El mercado en los nubleos... San Francisco

Friday, Jan 28, 2011

Today we had an outing to the market town of San Francisco, a town about an hour´s bus ride from here and 2,000 feet higher into the clouds. Our house mother told us that, in San Francisco, everything is for sale. It sure seemed like it. The market square is huge, but to get there you have to walk through the narrow streets which are lined with vendors selling everything from used tools and salvaged car parts, to Colgate toothpaste, to Guatemalan textiles. As you climb up to the market square, mobile vendors push by carrying handfuls of braided garlic and massive baskets on their heads filled with live chickens. Occasionally you come to an especially narrow area where the crush of people kind of jams up. At first I politely waited for oncoming traffic to pass until I realized that the people behind me were shoving past me. So I just started shoving my way through too. This is no place for someone with personal space issues.

Once in the square, things get really interesting. The huge plaza is roughly divided into sections for selling meat and vegetables, for live animals (further subdivided into the piggy area, the poultry area and the cow area), and then running around the perimeter are the hot food vendors selling tortillas and tomales, fried chicken and chicharrones (fried pig skin), hot corn porridge and arroz con leche, a hot milky drink. The chicken smelled so good that we risked the potential bellyache and had a piece. It was mighty tasty. We didn´t do much buying but we got lots of photos. Some people were very willing to be photographed and others were not. Totally understandable... they are there to sell their goods, and I can imagine that with so many tourists moving through the market every day and taking photos that sometimes they must feel like they´re on display. I got a good chance to visit with the various vendors, asking about what they were selling, learning the many different words in Guatemala for pig (puerco and coche being the two I remember), and haggling for earrings. All good stuff. The best was the pig area. There were young men and old women selling their piggys, and each of them had their goods, on the hoof, tethered by frayed rope and held securely in hand. It looked as if they had gone out to walk the pigs and decided to sit down for a rest. Fabulous!

We only had a few hours at the market, but with the long bus ride, it took the entire morning, so that was our class for the day. Because it´s the end of the week, that also meant it was our last day with our current teachers. My last day with Saul. I told him I had discovered a new word in my dictionary that I believed applied to him... sinverguenza. According to mi diccionario, it means cheeky devil. Es perfecto. When I told him, he nodded knowing and said “gracias.” I will miss him.

Tonight was the graduation ceremony for the students that finished up their studies this week. Most have been here for quite some time, some for two weeks, some for as long as six weeks. Each Friday night, the school gives graduating students a chance to demonstrate their Spanish abilities to the rest of the school by hosting the graduation followed by a typical Guatemalan dinner. Students can perform skits or sing songs or read poetry or whatever they want to do. The graduating students do the cooking (I think) and the current students provide the beverages. Some brought juice, a few brought soda, but it was almost exclusively beer, except, of course, for the bottles of rum and tequila and Guatemalan liquor. …and a good time was had by all.

The teachers kicked off the party by forming a band and leading those in attendance in rousing revolutionary songs. Participation involved loud and exuberant singing as well as noisy drum rolls on the table or laps or anything else handy to bang on. There were heartfelt speeches from the graduates thanking their teachers and the school and one original song by Megan and Paula that was a play on their struggle to learn the various conjugations of verbs. What I understood of it was hilarious.

The student body here is very interesting. The PLQ school is a cooperative and is dedicated to preserving the history of Guatemala (particularly the history of oppression and the struggle for justice) as well as participating in the continuing struggle for peace and justice throughout Latin America. Consequently, the students here, in general, have similar political and world views. Extremely progressive. Many of the students here have lived all over the world, have worked for the peace corp or found volunteer opportunities in Africa or Central America or elsewhere. Many are quite young and the experiences they have already had in their short lives could fill books. There are quite a few vegetarians, lots of artists (film-makers, playwrights, painters, etc) and a higher than average number of people sporting dreadlocks. It´s so interesting to meet and get to know them. We have already made several good new friends – people that I hope to stay connected to well beyond our time here.