EbertFest Beckons

The weather is finally gorgeous and spring is in full bloom. So, what better time to spend 5 straight days in a dark building with 1200 other people watching underappreciated movies?

Yes, it is EbertFest time again, and I'll be huddled in the Virginia Theater tomorrow night through Sunday, enjoying the festival. I'm also going to guest blog again at http://ebertfest.blogspot.com/ with some friends. However, this year I'm not going to try to post reviews for most of the festival movies like I did last year, which was simply too much work, and frankly, cut into my enjoyment of the movies. This year, I'll only post when the inspiration hits. That's probably good practice anyway.

I'll add links to this post (below) as I post them over at the ebertfest blog.

• EbertFest 9 Wrap Up
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
• Beyond the Valley of EbertFest
• Bust of a Day
• Come Early Morning
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Allan Rickman Interview
  
• Roger Ebert Fulfills Life-Long Dream
  
• Gattaca and Meritocracy
  
• The Quintessential EbertFest Film
  
• Overlooked No More
• 70mm Blues
  
  
  

Supporting the Troops

Last Friday, NPR reported that injured soldiers are being taken advantage of by the military with injury ratings. Soldiers who are injured and cannot perform their duties get a disability rating when they leave. If the rating is less than 30%, the military doesn’t have to pay them a monthly stipend (they get a small one-time severance instead), and they don't get to be part of the military health care system (they go into the VA system instead). One guy had a serious head injury in Iraq where they had to cut out part of his skull. He received a 10% disabled rating. In order to get health care, he has to fight long delays at VA hospitals. Sadly, this isn’t an isolated case. Vets are continuing to have troubles getting the health care they legitimately need.

This hits home for me because a very good friend of mine is in this exact position. He wasn’t in combat, but has debilitating back pain from an injury he sustained while in the Air Force. He had 16 years in towards a 20 year full retirement, but had trouble standing for much of the day (he was a teacher), so he was forced out of the Air Force with a 20% disability rating. He got a severance, but no monthly stipend, and because his back pain is so bad, it is hard for him to work and support himself.

The Mennonite part of me has nothing but compassion for the injuries soldiers sustain, regardless of whether they are physical or not. They are the ones bearing the cost of lessons not learned a generation ago by those running this war, and deserve to be taken care of. Actually, the Mennonite part of me thinks everyone should be entitled to quality health care, even if one’s health issues are not the result of arrogance or greed on the administration’s part. But that is probably a Minor Mennonite position.

The Liberal part of me wonders how in the world Conservatives can accuse us of not supporting the troops. They are the ones who put soldiers in harms way for no good reason, underfund their body armor and medical care, and whose contempt for government makes them seemingly unable to run any part of it. The idea that we are not supporting the troops by attempting to put a time-limit on the amount of blood they must spill is ludicrous.

The Snarky part of me (which often undermines the Mennonite and Liberal parts of me) wonders why NPR wants military health care to fail. After all, if reporting bad news from Iraq undermines the war, then reporting bad news about health care must threaten health care. Why didn’t they choose to interview people with serious head injuries who do get monthly stipends and reasonable health care? I would even bet that some hospitals have been freshly painted. No wonder NPR is constantly being threatened with its funding. What's a government-run organization useful for if it isn't to trumpet the success of those in power?

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

I’m in Florida this week for spring break, and am pleased to report that I’ve found a sign that now qualifies as my all-time favorite:


The other side of the sign contains the exact same message, and the exact same scene of countless sunbathers enjoying a nice sunny day on the beach. There is no indication as to what is designated about this area, why this particular spot has reached its limit. It is quite literally a useless sign plopped down in the middle of a beach, saying essentially nothing, and yet saying it in an awkward way.

This sign now replaces my previous favorite, which has lasted 20 years and dates back to my time living in Maryland, where on the side of the road near some paint stripes they warn motorists:

Paint Test
Drive Normally

That sign leads to all kinds of easy jokes about what constitutes normal driving in Maryland, and why the people of Maryland need to be reminded every day to drive that way. But, it does meet the minimal qualification that a sign convey intelligble information of some kind, even if it is just say that you should be acting normally. The Limits sign conveys information, but it is known only to the committee that designed and placed it.

