I am in Guatemala

Woke this morning to the sound of birds and thousands of boots and a chant that yesterday I first though was the sound of futbol, but which is actually the miltary school down the block.

I am carving a niche in this neighborhood. took a city bus a ew long blocks up to the museums and zoo and took a Sunday stroll back, found dinner in the form of the only place open on the Lord´s day, mother and daughtr stand with good grilled meat, rice, salsa, perfect Guacamole. Joined the kids and families and odd person in a wheelchair from his war wounds playing in the roundabout by the airport. Probably more than half of the time that the kids kicked the futbol it went in the road. A young man, maybe 6th grade approached me and told me the whole flight schedule, asked whic hairline I flew--that one we ca nhear overhead is the TikaJet-- because his dad used to take him to the airport to watch the planes.

Back in the hostel my odd-couple riends are the sixty-year-old traveller dad who got his girlriend in the Phiipines pregnant and took the kid, Claire,now two and speaking some incomprehensible language that is mostly ¨Ahhh¨" and nonsense but that may be a mix of English, Tagalog, Thai and Spanish. She is a great time, but the kind o kid who the friendly receptionist says "has batteries", maybe too many batteries!

At some point a biggish group of guests arrived for the good roos upstairs, one of them good and drunk. I was swinging Claire by the wrists in the courtyard and he had to come down and ask if I was married, if I was her mother, if the old man was my husband; when I said no, he just started over, incredulous with the same set of qustions, so I went to the comedor, close-by and well-lit and a`place where I could be out and safe and have a Gallo.

My friendly hunch was right, owner Eddie from Uruguay used to work in the Southern US restoring antiques and doing hotels, making old things new and then making them look old again. His friend Juan Carlos works in customs at the airport, importing and exporting clothes. They let me join their conversation and before it was over we had talked safety and law and business in the city and talked politics and war-- they say now the military does what a military is supposed to do (not much, be prepared) and they gave me a book about the journalists who disappeared duing the bad years. The widow of Isidoro Zarco wrote in a column memorializing him and promising to take on his work herself,¨"He dreamed with industry and vigor, that which fits with his dynamism and talent, but he wished at the same time that the business would not lose its human flavor and the Christian odor that bread has when it is made by hand." I love the way Spaish sounds. The conversation turned to the politics of today; they said that Berger is "a good man" although not ultiately that powerful, ruled by his cafiz (not in my dictionary, I think it is a more powerful version of our cabinet). "It´s a democracy if I false democracy" he said, more false than ours, less false than it used to be, like ours but much more confusing. Juan Carlos had a Class B liscence to drive a bus for five years before he knew how to work a car at all. "Money makes the world go round" they said and laughed.