Mixed signals - July 21

 Well, I'm going out of order here because I'm going to start with today, instead of last week, because it's fresh in my mind, so I'll be working backwards.

My plan for today was to visit the mother of a young man, Alex, who is a recent arrival and is one of a group of workers who have qualified for a new federal program called "deferred action", which allows non-authorized immigrants who are involved in a labor dispute to apply for a 2-year work permit and a social security number. I'd been in touch with Alex's mother, Doña C., and we'd arranged for me to visit her today. I knew the name of her aldea (village) but many of the village names are repeated -- there are Aguascalientes (literally, hot waters) in several different municipalities, and more than one Potrero Viejo. So I asked what municipality, so that I would end up in the right place..She told me that the aldea where she lived was in the municipality of Chiché. I have a reasonably good grasp of the geography of the department of El Quiché -- but obviously not good enough, as today's episode will demonstrate. The cabecera (the main town of the municipality -- municipalities are the equivalent of townships) of the municipality of Chiché is located along the highway that runs between Santa Cruz del Quiché and Joyabaj. The town of Chiché is more or less midway between Chinique (where I had been staying for the last two days) and Santa Cruz del Quiché (SCQ), so I thought I should take a bus heading towards SCQ and get off somewhere in Chiché. I asked her where I should get off the bus and she told me "el Rincón" and assured me that the driver would know.

I didn't get as early a start as I had wanted -- I was having some internet issues, and needed to straighten those out. My eSIM card had run out and the internet connection at the house where I was staying was on the fritz so I needed to use the hotspot of my host's phone before she went to work so I could re-charge my eSIM card. I'm reliant upon the eSIM card because I decided not to bring my old Guatemalan smart phone to use here but instead to use my US iPhone, which means that I need a cellular data plan that works here so I can use WhatsApp to contact people here. Most people I know use WhatsApp -- from migrants' mothers in remote villages to tuc-tuc (motortaxi) drivers),  so I can call and message folks here fairly easily.

So I got a late start on my run. And then I wanted to stop by the Centro de Salud in the town, both to say goodbye to my host, who works there (she'd been in bed when I left for my run, but had already left for work by the time I'd returned) and also to see if I could do a quick update interview with the director of the health center, whom I'd interview last summer (some discussion of this in a separate post). I then grabbed my bags and waddled down the street to the intersection where I knew the buses heading in the direction of SCQ  would stop. Since my plan was to spend the night in Santa Cruz del Quiché after the interview, I figured I wouldn't be passing through Chinique again, so I packed everything to take with me. I had a carry-on bag - not a rollerboard but a shoulder bag - stuffed with a week's work of clothing, plus another bag carrying my laptop and camera, and a small backpack with my food (I have to have my oatmeal, flax seed, my own coffee and travel coffee maker, plus dried whole milk for my coffee) and a few sundries. So I was pretty loaded down. Little did I know....

I only had to wait a little while before a camioneta (repainted school bus) rumbled by and I hopped on. I told the ayudante (assistant) that I needed to get off at El Rincón. He looked puzzled. I said it was part of Chiché. He said there was a place called El Rinconado, was that what I meant? I said I didn't know anything about El Rinconado, but that I was told to get off at El Rincón. The bus wasn't too crowded and so I sat and waited to be told where to get off. We passed the new gas station that is across the road from the house of some friends, and I noticed a new construction for an Auto Hotel -- a first for Chinique (the second smallest municipality in the department of El Quiché) -- right along the road. We entered the town of Chiché, made a few stops, and then out the other end towards Santa Cruz del Quiché. Not far along, the ayudante told me we'd arrived at El Rinconado and so I got off. Doña C. had told me there would be tuc-tucs at El Rincón and the ayudante spotted a tuc-tuc across the road and tried to flag it down but the driver took off. On the side of the road where I had gotten off, there was a new Evangelical Church with big bold letters announcing itself, and on the other side, a housing development called El Campo and a few stores. 

 I stood in the driveway and tried flagging down the empty tuc-tucs but none would stop for me. That seemed odd and wrong. I called Doña C. and explained that the ayudante on the bus seemed not to know what El Rincón was but that I'd gotten off where he told me. She asked me to describe where I was and I told her. It didn't seem to register with her so she asked me to shoot some video. I didn't know how to shoot video in the WhatsApp application, so I took several photographs and sent them. She apparently showed them to one of her sons because when I called her again, a male voice was on the phone. I explained that I was on the road between Chiché and Santa Cruz del Quiché. Between the two of them, they explained that I had gone in the wrong direction and that I had to head back "abajito" (down a little bit). In other words, go back the way I'd come, and then some. Past Chinique, and towards Zacualpa (which is to the east of Chinique), and somewhere along there was El Rincón.

