BootsnAll Travel Network



Wal-Mart, Hugo Chavez & Chickens on the Chicken Bus

There are 2 large shopping centers in Xela and recently Wal-Mart bought both of them. We’ve been shopping at a small grocery store near our school. I was reminded of Hugo Chavez’s recent speech at the UN when I realized the devil is all around us. The director of our language school is a Guatemalan woman and we had a short discussion about some of the criticism Wal-Mart receives in the US. It was interesting to hear what she had to say about Wal-Mart. I took her point to be that when people in Guatemala barely have enough to eat they don’t worry about things like business practices, the effects on small-businesses or working conditions of the people producing goods sold at Wal-Mart. I’ve never seen it as a real luxury to be able to criticize Wal-Mart and choose to shop elsewhere, but I guess it really is.

Every day our school has special activities. We’ve been to a weaving cooperative run by Guatemalan women, yesterday we had a cooking class and today we took a trip to a small town about an hour away from Xela.

We first took a city bus, and then took 2 chicken buses up to the town. This time we actually did have chickens in the bus. I kept hearing this squeaking noise when I finally saw the small beaks of little chickens poking out through the holes in a cardboard box stored above Matthias and William. At times the bus was absolutely packed. When these buses are on the road in the States I think they only allow 2 kids per seat. There were 6 of us on my seat for a while. There was a woman at the window, I was in the middle with William on my lap and at the isle was a Mayan woman with a little girl on her lap and a baby wrapped on her back. We went to a small town with an interesting church. It was bright yellow with lots of colors. There is a picture of Matthias and his Spanish teacher here. There wasn’t a lot to do in the city so while we were waiting for the bus back Matthias’ teacher started to tell him about another nearby church they wanted to take us to. It is high up in the mountains and they perform all sorts of witchcraft. They decided that we shouldn’t actually go there because they sacrifice chickens and other animals and that might not be good for the kids.

Matthias is really enjoying his Spanish teacher this week. They sit and chat the entire time and he’s getting good at bull-shitting in Spanish. I knew he could do it. She ended up telling him how much money she makes as a teacher. At the school we are attending we each pay $100 for private language classes (5 hours of lessons for 5 days). Our teachers take half of what we pay, which means she earns $50/ week. Sometimes she works at other schools, where she is paid less. Right now she lives on $200/month. The same work in the US draws a salary 8-10 times higher wages. Matthias asked her if she wants to travel around with us for the next week or two since she doesn’t have any students lined up for next week. We’d pay for her food and accommodation and pay her her current salary. We want to continue learning Spanish, she knows a lot about Guatemala and she has a really good sense of humor. It could be a lot of fun for all of us. We’ll see what she says, but there might be 5 of us in the Yoda Van for the next couple of weeks. Plus we might finally see an end to all the “Gringo Prices” we’ve getting getting at the stores if we let her do a bit of the negotiating.



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