true life planet

So for some time, I´ve been wanting to write about time-Guatemalan time-and how it is affecting every aspect of my life.

Time here is relative-nothing is ¨on time¨at least not by my standards at home. In the past , when I first arrived, I would spènd entire days frustrated that I couldn´t seem to get anywhere or get anything done…but lately…I think I´m liking this ¨Guatemaltecan tiempo¨-and I´ve got no choice, anyway, but to go with the flow!

I´m just trying to have a sense of humor about it all-after all, there is no other choice!

For example:

I needed photocopies one day, for my art class. In my mind I had the enormous photocopy shops of the USA in my brain…but such effieciency was not to be… I was eating lunch with a Guatemalan friend, and had mentioned before the meal that I needed photocopies. She said this would not be a problem, and she had a friend nearby who had a copy machine in her pharmacy shop ( I should mention that most little shops have a multitude of businesses under one roof-for example, right now I´m in an ¨internet cafe¨ that also sells containers of gas, helgados(ice cream) and religious music, which is blasting so loud it´s hard to focus on my words and not write the lyrics!).

So, after lunch, off we went to the friend´s shop. It was 12 noon. My class was all the way across town, at 3:00. We entered the shop, and my Guatemalan friend explained what I needed-30 copies total, or 15 booklets of two pages each.

No problem, says her friend. I looked at the ancient photocopy machine in the corner and thought to myself that it didn´t look up the task, but decided to go with the situation. My friend reassured me that it will only be about 15 or 20 minutes…so we went a walked around for about half an hour, and when we returned…only two copies were made. This didn´t look good to me, so I suggested we find a different shop. But the woman reasssured me, it was no problem, really! Apparently someone needed some legal copies right away, so she had done those instead…. so off we went again.

When we returned, in about half an hour, it was grim. Only 8 copies made! The photocopier had run out of ink, and her husband was unhappy and wanted her to close for lunch. He was very grumpy( It would seem men here don´t cook.) and she was close to tears…still, when I decided to go somewhere else-she wouldn´t give me my originals! So I was stuck there, waiting. Since she was upset, we were trying to be nice about it all. Meanwhile, people were coming into the pharmacy for medicine and candy and so on….she was the only person helping all these people. At this point it was 2:00, and still not many copies.

We decided she needed another half an hour, so we walked around some more. When we returned..total chaos! People had come into the shop, and all of them were helping this woman assemble the booklets. She was in tears, and when she saw me she said, my husband needs his lunch right NOW!

So three hours later..I had my 30 photocopies. I literally never walked so fast in my life to get to my class on time. I had to walk all the way across town-since taking the bus and expecting it to actually get there rapidly would be ridiculous!

Which gets me to the topic of the buses…when you want one, to go to a particular location-it´s rare one actually shows up. If it does it is so crammed with people that I prefer to walk!

Here´s another example of Guatemalan time: I asked for my windows of my house to be repaired.(I´m the only one with a few broken windows..). This has proved incredibly complicated. I asked for them to be reapired about two weeks ago-and here´s what happened:

There is a guy that repairs windows in my area, so my family called him and he said he would come-two weeks ago! So after it was pretty obvious he had forgotten or something, we called again. Turns out he hadn´t forgotten-he just hadn´t gotten around to it yet.

Okay, I told myself, they will get repaired, he will come. Meanwhile I am freezing, due to the fact that it is the coldest month here of the year. Okay, I told myself, as I could see my breath at night and every morning. Okay, I told myself, as I developed a desire to sleep in ALL of my clothes that I brought with me.

So, nothing happened..he never showed up. I mentioned this fact to my family, and they decided to take it upon themselves to repair the windows. It turns out the glass is sitting by the front door of a house on the property, and all they needed to do was cut it and glue it into place. (So why didn´t they do that before? I have no idea!). Of copurse , there is a glitch-they have no glass cutter, and no putty to glue it into place. Someone goes to Xela to find a glass cutter, buys it, and then somehow one of the jkids plays with it and it is lost. A different person says they will buy the putty, but apparently this proves very impossible for some mysterious reason.

Everyday I go off and hike in the bosque, visit friends etc. Everyday I give them the key to my house. Everyday they say that this is the day that either the repair guy will show up, or that they will do it themselves. Everyday I come home to no windows. When I ask why, everyone just shrugs..other stuff came up, I guess.

Finally, I used the duct tape I brought and cut up a bunch of cardboard. Now I have cardboard windows-and I am not so cold at night.

Why did you do that, they ask me. We were going to fix it. Really.

I said, that´s okay..I´m sure it will get fixed..eventually. Like in June.
Everyone laughed and said, Well, now you are becoming Guatemaltecan!

It is kind of nice to not rush around everyday, just relax. Having experiences like those above gives me a clearer picture of the difficulties of life here. It is diffficult to get to work on time, for example. The bus may not show up, or whatever. It´s difficult to make set plans or say you are going to be anywhere at any particular hour-anything could happen. You could be online and the power goes out(happens to me alot here); you could be walking down the street and get attacked by a dog(has happened to me); you could take three buses and walk loads to meet someone, but be stuck in the hot sun in the street waiting for them for two hours (has happened more than once to me).

The only solution is to smile and buy some ice cream from the street vendor walking by..and wait.

gigi

It is La Vida Loca!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.