Man Must Dance

It can be stressful for me here. From the moment I lift my head off my infant-sized, rock hard Winnie the Pooh pillow, until I throw myself back onto my firm futon-y mattress, there are very few moments when I do not feel uncomfortable in some way. “Estás servido (You’re served),” Abuelita announces through my door every morning. A sloppy bowl of atol (watery warm milk sometimes with mushy rice in it), beans and boiled plantains await me every morning, occasionally with eggs and hot dogs posing as sausages. Plantains down here are about 3 times the size of bananas in the states and boiled plantains, for the record, taste like banana vomit. My other meals are usually much better, but eating beans almost two out of every three meals angers the beans… and they revolt…big time. Walking to class, I find myself short of breath: partially due to the altitude, partially due to the dust and the fumes spewed out by the cars here. If most of these cars went in for inspection in the states, they would be decommissioned and deconstructed on the spot. In Spanish class, it takes all the mental energy I can muster just to understand what is being said to me. After four hours of Spanish, I try to sneak on the internet to send out a few e-mails to family and friends. Electronic communication is a shitty replacement for real person-to-person interaction and this time of the day is always like licking honey on a knife for me: when I get e-mails they make me feel great, but they also remind me how far I am from the people that matter most to me (the honey is worth it, so send me e-mails!). I’m meeting plenty of great people here, but people come and go so quickly that it is tough to get close with anyone. This list could keep going, but I think I’ll stop here.

There has been one thing, however, that has consistently lifted my mood whenever I’ve found myself being bogged down by all the things I whined about in the first paragraph. That one thing is salsa.

I got my first taste of the spicy dance during my first week here, and now I am hooked. It’s so mathematical yet fluid; structured yet free-flowing. Even after my first day when my hips were rigidly locked in place and I was literally walking through the steps, I felt great. Since then I’ve taken a couple more lessons – either free ones at bars or one’s that were privately arranged by a friend – and, I must say, I’ve come a far way from the rhythm-less white-boy who couldn’t follow his freshman roommate, Alex the Cubano, in the basic steps. Now I slowly feel my hips starting to break free, and when they do I feel myself breaking free of whatever is getting me down. When I spastically spin my partner and screw up, there’s no pressure. We laugh, genuinely, fully, and without a care, and we try it again. For a lot of my life, I was always the guy watching on the side of the dance floor – and I guess I mean that metaphorically, as well as literally – but here and now, I have no shame showing off the very limited arsenal of moves at my disposal in public. After all, we all just have to dance sometimes.

A friend (thanks Davíd!) recently reminded me that, while it’s important to worry about the big picture, if you can’t find things in life to enjoy you will go insane. Like my Aussie buddy Andy once said, “Friday night is the only reason why capitalism hasn’t collapsed yet. ‘I hate my goddamn job… oh wait, it’s Friday night! Let’s get pissed (drunk)!’” And it’s true, how miserable would my trip be if I only focused on the things I’m missing here? How miserable would life be if we didn’t find some time to just let go and dance?

La Laguna Chicabal

The Laguna Chicabal is a crater lake that fills the remnants of a volcano in the small rural village of San Martin. The lake is considered sacred by the Mayans, so much so that visitors are forbidden to touch its water and are strongly discouraged from visiting during the worship ceremonies in May. The lake itself, being at such a high elevation, is often blanketed by clouds filling the volcanic crater and the town is a forty minute microbus ride from the city center. Nevertheless, the Laguna Chicabal is on many Xela-bound tourists’ must-see lists. Coming from New Jersey, the state whose biggest natural attraction is the Jersey Shore, I have become one of those foreigners eager to eat up all the nature that Quetzaltenango can throw at me. This past Saturday, five fellow students-volunteers joined me on a little day excursion to the sacred lake.

We met up at the Parque Benito Juarez where there was a massive kids’ party in the central gazebo. Piñata after piñata was hung up only to be smashed and eviscerated as we waited for the rest of our group to show up. Vendors strolled by, some with dozens of belts draped over their shoulders, others pushing ice cream carts with cowbells clanging rudely. After setting up a 9:30 rendezvous time, we finally began our journey at 10:15.

