Remembering and Misremembering: Marking Time with Michael Jackson and Crissy

Fall of 1983: We were running out to the playground. Crissy had her boom box in her hand and we scoured the playground for a place to ourselves—but not too far away from others. We did want to be noticed. So we found a place on the jungle gym. She balanced the boom box on the top of the bars and pressed play. There was the music and then that voice to remember. “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” waved through the air. We laughed and jumped around to the music. The warm fall air, filled with the smell of dried leaves, lingered around us as we danced and played.

June 25-6, 2009: When I heard that Michael Jackson was dead, I was sitting at Atomic with Angela. We were talking about our research on Guatemala. I didn’t believe it at first. I looked at the CNN headline and just sort of thought it was a joke. I still don’t really believe it’s true to be honest with you. Part of me wants it to be a big publicity stunt for his great comeback. As I write this, though, it brings back lots of memories of growing up. I’ve been in an '80s nostalgia mode these days, so this just tipped me over the edge.

Remembering December 2, 1983: Crissy, and I eagerly awaited the world premiere of the “Thriller” video. Crissy was my best friend in the 5th and 6th grade. She was my first best friend. I remember being excited that the video would premiere on Friday Night Videos because my family did not have cable. Having it on Friday Night Videos meant that I could actually see the video for the first time when the rest of the country saw it for the first time. It was a time to celebrate, because not only was the video premiering, it was also less than a week before my birthday. For the occasion my parents let me invite Crissy over to spend the night.

That night has been significant for me—and not just because we watched “Thriller” for the first time. I was in the sixth grade and my family and I were living in the farmhouse in Defiance, Missouri. It is a house full of terrible memories, but that night—that night was one of the best nights I had in that house. I had a wood stove in my room and I remember that it was nice and warm—so toasty. Our firewood supply was often touch and go and luckily we had enough before our next trip into the woods. (Yeah, it was the sole source of heat for us.) So Crissy and I spent the evening doing all those things girls typically do. It was rare for me, because I almost never invited friends over to my house. My father was just too unpredictable with his drinking to trust bringing friends over. But this was an exception. It was near my birthday and it was Michael Jackson. I took the risk.

We had so much fun that night. Crissy and I played games, did each other’s make-up and hair, gossiped about the boys we liked at school, and, of course, talked about how awesome the video was going to be. By the time Friday Night Videos came on, we were poised with our popcorn—nearly ready to jump out of our skin with excitement. We watched it on the small tv in my room, because we wanted to digest it by ourselves, without parents. Crissy loved Michael Jackson. It was on the playground out school that I first heard Thriller. We were in our own little world when we listed to it at recess. When I would go to her house, she would pull out her album, opening it up to look at the full-length photo of Jackson that lay within it. White suit, cool hair. As the album played on her turntable, we would read the sleeve over and over again—memorizing the lyrics and all the acknowledgments.

June 25-26, 2009: So I’m sitting here listening to Larry King Live with all the famous people talking about the life of Jackson and their experiences with him. It’s strange, but I get frustrated with these obsessive tributes to famous people who die. It makes me feel disconnected from my own emotional responses to those figures. It becomes less and less meaningful as the news shows try to capture the moment as it is happening. There is no time to mull things over, to let yourself digest, not only the person’s death, but what such an event means to your own life. And it is an event. Michael Jackson was not just another person, his image was no longer his own. And if any of you are like me, you build your memories around those images, those events. Like it or not, popular culture is a marker for all of us. It reminds us of our immortality. It provides a way for us to remember events in our own lives—events that might otherwise melt away into the recesses of our minds. Oh, how I am a product of the 1970s and 1980s.

Without the marker of Thriller and the video’s premiere, I might not still remember the deeper things that were going on in my life in that period between 1982 and 1984. Or at least I would never be able to remember that time with the mixture of joy, bitterness, dark humor, and hope that currently defines those years for me. At same time, I find myself creating a narrative around big events, even if they don’t exactly align in real time.

Misremembering December 8, 1980: Here is how I always tell the story of what happened the day that John Lennon died: It was my birthday and we were living in the farmhouse. I threw a big birthday party with most of the girls from my class. I remember my mom glued to the television that evening, crying. I felt sad for my mom and sad that Lennon was dead. I just knew something big was happening even if at that moment I was more consumed with my friends and the drama of being a young girl than the news reports.

But that story is now all mixed up for me. The timing is all wrong. As I was reflecting on the date of when I watched “Thriller” with Crissy, it didn’t jibe with my memory of events during our time living in the farmhouse. If it was 1983 when I was sitting there with Crissy, watching “Thriller” and John Lennon died in 1980—the day of my 9th birthday, then that means we were not living in the farmhouse. We were living in the mobile home in Bonne Terre, Missouri. But that memory is so vivid. So clear. I see my mom on the couch in the living room in the farmhouse, crying and pacing. I see myself watching her from the doorway leading into the living room, leaving my friends in the back rooms on occasion in order to check in on her. It is so tangible, so real.

It was one of those dependable memories—until today, June 25-26, 2009. The story is no longer possible and it blurs into the many memories of that time in my life. Those memories are like helium balloons floating in the sky. They float and fluctuate, some fly away out of sight, some bump into other memories. Most are not attached to solid ground and I try to catch their strings to grasp onto something—anything that has coherency. But I find myself making and remaking those stories. Clumping events together that I know did not happen together in real time. All those memories of moving back and forth between California and Missouri are one big streak of movement with anecdotes making pock marks along Interstate 70. And then the years between the trailer in Bonne Terre and the farmhouse in Defiance merge, conflate, and push there way in and out of my consciousness.

Remembering December 2, 1983: After watching the video and talking about the dancing, the storyline—just completely dissecting each moment of the video, we got ready for bed. We stayed up, talking into the night about almost everything. It was the first time I felt I had a real friendship, that I had let the walls of my secret world down to share with somebody. Up until that time, I never really had a close friend. I just lived in my own world, which consisted largely of books. That night was the first time I ever told anybody that my dad was an alcoholic and that he was prone to fits of rage. She, then, shared with me her own struggles at home. I do not feel comfortable revealing those struggles, but suffice it to say, it made me realize that I was not alone. Although I would retreat into my shell about a year later when our friendship dissolved (it just couldn’t survive the transition from grade school to junior high), that moment was an awakening. It opened up something inside of me. It is a soft memory that rests outside of the many jagged and sharp memories that define that time in my life.

June 26, 2009: I keep looking at the dates of my life in Missouri, calculating the years and where I was living and when. It is messy. My memory of that time is full of mistakes and errors. I keep leaping for a string to attach at least one memory to solid ground. I’d like to think that the “Thriller” night is one such memory, but who knows. Right now, though, I don’t care. It is real. And it is me. It is how I can (and want to) mark the trajectory of my life. And I will take Crissy and Michael Jackson with me in this memory journey.

Walking...Meandering

I could see him walking toward me in the distance. He was stumbling up the road. It was clear he was drunk even from several blocks away. He would walk straight for a few steps, then veer to the right, catching himself and straightening out his gait. As he crossed the street, I was worried he would get off course again and walk into the middle of the street, but he didn’t. He kept getting closer to me, stumbling and swerving. I had a momentary pang of nervousness, like I wanted to find an alternative route to walk. I’m not sure why entirely. But I realized it was not only impossible to change my course at that point but I felt terrible that I was treating this poor man like a pariah and diminishing his humanity with each glance to find a way out of interacting with him. And I knew I would have an interaction with him. I seem to attract the attention of inebriated older men. It’s never a scary thing, but it is always awkward and uncomfortable for me.

Like the time in Buffalo when I was walking to a local café one morning. My boyfriend was with me, but that didn’t matter. The man came directly up to me and started telling me about how he was just released from jail. Basically incarcerated for being drunk in public and having nowhere to go. You see, I seem to inspire conversations with these men about their lives and struggles. So I listen. He told me that I looked like a kind person and he kept telling me he was glad he ran into me, thanking me for listening to him and giving me a hug. He smelled of alcohol and stale cigarettes. He wanted nothing from me except for me to listen to him.

