A Saturday Trip to Town

Somehow shopping in Guatemala is always harder than it should be. I headed to town early this morning, with a pretty manageable shopping list. First on the list was to buy chicken wire to build a chicken coop and fence in my garden. My host dad helped me measure last night with a stick that he declared to be 2 varas long, and he added up 52 varas (a vara is a measurement used in Guatemala, it's 83.5 centimeters). But one of my friends told me she bought chicken wire per meter, so I converted the varas to 44 meters. I thought I was ahead of the game. But the first store I went to offered me chicken wire for Q12/vara, or Q480 for a roll of 45 meters.

"Well, what do you sell it for per meter?"

"We don't sell it per meter. Only per vara". Ok, way to be difficult.

It seemed kind of high, so I went to the store next door. They offered me Q11/vara, or Q10/yard. Wait, varas, meters, and now yards?! How confusing do they have to make this? But they didn't have the right length, so I figured I'd check out the place across the street. (That's right, there are three hardware stores on the same block). But then the guy from the first store came running up to me to ask how much I wanted, and offered me Q11/vara (down a whole quetzal from the first quote). I still wanted to check prices at another store, so I went across the street. There they offered me the roll of 50 yards for Q400. Let's see, 50 yards is 45 meters, so that's less than Q9/meter, or Q7.50/vara. That's more like it! So that's what I bought.

But should buying one roll of chicken wire really require that much converting? Does your average poor Guatemalan farmer work through all those conversions to find the right price? Since most adults living in rural Guatemala have received only minimal amounts of education (if any at all, many are illiterate), I highly doubt it.

Phew, chicken wire crossed off the list. Next stop, the photo shop to print the 210 photos that people have asked me for lately. What with a wedding, two birthday parties, a baptism and a trip to the lake with my host family, they've added up quickly this month! Q420 out of my pocket...hope that everybody pays me back quickly!

Lastly I headed to the grocery store for the things I can't find in the market (powdered milk, cinnamon, vanilla, mouth rinse), and then to the market. The official market day is Wednesday, but Saturday is still busy. Sacks and crates of tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and potatoes line the market street- three rows of vendors, making it pretty hard to maneuver. Swiss chard, lettuce, cabbage, celery, onions, avocado. Blackberries, bananas, plantains, mangoes, guavas, oranges, lemons, cantaloupes, watermelons, pineapples, apples. The list goes on and on. The vendors all have their goods spread on tables, stacked in crates, and spread out on the street. All the vendors shout to the multitudes, claiming the best price or quality. Then you've got the customers, almost all shorter than me. Mostly dark skinned, haired, and eyed. So yeah, I generally stand out as I have to duck to avoid catching my head on the makeshift shade roofs made out of sacking or tarps. All the bustling about makes it hard to get anywhere, and nobody stops to let other people get past. And everybody carries a big bag for their purchases. If you want to get anywhere, you have to push your way through. It's kind of crazy. But luckily today I found everything on my list, and at a decent price. I don't think anybody ripped me off- Q4.50/pound onion (56cents), Q3/.5 pound jalapenos (37 cents), Q2.50 (31 cents) for 5 bananas (five on anything is called "una mano", or a hand), Q3 for two plantains, and Q5 (63 cents) for three HUGE avocados. Delicious.

So even though the market isn't as neat an organized as Wegman's, and it's always a lot more hectic than Wegman's on a Sunday afternoon, I definitely prefer it. What grocery store carries all those fruits and veggies all the time, and allows you to haggle for the price? One of the many things I love about this country.

Phew, got everything that I needed. Just need to stop and pick up my chicken wire. But wait. The bus terminal is full of vendors, but no buses. After asking around I find out that it's under construction (it didn't look like there was any construction going on), so my bus is parked up the street (or that's what I gathered from the vague wave up the street that I got for an answer). Right. I pay for my chicken wire, throw in a pound of u-nails, and a guy working at the store throws the roll of wire on his shoulder to carry it to my bus. We ran into the ayudante (or literally the "helper", the guy who collects money and helps the passengers with whatever they happen to be transporting, from chickens to milk to avocados to barbed wire), and he grabbed the wire and led me to the new parking spot for my bus. Since I'm the only gringa living on my bus route, the chofers (drivers) and ayudantes all know me, which can be kind of annoying, but also pretty convenient when the buses seem to have dissapeared from the terminal. Ayudantes can be a little creepy sometimes, but I'm always amazed by their agility. This guy managed to climb up the ladder on the bus with a 2 meter tall roll of wire over his shoulder. They also routinely tie things down on the roof rack while the bus is moving, usually very quickly on windy roads, then suddenly will pop through the window of the sliding door and start collecting money. Crazy.

So all in all, a productive morning. I got home to find that my host dad had paid a neighbor's teenage son to dig up part of the lawn to start our garden. Yay! I was planning to help..but I'm not going to complain. It was a LOT of REALLY thick grass. Now we've just got to pull the sod out, dig the dirt up really well, and add some of my nice organic compost. And build the fence. And plant. So I don't feel left out.

Now I'm drinking hot chocolate and listening to the rain. Because when you have a tin roof and there's a downpour, that's all you can listen to. Makes me feel lucky to live in such a nice house. It's pretty basic, cement floor, cinder block walls, metal roof with bare rafters. But it's a really nice house by local standards, and it's DRY!

This picture is of a fruit and vegetable exchange that my women's group had on Friday with my friend (and fellow PCV) Alene's women's group. It's "flor de izote" season- a flower that grows from a tree that looks like a cross between a cactus and a palm tree. The flowers are edible, though rather bitter, and my ladies up here on the mountain go crazy for them. So we brought potatoes, broccoli, and peas, and went home with flowers, oranges, bananas and limes. Alene and her group gave a talk about chicken nutrition, then we had a dish to pass lunch and exchanged produce. A good day. (Side note- see how I'm a head taller than...almost all the women in the
picture? That's the story of my life here...)