena would often rephrase what I said . Or I just stayed silent and sat demurely at the end of the table leading people to imagine I was shy. Sometimes I made words up. That often backfired. “Estoy embarrazada,” I had said at the dinner table one night, attempting to say I was embarrassed. “Congratulations,” said one of the aunties, looking puzzled no doubt wondering why I would announce such momentous news in between slurps of my soup. “When will the baby arrive?” asked another. I’d just announced I was pregnant.
I chose Antigua because it was 25 minutes away from family in the capital, and tuition at the school was only $90 a week, plus a book donation, for 20 hours of personal instruction. It wasn’t the cheapest, but I also liked that it as a non-profit institution that provided mobile libraries for children in rural villages where there was no access to books. Books had been such an important part of my life growing up, I thought everyone should have the opportunity to read. The next morning, I followed my map and discovered the school was just around the corner from the hotel. I met my teacher, Lucrecia, and she assessed my level of Spanish as intermediate and adjusted the training plan. "I’ve been teaching here for six years" she said "and, after one week, if you work hard, you will get to here." She pointed to the Future tense in my workbook. "But, if not, you ll get to here". The Past Preterite. Not one to live in the past, I vowed to diligently complete my homework. The lessons began that day. Soon my brain was going fuzzy. "Only one more hour to go until la pausa or coffee break" she encouraged. I persevered and was rewarded with strong coffee and a bun from a woven basket. Coffee was served in an olla, a large earthenware urn. It was ladled into each student’s mug, the delicious scent of coffee with a hint of cinnamon and cloves wafting up and warming your face and hands. I used the coffee break to scout the premises. There were 20 pairs of students and teachers, seated at individual wooden tables, within an outdoor courtyard. Stone steps led to a garden patio shaded under pink bougainvillea. I tried a few words of English with a student and got a blank look. Many students were from Germany, Switzerland and even Poland so our common language was Spanish. A piece of paper fluttered onto the table. It was the list of weekly student activities. From salsa dancing classes, cooking lessons, movies and excursions to coffee plantations, I was glad I hadn’t signed up for the seven hour a day instruction plan. "I made that mistake at first," said Evelyn, a fellow student. "I just couldn’t take so much activity." She could take most anything, I figured. In her sixties, she’d been travelling alone through the world for three months. Her skin had the slightly weathered look of days spent in the sun and her clothes were faded from wear. In contrast, her teeth sparkled. She had gotten her teeth fixed - a crown and a bridge - in Thailand. She still wasn’t ready – or able - to return back to the United States. She’d sold her home to live off a portion of the proceeds and now rising home prices had priced her out of the market. "I’m looking for a sweet place to settle down in," she said looking around as though inspiration could hit any moment. “Antigua just might be it.” The break ended and another hour and a half of lessons began. By now my teacher was puzzled about why I spoke Spanish with a Guatemalan accent. I gave it away within a few minutes of the coffee break. “Que puchica,” I said when there was a sudden crash. An orange had fallen off one of the trees in the patio and narrowly missed me. “Where did you learn that word?” she asked her eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Mi novio,” I shrugged. The disclosure was like opening Pandora’s Box. Once she discovered my partner was from Guatemala she couldn’t resist steering our conversations back to my family life. “Where does his family live? Did you meet here? What kind of job does he have? What kind of food do you eat – Canadian or Guatemalan? How does he compare to Canadian men – which is more macho?” Just when I was sure I couldn’t possibly speak one more word in Spanish, a bell sounded and we were done for the day. Just in time. I had disclosed more than I wanted to about my “amor.” My teacher knew more about my personal life than my mother did. I had enjoyed talking in Spanish with a stranger, without worrying about making a fool of myself. I felt able to speak freely and vowed to take more lessons in the future.
