Priceless

While riding the bus this morning from Los Encuentros to Zaragoza, I put together a little excerpt for a trendy backpacker magazine.  It went something like this:

Flying down the Pan American highway in a chicken bus on a clear Tuesday morning with three volcanoes in view, I am experiencing Guatemala as any foreigner should.  I let the window down to taste the fresh mountain air, which was extra sweet thanks to the heavy rains from last night.  The couple seated in front of me, dressed in their colorful garb, is conversing in a Mayan language while their ten year-old son falls asleep on my shoulder.  Two rows ahead, a beautiful young girl is smiling at me over her mother’s shoulder.  I am about as far away from my normal Tuesday morning commute as I could possibly get.

Eventually my pessimism set in and I realized that I am living a neoliberal nightmare.  These buses I am riding on are severely under regulated.  The faster they go and the more people they cram on to the buses, the more money they make.   The consequences of Guatemala’s crude profit driven transportation sector are disastrous.  People are constantly dying on the buses because of horrendous accidents or violent crimes.  Once the payments to the family members of the deceased are factored into the costs (it’s not very much) the bus companies still come out ahead.  After all, life is cheap in Guatemala.  This is not how Guatemala should be experienced.  Human life is precious and does not deserve to have a price placed on it.       

Enter Loneliness

After only four days am I really feeling lonely?  How can I be surrounded by so many loving people and feel so lonely?  Have I already failed?

These questions have been burning inside of me all day, even after I spent the morning hanging out with students in a remote village outside of Comalapa.  So far I have come up with two reasons for why loneliness has set in.  The first is obvious so I will spend my time on the second:

Reason #2

I was so excited to return to Guatemala after being enlightened for a year in Graduate School.  “Surely everything I learned in a classroom would carry over to my field research,” I thought.  The truth is I have never felt so disconnected to Guatemala.  Over the past year, Latin America has only existed in print and no matter how hard authors have tried to get it right, they always seem to come up short.  While it would be ridiculous for me to try and get it right here, I will say that the United States has never seemed so distant and that God has never seemed so close. 

Enter loneliness: 

I have spent the past year secularizing an environment that is anything but secular.  Without God in a place where so many people depend on him to get through the day, one cannot help but feel lonely.  I began analyzing the people I love in Guatemala through the books I have read and not through the God I worship.  I’m sorry.  I will try my hardest to never again be so petty. 

Reason #1

My wife is not with me.

It Will Not Be The Same

I have been building this trip up with fond memories of my former life in Guatemala.  Over the past few days however, I have begun to realize that it will not be the same.  The most obvious reason being that half of me is still in the United States.  Being away from her is going to be a lot harder than I thought.  Everything I viewed before, I viewed with two sets of eyes because she was at my side.  My vision has been cut in half.

      

Self-Absorption?

I have been reluctant to start blogging again.  My previous blog only contained three or four posts, but I still felt a bit awkward when I wrote each one.  Do I really have anything worth saying or am I just being self-absorbed?  

These questions are sure to remain in my mind throughout this blog.  Therefore, the blogs will be short and sweet so that I might avoid the pitfalls of blogging that ultimately make a person sound a tad self-absorbed.  I have titled the blog "For Dejah" because she is my wife and we will be apart for the next five weeks.  Also, she is the only person who will probably end up reading every post.

Feel free to comment on anything accept the spelling and the grammer, irregardless of weather or not it don't make no cents.

Eric