From the Mind of Trevor Stone

While journaling last night, Molly noticed that the last time we got robbed was also the last Thursday of the month. I never could get the hang of Thursdays...
Fortunately, we'll be back in Boulder on the last Thursday of June. It's not that Boulder is crime-free, it's that theft is less of an affront. If I leave my backpack on a bus and someone takes my wallet out, I feel stupid. If someone steals my wallet while I'm getting off the bus, I feel violated. The first I would expect in Boulder, but not the second. I feel worse about this incident than the break-in; here they stole from a person, not from a place.

After we got off the bus yesterday, we took note of the nice images that didn't need to be photographed. Sitting in a panadería/internet café I remarked with a smile on the modern scene of a woman in traditional Maya garb hunting and pecking out an email on Yahoo. After she left, we found out she was an American, living at Atitlan for 25 years and doing social work. A gringa pretending to be Mayan hunting and pecking an email on Yahoo is also a nice image to remember.

Lying in bed last night, Molly ran through all the images on the stolen camera. She remembered exactly where she was standing, what she was smelling, what was around but not in the frame. She expressed special regret for a few photos: a fantastic family who run a new licuado shop in Copán Ruinas; a bunch of kids staring at the two white people visiting the campo, right before we were invited in for a beer, some tamales, and birthday cake for a four-year-old girl; Trevor in scuba gear jumping off a boat for the first time; a drip sand castle on the beach at night at Tela's beach; Mormon missionaries on Utila with the nameplate for Elder Beach clearly visible. We both had waking dreams of catching thieves on a bus, calling out as they snatch an object, twisting their arm and sitting on their back, demanding that no one leave the bus until the police come and arrest the thieves. A small number of Guatemalans are thieves, but a large number are complicit and silent when they see a white traveler taken advantage of.

I was wondering the other day why so many stereotypically libertarian folks stay in the U.S. and complain about all the government regulations when they could move to Central America. Cars don't have to pass emission tests; glass bottle recycling is enforced by a monetary incentive to the vendor; McDonalds has shotgun-wielding guards; you can sell food in the street without a license; people burn trash and excrement; goods are sold without price stickers, letting merchants charge more if they think someone's willing to pay more; building codes are lax if they exist at all; municipalities don't treat the water supply for you: if you want to drink, you have to buy bottled water; the number of passengers on a bus is not limited by the number of manufacturer-intended seats; drug use and drug organizations are quietly tolerated. Yet despite the claims of libertarian idealists, Central America is not as safe as the North.

Plenty of people have guns, but crime is still a problem. Thieves target foreigners and people who look like they have money. Most buildings in a city have bars on the windows. Crime in Antigua dropped significantly when tourist police were deployed. Conflicts are still handled by assassinations. A well-armed public is not as good of a crime deterrent as a vigilant police force with a good track record of apprehending criminals post factum.

The air and environment is less enjoyable. I hold my breath on the street as a bus drives by (thank goodness most cars on the street are manufactured according to California standards). I wince as I try to breathe between trash fires and jungle slash. I've had some sort of a cough, excess phlegm, or digestive problem for most of my visit. Bus riders throw bottles out the window and the sides of the streets are lined with trash.

People with lots of guns, drugs, and money and minimal government interference are not good neighbors. An expat living in Río Dulce told us that a drug gang had opened a new hospital in Morales (as a money laundering scheme, presumably). They told his gynecologist to come work for the hospital or they'd kill him, so he fled to Atitlan. ("He's visiting his gynecologist for thumb surgery? Huhuh.")

It's precisely government, with well designed laws and fair enforcement of strong regulation, that can help establish security, public health, and equal opportunity. It is, of course, not a task for government alone, nor is extreme regulation the answer. Security always involves tradeoffs, but when libertarians propose trading public health and security for theoretical liberty, it turns out that there are many things you still can't do... like breathe clearly. I believe in metaliberty, and I don't want to choose the idealist libertarian offering.


Fortunately, the people are interesting people, regardless of the social system or how public institutions behave. Yesterday we
played basketball with a babbling toddler,
relearned how to greet someone in Kaqchiquel ("Utsa watch," response: "Utsa madiosh"),
tried to estimate the number of actual gallons (three, at least) that would fit in the novelty hat inspired by a Mayan folk story,
paid Q40 ($5) for a hand-woven (two months work?) long belt (maybe a drum strap?) so the woman would stop embarasing herself by rapidly lowering the price ("It's worth 250, but I'll give it to you for 150" deteriorated into "90... 80... 70..."),
had nearly a dozen locals ask where we bought our pico de oro mangoes,
compared Molly's "I'm waiting for Trevor to finish something" macrame leg bracelet with the Mayan style,
teased a mobile vendor carrying a baby ("How much per pound?" "Only per unit? Do you have a special, two for one?" "It's hand-made, nine months work!"),
pronounced strange words and asked what language they were in while two women tried to explain that you can buy a bracelet with your first initial on it,
lectured a vendor on not having a gringo price which Molly noticed because he said "Uh" before quoting Q25,
winced at the gringo accent (yet full vocabulary) on cell phone calls,
called out the drinks on offer to pedestrians ("¡Arroz con leche y leche con arroz!" "¡Rosas con lechuga!"),
and invented meaningful symbols for tacks and string, stick figures, and mushrooms on kitschy handcrafts.
This is why I want to speak Spanish well: not just buying stuff in the market, but joking around with locals, even though only some of them realize it's funny. I also want to speak Spanish well enough to find out how people feel about international trade, local politics, environmental issues, and other deep thoughts. Unfortunately, I often find it challenging to start those conversations even in English.

