Teacher on Two Wheels

Friday 12/21/07 St. Lucia Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala

Above: Sugar cane field at dusk

Guatemala. It already feels so different from Mexico.

In the early mornings, when the insects pass off singing duties to the birds, women walk down dirt paths next to the roads with enormous plastic tubs balanced on their heads, tubs containing everything from coconuts to dirty clothes to rocks to peanuts.

Men with cowboy hats, shirts half-buttoned, and enormous machetes at their sides sit at outdoor food stalls along the highway and gossip over breakfast.

The sun falls on the dust in the air in a way that makes it beautiful and less like dust.

Pick-up trucks over loaded with people race down the highways as their passengers stare off bleary-eyed into the blur of tropical green that surrounds them on all sides like a tunnel of spraying paint.

A mother breast feeds her baby openly and waves at me with her free hand when I pass.

Dogs seem skinnier and dirtier than those in Mexico.

As the sun floats like a fresh balloon, everyone races around in the cool of the morning before heat-induced lethargy settles over them like the thick smoke that clouds around the outdoor barbeque pits.

Above: Central street market in Mazatenango, Guatemala

*****

At lunch time people still buzz about, but they wear the heat on their faces as a type of flatness. Tired eyes. Straight lips. Sweat that refuses to stay wiped away. A smile really must be earned when the sun is high.

Shoe shine boys with blackened fingers, some as young as seven or eight, pace the central plazas of the cities like jittery junkies and look down at the shoes of passerbys before deciding whether or not to speak to them. I wear sandals so rarely do their eyes ever make it past my ankles. When they spot a set of boots, they perk up and get chatty.

Ice cream vendors ring bells as they push their carts, bells with rings that almost sound cool in the heavy midday heat.

People lounge in any spot that is comfortable and don’t feel the need to explain themselves. We all understand. Doing nothing for 20 minutes or two hours is a way to avoid conceding defeat to the sun. A man spots me flopped on a concrete park bench in the shade and nods. Not a Hello nod. An It’s OK nod. A Wait It Out nod.

*****

In the late afternoon the truckers get impatient with the traffic and start making roads out of tiny shoulders. One cuts too close and tips into a ravine. No one stops or seems to care.

Tractors stir up blooms of dust in the afternoon fields.

Sugar cane burns and seeps into everyone’s nostrils. Its aroma is foul but faintly sweet and contains just enough sugar to make the fruit that the teenage girls are selling at the speed bumps and stop signs seem sweet enough to buy.

Trucks full of day laborers in dirty shirts blast reggaeton for all to hear as the traffic crawls along.

Men on bicycles with wobbly wheels and rusted fenders smile and wish me luck as I pass them.

The hired security guards that stand in front of almost every store with electricity hold their shotguns at their sides like heavy purses. Another day without a shot.

*****

Despite all the newness that surrounds me, the iguana road kill, the fruit I have never seen before, there’s a familiarity here that makes me feel comfortable. People are still people. Their smiles are the same ones I grew up seeing. The water is still wet. The sun is still hot.

There is just enough sameness to draw on to find the legs to stand and run (or ride, rather) yet not so much that I’m left feeling like I know what will greet me when I round the next turn.

Because of this mixture of sameness and newness, a subtle confidence and a wild curiosity can co-exist within me when I travel, a co-existence of mindsets that leaves the world aglow and my legs itching to move.

Above: Relief from the gnats in the sugar cane field.