It started out as a very uneventful day [foreshadowing]. Alaina was meeting a girlfrom church in the morning, and that was the only thing planned. Then at 1:30 we had set out for Jo's house. Jo is a part of Iglesia Reforma lives in zone 17 with his parents and has a truck. He's also pretty generous and let us use his pickup for the afternoon.
A red Mazda pickup with all the latest...features. The tailgate had been "upgraded" with a 2x12 board stretching across the back. Both door handles had an "all-new" jerry-rigged system to allow you to escape from the inside. The seatbelts had been "updated" with the latest invisible technology. The latest fashion in spider web shatter had been artistically added to the windshield, and the steering wheel "adjusted" to provide a significant shoulder workout anytime a turn was necessary...two birds with one stone. And if that's not sauvé enough, the outdated parking brake also had been swapped for a stylish wood block to be tastefully placed beneath a tire in the case on an incline. We gladly left Heidi (our newly dubbed Hyundai Tuscon) with Jo in exchange for this masterpiece. It being a stick shift, Alaina drove out of the city en route to San Jose Pinula, a 30 minute trip from Jo's.
It takes us 30 minutes to drive 4 miles to school every day. This 30 minutes was much more exciting, winding down a ravine or two, climbing through an unnamed village, literally driving back in time as we drive by a small caravans of people walking with gathered bundles of wood for their kitchens. The ol' Mazda proved trusty and we arrived in San Jose Pinula safely, coming upon our contact, Herber, a young gentleman with braces who walked us into his apartment to show us our prize: a couch and chairs listed on OLX (Guatemala's craigs list, if you'll recall) for significantly cheaper than anything in the city, and in pretty remarkable condition. We strapped it in the back of the pickup and were ready to head back to the city!
A red Mazda pickup with all the latest...features. The tailgate had been "upgraded" with a 2x12 board stretching across the back. Both door handles had an "all-new" jerry-rigged system to allow you to escape from the inside. The seatbelts had been "updated" with the latest invisible technology. The latest fashion in spider web shatter had been artistically added to the windshield, and the steering wheel "adjusted" to provide a significant shoulder workout anytime a turn was necessary...two birds with one stone. And if that's not sauvé enough, the outdated parking brake also had been swapped for a stylish wood block to be tastefully placed beneath a tire in the case on an incline. We gladly left Heidi (our newly dubbed Hyundai Tuscon) with Jo in exchange for this masterpiece. It being a stick shift, Alaina drove out of the city en route to San Jose Pinula, a 30 minute trip from Jo's.
It takes us 30 minutes to drive 4 miles to school every day. This 30 minutes was much more exciting, winding down a ravine or two, climbing through an unnamed village, literally driving back in time as we drive by a small caravans of people walking with gathered bundles of wood for their kitchens. The ol' Mazda proved trusty and we arrived in San Jose Pinula safely, coming upon our contact, Herber, a young gentleman with braces who walked us into his apartment to show us our prize: a couch and chairs listed on OLX (Guatemala's craigs list, if you'll recall) for significantly cheaper than anything in the city, and in pretty remarkable condition. We strapped it in the back of the pickup and were ready to head back to the city!
JkTurns out I forgot to tell you about the upgraded paint job on the front of the truck. Anyway, we called Jo at 3:50pm to tell him the truck wasn't turning over at all. It had started fine when we left Jo's house, and he had no idea what was wrong. Herber had is cousin come over in his pimped-out Toyota to give us a jump. Nothing. We prayed. Nothing. Guy with the pimped out car looked around the engine and couldn't figure out what was wrong. [Low point] [Insert emotional breakdown here] [Insert regret for not being a car person here] [Insert flashback to mistaking Shmadam's transmission fluid filter for an oil filter]
Jo drove Heidi out to come rescue his beauty. Upon further investigation, he had no idea what was wrong either. It was getting dark. I don't think we had seen another Gringo since we left the city, but we were thankful to have two nice Chapines* (Jo and Herber) on our side. *(Chapin means authentically Guatemalan...whether food or culture or people).
Herber went and found an older gent named Tito who was a mechanic, who, at 6pm on a Friday night, trekked up to the Mazda, tinkered, determined it was a fuse, went back to his place to get a new fuse, came back, realized he had lost a very specific nut in the darkness of the engine, went and found another one of those in [insert 10-15 minutes for each trip walking back to his shop], and I think he went back one more time for something else in there.
