Antigua, Guatemala January 9-26, 1979
I arrived in Guatemala on January 7th, spent one night in Guatemala City (a dirty, dismal, depressing place), and caught a bus to Antigua. I started Spanish school – a two week intensive total immersion course – on January 8th. I’m living with a young Guatemalan family – Rafael, Olga and three children – Juan, 8, Carlos, 6 and Suzanna,4. I believe both Rafael and Olga speak some English, but they don’t speak a word of it to me, which is great. I’m already learning fast.
Olga and the kids, with a previous student, back for a visit
Like many families here, Rafael and Olga run a little ‘tienda’ (store) out front, from which they sometimes sell something from the odd assortment of goods they have ‘on display’ – various dried soups and frijoles, some ancient cauliflowers, a couple of moldy onions, some candles, cigarettes, many empty and a few full pop-bottles, all sorts of paper garbage, and the family fridge. From what I can see, the tienda is never open. Perhaps it was a one-time venture, and now serves more as a store-room.
There’s a decidedly make-shift plywood door – thin and splintered, unpainted and barely hanging on flimsy little hinges – between the tienda and the ‘dining room’ and ‘sala’ (sitting area), both of which are open-sided but under cover. The dinner table is a large arborite and aluminum affair with matching chairs. There’s a ‘hi-fi’ set, chesterfield, and a chair or two in the sala. I’ve yet to see anyone sitting there. There’s a huge nativity scene in the corner, with all sorts of plastic figurines, replicas of baby Jesus, and lots of lights and glitz. I wonder how long it will stay there? The one and only mirror in the house hangs nearby. A shared bedroom, off the sala, has three beds, and is always full of stuff – blankets, clothes, bags. This seems to be where the kids sleep – or maybe other relatives...?
The sala and dining area are separated from a large inner courtyard by an old sheet of half-clear plastic, presumably to keep the rain out. The courtyard is pleasant enough, with a little pool, a small patch of grass, and lots of plants. Someone has a green thumb. Beyond the courtyard are several rooms, including Olga and Rafaels’ bedroom, the room I’m staying in, the kitchen, a wash-up area, the toilet and the cold, of course, shower. Off to the side of the courtyard, in the area that gets the most sun, are some big cement laundry tubs, and a place to hang laundry.
The kitchen is a night-mare – a large arborite table against one wall, a floor-to-ceiling side-board, and a gas range in the corner. Plates, bowls and cups, almost all melmac, in racks and stacks around the room. Some maybe clean, some definitely not – it’s difficult to differentiate between them. There’s food absolutely everywhere in varying states of decomposition. Dribs and drabs of this and that – cooing fat, butter, rolls, left-overs from breakfast, lunch and dinner. Several long finished boxes of corn-flakes, jars of indistinguishable substances, little bundles of herbs and straw, all sorts of packages and tins of sugar, salt, flour, coffee; a plastic bag full of egg-shells. One day, in a search for matches, I began looking in cupboards and drawers and found more little plates of left-overs from meals I don’t recall. I wondered how old they might be... . It appears the fridge is used for very little other than milk; all the fruit and vegetables being left out, or in baskets and bowls, on the table. And yet despite its chaos and clutter, despite its questionable state of hygiene, I like the kitchen, and spend a good deal of my time there, talking to Olga as she cuts and cooks. It’s a warm and friendly place. And a good place to learn Spanish. Onion = cebolla, carrot = zanahoria, garlic = ajo, lettuce = lechuga, knife = cuchillo, spoon = cuchara, fork = tenedor. Olga holds things out, tells me their names, slowly, and I repeat. She corrects, I repeat again. And so it goes.
Just outside the kitchen is a second, smaller courtyard and general utility area: more laundry lines, garbage, and ‘dog-house’ – this just a stick to which ‘Rebecca’, a small white long-haired dog (Maltese?) is chained. She barks a lot just after family meal-times – in anticipation of her scrap dinner, the highlight of her convict day. There are a couple of cats, one of which has decided that Rebecca is really a rug, and sleeps, happily curled up, right on top of her.
The family is relatively ‘well-off’. Rafael works in Guatemala City for a company that imports industrial machinery. Olga tends the home, and of course makes all the meals. She teases me about being a ‘vegetariana’ – “are all Norteamericanos vegetarianos?” And she goes out and buys me a big basket of fruits and vegetables to go with my staples of rice and beans, beans and rice. Breakfast is always eggs scrambled with tomatoes, green peppers, onions and lots of butter. This is served with white bread (there is no whole wheat bread here that I have found), and coffee so loaded with sugar that it’s more like syrup. For me they make tea with cardamom and boiled milk. And cookies – they’re really into sweets here – sugar is considered a food like any other, certainly not something to be consumed in moderation. For lunch, which is their big meal, they usually make a noodle soup, potatoes of some kind, rice, perhaps some cooked vegetables, and maybe a ‘salad’ of cucumber, a bit of tomato, and shredded beets (no lettuce). And of course more bread and hot tacos. ‘Dinner’ is almost always refried beans and rice – they add a little salad for me. Sometimes they serve a very salty white cheese with the beans, but cheese is very expensive here, so it’s more of a treat than a staple.
