Break Point

Over six months is the point break when you really can start seeing yourself as integrated. I lead a double life; the AFS traveller and the San Pedro volunteer. Before leaving I had the strange sensation of not wanting to go, of unwillingness to face the seemingly stressful and full of risk situations. I had become where I was living, the safe harbour. The first hour on the bus was enough to flip the poles; I was on the road again ready to explore the world, and extending mine.

“… No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence-that which makes its truth, its meaning-its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone.” As wrote Joseph Conrad in ‘Heart of Darkness’. And I agree.

We are all nude. Fishes flung into feverish fugues. While some people hammer on every slight detail, I prefer to let my unconscious make the registry and sort the files for me. Memories which really are worth the remembrance are those which alter out perception; they breach the bubble and remould the map. And these we never forget. Backpacking is a mere catalyst. Its explosions to conceptuality. Guatemala is so much more infrastructurally developed; they fill holes in tarmac.

We always take the first to be the best, we shouldn’t, but we do. I can’t seem to classify the happenings in any specific or relevant order, but so there I was back in Guatemala; Puerto Barrio, after a week in Belize and two in the previous mentioned. Marching down the blazing sun with an 18kg backpack, and not sure how to respond to the buff, dishonourably discharged US Marine trying to bake us a hotel deal. He introduced himself as Smokey, explaining it was on account of his herbal indulgences he was discharged, adding that whatever was our need, he could fulfil it. ‘We’ being the Sweed and I. The others had parted earlier on a mission to hitchhike their way up to the 24-million strong bastion of MExicanism in the Valley of Anáhuac, also known as Mexico City.

Sunshine and frivolous experience later, we, again the Sweed and I, sat solemnly on the hotel terrace randomly conversing the place we would most like to be in that very moment of time, or mind. I felt like nothing. I was satisfied digesting reencounters with the past. Trying vainly to reconstruct the living moment of toeing about a chalet in mid construction by a lake with an enchanting tang. Slurping corn atoll on a rainy Sunday morning engulfed by descendants of great Mayan deities in a sea of brightly coloured fabric. Or that moment of being reduced to a childish rave fuelled by adrenalin of hop-skipping around a slowly erupting volcano. Sinking into H2O highways after unsuccessfully trying to take lift off from the iron bridge above, and puddling around in dreamy coloured splashes of the stuff a stone throws away. Even the sensation of lying tucked away in my sleeping bag captivated by the irrational fear issued by that bug, which to my mind in that moment seemed freakishly like ‘Chagas’, I fished from under the orange and black polyester, seemed laughable then. I even dreamt that night Chagas was confirmed and I was counting down the days till my heart would stop beating. And cold it could be in those mist crowned mountains. The mind-boggling wandering around a complex of stone giants pillaring out of the lush jungles, once house and helm to a budding Mayan civilization is evenly not prone to reconstruction. Fascinating.

Sun up and down later I found myself wandering around a very Shire like, Platdeutsch speaking hub tucked away in some Belizian corner with little blond-haired children playing on a tire swing suspended in their front yard. Hitler would have squealed at this picture perfect community of large self-sufficient families with strong young agriculturally minded boys working the fields. However, this is far from a Nazi add. The Upper Barton creek Mennonite community; a bundle of not over thirty five families, most descendants of Arian families on the move for the past 400 years, who dropped down a good 50years ago in search of new fertile land and a quite place to call their home. Mennonites, where if ‘ites’ was the drug, pure discipline and faith it would inspire. But these menn, and woman, are on to something. Something that rings so truly and pure, it is hard to disagree. We could compare them to the Amish, however upon confronting our dinner host with this saying, he chuckled just ever so slightly and clarified that the Amish live following tradition whereas the Mennonites stand strong with their religious beliefs. Hardcore-religious Amish. Our bus dropped us off about in the middle of the highway and so our hot steamy hike began; with full 18kg pack strapped up we marched on along the sandy tracks creeping into a tamed monotonous jungle-forest until the first two story wooden house-on-a-hill was in sight. Of the first family we visited, a friend of a friend knew the father, so one of the boys was sent out into the fields to inform him of our arrival. The tall barefooted big-bearded mellow fellow answering to Cornelius soon filled the door opening and wishing us all a big welcome, he called for his 7 sons to great the guests. The mother and the two daughters stood peering in from the kitchen. We had an idea of staying for a night or so, and ended up leaving 5 days later.

If there are ever two things a Mennonite does not go without, it’s his Holy Scripture and his farm. Living in the world God made and Jesus lived in, they reason “people were happy in the times without all this modern technology that has poisoned the world, and so can we”. All forms of what we see as our technologically advanced society only serve to fuel the destructive downward spiral of lust, desire and modern day consumerist society. I will leave this short as plenty a late night conversation as well as a few voluminous works can be/are dedicated to elaborating further on this subject. Information is available for those who seek, and I definitely advise you to read something about these pacifist Anabaptists.