For an even easier joke, here is my favorite made-up sign:

Corruption as Policy

Every time the Bush administration abuses their power or wreaks a bit of havoc on the country, I struggle to respond appropriately. The problem is that it is just such old news that these people are morally bankrupt. Continuing to point out their follies is just continuing to beat the proverbially dead horse.

The predicament is that this horse is still in power, which makes it not dead at all, but one that continues to charge around the barn, whacking other people, objects and barnyard animals. Plus, there is still a mysterious 30-some percent of people who still approve of the job Bush is doing. I suppose at some point, facts and logic simply don’t matter.

For instance, in the latest flair up concerning the fired federal prosecutors, it seems obvious that they were fired for political reasons. Their sins were to follow up on real corruption by Republicans and not follow up on fake corruption charges in order to smear Democrats right before an election. The justice department didn’t even bother to check on the actual performance of many of them before letting them go.

The administration response? Prosecutors are political appointees, and serve at the president’s pleasure, so he can fire them for any reason. Right. That’s like saying you can beat your wife because you believe yourself to be the head of the family. She serves at your pleasure and if you decide she needs to be more loyal, you will beat her if you need to.

I suppose the administration has forced itself down this route, since enough info has already come out that they can’t plausibly deny they were fired for political reasons. They are just trying to define “political” as “carry out generic policy” rather than “protect Republicans from the law and smear political opponents by any means.” This isn’t carrying out policy. It is simple corruption. Or rather, it is corruption AS policy, the kind of thing I used to expect from third world dictatorships, but now have to soul-search on whether to even complain about, for fear of sounding like broken record.

Perhaps the problem isn’t with the Bush Administration itself, since any administration will lie or spin when caught in an obvious misdeed. The problem is with the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Fox news folks who perpetuate these claims with straight faces and even indignation. It allows 30 percent or so of the people to continue to live in a bubble where it is only the one bomb a day that ruins people’s perceptions of how well things are going in Iraq, or that any and all accountability directed at Bush is liberal media bias.

But, here I go again, getting all unattractively huffy. Probably the right approach with Bush and Limbaugh and Fox news is to simply expect the craziness, point it out with a dash of ridicule, but try not to get too self-righteous or angry about it. I will constantly fail at this, but it is a nonetheless a worthy goal.

W Can't Get No Respect

It must be hard work to be George W. Bush. Most everywhere he goes in the world, people hold mass demonstrations against him, dress him up like Hitler, and burn him in effigy. Guatemalan Mayans even felt the need to spiritually cleanse a sacred holy site after his visit. Unlike a common tourist, his mere presence was deemed enough to defile the place.

I wonder if this registers with him at all. I’m pretty sure it would affect me if every place I visited acted out the same basic metaphorical burning of the sheets after I left, differing only in local, culturally appropriate ways. Eventually I would start to wonder why people think so poorly of me. Of course, I suppose it depends on who it was. If a crazed lunatic like Pat Robertson were doing the post-visit purifications, I would probably wear it as a badge of honor.

But gentle Mayans? Generating hate from them is akin to having the Dalai Lama spit on you while Mother Teresa knees you in the groin. Sure, they got a little bit militant-y when the Guatemalan government tried to commit genocide against them for 30 odd years. But they’ve completely kicked that human sacrifice habit they had a few centuries ago, and are one of the most spiritually in-tune cultures in the world.

I know this because I am now an expert on Mayans, having read almost an entire book about them (“I, Rigoberta Manchu, An Indian Woman in Guatemala”, highly recommended, especially the parts I read). Plus, I have seen some actual live Mayans, and they definitely seemed gentle to me. And short. They were all short and gentle, and not once did I see them publicly purify sacred sites that gringos were defiling. This should definitely be a sign to W, like a flock of canaries dropping dead as they pass over one of his stripped-mined coal fields.

To be fair, most presidents get a lot of mud thrown at them, and are hated by great numbers of people. After all, Clinton was despised by conservatives almost as much as Bush is despised by the vast majority of the world. I suppose we’d have to get into a long, boring comparison of whether the centrist Clinton should be more vilified for lying about sex than Bush should be for misleading the country into war, ballooning the deficit, doing everything he can to make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful, denying the reality of global warming, illegally wiretapping US citizens and lying about it, firing federal prosecutors for political reasons, gutting the government so it has a hard time responding to natural disasters, and generally destroying the good name of Americans the world over.

