"What Up?" To The Baby On My Leg

I saw a deformed baby today. But let’s not talk about that right now.

Last night I went to a volunteer meeting at Le Pena Del Sol Latino, a great Antigua restaurant. The meeting was with an organization known as Casa Sito. They are running a music festival in a small village called Santiago Zamora. I am to be a volunteer! I suppose that I will be playing the role of stage manager for this thing. It should be quite fun and perhaps offer some pretty good contacts.

I came by this opportunity because of a “Yes” that I uttered when a friend of mine asked if I would like to get up at 6AM on a Sunday and go spend the day on the ocean. Seeing as how I had never even seen the ocean before my move to Guatemala, I decided that it was best for me to get as much ocean as I possibly can whilst here, thus improving my chances of being chomped by a shark before my return to the Great Lakes, where the only deadly hazard one must learn to avoid is some tanned head, white torsoed moron on a jet ski.

During this trip to the ocean I sat in the back of a lovely little VW convertible. The top was down, the sun was blazing (always great for the skin cancer farm that is my bald head) and the company was perfect. I spent the hour or so ride conversing with a lovely German girl named Esteema. By lovely, I of course mean she would fit right in at those fabled German hardcore rock concerts where everyone can kick my ass. She is tall with jet black hair, a muscular build and possesses a swagger that George W. Bush would be proud of! This girl sports a tattoo that runs the entire length of her back and covers fully more than half of it. She is hardcore, she could indeed kick my ass and she is one of the coolest people that I have ever met. Oh yeah, she is also a volunteer at Casa Sito, she is actually the one in charge of this whole festival thing. We spent most of the day chilling together and talking about various things. Thus was born the conversation of the music festival and the resulting presence of your’s truly at last night’s meeting. I am very much looking forward to this thing. It sounds like an insane amount of fun. It will happen on the 2nd of August, but we are all already working hard to get the word out. I have put up a poster at Dominos! As I stood waiting for the “Delivery Experts” to prepare my order I marveled at the power of my newly placed poster. Children called their parents to it, girlfriends called their men (and in one case woman) and families began their planning, all because I chose to chew off a few pieces of tape and stick a fancy sign to a wall. That’s right folks, I bring joy to Guatemalans everywhere.

I also wondered why all of the Dominos’ signage was in English. This is Guatemala, after all, one is shocked and amazed at anything in English. Seeing a sign in English is almost like seeing Jesus down here! People flock to it, hover under it because they feel at ease with it and speak of it for days to come.

Sometimes I just love where this writing thing takes me. From Dominos to Jesus in one sentence! Billy Graham would be proud!

On my wander home from the meeting, I conversed on the phone with Claudia (another friend from Germany, one of my favorite people in Antigua and a fellow blogger, see her here: http://claudiainguatemala.wordpress.com/about/). We set up a lunch date for today. Thus begins the tale of the deformed infant.

Claudia and I always meet in the plaza mejor (central park). I usually arrive early to do a bit of people watching, as I love that sport and the watching is always good at this park. Usually I am accosted by indigenous folk selling linens, flutes, bracelets, necklaces and drugs. Yes, drugs.
As a lone white dude sitting on a bench, I suppose that I come across as a desperate drug fiend looking for a fix. The game usually goes like this:

I sit for 5-10 minutes just chilling and looking around. Soon, I am shadowed by a rather grungy looking Guatemalan dude (never the same one, they must get whacked all the time). After about two minutes of pacing just outside of my comfort zone, the dude bursts my bubble of personal space and sits next to me. He then asks me what my name is, then where I am from, then how long I have been here, then how long I will stay, then if I like it, then he will list off all of the differing kinds of marijuana he has on him today. If I balk at that, he will list off all of the harder drugs that he has on him, because if I don’t want marijuana, surely I must want heroin. Usually I politely decline and he will move on (I say usually because sometimes I must be a bit rude with the decline before they move on, not because I sometimes say yes to heroin).

Today, there were the indigenous peeps selling their crap, but their was also a rather red neck looking Guatemalan chick with a baby in a trashy stroller. I first saw them out of the corner of my eye. As I turned to look at them, she pushed the stroller right up next to me, I mean, it was right there. She had the kid’s legs touching mine. She went into this well rehearsed schpeel about how she needed money. During this schpeel, she bent forward and lifted the shirt of the baby. The kid had some sort of hernia or something. A large red, moist, bulbous thing protruded from its stomach. The kid looked normal, happy, healthy, but for this……thing. The mother said that she needed money for an operation. I told her that I did not bring any money with me, which was true, unless the kid was also a credit card machine. She backed the stroller up and moved on to the next most foreign looking dude. The sad thing about this whole ordeal is that if I had given her money, it would not have gone to the kid. Curing that child would remove her only source of income. She would not do that. This is the way that many beggars make a living down here. They expose their deformities for money, never intending to use that money for hospital care, as they claim. This child will be 40, on the street with its mother, showing that thing off, no matter how much anyone gives her right now.

The best part of this tale comes from Claudia and my end of the day ice cream chat. This has become a habit with us. We will finish our outing with ice cream, people watching and talking at the park. This woman came back to me because of Claudia. Claudia’s face was one of pure shell shocked horror when this happened to her. The only thing she could muster was a weak “No gracias” which sent me into fits of laughter. Once her shock wore off, she laughed as well. She said no gracias, like the mother was trying to sell the squirt. Which, to be honest, was what I thought was going to happen when she slammed the stroller into my leg. To be fair, the only thing I could muster when this happened to me was a weak “What in the world?” after greeting the lady with a rather shocked “What up?”

So, as the cricket descends on my kitchen (I’ve got to find that little bastard) and the darkness begins to fall, I will leave you and go begin a movie. I am really in the mood for one. The day has been awesome and life remains good!

OH YEAH! I also bought another bottle of Arbor Mist. Perhaps they will read this and make me a spokesperson for their new “Manly Mist” line!!