Meeting Rigoberta Menchú (plus drunken antics)

Sometimes things just work out.  Saturday I was able to meet Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchú after a chance encounter with a cleaning lady provided us this unique and unexpected opportunity.

We had been reading Rigoberta’s book, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia, for our ethics class.  Ellory and I happened to both be reading that very book in the garden behind our school one Friday afternoon, when Adrianna, the guesthouse cleaning lady, saw the book in Ellory’s hand and mentioned that Rigoberta was coming to visit her town and we were reminded that this mythical character from the pages of our book was a real living and breathing woman in Guatemala.  Ellory told her that she wished she could meet her.

We just kept reading in the garden, but later Ellory and I talked about trying to capitalize on this opportunity to see a world-renowned human rights activist while she was in our backyard.

Eventually I got around to asking Adrianna about the details of Rigoberta’s visit to her town and she told us she would talk to her parents to see if there’s was any chance we could meet her while she was in our area.

Friday, Adrianna told me that Rigoberta was coming to Olintepeque at 10 Saturday morning to talk at the political headquarters and we were welcome to attend the event.  I asked Loloya, my Spanish teacher, for directions to get to Olinteque, which was only half an hour from Xela, and scrambled to spread the word to my classmates to meet outside Celas Maya at 8:45 the next morning to trek to Olinteque for the talk.

Friday night we had our traditional end of the week party at Celas Maya and afterward went to La Rumba.  Many of us exceeded the necessary and sufficient conditions of drunkness, although I decided to take the night off because I was only one day removed from a brief but strength-sapping spat of diarrhea probably related to a smoothie containing blackberries of questionable quality.

Anyhow, Saturday morning rolled around and I was surprised to find that 15 of us had assembled for the trip to see Rigoberta, despites the excesses of the previous night.  We all crammed onto a microbus that took us to a mall called País.  From there we walked to a corner where chicken buses going to Olinteque pick up passengers.  There was some confusion whether we were on the correct corner, and later on which bus to take, but we soon found a bus that was headed toward Olinteque and hopped on it.  The ride wasn’t long and only cost us two quetzales.

The problem was that it just dropped us off on the side of the highway and we had no idea where we were.  The ayudante pointed us in the direction of the central park and we wandered in that direction until we started doubting ourselves and asked for directions again.  The church came into view and we knew we were nearing the city center.

As we reached the bustling central park we could see there was a wedding going on, but we couldn’t decipher where the political headquarters was.  We were the only foreigners in the town.

The building was supposed to be behind the municipal building so we went around the block but couldn’t spot it.  Directionless, we stood around in the central plaza and seriously feared that the event wasn’t going to happen or that we would never find it.  We asked a few people in the park about Rigoberta and some didn’t even know that she was going to be in their town.

We headed to the street behind the municipal building again, asked for directions one more time from a shop keep and finally were pointed in the direction of the political headquarters.  I asked the host if Rigoberta was going to be there, he assured me she would be, I asked him if we could enter the building and watch the event and he warmly welcomed us.

An ancient marimba player who had obviously past his prime, cajoled semblances of rhythms and chord progressions out of his rickety machine while we waited for the event to start.  When Rigoberta arrived, the crowd applauded as she shook hands with everyone on her way to the front.  Her vibrant Mayan dress gave her the air of a powerful matriarch.

She made some brief remarks before the MC proceeded to present awards to numerous local party leaders.  We had never heard of Winaq, Rigoberta’s political party, before the event but we soon got to know the group, as all of the party leadership was gathered in the courtyard.

After all the awards had been given out, Rigoberta addressed the crowd and laid out the goals of Winaq.  Ultimately, she wanted Winaq to become the dominant political party in Guatemala with a Winaq president in office.  She stressed the party is not an indigenous-only club, but one that hopes build a coalition among the various minorities and oppressed people to make Guatemala a country for all cultures and peoples.

Alas, it would seem Rigoberta has a long way to go to achieving her goals, because the last time she ran for president, she gained only three percent of the vote.  Still she stressed building the movement from the ground up and developing young leadership in the party.  She even urged indigenous families have big families with lots of good children to carry on the movement.