I think some of it comes from my penchant for walking. No matter what city I’ve lived in, I am compelled walk around it as much as I can. I make sure I don’t just view where I live from the false security of the car. You miss a lot about a city when you just drive through it. When you walk a city, you take in a lot of subtle undertones that make the city what it is. You are forced to interact with other people, animals, nature, the buildings—even if it is for just a moment. These interactions taught me how to feel out people and figure out when it’s okay to smile and say hello as I pass and when it’s better to just look straight ahead toward my destination. You learn a lot about yourself in those moments.

So this man kept walking toward me and I was struggling for the best way to pass him. Do I make eye contact and smile? Do I look at the ground and pretend to be in my own head space? I think I was struggling because on my walks in Fargo, I have not had to face this type of situation. I know it sounds strange, but it was out of context. It was a Sunday morning. It was Father’s Day and here was this older man walking toward me visibly under the influence of alcohol. You see, this town is good at hiding its problems with alcohol and homelessness. You don’t really see homelessness in Fargo unless you really look for it. It’s the only city I’ve lived in that didn’t have a visible homeless population. And it’s not because homelessness doesn’t exist here. I think that is the misconception. Instead, I think the homeless population is marginalized and rendered invisible by a city that misunderstands what homelessness is and who is affected by it.

It’s unclear if this man was homeless, but I could not help but wonder what kind of life this man lived. And what led him to this moment when our paths crossed. I know a lot of strange things led me to that moment, so I can’t even begin to imagine the circumstances that led to his presence that morning. To see this man was out of context for me in Fargo and it immediately transported me to other moments, other walks in other cities when there was dynamic public space with a variety of characters and individuals that would enter and exit my life.

Working at Bulldog News on University in Seattle was always an experience with the local homeless community. One older gentleman would come in regularly. He was probably in his 70s. I can still see his face. Thick white whiskers all over his face. Long eyebrows with eyes sparkling and glistening as he spoke to me. His face had deep wrinkles and you could see how the sun and dirt had darkened his face and neck. His clothes were stained and worn and he usually had a stale and pungent odor. He had a shopping cart overflowing with newspapers and books that he would push around. He would park the cart at our door and ask me to watch it for him. He would then browse all the political magazines for the evening. He never bothered me. Often I would work the night shift with only one other person—the barista. So, he would talk to me at length about various political conspiracy theories. You could tell this man had one of those brilliant minds that disconnected him from ‘normal’ life--whatever that means. He would never answer my questions about his life. He would only talk about politics and his current quest for a book or information. He always reminded me that looks are deceiving and you cannot judge a person by their appearance. I would see him often as I walked to work or school or wherever I happened to be going. Even after I left the job at the newsstand and started working at the university library, I would see him there, coming in on the cold wet days to read. I’m not sure if he knew I was the same person from the newsstand but we would still talk politics and about various theories he had about the government.

As the man came closer to me and we were about to pass, I looked at him and smiled. I realized it was the appropriate response. Nothing about him made me feel I should worry. But then I noticed he was saying something to me, so I removed my headset and stopped. He looked at me and said, “You are beautiful.” I had no idea how to respond, so I just thanked him and told him to take care. Again, the awkwardness was there, but it was only for a moment. He continued on his path and I went on mine. As I walked, I looked back to see him still stumbling and swerving.

I continued on, realizing how much I missed living in a city that afforded me various opportunities for interactions with people outside of my small social sphere. But then I also realized I, too, am responsible for my insulted day-to-day life. It’s not just Fargo. It’s also this life that I’ve created in Fargo and the place I am in my life. I miss taking chances with strangers and being reminded of the diversity of life out there. It’s too easy to create a protected world in this small community. It is too easy to make excuses for myself, worrying about what image I’m supposed to project as a professor at a university. I miss the moments in which I felt the freedom of nothing to lose and everything to gain. As I passed that man, the heaviness that marks my small world became too oppressive to ignore. And all I wanted, as I walked on and finally stopped looking back at him, was to allow the walls I built around my world to shatter, releasing the pressure and density of my fears into the expansiveness of this open flat plain in which I live…. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” –Kris Kristofferson

Reading My Way Through Guatemala....

“If the past has nothing to say to the present, history may go on sleeping undisturbed in the closet where the system keeps its old disguises.”
— Eduardo Galeano

So, I haven’t written much in the past few days. I’ve felt a bit blank and tentative with my thoughts. This largely because I have been spending time reading about Guatemala’s history. I’ve been consumed by books to try to explain the poverty, the cynicism toward the government, the civil war, the alcoholism, the widespread corruption, the police with machine guns who I was told were largely useless. I want to understand why things are the way they are. I want a context in which to locate my experiences. I suppose that is me typified. Resort to books when I can’t understand what is going on around me. It is a coping mechanism for me. I have no idea what I’d do if I couldn’t bury myself in books. Researching things is like working on a large puzzle, putting pieces together from different books and different stories, and various other sources of information, trying to see the bigger picture. I have an affinity for the discovery process—and the big picture.

Agrarian Reform and Silence
It was after the man in that small warm room at The Dreamer Center finished talking about his experiences in the civil war that questions started to come to me. I wanted to ask much more than I knew I should. One question, though, inspired shared humor between the three people presiding over the talk that day. They exchanged sort of knowing glances that people share when they are asked a question that either has an obvious answer or that reflects the naiveté of the question-asker. Needless to say, I felt silly, because it was a question that was not obvious to me. And I wasn’t asking it naively, although it may have come out that way. I knew the question might not be possible to answer. What I wasn’t expecting was such a certain response.

I asked them if there were people or groups out there currently working against the corruption of the government. Resistance groups or parties? I mean, what I did know about Guatemala at that time was that the civil war was largely between a militant government and militant government resistors.

After a pause, I received essentially the answer of no and that people are too afraid to do such things. This was followed by discussions about how there are high numbers of vigilante-style justice tactics, because the government and police do not truly help its people. The corruption is widespread and everyday folks must take care of themselves. They explained that the peace treaty of 1996 was only paper and very little else. There was also an assessment that civil war is more than likely to break out again. It is only a matter of when. All this leads to contradictions that I couldn’t resolve in my mind and I didn’t feel comfortable pressing the issue. Why were they so quick to say there were no counter groups out there? If they are predicting civil war to erupt again, who are the groups/factions inciting it? Perhaps, these, too, are naïve questions.

But the questions continue to perplex me, especially as I continue to read about the recent history of Guatemala (the last 100 years or so). Currently, I’ve been reading two books, which have been helping me understand a little bit more. Bitter Fruit by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer and Silence on the Mountain by Daniel Wilkinson. These books have given me a few more pieces to the puzzle.

Agrarian Reform: Decree 900, The Agrarian Reform Bill of 1952. This seems to be a significant moment in Guatemalan history and marks both the pinnacle of the October Revolution of 1945 and the descent of its hope. The October Revolution in 1945 ousted General Jorge Ubico and set the stage for a democratic government under Dr. Juan José Arévalo. According to Schlesinger and Kinzer, Arévalo had four priorities for he six year term: “agrarian reform, protection of labor, a better educational system and consolidation of political democracy” (37). Arévalo made great strides in his six years in office, but his larger goals of change—particularly agrarian reform—were left to the next democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz. It is Arbenz who put Decree 900 into the books and it is he who would experience the repercussions of this legislation. The Agrarian Reform Bill set out to redistribute uncultivated lands that were in the hands of a very small elite—including United Fruit Company (U.S. owned). According to Schlesinger and Kinzer, at the time Arévalo took office in 1945, 2% of the landowners held 72 percent of the land (38). So, Arbenz’s goal was to enable Guatemala to move out of its plantation system and into a modern capitalist state. He also wanted to take if from a semi-colonial economy into an independent nation in a way that would raise the standard of living for all folks (see Schlesinger and Kinzer, 52). The upper class and the U.S. was less than happy with Arbenz, though. And his government was not without controversy. The specter of communism would rear its ugly head, giving the U.S. an excuse for intervention. Between the communist fear and the desire to protect U.S. corporate interests in Guatemala (United Fruit Company), the Arbenz administration—with its agrarian reform—was up against incredible odds.

