Pacajcoj

Wed. 1/28: We meet up at Pop-Wuj around 8am, six of us students plus two older volunteers who did this project last year, as well as Lara, the group leader who, coincidentally, happened to grow up outside of Roseburg. We´re going to a local indigenous village named Pacajcoj (even my instructor had a hard time pronouncing it) to deliver materials for safer, more efficient ovens than the open-air stoves they´ve been using. As my instructor broke it down for me, their current stoves are part of a chain of serious health problems the indigenous communities suffer including lung damage, eye damage, infant burns, death due to houses burning down, as well as local deforestation. The new, closed stoves, on the other hand, release smoke outside through a chimney and only require half the wood to heat the food.

We take a chicken bus on the way out of Xela. It takes two people (always young men) to operate the busses: one to drive; the other to collect fares, guide the driver around tough corners, and to jump on top of the bus for passengers´ luggage. At different stops along the way, vendors come aboard, two, three or four at a time touting their goods whether they be fruit, ice cream, cheap jewelry or other trinkets. They ride with us until satisfied they´ve exploited every potential customer, then get off at the next stop to jump abourd another bus going back the way we came.

Normally, we would actually be building the stoves, but today we´re only gathering and hauling the materials. We pick up the bricks, concrete blocks and cement in the of Momas, more populated and developed than Pacajcoj. On the short ride to Pocajcoj we all ride in the bag of a hauling truck, sitting on top of the materials. During the ride, EVERY local person we pass stares at all the gringos riding precariously in the back of this rickety, packed truck. Most just stare with bewildered faces, but many, especially the kids, laugh heartily. And they don´t stop staring until we´re completely out of sight.

The work is exhausting. We´re in the sun carrying thirty or forty pounds about 100 yards, over and over. After the third house, we brake for the meal a local family has made us - soup with noodles and vegetable and a chunk of either chicken or beef. I give my chunk of beef to my neighbor. Also, they make us a strawberry juice-drink that´s so good.

We do a load for one last house and call it good. We´re not taking the trunk back, but instead take a trail through the forrested hills. Despite the fast food wrappers and other plastic detritus, the scenery is beautiful. Village huts strewn about a hillside forrest that makes think of Oregon. After a half mile we make it to the main road where we wait for the bus.

Patricia, a fellow gringo/student/volunteer has to use the bathroom, so she heads a hundred-or-so yards up the road to what looks like a church. The rest of us wait where we are and, after a few minutes, hear what we think is a local girl laughing hysterically. But the laughing goes on and on and one of asks "is that screaming?" We get unnerved and start wandering towards the ambiguous laughing when Patricia stumbles from the side of the road, half crying/screaming and limping. We run to her side and she says a dog bit her in the leg.

"THERE IT IS!" she cries.

On the other side of the road is a vicious looking mutt, snarling and barking. I bring my foot back ready to kick the shit out of the son of a bitch (´cause he is), but he doesn´t move any closer and eventually wanders off.

Patricia calms down impressively and lets the older, female volunteer look at her wound behind a wall. The older woman says the dog just barely broke the skin and that there´s going to be a nasty bruise. In any case, Patricia´s gonna need rabies shots.

And then the bus arrives.

The kicker for me is that, at lunch, Patricia didn´t eat her meat either because she´s also a VEGETARIAN. What kind of fuck up dog...?

The next morning, I show up at Pop-Wuj and the secretary who only speaks Spanish asks me to take a call for her. It´s Patricia´s mom trying to get information. After I tell her the details and that, no, it´s not possible to find the dog and put it down she tells me Patricia had to be flown to Miami to get the proper shots. The upside, if you can look at it that way, is that she was going to leave for home on Saturday anyway.