|
|
|
|
|
|
|
07 March 2006 |
|
|
The trip down was amazing, difficult, beautiful, frustrating, awful, expensive, cheap, and awe-inspiring. The trips usually provide the best parts of the story - there are only so many things you can say about washing and measuring lithics all day - and so this entry is long, even for someone like me, who tends to be long-winded anyway. We got off on Monday (February 28), and the first day was almost completely uneventful. Other than a stop for lunch and a couple of stops for gas (and unsuccessfully looking for postcards at a town named Edna!), we got to Brownsville almost without incident. Matt asked me whether I had the title to the car with me about three hours into the drive, and we called to have Kathe email me a copy - Guatemala requires that you carry one with you. Next morning at the border was a little tough. We went to Kinko's to get the email Kathe had sent, and we both had gotten emails from the Office of Research at Tulane, saying that there were places in the grant that needed tinkering. We fixed what was needed, printed out copies of the car title, and moved on to buy insurance from Sanborn's. Transmigrante insurance cost us 55 bucks, and the travel log cost us an additional 25. We hit the border around 11. Seemed like the border crossing took a lot longer than it did - we waited forever at the bank to be waited on, and then had four additional copies to make. But finally got waved through and immediately got lost in Matamoros. The log made no sense out of what we were seeing, and we took wrong turn after wrong turn, until we finally stopped at an intersection (cars honking behind us) and got hand directions to get to Ciudad Victoria. Three more sets of hands later, we were actually on the road, without seeing a single landmark mentioned on the Sanborn log. The Sanborn log is an interesting animal. Providing very little in the way of maps, the log navigates entirely by landmark. While giving you a feel for the town you are in (this pueblo is famous for growing the vanilla orchid. Be sure and check out the vanilla bean figurines they sell at the town's four topes - the steroid-induced speedbumps you find in Mexico) it also provides you with distance to the next landmark (Gas at 3.4km on your left, but avoid the bathrooms at this station, which tend to be dirty. Cleaner facilities are available in 98km.) and that sort of thing. We have decided to create our own version of the Sanborn log, but instead of having stars or beans for a rating system, it will use hands to designate how difficult it is to follow directions on a map of the city. One hand means you only had to stop and ask for directions once. Five hand rating means you have to ask directions from everyone. I think a more realistic version of the maps might be a useful thing to have. The log's landmarks persisted in their absence through the entire trip to Tampico. We made an emergency stop when we realized we could take the coastal route or the inland route, and ate at a taqueria while asking for directions. She said that both were about the same time, but that the coastal road was shorter and bumpier; the other was faster, but more roundabout. We decided on the coastal route - Sanborn log said it was in variable condition - but then never saw the exit. So we took the inland route through Ciudad Victoria. It was a fine choice; the road was beautiful for most of the trip, but we never found a single landmark mentioned in the log. Ford dealership? No dice. Hamburger stand? Tampoco. Open-air concrete manufacturer? Fugettaboutit. No hospitals. No Refineries. Nothing mentioned in the log ever showed up. Nothing we saw was in the log. Ugh. And highway numbers? Heh. They actually had some signs that were put up without the numbers placed in the shield. Just to keep us guessing. But we got to Tampico without too much fuss, just a little stress at the navigation. The hotel we put in at, named the San Antonio (?), was a nice place. Inexpensive enough, nice, clean rooms, and off street parking. Ate an expensive meal and turned in for the day. From Tampico, we got an earlier start, since there was no Kinko's or insurance or border crossing to undertake, and we followed the simple instructions on leaving the city that were provided on both maps and in the log. Of course, it was all wrong. Three sets of hand gestures later, we cut across four lanes of traffic and followed a side road that is the only mode of egress from the city. The road was not bad, and we got to see some pretty countryside on the trip, especially the Costa Esmeralda. And getting into Veracruz was simple, as well, albeit not anything like what the log said. Some bits helped make the drive, well, interesting. All gas stations are full service in Mexico, and if you ask, they will check fluids, tire pressure, the works. At one of the Pemex stops, when I went to get back in, I noted that the gas cap had not been replaced. I told Matt that we were going to drive 100' and check. Sure enough, the radiator cap had also not been replaced. Ugh. At another place, we had to stop on the side of the road to clear my shirt of all the bees. What looked like mud sprayed from the back of the truck in front of us ended up being a swarm of bees that we hit with open windows at 65 miles an hour. Most of the bees that got inside were already dead, but