As I read Bitter Fruit, I assumed the time of Decree 900 would be glorified in Guatemalan history as a key moment in which the people would hold on to for hope. The feeling I had as I started reading was that this was a book for people in the U.S. to know our role in the breakdown of the Guatemalan democracy, specifically-- and more broadly, the U.S.’s role in Central American politics. I assumed this history would be well versed in contemporary Guatemala. At this point, I’m not sure if it has been forgotten or it is just not talked about. Two entirely different things.

Silence: I then started reading Silence on the Mountain. I was only part way into Bitter Fruit, but I wanted to understand more than the broader political history. This book is an oral history that tells a story similar to Bitter Fruit, but tells it from the point of those affected by that history. This book provided the human nuances of the Agrarian Reform Bill and the overthrow of Arbenz—and their lasting impact on the country. Wilkinson did much of his research for the book in the early and mid-1990s when the civil war was still going on. The author is an American—a graduate of Harvard.

He met the inspiration for his research, César, while visiting a plantation. César grew up on a plantation and introduced Wilkinson to the Agrarian Reform. According to Wilkinson, university students like César were aware of the reform’s significance on Guatemala. In fact, he told Wilkinson that to understand the war in Guatemala, he needed to understand Agrarian Reform. This was the beginning of what would be a nearly obsessive journey to understand the reform’s impact on plantation workers and other everyday Guatemalans—not just those politically active. César had wanted to write a history of the Agrarian Reform for his thesis in agronomy, but was not allowed to by the faculty at the university. So every time he saw Wilkinson, he would say to him “Go find out what happened with their lands after the Agrarian Reform and you’ll understand the frustration that fueled the war. (9). Wilkinson realized that César was not challenging him, but asking Wilkinson to do the study that he wasn’t able to do himself.

But when Wilkinson went out to talk with people on plantations about Agrarian Reform, nobody seemed to remember it. Getting the vague response of saber (who knows) every time he asked about that time in history. Arbenz appeared to be little more than a footnote in their descriptions. It exemplified collective amnesia—but it was hard to decipher if it was that people didn’t know or didn’t want to speak of that time.

But, I told myself, he interviewed these people during the civil war, so of course many people would be fearful to speak about anything controversial or that might put their families in danger. What about now, though? I remember the folks at that center telling us that people are no longer afraid to speak about the war. But I wonder if they speak of Agrarian Reform. I wonder how they understand and talk about it in relation to the civil war and its aftermath? The students in César’s era knew about it, but what about now?

So many questions. What is the legacy of the silence? As Wilkinson continued, he realized that the silence—or secrecy—of the people was not merely a “necessity, it had been a virtue. And for the first time it occurred to [him] that people who told [him] ‘nothing happened’ had actually taken satisfaction in the exercise of that virtue” (235). I can’t help but wonder if it is a continued virtue. I also wonder if a society that has been built on fear and secrecy for so long can overcome that silence. Can fear be overcome in less than a generation?

Agrarian Reform: But we in the U.S. are fantastic at forgetting, too. And we are often privileged enough to remain ignorant of the things our nation does to enable us to continue to live this good life. For example, what are we willing to remember about our role in the coup that removed Arbenz from office? The demise of Agrarian Reform was not the result of the self-implosion of a corrupt government. Thanks to U.S. intervention, the Arbenz administration collapsed. According to Schlesinger and Kinzer, so did democracy. Arbenz was publicly renounced and humiliated through a variety of propaganda tactics orchestrated by the Dulles brothers under Eisenhower’s presidency. Part of “Operation Success” included ousting Arbenz, replacing him with the U.S. supported "Liberator," Castillo Armas.

Perhaps, it would be comforting to say that the U.S. stayed out of Guatemalan affairs after that, but it did not. Reading Bitter Fruit, all I could think of was the disastrous precedent it set in motion. It seems after that time, the government’s ability to regain stability and the trust of its people never found solid footing. One dictator after the next; one coup after the next. It was disheartening reading the spiraling cycle of violence that followed the demise of the Arévalo and Arbenz era. The military dominated the country and as Schlesinger and Kinzer comment, “the intention of the military leaders was essentially to destroy the political center. Anyone not supporting the regime was almost by definition leftist, and therefore an enemy. The military apparently believed that eliminating the center precluded the possibility of a moderate government, therefore leaving the citizenry the sterile choice between a revolutionary Communist regime and the existing military dictatorship” (251). There was only black and white and no room for the subtle shades of gray that give breath to real life.

Silence: Wilkinson pursued through the silence he encountered on his journey through Guatemala. He listened to the silence. Allowed the silence to persist. Silence is a significant theme of social trauma. Social trauma is by no means a phenomenon only found in Guatemala. Nor is it something new to me, considering it’s my primary area of research. What was new to me was the way I experienced it when I was in Guatemala. My obsession has been with the Vietnam War and its impact on cultural structures in the U.S. and Vietnam. And I experientially live that impact (at least on the American side). I have only read about the social trauma in places like Argentina, Germany, Armenia, and other nations.

Yes, I visited Germany and several concentration camps, so I went beyond books in that context. But Guatemala was different. Unlike the disconnected tours in the concentration camps, I saw trauma's echoes in ways that have emotionally attached themselves to my conscious/conscience. There was an emotionality that I linked in to. It’s hard to explain, but in some ways it’s like you’re seeing the effects of that past lived out in the lives of the children, mothers, men—all that I was introduced to in Guatemala. And things about those experiences were frighteningly familiar, which made them entirely palpable. As I go back in my mind to those ten days, I think about what wasn’t spoken in the stories we heard. I think about the things I didn’t see when I was there. I’m still waiting for the holes in the puzzle to start to tell another story. Galeano’s quote seems all too relevant: “If the past has nothing to say to the present, history may go on sleeping undisturbed in the closet where the system keeps its old disguises.”

Agrarian Reform: The history between the U.S. and Guatemala needs to be remembered from both sides. Agrarian Reform wasn’t about attacking a particular corporation. It was about a country trying to gain autonomy over its resources. For Arbenz, it wasn’t about taking the land away from the rich and giving it to the poor. It was about creating a viable and sustainable system for his country. But the history of colonization proved challenging to overcome. As Schlesinger and Kinzer comment, the current state of Guatemala (at least at the time this was written) was worse than what had existed prior to the October Revolution. Over 30 years of civil war and political instability wreaks havoc on the economy and culture of a nation—not to mention what it does to its people.

And where do we in the U.S. locate our relationship to Guatemala? As the Dulles brothers were celebrating their victory and Arbenz was humiliated and exiled from his country, what happened to the people? What happened to Guatemalans? And did any of it really matter to Americans?

Silence: I wish I could convey what I gained from these books. It seems all I could really talk about is the content of each book, but there’s more to it than that for me. It’s the books in the context of what I saw when I was in Guatemala. Pieces of the puzzle fitting together, but the articulation not there yet. I wish I could convey the mood and the energy of sitting in a room with a person telling their story, plugging into something larger that is so present, yet inarticulable. All I have right now, though, is the outline of an image. The colors and nuances of the picture are intangible and fluid. And I’m yet again learning how to accept ambiguity as clarity, waiting for the shifting images to tell me something else, something different.

