| Carol Ann (Gratsos) Howell... page 6 |
| VACATION #4 SENSITIVITY TRAINING GUATEMALAN STYLE In the United States many try to improve their sensitivity and attend classes that school them in the art of touching and being touched. Such classes can cost hundreds of dollars. But in Guatemala City a short bus ride will get you all the touching you want -- and it costs only five cents. For forty-five cents you can ride for an hour and a half through the mountains from the capital to the town of Antigua. Traveling in Guatemala by bus is really a trip. There are lots of indigenous people, the Maya, speaking generally. The women carry baskets on their heads. They hand their burdens to the ayudante who puts the loads on the top of the rounded bus. There's just a small railing around it. Anyone who has something too big to put inside has his things put up there. When you go to Antigua they put your bags on top. When you go through the mountains, the bus leans and lurches. You can just imagine your two hundred dollar suitcases flying off, and you try to relax yourself by thinking about a fortune cookie you once read, "You possess only what won't be lost in a shipwreck." The driver has an assistant, the ayudante. They must get paid a percentage because they try to pack in as many people as possible. It's illegal if people are standing in the aisles, so when the driver passes a checkpoint, he signals the passengers to crouch down. However, your first bus experience was different. The ayudante put a narrow board across the aisle connecting each row of seats. The people were really mashed together. You sat by the window thinking it was a good place, but when the bus filled up you were pushed against the side of the bus and one cheek hung off the seat. The insurance company would never approve, you thought erroneously. The passengers bring anything into the bus that is precious -- like live chickens and turkeys. They tie up their feet and the birds just lie there. Once you were on a bus and someone shouted, "Catch it!" It was a piglet that had gotten loose. Everyone cooperated in its retrieval. The bus is a community experience. The ayudante winds his way through the crowd to collect the fare from each person. He remembers who he owes change to, he never forgets. You discover it's good to watch the scenery while you ride or engage a neighbor in conversation. That way you can ignore what the driver is doing -- like passing on a curve and just missing the oncoming truck, or racing with another bus in order to get the passengers at the next stop. It's better to admire the volcanos and the sumptuous plant life. While you ride you think about one of the most memorable bus trips you experienced in Guatemala when you went from Antigua to Chichicastenango. You had to take two buses. It took you four hours to get there. At Los Encuentros, which is almost eight thousand feet high, you stood on the Inter-American Highway in the cold wind waiting for the bus to Chichicastenango. A full bus pulled up, very few people got out. There were about ten of you who wanted to get on. The ayudante opened the back of the bus. It was filled. He called, "Come on. There's plenty of room." You couldn't see any. He pushed you in. People were standing in the aisle (no boards that time). More people were pushed in behind you. You couldn't turn you body. The bus lurched and you just let yourselves lean on whomever was there. There was nothing to hang on to, every space was occupied. You were facing front. The man behind you was pressed up against you, another was behind him. He was so close that you could feel the burr that was sticking out of his trousers. It pierced through your own pants and pricked you skin. You couldn't adjusted your stance enough to avoid it. After about an hour, the load shifted somewhat. A few people got off. You changed your position to standing sideways, gripping the bars in front of and in back of the seat over which you had to lean. The campesino in the seat was wearing a sombrero and his head was bent forward. Good thing he was asleep because your chest bumped his head as the bus bounced. You were powerless to change your position. The space had been filled around you and you needed the bars to hang onto because the road had become very curvy as it wound through the mountains. Occasionally the bus lurched radically and you bounced down hard on the man's head and he awoke for an instant, then fell asleep again. You stared out the window as if you hadn't noticed that you had come in contact. You wished then that you were back with the man with the burr in his pants. The trip cost $1.25 from Los Encuentros to Chichicastenango for the two hour ride. Your sensitivities had been definitely awakened, what with the body odors -- both human and animal, the garlic breath of your neighbors, the unchanged diapers of a child nearby, the roar and fumes of the bus, the tape of popular songs the driver played, the spectacular scenery of pine and banana trees, tropical and mountain foliage cohabitating in the tropics at eight thousand feet. You can still feel your sweaty palms slipping on the metal seatbars, the heat from the anxious bodies and the cold wind that chilled you from an open window, and seeing the beauty of the Indian people with their satiny reddish-brown skin and blue-black hair, the rich colors of their embroidered costumes ... You had never had much experience riding buses until you went to Guatemala, but now that you have, you have really been touched. ***** |