the ones that weren't were stunned, and then ticked off. But we managed to get out of it without being stung. Veracruz is magical. Between the beautiful zocalo and the birds and the marimbas and the mariachis, it is just a wonderful place. We ate huachinango outside and smoked Cuban cigars on the balcony overlooking the city. Amazing. Even the Canadian gringo that came and sat with us and talked about his month in Acapulco followed by a month in Cancun and all of his other gringo-style travels (including every curse word in the language describing how much he hated Mexico) couldn't spoil the mood. And then we hit the internet café. The guy from the Office of Research had written both of us again, asking for a different set of changes. Matt talked me down off the ledge by talking about the stresses of tomorrow's driving, where neither of us knows the route and we don't have a good map. That was a real stress reliever. We made the changes, but now it is nearly a week since I submitted it, and I am still making unimportant ticky-tack changes. After I had calmed down a little (and walked some of it off) I had a coffee and flan at the Gran Café (best coffee in the world). That plus the marimba players and a call or two to my wife helped settle me down a bit. The next day was long. We decided on the route that would get us to Antigua the quickest, which involved crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and going through southern Oaxaca and some of Chiapas. We started off around 7, and got breakfast at the Gran Café. We went, and it wasn't yet open, and we sat and waited forever. Finally got waited on, and they brought us coffee and food. While we were waiting, I saw an old man come up, and had to laugh. He pulled out a violin and started tuning it. I turned to Matt and explained that he wasn't, in fact, tuning the violin. He was playing. Old as the hills, and he comes every morning to play the violin terribly. I remember him from when Kathe and I paid him to stop playing next to us. He sounds like he is killing cats by the dozen. And in the intervening 5 years, he has improved not one iota. Started driving around 8, did not stop until we got into a hotel in Tapachula at 6:45 pm. The directions we got for leaving Veracruz were suspect. We knew, of course, that "straight" means no such thing, and so when we were told "You take a left out of the parking lot, and then turn left on the big divided street named Allende, go straight, straight, straight, and that takes you to where you want to go" we started looking for back alleys that were actually involved. For once it was actually straightforward, so to speak. We followed the directions with heads on swivel to track possible deviations, but it was unnecessary. The mountains are glorious. We didn't really cross them, but instead went through a pass, but they are simply beautiful. I have been away from land forms for far too long. It also changed climate drastically yesterday. The morning started in a pretty lush environment, with lots of humidity and trees. The end of the day saw a lot of dry, parched land with small plots of corn dotting the landscape, but very little in terms of population or land use. Another thing that struck me was that whereas craft production and sales are the norm on the east coast (you can hardly bang past a tope without dodging a kid selling an iguana) nobody sells anything on the Pacific coast. Interesting bit happened at the end of the day. We got pulled over at an intersection by an official with a plastic ID holder pinned to his shirt. He proceeded to explain about the removal of the "steeker" on our windshield and how we needed to have a guy we can trust to run interference with the officials. The location of the officials we were to avoid was 100km ahead, and he was no official at all, just a guy with a plastic badge, trying to make some money by running over travelers. The first indication we should have had is that two women and a kid were pushing him out of the way to offer us oranges, cokes and juice. And he was letting them. No real official in Mexico would stand for that, and no kid would even try. We ended up having to pass up the office in ¡Viva Mexico! (yes, that is really the name of the town) because it was late and we needed to get a room. We stayed in the Loma Real, a beautiful hotel in what appears to be a dreadful town. Tapachula is simply not pretty, and seems a pretty typical border town in Mexico. Ugh. Up to this point, only a couple of things have been bothering Matt. First off was that we did not have the original title to the car we were driving, only the copy of the title we had printed out at Kinko's before leaving Brownsville. Secondly, on the advice of the Sanborn's travel agent, we did not register as "transmigrantes" when we came into Mexico. Our visas instead called us tourists. By doing it this way, we avoided the 20 dollar charge that Mexico levies on transmigrants. We put as our destination Veracruz, and then we would "decide" later to go to Guatemala. When we started off in Tapachula, it became obvious that at least one of these concerns was justified. Canceling our car permit was no big deal. I talked to one of the cops while I was in line, and he explained the process to me. I will go in, hand him the passport, visa, and steecker, and he will tell me to make copies