César, Wilkinson’s point of contact, made an important point to him. Wilkinson asked how he was supposed to write the story of this history of Agrarian Reform if nobody could remember or were willing to speak of that time in history. Wilkinson lamented that it wasn’t the same as archaeologists excavating bodies; memories are not tangible. Bodies don’t lie and distort the past. Wilkinson was sure he’d never get the full story. César’s response echoes in my mind, “’forensics never get the full corpse, do they?’ He had a point. What they got was decayed. Sometimes, it had been mutilated beyond recognition. ‘But it still tells them something, right?’” (21) The closest I can come to try to convey this process is when I was interviewing soldiers with PTSD and the dance we would perform as they talked about their war experiences. Often we talked in bits and pieces. We would talk about their job, their duties. We would talk about those duties as a doctor might talk about a surgery. Great detail about the specifics; the feelings behind the actions left silently lingering in that thick surface description of a seemingly sterile task. The story seemingly beyond recognition. But the stories were there if you waited and listened. Really listened. Nothing is ever what it seems.

We tell stories for many reasons. We want to remember. We want to find resolution. We want to be whole again. We want people to know that real life is far more complex than a reform bill or a coup. That lives circulate beneath all of that. People are affected. People have a lot to say—even if they don’t say anything all.

Works Cited:
Schlesinger, Stephen and Stephen Kinzer: Bitter Frut: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Wilkinson, Daniel. Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.

Riding (Writing) through Guatemala: Tangents

I’m in the protected bubble of this minibus. It is a white bus and very different from the large local buses that squeeze through the narrow streets of Guatemala. Those buses are infinitely more colorful and typically tout a feminine name such as Santa Lucia or Josephina. Our bus is not like those. Our bus is nameless, smaller, and blander than the local buses, marking us as tourists.

We’re heading to a malnutrition center that is somewhere outside of Antigua. I’m not sure what the name of the town is, but what I do know is that I’m mystified (and ever-so-slightly terrified) at the way the drivers navigate these tiny streets in such huge vehicles. We are currently behind one of the local buses, which is essentially a painted up school bus (you remember the yellow bluebird buses from grade school?). The other great thing about these buses is that they choke out black smoke from their exhaust (especially when they’re trying to get up steep hills), so we all close up the windows of our little bus to try to keep out the fumes. This only further completes our bubbled presence.

In this bus, I feel like both spectacle and spectator. Both the object of attention and consumer of the images and street scenes that blur past the lens of my camera. I take pictures throughout the drives in the bus. I take pictures of mountainsides, buildings with Tigo and Orange Crush logos, dusty roadsides, cornstalk and sheet metal homes. Occasionally, I capture people living their daily lives. I take the pictures to remember, to try to hold on to something about those journeys, but I do wonder about my visual invasion of the lives of the people and the geography of this country.

*****

My hair is blowing all over the place in the back of this truck as we head up the Guatemalan mountainside.

I haven’t ridden in the back of a pick-up truck since I was a little girl riding in my dad’s blue International Scout—we called it Tree Rat, a nickname for my dad. My dad’s friend, Butch, even painted a cartoon version of a tree rat the back of the truck. The Scout took us all over the place. We went camping in it along the Feather River in California. I vividly remember my dad yelling at us to get in the truck while he went to kill a rattlesnake that invaded our campsite. He wore the rattle on his floppy hat for years after.

We also drove through the Mojave Desert in it. I remember my mom wetting bandanas for my sister and I to wear around our necks to keep us cool in the ridiculous heat.

I remember one time we used it to move from Missouri to California (or was it California to Missouri?—it's hard to recall, the trek back and forth was frequent during my childhood) when I was maybe 4 years old. My sister and I shared the back of the truck with Toto, our little dog.

We would also go to drive-in movies in the Scout. One time in particular, I remember sitting on the wood bench in the bed of the truck with the neighbor boys and my sister as we headed to the movie. My hair was blowing and hitting one of the boys in the face. He wasn't pleased.

I think my hair hit Maia in the face as we were zooming up the smooth paved mountainside road. My hair is completely out of control. Soon, though, we turn off the wide road and start bumping around narrow and steep dirt roads. We’re surrounded by homes of a variety of sorts. Some made of cornstalks, some made of cement bricks, some hidden behind foliage. The houses cluster up the hills and I watch women walking up steep hills with large baskets balanced on their heads. They seem unconcerned about dropping their baskets or losing their balance. As we drive by, we receive curious stares. Certainly, a pick-up truck full of white people is not typical. Here I feel exposed, vulnerable, entirely out of place.

After finishing one of the service trip stops, we headed back to the truck. As we reached the truck, we could see a number of women and children surrounding the truck. The children were sitting in the bed of the truck and one of the women went up to the social workers to ask about assistance from The God’s Child Project—or at least that is what I interpreted was going on. They seemed curious about our presence and wanted to know more about what the social workers were doing. It was an amazing moment to witness. The project-- and its outreach--seems filled with moments like these.

*****

We’re in our white bus heading up through the mountains to Lake Atitlan. I’m feeling nauseous and have a headache. All the signs of being carsick. Usually I can handle mountain drives, but I am plagued with carsickness on every trip through the mountains in Guatemala. It could be the fumes from buses and trucks in front of us choking up the mountains. Or it could be the sheer number of hairpin turns that we take up the hill. Or it could be my incessant need to take pictures as we drive. Focusing through the camera lens seems to add to all the other elements at work on the drive.

At one point along the drive, I saw these colorful structures clustered together. They were aesthetically lovely. I started taking pictures of the area and then the driver told us that those buildings constituted a cemetery. I had—well have—gorgeous pictures of the cemetery. It seems a little disconcerting to have taken pictures of a cemetery, but then I think about all the cemeteries I have taken pictures of over my travels. Like churches, I seem fascinated with the history and ritual embedded in these locations, even if I don’t entirely understand them.

I went to Germany when I was 26. It was my first time out of the country. While there I spent more time in churches, temples, and cemeteries than I ever had in my life until that point. Being a spectator of these markers of history is a comfortable place for me. In Prague, I spent time in the old Jewish ghetto. The Jewish cemetery there was layered with tombs. The walk through it was a solitary refuge. I could write and think without interruption. I believe it was Kafka who wrote that he frequented cemeteries for the solitude they afforded him from the hustle and bustle of the city.

The sole purpose for my visit to Paris was to go to Pere Lachaise Cemetery. It is there that Jim Morrison is buried. I went there and spent time at his grave and then walked the solitary paths, finding a number of renowned artists (including Lyotard and Proust). It was that time in Europe that started my affinity for cemeteries.

My grandfather is buried in one of the most beautiful places in the world. He is buried at Skylawn Memorial Park in Skyline—a mountain area that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. It’s discomforting to visit, because from his grave (on a day without fog) you can see the ocean. Picturesque. And the ocean is the great love of my life. But, there, I must look at it from one of the saddest places I know. My grandfather’s death marked the end of many things—not just him. And that memory is hard to handle wrapped in the majesty of the ocean.

So I'm looking at the photos of the cemetery that are now on my computer. It is beautiful. The colors, the shapes, the location. What do I do with the photograph? How do I talk about it? I didn’t get to go to the cemetery. I didn’t get to ask questions as to why the markers are so colorful. I don’t know if the people in Guatemala deal with death better than we do in the United States. I just know I have this picture.

The protective bubble of the bus is limited. My vulnerability in the back of the truck is limited. My views are limited. My camera lens is even more limited. My memories and imagination are really all I have to fill in the spaces.

Melon Juice and Civil War

Melon Juice: The melon juice was all over me. I had never seen so many melon balls in my entire life. There were trash bags full of them. We were preparing for the food distribution. There were a variety of fruits and vegetables that we helped distribute. The amount was incredible, but it was melons and broccoli that surrounded me for several hours. I was at a table with a big bag of melon balls and a Frisbee-like object, which I used to scoop the melon into each woman’s bag. The women who come to The Dreamer Center on Fridays are mothers who participate in the center’s programs. The programs are varied and from what I was told, they include different meetings and activities, all of which help them find support to take care of their families in an environment where there are few support mechanisms and resources at their disposal. Their participation enables them to receive food every Friday from the center.

