A couple of weeks ago the 23 people I am travelling with were all strangers. Not even passing acquaintances. Strangers.
Since then we have had conversations about toilet paper( lack of) and bowel movements (abundance of). We have all had cold showers and shivered while scurrying down an outside hall in nothing but a skimpy towel. We have shared clothing when luggage was delayed, shared food when some had and others didn't, and picked up/dropped off each other's clean/dirty clothes to the neighbourhood laundret.
Finally, I admit defeat. I struggle through Thursday by not eating. My theory? Nothing in, nothing out. It works but instead of shitting all day, I simply feel like shit.
After a horrible night on Thursday I get up early Friday and begin taking the Sipro antibiotic. My Ottawa doc gave it to me to bring in the unlikely case that I were to develop an intestinal infection. I was tied to a toilet. Immodium didn't work. My poor body was pleading, "Take the damn medicine already!"
Jackie, Meg, Paul and I take the Sipro. (It was either that or have my family ship me down a container of Cottonelle. Highly unlikely!
Thursday we go to the sprawling Chi Chi Market in Chichicastenango. The road out of San Pedro is brutal. Ok ok, it is the same road we took in, but it feels far worse. I feel quesey but oddly cheerful. Shopping always makes me smile. I attempt to think about something else because imagining that I might "explode" with little warning is giving me a headache.
But my inner whining becomes insignificant when we come upon an serious highway fatality. It looks like a truck trying to navigate the winding downward slope collided with an SUV going up on his side of the road. It must have just happened. The driver's side of the SUV is gone. I've never seen a single person wear a seatbelt here so we assume the driver, at least, has died. Somehow our van driver, Jose, inches by. He stops to get out, as do everyone in the van, except Jim and I. I know my limitations. They are not gone long when they all reappear and we continue our journey, in silence for a while as we process what we have seen. We only discuss with our inner selves.
The mid-day sun is hot when we pull into the guarded market parking lot. Hell, they guard everything here. Coca Cola trucks, like banks, have armed guards. In a place like this, with streets upon streets crammed with "stuff", shopping is a game best enjoyed alone. I accept that it is a solo activity. For the next three hours or so I wonder. Every few feet a seller approaches me -- children with big doe eyes pleasing for money to buy books, old women with woven cloth I haven't got a clue what I would do with, wrinkled old men sell knives and metal gadgets and carved wooden intruments.
"Hey lady," they say "I give you a good deal. How much you give me for this?"
If I play along they will follow me. The name of the game is "Wear the Gringo Down". Some doubting-Thomas place within me wonders if they live in mansions somewhere, with big screen TV's and iPad's at their disposal (I want an iPad!) .
The ChiChi Market is famous amoung tourists for its spending possibilities, and among locals for its money-making opportunities. ChiChi assualts the senses. Its effect is brutal and constant. Today is not a busy market day, yet it is everything I imaged it would be. Down uneven cobblestone streets the smokey smell of fried food, noisey heckles of desperate sellers and unrelenting touch of child hawkers adds to the ambiance of the garbage strewn streets.
From time to time I bump into a fellow GSP volunteer and we joke about, or show off, something we have just purchased. But I am enjoying my solitary wandering. I don't buy much. Alot of what is here is the same as what we see elsewhere. It all confuses me. I feel uncomfortably pressured. In the end, I get a few gifts for Carol's kids and a few woven clothes for me.
At 2pm or so I take the scrunched up paper given to me by the shuttle service and begin looking for Ingleise Santo Tomas. I have this nasty little voice in my head that tries to sabbatoge my resolve. "You are in the wrong place," it nudges me. "You won't find them and they will leave without you. You'll be alone and robbed and have to live on the streets of ChiChi eating poisonous street vendor food, with no access to toilet paper for the rest of your life!"
I find the church. There are two churches here, one at either end of the market square. The big one is Santo Tomas. The church steps face the square, which seems odd... What a strange place to meet a tourist van.
Santo Tomas is a huge Evangelical Church. Its white precense is towering. There is nothing magestic about it though. It is not of the ornate Catholic variety. This church is dusty, but not from a lack of upkeep, from over use, from over devotion, from the pain born of uncertainty and dreams crushed by the burning force of life gone crazy.
We have said adios to the majority of the group. They are going back to Antigua before flying home. Marg, Joe, Sarah, Margaurita an I are going back to San Pedro. In some ways our Guatemalan adventures have only just begun.
I walk around the church several times looking for a place the van might meet us. Up a steep hill past vendors selling stuff they have obviously picked out of the garbage...much-warn shoes and Nintendo games from the 80's. I don't see any vehicle displaying the "Big Foot" sign, I was assured would be there. So, I head back to the steps and wait for 3pm and the others to arrive.
I take pics while I wait; pics of a drunk asleep in a corner; pics of a man swinging a burning candle and praying; pics of the people of the market, bustling with activity. My GSP team shows up (thank you god!)
Our van driver doesn't show up. The next hour we scramble to make other arrangements. I talk a guy in a Guatemala tour vest in to calling our tour company for us. He does. At the same time Joe uses a pay phone to call. An hour later our designated meeting time the driver shows up and we begin the harrowing journey back to San Pedro.
Friday I pass on all group activity. They are taking a boat somewhere to see something. I don't even care. I am feeling better and all I want to do is relax and write. I am excited to get my blog back on track and to download my photos. I need to allow my insides to heal. I go to the terrace at the Mikaso with my netbook and journal entries. I eat slowly and deliberately.
At night I sleep soundly without the aid of my buddy gravol!
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