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A little after 3pm on the Wednesday before Easter.... This was the scene.
As I write this I'm swaying from side to side in the
hamaca down next to the kitchen.
Don Ricardo the Canadian is digging something in the garden, Sister Paulita has just walked past on her way to the shops and Virginia the cook has just finished knocking mangoes from the tree. Before to long you won't need to knock them off, but for now, they need a little tempting.
It's Guatemala the day before the Semana Santa (Holy Week) holiday begins, it's a half day and such activity as there is seems very relaxed. There's that pre-Christmas air around the compound. Everyone is winding down for the biggest holiday of the year.
Thankfully the music pumping out of the church has wound down too. Why this obsession with morose death marches and while on the subject, why oh why should a recording be so out of tune??? The church may be half a mile away, but for most of the last week we've been able to hear nothing other than the musical gloom it's been pumping out.
Yes, we'd been been
able to hear nothing apart from death marches from the church. Nothing else except the lions that is.
Lions.
Well you can try and prepare yourself for a place, try and imagine what it might be like, and inevitably you will be mostly wrong. The people will be different, perhaps the landscape more or less developed, maybe there are more banana trees, or less mangoes, or more avocados and less bread; probably the food will be both better and worse than you had thought. (Though in fact it is pleasantly mostly better. We are developing quite a taste for beans and maize tortillas.)
Anything can become surprising. Jumping time to yesterday May 4th, for example, Rhona was revelling in the fact that we had been served moonshine. Chicha, a sort of cane sugar beer, like a stout perhaps, but one on steroids. Said I, "Did you not expect to drink any moonshine?". Replied Rhona, "Yeh, but I didn't expect to be served it by a nun!"
I one for one can report that moonshine is a serious impediment to blog writing! One of the many....
Pretty soon though, you forget what you had imagined and
just accept things as the way they are. You expect your predictions to be wrong, that's part of the joy. What you don't expect is what you could never have imagined. And we never thought on our first day here we would walk down the street and come face to face with a pride of lions. Thankfully there was a cage and fence separating us, but nevertheless....
Remember we found out how much they love clowns here. Well that must extend to circuses too.
The lions have roared to appointment every evening for a month now so we've been told, and for us, every night for two weeks. They are barely 100 yards from the compound. The roaring of lions has become our night-time chorus. After a while, it merges into the background with the buzzing of the crickets.
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It's never silent here, and if it is it's disconcerting. Noise is the expression of life and of wealth and of commerce, noise is just everything really. Even if that noise is quite alarming. Bangers can be so loud they can be heard in Scotland through Skype. Those are nothing though - more alarming still in a country with a violent past are the flares for which you need a
mortero to set them off. Uncomfortable at long range, they are deafening close up. How anyone can think they are good, we just can't understand. Never mind though, the mortars have been here longer than us, and will still be here when we go. For the curious, they are used not just to make Scottish people jump, but more commonly to announce a party or event. If you can, take a moment to imagine the planning list: chairs, yup, tables, yup, PA system, yup, rocket launcher, err, I'll need to run out and borrow one...
We thought it would quiet down when the circus left. Fools! It hasn't got quieter, it just means we can hear everything else the circus drowned out. Woe of woes, now we can hear the Evangelicals! If we thought the Catholics were bad singers, oh my goodness. Bring back the lions.
Here's a wee video we took just to get the sound of the Evangelicals singing. I'm not exaggerating
Back to the scene in the compound.
The wee boys are working in the garden, no half day for them. They'll be 12 or 13 or so, the age you can leave school at. Probably working with the chickens or the pigs on the rather improbable farm they have here.
The weather today could be summer in Scotland - low 20s and overcast, a good day. People are saying it's cold, but as far as we're concerned, this respite is wonderful. 15 degrees less than the normal means no sweating, no stickiness and the ability to walk without exhaustion.
The day rumbles on, we prepare to join the Easter exodus....
Jennie
non-member comment
You weren't joking about the singing!