Civil War: I could still smell the melon from earlier that morning. It seemed to grow in the heat of the small room where I was sitting with our group and a few additional people from the project. At the front of the room was Victor, a translator, and the man who was the first in a series of life story talks given by different people at The God’s Child Project. This man participated in the Guatemalan civil war. As I sat listening, I was trying to guess how old he was, because I sensed that he was not that much older than me. He gave the year he joined the military to fight in the war. What was I doing that year? My family and I would move in the summer of that year from Missouri to California. It was an awful year for me, but it cannot even compare to what this man went through. How different can lives be? And now here we are at an interesting point of intersection.

Juxtapositions. The more contradictory and seemingly irreconcilable they are, the better. The more they cause me to react and reflect, the harder I try to hold on to them. It often means I’m being challenged and opened in some new way. I’ve been home now for nearly a week and I think about the ridiculous number of juxtapositions moving through my mind. The United States and Guatemala couldn’t be more different. Yet, I never expected to find so many points of connection.

Fargo: I was sitting with friends at a place called Sky Prairie. It’s essentially the rooftop seating area for the HoDo, a local restaurant and bar. We were enjoying great conversation and some drinks. The flows of the conversation moved randomly through many different topics, yet I spent some time trying to trace the trajectory of my trip in Guatemala for them. It was weird to be sitting there on a rooftop, living my life, while I knew all that I saw back in Guatemala was still going on.

I have been living in a liminal state ever since I returned from Guatemala. One foot is in the memories of my trip and the other is moving forward with my life here. And that reality is fraught with contradiction and uncertainty. It’s the source of my need to keep writing and thinking about everything that happened. It’s left me stalled in moments and thoughts that I must soon step away from so I can go on with my life here.

Civil War: As I sat listening to our speaker, I searched through my head to remember some of the details of the book, I, Rigoberta Menchu. It has been a few years since I read it and now I regret not reading it again before I left. I know that book recounts the oral history of the Mayan people’s struggle through the civil war and how both sides—the government and the guerrillas—used the people in devastating ways. It was brutal and tragic. I know the history of the civil war only in a very superficial way. Listening to this person, I am forced to confront how ignorant I am of that past and how important it is to understanding the present. The life this man now lives—the life of all Guatemalans, for that matter. The very existence of The Dreamer Center. My presence in Guatemala. And even the food distribution that we participated in that morning.

Melon Juice: Occasionally I would look up from the bags of melon and the women in front of me and look for the end of the line. The line wound around the stone castle structure that marked the volunteer office at The Dreamer Center. It continued around the medical building and up the driveway to the entrance. There didn’t seem to be an end to the line. There were so many women, nearly all of them with children. I would guess the ages of the women ranged from late teens/early 20s to maybe 60s. All of the women carried their own bags and we poured different fruits and vegetables into them. Buenos Dias and De Nada came out of my mouth in a rhythmic fashion. I must have emptied more than ten garbage bags full of melon during the distribution.

Fargo: My mom called the night before last to tell me that my grandfather is starting to go into decline and that hospice had to be called. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in almost a year. My relationship with my parents is fragile at best. I am on better terms with my mother than my father, which was why she called to tell me about my father’s father. After going over the specifics of my grandfather’s situation, we eventually went into a discussion about my trip. I was trying to explain it as succinctly as possible, but it was difficult. The gaps and spaces between my life and hers were noticeable and wide. Yet, I felt relieved and comforted that I finally spoke with her. The past is painful and unfortunately it is largely responsible for the chasms dominating my relationship with my parents. I could tell my mother was nervous talking with me. Her voice stuttered and she stumbled over words. At times I think I intimidate her and that she thinks I’m judging her. But I’m not. I’m just at a loss as to how to communicate with her. As the conversation wound down, she told me that I should always call to tell them when I go out of the country. I hadn’t done that because I don’t call my parents. Usually, I will write them or my sister will relay the big events in my life to them. So often I feel like a terrible daughter.

Melon Juice: It was not without sadness that I looked at all of these women, mothers. Yet, it felt so nice to be in the company of so many women. It gave me something I don’t have in my daily life at home.

I knew that the women in that line confronted poverty on the daily basis and that the extreme situations they face have been normalized over time. I’m sure many have dealt with abuse of various sorts. I know the look all too well. It’s all over my mother’s face and deep within her voice—still. It always amazes me how much we can take as human beings and how accustomed we become to horrific situations. There is a saying in yogic philosophy that I think about a lot. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, she will immediately jump out to save herself, but if you put her in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it to boiling, the frog will stay and she will eventually boil to death. Gruesome tale, but telling of our amazing capacity to adapt and the struggle it can take to change those adaptations.

I look back at my growing up and think about that frog story. At times, I see myself as the frog that jumped out of the hot water and my mom as the frog that stayed in it. And there is nothing I can do about it. My mother and I are separated by the pot and the water—with all its heat. Neither of us seems capable or willing to change our positions. She won’t get out and I sure as hell will never go back in. Instead, I am simply filled with overwhelming sadness at the situation.

In my phone conversation with my mom, I never bring up the mothers at The Dreamer Center. But they’re on my mind throughout.

Civil War: After the man finished speaking, he passed around photos of himself from his time in the military. He was incredibly young in those photos. I could only faintly recognize the boy in the photo within the eyes of the man speaking—but both were there. This man who sat before me was loving, kind, and brave. You could see it in person as well as in the photos.

I often wonder why some men can rise from a situation such as war and others become tragic victims to it. Are those who rise stronger? Were they better suited for the rituals and requirements of traditional masculinity? Are they more resilient? Do they have more social support? Are they better at compartmentalizing things in their lives? I suppose this is why I am so focused on war. Why my research is always at least a few degrees away from asking questions about war and how it affects human beings. I want answers. But I know that a definitive answer will never be found. Humans are way too complicated for a single answer to emerge from that question. So maybe what I really want is an answer to why my dad fell victim to war. Maybe, when I talk and listen to veterans I’m trying to find a solution to my father’s pain—or at least some explanation for why he was so damaged. And, then, maybe, that would help me understand why his pain came home to terrorize my mom, my sister, and me.

Building a House

Trenches: I’m looking around the small square footage of what will be a house, feeling frustrated and completely out of my element. Digging trenches is just not something I excel at. The dirt is filled with big rocks, bricks, syringe vials, and many other curious objects. Whenever the shovel hits a brick, I have to try not to throw the damn thing across the build site. But I dig it out, throw it on the growing pile of dirt, and continue on. If it were just a matter of digging with brute force, I might be okay, but there are nuances to the digging. For example, the trench has to be even around the perimeter. Two feet deep from a white string that our build leader, Juan, carefully measured. I am not a precise or meticulous person, so the idea of getting this trench to a perfect two feet just adds to my frustration. I hit another brick and dig it out, but then it puts me over the two feet mark and I have to try to even out what I just dug out. I just want to scream.

The primary purpose of the service trip was to build a house. Yet, I knew as one of the instructors teaching the class and through working with Angela that the purpose was more than that. We wanted students to understand cultural difference and global power relations. We wanted students to understand their privilege as Americans in the big world in which we all live. We also wanted to prepare students for what they would see and experience in a country that could not be more different from the United States in terms of economic and political realities.

• A country in which civil war ended around 1997;
• A country plagued by political and economic corruption;
• A country where approximately 90% of women can expect to experience some sort of physical abuse by the age of 16;
• A country where approximately 75% of men can expect to experience some sort of physical abuse by the age of 16;
• A country with one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS.

We did not want students to enter the country, thinking ‘if only these people could live like us.’ ‘Aren’t we lucky people to not live this way?’ We did not want to erase cultural history or global socioeconomic relations. We did not want to erase the lived realities of generations of people. What we did want was for them to see in profoundly new ways.

We wanted them to hit bricks and stones as they dug deeply to see difference as they simultaneously experienced human connections. I say we, but I suppose this is what I had going on in my mind. I’m sure Angela had slightly different goals for the class.