of one of the pieces of paper. "Which one?" I asked. "It varies" was his response. He went on to explain that when I do make copies, I should do it over there (points across the street) because it is cheaper than in here. So armed, I passed the Mennonite missionaries headed to Nicaragua and went into the office. The official was efficient (a new concept for me) and quickly pushed my paperwork through. No copies. No waiting. Nothing. And he handed me back my paperwork, explaining that I needed to keep this part very safe, so that when I came back through, my passage would be easier. And then dropped the bomb. "And you need to go to the bank in town and pay for transmigrante tax." I looked over the form. "Excuse me, but where is the amount I must pay?" "It is right on the form. This line right..hmmm. The line is left blank. There should be a number in this blank. You will have to pay $210 (roughly 20 USD)." And I was excused. Grumbling that we had to go into town to pay the fine, we headed in to find a bank. For those of you who don't know, the Mexican government is based on the concept of the kleptocracy. Anything you can steal is yours. Politicians have been voted out by electorates based on the argument that "he can't be any good at politics - after four years his house is only half finished!" If you are not good at siphoning off money, you have no future in politics. And this is the basis of the entire country's economy. It is assumed that employees will try and rip off employers. No employee ever has the ability to make a decision, whether it be to return a defective radio at the department store or to issue a discount to a long-standing customer. Naturally, then, a customs agent cannot be allowed to handle money. It all has to be done at the bank. We finally get to the bank (only two sets of hand gestures) and I wait in the wrong line while Matt vultures the car, circling, circling. Eventually I find out that the line that leads to four tellers is for people without accounts at the bank; the longer line I joined was for people with accounts (only one teller). I get to the front of the correct line, and explain the predicament. The teller asks the boss, who comes over and tells me that I have to go to SAT, the government guys that set tariff prices. Two doors down. I head that way (one set of hand directions) and arrive. Explain my situation, and the girl -she can be no more than 17 years old - asks her supervisor, who tells her I have to go to migracion, the other government department. I ask her for clarification, since they are likely to send me back here to do this over, and end up in the supervisor's office. He is a pleasant guy, wanting to help. He disappears after hearing my predicament. I look around his office. Pretty small space, but he has a nice Oaxacan vessel in one corner, and a few other pieces of artesania. Behind the desk is a large oil painting (on velvet, perhaps) of a woman gathering calla lilies. It is reminiscent of the famous Diego Rivera painting, but in this one, the woman, inexplicably, is gathering lilies in the nude (seemed like a painful way to gather lilies to me.). Finally, he comes back and calls somebody about me. I catch most of it, and he gets more details as he is talking. Calls somebody else. Calls back. Finally turns to me and says "Don't worry." He has fixed this with a friend of his at the border. I can get my visa cancelled, and I can pay at the bank next to migracion at the border. We shake hands, and I leave. We get to the border town (two sets of hand gestures later) and hand the papers over to migracion. He stamps them, and says "$200". No need to go to the bank. No need to do anything special. Just tip the guy a twenty and we are out of there. We are feeling pretty good at this point, a feeling that ends right at the Guatemalan side of the border. "To register your car, I need the original title. No copies." And just like that, the world came crashing down. I argued. Pleaded. Begged. Made a nuisance of myself. Subtly offered a bribe. Not so subtly offered a bribe. "What can I do?" I asked. "Have the original sent to you. Next!" Which means sitting in a hotel room in no-man's land for three days. Matt paced for a minute, and then approached a guy who has been helpful to us in getting stuff done so far. He looks away, and suggests France, with a negligent flick of the hand signaling around the corner, he is back to work. We ask for France at every window, and finally get to talk to him (Franz, of course). He pulls the same guy over, and shows him the registration certificate, at which point there is a way of getting it done. But I need copies in triplicate of every form in the book. Fine. We do that, pay the fee for registering the car, get a steeker put on the windshield, and are on our way, on a three-hour trip to Antigua. Ever heard of a guy named Gilligan? Yep. The longest three hours of the year, right there. We had to deal with lost loads of sugar cane - the hundreds of trucks are all huge and always overloaded and unsecured - and with underpowered, overloaded trucks going up curving mountain passes. For the entire length of the distance to Antigua, we were caught behind one truck or another. Short straightaways where they speed up (and my car has little oomph to pass with) followed by another mountainous curve. We finally see signs