Jostled

December 12th 

Jostled around on the bus, I write–my scribbles barely legible. I can’t seem to focus on anything else right now. Too many thoughts teeming underneath the surface. I look out the window to the north and I see the Guatemalan country side. The dense green forest creeps up the mountain, rising to meet the clumps of clouds that hug the slope’s side. I peer out the other window, and to the south, a strip mall greets me, a scene seemingly copied and pasted from an American suburb: Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Dollar City, a generic chain coffee shop. What does a dollar even mean here? 7.7 quetzales, más o menos. But of course, this is not America. I’m seated on a school bus converted into public transportation and a slight, stooped-over señora is jogging in her traje típico and chanclas to catch the bus that will whisk us off, chaotically and cumbersomely, to our next destination. 

 

Other scenes: three men lounge in the back of a pick up truck next to rows of neatly stacked pineapples, held in place by cords and hope, hoodies on to shield themselves from the blustery gusts of wind. Women wash their laundry in a public pila off the side of the road, their passions and problems lost to me in the rumbling of the camioneta. Vultures float in the drafts of the very same winds the men in the truck try to stave off. An abandoned soccer field now boasts knee high grass blithely blowing in that steady, sturdy breeze.