Foundation: The cement bricks are driving me crazy. Yet again, I’m losing patience with myself and my inability to be precise and remotely useful to the building process. We’re supposed to be stacking cement bricks to build the foundation. The first layer of bricks has to lay flat on the ground. We put cement on the dirt and lay the brick on it. Sounds so basic, so simple. But this time there is an orange string and we have to have each brick not only flat on the earth but also flush with the string. I’m losing my mind. I have plenty of patience with other people, but when it comes to being patient with my own lacks, forget it. And the idea of making something level on bumpy earth nearly causes me to plunge the trowel into my leg. Briana and I eventually get one side of the foundation done, but it doesn’t seem very even. We then have to place another layer of bricks upon the first. Same orange string. Same frustrations. Eventually, I get pulled off that task (thank goodness) and I am asked to break holes in some of the brick for the third layer of the foundation. This I can handle. Again, brute force is more my forte. Not precision. But as I’m beating the holes into these bricks with a hammer, two boys come and watch me (I will learn that one of the boys is Emanuel, the boy for which the home is being built. The other boy is his uncle). They giggle and stare at me. I can’t imagine what I look like to these boys. Sweating and caked with the dust from the cement bricks, I realize then that sociology is truly my calling. Not construction work. It’s good to know I’m in the right field. By the end of the first day, we get the third layer of the foundation up.

As the week progressed, I realized that building the house was merely the starting point from which a complex and involved journey took shape. Don’t get me wrong. The house is incredibly significant. Foundational. A portion of our fees for the program goes to buying the supplies and then we help build the actual house. This is not a small thing, even if none of us are efficient construction workers. It is not accidental that the house begins our journey.

Home is such a dense word and it means different things to different people. It is through building the house that we learn about so many things: The God’s Child Project, life in Guatemala, our group members, and ourselves. While building the house, I continually reflect on the importance of home.

As the building progressed, I started to see how I was tested over and over again. I tend to be a solitary and introspective person and the idea of being one of the responsible links between the students and the bigger picture of the trip was challenging for me. I anticipated that I would be out there, open (yet contained in my judgment), and willing to cushion some of the blows that the students experienced. But many times I felt I faltered at this role. I felt like I was not being the right role model, the right support figure. It was an ongoing struggle. Angela was a great role model and had everything under control to the point where I felt clunky, irrelevant, redundant.

But then I would let go of the need to be whatever I thought I should be and give permission to be myself—a person in the same position as my students. Another person trying to process the gravity of what was happening around me. It was in those moments that I felt most effective. I am not one to shy away from admitting my weaknesses and vulnerabilities (I, in fact, revel in them and laugh with them), so I gave into the process. It’s like when you’re surfing. You can’t fight against the waves (well you can try, but you won’t succeed); you must see yourself as a part of those waves and surrender to the larger flows at work around you. When you let go, you can finally feel the power of possibility. You discover that your strengths and abilities heighten. You are no longer working against something, but with it.

Cement Floor: Back to the dirt. I’m refilling the trenches in around the brick foundation. The blisters on my hands no longer hurt as I curl my hands around the shovel once again. The dirt we dug out for the trenches the day before had been piled up in the middle of the yet-to-be-house. So now I was spreading that dirt out. It was good to feel like I was doing something right and being useful. But that feeling was short-lived, because we had to even out the dirt before we could lay the cement. You would think it would be easy to even out dirt, but the shovel started to feel awkward and clumsy in my hands as I tried to flatten out the bumps. Poor Juan kept telling me it needed to be more even, but I kept trying to fool myself into believing that it was flat. Finally, though, it met his approval. So the time came for making cement. Gravel, this black dirt, cement mix, and water. The concoction was mixed in a square area where we were working. Again, the shovel felt awkward in my hands as I stirred the mixture over and over to make the cement. We were all working on it in different rotations. Brian, Chelsey, and Briana at one point; Brian, Benjamin, and I stirring at another point. My blisters were shrieking at me by this point in the day. Eventually we were ready. Benjamin and I stirred the cement (I finally felt somewhat efficient at this process), filling up metal buckets that Briana, Brian, and Chelsey handed off to Juan. I was so focused on stirring and filling, that when I looked over to the house, I was in awe of how beautifully even and perfect Juan was laying the floor. The floor was done.

My host home became a welcome relief over the course of our stay in Antigua. I was fortunate enough to share my room with a kind and gentle soul. Briana seemed capable of listening to my continual need to verbalize my daily struggles. Did I also mention she was incredibly patient?

In the evenings, after the building day and dinner with our host mother, we would go out to a local café or restaurant. We would meet up with different build groups from our class and get the opportunity to share our experiences of the day. This often included sharing photos from our cameras and laughing about our building adventures. Watching the students learn to rely on one another and share with one another was an incredible perk for me. It allowed me to sit back and observe and process. It was a reminder of the purpose and goals of the class and our trip.

On the first night of building, our group went to a homeless shelter supported by The God’s Child Project. We went to help serve the dinner to the people staying in the shelter that night. It was a unique experience. It is one of the only homeless shelters south of Mexico. Considering the extreme poverty of the area, it surprised me that there were not more people at the shelter. We served about 70 people, passing out small bowls of soup. The shelter was separated into two sides, in the middle was where we served dinner. One side of the shelter was for people who were dealing with alcohol and other drug issues. The other side was for families and those not dealing with substance issues. On each side, people found areas to sit and lay down on the cement floor. Some had blankets they laid on. Others just laid on the cement.

The side that was for those with substance issues consisted only of men, which is indicative of the struggle that men have with alcohol in Guatemala. The ages varied from what looked like teenagers to elderly men. The struggle with alcohol in Guatemala was not so much a surprise to me as it was a reminder of how self-medication can take its toll on so many lives. It hit too close to home for me; I looked at those men and could not help but think of my father. It was unnerving to make such a connection and perhaps the link is tenuous, but I cannot help but see the universal damage that alcohol addiction brings to individuals, families, and communities.

The links between our activities after the house building and the actual building process slowly started to grow in number and strength as the trip progressed. The links started to sketch a rough picture of the issues people face in Guatemala. But as I mentioned in another post, I was only learning enough to grasp the magnitude of issues I could not begin to comprehend. For example, one of the main goals of building the houses is to eradicate disease that is brought in through dirt floors. The houses are simple constructions, but their value significant to the families who will live in them. The cement floor and foundation is a central component to these houses. Yet, when I trace that information back to the homeless shelter I start to see the gradations at work within poverty. I also started to recognize its cyclical and fluctuating nature. How many of the men in that shelter are estranged from their families? How many lost their families or never knew their families? How many lost their houses or can’t go back home? What kind of experiences have these men had and what brought them to the shelter that particular night? A number of them spoke English well. What path have they been walking? There is so much lived history in their faces. Again, it takes me home, to my family, because my parents were homeless for several months when I was a teenager and I remember having to move in with my grandparents as my parents scrambled to find temporary places to stay. I think of the safety nets my parents found and what made their choices different (if at all) from those people in the shelter that night. Each of those lives are so much more than that moment in time.

Frame: I’m sawing this piece of wood. I actually made it all the way through! I’m so excited by my ability to saw. I finally found something else I’m sorta capable of doing. All these two-by-fours have to be cut at various lengths. Juan is telling us to cut and he scans the area, his measuring tape in hand, calculating everything. Slowly the frame takes shape. The hammering, which I thought would be a simple task I could do, ended up being yet another dimension to my inabilities. To my credit, the nails were long, not short. Hammering them into the hard wood was not as easy as Juan made it look. To get sufficient energy behind my swing meant that I would not always hit the nail directly on and it would cause the nail to bend in all the wrong ways. This sucks! Nothing is easy. In fact, the things I thought would be easiest ended up being the most challenging.

I love frameworks—conceptual ones, that is. As a theorist, I live to work within frameworks and charts and diagrams. They are what support and give voice to old ideas and help us generate new ideas. So I, in theory, understand the importance the frame carries for the house and the building process. Yet, when I work on the house, I am lost and unable to find my physical voice (for lack of another way of saying it). But this is indicative of my experiences in Guatemala. Theory and ideas smashing into unfamiliar reality. Much of my life is lived in theory—in words and ideas. I don’t apologize for it, but when you are confronted with the fact that it requires a fair amount of privilege to be able to live in that place, it is uncomfortable.