But, I don’t have the energy for it today. Having gentle Mayans scorn him is punishment enough.

Evidence That Gas Prices Are Too Low

Today was one of those sunny and fresh spring days, where it finally reached 60 degrees, giving one the slim hope that, just perhaps, we are not doomed after all.

That is, until I picked up my daughter from swimming practice at school. I parked in the lot, to avoid the 15 or so enormous SUVs and minivans waiting in line next to the gym doors. As I walked in, I noted that there were about 20 or so additional enormous SUVs and minivans in the parking lot, many with people in them, with their engines running while they waited. As I passed the enormous SUVs in line, I then noticed that every last of them had their engines running as well.

I understand that there will always be one or two knuckleheads who seem to enjoy unnecessarily pumping CO in the atmosphere for no good reason. But how is it possible that everyone can just sit there with their windows rolled up, presumably running both the heat and A/C together, in an attempt to match the inside of the car with the perfect conditions outside? It is no wonder the planet is dying, with people pooping in their own soup like this. Except that it isn't just their soup, it is mine too, and yours.

I'm wondering what thought processes take place in these kinds of situations. Perhaps it is thought to be too much time and energy to turn the ignition off, only to have to turn it on again 10 minutes later when it is time to go. Perhaps there was concern that the battery would go dead from playing the radio too loud. Perhaps they are making sure that our effort in Iraq will not be in vain, that our right to burn gasoline for no good reason not be impeded, and there is no better time to make this statement than on a fine spring day.

Gas is obviously not nearly expensive enough. That, or perhaps we need new controls in cars that simply dumps all the gasoline in the tank on the ground when it has been idling in park for more than 5 seconds. Sure, it would waste gas the first few times, but I think people would learn pretty quickly. Hopefully.

Spelling Motivation

The problem with most educational tools that are designed to help your spelling is that that they simply don’t have enough violence in them. We recently bought the spelling game Bookworm Adventures, and I am happy to report that they have addressed this glaring deficiency. In Bookworm, you are given 16 random letters, and when you correctly spell a word, the nerdy hero bookworm gets to whack some nasty monster into submission. If that isn’t motivation to spell a really long, cool word, I don’t know what is.

In all seriousness, I was initially appalled that spelling was being reduced to violence in this way. Why can’t they give flowers to the monster, and have his malicious facade melt into a nice butterfly or a happy smiley guy? I suppose no one would buy the game if it were that wussy.

Worse yet, this game is addictive, and even, dare I say it, family friendly. Our nice Mennonite family often gathers around the computer in the evening, shouting out helpful suggestions for the longest possible word we can spell, to inflict the maximum amount of firepower on the evil monster. And worse yet, our kids are becoming pretty good spellers because of it.

The thing is, it is perfectly fine to slay specters or seven headed hydras that will kill you (or your little alter ego of a computer nerd bookworm). Seven headed hydras are, as far as I know, completely evil, and that of God does not shine within them. The problem, though, is that there are no seven headed hydras in the real world. Just messy, complicated human beings, all of whom are flawed and yet retain some redeemable quality somewhere, a place in their soul where God can shine a light and start healing. All too often, and especially since 9/11, I’ve seen too many people unable to differentiate between evil hydras and, say, Muslims, or Immigrants, or Americans.

Bah Bye Chief

They are finally going to retire Chief Illiniwek. The long dark nightmare is finally over, pending a ridiculous lawsuit from students who portray the Chief who claim their first amendment rights are being violated. If they win, I look forward to donning a Pope costume so I can dance around at football games too, as would be my constitutional right.

It looks like there will be a lot less honoring of American Indians in this town in the future, which I'm pretty sure most American Indians will be quite relieved about.

Valentine's Day Quote

Here's a Valentine's Day present to my loyal reader(s): A quote from Butch Hancock of the country band The Flatliners:

"In Lubbock we grew up with two main things. God loves you and he's gonna send you to hell, and that sex is bad and dirty and nasty and awful and you should save it for the one you love."

Have a Happy Valentines Day, all you sinners.

Moral Strength vs Material Strength

Normally I don’t agree with people who poison their political opponents, but I may have to make a temporary exception for Vladimir Putin.

