{"id":773,"date":"2010-11-06T15:38:21","date_gmt":"2010-11-06T21:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=773"},"modified":"2010-11-06T15:38:21","modified_gmt":"2010-11-06T21:38:21","slug":"%c2%a1hacen-usar-de-pollos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/%c2%a1hacen-usar-de-pollos\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a1Hacen usar de pollos!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get ready for a long post with lots of pics.\u00a0 First things first, the calendar is\u00a0FINISHED and the files are at the printer!\u00a0 What a great project to work on and what great people to work with.\u00a0 I am really going to miss Proyecto Payaso<\/em> and my new clown friends!!\u00a0 I am un poco triste<\/em> that it is over.\u00a0 And I can’t believe that I am going home next Friday.\u00a0 Although I really am sad to leave, I guess it will be kinda nice to go to sleep without trying to catch something biting me.<\/p>\n

So now I have a few days before I go home to maybe take another little trip.\u00a0 Which brings me to the little trip I took last weekend.\u00a0 Todos Santos Cuchumat\u00e1n<\/em> for D\u00eda de Los Muertos<\/em>…the Cuchumatanes<\/em> are\u00a0beautifully scenic mountains in Northwestern Guatemala.\u00a0 Here’s a link<\/a> if you’re interested in reading more about this fascinating region of Mayan Mam-speakers.<\/p>\n

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About 10am, right outside the raceway. I LOVE the can of Gallo between his feet.<\/p><\/div>\n

So Tony, my other Payaso boss, who had just returned to his home in the lake from Europe last week, hopped in the clown car\u00a0with Burbuja (his gorgeous dog) last Sunday\u00a0to drive us to Todos Santos, which is about\u00a03 hours m\u00e1s o menos <\/em>from Xela.\u00a0 He drove a few hours from the lake to pick me up at a gas station at Cuatro Caminos<\/em>, a junction with roads in\u00a0four directions, and surprisingly I didn’t get lost getting to it.\u00a0 Okay, Stef dropped me off at Minerva, but I got on the right bus and off at the right stop and thankfully there was only one big ol’ Shell station, so the odds were definitely in my favor that I was in the right place.\u00a0 The drive was absolutely spectacular.\u00a0 We passed through Huehuetenango, (a.k.a. way-way) and ascended\u00a0pretty\u00a0quickly through the most stunning landscape of mountains and valleys and distant volcanoes.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

There was lots of talk in Xela from students about heading to Todos Santos<\/em> and I had it in the back of my mind that it would be difficult to find a room so we brought sleeping bags just in case.\u00a0 Good thing, because when we arrived,\u00a0there was not one available hotel room in the already sparse hotel scene.\u00a0\u00a0Even though\u00a0we didn’t have to sleep in the street, I like to think my sleeping bag protects me from things that can crawl on me and bite me.\u00a0 One of the proprietors sent us to Do\u00f1a Juana’s casa grande\u00a0de cuartos para alquiler<\/em> and after about a half hour of negotiating in\u00a0Spanish and Mam\u00a0about where we were going to sleep and how much we were going to pay, we were set.\u00a0 There weren’t actually beds for us in this room and apparently there was another traveler staying in\u00a0the big\u00a0bed we thought was ours’, but Do\u00f1a Juana & Rosa insisted they would bring\u00a0in another\u00a0big bed for us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And that Burbuja was welcome tambi\u00e9n <\/em>which was definitely a relief.\u00a0\u00a0What a beautiful family…mom and dad, adorable little boys and Rosa with her\u00a0baby, Emily.\u00a0 She had a book of 10,000 baby names in English from 2006, and that is where she chose Emily, which was\u00a0#1 or 2 in popularity that year.\u00a0 She was\u00a0close to naming her\u00a0Betsy but was worried about\u00a0the cruelty of other children.\u00a0 I couldn’t have been in a more foreign place, culturally, socially and linguistically, yet this young mother expressed a concern that seems to transcend place, culture, society, language.\u00a0\u00a0 I love when that happens…and it happens\u00a0A LOT.\u00a0 I\u00a0also really\u00a0love Mam…what an interesting sounding language.\u00a0 I was convinced I understood what they were saying, sort of like how I convince myself that I understand Spanish.<\/p>\n

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Our makeshift bed, which consisted of a few planks of wood on top of what looked like a low table, a mattress and pillows made of random clothing and our sleeping bags.<\/p><\/div>\n

So we left our bags and headed into town for a churrasco<\/em> and a wander, we had to be back by 7pm for our chuj<\/em>.\u00a0 I had a temascal<\/em> in Oaxaca and this type of bathing is similar…it is a sort of sauna\/sweat bath.\u00a0\u00a0On the top of their roof terrace they have a small room with a hearth and chimney where they bathe.\u00a0 My temascal<\/em> in Mexico included a small woman who came in to beat me with branches while blessing me\u00a0in Spanish.\u00a0\u00a0This time, I\u00a0was on my own.<\/p>\n