It’s funny how many things happen here – things that should be infinitely foreign to me – that I’ve simply become numb to. Why wouldn’t there be a woman in Mayan garb handlessly carrying a basket wider than her shoulders on her head? Of course people ride decked out American school buses that spew out black fumes that look like the smoke monster from lost. You mean to tell me that entire families don’t ride on a single motorcycle in the States? Oh look, there’s a man taking a dump on the sidewalk; just another Sunday afternoon in Xela.



After we were swiftly herded onto our microbus – one of those long vans you were warned to
avoid as a child – I tried looking at the city with fresh eyes once again. I realized that I’ve forgotten what enforced traffic laws are like. The only speed limit here seems to be as fast as you can go before the next speed bump – essentially a six inch curb that stretches the width of the street. We sped by a man carrying a single six inch shrimp in an outstretched arm as he walked into the street. As we left the city, there was a man driving a pickup truck with a six-ish year old boy confidently standing in the bed holding onto the outside of the cabin. Our van made “stops” along the way, slowing down enough to let whoever needed a lift to dive in. There was a “Please don’t litter” sign with almost a mound of garbage sitting in front of it.

As we drove further and further from the city, the scenery changed drastically. We were in farm country now. There were modest shacks of houses surrounded by fields of corn, potatoes, and other types of produce. There were women and children rummaging through some crops impossibly placed on steep hills. Children playfully ran across two wooden boards posing as a bridge across a small canal. As we came closer and closer to the clouds, I knew that I was about to see a very different side of Guatemala.

We were dropped off at La Distancia, a random point on the road with a street leading through a village and ultimately to the Laguna Chicabal national park. As we climbed up the 45 degree concrete incline, we passed many small farmhouses. The kids we passed gave us huge smiles as did most of the adults as they watched us struggle to walk up their street. Eventually the paved road ended and we had to continue up a wide mud path. We passed three young boys – younger than my sisters – wielding machetes and carrying huge piles of firewood on their backs. I wondered what the indigenous villagers – especially the children – here thought of outsiders parading through their town on a regular basis. We also passed a German-born Aussie named Shandor that helped out with our Kids’ Day activities. “It’s like a propah feckin’ jongle down there, mates,” he raved, clearly happy with his hike to the lake.

About fifteen minutes and six “that’s what she said” jokes later, we reached the park entrance. We paid our 15Q entrance fee and began the last forty-five minute stretch of our hike. Ascending the last chunk of the volcano, the clouds hid the surrounding scenery from our view. We reached the Mirador – the lookout point – and, thankfully, the lake was visible. The only things separating us from reaching our lakeside destination were five hundred of the most awkward, steep, and uneven steps I’ve ever had to descend. Walking through the tunnel of foliage, everything around me seemed unusually green. Leaves were bigger than my hands and there were fungi and ferns growing wherever they could. Bamboo plants sprawled out wherever they so pleased. It felt “like a propah feckin’ jongle” alright.

After surviving the steps, we emerged from our path to an opening by the lake. Annah, one of the long-term volunteers, and I were the first to emerge. Much to our disappointment, the fog had rolled in as we were walking down and we could not see more than 15 feet in front of us over the lake or along its shore. As we stood there initially, we might as well have been on the set of some Friday the 13th movie it felt so creepy. After a few minutes, however, I felt oddly at ease. The fog cleared and it was easy to see why this space is considered so sacred. Everything was so tranquil. The only noises to be heard were birds arguing in the trees, bees buzzing by, and our intrusive voices. The clouds gently came and went, and the wind softly stirred the lake’s surface.



We began walking around the lake, and scattered about were random “altars” – designated cleared areas that requested to be treated with respect through wooden signs. I wanted so badly to hide among the trees in May and see exactly what kinds of ceremonies went on here. Churches and temples can feel majestic yet always artificial and manmade; this lake just seemed so real. I caught up with Garret, another student-volunteer, to find him standing at the edge of the lake. “Check this out,” he said to us. “Hellooooooooooooo,” he shouted, and his voice bounced off the interior walls for a solid eight seconds. Woah, I thought. I imagined hundreds of people gathering here and chanting together. If you want to find a place where you can be pretty sure heaven will hear your prayers, the Laguna Chicabal is it.