"This is luxury," she said. "At home (the village) we get running water only between 4 and 6 and when it arrives it’s cold." I was impressed. I had struggled with the shower that morning. Built for energy efficiency, instead of a hot water tank, the heating element is built into the showerhead so it takes time to warm up. By coincidence, Kaitlin and I were staying at the same hotel, Posada La Merced. She led me up a back stairway to the rooftop to see the whole town, where the spires of crumbling churches punctuated the low relief of the short squat stucco buildings. The hotel itself was managed by an expatriate Kiwi, Gail Rogers, and had 26 spotlessly clean rooms, two garden courtyards and my very own desk all for $21 a night. As the days passed, I spent my mornings at school and my afternoons exploring the town. At the north end was La Merced church, a confection of golden yellow stucco and glossy white trim, built in 1552. Inside is a 4 ton statue of the Black Christ which, during Holy Week, gets carried aloft by eighty men in a procession that moves slowly through the streets. As I walked south through the Arch of Santa Catalina, toward Agua Volcano which loomed large over the city, I noticed many language schools. Many were hidden beyond crumbling 17th century facades in courtyards with stone fountains spilling water into waiting basins. Cool breezes rustled the trees. Most of the schools offered homestays with a Guatemalan family or a volunteer experience to accompany the lessons. I talked with Bill, a geological engineer originally from Colorado, who talked while he blended some juice in the hotel’s guest kitchen. "I went crazy about 5 years ago," he said. "Sold my house, moved to Florida and bought a sailboat, even though I d never sailed in my life." Now, he was selling that sailboat to buy a marina in Rio Dulce on the Caribbean Coast of Guatemala where he hoped to make enough money to buy a larger boat and sail to New Zealand. Finally, with the week nearing its end, I got up the nerve and vocabulary to talk with Rigoberto Zamora Charuc, the Director of our school. I was curious to learn more about its Access to Learning award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Fortunately, Charuc spoke slowly and told me that their fleet of library buses reached over 5,000 children, important in Guatemala where 50% of the rural population couldn’t read and most villages and schools did not have libraries. "Book by book, Guatemala will change," said Charuc who noted that the grant had already provided computers in five communities and that they would soon be adding more. "Students are welcome to help out in the community libraries once they have mastered the basics of the language," he added. I told him that sounded like something I’d like to do and realized I had committed to a return visit of a longer duration. A few days later, I stopped at the office of Revue, Guatemala’s English language magazine and visited with Terry Kovick Biscovitch, the publication’s founder and editor. On one of my story-idea pitching marathons, I’d proposed a couple of stories from my travels as a CESO volunteer in Honduras. She’d published them, we’d kept in touch and I enjoyed hearing her insights into the country. She was keen to show me her latest project – a feral cat rescue program. Inside the building’s leafy courtyard were several cages with felines rescued from neighbouring rooftops. Once she’d seen the sorry state the cats were in, she’d hired a veterinarian to repair their broken bones and rid them of parasites. Now she was trying to domesticate them. “I hope to find them homes someday,” she said, patting a cage lovingly. Based on the flurry of claw slashing that emanated from inside the cage, I had doubts. This one for sure didn’t look very adoptable. I loved cats but even I had to concede that this collection of cats, with their snarling and spitting, weren’t easy candidates for Pet of the Month photos. They look more likely to scratch out your eye sockets than curl up on your lap. She handed me some pamphlets promoting a fashion show to raise money for the cats and then had to get back to work. I took a peek in her office. It was gorgeous. Set within a 17th century stone building, her window looked out on a grassy courtyard with a border of graceful lilies and a wall fountain. “And here’s my mother’s suite,” she said gesturing to another lovely room. Even her mother lives here? I thought to myself as I left her office. If they could both live here, why was I so consumed with worries about safety in Guatemala? Teri had obviously been able to adjust any culture shock she’d experienced when she first arrived. She even seemed to thrive on the opportunities and beauty. I was pleased with my solo travel success. I hadn’t been robbed or gotten sick. I’d even sold a couple of stories and made some money. Chapter 21: Cooking up Ideas
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