He blasted the US over the weekend for, well, acting the way we have over the last six years. Some quotes include:

"The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. Nobody feels secure anymore, because nobody can take safety behind the stone wall of international law. This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons”



“Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not managed to resolve any problems, but made them worse. The wars, local and regional conflicts, have only grown in number. We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force in international relations,"



“Until we get rid of unilateralism in international affairs, until we exclude the possibility of imposing one country's views on others, we will not have stability”

I also remember Bush criticizing Putin awhile back for lack of democractic reforms in Russia. Putin shot back that they didn’t want the kind of democracy that we’ve brought to Iraq. Ouch.

I have no illusions about Putin. He would be an old Soviet-style dictator if they let him and seems to be doing everything he can to drag Russia back to pre-democratic autocracy. He’s probably just mad that Russia lacks the power to create unholy, biblically-sized messes like we can. But that doesn’t make his criticism invalid.

It just shows how far we’ve fallen that someone like Putin can criticize our actions, and be so justified in doing so. It also demonstrates why attacking Iraq (and our subsequent behavior there) was not merely a tactical error in the war on terrorism. It was a generational mistake, one that will cost us moral leadership for decades to come. Suffering through lectures on how to behave responsibly from the likes of Putins will be our penance for not having the stomach, strength or willingness to stand up to the Bush administration when it mattered.

Peter Dauo’s The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength is one of the best essays I’ve read about the moral implications of the Iraq war, and it is as relevant today as it was when it was written a year and a half ago. He compares the left’s focus on moral strength to the right’s focus on material strength, and it goes a long way towards explaining why we so often talk past each other and are so angry with each other. I think of it whenever something happens that is an inevitable consequence of squandering our moral leadership. The first three paragraphs are below:

The unbridgeable divide between the left and right’s approach to Iraq and the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left's protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader.



War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the so-called “blame America first" crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They can't kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they've done irreparable harm to America.



The antiwar critique of Iraq is that it is an immoral war and every resulting death is a wrongful one. Opponents of the war view the invasion and occupation as a dangerous and shameful violation of international law. Iraq saps our moral strength and the sooner we leave the better. Opposing the invasion on the grounds that the administration lied its way into it, they see every subsequent death, American or foreign, as an ethical travesty and a stain on America's good name.

Read the rest here.

Two Hauerwas Quotes

I’m back to my old, lazy ways of barely getting in a post a week, and even then, just quoting someone else and commenting on it. Since being reactive is so natural for me, I often question why it is considered a bad thing.

Also, I'm currently trapped in a house with 3 to 6 cabin-fever-infected children, as school has been closed due to the extremely cold weather here. I'm posting this while children are running around me in circles spraying each other with fire extinguishers and wiping our remaining food supplies on the walls.

Posting Hauerwas quotes is not only easy and entertaining, but also something I am able to do with children running amok. I would hope this would be a source of pride for Stanely, rather than shame. For those unaware of Stanley Hauerwas, he is a Methodist theologian at Duke, and worked a lot with John Howard Yoder, who is the St. Augustine of Mennonite Pacifism. Or perhaps the Thomas Aquinas? Mennonites should weigh in here. For that matter, who would Hauerwas be in this metaphor?

Anway, here are the quotes, which I'm not even going to comment on now.

Quote 1 (My favorite Hauerwas quote):

“Why say carefully what you can say offensively?”

Quote 2: Where he relates his contribution to ecumenism (religious unity) and how he became a pacifist, when he presented a paper that defended John Howard Yoder’s work at a Notre Dame/Valpraiso meeting:

I began my presentation by noting that what I was going to do before these Lutherans and Catholics was a genuine ecumenical effort. It featured a Methodist with a doubtful theological background (if you are Methodist you have a doubtful theological background) representing a most Catholic department of theology, reading a paper to a group of Missouri Synod Lutherans and saying that the Anabaptists had been right all along. I said that it was an ecumenical gesture because, by the time I finished, the Catholics and Lutherans would discover how much they had in common – namely, thinking it a very good thing to kill the Anabaptists. And, of course, that is exactly what happened, as the Catholics and Lutherans joined forces to try to show me why we should not take Yoder seriously. Serious people understand that sometimes you do need to kill somebody. I was not convinced, and the rest, so to speak, is history.