The rains came to tell us that we had overstayed our welcome, and we decided to head out. After a much easier hike out, we reconvened by the welcome booth. One of the two men there asked us if we’d like a 5Q ride back to the “bus stop” in the back of his pickup truck. All of us tired and out of shape, we gladly accepted and climbed in with another man and four kids toting machetes and hoes.

As we awkwardly sat in the bed of this pickup truck, mercilessly being tossed around by bumps and clumsily sliding to and fro, I noticed the children’s boots. These kids were only about twelve and their rain boots were cracked and torn, exposing their still-growing feet to all the elements. They sat across from us, calmly alongside of us. How different our childhoods are – our upbringing, our families’ expectations, our education, our positions at birth, I thought to myself. This was one of many, many moments I’ve had here that has made me realize just how spoiled I really have been my entire life; one of the many, many moments that has made me realize how grateful I should be for what I have been blessed with by no doing of my own.

The kids got out, and I noticed that the man in the back with us was not speaking Spanish. Minutes later, he began talking to us in Spanish about the crops around there and how he learned Spanish while working in Miami for three years. I asked him what his primary language was, and he told me that it was Mam, one of the many indigenous tongues native to Guatemala. He told me very few people in his village can speak Spanish and most speak Mam like him. I came to Guatemala to learn Spanish so I’d be able to communicate the people and learn about their struggles through their own language. I hadn’t thought about it much until that moment, but I found it cruelly ironic that the language I wanted to learn was a relic of imperial Spain. The language I came to learn is, in reality, not the language of the oppressed. The indigenous have always been the ones repressed and it seems like that trend will continue for some time.

We were dropped off and almost immediately caught a microbus heading back to Xela. Exhausted from the hike and the lack of food, I didn’t feel like talking much. I put my head down on the seat in front of me and looked out the window. I saw kids working on their small crops with their families and my mind took off again. I thought back to the cracked rain boots, the kids hauling wood, the plight of the Mayans, and I thought about me, jollily strolling through the middle of it all to take a nice little day hike. It was too much for my mind to reconcile, so I did what too many of us do when confronted with these issues. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

El Día de los Niños

This past Thursday was the Día de los Niños (Kids’ Day) in Xela, and El Nahual organized an afternoon fiesta at the local zoo for its affiliate elementary schools. One hundred and thirty seven children from La Cuchilla, La Candelaria, and El Nahual’s Manos de Colores program came to enjoy the modest display of animals (turkeys and jaguars were the big attractions) and to play a bunch of carnival-esque games prepared by the volunteers.

In the two weeks before the Día de los Niños I had volunteered three times at La Cuchilla, an elementary school. The school sits on a narrow side street in a tiny neighborhood fifteen minutes outside of the city center. The doors to the classroom exit directly out onto the dusty road. Modest metal panels make up the ceiling and are the only thing separating the students from the elements overhead. Maps of Guatemala and pictures of the national flag adorn the fading red walls. In the second classroom, student art projects hang from the ceiling, conveniently disguising a dangling fly strip with hundreds of its victims on display.

Each time I went, I taught the same two classes, each time with at least two other volunteers. In the first, the 8-10 year old students sat two to a desk (when they were actually sitting). When we walked in, we were always greeted by a couple young girls in uniform skirts eager to show off their English skills. “How are you?” we’d ask and they’d shout back, “How are you!” with huge smiles on their faces. They don’t quite get the concept of “I’m good. And how are you?” With their school year almost coming to a close, you’d think

we’d be far past the basics. With so much volunteer turnover, however, I wondered how much good we’re actually doing these kids sometimes.

The question of whether or not we’re actually helping the kids bothered me a lot, but on Thursday I couldn’t think about that; there were games to set up. As I sat near the gazebo in the park waiting for the rest of the kids to show up, it started to rain. The city kids took shelter under the gazebo alongside me, but the rural kids weren’t deterred by the dark clouds. They continued sprinting around on the grass, having headstand competitions and playing tag.