A linguistic aside: one of the most frustrating linguistic quirks of Guatemalan Spanish is when people tell you that a certain location is "abajo" (down, or below) or "arriba" (above or up), because these terms seem to be very situational and not really geographical. Zacualpa is farther down the road from Chinique if you're heading east, and Chinique is farther down the road if you're heading west. 

Back to my journey. The ayudante on bus #2 seemed to know where El Rincón was. He wanted to know where I was headed from there (I guess to make sure I was getting off at the right place). I told him "La Trinidad" and he looked puzzled. I told him that the people I was visiting had told me to get off at El Rincón and that there would be tuc-tucs there and I should tell the driver to take me to "la terminal de la Trinidad" (the terminal of La Trinidad). I called Doña C. and handed the phone to him so she (or her son) could explain to him and he seemed satisfied and so we continued on. After a while he indicated to me that my stop was coming up and so I gathered my bags and readied myself to hop off. The tuc-tucs were on the other side of the road, so I waited for the bus to leave and for a safe moment to cross, and found the first one and told him I was going to la terminal de la Trinidad. He turned around and we started on our way. The road was bumpy and rocky, with deep ruts. There steep winding turns heading down, and then back up. The tuc-tuc puttered along, the driver skillfully avoiding the worst holes and bumps. 

During this time he asked me who the family was that I was planning to visit. I told him it was a Doña C, who had a son in the United States. That didn't seem to give him much information. After about 15 or 20 minutes, we came to a house where there were some people out on the porch and in front and he stopped and asked them if they knew a Doña C who had a son named Alex who was in the United States. At least I think that's what he asked since it was all in K'iche' except the names and the words "Estados Unidos". They seemed to draw a blank but we proceeded on. I decided to call Doña C and give the phone to the driver so he could ask them more specifically where to leave me. She (or her son) told him by the new Evangelical church.  So we bumped along some more and then I saw a brightly painted church off to the right and there we stopped. "I don't see the kid," the driver said. "They were supposed to send a kid to meet you." A moment later a small, slight boy who looked to be about 10 or 11 walked down the road towards us, coming around a curve. He turned out to be 14, but a lot of the children in rural areas are small for their age -- at least to U.S. eyes -- and look to be younger than they are.

We started up the gravel road, me with my three bags (carry-on, bag with my laptop and camera, and backpack) and he said, "Let me help you." I didn't know how far we had to go so I agreed. He grabbed the largest bag and put it on his head and we proceeded. We didn't go far on the gravel road but turned off soon onto a narrow, red-earth footpath, that wound up and down hills, through cornfields, across several small streams (mostly really trickles of water). I followed along as best I could, trying to watch my step so that I didn't turn or roll an ankle or hurt my knees. The last time I hiked anywhere in Guatemala, back in 2019, I ended up with a sprained ankle and was on crutches for a couple of weeks, so I was not eager to repeat the experience.

My guide, whose name I later learned was Jairo, sped ahead, nimbly moving along the path. I felt extremely guilty for having lugged all of my luggage. Had I been clear about the actual location of the aldea where the family lived, I would have understood that I could have left my bags in Chinique, because once I left the village and returned to the main road, I would have to pass through Chinique on my way to Quiché. And I could easily have hopped off the bus, gone up to my friend Naty's house, grabbed my bags, and then waited for another bus.  People in the area refer to the departmental capital as Quiché, although that is also the name of the department. It might seem a bit confusing, but if you are inside the department of Quiché and in one of the small towns or villages and someone says they are "going to Quiché", everyone understands that they mean the town of Santa Cruz del Quiché.

But here I was, forcing a child (or so he seemed) to carry a heavy bag on his head while I plodded along behind him, with a backpack and my laptop bag. On and on, or so it seemed, and I had to call ahead and ask him to stop a few times so I wouldn't lose sight of him -- although in most places the path was pretty clear, and there was only one path. In several places we came across barbed wire fencing, the wire strung between wooden poles, but in each place there either was a narrow, U-shaped passage, small enough for a slim person, or a kind of "bridge" made of four or five logs laid down at an angle, so people (and presumably not animals) could step up and over the barbed wire. 

A bit abashedly, I ventured to ask if we were close. Specifically, I asked "falta mucho?" (literally, "does it lack much?" but taken to mean, "is there a lot more left to go?"). Jairo answered that there was still a bit to go ("todavía falta un poco") but knowing what I do about how Guatemalans speak, and specifically in rural areas, "un poco" can mean anything from 200 yards to 2 kilometers, or even 20 kilometers if you are in a vehicle. 