to Antigua. Signage to the capital has been pretty good, and Antigua is very near the capital. We follow the signs to Antigua, and almost immediately hit a fork in the road, both roads equally good, equally wide. One will take us to San Marco. The other to San Felipe. Perfectly good signs directing us to insignificant pueblos, none telling us which road to take to the next major city. (Two hand gestures.) We do pull in and get the stuff loaded into the apartment. Ingrid, the other roommate, is surprised to see us, and after being delighted, starts to consolidate piles. She wasn't sure when we were coming (since the January 15 deadline for our leaving is a little passed) and wasn't prepared for the onslaught of stuff. But we got it all in, went and had a dinner that was perfect, and came back to the apartment. It is small, but has a great view of the volcanoes. The temperature is lovely, and it is almost worth the border crossing to get here. Give me a few more days, and it will certainly be worth it. Since arriving, the major push has been to get settled. We bought groceries, rearranged the entire house, pulled artifact boxes out from under beds and put them on tables, then put them on shelves, only to put them on the table and under beds, in different orders. But everything is workable - we now all have workspace and stuff to do. I basically washed lithics all day long, with a one-hour break to measure some obsidian. The good news is that the calipers I bought to use on the lithics work like a dream. I push the button, the measurement goes straight into Excel. Sunburnt to a crisp, too. The washing takes place on a patio on the roof, and the morning sun, especially at this altitude, is really bright. I replaced my jeans with shorts half way through the morning, and then had to revert in the early afternoon. The nights are cool, and the days are hot. And the view is stunning. One of the volcanoes lets off a little steam several times a day, and the smoke looks pretty cool, albeit a little disconcerting. Matt is reading Krakatoa, and keeps suggesting volcano novels and books for me to read. Funny, but I am not feeling particularly so inclined. Matt and I went to the market to look for plastic sheeting to cover the tables and to see if we could find either wood or a set of shelves to put artifacts on. We found neither but the market is wonderful. Just like the lyric from "Alice's Restaurant" - "You can get anything you want." Well, except metal shelves. But it was an amazing thing to go through and see so much stuff all over, test my Spanish a little, feel like a gringo in a Maya village. I am now feeling the crunch for funds. The trip cost more than I anticipated, and it will require some creativity to make the money stretch until the grant comes through. Pretty heavy source of stress. And if the grant doesn't come through, we will have real problems. But I can only do what I can do, so I am trying to deal with it one bit at a time. It was nice today to go from trying to develop questions about the lithic assemblage sight-unseen to trying to develop answers to the questions, based on what I have seen. Suddenly I find myself ready to read again - look at Aldenderfer, Lewenstein, and McAnany, maybe Aoyama. Find out what their solutions to the questions were - both for developing a typology and for doing the functional analysis. Now that I am seeing the material, I can get a fix on what other people have done for solutions to theirs. The stone recovered from the site is ugly. There is simply no other word for it. A huge quantity of stuff, much of which is just shatter left over from banging rocks together. Some interesting pieces, including some blades and what may be drills. But most of it is just garbage. It will be interesting to get a fix on exactly what they were doing with all this stuff. So ends the first week of the project. I hope that you are well, and that the previous tome finds you all in good health. Please write me often - it is always nice to get a note from home. I am just starting to get the feel for Antigua (Internet cafes everywhere, but of variable quality), but I will work to make sure I reply to everything. Crorey
|
|
|
13 March 2005 |
|
|
Hey guys, Sorry about any duplication last time. I kept getting error messages when I'd try to send - almost like it timed out. But nothing. Finally asked Kathe to send it for me. So at least some of you got quadruple copies. Hopefully only one copy to delete from the inbox this time. On the way to the internet cafe, we got stopped in pedestrian traffic. here was an anda going on - a procession where the participants, all wearing royal purple robes, carry what is basically a Mardi Gras float on their shoulders. The Tanda is the female version of the same thing, so say my informants, and these people walk for hours, carrying a huge float, some in high heels. It sways to the beat of the drum, the smell of incense is cloying, the crowd surrounding the procession is tight but respectful, and the vendors are selling trinkets, tortillas, and fried bits of food along the route... an intense contrast of emotional states, one of celebration, of sorrow, of grief, of happiness, all in a pretty festive environment. Really intense. Those of you who have experienced it know what I am talking about, even if my details are a little bit off. The