DAY 10...CHICHICASTENANGO

DAY 10

I figure that if I am up at 6:00 am and on my way by 7:00 that I can easily walk to the place where we are supposed to meet the micro bus for the trip to the much talked about Sunday market at Chichicastenango or Chichi, as one hears here.

I have wondered a lot about where I got my ideas about this place, Chichicastenango, seeing as how I have never been there. I know we have a book about Guatemala and I know that the famous church and probably some of the market appears there in photographs. In my imagination it is a place at high altitude, lots of rain. It feels dark to me in my imagination, mysterious somehow. I think I have read somewhere that the Mayan religious customs are totally mixed up with Catholicism there. I somehow feel that this is no ordinary place. I looked up on the internet the traditional clothing of Chichi and it is all blacks, with embroidery and stitching in deepest of reds and blues and purples. The embroidery is not fantastical and florid, but strict, geometrical, like some cosmic, hierarchical order that one has given up on trying to change.

Somehow as we roar up the mountainside, topping the huge caldera which forms the lake, I have the feeling of pilgrimage to some sacred place. That is until the backseat group starts talking. Oh, dear God, please put me in a sound proof cabin! I have never heard so many ‘valley girl likes’ in my whole life. I am loosing my mind:

“Like, I told him, like how could he really not like understand, like who is he trying

to fool, like, I told my mother and she didn’t like understand at all and then I

like thought how would she like understand she’s like so out of it…..”

Dios mio. And on and on. The main culprit of this group is a girl who is in medical school at Vanderbilt or some place similar. God, what have we come to. I am trying really hard not let my ears focus on their conversation but it’s like not wanting to look at a car wreck and not being able to take you eyes off it. And they are shrill. I have now progressed from thoughts of a pilgrimage to a sacred place to needing badly to find some narcos who could knock off the back seat. See, with that comment I am trying to humorous…..or am I?

Outskirts of Chichicastenango! Relief is in sight!. Soon I will jump out the door of this micro bus and escape. Neither do the jaw dropping sights out the windows of the micro bus stop the back seat likety-likety-like. Passing along outside the car windows the dress of the woman actually changes as you move through the various colonias of the outskirts. Amazing, these colors in the rainy morning against the green of these lush, high tropical mountains. Huge round baskets are being transported full of fruit, all held together by a net that looks like it would belong to stevedores. Women balance huge, loaded baskets on their heads with a small child in a shawl tied over her shoulder and other small ones on each hand, stepping gingerly over rocks, dodging the growing number of tuk-tuks and all looking as if they were going to some extraordinary festival as they tread through the mud.

Now we are in the heart of Chichicastenango. We wend through the narrow, narrow cobble-stoned streets. Suddenly, there is a parking place. The driver is giving us instructions about when we are returning to San Pedro and I am getting my butt out the door as fast as I can and hitting the street with the ‘likes’ mercifully disappearing into the far past.

Two blocks down the street and then one block to the left and there it is, the Sunday market of Chichicastenango. And it is cold, and it is misty here and just as I thought it is a mysterious place. These streets of the market are drapped with woven and embroidered textiles of the most amazing colors and patterns. People are scurrying. I am much bigger than they are, but they bump into me with impunity. This surprises me, but soon I get the hang out it and forge my way through the moving masses of people who seem as if they somehow had lost a foot of height on the way to the market.

It’s a maze. It goes on and on. Now I think I must be lost. I really can’t remember exactly how I got here. Well, yes I can: I saw something amazing and went down a little street to check it out and then just around the corner were more huipiles of Chichicastenango with their mysterious, rich colors on black. And then another corner and another crowded passageway. That’s how I got here and that’s how I got lost.

No matter, I really don’t care. I want to understand the art of these people and ask questions, but the pressure to buy is high. I must appear really comical to them as I try to explain that I don’t want to buy, am just looking right now. Suddenly I remember the experience from the rainy market at Santiago Atitlan. I have spoken the magic words of serious negotiation (I don’t want to buy)! Ok, so here we go and I buy one. I think it’s a good price for this huipile that is also antique/old that I will hang on the wall in an honored place in Casa Curtidores in San Miguel. And then I find a stall with the most amazing work I have seen yet. I stand there fingering the work and to my amazement no one, but no one pressures me to buy. The women there at the stand seem hardly interested in me. Finally, I turn to one of them and ask the price. She casually looks at me, gives the huipile in question a look and utters a price that is more than 10, as in diez, times more expensive than what I had been quoted as starting prices, and more than 20 times what I had actually paid. Thankfully, someone runs into me from behind and almost knocks me off me feet and I think this is a good moment to escape from the Dior of Chichi with my Quetzales still intact.

Now I am on overload. It’s like an overdose of colors and shapes and people and sounds and smells. One of the streets opens onto a small, small plaza and there it is: the famous church of Santo Tomas. Steps rise to the entrance. The story is that when the church was built that the Mayan builders insisted on building steps instead of any other kind of approach and secretly they built steps in the exact number of divisions of the Mayan calendar. The steps are filled with flower vendors. The church is white and looms narrowly above the scene rising into a background of rain laden clouds and sharp edges of green mountains. Shaman have taken their place on the steps. They burn ritual fires and speak prayers. The smoke of the burning coals and incense rises and veils the whole scene in a sense of irreality and magic. Inside the church, I am amazed at the condition of the building. It looks as if it hasn’t been taken care of, as if no one has done anything to maintain it for many years. In the center aisle shaman have lit a forest of small colored candles. I move down one of the side aisles towards the front. It is dark. I sit in one of the front pews and try to feel what this place is like and just as I sit down a young Mayan couple is led to the front by a shaman. She is carrying an infant in a shawl tied around her shoulders. Her eyes seem fearful. I imagine that there is something wrong with her baby and that they have come to this special church to ask for help. The baby lies there wrapped securely in her arms and fixes its eyes on something I can’t see in the dark air above us. The shaman instructs the couple in a mixture of Spanish and Mayan. I hear him say ‘seis veces’ and see him point to a place behind us. The couple walk slowly, not reluctantly, but with no energy to a point half way to the back of the church, kneel and begin to walk on their knees towards the main altar. When they reach the altar, they stand and return and kneel and walk on their knees again to the altar. This happens 6 times. I am caught in the middle of this ritual, but I think it is better not to move, just be quiet and stay put. The Shaman all the while remains at the altar with his array of candles and talks and sings with his eyes shut, gesturing with his hands in his plaintive conversion with…..? I really don’t know with whom. The bad spirits that have made the baby sick? The gods that should be prodded to wake up and do something for a change? The animal ‘nahuals’ that must take on the inner support of the child and are only sniffing it cautiously now? I don’t know. I sit and wonder. The couple get up from their knees for their last peregrination to the back of the church. They seem to me almost shameful and that’s strange. The husband moves past me, head down, staring at the worn wooden plank floor. The young mother follows behind him. I am watching her secretively from the corner of my eye. As she moves past me she almost stops, turning her head towards me. I am startled but turn my head a little towards her. Our eyes meet. She looks long and deep into my eyes and almost smiles and then continues her quiet walk.