Goodbye Guatemala

I’m home from Guatemala now, happy to see my family, but sad that our fine group of sojourners is now dissipating into our individual lives again. I already miss our morning comparisons of sleep and bowel movement patterns and meals just aren’t the same without a stack of tortillas and some kind of interesting and tasty (but unrecognizable) fruit juice. On the other hand, even though it is cold here, the forecast calls for much less oppression and injustice.

But it wasn’t all oppression and injustice while we were there. I will end the "Dan's Blog Gets Hijacked by Guatemala" series with some pictures from a soccer game we attended during our stay. The Municipal Rojos (Guatemala City’s team, the Reds) played some other team that they trounced 4-0.

Here’s our happy group at the game:



Here’s a goal that was scored:



Well, to be strictly correct (and honest), a goal was not scored on this play. It is very hard to get a picture of goal in soccer. This play probably ended the way most plays do, with some player flopping on the ground in agony until a foul is called, wherein he quickly gets up and starts running again.

I must say I was a bit disappointed that there were no riots or hooliganism. As a Mennonite, I must get my violence vicariously through others. My Irish friend Ken Humphrey had entertained me all last semester with stories about the danger and excitement of attending an Irish league game, and I assumed Latin American soccer was similar. I’m told that in general it is, but this particular game featured about 10 fans for the away team and they were cordoned off in their own section, where they had nothing to cheer about for 90 minutes.

The crowd in the cheap seats across the way was trying to rile things up, though:



They were singing a song in Spanish that I couldn't quite catch the words of:

Something! Some, Something!
Some Something Something (vous?) Madre!

Enrique, a Spanish language instructor at the seminary who came with us to the game, pretended he didn’t know what they were chanting, and wouldn’t translate it for us. It seemed directed at the mothers of opposing players. I imagine it was some kind of lullaby or love song, singing the praises of all mothers of soccer players, unifying women and men in a spiritual and universal bond of motherhood and brotherhood. The tune wasn’t much of a lullaby, but remember that this is a very machismo culture, and they may have been overcompensating for their overly tender lyrics. That’s probably why Enrique was so embarrassed.

Enrique was a lot of fun though. At one point, two of the younger women in our group got up to go the bathroom and chose one that was halfway across the stadium. The suggestion came up that perhaps they wanted a better look at some of many fine looking machismos attending the game. I happened to use the phrase “on the prowl,” merely as an educational opportunity for teaching colloquialisms. Sure enough, Enrique was confused by this phrase, so I added, in Spanish, “como un Tigre.” The lights suddenly came on, and he understood how the phrase worked. In fact, he was quite enthusiastic and liberal in his use of it for the next week or so. If I accomplished nothing else in Guatemala, I was at least able to teach an extremely cool Spanish language instructor a new and apparently useful phrase, thus bridging some small part of the gap of understanding between our vastly different cultures. My work here is done.

Tuk Tuks, Fletes and Chicken Buses

Tuk Tuks, Fletes and Chicken Buses is my Guatemalan version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, except I don’t wake up next to Aaron Lehman, my bunk mate, mistaking his butt for a pillow. Aaron and I have shared many adventures over the last 3 weeks, and there is no bond quite like that of a bunk mate in a dorm setting, but every adventure has its limits.

Our story begins with the sturdy 15 passenger Dodge Ram (circa 1970?) that we have been driving around in, and which we believed could easily survive a direct missile attack:

In retrospect, our confidence in the Dodge was based more on the weakness of other available vehicles than in the inherent strength of the Dodge. A group from George Fox University was here at Semilla the same time we were, and they were given use of a newer and more comfortable KIA van. However, on one of their out-of-town trips, it broke down and they had to take public buses back. They then rented a van for their next out-of-town trip, to ensure there wouldn’t be problems. That one caught fire while they were driving.

We were especially gleeful about all this, since deep down we resented that they got to zip around town in the nice van while we had to trudge along in the crappy Dodge. Thus, it seemed right for them to have van troubles. Regardless of our economic situations in our real lives, here in Guatemala they were the rich privileged kids with the shiny new uniforms and we were the ragtag group of poor kids with broken-down equipment and a drunken coach who learns to appreciate life again after he dates one of our moms. We may have had initial misgivings about our Dodge Ram, but after a few non-catastrophic outings (compared to the KIA), we learned to respect it, and eventually reached the point where we boasted of its feats of strength and endurance to any and all that would listen.