processions continue through Holy Week, so I am sure my impressions will be refined over time. Crorey Another beautiful day. Antigua is an amazing place. It does not freeze - ever - and right now is about as hot as it ever gets - around 85° during the day and still dropping to the 50s at night. The sun shines most of the time, and the view is simply spectacular. I'm sure that at some point I'll stop gushing about that, but I can't fathom when that will be. The houses are interesting. The basic Latin courtyard house is the norm, so that from the outside, the houses look pretty much jammed together and uninteresting. The only interesting thing, aside from rich paint colors, are the doorknockers - they tend to be pretty whimsical. But once you get inside, there are lush green spaces and open sky in a private interior courtyard, with all the rooms in the surrounding building opening to the interior space. It is pretty much opposite to what we do in SC, where we attempt green lush spaces separating us from the street, and the interior of the house is the private area, with no interior light source. And some of these places are majestic. We visited a museum/hotel/church ruins yesterday that was so beautiful it left me wide-eyed with astonishment. The hotel Casa Santo Domingo (look for it on the web!) had been built within the ruins of the Spanish colonial church and convent of The Order of Preachers of Santo Domingo. As part of the restoration done by the hotel and the local university, they created museums on the grounds - a church history/colonial art museum, an archaeological museum, and a modern art museum. They also reconstructed a worship space where they hold mass. The space was beautiful - with orchids and fragrant flowers growing in every corner and amazing baroque architecture. The archaeological museum was a little disappointing - the precolumbian museum was not well labeled or extensive, and had an odd juxtaposition of modern and archaeological pieces - but the overall effect of the renovated space was stunning. I wish I could live there, or at least go for a swim in the pool from time to time. Unlike the archaeological museum, the modern art museum was fascinating. It featured the work of an artist named Alfin, who manufactures and performs with marionettes. The detail was amazing. Some looked like they came out of Jim Henson's studio (you could almost hear them singing "We RRRRR pirates on the high seas!" while Kermit appeared in the middle). But others were very lifelike, especially the ones concerning the church personae. We also went to the Jade Museum down the street. Wow. I will be stopping by there this coming week to talk to the owner about some questions I have. The few pieces of greenstone we have from the sites on the project are all fragments, and are not even recognizable as parts of worked material. It is possible that there is a workshop at the site somewhere. I will need to do a little bit of testing to determine what kinds of wear would result on chert tools from being used to carve and drill jade. To do that, I will need some small pieces to work with, as well as the knowledge that he has about the process. They use grinders now, but they have a lot of information about how it was originally done. Matt also suggested that I could get him to take a look at the material we have, with the hope that he might be able to identify variety and source. To do it properly, you have to use neutron activation. But if you work with something long enough, you get a sense of where the stuff is coming from, even if you can't make it terribly scientific. Or maybe they have a quick and dirty method that they use to accomplish the same thing. One of the reasons for the sudden interest in jade is that I found a piece of greenstone while washing the chert. In the middle of all this gray, brown, pink and white material I am washing is a flake of very green rock. It is located in a building that is not an elite residence, and should not, by all rights, have access to such a restricted resource. Bet there it is. After show-and-tell in the lab, I got to thinking, and looked up information on jade, and it does not exhibit conchoidal fracture - the property that lets you make an arrowhead out of a piece of chert. But the flake of greenstone had all of the earmarks of a chert flake - the bulb of force, concentric rings, and tapering to a fine edge. It was a flake, and not a chunk. And therefore not jade. Probably green chalcedony. But still all by itself in a house that shouldn't have any greenstone at all, looking VERY different from the rest of the material. We have to cogitate on it a bit more, and talk to some people about what is going on; whether green chalcedony can be a poor-man's jade. If only we could find some more. Other than that outing and a few times wandering the streets, life has settled into a bit of a routine, looking at lithics, washing lithics, sorting lithics, reading about lithic analysis, eating Core'n' Flakes (sorry - it had to be done) and even the occasional dream. About lithics. I am trying to figure out how to take measurements of broken and shattered pieces of debitage, and what possible purpose it could serve. People have written about the leftovers from stone tool production, and figured out some pretty cool things from it - what technology was being used, how