After the talk, we waited for our chance to talk to Rigoberta and pose for a photo with her. There was quite a line, but we got our chance and even got her to sign our books and pose for a photo with our whole group.  She was very gracious and the camera crew even asked some of us to go on camera to talk about what interested us about their party.

And if my day couldn’t get any more amazing, that afternoon we had a little party at my friend’s Travis apartment and relaxed on the roof with some snacks and beverages.

The view from Travis's roof.

Next, we headed to the big soccer game: The Superchivos versus archrival Cremas (one of the two teams from Guatemala City).  I was in the group that had success smuggling alcohol into the game, but some had their contraband booze confiscated.

We seated ourselves in the rowdiest section and spent most of the game standing, dancing around, chanting and screaming.  It was an exciting back and forth game.  Xela scored first, but fell behind 1-2 before coming back to win 3-2.

Smoke from fireworks obscured the screaming crowd after a Superchivos' goal.

After the game we scampered though the streets still cheering and headed to our standby discoteca, La Rumba, to dance.  Our Superchivos garb was popular with the club-goers, and some Latina shorties seemed very taken with the Gringo men.  As Jordan later said of a Latina that was dancing with him: “Her hips were definitely not lying to me,” of course referring to one our of favorite club songs Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.”

Perhaps I tainted my pure cultural experience watching Rigobarta speak with a night of rowdy hooligan antics and dance-whoring, but I like to think the two halves balance themselves out.

Las aguas del Pacífico, del Caribe y de Atitlán

I have neglected to blog for a month so I have left a lot of gaps to fill in.  Last time I blogged, I dwelled on my stomach ailments, but fortunately, I have no problems to report this post.  Spring break came and went and only three weeks of class remain, so it’s starting to set in that our stay in Guatemala is almost over.

The idea that we are running out of time has been on our minds for a while, so the weekend before we started spring break, a large group of us hopped on the chicken bus to Tulate to relax at the beach rather than let another opportunity to travel and see Guatemala slip by.  We hadn’t made reservations at a hotel but we heard from last year’s study abroad group that we could stay three nights at a nice all-inclusive hotel for only Q450.  This proved to be false, so we ended up shacking up at a dive motel that had only one redeeming quality: a pool with a waterslide.  On the bright side, it was about Q50 a person each night.

We didn’t let that get us down and the first night we swam in the Pacific, played soccer with some locals, ate at a restaurant with delectable fish and seafood, and got drunk and swam in our motel’s pool.  Don’t worry there was a lifeguard on duty.  Actually, his name was Carlos and he wasn’t a lifeguard so much as a motel employee who was at least as drunk as we were.  That played to our advantage though because he was willing to turn on the waterslide and take down the kayak off the wall to use in the pool.

BECKY SUHR

On the down side, it turned out that Carlos was that special creepy type of drunk that breaks into women’s rooms in hopes of seducing them and watches young ladies while they use the motel’s community showers by peaking under the shower curtain.  Suffice to say, the women of our group were creeped out.  We also suspect that Carlos stole Jordan’s camera and Phil’s flashlight.  Well, at least we had our fun in the pool.

The second day, I basted myself in the sun too long and scorched bright pink sunburns onto the pasty skin of my stomach.  I decided to go to bed early rather than defile the serenity of the pool with another night of drunken escapades.  Nonetheless, the pool was defiled anyhow by superior partiers than I.

Sunday we took the chicken bus from the coast back to our home in the mountains.  We returned in time to attend a birthday party for Carolina, our director’s three-now-four-year-old daughter.  We played musical chairs, broke a piñata, and went to a Guiseppe’s for pizza.  It was quite a fiesta and it seemed like Carolina had a blast.

Just four days later on April 2, our spring break began, and our study abroad group broke into several smaller travel groups.  Some traveled with their parents around Guatemala, some met up with their parents in to Mexico or Honduras, and one group took a tour of religious sites and Mayan ruins.  Our group—Steph, Becky, Megan, Laura, Mike, Travis and I—set our sights on pure relaxation in balmy Belize. The seven of us rented out a three-bedroom house on the beach for six nights.  Moreover, we decided that we would spare ourselves the lengthy bus rides by purchasing plane tickets.