The rain came and went, and I set up shop near a tree. I put my cardboard box/mini table on the grass and, as I sat there with my three cups and Styrofoam ball, Andy said I looked like a Gipsy hustler on the streets of Spain trying to peddle out fake Euros. Andy and Beth had some basketball-ish game set up, Rachel and Sarah had a mini-fishing pond behind me, and Steve and Shamus had get-the-ball-through-the-cardboard-clown’s-mouth games ready to my right. There were four more on the opposite side of the gazebo, but once the kids started playing, I didn’t get to see how they went.

Jaime, our director, gave all the children a little speech that I couldn’t hear, but I knew it was done once a stampede of kids came trampling toward us. Smiling faces, ranging from four to fourteen years old, encircled me and my box immediately. I would try to fool them, but – if there’s one thing I learned that day – I’m not meant to be a street hustler. I believe my record was 2 and 87. Every five minutes Jaime would ring a bell and the kids would sprint off to the next game on their list. I thought an hour sitting behind my box and spastically mixing cups would be the longest hour of my life, but each group of kids was so excited to be playing (and kicking my ass) that I found myself smiling along with them the entire time.

After an hour of intense gaming, the children sat on the grass anxiously awaiting to hear who won the big competition. I didn't listen to Jaime as he told them the scores because I already knew the big secret: they would all go home winners today. Instead, I sat looking at them and how genuinely happy they were to be there. I began thinking that maybe how much English they learn isn't so important; maybe our being there as volunteers should be about something bigger than that. I continued thinking as I watched them line up to receive their prizes - toys and hot dogs, all courtesy of Milosz's, a volunteer, Polish government grant. Maybe what these kids need most - maybe what all kids need most - is to believe that they have it in them to be something, to be a winner in life, I wondered. Maybe, being a mentor and showing them that I believe in them is just as, if not more, important as teaching them to conjugate verbs in English. As the last of the niños left the zoo to board our "bus" back to school, I knew they were all going home feeling like winners today - especially the kids who played against me. I just hoped that they'd feel like winners still tomorrow.

Andy and Beth

We sat at the dinner table together last Friday night – Andy, Beth and I – like we had done every night for the previous twelve days. This supper, however, would be our last together in the casa de Paty. As we finished eating, Paty came in holding a gift bag with a pink paper flower sticking out made by her very arts-and-crafts-y daughter, Nancy. She gave a mini-speech, telling them that she would never forget them and wishing them safe travels and happy lives. Andy graciously accepted in his broken yet always charming Spanish while Beth held back the tears. Later on Beth and Andy gathered the whole family – Paty, Abuelita, Nancy, little Javier, and even littler Diego Andres – in the living room and surprised them with a speech and gifts of their own. They all hugged and wished each other well and it was an incredibly warm and genuine moment.

Before coming to Guatemala, Andy and Beth had been traveling together for two and a half years. Andy, now 26, met Beth, now 25, when they were both living in the French Alps. From there, my Aussie buddy tagged along with his new British lady interest as she traveled to Barcelona to teach English. There, they fell for each other. Since then, they have traveled to their respective home countries together, some north African countries, India, back to the French Alps, and then to Central America. After a couple months of enjoying Nicaragua, Panama, and Costa Rica, they decided to come to Xela. Though they both began traveling with more self-indulgent intentions, the two of them have realized the potential they have to give back as they gain so much from each culture they encounter. Now they were on the eve of their three day trip to Mexico that they needed to take so they could renew their visas for Guatemala (and Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador) for another three months.

Since my first day here, Andy and Beth have been my mates. As Beth would say, they’re both “ace” (that’s British for cool/awesome/great). New to Xela (and without a key to the house) they took me under their wing and showed me the ropes here. Not only did they walk me to school the first day, but they invited me to join them to La Feria and the Dia del Independencia festivities. We would get lost in conversations about traveling, about health insurance, about the respective differences in our countries, about our families and friends, and so on.

