Three weeks in Xela

21.5.09

Three weeks living in Xela and I feel like I´ve been here for ever. All the ex-pat longtermers say that the city sux you in and takes a long time to spit you out again. I think this may be true. Or maybe it´s just that my traveling style has changed. No longer do I feel the need to see all the main attractions and tourist haunts...feeling unsatisfied until all places have been visisted. I´m quite content trying to live my life as a local and settling in in one place rather than being on the move, ticking off the places I´ve seen as they start to all blend together.

The political situation in Guatemala has recently developed another important historical milestone. A well respected lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg was shot dead a little over a week ago in the capital. A little after his murder, the media released a video that Rosenberg produced if he was killed. He incriminated several high ranking government leaders for his murder, including the President, Alvaro Colom. This has started a massive political debate upon corruption in the current government. There are groups asking for the government to be ousted and others who say its an attempt at destabilising democracy. Protests are occuring frequently and there´s even been talk of a possible cue by the opposition. This is a country that has suffered more than 36 years of civil war which ended in 1996. Trust in the government is essential especially if old wounds are to heal. Colom is very quickly loosing this trust. It´s amazing to see so much political debate in civil society. Apathy doesn´t exist here and people who have had access to education seem to be well informed about politics and the history of the place. A little different to Australia´s situation.

I was wondering through the La Democracia market yesterday, overwhelmed with the abundance of fresh food, kitchenware, traditional cloth and general chaos that a market that size brings. After purchasing what I believe to be Guatemala´s version of a huge squash from a wrinkled old lady sitting amongst her vegetables, she asked me where I was from. Everyone who´s white in Guatemala is considered to be a ´gringo´ (from the U.S.) until you prove them otherwise. I told her Australia and she looked at me bemused, not understanding that I wasn´t from the U.S. She had never heard of Australia and neither had any of her friends sitting near her. I told her that it was near Asia and left it at that. Almost as bad as when I was speaking to someone before I left Sydney about Guatemala and they responded, ¨Guatemala, what is that?¨.

I´m not sure if this is a tradition held solely by the Guatemalans, but for every occasions here (and this means for absolutely anything), fireworks/crackers are let off at ALL hours of the day (especially Sunday morning, very early...). My belief is that they are used with the aim to scare the living daylights out of people, especially while they´re sleeping. On mother´s day a couple of weeks ago, I woke up to the pleasant sound of bomb explosions - at 1 in the morning. This is a tradition that could be fazed out in my opinion.

So everyone may think that it´s a tropical country here, but the evidence is opposite, or at least in the mountains where Xela is situated. It´s bloody freezing! And here I was thinking that I was getting away from the Sydney winter. It also rains a lot, at least from the start of May till the end of October. When it rains in Xela, it´s definitely classified as a tropical downpour. You get saturated in one second flat, just as if you´ve had a shower, with ponds in your shoes and clothes that cling onto you like wet towels. Rivers run down the streets and laneways and walking becomes an opstical course, jumping from rock to rock with the objective of having less water inundate your shoes.

That´s it for now. Am off for a weekend trip to the ´lake´ and then for a week in a rural mountain school where I´m sure I´ll have no access to internet.

First week in America

4.5.09 - Sydney to Aukland – Not much to report, Aukland airport is as nice as any other airport, but watching the sun go down from the large windows next to the bar was inspirational and helped ease my post-goodbye sadness.

Aukland to L.A. – Bloody long trip! 12 hours of uncomfortable sitting, awkward neck positions while trying to sleep and receiving food that left much to be desired. We finally landed in the acclaimed city of L.A. with a few cases of masked people wondering around the airport…

Stopover for 12 hours – Angry officials greeted us at the immigration counter – two hand prints later and one unsmiling photo, I passed through with no problems (surprise!). Met a kiwi in the queue who was also waiting for his connecting flight so we decided to try our luck and do a quick tour of L.A… or at least Santa Monica beach.

First impressions – everything is so big! Cars especially are the size of trucks; funny bike police dressed with aviator sunglasses and cowboy uniforms, lots of fast food everywhere, lots of diverse ethnic groups – much more so than in Australia. I feel like I’m in a movie with American accents all around me (how surprising!). Santa Monica is a huge stretch of a beach, where some of Baywatch was filmed. Alongside hammers, troop carriers and limo’s lives the working class... it´s a weird but familiar contrast. I feel so strange being in America. Perhaps because I have seen and heard so much about this place and have very set ideas of what I will find here. To finally set foot on American soil and experience what I have only seen on T.V. is a marking moment indeed.

L.A. to Guatemala – I arrived in Guatemala after almost 48 hours of traveling and feeling very spaced and displaced. I realize at this point that I really don’t know how to say anything in Spanish and so I get my phrase book out, like a typical tourist and work out how to say “can you take me to the Xela bus stop” to the taxi driver. After some haggling about the price (I somehow managed to suss out the words for this!) off we went into the city of Guat.

First impressions – Guat. reminds me so much of Timor! The sprawl of city life, street vendors parading their goods, markets stretching out onto the streets, the way people drive, the large mountains in the background of the city, the fields full of produce... sometimes even the Guatemaltecans have similarities to Timorese people. Amazing – this makes me feel much more at home. One of the marking differences is the level of development in the city and towns. Bigger houses, bigger buildings, well constructed roads, better resourced, and generally seems to have more money than Timor - just a bit more...

After a four hour bus trip I arrive in Xela (Quetzalteco). I pick up my extremely heavy backpack (22 kg’s!) and set out to find my couch surfer friend.

Xela is a beautiful city/town set amongst the mountains and volcanoes of Guatemala. It’s cold in the morning and at night (didn’t prepare for that!) but sunny and relatively hot during the day. Most of its architecture has a renaissance feel to it, built during colonial times. There’s a gorgeous town plaza which displays the reconstructed church which collapsed in an earthquake in the 70’s. Speaking of earthquakes there’s been a few tremors in the past week. Eeek!

Guatemala is a country of more than 55% indigenous people. They’ve been discriminated against for centuries and are still so today. When the Spanish were here, they imposed a typical set of clothing for each indigenous group to be able to differentiate between them. You constantly see these dresses and skirts being warn in the street. It’s quite a strange site to see so many people wearing such colourful ‘uniforms’. These were around before the Spaniards arrived but weren´t regimented in style and colour to each indigenous group.

So I started my Spanish school on Monday (felt like I was starting my first day of school all over again!) and feel like I’m already improving although I get frustrated when I can’t explain things properly, which happens a lot! I have an elderly woman teaching me Spanish for five hours a day, five days a week. I don’t think she liked me too much at first (another bloody tourist wanting to learn Spanish!) but I’m sensing that I’m growing on her. She’s been telling me about the problems that indigenous (Maya) people face and has also been telling me about her political efforts in the civil war, to organize women. My flatmates speak to me mostly in Spanish and thanks to my French and Tetum, I seem to understand most of what they say. I do make up some words (normally a mixture of Tetum and Italian) but either people nod politely in agreement not having understood a word or they understand what I say.

That´s it for now - I will put up some photos up of Xela soon - once I get over my shyness and take my camera out for a walk around town.