So on Friday morning we touched down at the Belize City airport, which may have been the smallest international airport I have seen in my life.  Like Nixon during the Watergate scandal, we walked down a staircase directly onto the runway.  We were greeted by a bright sun and eighty degree weather.  After going through the airport rigmarole, we boarded two taxis that took us to the harbor where we caught a watertaxi to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, the island where are house was.  From San Pedro a taxi took us to another boat, which finally brought us to our house a couple miles north of town.  We had to take a boat to our house because no vehicles larger than a golf cart were permitted on the northern part of the island.

Our house was well worth the wait.  We climbed off the boat onto our house’s palapa and crossed the forty feet of white sand that separated our house from the indigo blue Caribbean.  We discovered our house was fully equipped with a living room, kitchen, air conditioning, a safe to protect our valuables, and a master suite with a master bathroom, a TV and an Internet jack.  Moreover it was fashionably decorated inside with hardwood floors and ceilings and tribal accoutrements and outside with stucco walls and a red-tiled roof.

BECKY SUHR

We headed into to town to get some groceries and to meet up with Travis, who arrived later than us because he had bussed in from Flores rather than fly in.  We brought Travis back to our princely abode and made ourselves a feast of spaghetti with meat sauce, complete with fresh parmesan cheese and garlic bread.  After dinner I dipped into some Belizean coconut rum and kicked back in front of the TV.

The next day we relaxed on the beach outside our house and made plans to take a snorkeling and fishing trip the next day.  We went the cheapest option we could find, which turned out to be with a guide named Martin.  That night we dined out at Sweet Basil’s, a restaurant near our house, because we knew the maid was coming the next day and we didn’t want to have to wash our dishes if we didn’t have to.

We met Martin at nine the next morning at the Palapa Bar, which a short walk from our house.  The skin on Martin’s sinewy body was tanned dark leathery.  His accent was part Spanish, part Caribbean and part Creole.  His boat was a little beat up but it would get the job done.  He informed us he had been fishing and diving in Belize’s barrier reef all his life and had even dropped out of high school because all he needed to know was out on the reef.

First off, we did some fishing.  The fish were biting fast and over the next hour we hauled in nine keepers—mainly groupers and snappers.  Only Travis, the most experienced angler of all of us, failed to catch a fish.  Even Becky, who somehow managed to break a rod during our fishing adventure, landed a catch or two.

BECKY SUHR

Next we headed to a spot called Mexican Rocks to do some snorkeling.  We had enough masks but we were one snorkel short.  Martin reassured us that snorkels weren’t even necessary; in fact, he preferred to go without because they only got in the way.  We traded off snorkels so that one person wasn’t stuck without one the entire time.  I discovered that my mask leaked considerably and learned to accustom myself to looking through a pool of water inside my mask.  Still, the colorful coral of Mexican Rocks contained many interesting fish and we also saw a few stingrays lurking around the ocean floor.

Martin took us ashore so that he could prepare us a lunch of the fish we had pulled in.  While he went off to cook, we stumbled into a swanky bar called the Rojo Lounge that included a beach side pool with islands on which patrons could lounge.  We each purchased a vastly overpriced drink for the right to use this oasis.  I paid ten American dollars for a “Dark and Stormy” a drink consisting of ginger beer and rum.

BECKY SUHR

After an hour, Martin returned with our lunch sealed in tin foil.  We opened one package to reveal our fish grilled up with onions and peppers and another was filled with potatoes.  He also pulled out some tortillas and sodas.  Even if he had a few screws loose, Martin could fucking cook.  The fish was cooked perfectly and allowed us to beam with pride at our ability to not only appease our hunger with the catch we pulled in, but tickle our taste buds too.

We headed back to sea and anchored near the spot where the waves broke against the barrier reef.  Our bellies laden, we snorkeled up the barrier against a strong current, stopping just before the point were we were in danger of being thrown into the jagged coral by the surging waves.  We spotted anemones and crustaceans as we weaved in between coral formations.  We even made a game of swimming as far as we dared into the breaking waves before letting them launch us so that we had to dodge coral as we zipped shoreward.

On the ride back to our house, a loquacious Martin told us about the problems he had with his ex-wife and his teenage daughter as well as rambling on about other random subjects.  We colorfully told us how he made fun of his girlfriend for her lack of a tan until she had pulled down his drawers to reveal he lacked a tan in some places too.  We suspected he was drunk.  It was not yet three in the afternoon.