An inch or so taller than me and about twenty pounds lighter, Andy’s physical presence isn’t all that commanding. As soon as he opens his mouth, however, it’s only a matter of seconds before the entire room is doubled over in belly-aching laughter. He’s a charmer to the max, no matter what language he is speaking. He just started learning Spanish on this trip and when he speaks Spanish his diction and syntax are frequently pretty off. Regardless, whether he’s talking to our host mom about his trip to the doctor, a street vendor he just bought some corn from, or whether he’s haggling with someone over the price of a toy drum, I’ve never seen him fail to at least get a sincere giggle. His charm is no act either. He is the kind of person that has the ability to enjoy life at even the most mundane of moments and to share that joy with those around him.

At roughly the same height as Andy with strawberry blonde hair and freckles, Beth looks pretty, but moreso she looks confident and self-assured. She has that Elizabeth Hurley-esque British accent that makes you feel like she is more sophisticated than you by default. While Andy is an extrovert to the max, Beth is more reserved in a crowd. She is very personable, but Andy steals the show. She is pensive and, like me, she completely loses her sense of place if a good one-on-one conversation starts rolling.

Together, they are perfect. Though they’ve spent every day of the last two and a half years together, they still seem to rediscover the core of their love every day. When Andy is on a roll with his charm, Beth’s eyes glimmer and betray how completely enamored by him she is. Likewise, Andy may poke fun at Beth from time to time but there’s no denying that Beth still has him wrapped around her finger. Whether they are playfully bantering about who is the best children’s book author or how effective garlic is as a panacea, or whether they’re discussing how their English class went today and what they can teach the kids the following day, they both always seem like there’s no place they’d rather be and no one they’d rather be with.

As I watched them hug and kiss Paty and company and bid them farewell, I felt a pang of panic. Who was I going to talk with at dinner? They other students living with us were Guatemalan and didn’t speak English. Who was I going to walk home from school with and compare Spanish classes with? Who was going to wake me up every morning before breakfast? Who would try to out-joke me now? I didn’t realize how much I had depended on these two before this moment. I jokingly told them that we were a tripod (Girl Next Door anyone?), but now I felt like my other two legs were fleeing and I’d be left alone to fall flat on my face.

However, as with all of my panicky, paranoid, and doubtful thoughts, I´m happy to report that they were wrong once again. I have been spending more time with my host family, I try out my Spanish with my Guatemalan student housemates at meals, and Andy and Beth are still in town for the next few weeks. Far from falling flat on my face, I finally feel like I´m starting to stand on my own here, like I´m riding a bike for the first time without training wheels. But I´ll write more about that later.

Thank you, Francis

Good teachers can teach their subject with competence and enthusiasm. They know the ins and outs of their material and they display a genuine passion for the topic at hand. Great teachers, however, take it a step further. While covering a specific academic subject, great teachers also manage to give lessons in the most important subject of all: life. They themselves can see the big picture, and they bring out their students’ abilities to do the same. I have had a handful of great teachers in my life, and I am happy to say that, after only two weeks of being here, I have one more to add to the list.

I have to admit, before sitting down for my first one-on-one Spanish class, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Our classroom at El Nahual is a large room on the second floor with only a thin layer of aluminum (I think. I don’t know my metals) panels separating our heads from the elements. There are eight tables scattered throughout the room with two cheap plastic chairs on each side, one for the teacher and one for the student. Several wooden Mayan masks watch us as they hang on the wall alongside a few naturey paintings – sunsets and forests and the like.

I arrived a half hour early on my first day with Andy and Beth. At eight o’clock, a short, slightly gordita Guatemalan woman wearing a zip-up hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and white basketball sneakers sat down across from me. She looked slightly out of breath and she was perspiring under bangs, but her movements were all controlled and confident. “Hola. Buenas Dias, Tom. Me llamo Francis…” and that’s how it began.

Nothing too spectacular happened on the first day of class. I cracked a couple jokes and she laughed. She played along and poked fun at me and my fake-egotism. That would change.

Before I knew it, we were still making jokes and telling funny stories, but our conversations got much heavier. By day two, she told me about the problems plaguing Guatemala – the corrupt and misleading government, the severe distrust lingering between towns and neighbors after the civil war, the inequality in education (a decent school costs about 1300Q a month and most parents make about 1400Q a month), the endless oppression of the Mayans, the lack of education in the countryside and the consequent over-reproduction of the family, machismo and how it holds women back, foreign domination in the past (by Spain) and today (US companies), and the list could go on. She only alluded to how she was connected to all of these problems; her weary eyes, however, told me that she carried their weight on a daily basis. Listening to her tell me about these issues in Spanish was difficult enough; trying to put myself in her shoes was impossible.

