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Stories about the heat
Memory plays tricks on you. You soften the edges, accentuate the positive, forget the boring bits, and obscure what you don't want to remember...so, here and now I will write about just how damn hot it is and has been. This is not a rant or long complaint, this is just trying to put words to this heat and how it makes you feel, because I know after 1 week back in Scotland I'll be thinking of packing a fleece and bunnet for the next time!
It's hard to describe just how hot it continues to be. Hot beyond the ken of a Scottish person. You can say a number, but now matter how high it is, it sounds a treat compared to 5 degrees or -5 degrees. Think of summer anywhere in Scotland; our hottest day of the year would be the coolest day of the year here in the Guatemalan east. For much of the last month, the cool days have been about 32 degrees, and the hot more like 38. That's if you happen to be in the shade. You want to be in the shade. Relentless is the word
for it.
It's so hot that if either of us walks to the one of the other offices downtown, it's 20 minutes necessarily slow walk followed by half an hour of embarrassing dripping. The walk would barely be 10 minutes if you could afford to walk at a normal speed. That's why there are so many tuk-tuk taxis, walking is for those who can't avoid it. It truly is the sort of heat that doing exercise has become something foreign: they do it in the other countries.
It's so hot, that though only it only gets light at half 5, we sometimes begin to sweat at breakfast at 6:30am.
It's so hot that when we've finished work, or when we have a break - whenever we can - we go to our room and sit half-naked in front of our fan. The downside to this is if anyone knocks at the door. Quickly, we have to scramble some clothes together! The rule that one of us has to be one item away from dressed just in case is broken all the time.
It's so hot, that one Friday we had a meeting with the
Doctor to discuss our plan for the time we're here, since we'd worked out what we thought needed to be done. It was an important meeting, about accounting reports, medicine inventories, IT improvements, budgets, and the survival of the organisation, but it was hard to appear serious and professional when you were sticking to the paper you were discussing, or when every 5 seconds you wiped sweat from your brow in giant drops.
It's so hot that when I sit on the floor worshipping the fan, I can actually slide across the lino on a patina of my own sweat. In fact as I sit writing this, I can feel myself sliding slowly across the chair.
Yet in spite of all this, we're doing fine. We seem to be learning to put heat to one side of our minds. We have begun to accept sticky as our default. In fact these days if we're not sweating we notice it and comment.
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It's so hot that exhausted is how we feel at the end of most days. And you can tell the days when you had to walk just 10
minutes down into town by the extra exhaustion you feel.
Of course some days are only hot, they are semi-bearable, other days are hot hot hot. We beg for an overcast day. Everyone else prays for rain. Every little change in the sky is a sign of coming rain. "
Va a llover", it's going to rain. Except it doesn't.
Ahora, va a llover, now it's going to rain.
Quizas va a llover, maybe it's going to rain. But it largely doesn't. There's always a strong line of hope running through any prediction of weather. And not a lot of rain afterwards. Since the middle of March the count is: 2 rain storms in the first week we were here, 3 or so bouts of lightning that didn't bring the relief of rain, and 1 proper rainstorm last week.
It's so hot that most times you ride a minibus you want to change your shirt afterwards. Your clothes have become a layer of sweat and fabric. It's so hot and so cramped in the minibuses (5 to a row plus babies) that you will always be sticking to someone. You'll take turns which parts of you to stick to
the strangers on either side of you. If you rest your arms on your legs, you will have dark sodden patches where your arms meet your trousers.
Nearby Chiquimula town is hotter still. It's the departmental capital, a town of maybe 50,000 - you can buy most stuff there, it's bustling and busy and it has an air-conditioned mall, but it's not a town of note. Rhona got it just about right, "It's like Falkirk without the charm". It's deforested, dry, and painfully hot. It's wise to go there in the early morning, if you have to.
Heading towards the capital, Zacapa town is hotter still as you enter the baking valley. The bus journey is a delicate balancing act: dehydration vs a lack of toilets. You need to drink enough water not to collapse, but not enough you can't sweat it out.
Further into the baking valley, in fact right into the crucible, you find El Rancho. It was so hot in El Rancho that we got sunburnt just changing buses there. It took us all of 10 minutes to get from one bus to another. El Rancho is a junction, not even a
Mayan sculpture
Don Yito's ancestor village, but alive with travel activity: vendors, cafes, shops and minibuses. It's where the buses to the north cross with the buses to the east, and it is an arid deforested oven of a place. Everyone suffers in El Rancho.
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On Saturday I spent a couple more hours trying to repair our broken fan. I figured since taking the dust out hadn't made it work that oiling it might help. So, I went looking for
Don Yito the maintenance man to find a bit of oil. Some used oil duly found, I went back to the room to have a go at the motor. Now Saturday was hot and sticky, so I did what we always do as soon as we get to our room, I stripped down to my pants. Then I turned on some Leonard Cohen, and sat on the floor attempting to fix the fan. Ten minutes later I hear shouting in the corridor. I realise it's
Don Yito shouting for me, and he's right outside the door. To explain Don
Yito, he is old, who knows what age, less than he seems surely, but his skin
looks old, his teeth number 3 or 4 at most, he is
pura Chorti - properly Mayan, is always to be seen in blue cap and ever so slightly scruffy trousers, and is almost impossible to understand.
So I open the door just enough to poke my head round and find myself conversing about oil types etc with a toothless ancient Mayan while all the while wearing only underwear. He doesn't seem that bothered, and unlike me, in no rush to finish the conversation. Behind me on the floor is a disassembled fan, Leonard Cohen is playing on the laptop and Rhona is reading on the bed and creasing herself with laughter.
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It's so hot that we have opened the window to our room at night despite the hordes of mosquitoes and the threat of a thousand itchy bites and hung our mosquito net over the open window. A do-it-yourself flyscreen. It is a case of choose your poison - slowly melting or scratching mosquito bites for days.
It's so hot that in the evening our cold shower turns warm. An evening shower usually involves the bucket, the sink full of cold water in the next room, an initial scream when the first scoop from the bucket hits, and increasing pleasure as the cold begins to become less shocking.
It's so hot that for the sake of our own health we have given up all physical activity. The simple acting of being is effort enough.
But still we are enjoying ourselves. Take away the heat and the mosquitoes and everything is going fine.
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