Here’s a picture of that same Dodge on the side of the road during our two day trip to Lake Atitlan, where it decided to stop running a number of times:



This presented a number of obvious problems for us. First, we were somewhere in Guatemala without transportation. Second, we were no longer the scrappy poor kids who won despite their hard-luck; we were now just the poor kids who got beat up with nothing to show for it. Third, we had come to believe that our fearless guide Carina (picture above) had mystical powers that protected us from any unfortunate events that might befall us, and we started to doubt her protective powers. Mostly though, we were somewhere in Guatemala without transportation.

But we had with us two first rate mechanics, Hugo, the Semilla handyman, and Saulo Padilla, our fellow student, and Guatemalan Christ-Figure (he grew up here and Knows All). We knew that if it was possible to get the van running, they would be able to accomplish it.




However, after messing with the engine (which is apparently in the dashboard) for a half hour or so, Carina took charge by fetching alternative transportation to the next town for lunch. Alternate transportation in this case was a “Flete”, which is basically a Toyota pickup truck with bars in the back so that people can stand up and go from one town to another, as long as the town isn’t very far. I don’t have a good picture of one from the outside, because, as in this picture, they are usually flying by at high rates of speed.


So, we all piled into one. “There is no such thing as ‘not enough room’ in Guatemala” says Carina. Here’s our ride, which was only about 10 minutes to the next town. I didn’t check, but I’m pretty sure there were not 18 functioning airbags in the back of the pickup. However, it was quite pleasant, like riding in a convertible with the top down, along with 18 of your closest friends.



While stopped for lunch, we were surprised to see none other than our Dodge Ram resurrected from the dead, rolling into town:



Hugo had gotten it started again. He claimed the problem was “muchos Gringos” (too many gringos). We acceded that this indeed could very well have been the problem, but we weren’t sure whether he was referring to us or the van (Dodge is of course the second most gringo make of vehicle, behind Chevy). However, we nonetheless piled in after lunch, without attempting to solve either of our Gringo problems. Predictably, the van rolled to its final resting space for the day about 15 minutes later:



We were only a few hundred feet from the top of the hill and we considered pushing it up the rest of the way, so we could coast downhill all the way to our destination of Santiago. We even had a miniature Jessica Uhl available for directing traffic (seen standing at the top of the hill). Luckily, the normal sized Jessica keeps a mini-her in her enormous backpack for occasions just like this.

Instead, we did what any group would do in this situation – we sent Kent Yoder (not pictured) up the very steep hill (not pictured) on the left to look for the source of the avocados that were sprinkled alongside the road. Like Lewis and Clark before him, he found neither a Northwest Passage nor any avocado trees, but he did manage to tumble out of the brush onto the road and sprain his ankle (not pictured). Meanwhile, Hugo and Saulo once again tried valiantly to get the van started, but this time the gringo overload could not be overcome.

But, we were saved once again by Guatemala’s surprisingly robust public transportation system. This time it was a Chicken Bus that came by (stock photo below):



A Chicken Bus is the greyhound of Guatemala, except one seems to pass by every 20 minutes instead of every 20 hours. They are called Chicken Buses because you can carry just about anything on them, including live chickens (although they are usually in crates on the top). Normally Chicken Buses are overflowing with people and things and animals, but ours was pretty comfy as there weren’t a lot of people on it, so we loaded up our considerable collection of luggage and breezed through the rest of the trip into Santiago.

Since we no longer had transportation once we got into Santiago, we needed a way to get to our hotel, which was outside city limits. Actually, it wasn’t a hotel; it was some kind of church camp with no drinking water or hot water for showers. But I digress. After a very nice meal, we hung around the town square to get alternate transportation. We still had all our luggage with us, which in this case included pillows and blankets because our hotel/church camp didn’t provide them. A good lesson learned here is that when you are hanging out in a town square in a very machismo culture, there is nothing more emasculating than holding your blankie and pillow like you are going to a sleepover (not pictured).

