San Ildefonso Ixtahuacan

August 8, 2010
This past weekend, I visited my friend Cassidy in the state of Huehuetenango. She’s living with a former BVSer, Todd, his indigenous (Mam culture) wife, Caty, and their 2 year old daughter, Yanna. I left at noon on Friday and took a bus to the Pan-American highway. The man-who-yells told me the fare to the Highway was Q50. On the return trip, I found out that it was actually Q10. Asshole. Thirtysomething transportation personnel are not the most trustworthy, especially if they’re on the bus lines, and ESPECIALLY if it involves a gringa. I arrived in Huehue at about 4:30, and met Cassidy and Caty. We took buses and a pickup to get to San Ildefonso Ixtahuacan, which is the town that they live near. Once we got to their house, it was close to 9pm. I hadn’t eaten but a couple of pieces of pan dulce since noon, and was just about to drop over dead. The house has no electricity, so everything is done by flashlight after the sun sets at about 6:30, so we made tortillas by flashlight and fire.
The next day, we went to a baby ceremony. The wife of one of Todd’s employees had recently given birth to a little girl. It is a custom in Mayan culture for the mother to go on bedrest for a certain amount of time. In San Pedro, she rests for 7-9 days. In Ixta, it’s 20. For the first 10 days, the woman is taken to the sauna in the house twice a day with her baby, and once a day for the next 10. This helps to form the mother-child bond, gives her body time to recover, and eases the transition between warm, squishy uterus to cold, hard world for the baby. Mercedes Vico says that this is a barbaric practice, and is really bad for their health. I’m not sure who to believe at this point – traditional Mayan culture that has been the same for thousands of years, or modern medicine.
Whether or not it’s good for either party, the family still has a big party after the 20 days, and we were invited. It doesn’t exactly fall under the “once in a lifetime” category, but it’s pretty darn close, especially for foreign visitors. We walked about an hour to their house and then sat around and talked for awhile. Then at noon they all squished into a little room in the mud-brick house, lit only by the door a single incandescent bulb, and two skinny white candles on the floor. It was surreal – all of the women and little girls in maroon traje, dark eyes glinting in the scant light, like something out of a National Geographic documentary, or something that someone else gets to experience. They sang a few songs in Spanish, gave a prayer, and then talked about Jesus at the temple in Mam for awhile, then translated it into Spanish. It seemed to be more like a church service than a celebration for the mother and baby (they took no part in it), but that’s not up to me, I guess. Afterwards, they fed us big bowls of super thick gravy with pieces of meat and bone in it. No utensils. That’s why God invented fingers. Messy business. When we finished eating (or in Cassidy and I’s case, when we were full), we hung out and talked some more. Cassidy and I were surrounded by a handful of kids, ages 4-12 or so, and they were all demanding the English equivalents for Spanish words, so we reeled them off, much to their giggling pleasure.
The next morning, we woke up at the ungodly hour of 4am and tried to gather our things by the light of Cassidy’s alarm clock (her flashlight died at an important juncture in my bathroom trip the night before) so that we could get the family’s booth set up at the market by 5. They sell a wide variety of products at their booth (venda), including baskets, pottery, güipiles (traditional blouses), cortes (traditional skirts), other textiles, plants, shoes, and a huge collection of herbs, tinctures, and natural medicines. It took about an hour to get the booth set up all the way, and by that time, the sky had gone from pitch-black to distinctly light and the neighboring booths were up and running as well. It was really interesting watching the market go from bare wooden booths and a complete lack of people to sell to, to a bustling social hub, filled with women in traje and men in cowboy hats.
After breakfast (bean-stuffed tortillas), Cassidy and I wandered around the market for an hour or so, eating food and looking at things. I had a large piece of soft bread, 4 fruits that looked suspiciously like sea anemones, and a serving of French fries with ketchup, mayonnaise, and green chili sauce (EXCELLENT, all of it). The market is pretty cool, but completely and totally PACKED. Walking down a street takes serious skill and a serious lack of personal space and/or regard for the personal space of others. Each little booth has its own wares spread out, is probably BLASTING Spanish music at full volume, and every 30 feet, someone wants you to buy two black grocery bags for one quetzal. Everyone is jabbering away in Mam, which to the untrained ear sounds exactly like Tzu’tujil, but Mam is softer and less “clicky.” Markets are the best place to encounter all that is culture.
I took a pickup truck for an hour and a half into Huehue (Q10 [$1.25]), a bus from Huehue to Cuatro Caminos (sort of a bus station where four major roads to major cities all meet – Q20 [$2.50]), another bus from Cuatro Caminos to Km148 (where the Pan-American meets the road to San Pedro – Q10) and then met the bus from the City to San Pedro (Q10). I love Guatemalan public transit (when they’re not overcharging me or leaving me in strange places with only the slightest knowledge of how to get where I need to be, that is). On the bus to Km148, the passengers were subjected to an absolutely godawful film about a werewolf. The sounds of screams, snarls, and general wreckage were a great background to the Josh Groban, Creekbusters, Open Road, and Glee! on my iPod. At Km148, I almost got on a shuttle bus with a drunk driver, but thankfully the tourists on board told me that I should most certainly take another bus. They were terrified, but I didn’t see any wreckage on my way home, so I guess it worked out all right.
These evening was the Pastoral Appreciation Night for our church. It was a LONG service, with lots of singing and such by the children. It was a big deal. Except that the guy who gave the sermon forgot my host father’s name. How embarrassing. It was also POURIING rain on the tin hoop building roof, making comprehension very low. I had also left my laptop to charge on the porch, which may or may not have kept out the rain. Consequently, I spent most of my time wondering how I was going to react to a fried hard drive. But it was ok. Sarah and I ran almost all the way home in the rain. Uphill. I told her that her family needs to attend a church that is closer to their house.