Somewhere in the hours of waiting, six excitable little niños showed up at the scene, either grandchildren or great nieces/nephews of Tito, who must've heard there was some stranded gringos whose truck Grandpa Tito was working on. They were seriously the best at diverting our attention from the problem and from thinking about what we would do if the truck didn't start. They bombarded us with questions which we partially understood... "Como se dice Daniela en ingles? Como se dice Mariana en ingles? Cuando es tu cumpleaños? Esta hermanos?" They got the gringos to play freeze tag and hide and seek with them in the little somewhat creepy and very unlit parking lot.
And you know what? At 7:05pm (4 1/2 hours after our arrival in the town we planned on spending 20 minutes in and an hour and a half after dark), the key turned, newly-installed fuse did what fuses do and "The Terminator" (Jo's name for his truck) was back in business. We drove safely home and got to place some furniture in the emptiness that was our living room!
I usually expect something to not go right most times we do about anything in Guatemala. This was a little more than I expected to go wrong. At the [Low Point] of the story, we prayed that we might learn whatever it is God was trying to teach us. We're still discovering what exactly that is, but here's a few things.
1. Jesus tells us to become like little children if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven. Throwing six children who aren't worried about the state of the car or how you're going to get home is a pretty good reminder that the good way is 1) not to worry and 2) to be OK with, or actually to pursue child-likeness. Being a helpless gringo helps you understand your powerlessness.
2. We can talk about poor people being valuable and being treasures, but when you stand like an idiot next to a rusty old Mazda while a "poor" person spends his Friday night systematically diagnosing and healing the beast, that speaks pretty deeply on the issue. And when he asks for the equivalent of $11 for the car surgery, it says some things about humility and how entitled we Americans are to getting paid big money for our services.
3. We got to spend our 2nd night out with Jo, as we stopped for dinner on the way home. He's a firefighter and photographer, he's 26 years old with a story, a heart for lost kids.
On the way home, in the dark, we also noticed Jo had increased the efficiency of his truck by downsizing to one functioning headlight and taillight. Nice.
Jo drove Heidi out to come rescue his beauty. Upon further investigation, he had no idea what was wrong either. It was getting dark. I don't think we had seen another Gringo since we left the city, but we were thankful to have two nice Chapines* (Jo and Herber) on our side. *(Chapin means authentically Guatemalan...whether food or culture or people).
Herber went and found an older gent named Tito who was a mechanic, who, at 6pm on a Friday night, trekked up to the Mazda, tinkered, determined it was a fuse, went back to his place to get a new fuse, came back, realized he had lost a very specific nut in the darkness of the engine, went and found another one of those in [insert 10-15 minutes for each trip walking back to his shop], and I think he went back one more time for something else in there.
Somewhere in the hours of waiting, six excitable little niños showed up at the scene, either grandchildren or great nieces/nephews of Tito, who must've heard there was some stranded gringos whose truck Grandpa Tito was working on. They were seriously the best at diverting our attention from the problem and from thinking about what we would do if the truck didn't start. They bombarded us with questions which we partially understood... "Como se dice Daniela en ingles? Como se dice Mariana en ingles? Cuando es tu cumpleaños? Esta hermanos?" They got the gringos to play freeze tag and hide and seek with them in the little somewhat creepy and very unlit parking lot.
And you know what? At 7:05pm (4 1/2 hours after our arrival in the town we planned on spending 20 minutes in and an hour and a half after dark), the key turned, newly-installed fuse did what fuses do and "The Terminator" (Jo's name for his truck) was back in business. We drove safely home and got to place some furniture in the emptiness that was our living room!
I usually expect something to not go right most times we do about anything in Guatemala. This was a little more than I expected to go wrong. At the [Low Point] of the story, we prayed that we might learn whatever it is God was trying to teach us. We're still discovering what exactly that is, but here's a few things.
1. Jesus tells us to become like little children if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven. Throwing six children who aren't worried about the state of the car or how you're going to get home is a pretty good reminder that the good way is 1) not to worry and 2) to be OK with, or actually to pursue child-likeness. Being a helpless gringo helps you understand your powerlessness.
2. We can talk about poor people being valuable and being treasures, but when you stand like an idiot next to a rusty old Mazda while a "poor" person spends his Friday night systematically diagnosing and healing the beast, that speaks pretty deeply on the issue. And when he asks for the equivalent of $11 for the car surgery, it says some things about humility and how entitled we Americans are to getting paid big money for our services.
3. We got to spend our 2nd night out with Jo, as we stopped for dinner on the way home. He's a firefighter and photographer, he's 26 years old with a story, a heart for lost kids.
On the way home, in the dark, we also noticed Jo had increased the efficiency of his truck by downsizing to one functioning headlight and taillight. Nice.