My days are pretty full. For the first few days I headed to the school, right in the centre of town, right after breakfast, came back ‘home’ (not far from the school) for lunch and a ‘siesta’, which for me involved reviewing my vocabulary and grammar notes, and then went back to the school until almost dinnertime, when it was almost dark. Antigua is such a beautiful city that I wanted to see more of it, so I started spending my two and a half hour lunch break roaming around town, picking up snacks at the market or at one of the food joints near the central plaza. I practiced my nascent Spanish on street sellers, who are mostly indigenous women, and often with kids in tow. And took lots of pictures.
There are lots of herbal preparations for sale here, made with natural ingredients.
On January 15th the family celebrated another Christmas event – the ‘last day of Christmas’. Olga’s mother and father, sister and sister’s young daughter were all there. There was a sweet smell of incense – the first time I had seen or smelled it in their home. Family members were playing flutes and shaking rattles, singing and chanting. It was clearly a religious ceremony, but my Spanish wasn’t good enough to decipher what was being said or sung. Once the ceremonial aspects of the evening were concluded we were all served glasses of hot ‘ponche’ – a mix of fresh and dried fruits, cooked with water, sugar and cinnamon. After that we shared a bottle of very sweet ‘champagne’, and ate pancitos dulces – very sweet little breads, almost like cookies. Everyone was talking, joking and laughing at the same time. It was such a treat to be with them, to share this family celebration. I like my family very much – every day warmer, more ‘amable’. Olga often puts flowers in my room, and one day a candle appeared. Very sweet.
On a day off from school I took a short bus ride to San Antonio Aguas Calientes, about 8 km from Antigua. It’s primarily indigenous village with many tiendas and tourist traps selling huipiles (colourful embroidered ‘blouses’), weavings, shirts and dresses. Everywhere the shopkeepers – almost all women – beckoned visitors in with “pase adelante” (come right in). It reminded me of my time in the old city of Jerusalem, where the Arab shopkeepers would beckon us in with “welcome please this shop”. It was another festival day of some sort – there was a procession of floats, mounted on truck beds with fantastic decorations. Kids dressed as popes and kings, angels and Virgin Marys in robes of day-glow pink and green and yellow nylon. Indian woman and girls in brightly coloured and beautifully embroidered huipiles, shawls filled with babies and baskets tied round shoulders and waists. The procession made slow progress, stopping frequently so men with long sticks could lift electric wires just high enough to let the trucks pass under. An 8-piece band played circus or football parade music. Young boys with more macho vigour than ability took turns ringing the old church bells. The church was destroyed by an earthquake, so the bells now stand free on wooden posts just off the plaza. But it was an all-American hot-dog stand that stole the show. And business was equally brisk for the four or five old women who were crouched on the earth beside the hot-dog stand, their large baskets filled with home-made candies, carefully wrapped in corn-husks tied with red strings.
Today’s my last day in Antigua. I’ve spent the last few days trying to get more photos of the city – the wonderful old churches, many damaged by frequent earthquakes, the colourful buildings and beautiful gardens. It’s a very picturesque city.
When I’m walking down certain streets I can see the biggest of the two nearby volcanos. Acatenango often spews thin streams of black smoke into the air, a kind of menacing reminder of its true power. It did erupt about five years ago, spewing a considerable amount of ash and hurling ‘bombas’ out of its crater, but they didn’t go far. No one here seems particularly worried about it. They’re much more worried about earthquakes, and they’ve suffered a few. The most recent big one, just a couple of years ago, in 1976, did a lot of damage. Many adobe structures were destroyed, and thousands of people died. Just a couple of days ago, when I was in school, there was a minor ‘temblor’ – everyone rushed out of buildings and houses into the street. There was much excitement – people yelling and running about, wanting to know if their families were okay. But it was quickly over, with no more aftershocks, and within an hour we were all back inside and conjugating verbs.
Note: “The most destructive earthquake in recent Guatemalan history was the 1976 quake with a magnitude of 7.5 Mw and a hypocenter depth of just 5 km. This shallow-focus earthquake, originating from the Motagua Fault, caused 23,000 fatalities, leaving 76,000 injured and causing widespread material damage.”
For more information about the 1976 quake go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Guatemala_earthquake
Yesterday one of my teachers offered to take me up to the top of a mountain overlooking Antigua. It was a pretty nice day, clear enough that we were able to enjoy a spectacular view of the city and, of course, the volcano.
I’m heading to Panajachel and Lake Atitlan tomorrow. I’m going to miss Olga, Rafael and the kids, going to the school, and the people and places I’ve become familiar with in Antigua. It would be so easy to just stay here... . But the road calls. I want to get away from the city – even a city as lovely as this. I’m definitely glad I decided to spend time at a school here, and I’m looking forward to learning and speaking more Spanish as I go. One of the expressions I’ve learned that I particularly like is: ‘que lo vaya bien’ – ‘I hope it goes well for you’. (I prefer it to the more religious ‘vaya con dios’, which is more commonly used. Almost everyone here is Catholic...)
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