a brief portrait of (way) southern decadence

Hello, neighbor.

I'll briefly recap the weekend. It was uneventful. Too brief? Okay.

Saturday was a national holiday. So me and the temp fam, as I've come to call them in my head, took a not so brief trip to some ruins in a place called Tecpan. The trip began with a stop at Mac (donalds)* where I ate a Big Mac (which wasn't as good as the ones in the US, though I'm not sure why it would be) in the car which was thoroughly jostled as A/the highways in Guatemala are not always in tip top shape and B/ temp fath fig drives like a maniac or an idiot, depending on my mood. Please take note of the fact that I used parenthetical observation, alphabetical subpoints, AND a footnote in that sentence. I hope you were able to follow. Anyway, at this point I'm relatively sure that the family thinks I'm completely unreachable given that I took 10 photos from inside the car including one of my sandwich, which came in a styrofoam container and I took no photos of the ruins. It's interesting to me that environmental uproar over the use of styrofoam in the United States was apparently insulated to the point that McDonald's chose not to change it's packaging material anywhere else, including a country with 19 priceless ecosystems.

*second fucking time I've been made to eat there

So, point of the story. We get to the ruins at 4:00. They close at 4:30. As we pull up, the gaurd is closing the gate. He says, "Sorry, you can't come in, we're closed". Paternal household says, "No no no, we have 25 minutes!". Gaurd: "Sorry, closed. Come again another day". My guide to Guatemala: "No, wait, you don't understand! We brought a Gringo! Look, he's right here! He's from America! Please, it'll take us like 15 minutes, I swear. We'll come right back"

It was at this moment, my pale face turned bright red and I wanted to put my 6'0'' frame in a 6'1'' deep hole. My attempts at requesting that this not happen again were rebuffed with an explanation that my foreignness garners me special treatment. To be more exact, "Those people don't respect locals". Awesome. I am my own key to the country. In closing, the ruins were old, the landscape was pretty, and I saw a Mayan ritual involving flowers and some burning stuff. It was very peaceful.

Aside...I hate that I can't sum up well. If you'd like to read events that inspired the blogs title, read on. If not, I understand and I'm sorry I'm so long winded. Your absence will be missed, and will cut my readership in half.

Second aside...at some point during this trip I was bitten on the nipple by an insect. Somehow, I had always functioned under the assumption that this didn't happen. Apparently it does. Brutal.

Today I went to work, did an English languate summary sheet for the firm, got tricked into stuffing 150 envelopes for a conference that I guess I'm helping with (I am still so incredibly angry about that) and after work ended at 6 got dragged to a party.

When I started this trip, I did not expect an extended encounter with abject poverty. I am not here on any sort of service learning trip, I am an upper-middle American staying with what I assumed to be the low end of affluent Guatemalans. I did not expect, however to end up at parties where the entire group wanted to forcibly quell unrest among the poor.

At this party, which was for the 17th birthday of the son of the pastor of the local Protestant megachurch that my temp fam attends. I was unaware that megachurches existed outside of a certain radius of Joplin, Missouri. Apparently His (Jerry Falwell) gaze is growing wider. Yes, that was a LOTR joke. I hung out for a bit in the U-17 room with the pool table and lots of kids. Apparently I am everybit as awkward around this group as I was when I was 15. Then into the adult party, where the action was.

I managed to keep abstain from the Johnny Walker Red Label, which was sitting there, beckoning to me. Probably a good thing, as I had trouble holding my tongue as the converation continued. Notable thing #1/ Rich folks that I've met here all tend to want to vote for Otto Perez (see two blogs ago) and only refer to him as "Mano Dura", his campaign slogan. His whole platform is based on security. He is a former general who promises an increased military presence among common people to stop crime. People seriously refer to this guy as "the firm hand" and are excited about it. Freaks me the fuck out.

#2/ It's not hip to be a Bush supporter. So everyone who wants to appear learned regarding international issues bitches about how much he sucks. Even wealthy folks who are "anti-communist" (apparently still a thing) and who plan on voting for someone who has no visible plans to invest in education, sources of income for the poor, healthcare, and will presumably roll back civil rights and liberties in the interest of some kind of "national security". D'oh.

#3/ This religious leader did not seem very much like one of those to me. He drank the whiskey that I didn't. He cursed a lot in English. He complained about the poor and how much they whine. He made jokes about me having sex with the 17-year old daughter of the family I'm staying with in front of her mother (who apparently thought it was amusing). His abode was also pretty fucking big for a family of four in a country where lots of families live in lean-tos constructed out of refuse. I suppose pious is sort of an outdated term

It is not as though I don't appreciate this experience, it's cool to see the top 10th of the income divide in countries like this, as I fully intend to see the bottom portion. It's just that these people are so...awful in terms of their concern for others. I don't know what more to say.

At least I was driven home by someone who was thoroughly intoxicated!

Okay! I really miss both of you! Seriously, if you're reading this, send me an e-mail, I'd love to hear how you are. Not being with anyone that I can really express my thoughts to and hear back from has made me miss everyone a lot. A lot a lot.

Anyway.

Chocolate Rain,
-kevin

PS. I'm currently working with a lot of women in heels, and I'm also scared to death of interacting with anyone half of the time. It has given a whole new meaning to Under Armour's "Click Clack, I think you hear us coming" ad campaign. I'm thinking they should maybe consider designing a pair of women's pumps.