The alternative form of transportation turned out to be a “Tuk Tuk”, pronounced Tuke Tuke, which I misprounced a number of times in various ways before getting it down. A Tuk Tuk is basically a golf cart, but driven by a crazed Latino. It was by far the most fun way we have travelled so far. Here is what they look like when you are a pedestrian and they are bearing down on you, giving you the choice to either become a customer or risk what seems like imminent death:




We needed five Tuk Tuks, since they seat at most 3 people. Samantha Loia, Moriah Hurst and I piled into one. We are three pretty average-sized people, but it was a pretty tight squeeze. I’m pretty sure that if our Tuk Tuk had been hit by a Chicken Bus and we rolled down the side of the mountain, we would have still been wedged into that seat when they found us. Another interesting fact about Tuk Tuks is that if you cheer on the driver, he will pass the other slowerTuk Tuks in your party, and restore a small measure of the manhood you lost when holding tightly to your pillow in a public square.

While we were having fun with the Tuk Tuks, Hugo and Saulo were trying to rescue the Dodge Van. I don’t have pictures since I wasn’t there, but on the first attempt, the retrieval vehicle overheated. Then it ran out of gas. Lastly, it got a flat tire. The ancient Mayan traveling gods were indeed angry at Mennonites that day. Hugo and Saulo didn’t get the van into town until well after midnight and spent the night in a (real) hotel. Presumably, their only consolation for this Herculean effort was hot water for their showers.

By the next morning, the ever resourceful Carina, whose descent into ordinariness was quite brief, had again magically secured alternative transportation. We had two 12 person vans, which felt embarrassingly luxurious to us (we do remain Mennonite, after all). Here’s our van:



The only problem with the van was the “Tourist” sign plastered on the front. As if it were not already glaringly obvious that we were largely comprised of pasty faced gringos, we had a sign that pre-announced us as culturally insensitive and ready to exploit and/or be exploited. Nonetheless, we were glad to finally have reliable transportation.

After touring Santiago’s mudslide area and peace park, we planned to cross Lake Atitlan in rented boats to the town of Panachajelsomethingorother, which is a tourist shopping mecca. We were travel-hardened by then, and a boat ride across a lake seemed like recreation at this point. We took two boats, one of which was called “El Quetzel”, after either the national bird, or the national currency (which is named after the bird). They were basically little cigar boats, and we expected a nice, leisurely crossing of the lake:



We didn’t sink, if that is what you might be expecting at this point. However, it was a very windy day. The wind produced pretty good-sized waves. The boats got thrown around a little. We took some videos:





As Gayle Gerber-Koontz pointed out, every time Jessica and Alissa screamed from the front of the boat, it was a good warning to lift up your body a little to save your lower back from the imminent high impact crash on the seat of the boat. Gayle bumped her head a few times on the top of the boat this way, but it seemed worth it.

Here’s a picture of the other boat in the water. I tried to get a picture of the 75 degree angle it seemed to achieve every now and then, but wasn’t able to capture it. Maybe it was my imagination, or the blows to the body I was receiving during the ride.



We made it there just fine though, without too many body bruises. We gave in to our tourist impulses, did some shopping and then left for “home” (Guatemala City) in our rented vans. The trip home was merely a boring four hour trip where we encountered no calamities except bad traffic. The rented vans couldn’t even manage to bump into each other, much less crash into anything grand and spectacular.

So, for those counting at home, that’s six official modes of transportation for the originally planned 3 hour trip to Lake Atitlan: Dodge Ram, Flete, Chicken Bus, Tuk Tuk, Tourist Mobile, and Cigar Boat. Kent Yoder, of bruised ankle fame, was able to score a seventh mode, due to his sore ankle: Travel by Shoulder. Overall, Kent was kind enough to physically embody the trip for us, as he limped from place to place without too much complaining.




I hope none of my jokes about this trip indicate that I was unhappy about it. Even with a dicey digestive system at the time, I wouldn’t change anything about this particular trip. Only by having massive problems were we able to have the experience of touring the Guatemalan public intercity transportation system, which in hindsight, is actually better than in the US. If your van breaks down in the US, there are no Fletes or Chicken Buses to come pick you up for a few dollars to the next town. Also, Santiago was a great town to be in - lots of great character and it doesn’t seem to suffer from tourististia too much. I plan to leave my pillow at home though for the next trip.

If this story were to have a moral, it would be this: Having large numbers of people who can’t afford their own transportation works to the advantage of those who do have sketchy, unreliable transportation.

UPDATE 1/24/07: We are back home now, and on the way home from the airport we rode in the 15 passenger van here at AMBS. It seemed cramped on the way to the airport at the beginning of the trip. Last night, it seemed like an unnecessary luxury. Three weeks can certainly change's one perspective.

