Today I woke up to an eerie quiet. For the first time since arriving in San Pedro de Atitlán three days ago, I do not hear the San Pedro high school marching band enthusiastically rehearsing. They had their big show last night for the school fundraiser and now my morning feels all off. I overslept, in fact, because I didn't have them to trumpet me into consciousness. Fortunately, I have the song committed to memory, given that they played it over and over and over again, so if I get nostalgic I can just hum it to myself until I go mad.
I'm staying in a town that teeters on the volcanic edge of the spectacular Lago de Atitlán, in the southern central highlands of Guatemala. The lake is the deepest in Central America, formed by a caldera and ringed by volcanoes. The water is perfectly blue, the villages are farming towns of traditional-dress-wearing Maya, and the vibe is chilled in the extreme. I have already made friends with a local drunk, Alfredo, who hangs out on the main street and insists on gripping hugging and kissing me every time I pass. "Hola preciosa, where have you been all my life, when will you have a drink with me?" He's really very sweet, despite the smell of liquor that assails me from a metre away whenever we meet.
Of course, he's never seen my eye.
Last night I woke up at about 3am by water dripping onto my mattress and realised that the exposed pipes over my head could not handle the seasonally torrential rain. They were dripping insistently. And loudly. A quarter of my double bed was soaked. Further investigation revealed a huge spreading damp patch across one wall. My room smelt of mould. Delicious. There was nothing I could do other than put a towel under the drip, go top to toe and try to sleep. I was not successful.
In the morning, I packed my bag, looked up "leak", "pipes" and "wet" in my dictionary (my Spanish vocabulary not extending yet to housing crises and poor plumbing) and went to reception to ask to change rooms. Success!
Even greater success: my bung eye, which was swollen completely shut yesterday, is slowly unswelling. I can actually see out of it a bit today, but I don't lose my head in all the excitement and deal with reception with my sunnies firmly on.
An old man with no voicebox with a machete casually slung over one shoulder directs me to the docks and I hop on a boat across the lake to the largest lakeside community, Santiago de Atitlán. My flat-bottomed boat thumps its way across the water, ruffled by wind. It hurts. Next to me two Mayan women with baskets full of produce yammer away in the beautifully arrhythmic Tz'utujil dialect. Clouds collect around the craters of the lakeside volcanos and as we draw closer to the town I can see children playing by the docks and shirtless old men pensively smoking cigars, untangling fishing nets.
Upon arrival I am immediately surrounded by an alarming horde of kids asking if I want to go see Maximón (pronounced Ma-shee-mon), a local deity. Of course I do, but I can't let my guard down for a second because these kids are sharks who will unhesitatingly fleece me if I let them.
"How much?" I ask one boy, as the others peel off.
"Ah, no problem, we can work it out afterwards," he says nonchalantly.
"Uh uh," I tell him. "Let's work it out now."
He's cagey and reluctant to name a price. Finally, he asks me how much I think his guide services are worth.
"10Q," I tell him.
He gasps theatrically. "No! 40Q!" he demands... and we're off. After some fierce haggling while walking up the hill, my little friend extolling the value of the tour he's about to give me ("Maximón AND church AND markets! And I'll explain to you the history of them all!") We settle on 15Q.
Andrés is ten years old and looks about eight. He is extremely smart. I ask him what the deal is with this Maximón character. "He's just our saint," he shrugs.
We arrive at an anonymous house and enter, greeting the occupants. Maximón is set up in the tiled garage with a room to himself. He's a creepy-looking wooden midget, wearing black patent leather shoes, a muumuu made of dozens of silk scarves, a porkpie hat, and has a cigar propped into his mouth.
Anthropologists think he is some combination of the Mayan god Mam, Judas, and Pedro de Alvarado (the Spanish conqueror of Guatemala). Despite this pedigree (or perhaps because of it) Maximón has distinctly human vices - the cigar for one, along with a fondness for liquor, a hole in his mouth enabling his followers to pour spirits in - and his devotees believe that prayers for revenge or success at the expense of others, are more likely to be granted by Maximón than any other saint. He understands his followers' lower instincts, and he sympathises... or maybe it's that he gets a kick out of the mayhem that ensues. He moves house once a year in a procession during Holy Week, which is a protective measure put in place to stop any one local family amassing too much power. Being Maximón's caretaker is a great honour, and that responsibility is taken very seriously.
Andrés and I chill out with Maximón for a while, and then I give him some money. One can not come to visit empty-handed, and donations buy him his favourite Payaso smokes. It's silly but I could swear his little carved eyes follow me. Maybe he's wondering what happened to my eye.
Andrés and I mosey on over to the cathedral. It was founded in 1547 and we practice saying this in Spanish, French and English. Andrés' first language is Tz'utujil. He also speaks Spanish and some 'Israel': "Shalom! Shalom!"