I mean, my family confronts me on this regularly. I should be used to it. They often tell me I’m over-educated and that I think too much. What they seem to forget is that it is because of my growing up and my family life that I developed the affinity for living in my head. It was how I coped with an uncontrollable world. I had a voracious appetite for books. I created stories in my head. I had wild dreams and fantasies (fed largely by the books I read) of a life without violence and poverty. Escaping reality was an art for me. I was also an observer. I watched from my small shell of a world, but could see larger pictures of life forming around me. Usually, with me on the outside looking in. In Guatemala, I was straddling the frame. Looking inside, but acting within, sorta. It was provocative. It was different there than with my family. No matter how much I’m reminded of my place by my family, taking my life experiences out into a different cultural and social context changes the entire mood of my story. Some of my dependable frameworks become stronger, others are rendered irrelevant and everything is open to interpretation.

Roof: The walls are now up. I stand watching Juan and Benjamin finishing preparations for the roof. Brian and I hand them pieces of sheet metal. This I am good at! So, as they finish the roof, it hits me that we’re almost done. I go inside the house and feel enclosed. I’m standing where three days ago there was only dirt. Soon thereafter, the door is made and we are done. It is now a place for Emanuel and his grandmother. It is time for us to go. They give us cards as a way to thank us—both hugging each one of us. It is a moment in which I have to fight back tears. I feel awkward, because they gave us much more than we gave them. But how can I say that to them with my limited (non-existent) Spanish?

There is something remarkably rewarding about completing something so physical. It is one thing to feel good about finishing an article for a journal or getting all of your laundry done, but it is quite another to finish something so tangible and meaningful. Sure you have a document and a drawer full of folded clothes, but it’s not the same. Maybe because house building was so outside of my daily life, I felt that the house required something different from me.

Home. There was an effort on the part of so many people to make this one tiny house. And I don’t just mean our build team. The effort included all of us: the build team, Juan, the people at The God’s Child Project, and the family moving into the house. If there is one thing I wish for Emanuel and his grandmother, it is that they can create a home within that house. By home, I mean the comfort of a safe place. Security and respite from the realities of the world and the difficult work they do within it.

As we finished the house, I could not help but let my mind once again trace back through my own life. Home has never been one single place for me. I’m at home now, because I’m writing and imagining. I have the freedom to do it here, now. But as I look back, it’s been fragmented and fleeting. Houses aren’t always homes. But I sit here now, fortunate that I have a place to rest my head, a place to hide, a place to dream, a place to celebrate. I hope all of that happens in the house that we built.

Yes, the primary purpose of the class and trip was to build a house. But it was so much more than that. I am seeing in profoundly new ways.

Confessions of an Inept Barterer (Homecomings and goings)

Small Shop in Panajachel Market: He was watching carefully as I interacted with the shop woman. His eyes were laughing and he was struggling to hide his amusement at the whole situation. I don’t blame him for laughing. Even I could appreciate the humor of my predicament. The elderly shop woman was swiftly winning our bartering transaction. I really didn’t have a chance. I must confess—I am not a barterer. So, as the woman slowly turned my change into kitchy key rings in the shape of frogs and ladybugs, I waved my white flag of surrender. At least I entertained Hector who, I must say, thoroughly enjoyed watching me crash and burn in that little store.

I have neither the heart nor the stamina to barter. I choked during all the traditional bartering actions. Countering the already insanely low price with an even more insanely low price, saying no to the seller, walking away, then, just as you reach the door the seller suddenly changing his/her mind. I can’t do it. It stresses me out. At the same time, I carry vast amounts of guilt with my American dollars. Dollars that are so much stronger than the local currency—the Quetzale. 8Q=$1. So, when I watch Americans bartering over 10Q, I wonder how much that $1 or so is worth to me versus the worth of 10Q to the shop person. Even though the shop woman had immense power over me in the bartering transaction, my national currency—with all its buying power—afforded me a different level of power. It was something I could not pretend did not exist.

Because I teach Karl Marx and socioeconomic issues, I see transactions such as the one I had with that tiny woman in Panajachel as more than simply surface interactions between buyers and sellers. I—for better or for worse—see a whole system of economic turmoil bubbling beneath the surface of those bartering transactions. I may not know all the economic jargon and precise ways in which exchange rates are generated, but I do see the implications of those exchange rates and the history and social context that go into the establishment of those rates. And it isn’t a pretty picture.

The markets at Panajachel and Chichicastenango were the places I felt my American-ness at its finest (please note sarcasm). Americans—United States Americans—are consumers. In those markets, I felt like that was all we were. Consumers. Buyers. Income. The shop owners and street sellers know this. The tourist trade knows this. And at times, I think we comprehend ourselves as such, but it is hard to control. And I get it. We all want memories to hold on to and to give to others upon our return. I am not innocent of this, which is what makes it all the more challenging. But as I watched the tourists all over those markets, I could not help but feel sick, overwhelmed, and depressed.

What makes a memory, though? Is it the object? Is it the frog key chain that I now have? Or is it the story of attaining it? I can tell you, the bemused look on Hector’s face and the twinkle in the shop woman’s eye are more firmly locked into my mind’s eye than that silly key chain. But the keychain is something I will give to my nephew—along with the story of his awkward aunt. As Angela told the students, we must tell the stories of our purchases (the commodities). That’s what’s important. People need to see the work of commodities if they want to really understand the broader realities of global economics. Even at its most simplistic. There is so much more to all the stuff we buy than its physical presence. The swirling memories and social relations inside of it are what interest me. And isn’t that what we’re trying to hold onto anyway? That intangible fragment of a moment? The meaning hidden within it? I know that’s what I’m after.

Mayan Church in Chichicastenango: As we stepped in, I realized this was exactly what I needed at that moment. I couldn’t take the intensity of the shops and sellers in the market, so Angela, Maia, Hector, and I sat at the back of the church. We happened to enter when there were baptisms going on, so we sat quietly and watched the families up at the altar. There were flat stone squares at the center of the aisle leading from the front door of the church to the altar. There was the residue of candle wax and flower petals on these stones. At several of these stone squares there were women and children kneeling and praying as they lit candles and spread the flower petals. There was a certain grace to the church that I cannot convey with words.

There was an elderly man sitting against the wall. I noticed him almost immediately after I sat down. He was tiny and so wrinkled. He was eating something—nuts or seeds, I couldn’t tell, but you could tell he needed more. After some time passed he walked up to me with his hands out, asking in Spanish for something. I didn’t know what to do. At that moment I panicked because I could not remember if it was appropriate to give money or food. If I were back in the states, I would have given something, but my anxiety over doing the right thing often leaves me actionlessness. I regret it now. I should have given him something. The only food I had, though, was a Luna bar and I doubt that would have been good. My heart broke as he continued to walk through the church asking for money.

The peacefulness of the church soon faded. The baptisms waned and there was an influx of American tourists. There are several rules about entering churches in Guatemala: no photographs, no hats, and no going to the altar area during services. Sadly (but not surprisingly), the Americans entering did not respect these rules. One woman in particular was blatantly disregarding all that was going on around her and I realized Angela was about to jump out of her skin she was so angry. This woman had on a visor and was snapping pictures continually as she walked around the church and up to the altar.

It was a great moment to witness Angela call out the woman for her actions. The woman’s response, though, made me physically sick. There was little respect for or understanding of where she was. And, in stereotypical American fashion, there was an air of entitlement mixed with privileged ignorance. She embodied the consumer identity with her camera as she captured the physical space in photograph after photograph. But it was done in a haphazard fashion, which made me wonder what images she was actually capturing. Even as we spoke to her, she continued to snap pictures. She really didn’t care. Her memories needed to be digital, I guess. Random images. Yet, I wonder where those photos will go. Will they stay on her digital memory card? Will they be shown to friends as she talks about her exotic adventures in Guatemala? Will they be hung in her den with all the other objects of her affection?

