Guatemala Post 3 - The Weather

This you did not expect. The weather. It is such a prosaic topic in the rest of the world, unless some major disaster happens, like the Brisbane floods this year. Yet in a place like Guatemala, that sits in the path of hurricanes most of the time, the weather is very important.

At present, the rains have loosened bits of soil around the country and caused so many landslides that most of the country is cut off from itself, let alone neighbouring countries. I was meant to have left for Quetzaltenango, where I am based, a week ago. I am stuck in Guatemala City, trying to make the best of a crap situation.

Why is it crap you ask? Well... public transport here tends to be frequented by highwaymen. I am not kidding. Violent thugs climb onto public buses and demand at gunpoint to have everyone's wallet or mobile phone. How do normal people survive, you ask? They risk life and limb every day to go to work. And yes, the do get mugged.

So, because I'm about a foot taller than everyone and fairer skinned than most people on the buses, my cousins have convinced me to avoid public transport. I've taken it once or twice in a group of people, in fact, with the outfit I'm working with: Cultural Survival. I'm still hesitant to go by myself, but I'm going to have to do it.

Guatemala Post 2

Back on the interweb peeps. How's it been? Where did we leave off? Oh yeah. Returning to Guatemala after 24 years.

I stopped off in LA to see my cousin Christian before continuing onto the land of eternal spring. We had not seen each other in 9 years and Christian had been instrumental in helping me with grant applications in the States. He's been a pillar of strength and support in all this. It helps that he knows the industry. So I hung out with him and his family for a few days, preparing myself for the cultural shock that was to come - which I was forewarned about.

It's a funny thing, culture shock. You expect it to happen, but you never know what form it will take. I have been away from Central America a very, very long time. I had expected a few things to have changed since then. Some had. The physical landmarks I knew in Guatemala City were gone. What is now the Westin Camino Real was not there in Zone 10 last time I was here. The highway to El Salvador did not look the way it does now. It was a lot less built up. These were physical changes. It was the cultural changes I was hoping to see.

The weird things is, when you're a 17 year old girl coming from a very strict religious background Guatemalans seem so liberal. When you're a 41 year old woman who's been round the traps quite a few times, you realise that you've changed but they have not. In so many ways.

Women still ask their husband for permission to study, or to go on a social engagement, or to take part in a performance. Husbands still need their wives permission to go to a yoga class. I am not kidding. Women still have to fit a certain set of expectations about being a woman: angelic, sexy but still pure. I break that mold without even trying. There are also tactful, indirect ways of speaking, which I had forgotten. Formulas that you say as part of small talk and politeness, forgotten.

Wives still look after children and the home single-handedly while holding down a job. Their duty is to look after husband, children and any guest that crosses their threshold, even to their own detriment. This, too, I had forgotten.

Then there are the things I didn't know about Guatemalan culture. These could fill volumes and I'm discovering them as I go along.

So, do I have culture shock? Not shock really, surprise and wonderment. Sometimes I feel slightly inadequate to deal other times I feel 100% comfortable. And sometimes I forget how much just comes naturally that is apparent when someone who is not from here mentions it.

Guatemala Post 1

Hey there, it's been a while. I know. I was busy. You know how it is: packing house up, straightening out tax matters from 10 years ago, reactivating an insurance claim from 11 years ago, getting closure for broken relationships, packing bags, making a list, checking it twice, trying to get everything done and not really succeeding.

Woh. Woh. I hear you. Slow down. Yep. I hear you. Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I chasing my tail faster and faster? Ok. I'll explain. In 2009 I applied for an artistic residency with a bunch called ArtCorps. They are a Non-Government Organisation that places artists with community organisations based in Central America. It took 6 months of a rigorous recruitment process which I thought didn't cover enough and asked all the wrong questions. But enough of that. I answered everything. I ticked all the boxes. I got the supporting letters. They liked. They really really really liked.

So they placed me with an environmental protection organisation working with the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in the Peten jungle, in 2010. Then the organisation got its funding pulled and my residency with them was axed. Yep. Another victim of the GFC. I shrugged, took in on the chin and went about my business.

Then, ArtCorps contacted me again to see if I was free to go to Guatemala in 2011. After protracted negotiations we agreed on a date for my arrival which just barely fit in one quarter of the year with another organisation called Cultural Survival. Better fit, stable funding. It was all good, except that my other half was not so sure about me going for a year, so we negotiated it to six months. Then as the time approached, he bailed for many reasons, one of them quite probably that he couldn't imagine living in Guatemala. I could.

After all, I had grown up next door. No big deal. So it was the second most dangerous country in the world after El Salvador. Whoop De Do. I was from El Salvador. As I said, no big deal. Once you know how to handle yourself in that environment, it all comes back pretty quick.

So here I was, embarking on a pilgrimage to a place that had mythical qualities in my imagination. Back in the annals of time, when I was just a wee girl of 17, I had been on a road trip through Guatemala with my classmates, where we saw Mayan ruins, jungle, rivers with crocs in them, and your run-of-the-mill guerrillas hijacking tourist buses on the way to Tikal, the largest Mayan city left in the world.

I had promised myself I would return to the land of eternal spring, as Guatemala is called. I had fallen head over heels in love with a country right next door to mine. I just never knew it would take 24 years before I saw it again.