much was being produced, where it was being done, and where the razor-sharp debris was put afterwards. There is simply so much material that it will be hard to make good sense out of any of it. And I hate wasting information - there is a lot of material that can tell me bout the process, if only I can figure out how to "read" the stuff that was left. Otherwise, I have shattered pieces of flakes that I can weigh and measure, but might not inform me about what is going on. Lots of work, but the picture is starting to come into focus a bit. Please remember my grandmother in your thoughts and, if you are of a religious bent, your prayers. She is in the hospital because of her leg; her diabetes is not letting blood circulate to the leg, and some sores are not healing. They have discussed amputation as a viable option, but only one that will provide a stopgap measure for her. Right now they are giving her heavy-duty antibiotics (also stopgap), but with no detectable pulse in the leg, the prognosis is not good. Her mood when I called this week was pretty upbeat, but it is a pretty tough situation for her. And us. Crorey
|
|
|
19 March 2005 |
|
|
Guys, To those of you for whom this is the first time the third installment is coming through (this is try number 4), enjoy, and please write me back to tell me you got it. For those of you who have suffered through multiple versions of last week's email, I apologize. There seemed to be something wrong with the account - I have to assume that a large number of BCCs kicks it all out for looking like spam. I am still working up my thoughts on the past week, so I don't even have any new information for you, except to say "jade". And, of course, that there is no news on the grant front since Matt found out that he got his, about a week ago. Still haven't heard about mine. I should be able to get the next journal entry out in a couple of days, once I have processed the madness that is Holy Week in Antigua. Best, Crorey 19 March 2005 Hey guys, There is an intersection near the apartment. At this intersection there are no visible stop signs, and no indication as to which of the five converging lanes is a one-way thoroughfare. Cars come flying from all five points on the compass, following a logic which defies characterization, and decide, as if on impulse, whether to roar through the intersection, or stop, or slow down, or slam on brakes. The rules, as I understand them, are as follows:
Driving through the intersection is an awful experience. And walking it is worse. I visited Boston to visit my sister once. Pedestrians, she explained, are sacred. Much like the cow in India, no one seems to care that the pedestrian serves no real purpose, it is a protected creature. In New Orleans, this is not the case; pedestrians are viewed as an oddity to be tolerated, but accorded no special privileges. Like a squirrel, if one gets run over, there is no real sadness. It is, after all, just a pedestrian. Antigua is different still. Adjacent to the intersection near my apartment is an inaptly named crosswalk. Crosshairs, is more like it. Vehicles avidly search and destroy pedestrians coming out of the social security office at the corner. The scene is part Asteroids, part Frogger. The only vehicles that will occasionally cede right of way to a pedestrian are the kamikaze motorized tricycle rickshaw go-kart taxis, named tuk-tuks. These demonspawn and the 12-year-old kids that drive them are adept at avoiding everything, but are very small and lightweight, and can be shoved into a wall by a stiff breeze. It is hard to pass one without thinking of bumper-carring them into a wall. I imagine that there might be some situation where I would consider riding in one. I am not positive, though. Nevertheless, you will never see on that is not jammed with seven people. Groceries, the family chicken, all five kids, and Dad inside, with Mom and papoose hanging on to the door, one foot jammed as an umbilicus to keep her attached to the flying tuk-tuk. The week was a pretty productive one on some fronts, less so on others. I worked my way through the washing of the second box of lithic material, and have turned in two grant proposals. Fingers crossed. It took a couple of tries to submit the Sigma Xi, but it was completed. The concept is good, but I do not know whether it is fundable or not. SX doesn't like paying for lab time, and I am asking for money for sample prep; I can't say whether the distinction will impress them. My first try at submission was typical. I went to the neighborhood internet café down the street, and instead of reading the flashdrive, it reformatted it. Which meant I lost my grant proposal text. Fortunately, it was saved on the computer. I explained to the guy that it had erased my drive, and he said "Switch computers". I explained the situation again – switching computers would not help me at all - and said "I will return". And promptly didn't. Reloaded the file to the flashdrive and went to a different, more reliable café. Once I started up the process, I realized that I had saved the grant number that I needed to access the file on the flashdrive (recently erased), and I had no printed copy. So I had no access to the proposal I had already started, and I wasn't sure that the letters of recommendation would be directed to my new grant if they came from Will and Kit