Ceserio Xecotoj School

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”-The Ancient Mariner

We brushed our teeth huddled around the blue pila on our first night. We were a gringo family of four keeping up our hygiene despite no potable water. The water appeared innocent enough but we had been warned that free-ranging microbes hazarded all 50 gallons now stored in its central storage tank. No splashing our toothbrushes or taking a swig.

Instead, we shared a few drops of bottled Evian bought accidently in an Atlanta airport by Olivia, our teenage daughter. My husband, Joe, used Coca Cola after the Evian ran out. We were an American family 4,000 miles from home set on teaching English in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala.

As my family brushed I contemplated the pila, a square concrete sink with one central chamber full of moonlight sparkling off the surface. Like a desert mirage, it invited more thirst than it quenched. From my small knowledge of Latin American history I knew that except for the preceding hundreds of years of greed, wars, genocide, racism and intolerance, the water might have been clean. Nothing in the natural world could outdo man at creating such a colossal catastrophe.

All of us together could have climbed into the central storage chamber, like a small Mikvah, becoming immersed to our armpits. Three shallower sinks, each with central drains,contained piles of dense textured woven clothes waited for washing.

Running water is an unpredictable affair in the central highlands where the indigenous Maya live. When the water runs it is wisely stored in advance of tomorrow’s trickle. The pila is a “modern” invention introduced by the Spanish to keep the Maya from using the waterways for drinking, washing and bathing. The small pilas in the courtyards of traditional colonial houses were named after the big pila or fountain of the main town square. Unfortunately, not much has changed in modern plumbing since the 1500’s and many homes still have only a central pila in an outdoor courtyard with intermittently running non-potable water.

“This lack of water is just a temporary setback, ” I told my husband. “We will plan better tomorrow.”

Locating sources of potable water would take us time. In fact, it would be days before we noticed the five-gallon blue plastic bottle of agua pura the O family kept in full sight in the kitchen. They didn’t introduce us to it, like I would have expected. It wasn’t in their frame of reference, and we were never sure of the protocols. Was this supply for us included in our weekly rent? Or were we on our own in locating drinking water?

The typical five-gallon plastic bottle of potable water was familiar from home, but I had missed it while perusing the kitchen. Like a coloring book puzzle that asks the child to “find everything wrong with this picture” the amount of “wrong” in the O’s kitchen was mind spinning, making for distraction. The list included the tiled wood-burning cook stove, no gas or propane or electric, the unplugged refrigerator, empty of contents, the absence of any sink and faucet and the congregated hordes of flies buzzing around the bowl, intended for our meals, of breads left on the table. It also included a chaotic stockpile of mismatched and unrelated objects scattered about. A glance up revealed open electrical wires threatening to electrocute all assembled at the picnic style table where the family congregated for every meal.

When I first saw my room, smelling of old tortillas and beans, I was sad. It was located adjacent to an overgrown mud courtyard with three clotheslines full of clothes. Much like the jail cell it imitated, there was no window or closet. Its floor was covered in the same black and brown linoleum as my elementary school, circa Dwight Eisenhower. A single naked light bulb hung suspended from the ceiling. A thin faded green cloth covered a skinny mattress lying on the floor. Concrete block walls held no pictures of palm trees and turquoise beaches. Mismatched polyester fake Indian blankets lay on the bed.  I fantasized about a Motel 6, the bottom dweller of the US traveling industry, where they at least leave the light on for ya’.

I wished I could reach my white hand back through time just six hours, before my luggage was packed in the trunk of the Lexus, and open my well-organized linen closet smelling of Tide and Country Breeze. I would have grabbed a set of old fitted sheets, nothing fancy, to shelter my feet from the scary mattress beneath the ill-fitting green sheet.

When I saw the only toilet or the baño, I regretted that I would have to use it, ever. Of course this was preposterous unless I suddenly switched to adult diapers. Also, where would I find them in a town without a Duane Reade? The bañ was spacious enough for a little woman to enter, sit down and THEN fasten the tiny metal hook, a lock not hardy enough to keep out the family’s giant drooling dog. And how about flushing with the bucket when the water didn’t run, which was a 50/50 proposition, and which my hosts never mentioned or apologized about.

