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Published: September 5th 2008
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sunday market
steps of La Iglesia de Santo Tomàs Chichicastenango, nighttime.
We found ourselves accommodation with an old indio lady who we met at the bus depot. With her old and worn-out face, skin like parchment yellowish and sickly looking fallen over a bony face with deep set eyes that betray a life time of hard work, her skinny frame dressed in a black long and dusty dress she reminded me of something that should have been burried and forgotten a long time ago.
She told me in halting spanish that she has got a big house just out of the city centre and that she really needed the few meagre quetzales she asked us for rent since her husband died a few weeks back.
Her house turned out to be a wooden hut with more spiderswebs then furniture, in fact there are not even beds in this dump, just a cooking fire with a huge black kettle, sacks with maiz, some kitchen utensils hanging on the walls from rusty nails and a few candle lights on the window sills.
While the old lady hurried over to light the candles we looked around and wondered where the old lady herself was gonna sleep in this one-room hut.
She told me
sunday market
colorful indio ladies nervously she would sleep in the chicken house while we could have the whole hut to ourselves bringing the rent down from 10 to 5 quetzales and that she would bring us buckets of water from the well in her garden. I gave her 50 quetzales for the five of us and together with James got the buckets of water so we could at least wash ourselves.
we're now at the main square,close the midnight, which is full with indio families cooking their food and arranging their bedding for a night under the Guatamala stars. Huge bundles contaning the wares they hope to sell tomorrow stacked around them.
In the arcades of the square I can see small shapes hidden in colorful blankets belonging to their children already deep in the realm of Morpheus.
We have arranged for one of the families to cook us food and are busy now activating our appetites with a huge joint.
The dark shape of the church Iglesia de Santo Thomàs dominates the whole square and in our altered state of mind this place looks like pure magic.
In the light of the stars and a semi-full moon I can see the mists
sunday market
entrnace of La Iglesia de Santo Tomàs coming off the mountains surrounding this ancient place.
The air feels fresh and crips after today's rain, local harsh voices probably speaking mayan and cackichel drift across the square.
I can hear a baby crying and soon after the happy sounds of a small young human live suckling a readily offered female tit.
We're all very quiet while we eat our food, totally inside our own minds, each one of us experiencing this our own way.
It is several hours later when we stumble down the cobble stone streets of this strange place to our hut, to our sleeping bags we have rolled out around the cooking fire on the earthen floor, to our land lady who is sleeping in the chicken house.
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