for the previous grant. So I even had to re-request letters of recommendation. Note to self – make sure that everything is backed up and that there is a hard copy of EVERYTHING. Lithics washing was a quick process. One of the archaeologists, Yovany, was unable to throw anything away. So his lots of chert are huge. I washed two huge bags of chert and there were only a couple of dozen artifacts – the rest were unmodified cobbles. A few good things come out of it – I get to see the true assortment of building materials, I don't have to worry that he missed something, and I get to see what the variability in chert is, without worrying that the knappers only brought the good stuff up from the arroyo. One evening I went out to work on my knapping (I have to knap my own tools from local chert for my experiments), and immediately drew an audience. One guy started asking questions about the antlers, how much did they cost, etc. I put a price on it, but only in passing. Suddenly he wanted to sell me some. We talked for a while and he asked me if I knew where this black stuff came from. I said, "That is obsidian. It comes from volcanoes." "Not so." He replied. "When it rains, the lightning comes down and hits the ground next to a tree, and you can find it there at the base of the tree. Now this," he said, picking up a nodule of chert, "This comes from a volcano." "Oh". What else could I say? (This wisdom was later confirmed by another, unsolicited comment from another observer. What do I know?) He eventually went inside and the kids that had joined us and stayed to watch the free show. I talked to them while knapping; they loved the fact that they could cut cardboard with the flakes I made. One looked over at my leprous arm and asked in alarm "What is wrong with your arm?" I looked down to see what he was talking about. Brand new pink skin peeked out from under the burnt outer layer, like chicken al carbon. I proceeded to explain about sunburn. The younger one (7yo) asked the older (12) if he would get burned, too. I interrupted, "No, that is just a gringo thing." "Why don't I burn?" "Because your skin is dark, not light like gringos. But even if the skin looks different, we aren't really that different, are we?" He thought about it for a moment, but remained unconvinced. I said "Really, what is the difference between you and me?" I expected a litany of you talk funny, you are pale, you are rich, whatever. He looked up at me and said without batting an eyelash, "You're tall." How easy it is to forget what is important to little kids. I experienced my first earthquake Thursday morning. I was making myself a breakfast of quesadilla and tea, and noted that the dished were rattling. I honestly thought nothing of it, just mentally attributed it to a heavy truck going through the neighborhood. Matt came in about 5 seconds later. "Did you feel that?" He grinned. "It always wakes me up, and I try to figure out whether that one is just a prelude to a big one." I tried to recall feeling anything, and still can't recall anything specific. Other than the plates rattling. But Ingrid was also up, and happily pointed to the creaky shelves on which we have loaded about three tons of artifacts, and said "Still standing!" I was pretty excited, but underwhelmed, by my first real earthquake. Trucks in New Orleans shake the house more than that. Ingrid pointed out later, though, that I would become more attuned to them – there have been a couple dozen since I arrived. Yesterday was a tough day. I got my shower, but that was the last of the water for the day. Apparently, water shortages are not unusual, and people who live in wealthy neighborhoods have large water tanks atop the house to assuage the problem. We do not live in an affluent neighborhood, and we ran out of water (it reappeared magically 14 hours later). Fortunately, I had already washed more than enough lithics to start work, and spent the day deciding whether a little damage on the edge of this cobble was enough to call it artifactual, or whether it should go in the cobble bag. After ten hours of that, Matt and I went to the internet café to check email and get virus update for my laptop. On the way there, we stopped and admired a carpeta being made. Part Mardi Gras, part palm Sunday, people make elaborate carpets for the processions, or andas, involving grass, grain, and sometimes sand. They take pre-made templates of decorative motifs cut out of masonite, fill them with dyed sand, and remove the template to leave a design on the street. The design we stopped to admire was a multi-colored sand carpeta, complete with swans and floral designs. Amazing attention to detail, awesome artistic endeavor, and intentionally ephemeral. It is intended to be walked on by the people in the procession. While we were in the café, it started to storm heavily, and the anda came by. Dozens of very wet, very unhappy-looking ten-year-old girls walked by, carrying an impossibly heavy float. I kept looking to see if the adults walking with the procession were helping with the load, but they were simply there to stabilize. Matt and I walked around the corner to grab a beer from the local biergarten – an authentic German beer hall – and started to order some food to go with it. I ran back and got Ingrid – we had talked about eating dinner out – and had to stiff-arm my way through