Learning how to litter

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As I child, when I craved junk food, my physician mother would hand me
something fat free and organic, promising I would appreciate this
someday that I when everyone around me had clogged arteries and
diabetes. I was always skeptical of this, especially on weekdays.
Back then, my parents would let me have a candy bar only once a week,
on sundays, as if chocolate were a religious experience.

One blustery Tuesday at lunch, the anticipation of 5 more sugar free
days was just too devastating. I surveyed the playground to make sure
my sister was nowhere in sight, then asked my friend if she would give
me one of her mini-snickers left over from halloween. "Are you sure
Jen, I mean, don't your parents not let…"
"They don't care about that anymore," I lied, and held out my hand to
receive the treasure. We unwrapped our candies together. I let my
wrapper flutter across the playground like a handful of dust, then
fell into sweet bliss.

"Litterer!" A girl yelled from the monkey bars. Crap. The chocolate
became cloying. I felt like I had swallowed a liter of aspartame. I
had been so entranced in my indulgence— and now the wrapper had long
vanished into gusty sky. All I could do was apologize to mother earth
and resolve never again to be evil.

And I wasn't. Throughout my childhood into my young adult life I was
an admirable, non-littering human being. Other than a few pits from
cherry spitting contests and some of apple cores strewn in bushes on
backpacking trips, I always waited until I found a garbage can into
which I could neatly discard my rubbish. That was, until my first
Sunday afternoon in San Mateo Ixtatan, Guatemala.

That Sunday morning, the seemingly inevitable fog had descended over
the town, but this time, it was so thick I needed to use all my
strength just to budge open the door. Great. This year is going to
be really fantastic, I thought, as I sat down to filter through the
Guatemalan short stories I had brought with me into San Mateo. I read
one about fog, then another about corn and fog. Then thankfully, just
when my muscles were beginning to atrophy, the mist started to drift
away revealing the sea of emerald mountains enrobed in cloudless sky
that last year's teachers had promised me. How fitting the
advertising campaign of "Guatemala—Land of contrast" was, I thought,
as I fastened my hiking boots, and headed out the door to explore the
landscape.

I asked a toothless elder, who obviously was well acquainted with the
area, where a good place to hike was in San Mateo. He pointed at the
bus stop. Not wanting to offend him, I set out in the direction of
his outstretched arm towards the throngs of people that crowded around
the central plaza to sell bunches of onions and miniature watermelons.
From there, I noticed an enticing road that wound around the lush
mountainsides. How had I not seen this before, I asked myself, then
remembered that the other days in San Mateo had been so misty I
couldn't see past the small children that liked to crowd around my
gringaness.

The dusty road led me away from rainbow masses, away from the palaces
and the 2007 Landrovers that guarded their gates and into a
pre-Colombian looking spread of adobe huts and scraggly corn fields.
Gentle beams of sun began to stroke my face and hands. Yes. This is
why I had come to Guatemala. I blissfully strode along the pastoral
dream, smiling at the stonebreakers that looked nothing like the angry
men in Courbet's famous painting, discovering that the sound a turkey
makes really does sound like gobble gobble. But after a couple of
miles, my parched mouth forced me to exit my reverie. So I stopped at
the nearest tienda (store) to refuel.

I held out a 10 quetzal bill to the gaping vendor and asked for a
bottle of agua pura. She shook her head and handed me a can of pepsi.
Right. Guatemala is not San Francisco. Like in Spain where wine is
cheaper than water (mmm, wine how I miss you!) here, a soda is about
half the price of a water bottle. Guatemalans love their soft drinks
so much that most stores don't see the point of cluttering their
shelfs with the rich person's beverage. Ok, Pepsi it would have to
be.
I reluctantly opened the can and walked along, stopping briefly every
couple of yard to sip. Once I had finished, I walked up to the six
children that manned the nearest tienda and asked if they would
recycle my can. My request was met with fits of laughter. I changed
my strategy, "Trashcan?" I asked, "Can you throw this away?

"Sure", the eldest asserted, then took the can from my hand and
threw it out into the middle of the road." Flabbergasted, I ran out
and harvest my pepsi can. I couldn't believe what had just happened.
Did these children have no respect for their beautiful landscape.

But then the same scene repeated itself, first with a shriveled
grandma and the following tienda, then with the gold toothed man at
the one after that. Each time I asked, the tienda owner looked at me
like I was asking them if they would like me to burn down their house.
I decided to pick up my can and wait until the town I would hopefully
arrive at soon.

I must step back for a second and properly introduce the subject of
trash in Guatemala, perhaps the thing that had bothered me most about
the country from the moment I left the airport. Trash was everywhere.
Each street was lined with a different mélange of tortilla chip
bags, shattered coke bottles, crumpled posters advertising corrupt
politicians. It broke my heart each time yet another passenger would
throw his bag of chili melon slices and plastic Fanta bottle out the
window of the Chicken buses. "How could an entire country be so
impudent?" I kept wondering, as I would stuff my garbage into my
purse, waiting for the receptacle that awaited me at my hotel room or
apartment. But on this hike I hadn't brought a purse, and well,
holding the can was starting to annoy me, like a blister that rubs and
rubs, rawer and rawer and rawer.

I finally reached the tiny village of San Francisco Madre Vieja and
headed toward the plaza. Had I not been on a mission to properly
discard of my soda can, I might have noticed the exquisite colonial
church, how the four ice cream vendors that stood side by side were
all advertising only blackberry paletas. "Where is a trashcan," I
asked person number one through twenty, each of them laughing at the
can in my palm that had long been crumpled in my stressing fists. One
after one, they pointed to the ground in front of me. Finally, a tiny
woman carrying two babies on her back pointed over towards the pine
tree in front of the church. ¡Gracias dios! I sprinted over, my
spirits lifted like a little girl who has just been given a pony for
her birthday.

I found the trashcan I had been dreaming of for the past hour. It
was plump and metallic, and surely could hold at least five gallons of
Guatemalan discards. But sadly, that day, it already held about five
and a half. This bloated trashcan was so overstuffed that a wide ring
of colorful remains had formed around the bottom like a mote. I
moaned. Turned around to see the familiar crowd of people staring at
me and the can in my hand. By now, I was so angry that my fingernails
had pierced holes through the metal. And just when I was ready to
explode, a little boy ran over towards me, tugged the can out from my
hand and threw it over his shoulder. I wanted to cry. But then the
little boy smiled up at me. He was just trying to help. Teach me
proper Guatemalan customs the way his mother had.

I still to run and pick up the can again, uphold my Western morals,
but somehow my feet stuck lead-heavy to the cobblestones. The next
moment, a chicken bus bus passed, and raised a ferocious cloud of dust
that left my can all but buried forever. Then suddenly, it hit me:
this was my initiation. I had to let it be. I backed away from the
can, away from the throngs, and couldn't help noticing how eyes had
begun to sparkle, smiling at the Gringa and her empty hands.

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