Week 14 - Adventure and Other Mind-Altering Drugs

I suppose I should warn that this is going to be a more introspective, perhaps even self-indulgent, installment. Relatively few exciting things have happened to me in the last week, which I suspect will be an increasingly common phenomenon as my schedule slowly evolves from unique to routine. The teacher strike continues, and must post a correction from last week: Teachers get paid quarterly here, so apparently it’s normal for teachers to go 3 months at a stretch without pay. In this particular instance, however, (most of) the teachers of Guatemala have now gone nearly eight months without a paycheck. They are holding out for a 14% increase in salary yearly. That is, if the average teacher makes Q10,000 per year currently, they’d get Q11,400 next year, Q12,996 the year after that, etc. Now I’m no economist, but even I am a little skeptical at the sustainability of an exponential pay structure. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don’t, but I’m willing to bet doorstops to danishes that the Guatemalan government has neither the desire nor means to pay out that many Quetzales. I guess we’ll see what kind of compromise they come up with, but it’s an election year, and this doesn’t exactly make President Álvaro Colom look very good. Not that he’s able to run for another term, but his ex-wife—the one who divorced him in order to legally run—is on the campaign trail…just sayin’.

But back to introspection: I had a moment this week that bordered on the mystical. It’s not as exciting or perilous as running from gang bullets, or as beautiful as Lake Atitlán, so as I describe it please keep in mind that it was more the stream of consciousness that I experienced than the actual activity that held me so entranced:

On Wednesday night I got a ride back with a nearby town’s basketball team.

That’s it. Ostensibly, that’s all it was.

I had been at the feria (fair/carnival) of a town about 45 minutes down the road and up a mountain. One of my new friends, a veteran PCV, is stationed there, and she invited me and a few others to come and see her site. I was the only one to accept, but two other PCVs showed up because they are on the basketball team from Malacatancito, which was scheduled to play the local favorites.

Malacatancito won, but it was an ugly game. I won’t get into it, because really the only important detail of is that they offered to drive me back to my site when the game was over.

I subsequently found myself squished into the far corner of a pickup bed with four large players while four more rode in the cab. The night was inky black, the darkness thick enough to hold save for a lamppost every mile. The blanket of stars above lent a pale luminescence to the men around me. The road unfurled behind us, close enough almost to touch. Whenever someone casually flicked away their dying cigarette butt, a tiny eruption of sparks—an ephemeral volcano—would briefly light up the history of our path.

I sat there, exhilarated beyond words at where I was and why. I relished being alive in that moment, in this country, as the wind whirled around me. Looking up at the virginal purity of the celestial bodies mixed with the brooding shadows of trees and mountains made me feel in binary oppositions: Colossal and tiny; counterfeit. Genuine.

It was like my inaugural ride to site a couple weeks ago: I was walking in the footsteps of giants, simultaneously following the paths of others and carving my own, terrified and electric at the thought. Many months ago my most trusted confidant told me that the possibilities for greatness and the possibilities for awfulness are greatly amplified in this place; whatever would happen would not be merely ordinary. She was right, as she so often is, and I have felt more alive and vibrant since my arrival than at any other point since freshman year of college, when I watched my parents pull away from my dorm that first illustrious fall. Like then, I was inebriated on my own maturity. Excitement and possibility really are potent drugs.

I felt noble about what I am doing here, even as I feel self-conscious for saying so. The romance of the Peace Corps has infected me more than it did when I was applying, but such romance is not necessarily born of aspirations to the philanthropic or the humanitarian. It’s the most thrilling adventure upon which I have yet embarked, further heightened because of the hardship and loneliness that I am already becoming accustomed to.

In the pickup I was moving forward, towards a home and a future that is unknown and exotic. San Se signifies for me what site has signified to fifty years of my compatriots: It’s a personal relationship, an arranged marriage between fate and providence. Like a relationship, it can end, perhaps unexpectedly or at the behest of either party, but it can also polish and accentuate the best in both. I don’t know if I’ll become my best me while I’m here, but I feel like I’m at least on the right path.

All this I thought about while gazing up. Of course I also had pangs of isolation as I spotted familiar constellations: There’s Orion, the same one that my friends at home must surely also see. I traced north via the Big Dipper, towards cultural fluency and linguistic simplicity. Then we passed the base of a large mountain and it was obscured by its bulk. For the best, I think. Homesickness does me little good at this point in my journey.

The trip was nearing its end, but my stay here is still beginning. As I clambered out of the truck, pounding fists and cracking last minute jokes, I did one last inventory: Backpack? Check. Cellphone? Check. Emotional growth? Check.

I started up the hill, bathed in the soft radiance of the streetlights which nonetheless caused me to squint.

I found my way to my apartment room, pausing to soak in the night one last time before going inside. The stars winked, the trees swayed, the road unfurled.

“This is a pretty great time to be alive,” I spoke to no one in particular. And it is.

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Though they don't have a lot to do with what I wrote about, this week's photos can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week14?authkey=Gv1sRgCL6SrbT8y6DP0wE#. There's another piece of good news: By Saturday night I will have my own personal source of internet. That also means that starting Sunday you have no excuse not to sit around and Skype with me. Your social lives have been warned.