Too Much Information, Running Through My Head

My brain is officially full. Information is leaking out my ears, down the side of my bleary-eyed face. If my brain were a stomach, it would have just eaten a plate of spaghetti the size of a hubcab, and is now expanding uncomfortably, causing my lungs to pant. I don't know what other part of me would be my lungs in this metaphor, becaus my brain is usually the one to figure these things out, and there is no room left at the inn for unmixed metaphors.

We are travelling for the next two days, and I am incapable of any meaningful output until after the trip. I've probably posted too much anyway, flooding the market on Dan Observations On Guatemala so that you could probably pick one up at the mercado for a few Quetzals from indigenous craftspeople. Please do. They need the money.

Guatemala Contrasts

I was able to borrow a USB device that copies camera pictures to my laptop (woohoo!), so now I can add pictures to blog entries while here in Gautemala. Good thing too, because pictures are important for this story.

The contrasts below are not poor vs. wealthy, but between miserable vs hopeful. Guatamala City is very hilly, and there are a number of large ravines where people with no where else to go simply start putting up corrugated tin houses. If they are not driven out, they eventually replace the corrugated tin with cinder block.



This set below was taken from the Guatemala City town cemetery, which is right next to the town dump. The town dump is in the same ravine as the picture above, but further downstream. As you can see, the trash is dumped into the ravine, and some dirt is put on top, but most of it is exposed.
If you look more closely, you can see people waiting for the garbage trucks to empty out, so they can pick out stuff they can use:

We saw the movie "Romero" the other night, and one of the scenes had someone being dumped in a trash pit exactly like this. At the time I thought it was just Hollywood creative license, but as I stood there, it did cross my mind that it would be an ideal place to dump an unwanted body.

The eerie part was the turkey buzzards, which are the black specks in the sky in the pictures. It felt like a scene out of some Goth Hitchcockian thriller, except with young Mennonites standing around, taking pictures. They filled the sky and also perched ominously on gravestone crosses (the buzzards that is, not the Mennonites, who, as I already said, were standing around taking pictures).






If you haven’t guessed by now, the pictures above represent the “miserable” side. For the hopeful contrast, we visited UPAVIM (United To Live Better), which is a woman’s cooperative in one of the poor barrios. Here’s a picture of the neighborhood:



The UPAVIM building is below. It was started in 1990 by women. Many of the women in the neighborhood are single or suffer from domestice violence and when they go to work, their kids have to be shut in their houses all day, or they just run around in the streets. Other problems in the neighborhood are typical for areas of extreme poverty: gang violence, alcoholism, illiteracy, lack of health services, and lack of funds to send kids to public school (where families usually don't have enough money to pay for books and fees, even for public school).



UPAVIM started as a “healthy babies” program, but they started making handicrafts for fair trade organizations like Ten Thousand Villages, and this allowed them to start providing other services for the community around them. It is amazing what they are able to accomplish by selling handicrafts which are fairly traded:

• Pharmacy and clinic for health care
• Nursery school for babies
• Montesorri school for elementary kids
• Scholarships for books and fees for public schools
• Tutoring for neighborhood kids
• Healthy babies program, which monitor babies for health problems

They also generate income via a bakery, a soy processing kitchen (where they make soy milk, yogurt and tofu), as well as an internet café, all of which provide jobs and services for local people. Here's the pharmacy, and the sewing room where many of the handicrafts are made. The women have flexible schedules to work around their kids' school schedules.






I’ve always been supportive of Ten Thousand Villages, but have also become a little more ambivalent about it over the years, because at its root, it still relies on consumerism to make people’s lives better. There has to be a more sustainable way to help others than to "shop for justice." Nonetheless, seeing purchases make a real difference in the lives of desperately poor people underscores that even though it isn’t perfect, it seems to be effective.


So, for those of you who like clear, unambiguous morals at the end of your stories, and don't yet feel like this story has sufficiently hit you over the head with a hammer: The moral of this story is to buy all your stuff at Ten Thousand Villages, or poor people will be forced to eat garbage.

A corollary moral might be: Everytime you drink a cup of coffee that isn't part of the Fair Trade program, somewhere in the world a puppy will die.

Other morals will be left as an exercise to the reader.