Back at our villa, he set about relaxing for the remainder of the afternoon.  Travis and I headed into town to purchase some drink supplies.  We came home bearing fifty-five dollars worth of rum and mixers to find Laura had made us some good old Easy Mac for supper.  After chowing down, Travis and I tried our hands at making piña coladas from scratch, by most accounts to utter failure since most people declined to drink our murky creation.  The silver lining was that we bartenders had more drinks to ourselves.

After pleasantly wasting away the day on the beach, we decided to eat out for dinner Monday.  We tried to locate a Chinese restaurant that my guidebook recommended but after a wild goose chase we discovered it had closed down.  We chose another recommended restaurant called Casa Picasso instead.  Steph and I split spinach manicotti and the house special sausage rustica over penne, both of which were delicious.  We headed back to Sweet Basil’s for rum punch, probably the tastiest drink ever concocted.  After collectively downing two pitchers of that sweet nectar, we returned to our house to set to work on the liquor with which we had stocked our cabinets.

This time Travis and I succeeded in mixing up some delightful peach spritzers.  We played Presidents and Assholes, Moose, Zoomy Zoomy and Never Have I Ever until we simply descended into debauchery.  Steph made us pizza, nachos and egg rolls to appease our late night hunger.  We even got to prance around in the rain to top off our night.

If this isn’t a theme yet, we spent Tuesday lounging around and relaxing on the beach.  For dinner we made chicken fajitas, which were good enough to convince ourselves that we didn’t need to eat out to placate our palates.

BECKY SUHR

Wednesday, Travis, Mike, Laura and I went snorkeling again, but this time we went to Shark-Ray Alley and Hol Chan Marine Reserve. We got to touch a shark, which felt like sand paper, and a stingray, which felt like tofu.  We saw turtles and eels—not to mention the schools of fish that swarmed around us, looking like streams of flying cars weaving in between the bright coral skyscrapers of a futuristic city.  The rest of the day couldn’t compare to our journey to the reef.  For dinner we had pasta and it was good.

Thursday we packed up and headed back to Belize City to catch our flight back to Guate.  We stayed in the capital Thursday night, and then took a bus to Panajachel Friday morning to spend the rest of vacation at Lago Atitlán.  Mike and I stayed in San Marcos de la Laguna where we got to hang out with the Conk family.  We tried to take a sauna Friday night at our hostel but the fire was not properly stoked and we ended up barely breaking a sweat.

Saturday Shannon, her brother Ryan, Mike and I went cliff jumping just outside of town.  Later we took a boat to San Pedro and wandered around the town.  We wanted to climb to the top of the city’s church to get a view of town, but the front door was locked.  We found an alternate way up by jumping a railing blocking our way and succeeded in reaching the top.  We returned to San Marcos to eat dinner with the Conks at Paco Real, a restaurant that had excellent curry.  After dinner we attempted to sauna again, this time at the Posada Schumann where the Conks were staying, this time with much greater success.

Mike and I woke up at 5:30 the next morning and kayaked out into the middle of the bay to watch the sunrise.  Unfortunately, clouds obscured the sunrise and Mike broke his flimsy paddle and had to make due with two broken ends.  Luckily, eventually the sun broke through the clouds and put on quite a display.  After enjoying the spectacle, we kayaked over to a cliff and scaled it from the side so we could jump off it.  It was quite a way to start your morning.

Mike and I traded paddles before we kayaked back to the hostel so I went ashore like a butterfly with clipped wings.  We had some scrumptious pancakes for breakfast and then boated over to San Pedro to do a horseback tour of the surrounding countryside.  I had never ridden a horse before so it was a foreign experience for me.  At first it seemed like a very rough ride, but soon I got the hang of it.  I discovered that galloping is actually easier than trotting because it’s a smoother motion for the rider.  We snaked through the forest on a mountainside path and visited a secluded beach.  We had a spectacular view of the lake.

Later than afternoon, I went back to Xela with Steph, Becky and Megan, concluding my spring break travels.  All in all, considering the time lying on the beach, the saunas and the comfortable accommodations, it had been the most relaxing spring break of my life.