As time went on, sure, we covered the present, past, and imperfect tenses, prepositions, and a long list of idiomatic expressions, but we also covered so much more. I would tell Francis about my family, friends, and Julie, and she would remind me how important it is to keep in touch with the people closest to me in my life. I asked her about migration to the US and she told me about the many, many well-intentioned men who left their families for the States only to end up finding new wives and new lives. We talked about the spirit of the Guatemalan people. “Si me caigo, me levanto,” she explained. If I fall, I pick myself up. Here, people take hit after hit, fall after fall, and still, they find the strength to stand up again and again.

It wasn’t until our last two days together that Francis told me her story, and it was then that I realized how much she embodies her slogan for the Guatemalan people. Throughout our nine days of class together, she always seemed to be walking that fine line between appreciating whatever life has offered to the fullest and breaking down from carrying all that life has piled on her shoulders. When she was sixteen she faced the death of her mother and the subsequent abandonment of her father. She got back up. She worked all day to take night classes where she was ridiculed for being a woman. She kept moving forward. She asked me not to share the details of her marriage, so suffice it to say that she now lives alone with her three daughters – aged 13, 10, and 6. She gets up every morning with a will to live.

What impressed me most is that, despite these setbacks, she can still laugh at my stupid stories about Gina and her boyfriend and me being pulled over by the cops for “taking pictures of kids.” In one of our conversations, she told me that we all have problems in life, but we have to remember the problem is never bigger than us. Never. Even if all the doors around us appear closed, “siempre hay una ventana por donde entra la luz.” There is always a window for the light to enter.

Francis, if I ever feel overwhelmed by the problems that life will throw at me, may the memory of you always be my window.

El Volcan!

The volcano Santa Maria stands just outside of town and watches over Xela like the all-seeing eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings’ land of Mordor. Clouds collide with its tree covered face on a daily basis but nevertheless there it remains strong and unfazed. With a peak reaching 3772 meters above sea level into the sky (about 1400 meters higher than the city), it’s a formidable yet conquerable opponent for a novice hiker.

Since my first day here the volcano peered at me from a distance, daring me to ascend its cloud piercing peak. This past Sunday, Andy and I decided to accept its challenge. No big deal, I convinced myself, we’ll walk up in the morning to beat the rain, take some cool pictures, and be back home in time for lunch. Considering I couldn’t make the ten minute walk to class without being winded, I had no idea what kind of struggle awaited me.

The night before our hike, I couldn’t sleep again. Aside from the constant pitter patter of rain drops on the thin roof, the night was unusually quiet; the dogs weren’t barking, no trucks roared by, and the roosters took the morning off. As I laid there unable to sleep, I thought about my struggles from the first week. If nothing else, these first five days made me realize how much harder learning Spanish would be than I ever could have imagined. I thought about how much I’d have to push myself to transform my lazy tongue into an ‘r’ rolling champion. I thought about all the awkward attempted conversations that I’d have to initiate to get there. I wondered if I have what it takes.

It felt like I only blinked when Andy walked through the door and said, “Time to get up, mate. It’s a gorgeous day.”

For the first time, we were the first ones up in the house. We skipped breakfast hoping that four oranges, eight water bottles, and two bites of chocolate would be enough to sustain us throughout the morning. By 6:30, we were out of the house.

The sky was a brilliant blue and we could clearly see the Santa Maria awaiting us in the distance as we walked to our bus stop. Vendors were setting up their fragrant flower displays and food stands as we boarded our surprisingly empty chicken bus.

We were dropped off twenty minutes later in a one-dirt-road farming neighborhood. During the bus ride, the volcano disappeared from sight in a swarm of clouds. About a half hour by foot away from the base, we walked up to the end of the road and – when the road ceased to exist – we continued onto the muddy dirt and rock path that we hoped would lead us to the cloud covered Santa Maria.