Instead, I'm blogging therapeutically. Time to get to know the town and take some more pictures of the volcano-ringed lake.

"It´s a very trusting place" Molly said as I left my amulet with our passports and money in our treehouse at Finca Ixobel while we went for a swim. "It´s kind of a vacation away from Guatemala." They trust you to write down what you eat and do (though they double check) and pay when you check out. Molly provided a zapote to satisfy her fantasy of the perfect smoothie, and promised big zapote seeds to the owner who waxed poetic about the tree that used to drop fruits that thundered on the roof. I almost mustered the combination of energy and annoyance to organize their National Geographics in chronological order.

The next day, I wore my amulet as we took a hot walk to a lovely, fairly pristene, limestone cave. I left my wallet in my backpack, though. I took it out of my pocket to wash my pants and didn´t put it back since I didn´t need to buy anything in the cave. When we got back to the treehouse, I saw my comb and moustache wax on the floor. I may be messy, but I´m not that much of a slob. "I think someone tried to rob us." As I looked through my backpack, my suspicions were confirmed: all zippers were open, even the one that doesn´t lead to a pocket, and my wallet was gone. The theif was pretty quick, though -- he left my camera in a pouch on the table and didn´t check out the other objects around the room, just bags. One of the caretakers stopped by to investigate and found clear signs of a break-in: chipped wood by the lock and slivers on the floor. When renting a room and checking its security, make sure the latch points the right way. I only lost about 300 quetzales, about $45 and was joking about it pretty quickly -- "Well, it´s all part of the authentic Guatemalan experience." There was a lot of things worth more than $45 that they didn´t take -- my backpack, travel books and a dictionary, a small digital camera, water shoes... all hard to replace down here. The Czechs in the dorm had it worse: passports, two credit cards, all their cash. Fortunately they were in a place they could stay a bit without cash and they still had netbooks with Skype, but losing a Canadian work visa is rough. Plus, the nearest Czech embassy is in Mexico City which is shut down from the flu. A couple people saw the thieves, who were passing as tourists from Nicaragua. They managed to spend $250 at a gas station (do they sell liquor there?) before the card was disabled.

We spent Beltane, aka Labor Day in the non-socialistaphobia world, in a river under a hot waterfall. It was a very refreshing experience, one of the best cost to fun ($5 including entrance and bus) hot spring experiences I´ve had. Then we caught a lancha down the Río Dulce to Lívingston, a Garífuna town that´s also kind of a vacation from Guatemala. There´s nobody guarding stores with a shotgun, people give each other sass on the street, and the famous soup -- tapado? topado? -- a big bowl full of crab, fish, shrimp, prawns, and a delicious broth. Today we met Polo Martinez, an old Garífuna musician, who talked about struggles to keep the culture alive, how the latinos are running all the stores on the main drag while the Garífuna kids are wearing rasta hats and smoking herb, identifying more with the African immigrants than the Carib with a dash of African that he identifies. He offered us some CDs that cost three times as much as the one the kids on the street were selling, alongside pirated DVDs and fake Casio watches. But I´m not here trying to get the cheapest trinkets. I´m here because the Garífuna are a fascinating culture and I´m happy to lend a hand to keeping it alive. He says the money goes to an orphanage, but I´m fine if he keeps it himself... musicians need to make it in this world. In 18 hours we´ve had great fun and found neat people by saying hello. Without being friendly, we wouldn´t have realized the women were selling pan de piña -- ¡¿pan de piña?! -- and we wouldn´t have scored some mangosteens from a guy with a bag full of them, then met the owners of the only mangosteen trees in town. And the whole conversation with Polo started because he mentioned my old hiking boots and then talked about playing music in Boulder (Tulagi) back in the day. We´ll meet him again this evening and he´ll take us to a family who will serve us a traditional Garífuna dinner.

So remember: when you go to a tourist town known for an indigenous culture, make sure to seek out members of that culture and have a conversation with them. You´ll learn why people thought it was such a cool place before all the souvenier shops opened.

Also remember: when traveling, think about how you would feel if any object didn´t return with you. If you would be highly upset or inconvenienced, keep it in your sights. In the end, what´s important is the experiences, and it´s hard to lose those.