Show me the way to your Sanitary/Bath/Service!

The word for bathroom in Spanish varies from “baño” to “servicio” (Panamanian) to (as I now learned in Guatemala) “sanitario.” A question for the “servicio” always ends with, you mean “sanitario”? Like we actually speak this language. We, as always, learn to roll with the linguistic punches. At dinner we sat around with a Guatemalan in a 3 tacos-for-$1.30-place and discussed things said/done (phrases, gestures, vocab used) in Panama but completely useless here. He was amused by Panamanian antics. So am I. Ahh, the Mother Land.

So, to update you in my typically obtuse style … after volcanos and lava and such (see below) we decided walking over lava was JUST SILLY and decided to take three days to see the bien famoso Lago Atitlán. Another interesting and much less dangerous experience.

With a bus from Antigua, we arrived in Panajachel, the gringo-town famous for making Peace Corps volunteers nauseous with too-many-Americans. We promptly left (having sampled the only good thing in the town, a delicious piece of fried chicken unrivaled on this continent) and crossed the sparkling water to the town of Santiago de Atitlán, a cool very not-touristy place where we spent several hours walking around the same block looking for our hotel (which we literally collapsed in front of, not realizing it was our hotel … the name had been changed since the publication of our absurd guidebook). The day was low-key. We enjoyed views from the hotel roof of the beautiful parorama that is the lake. Later we enjoyed views from the bed as we soaked in a little cable T.V. The height of the achievement of the day was by far the find of 10 Quetzal ($1.30) street-meat dinner which was the most flavorable piece of beef I’ve encountered in this continent. Avacado, beans, tortillas, rice, beef, sour cream. Heaven, in a word, on a Styrofoam plate. I gloated in our great victory a bit and the other guys (their names are Alan and Josh) rolled their eyes in collective disgust. I will without a doubt miss the super-fast, super-cheap, full home-cooked meals in often-outdoor eateries that are so characteristic of this culture. America is a corporate demon from which I must find a means of escape!

The next day we high-tailed it out of there and went to a bizarre location, across the lake, the little town of San Marcos La Laguna, a strange haunt of gringo-hippies and poor Guatemalans. The town was ghettoized into the ritzy/trendy massage parlors (seriously), sauna baths, meditation centers, yoga clubs, etc. by the water and the poor, much more interesting Guatemalan side of town with the typical basketball court, small comedors (eateries), dirt streets, young Guatemalan children standing in doorways barefoot and bashful, etc. Much less pretty and much more real. I enjoyed the Guatemalan side. The trim and neat, an-effort-made-to-be-natural-yet-distinctly-fake gringo playland, the artificial world of plant-life and chic little cafés populated by dredlocked, glazed-eyed hippies, wearing lots of hemp and prayer beads, distinctly turned me off. They have made spirituality into a commercial phenomenon. A pay-for-yoga-classes-and-attain-enlightenment kind of “soft soap” (CS Lewis) way of thinking that I feel cannot work. I want to fly-in an Aghori tantric yogi and show them this guy and tell them THAT is yoga, a man sitting in a graveyard at midnight, covering himself in human ashes and eating burnt human flesh (DO YOUR RESEARCH if you want to do this I’m-going-all-eastern-because-the-West/Christian-culture-fails-to-speak-to-me stuff).

But it got me thinking a lot about identity and authenticity, two important words to think about. How one defines one’s identity and how one remains authentic, always being who one is (identity). It also started a lot of good thoughts on the nature of spirituality and how it can be authentic or commercial. How visiting a monastery has a much more genuine, authentic aspect whereas paying for trendy classes and yoga-equipment has the hint of wanting to be accepted through a certain identity, a group of friends and associates that forms one’s identity as a calling-card for what one is. This stuff worries me. I also thought about the nature of space in spirituality: how one should not need a special/beautiful place to “do” spiritual things/live spiritually. How ideally spiritual living saturates daily life and can be done anywhere at any time. Why must I meditate on the most beautiful lake in the world and then go to a steam bath and relax and do yoga to find peace? Perhaps these “retreat” type situations are important breaks in the spiritual journey, refuges of rest, but they cannot be made into a real lifestyle, can they? Is that what monasticism is, a kind of escape from certain pressures (daily, worldly) to other pressures (spiritual, emotional)? I feel it’s something much more than that. Any monk would argue you flee the world to find the world (paradoxically). That to enter the monastic lifestyle turns one from a kind of reality so that one can see that reality most clearly and plunge into all its consequences.

Why do these entries come out so judgmental and harsh? I feel peace corps has taught me to start to view the world from others’ eyes and judge them less for what I perceive as their faults. Yet I find a disturbing intolerance continually creeping in: for trendy, wealthy Americans flopping around this continent or world in search of meaning/truth/reality by paying lots of money, or trying to learn Spanish to appear cultured or worldly, or pushing their agenda on others. We were in a little bus today going to a famous kite festival today in Santiago de Antigua and the high-tension, high-stress Americans grated on my nerves to an unexpected degree. They were freaking out that we were leaving 30 minutes late (it didn’t matter, we got there and the activities still had not started). A hyperactive Spaniard chewed out the bus driver and I almost said something to him. The motor wouldn’t start, so we had to hop out and bus the bus til the engine fired. They were flabbergasted. I thought, Welcome to the Developing World, Welcome to Reality. This is how things are for a lot of people on this planet. Deal.

Peace Corps has given me a phenomenal gift: a two year life lived in rural, trying conditions in the developing world, and I am immensely grateful. It has opened my eyes and shown me how things really are. This amazing, life-changing gift comes with a great burden, the burden of knowledge: of having scales of ignorance drop from the eyes and the painful truth rush in and blind. I have seen the world as very, very few people on this planet have (at least the people from the so-called “Developed World” (a term full of problems)). All of us, every Peace Corps volunteer, has had this experience and now we are asked, demanded, to live in a culture, a country, a civilization which has none of the experiences we have. I see us as a kind of lonely elite, a great but sad minority of Americans which has seen the real world, the Other Side, and now must return to live in the dismal grandeur, the great vomiting insanity of capitalism and consumerism that is the “Developed World.”

More fun thoughts coming soon!