Chicken Bus

I’m sure that nearly every foreign traveler in Guatemala, has her own story of riding a “chicken bus.” I fear my words will fail to live up to the experience of it, but here we go: We left Hotel La Casa de Don Ismael, in Antigua, Guatemala without consulting our map. It was not out of foolishness we did this, but from relying on our faint memory from a similar journey years ago in the same place. We headed in the general location of the market at the edge of town, behind which we would find rows of colorful chicken busses which could take us to a variety of different destinations.  We were looking for a bus to Panahachel, when a young man jumped into our path to advertise his bus to Chimal. “Pana,” Sugata replied, which was met with a stream of Spanish which I took to mean “This bus will go through Panahachel on the way to Chimal. We shook our heads and moved on, then ducked behind another bus to consult our guidebook. Ah, yes.  According to the book, we couldn’t catch a direct Chicken Bus to Panahachel and would have to transfer in Chimal. So my translation hadn’t been quite accurate, but the essence was the same. We needed to get on a bus headed to Chimal. But instead of getting on the young man’s scarcely populated red and yellow bus, we ascended into a green bus to Chimal which was already pulling out of the station.

The bus wasn’t very crowded. And only a few black plastic bags were tucked onto the shelves above, as well as a few knapsacks. Our bags were too large to put on the shelves, so we each took our own seat, uncertain as to how we might crowd both our backpacks and the two of us onto one seat, and as of yet, there was no need. Though the bus had appeared ready to leave, the progress from bus port to street was painstakingly slow. As the bus inched forward and stopped, inched forward and stopped, in popped a beggar asking for handouts. Then a man with fireman’s hat and coat entered, made a speech, collected a few Quetzals as he made his way through, and exited at the rear of the bus.  More passengers began to hop on as the bus worked its way to the street.

Sugata motioned for me to join him, and after arranging our backpacks a couple of times, we managed to squeeze everything onto one seat. Really, what excuse had we? A family of four would later sit two seats in front of us.

Just then, a discreet foreigner popped into the bus and took the seat which I had so recently evacuated. She tightened her tiny ponytail and in a moment was flipping through a stack of 3X5 cards. “She’s studying Spanish,” I whisper to Sugata. “Talk to her,” he says. I hesitate as I peer over her shoulder at the cards she’s holding.

The driver turns on some lively music and the bus ride begins to feel like a festive occasion. When I look up I realized that not only do we have audio, but video, complete with men who look like they think they’re oh-so- cool, and women shaking their scarcely-clad “stuff.” A stuffed toy monkey clings to the side of the screen. His companions, a small white bear and a brown bear, sit next to him, each holding a red velvet heart.  From the driver’s mirror dangles a CD painted with the figure of the Virgin Mary. It swings back and forth as the bus jolts along.

After a good long while of alternating my gaze between music video and passing scenery, we are out of town. The driver takes us into the curves, full speed ahead. It is then that I remember what riding a chicken bus is all about, that not only will I listen to festive music, but I’ll be taking roller coaster ride without the benefit of security straps. I grab onto the bar in front of me with both hands and hang on. Lucky me, I have the aisle seat. By the time this bus journey is over, I will feel like I’ve been to one of the more strenuous Cross-fit workouts. 

It’s surprising that such a bus, packed with so many people, can fly up these turns so fast. It’s also surprising that quite a lot of the natives on the bus can nap or eat quite comfortably under such conditions.  Occasionally the bus stops to pick up more people, and I can, in those moments unclench my hand. It is in one of these lulls when I finally tap the foreigner on the shoulder.

“Are you studying in Antigua,” I ask, “No,” she says, “Panahachel.” We have time for a few more words before we must brace ourselves against the curves.  She’s been in Pana for some months, but has just taken her husband to the airport and will study in Pana a month and a half more. She becomes our unofficial guide. She’s been there. She knows what she’s doing.  So when she hops off saying “This is where I got on yesterday coming down. No promises,” We hurry off the bus after her.

Three buses later we are in Panahachel.

A Week in Guatemala

It has been a week since Sonya and I have landed in Guatemala.

We have started our Spanish classes at the picture perfect garden school in Casa Rosario by the shores of the Lake Atitlan. It has been somewhat strange for me to learn a European language, Spanish, from a fellow colonized subject. It should not be; after all the teachers I had in the U.S.A. were from Mexico and Argentina. As I think more about this, I am beginning to think that the reason for this dissonance is that I expected Spanish in Guatemala to be no different than English in India: only the elite upper and upper middle classes to be speaking it.

India is not Thailand or Kerela with near cent per cent literacy, and I was expecting the same in Guatemala.
However here, everyone speaks Spanish: the immigration official, the shuttle-bus driver, the chicken-bus driver,¨El capitan¨ of the launches on the Lake Atitlan, the auto-drivers (tuk-tuk), the old woman in the market selling rounds of sin-azucar chocolate wrapped in leaves, the woman making tortillas, even the little girl who is vending peanuts and fava-beans. India, if any of them had spoken English to me- I would be shocked.

The other reason for the dissonance is that my mind is tricked into believing I am in India time and again: physically the way I have to manoeuver my body in the market place is the same as India; I need nimble feet and alert eyes, rather than the encumbrance of a shopping cart on the smooth floor of a supermarket. Concrete structures topped with exposed twisted iron rebars promise future vertical construction. Aurally, the noises I hear are the same: four-stroke engines from the same vehicles- Bajaj Autos and Pulsars, dogs barking so louldly at night that they wake me, distant roosters and ashtmatic trucks. And wood-smoke and diesel exhaust smell the same.

The kids playing soccer in the street below do it in Spanish. I was expecting to hear more of the local language and be lost in known non-comprehension, similar to the way I do not understand conversations on the bus or the train in Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu, and not be taxing my brain trying to understand what they were saying.

My Spanish teacher who is of Mayan heritage learnt Spanish in school; she did not learn her native Tzu´tuhil in school, she is in the same boat as I am with Bengali: she can speak it- but cannot write it, according to her there are less than a dozen Tzu´tuhil literates in San Pedro- a town of around 10,000 people. She tells me that her children are now learning Tzu´tuhil in school with the Roman alphabet.

I am pondering about the ways in which language influences the marketing of products of daily consumption. How do certain memes take on significance in one culture and not others. For example would one buy soap or beer in India if it were called ¨Murga Brand¨ or in the USA as ¨Rooster Brand¨?