The cathedral is very simple, with whitewashed walls and wooden pews. The walls are lined with wooden carved saints in the style of Maximón, wearing muumuu-type scarves as dresses, and piratical bandannas. There are quite a few midget saints. Needless to say, I am digging Guatemala's take on religion.
Next up is a visit to the market, where Andrés knows everyone and is clearly in cahoots with them all, motormouthing in Tz'utujil because they don't want me to understand that they were discussing how much money they could possibly extract from me. This is one persuasive kid but today I will not be swayed.
We sit on a kerb outside a weavings store and my little guide asks me to write a list of useful Spanish/English phrases for his older sister. We have a long list, which includes such goodies as "Hola/Hello", "Cuánto cuesta/how much", and "Would you like to go and see Maximón?" The man running the store is a Guatemalan in his forties, and he stands by us quietly repeating the English phrases to himself. "Hello. Hello. How much?" I'm proud of my students' progress.
Andrés practices his favourite sentence all the way back down to the docks: "Would you like to go and see Maximón?" He keeps asking me to repeat it for him and I remind him that he doesn't have to worry, he has the list in his pocket.
"I don't know how to read," he finally admits. He is one smart and enterprising kid, and I'm even more amazed at his ability to learn the snippets of English that he already has down pat. When I had asked him earlier about school he dodged my questions. "I'm going later in the afternoon," he said vaguely. But I realised that he wasn't attending school at all, or at least not often. He was making good money for his family working as a guide and in all likelihood would never be in a position to receive a proper education and create more options for himself. I pay him extra and even buy a little beaded doodad that he's selling. He takes my extra cash coolly as though it is his due.
He sits on the boat with me and a couple of other kids and we pass around my Skittles and watch an Israeli guy in pyjama pants tie a bandanna around his tangle of hair. He's wearing an assortment of tacky hippy necklaces and is burnt so brown from too many years in the sun that his skin has taken on a leathery charred quality. He has a pair of binoculars and hands them around to all the children to peer through.
"Yeah man, my mother is American-Israeli and my father is from Israel too. I grew up here in Guatemala and I have three passports. This is my home. See that island over there? Here, use my binoculars. That island is mine, man. See my swimming pool? You can come over and swim any time you want. Why do I need a pool when I have the lake? Well, it's tiled. I go fishing on the rocks with my buddies - see those rocks, there? Those ones. How old do you think I am? twenty-seven, twenty-eight, huh? I turned thirty-six two days ago. Fuck yeah, it was my birthday. I was in the army for a long long time. I worked for Mossad and the CIA. See this tattoo? It's from Mossad. I have two coffee fincas as well, here on the lake. Fuck yeah, man. I love Guatemala. I have a boat as big as this ferry but I like to take the ferry, I like to be with other people. When I stay in San Pedro I sleep on the boat. Fuck yeah, man, it's cool. My brother and I, we fly our helicopter here from Guatemala City. It's not far, like two hours maybe, and we land it right on the lake, fuck yeah, man!"
I am beginning to suspect that this guy Joshua might perhaps be a little bit loopy. "San Marcos, fuck yeah, man! It's my favourite town. Naked girls on the beach... I want to live there! Come visit with me!"
I manage to extricate myself and spend the rest of the boat ride playing with a little Mayan girl and taking her picture. I am apprehensive about getting to close to any of the local kids here. There have been some unfortunate misunderstandings between tourists and the local Maya population in recent years in Guatemala. In 2000, in a village not far from the lake, A Japanese tourist who comforted a crying child was killed along with his driver. Crowds were agitated by rumours of satanists operating in the area. Further north near Cobán, a woman photographing children was lucky to escape alive when a hysterical crowd apparently became convinced that she wanted children's organs for transplant operations.
I keep glancing at the mother to make sure that she's not planning to hack me to pieces when we dock but she seems quite happy for me to distract her baby.
When the boat docks I wander up the hill to a cafe that serves the most amazing smoothies, and have a chat with the two guys who work there, whom I've befriended. I am drinking a Mono Loco - chocolate ice cream, banana, and peanut butter all blended together. It's the size of my head and totally delicious and costs about $3. I tell Phil about Joshua the Israeli.
"Oh that guy, he's full of shit," Phil says, wiping down the counter. "He's a lunatic. He has a different story every day. Last night he got drunk and got into a fight with the police and they dragged him off. He was throwing beer bottles all over the street, pissing everyone off. It never sticks, though. He always comes back."
I look out the window. I see Joshua walking up the hill with his garbage bag of possessions, his binoculars slung around his neck. At that moment, the clouds that have been threatening all day finally unleash a downpour upon us, and Joshua dances through the rain, face upturned, splashing all the way down the road and around the corner until I can no longer see him.
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