So after our chujs<\/em> and\u00a0a few\u00a0hot rum chocolates with the Swiss guys down the road, we headed back to our room to get a good night’s sleep before the races.\u00a0 It looked\u00a0like our neighbor left because his bag\u00a0was gone,\u00a0 so\u00a0I got into the empty\u00a0bed with my sleeping bag.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course, he wasn’t gone\u00a0and came home wasted in the middle of the night, swaying drunkenly\u00a0and\u00a0slurring that\u00a0I was in his bed.\u00a0 Duh.\u00a0\u00a0I was honestly\u00a0thankful that he didn’t just strip down and climb into bed with me which is what he proceeded to do after I scurried back, \u00a0still in my sleeping bag, to the bed\u00a0made of a\u00a0pile o’ clothes.<\/p>\n

THE RACE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Okay, this is one of the things that intrigued me most\u00a0about Todos Santos<\/em>.\u00a0 Apparently on November 1st, All Saint’s Day (Todos Santos means All Saints<\/em>) after a week of booze, marimba and scary carnival rides, the men get on their horses all dressed up and all\u00a0liquored up\u00a0and race each other back and forth between swigs of aguadiente<\/em> on a short, straight course made of loose earth\u00a0and sand.\u00a0\u00a0 We heard that Todos Santos<\/em> has been dry since 2008 during this festival because of the drunken disorder, but if this is what a\u00a0dry town looks like in the Cuchumatanes, I am staying far away from any \u00a8wet\u00a8\u00a0ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Chicken Guy drinking Gallo...breakfast of champions<\/p><\/div>\n

Oh my god, it was so crazy.\u00a0 And so wildly entertaining.\u00a0 There is nothing like watching hours of\u00a0what seems to be an elaborate\u00a0pantomime of drunken balancing on horseback.\u00a0 I went to both sessions because I was obsessed with a few of the riders.\u00a0\u00a0 My favorite was one guy I called \u00a8swollen eye\u00a8 because, well, he had a swollen eye and I needed to distinguish him from \u00a8Drunk Hat\u00a8 and \u00a8Head Gash\u00a8 and \u00a8Chicken Guy\u00a8.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u00a0watched the spectacle from several different\u00a0viewing points…in front the of the action, above the action\u00a0and on the sidelines.\u00a0 It didn’t matter where I stood, these men were drunk.\u00a0 And I mean close to unconscious drunk.\u00a0 Some were even at\u00a0the\u00a0hallucination stage of\u00a0prolonged\u00a0intoxication.\u00a0 Swollen Eye thought he had a lasso at one point and would twirl this imaginary rope over and over while rocking back and forth and side to side on his saddle,\u00a0trying to move his horse in the direction of the race, but going absolutely nowhere.\u00a0\u00a0I never got tired of watching him struggle with his imaginary lasso before whipping into starting position and almost losing his seating.\u00a0 I am not sure if he ever fell or not, but I never saw him go down and I watched him for a loooonnnnngggg time.\u00a0 If I had to choose a winner of this race it would hands down be Swollen Eye, with Head Gash a close second.\u00a0 And when it came close to the end of the race, some of men who were racing all day, including Chicken Guy, rode with live chickens.\u00a0 I couldn’t tell if they were alive or not, one or two seemed to be, but I did watch Chicken Guy wring his chicken’s neck before swinging it wildly and screaming something\u00a0as he raced down the track.\u00a0 I was horrified by the barbarism, but I still couldn’t stop watching.<\/p>\n

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The \u00a8not-so-drunk\u00a8guys<\/p><\/div>\n

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Swollen Eye on the move<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n
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Swollen Eye's good eye<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Head Gash trying to stay upright<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Head Gash & Swollen Eye<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n
\n
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I think this was Head Gash going down<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
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Drunk Hat<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

I stood on the sidelines for hours and became friendly with my Mayan neighbors.\u00a0 One Mayan mama wrapped\u00a0her arm around my waist as if\u00a0I were some sort of prize she won, this tall, dark\u00a0extra\u00f1era fixated on the race.\u00a0 It was comforting to\u00a0feel so welcome and protected.\u00a0\u00a0There was one point during the afternoon where I was the only\u00a0norteamericano in\u00a0a crowd of todosantonians and at that moment\u00a0I wished there were two of me, the first me to stand exactly where I was standing, the temporary hija<\/em> of a Mam woman, towering doofily over a sea of white straw hats and colorful huipiles<\/em> and the other me to take a picture of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although I am really sad to leave, it will be nice to go to sleep without trying to catch something biting me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}