In the baño I faced one truth of my visit: My hosts had never been to a Bed, Bath and Beyond to research toilet roll holders. Choosing a single industrial sized nail was a reasonable solution, even if it seemed a little minimalist. They had pounded it in at the perfect angle securing the toilet paper roll and preventing it from falling onto the floor, where I would have to pick it up, a proposition I didn’t want to ever entertain.

I learned to bunch up a blanket and spread a towel to simulate a pillow. In the mornings, I drank lukewarm apple tea and ate small round sweet breads selected from the bowl on the table. Kellogg’s corn flakes, from giant boxes with the signature red rooster, were eaten with warm powdered milk. I tasted my first quiskuil, a small green squash, and a bone in my soup became a treat. I learned to block the sounds of bleating gas trucks selling propane, the cacophonous roosters keeping early morning hours and the constant cherry bombs celebrating feliz cumpleaños (birthdays).

I delighted in the bustling cobbled streets brimming with smiling people on their way somewhere all times of day and night. I liked the dusty switchbacks crisscrossing the green hills between pińon pine, avocado and cedar. The terrain was dotted with smoke clouds escaping from open fires and wood stoves that conjured up Little House on the Prairie, although the aluminum shacks and tin roofs were nothing like log cabins. I laughed at misshapen pine trees on every hilltop that were reminiscent of Dr. Seuss.

I looked into the eyes of the passing women, carrying mysterious lumpy bundles on their heads, and said Buenos Dias every morning and Buenos tardes every afternoon, starting at precisely one minute past noon. I heard 13 people living under one roof without shouting. I saw the uncles and aunts hug their nieces and nephews, give kisses and tickles just as loving as the ones rendered by the mamas and papas. I witnessed joyful reunions between adult brothers and sisters every Friday night. These reunions followed five days of separation because someone had to work in the capital city where the jobs were located.

I saw the siblings and cousins play in the courtyard, digging in the dirt with a spoon or flipping an unidentifiable plastic object between them. They delighted in each other’s company, chasing, teasing and giggling. Once the littlest girl, just two, pulled down her panties to wee in the dirt. Her cousin stopped his play, politely waited by her side and afterwards, with a gentleman’s flourish, helped her yank her little panties up before resuming their game of tag.

I witnessed a Saturday morning fiesta-day when 18 women, babies and children crowded into the O’s kitchen to prepare a meal. While several women camped around the wood stove flipping tortillas and mixing soups of chicken and bean, others sat on the floor nursing babies, counting out napkins or telling stories.

Although our hosts, and everyone else in the town, cooked with wood, there were no fire engines, picks or fire axes. And certainly no red fire plugs lurking curbside to extinguish fires. Fires were defeated with hand-held fire extinguishers and bucket brigades. There also were no newsstands, bookstores, mailboxes, public restrooms or a library. The Bible was the only book for purchase in the town and not a single bookshelf lined any walls we saw. Most girls left school in third grade to help gather the daily requirement of water and wood. Most boys left in fifth or sixth grade to help their families till their plots of land or work in their small stores. Trash trucks never rolled through town. The post office never opened and the police never solved the murders.

I wondered at this disparity of wealth and learned that supporting democracy in the north wasn’t trickling down. Every day I walked through the courtyard seeing the pila, still mocking me like a mirage in the dessert with its crystalline supply of untouchable water.

After my return to American flush toilets, food courts and kitchens I woke up, a little. While laying over in Atlanta, I used the ladies room just to watch the toilet paper flush away. No longer would I have to store that refuse in a little basket next to the toilet. But I had to wonder about a country that didn’t have the foresight to install pipes to accommodate toilet paper.

I was relieved to be back on American soil. I could stop worrying about robbers hijacking us on the highway to rob, rape and murder us. To celebrate, I ordered a green salad. We sat next to a white American family with three kids all wearing baseball caps and trendy t-shirts.

“Sit there and don’t move,” said the man, as he pulled a little too hard on the boy’s chair.

The boy cried through his meal. No one touched his arm.

I missed the quiet murmurs and gentle squeezes redirecting restless children at the dinner table. Like waking from a trance I didn’t know I had entered, I realized that my senses had calmed while in Comalapa.

At home, I ran to my kitchen spigot. We had spigots in each of our four bathrooms and one in the backyard to water the perennials. Whenever I activated any of them, potable chlorinated and fluoridated water flowed any time of day and night, not just between 5 and 7 AM on certain lucky mornings. I filled a glass and drank. It was cool and clean and tasted like privilege.