Last night I slept with don pancho
Chapter 14: San Vicente Papa’s Camino
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- Recipe: Pollo con Loroco (Cream chicken with loroco)
Chapter 14: San Vicente Papa’s Camino
Days passed and with each day everyone became more and more preoccupied with Papa Challo’s deteriorating state. He seemed to require no sleep. He gave money away to people in town. He accused someone of stealing his hat. He rode off on a neighbours horse. All before noon. “Sometimes the woman who lives in this house doesn’t cook,” he scowled pointing his machete at Mama Tallo who hurried to get him some food. He suddenly started receiving old age pension, available to Guatemalans with low income., even though the authorities had earlier turned down his application, saying he had too much land to qualify. Now, at age 81 -– without even reapplying – he’d suddenly started receiving cheques. A social worker spotted him walking through town looking like a hobo. “He banged on someone’s door and said he was hungry because Mama never feeds him,” said Lorena. “Who wouldn’t believe him? He’s so skinny.” “Isn’t there a senior’s care home he could go to?” I asked. His cantankerous personality was wearing everyone out. Mama was exhausted with his care. “In Guatemala, senior’s homes aren’t for family. He’d die there,” said Javier. That afternoon, Javier took Papa to the doctor in Cabanas, the neighbouring town. The doctor wanted to do more tests and recommended force-feeding to put some weight on him. Papa weighed just 90 pounds. All that meant he’d have to go to Guatemala City. Papa was adamant about not going anywhere. “I’ve got work to do,” he said, back at the ranch, shaking his head “I’ve got no time to go to the hospital.” “It’s just for two days,” said Lorena. “Who will look after the cows?” he said. “Jose can look after them. He has time” “Then let Jose go to the hospital,” he said, slamming his hands on the table, pushing his chair away and storming out of the yard to get his horse, a dappled white and grey mare the colour of dishwater. No-one tried to stop Papa Challo as he rode off. Although he was half the weight of anyone else in the family, he was wiry and strong from years of labour in the fields. “If he gets lost, at least the horse knows its way home,” said Javier. When Papa wasn’t riding his horse, he was walking. He couldn’t sit still. Each morning he rose at dawn, ate breakfast, grabbed his machete and headed out. He didn’t return until mid afternoon. “Where does he go for so long?” I asked. San Vicente is situated on an ancient camino a walking route that leads to the basilica of Esquipulas, home of a statue of the Cristo Negro (Black Christ). While Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela are the holiest places of pilgrimage in the Christian world, Esquipulas is Central America’s most holy site. The shrine is so revered it has drawn pilgrims since 1595. Javier’s father and grandfather had both walked the 120 kilometres from San Vicente to Esquipulas in pilgrimage upon the birth of their first children. Maybe he was retracing those steps, I suggested.
Then he swung his full satchel across his shoulder, closed the gate behind him, tipped his sombrero to the sky in salute, made the sign of the cross and headed for the hill. Javier put on his running shoes and followed him. He returned five hours later covered in sweat. “It was two hours of hard uphill climbing to the top of the cerro,” he said. “I had a hard time keeping up with Papa, he moved so fast.” The mystery of what Papa did all day was over. Once he got to the top of the mountain, he picked maize, built a fire, roasted the corn and ate it along with the tortillas. An hour later, he made the return trip back down the mountain. All that exercise explained how he was burning up all those calories. I was sitting at the kitchen table when Papa returned (looking no worse for the wear of a full day of hard hiking) a few hours later. He had plenty to say to me, motivated in part by the bag of Halloween Kit Kat chocolates I had. He spoke slowly – perhaps a result of the stroke – so I had no trouble understanding him. He also seemed to understand what I was saying – unlike everyone else who weren’t accustomed to my accent. “Tu no conoces mi territorio – you don’t know my land ,” he said circling his arm to encompass the horizon from the mountains to the desert. He believed the land was his and each day he paid tribute to it by walking as many steps of it as he was able to manage. I could identify with what he was saying. My own explorations in Guatemala – such as looking for Blue Jade – were my tribute to the country. The problem was that his territory kept growing. First it was just the lands he owned. Then it became neighbouring properties. Now it included the cerro, where he could be seen, walking with purpose, swinging his machete, until he disappeared from view. Over the following weeks, Javier followed Papa up the cerro each morning, claiming the climb was a great workout. He approached it as though he’d just joined the French Foreign Legion. Each morning, he jogged down the dirt trail to the foot of the cerro and began the steep ascent through the thick brambles and overgrown brambles. Like Papa, he’d disappear from view and return a few hours later Sometimes he saw Papa at the top, other times not. At night, I’d pick slivers out of his fingers and apply antibiotic cream to the cuts on his arms. “Better than the gym back home,” said Javier. I developed a walking regimen of my own. In the late afternoon, when the intensity of the sun decreased a fraction, I went walking. Unlike Guatemala City where walking was dangerous, here it was possible to walk the entire perimeter of town without incident. Unless you counted running into Papa Challo and his machete. I’d walk with Lorena down the hill to the San Vicente River and we’d pass tall organ pipe cactus, sometimes with delicate white blooms, and towering trees which offered a flash of shade. Our evening walks began to draw other women in the village -- many anxious to lose weight. Much like other parts of Central America and Mexico, obesity rates had climbed in San Vicente over the past few decades. Although working 18 hours a day cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and tending to their families was exhausting, it didn’t provide women with a sustained cardio workout. At 1,200 calories a tamale, it didn’t take much time to pack on the pounds. The men of San Vicente, many who worked in the fields, weren’t obese. “Once we got cell phones, we started gaining weight,” said Lorena. “We used to have to walk to the market, now we just phone and a tuk tuk driver brings us what we need.” Being plump was considered a sign of affluence and happiness in San Vicente, but the doctors were advising women to lose weight. Along with the rise in obesity rates was a rise in Type 2 diabetes. Apart from “slimming” teas, exercise was a way to work off the pounds. Some women now owned running shoes. They’d take off their aprons and join me in our walking circuit around the village. “You started a new tradition for las gorditas (chubby ladies)” laughed Javier. A gaggle of children straggled along, teasing each other and horsing about. As we walked, women would join in or drop out. “It’s not easy,” I said to Javier. “There are a lot of hills and a lot of huffing and puffing.” On the steepest hills, we’d make a human chain and pull the more exhausted walkers up the hill. I was usually in the lead among the walkers. I might have been inept in the kitchen but I could walk up hills. “Que piernotas (what strong thighs)” they joked, happy to have a hand climbing the hills. They’d laugh even harder when we’d encounter herds of cattle returning from day pasture. The cows would hog the road and our hiking group would have to hug the side of the road to let them pass. Far from being the placid, cud-chewing creatures I saw on the milk cartons at home, the cows of San Vicente were unpredictable, nasty creatures with large curled horns as thorny as their temperament. As I discovered, there’s nothing quite as humiliating as getting chased by your own wedding present. Even though Javier and I weren’t officially married, living together was considered important enough to merit recognition, so Mama Tayo had given me a dairy cow as a wedding gift. Wedding cows were usually slaughtered and eaten as carne asada in a celebratory meal but as there’d been no village wedding, mine had joined Mama Tayo’s herd as a milk-producer. Perhaps my cow and I had never bonded on account of me being in Canada or maybe it was my height that grew her bovine ire, but invariably the bad-tempered animal would eyeball me out of the crowd of ladies, determine I didn’t fit in with the rest of the group and decide to head-butt me out of sight. “Run, run,” Lorena would shriek. The hiking gorditas would form a group to protect me long enough to allow me to scurry away. Once I even had to climb a ladder to escape the ornery beast. From a distance a cow may appear a gentle animal, but up close, its 1,000 pounds of stomping hooves can be a daunting sight. When I wasn’t running away from my fleet-footed wedding gift, there wasn’t much to do. In the heat of the day, we’d swing languorously in the hammock, listening while people in the family went about their tasks. The thumping sound of hand-washing, the grinding of the feed corn for the chickens, the swoosh swoosh of the broom across the patio stones and the ring of church bells at noon gave the day a hypnotic rhythm. One afternoon I watched while Janet, Javier’s teenaged niece, ironed her jeans for what seemed to be hours. Then she ironed her hair. One day, in the middle of our languor, Papa had an accident. He hobbled into the kitchen, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead. “Radar tripped me,” he said, blaming the dog. Everyone knew there wasn’t a dog in town that would climb the cerro in 40C heat. “Radar didn’t go, he was sleeping here the whole time,” reasoned Mama Tayo.”Maybe it was el diablo who did it.” “No, it’s Dios (God) who’s with me up there,” said Papa, his words slurring strangely. He’d had another stroke and it was obvious he wasn’t going to recover anytime soon.
“My family really needs me here in Guatemala. I’m going to have to stay at least for awhile.” Recipe: Pollo con Loroco (Cream chicken with loroco)Adapted from El Sabor de la Tradicion (Super Pan Pasteleria y Panaderia) After my repeated (and no doubt annoying ) requests for Guatemalan recipes, Thelma dug around in the big china cabinet in her dining room and came up with a 40 page booklet given to shoppers at Super Pan, the Guatemalan chain of bakeries. The cookbook’s main purpose was to promote family celebrations and create demand for fancy desserts but I’ve found the recipes very reliable. If you dig around, you can find loroco in the freezer section of specialty Latino food markets in North America. In Toronto, we go to Plaza Latino, a 2 storey strip mall with a travel agency, a barber, a video rental shop and a small Guatemalan tienda (now owned by Salvadorans). On weekends, we include a late-morning lunch stop at the back of the building where there is a popular Latin food court featuring food vendors from Central and South America. Join the weekend throng and order a seafood soup, a plate of pupusas and a fresh mango licuado at one of the no-frills eateries and they’ll deliver it to your table on a plastic tray. In Latino food courts, you pay when you’re finished eating, not when you order your food. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2015 2015 -> Police Militarization 2015 -> 2015 ihbb championships: hs history Bowl Round 4 – Prelims First Quarter 2015 -> Wrtp/big step · 3841 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, wi 53208 2015 -> Rao bulletin 1 December 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles 2015 -> Darton College 2015 -> Training Workshop on Planning and Implementation of Multi-Sectoral Development Programme (MsDP) in Bihar Date : 6th 2015 -> Rao bulletin 15 June 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles 2015 -> Rao bulletin 1 September 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles 2015 -> Rao bulletin 1 August 2015 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles 2015 -> Science, and transportation united states senate Download 7.12 Mb. Share with your friends:
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