The plan was to switch on carrying the backpack every twenty minutes. It seemed reasonable enough and, thinking that I was a reasonably fit young man, I thought I could hold up my end of the bargain. I was wrong. Ten minutes into our uphill hike through farm fields, my feeble lungs struggled to make use of the thin air. Deep breaths were made all the more difficult by the pervasive smell of mud mixed with shit – dog shit, horse shit, bull shit… it was all there. Andy looked back to find me hunched over, sweating through my shirt, and wheezing as I tried to keep up. “You were carrying it before. Why don’t you let me carry the bag for a bit and we’ll switch in twenty,” he insisted. I didn’t carry the bag again the entire day.

A half hour in, my shirt and pants were soaked and I didn’t think I’d make it three more minutes never mind three more hours. A group of five Guatemalans around our age came up behind us, the guys dressed in jeans and track jackets; the girl with them wore a dress and slippers. “Hey, no excuses mate. She’s climbin’ in her bloody slippers,” Andy quipped. I almost collapsed on the spot.

Andy and I had been debating whether we had reached the base yet. We agreed that we had, but we still couldn’t see the volcano behind the clouds and we had no idea how far we had gone. We reached the base about twenty minutes after we thought we had. Then, in a most dramatic and timely fashion, the clouds thinned and we could see the forested face of the beast towering over us. All I could think to myself was, No fucking way.

There was a makeshift shack and a couple benches along the open path leading into the woodsy trail up the actual volcano. We stepped over roots and rocks as we followed the narrow trail through the forest. Andy, being the heavily bearded former Aussie rules football player that he is, set the pace. I tried to keep up. Surprisingly enough, however, for a while I found my stride and, though our pace was pretty deliberate, we seemed to be making decent ground for an hour plus.

Then the trail started getting steeper and the air a bit crisper. My feet started feeling heavier and my legs tightened. My lungs tried to convince me they couldn’t take anymore. For a while Andy ran off a head. I stopped to rest every few steps. My head throbbed and spun. Even my shoulders hurt. The trail was much steeper here. The sweat drenching my shirt cooled and circulation slowed to my extremities. I had never pushed my body like this before. I didn’t know how much more I could take.

“Tom!” It was Andy. Thank God, I thought as he finally came into sight with a bottle of water waiting for me. “I reckon we’re almost at the top,” he said excitedly. “You,” I breathed, “waited.” I continued panting. “That’d be pretty selfish of me to finish by myself, eh? We’re gonna finish this thing hand in hand, man. We got about ten more minutes to go, so here’s what we’re gonna do. Walk for one minute, breathe for ten seconds. Walk for one minute, breathe for ten seconds. Got it?”

The only things I remember seeing in those last minutes are the dirt and rock path in front of me and the back of Andy’s heels. When we got past the tree line, Andy made me take the lead. I trudged forward, refusing to stop or to glance to the side until we were at the very top.

Three hours and eight minutes after we stepped off the bus, we had reached the peak. The pictures and videos we took could never capture what it felt like to stand up there and look down on the clouds; to see for miles in every direction and look down on everything in sight. I felt so proud of myself… that is until we saw a group of Guatemalan women in dresses and flats having a full-on picnic (including several 2-liter bottles of soda). Then we saw a group of men and women with boxes filled with food to sell to hikers. As Andy and I sat and enjoyed our victory chocolate and orange, a Guatemalan man stumbled behind us and relieved himself of the huge sack he was carrying on his back. Andy was as dumbfounded as I.

After a half hour of enjoying the view and the accomplishment, we headed back down the way we came. We started off with ginger steps along the steep muddy path at the top; by the time we were halfway down the winding trail we were jogging, jumping over roots and ducking under low hanging branches. When we reached the base, the clouds had resettled and they opened up on us during the last stretch of our hike. By the time we reached the road, my legs were on autopilot. Each foot managed to throw itself in front of me just in time to catch me from falling as my momentum cast me forward.

I ran into a small shop and grabbed a 7-up and two tasteless but unbelievably satisfying pieces of bread while we waited for our bus. As I sat on the grass outside the shop with Andy I looked back on the volcano, now smothered on clouds. I thought to how utterly shitty I felt within the first ten minutes and couldn’t believe that I lasted another three hours. At that moment I felt like I could do anything I put my mind to.