But in my judgment, I see my own image reflecting back in all the pictures I took and purchases I made. Does my attempt to respect the rules make me a better person? Does my (albeit) limited awareness mean I’m countering the reality of my privilege as an American in Guatemala? Is this woman such a terrible person or simply playing the expected part in a production that was going on long before our meeting in that church (and will be going on long after our interaction ended)? How do we counter the strong flows of global capitalism? How do we resist and make change? I wish I had answers to these questions. But at this point, all I can do is raise the questions.

Airplane from Guatemala City to Atlanta: Bride Wars was too awful to even get through the first 10 minutes, so I sift through the movies and find Confessions of a Shopaholic. I figure it probably won’t be much better, but I am on the plane for three hours and I am not in the mood to read and am not yet ready to do more journaling. It ended up being an interesting choice because the entire movie was a commentary on American consumerism. It was neither the most scathing critique nor the most entertaining, but I found it an interesting welcome home.

The main guy character tells the main woman character that ‘you are not defined by the things you buy.’ I found it intriguing that a mainstream film so blatantly critiqued consumer culture; unfortunately, the film never escapes its own critique. But I suppose few of us can. I found the young woman character interesting because she had this affinity for the act of buying. She put so much emotion and passion into the stuff that she bought that it stunted her ability to put that energy toward people and actions that were most meaningful to her. The displacement of human relations for the act of buying stuff makes it easier and easier to step away from our obligations as human beings. We can put our memories, emotions, and variety of human actions toward inanimate objects. We have control over those things—at least we think we do. We like the stories that things tell for us. We like what things like clothes and furniture say about who and what we are as people. It enables and encourages passivity. It is easier to let our stuff tell our stories for us than to delve in and tell it from a deeper place.

Caribou Coffee, Fargo: I walk in to do some work and get some coffee. When I walk up to the counter I see a brochure. The front reads, “Roastmaster’s Report. Guatemala ~El Paraiso~ Grown sustainably on the Felipe Martinez family farm, this coffee has the hallmark citrus and floral flavors of the Huehuetenango region, along with cranberry and dried cherry notes.” My heart drops. I am so much a part of this system. With my coffee addiction and café lifestyle, I have to face the confrontation. As I read about the farm and wondered how ‘sustainable’ it really is for the people working there, I keep seeing finca after finca that permeated the areas we drove through in Guatemala.

In the words of Sweet Honey and the Rock, “my hands are not clean.”

Welcome home.

Sanctuary for Dreamers: Reflections on the Dreamer Center, Antigua

Almost every morning we walked to The Dreamer Center, which is the hub for the God’s Child Project. It was with a careful eye that Patrick Atkinson, the founder of God’s Child Project, built the center. With each entrance into The Dreamer Center, the meaning of sanctuary took a firmer and deeper root in my heart.

The center is a sanctuary for the numerous children who attend school there. These are children with precarious lives outside of the walls of the center. Poverty. Homelessness. Violence. Alcoholism. If you look carefully, you can see the reverberations and echoes of war in the dark shadows of these children’s lives.

The center is a sanctuary for the numerous mothers who enter its gates. These are women struggling to take care of their children and themselves.

I also started to see how The Dreamer Center was a sanctuary for the people who work there. Our group had the privilege of hearing life stories from several of the individuals who work for The God’s Child Project. They told stories of children as affected by poverty, violence, war, and alcoholism as the children who presently inhabit the classrooms and playground of the center.

But the center is something extraordinary for the staff of The God’s Child Project, which is probably what makes it extraordinary for the children there now—and extraordinary for me as I observed what was going on around me. The work done at The Dreamer Center is not simply a job for these men. Sanctuary for dreamers is the only way I can describe the vibe that permeates the world inside of the gates of The Dreamer Center.

As you enter the gates and walk past Patrick’s dogs and down the incline into vibrant energy that is The Dreamer Center, you are engulfed by beautiful foliage. But that foliage would be hollow without the passion and commitment of those who work there. You can feel how deeply personal it is to all of the people there.

The sociological side of me has an imprint of my observations I made while at The Dreamer Center, but the introspective-reflective side intrudes to articulate the feelings and emotionality within what might otherwise be mundane observations. I cannot help but see more than the beautiful foliage and lovely children playing. The investment that the individuals at The Dreamer Center make each and every day infected me and everything I saw during my time in Guatemala.

The Dreamer Center became a sanctuary for me. This may sound silly and selfish, but I felt myself finding respite and a space for reflection every time I entered the center. I found my past returning time and again when I was there—as if my subconscious was telling me it was safe for those memories to come back to me in those moments. It seems somewhat ridiculous now. The Dreamer Center is not for me—a privileged white American woman. But the people within the center graciously opened their hearts and minds to my presence (our whole group’s presence). Their openness enabled a deeper reflection for me. The stakes rose for me because it was no longer simply about me serving others. Nor was it just about teaching my students. It was about how I was linked into this world—for better and for worse. It was about how similar lives can be under very different circumstances. It was no longer about them or me. It started to feel like it was about us.

The chapel. It marked a place where my memories found safety. As a non-religious person, I must say that this was not a chapel in the institutional sense of the word. It was more like the nexus of The Dreamer Center for me. The richest source of sanctuary. The waterfall and cavernous structure made it feel earthy and alive.

The first moment that marked this location for me was during one of the life story sessions. The story was completely unlike my past, yet so similar, that I could hardly breathe throughout. I felt like I was disembodied, observing the speakers, the group, and myself from the entryway. What woke me from this state was the realization that my fingernails were about to puncture my arm. Crazy, I know. But in my haze I started to recognize the immense gifts being in given in those moments. What I regret, though, is that these individuals told their stories and I could not express just how much it impacted and resonated with me. How much it meant. I still can’t quite articulate it. I thanked them, but that didn’t feel like enough. I’m not sure what enough would be.

The second moment was after a rough morning visiting a malnutrition center a few hours from Antigua. We returned to The Dreamer Center and told the students to journal for about 30 minutes. I needed to journal as well, so I went to the chapel to write and think. It was there that a flood of visions raced across my mind’s eye. It was a mix of the tragedy within the walls of that malnutrition center along with older memories of my own vulnerability as a young girl. I kept seeing the face of a little boy at the malnutrition center who desperately wanted attention and acted out because there was no way for him to get everything he needed in that sterile, understaffed environment. At the same time, I saw myself in the arms of my father as he cried to me in one of his drunken post-rages about what he had to do and see in the Vietnam War. Thoughts were jumping so fast—I’m still trying to make sense of them. Everything bleeds into everything else in my mind’s eye. My ability to compartmentalize just completely broke down. So often, I try to keep things separate and tell myself that it is vanity and conceit that leads to my continual need to relate events, but in that chapel at that moment, it felt okay to let things blur and intersect. It felt like it was finally okay to take the things I had been seeing over the previous days and allow them into my own world in an intimate way.

The third and final moment that marked the chapel was at the closing ceremony. It was during that time that I found presence—enough to observe the students and staff at The Dreamer Center. It was not the past that was dominating my thoughts, but what was happening at that moment—and future possibilities. I could feel the bonds between students and my bonds with those sitting in that circle with me that night. It was one of the rare moments in my life that I felt part of a shared moment. It was also the first time in a very long time that the visceral power of life stories took hold. I am so attached to words, language, and dreams that the practical world often becomes fuzzy, but it was in that circle that I felt my dream world and the practical world unifying. And even though it was for only a moment, it left me with the possibility of something more. It reminded me of the power that dreams hold if we are brave enough to share them and put them out there in the real world. Act on them. If only I can be as brave as those who inhabit The Dreamer Center. Maybe, then, I can create a sanctuary for dreamers in my community—a place where those around me can be free to dream, create, cry, laugh, live, love, and remember….