Chichicastenango, Day 304 (Guatemala story)

After an hour or so of driving we reached the city of Chichicastenango. One of the main things that caught my eye in the small mountain city was the presence of garbage on every street. Bottle caps, potato chip wrappers, old holey shoes. A thick layer of Guatemalan dust covered everything, even the trash that was lying around. The grass making its way through cracks in the concrete had this dust coating. Everything was brought together, as if even the garbage, the old discarded broken things were exactly where they should be under this dusty coating. Amidst the filth Chichicastenango was a bustle with activity but every bit of movement was executed with lethargy. Seemingly tired people, tired animals, and tired vehicles trudged through the over congested city. The streets were cozy old cobblestone (real, nothing like the decorative cobblestone I’d ever seen) too small for the traffic squeezing through them but all of the rusty, smoky vehicles kept squeezing through anyway. Honking, creaking, growling, the tired cranky ancient metal monsters were driven along by the men riding within them. We were a part of it now but we did not belong. Our shiny new air conditioned bus was not of the ancient monster society. We were clearly foreigners in this far off land of dusty cobblestone streets lined with colorful stone buildings. All of the buildings ran together only breaking for the streets. Everything fit together like a perfectly constructed puzzle and then there was us.

There were people sitting, standing, walking, working, everywhere I looked. The people looked so weary. A gas station we passed had a little frozen lemonade cart in the far corner of its parking lot. I imagined a woman dressed in very worn traditional Mayan clothing standing behind it selling frozen lemonade. This was a lemonade stand where a grown person would spend their day standing in the heat making a living. There wasn’t a supermarket in this far off city. There was an ice cream shop with two freezers like the ones at baskin robbins. You could choose from 8 or so different flavors or 6 different types of ice cream bars. The shops were open to the streets, they must have had doors but I don’t remember seeing any (except at the bank where two men dressed like security guards stood on either side of the door with very large guns). You could look all the way into the shops from the street. There was a meat shop where freshly butchered animal parts hung from the ceiling amidst the shop keeper, the hot Guatemalan sun, and a very happy swarm of fat flies. We drove past a fabric shop that was adorned from ceiling to floor with beautifully vibrant colors that implied the store was selling rainbows. There was a shoe store, a pluming store, a store that was like a weird Walgreens. I noticed a tile shop filled with numerous gorgeously painted designs. Of all the people I’d seen thus far I wondered who could afford such elaborate ceramics. There was a shop that sold gods. This was a different world indeed. These weren’t statues, they were gods.

There was a distinct difference between the people working in the shops and many of those walking slowly through the streets. The men and many of the women in the shops looked cunning. They wore clothes like mine, t-shirts and blue jeans. The people standing in the streets behind carts, holding shoe shine kits, or walking with enormous bundles strapped to their backs or atop their heads, these people weren’t dressed like me. The women were all dressed alike in traditional clothing they’d been making themselves since they were little girls. They wore long thick straight skirts with stripes of color running through them and elaborately woven heavy blouses covered in beautifully stitched flowers. Their mothers taught them how to make these outfits. They’d taught them what to wear, how to wear it and why, just as their mothers had taught them. The men wore filthy worn out pants and tattered shirts. The clothing these people wore looked as tired as the people. It was like their outfits were apart of them. Man, woman, and child wore a layer of dust from head to toe nail. The same dust that was coating every inch of the city, and was working its way into my lungs was the final piece of every outfit in the city. I felt like the people and the city belonged to Guatemala, to this small place on the earth, it had claimed them. This piece of earth had made its mark on them and they were eternally a part of it.

We eventually reached our destination in the heart of the city. The bus came to a stop at a gas station. People were everywhere. There were now too many sites for me to take in. The air was full of campfire aroma mingled with exhaust fumes. I worried about where we’d be staying. Everything everywhere I looked was filthy and dusty and sort of gross. I started to think I might have to avoid using a toilet for the entire week. I wasn’t sure how, but I was determined I could do it. I was afraid I’d be sleeping in a bed of dust. It was everywhere. I exited the bus with hesitation, overwhelmed, and a bit in shock. Here we were, tall at five feet four inches, gigantic at six feet tall. Our clothing was well wrinkled from travel but pristine in those dirty city streets and still undefiled of the Chichicastenango dust coating and ashy aroma. We each grabbed a suitcase, popped up a handle, and clumsily tried to roll our pot bellied pack along the cobble stoned street. Without the slightest clue of where we were headed we slung our back packs upon our backs, shiny clean bright blues, purple, red, addidas, jansport, these carried the airplane essentials. We had our water bottles, dasani, fuji, hydration from European springs, we scurried through the street like a pack of pampered show dogs amidst wild canines. I think at that moment of introduction into this world that I’d sat marveling at through a plate of glass I was too overcome to any longer process anything.