I thought about my doubts from the previous night. I’ve only been here a week. I still have another six months to go, I told myself. It will be a long climb undoubtedly, but I can make it. I need to focus on how I’m doing and not worry about if some woman in a Mayan dress and slippers blows by me. Patience, perseverance, and maybe the help and encouragement of good friends along the way – with these things I can do anything I put my mind to.

Lady in the Cafe

She came into the café lugging a huge sack on her back and decided to set up shop right next to me. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she unfolded blanket after colorful blanket onto the floor in the middle of the coffee shop. She wore a Mayan-style dress, but not of the ornate style that I saw much of earlier in the week. No her clothes were not glamorous at all. They looked dusty and worn out, as did her braided hair. As she was unrolling her products I noticed her lips gently whispering a prayer. I must have caught her glance because she looked at me and said, in English, “You like? Only 60 Quetzales.”

In contrast to most other shops in town, this coffee house had a spacious interior with cozy couches spread throughout the town and a ceiling window letting in just the right amount of sunlight. In Xela, there are enough places tailored to travelers like me to make you forget how surrounded you really are by poverty, injustice and daily suffering. Having just finished a Skype conversation with Julie and now updating my blog to the soundtrack of some Radiohead, I realized that is precisely what happened before the woman spoke to me.

“No thank you,” I responded in broken Spanish, “but your blankets are very nice.” I lack the ability to ignore another human being when he or she speaks to me – especially one who seems in need – but sometimes this gets me into situations that I’d rather not be in. She showed me another blanket – along with a picture of her making the blanket – and said, “I made this. With hands.” In her mouth she was missing all but five or six teeth. “It’s very pretty but I can’t buy one today,” I replied, trying my Spanish once again.

I put my headphones back in and tried returning to my writing, but I felt very rude. I thought music in my ears might diffuse the awkwardness of the situation, but I felt bad for this poor woman and couldn’t help but watch her out of the corner of my eye. Another foreigner walked by and didn’t even bother to look at the woman desperately trying to sell her a blanket. Beth, my housemate, strode by to the bathroom and – with her genuine smile – gave the woman a cheerful “No gracias.”

Once again, the woman grabbed my attention. “Are you student?” she inquired. “Yes… El Nahual. Lo conoces (do you know it)?” “Aye sí! Jaime (the director of the school) is my friend.” Her face lit up with excitement. “Write name here. I tell Jaime,” she said as she handed me an envelope. Not thinking, I wrote my first name. She continued, “I come martes (Tuesday).” Duh, I thought to myself, She wants to tell Jaime I want to buy a blanket from her. “No. I’m not going to buy a blanket martes.” “Martes. I come martes,” she repeated, possibly out of confusion, possibly out of hope. “I don’t want one,” I firmly stated, as I put my headphones back in.

She pressed her hands to her lips and, with her eyes closed, started praying more emphatically. Her body rocked back and forth desperately. Her face looked worried and worn, like she had not sold many blankets at all lately.

Once again she started talking to me, and once again I couldn’t ignore her. She told me in a mixture of broken English and Spanish that she did not live in town. She lived an hour outside of town where no one could buy her blankets. I told her, “No thank you,” again and she started folding up her merchandise.

I felt guilty sitting there on my computer with my biggest concerns at the moment being that I didn’t have a plug converter to charge my laptop and that the weather might postpone my hike up the volcano in town.

Hoisting her huge sack of blankets over her back, she looked back at me for one last sales pitch. “I come here next Saturday. Ok?” I said I probably wouldn’t be here. She talked me up to a maybe and I settled for that. Her English – at least her accent with the words she knew – was surprisingly good, so I told her that. “Isgood?” she asked for clarification. “’Is’ es es,” I responded, “y ‘good’ es bien.” “Sí?” she asked enthusiastically, her eyes squinting and her toothless mouth opening into a bright smile. “Is good,” she repeated. “Muchas gracias, Tom,” she said, maintaining that same smile as she walked out the door.

At least she left with something.