Revisiting the past

Another little detour here. My last post about traveling to El Quiché was mostly about the mechanics of the journey. But there's an emotional or psychic side as well. When we go back to place that we haven't seen for a while, there's always a mixture of anticipation and fear. Will the people I liked and cared about still be there? Maybe some of them have moved away, or perhaps a few have died. Will I recognize the place? And perhaps more importantly, will the place recognize me? Will the people among whom I lived many years ago -- but with only a very few of whom I have stayed in touch -- remember me? Will they still like me?

After I walked around and looked at my old house, I went into the small store that was owned by the grandparents of a friend in New Bedford. The grandmother -- I think her name is Doña Adela -- was still holding it down, and a young woman I did not recognize was keeping her company (and probably helping out). I went over to her and told her who I was -- that I'd lived in Chinique for a year, that I had been to her store several times, and that we had spent the evening together during the fiesta patronal. She looked at me somewhat blankly, not really blankly, but it was clear that she didn't really remember me. She must have been at least 65 in 2011, so she's undoubtedly close to 80 now, and it has been a long time. So that was a small disappointment. I snapped the photo above on my phone and sent it to the granddaughter in New Bedford, who immediately responded and asked me why I hadn't yet been to see her mother, Doña Chenta. I explained that I had literally just arrived and the place I was staying was right across the street from her grandmother's store and Doña Chenta's place was a little farther way, but I promised to go and say hello. 

Willy, however, the owner of the garage, remembered me well when I finally located him later that day. Of course, I lived across the street from his garage and therefore saw him at least in passing several times a week (Doña Adela's shop was about 2 blocks away). His brother had moved to Zacualpa so was no longer in the shop with him. 

We don't, of course, expect time to stand still. The adults we knew are often grayer, more bald, fatter, or thinner than they were in the past. Their faces are more careworn and show the effect of the passing years -- not just the literal time that has elapsed, but the troubles (familial, economic, political) that have beset them. Some of them are no longer with us. Children who were small are small no longer. Chubby little toddlers have become lanky adolescents.  

The children of my good friends Catarino and Sandy were, of course, not the small children I remembered, and they have had a third child in the interim, whom I had only seen in photos. Their daughter, Verónica, who was a sweet grade schooler, is now finishing up secondary school and is a huge fan of K-pop (see photo on the right). Brandon, who never spoke much when he was young but would throw himself around me and virtually smother me with hugs, is now that lanky and somewhat serious teenager, hardly recognizable. The baby - no longer an actual baby - looks very much like Brandon did when he was that age, but of course since he hasn't been accustomed to seeing me at his parents' kitchen table, he's not about to throw himself at me. 

The second day in Chinique, I went to the Centro de Salud to see if I could meet with the director, or someone who could give me a local perspective on the pandemic and its impact in the community. When I got there, the waiting room was full, mostly with women and children. There were people waiting outside as well, and one of the clinic workers was clearly giving some kind of educational talk. I could see that she wore glasses and was on crutches. I sat down, since I didn't want to disturb the talk, and waited until it was over, and then went in and asked for the director. As I was shown to his office, I recognized Doña Lola, the sister of my friend and collaborator Adrián, whom I knew worked there, and we quickly embraced. But then the woman who had been giving the talk looked at me and said, "Lisa? No me reconoces?" It was Naty, whose house I had stayed in when I first arrived in Chinique in 2011 for my Fulbright residency, and needed a place to stay while I looked for a place to rent. I hadn't recognized her at first -- she'd gained weight, and I don't think I'd seen her in her work uniform (although I knew she worked at the Centro de Salud). She asked where I was staying, and insisted that I come and stay at her house rather than paying for a lodging, I gladly accepted because it meant I'd be with friends rather than alone, and that I'd be able to cook. While I'm a very adaptable traveler in many ways, I like to drink my coffee the way I like to make it (or a good latte). I actually travel with an Aeropress coffee maker and for this trip I splurged and bought a travel model (yes, I know, a little obsessive -- so sue me). And I like having the option of not having eggs for breakfast every single day of my stay (that's what you get at most restaurants -- I've described a desayuno chapín in other posts). So I usually make one of my first stops at a supermarket, and buy the darkest roast ground coffee I can find, powdered whole milk (I don't know why we don't have this in the U.S.; powdered milk is really convenient when you travel and non-fat milk is too gross for coffee -- apologies to any vegans or skim milk fans), old-fashioned oats and carry them around with me. So staying with Naty (and her husband Oscar) meant that I could feed myself as I pleased for at least several days. I didn't move until the next day -- I felt that I needed to give notice to the person from whom I'd rented a room, and it was already mid-afternoon. 

Naty's house had grown since I was there last -- they'd added a second story, and moved the kitchen. Her daughter Jocelyn is now an adult and has a room upstairs (unmarried children, especially female, usually stay in their parents' homes until they marry and sometimes after). The last time I'd seen Oscar was by sheer coincidence -- I was at the bus station in the city of Huehuetenango waiting for a bus to Santa Eulalia, and Oscar called out to me. At that time -- this was maybe 2017? -- he was driving a microbus between Santa Cruz del Quiché and Huehuetenango; when we'd met in 2011 he was a health promoter. And now, 2022, he was working in construction, part of the crew that was constructing a new municipal building in Chinique.

I received some affectionate chiding for not having stayed in touch and for not having contacted them in advance. I told Naty that I didn't have her phone number any longer -- I've gone through a couple of telephones in Guatemala and each time I've had to get a new phone, I lose phone numbers from earlier trips. 

Another day I went to see Dona Chenta, the daughter of Doña Adela, with whom I had visited fairly often when I lived in Chinique. Doña Chenta has several children living in the U.S., and while I don't keep in close touch with them, her daughter and I follow each other on social media. I remembered very generally where her house was -- in a part of Chinique called La Cruz (because there is a large cross at the intersection of the main road out of town and a smaller, unpaved road that comes in at an sharp angle (what Guatemalans would call a cuchillo -- literally, a knife). The road that Doña Chenta lives on was still unpaved, but there were several new stores and eating places around this intersection, which  used to have nothing other than the cross, a kind of sad and dilapidated-looking gas station across the road, and maybe one small store. The gas station had gotten renovated and the whole intersection seemed more lively.. But I misremembered which side of the road her house was on, and I walked into someone else's house -- or rather onto their property, not literally into the house. I opened the gate and called out hello, and asked if it was Doña Chenta's house. The woman who lived there pointed me in the right direction and off I went. 

Doña Chenta remembered who I was and was glad to see me. I sat with her for a while as she and a helper sorted through large baskets of wild mushrooms. I asked her if she was going to sell them in the market, and she told me that she cleaned them and sent them off to sell in the capital. She didn't pick them herself but bought them from people who gathered them up in the surrounding mountains. I started to help her. As if to illustrate a point, while we were working, an old man came in bearing mushrooms he had gathered. Doña Chenta pulled out a scale, and put the mushrooms into the tray on top of the scale, and then told the man what she would pay for them. About 10 minutes after he left a woman came in, also bearing mushrooms to sell. While we were there I called her daughter on FaceBook or WhatsApp (I no longer remember) and let her speak to her mother a bit. She made her mother promise to cook me a dinner and we agreed upon the date, and that the meal would contain some of these delicious-looking mushrooms.