Back to the point; what can I say, three weeks backpacking in Central America in great company? Spend some time staying in a stranger’s house, a few boat rides from here to there, and in the end be able to get home in one piece. Only thing missing is the sleeping bag which must have popped out somewhere along the road, not all too bad keeping in mind I brought home a lot more than I left with.

There are many a thing I have learnt in thee past fleeting moments. I’m far over the half now, and the end of my stay here slowly but surely comes edging closer into sight. Still small, but clear cut in the distance. I have now come to support my Copeco Polo-shirts with pride and commitment as one really forms an identity with which he is working. The First Lady, Xiomara Castro Zelaya, has, in name of la ‘Red Solidaria’ (solidarity network) obtained a grand donation by the Government of Italia in order reach out to all Honduran families living in extreme poverty and supply them with a heavy double bagged food ration. Meaning I get to explore the entire north-north-western backyard of Honduras inspecting the horrifically poor distributing not only food, but blankets, clothes and thin mattresses as well. Just imagine the joy of a 45 year old mother with eleven kids (she bore fifteen in total, of which four lay in peace) who can finally lay her family on a mattress and give them a blanket instead of the hard cold floor in their little square mud hut. Note, the word mattress is quite unfitting in this instance for they are five-centimetre thick plastic-enveloped foam cushion which, in Europe, would serve no other purpose than that of a child’s garden toy. The father of all these children sighed when jokingly advised it was time to stop making babies, and brokenly replied that the local pastor preached of denying the children God sent as a terrible sin punished by hell. Even natural methods are deemed incompatible with the will of God in these lost mountain-hugging communities, unreachable when it rains, and where 75% of the adult population cannot write their own name. Whenever our pickup passes a place once before visited, the entire under 12 population runs out calling for leche. Sitting on the green metal benches of the Indian made army trucks I often sit staring back at the barefooted children slowly disappearing in a swirling cloud of yellow dust in their joyful chase of the milk dealers. It’s quite comparable to the ecstasy of a child’s day before Christmas, that one carton of chocolate milk.

There is a story I feel bound to relate due to its proximity. Doña Ana has been living in this house since I arrived six months ago, but only recently presented itself the opportunity to delve into the true identity of this seemingly always cheerful and whistling old lady who occupies the backroom of our house and helps with the washing. She has more than one story to tell, however they usually never last longer than half an hour. I think that fault is ours mutually, as after the first ten minutes I usually have to take a few deep breaths and suppress the watering-up of my eyes, while hers persistently redden along with the hoarsening of her voice. By the half hour mark I usually bubble up with frustration and start fidgeting with rising agitation as her story winds down and she retires with exhaustion. Doña Ana is labelled an orphan, as both her parents died when she was a baby. “We were given away like kittens from an unwanted litter” she worded with a chilling coldness. No muscle flinched. Three girls, of whom she was the only surviving one, and a brother involved with crime quite a distance away. Doña Ana is completely illiterate and knows neither how to write nor read; she never attended school and has no idea how her country looks like save her little farmers village in the fields and San Pedro. Her first husband, of whom she bore one daughter, was killed in a car accident while doing his milk runs. Not police inspection was made, and her daughter was taken away by her late husbands mother, never to be heard of or seen again. “The police arrived one day and took away my second husband on account of another man’s murder.” He died in prison; not being able to eat nor drink under the immense psychological strain of being incarcerated, without trial, for another mans sin. He left her with two children she could not take care of, and ultimately had to abandon to government orphanages. A choice which was extremely testing if not torturous to her mind as she her self had experienced the life of an abandoned child. Doña Ana has never known a trade different from housemaid; clearing, washing and ironing, leaching off other peoples property on a barely liveable loan. Better said, on an unliveable loan. It is only until recent she established contact with her son; a young man with girlfriend only an echelon higher in the hierarchy of society implausibly making his living as a bus driver. But at least he can write his own name and knows without all too much difficulty that the change of six to a fifty is forty-four. Doña Ana continues to quietly live out her days in this house happily supported by my big-hearted good-Christian host mother as she has for the past ten years. Her son she continues to see every now and then, of her brother she wants nothing, and her second daughter, whom has settled down in the north coast with her husband, bluntly rejects all form of communication with her family, for reasons which are understandable.

I just really don’t understand how the world can revolve with the extremity of the imbalance setting hold on its surface. The equilibrium is just so far placed to one side of the spectrum; it is hard to believe things haven’t crashed as they are. We really are the cream of the world. The tip of the iceberg.