So we marched on. I saw a house on a distant hillside. No, I thought with an inward groan. I bet that's where we're going. It seemed so far. And so it was -- far away, and our destination. 

Part of my intention in writing this, however, is not to pat myself on the back for being such an intrepid researcher that I will scale tall mountains in order to talk to people. I only had to do this one time, out and back. But Jairo, my "guide", did it twice -- he came out to meet me, returned with me, and then made the journey out and back a second time -- accompanying me back to the spot where his mother had told a tuc-tuc to meet me, and then returning home.

One of my favorite meals:
tortillas and cheese

Alex, the young man who recently arrived in New Bedford -- the older brother of Jairo -- undoubtedly had to make this trip frequently, maybe daily. And maybe even farther -- I could afford the Q30-Q40 for the tuc-tuc from the church down to the main road. But as the tuc-tuc made its way back to the road, we came across plenty of people on foot, undoubtedly walking from the main road up to their homes. Maybe they didn't have to walk along a narrow footpath. Maybe their homes were closer to the dusty, rocky, rutted road. But still they were walking a long distance under a blazing sun. A tuc-tuc ride one way is probably as much as many people earn in a day -- that is, if they have a job that pays wages and are not simply working on their own land. As I was waiting for the tuc-tuc on the way back down, three people walked wearily up to where I was standing -- a young woman, an older woman with a humped spine, hunched over nearly double, and an older man who may have been her husband (hard to tell people's ages; the man looked somewhat younger than her, but it may have been the deformity that made her seem older).They stopped, inquired what I was doing there (a natural curiosity since I imagine very few foreigners make their way up to that rural village), and where I was from. We chatted a moment, and then they continued their slow course up the hill.

Two of Alex's three younger brothers

Making trips like this -- there was another family that I visited earlier in my research, in San Andrés Sajcabajá, that lived some distance from a road, but not quite as far as this family-- causes me to reflect. These hikes to visit family members of migrants fills me with admiration for the migrants and their families, the amount of effort they put into everyday living. In this particular instance, the nearest store is a 30-minute hike away, somewhere in the vicinity of the church. People who live in cities or town or communities that are at least served by roads can take so much for granted -- you can walk out your door and find a store nearby so you can buy rice or oil or salt if you run out. Alex's mother Doña C., whom I imagine rarely makes the trip along the path down to the church and even less frequently to the main road, still less frequently to Zacualpa (the nearest actual tow), had a large store of staple supplies on a shelf in her kitchen. As she was preparing lunch for her family (she was kind enough to give me some queso fresco and freshly made tortillas with some chirmol -- a sauce made of roasted or blanched tomatoes, sometimes with chile), she asked one of her sons to get a bag of salt from the shelf. He stood on a rickety wooden chair (on an uneven dirt floor) and pulled down a black plastic shopping bag that was filled with several bags of salt, removed one, and then tried to replace the black plastic bag (it fell down again). I said that I would put it up since I was a bit taller, and once I was able to reach the shelf, I saw that there were probably a dozen packets of pasta, along with the salt and other items in black plastic bags. I surmised from this that Doña C. probably bought her staples in bulk to minimize the number of trips to the store.

On the way back, we stopped at Alex's grandmother's house to pick up my carry-on bag, and also to talk to the mother of Alex's 15-year-old cousin Kevyn, who had been in immigration custody until Alex was able to sign all the necessary paperwork and get fingerprinted so that ICE or the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) -- not sure which agency is in charge of minors who present themselves to immigration at the border -- would release Kevyn into Alex's care. Alex is 22, but he was the only relative who was willing to take responsibility for Kevyn. Apparently there is an uncle in New Bedford, but the uncle didn't want to sign for Kevyn, so it was left to Alex. 

Just one other personal note: not only did I schlep along all my bags, I also did not wear the appropriate footwear since I did not know that I was going to be hiking on a narrow and rocky dirt path. I wore my "good" sandals - which are actually flat, and quite comfortable (no blisters, I'm glad to say). I did actually bring hiking sneakers and sturdier sandals to Guatemala but I left a lot of stuff in a large suitcase in Santa Cruz del Quiché in the home of the mother of some friends, and traveled to smaller towns in the department with my smaller shoulder bag stuffed with a week's work of clothing. I took running shoes and my good sandals (in case I had to look nice). And since I was wearing my running shoes every day for running, and I wanted to look nice to meet families, I wore my sandals for this visit. They did hold up pretty well, I had to say.