the procession. I got a look at more of it, and in addition to the sodden 10-year-olds, there was a smaller float for wet six-year old girls and a tiny one for drenched four-year-olds. By the time the four year olds passed the biergarten they were all crying from the discomfort of miles spent carrying the float. Finally waded through enough of the crowd, got Ingrid, and walked back to find a beer waiting for me. We ate some wonderful pretzels, sauerkraut, and sausages, and drank beer. Not a bad way to spend the evening. Now we just have to survive Holy Week. Today was nothing but fireworks going off every thirty seconds all day. And I am told that it gets worse. Fireworks are pretty much non-stop here during non-celebratory weeks; I can only imagine what the next week is going to be like. The village where we are doing our fieldwork, I am told, has gone from having the preferred palmetto thatch roofs to shingle, 5-V, and tile, all in the past twenty years. Thatch is better –everyone says so. And it has the weight of millennia of history behind it. They simply couldn't keep fireworks from landing on roofs and burning the thatch. And there was no way of stopping the setting off of fireworks. Reminiscent of New Orleans – bad things happen when you drink and drive, so, oh, I don't know, let's just take away all the cars. That much change. In twenty years. Have a blessed, and quiet, Holy Week. From the land where men are strong Women are good-looking, And all pedestrians are bruised at the thigh, Crorey
|
|
|
29 March 2005 |
|
|
|
The Guatemalan equivalent to the telemarketer is the door-to-door salesman. I am convinced that if I wait long enough, everything will eventually come to my door. None of the salesmen are offensive. Some are inexplicable, some just bizarre, and some just out and out funny. This morning, a man rings the doorbell and offers Ingrid an ironing board. A door-to-door ironing board salesman. I wonder what the demand for those is, and just how often he makes a sale. Also this morning, a truck drives up with a loudspeaker blasting some guy's voice, shredding the nice quiet of the morning. problem is, there is not a word of the noise that is intelligible. There are no real consonants, just long quadripthongs: "IIIIOOOOAAAAOOOp," the speaker says. "IIIIAAAAAAAAOOOEEEEOOOOp." Apparently, translated from Universal Unintelligible into Spanish and then to English, that means "Get your fresh pineapples, straight from my garden to your door!" The truck was filled with beautiful pineapples. The flower vendor comes by on Mondays. The tortilla lady is a regular fixture in the neighborhood. The bread truck comes by every afternoon. Another loudspeaker truck came by announcing something, and a bunch of dog owners ran out, dogs in tow, to get a shot for their dogs. Yet another loudspeaker places a single consonant in the middle of the message: "G." "IIIAAAAGAAAAA!" does not translate, but it is, apparently, the propane vendor. The colmo, however, was a guy who was a door-to-door buyer. He knocked on the door and offered to buy empty perfume bottles, and showed her a price list for how much he would pay for each kind of bottle. What a racket – buying empty bottles of Chanel No.5 and refilling with Eau de Antigua! Ingrid said she didn't have any to sell. I fully expect him to come back, now that he knows she doesn't have any. That is what free enterprise is all about – making a market and/or demand for what you have to sell. I also found a woman who sells brass doorknockers and other brass pieces in the neutral ground in front of the market. I went to talk to her, and she also had a gold Guatemalan coin from 1860, a couple of silver Guatemalan pesos from 1863, and a piece of eight, that she admitted was fake. There were also pieces of obsidian, including an artifact – a prismatic blade made of obsidian. And then there were the pieces of jade. Well I found some jade. My last entry ended with our hero having a good meal in the German bar and restaurant. What I didn't share in last week's entry was that on the way there, I spotted, in the cobblestone street, a cobble of beautiful greenstone. I went back the next morning, and tried to pry it out of the street – with my good knife. In an odd combination of not wanting to break my good knife and not wanting the sidewalk-sweeping shopkeeper across the street to come over and investigate, I decided to postpone my mining activities for a less-heavily trafficked time. Which, for those of you who are not familiar with my schedule, comes naturally when I wake up in the morning. Usually around 5:00 a.m. So the scene is set. I grab the archaeologist's trusty Marshalltown™ trowel, and head out before breakfast to abscond with a street cobble. Turns out that they are cemented in place. Fortunately, the cement bond at the base is pretty weak, and it pops out within 20 minutes of when I started. It would have been sooner, if I had been able to work steadily at its removal. But due to the surreptitious nature of the task (and questionable legality – is it illegal to steal a street cobble? Machelle? Oregon?) I decided to play the part of "Gringo Asleep Beside the Road" (a non-speaking role) every time someone would pass. But when I brought it home and cleaned it up, I have a large cobble of really lovely greenstone. I suppose it is serpentine – true jade is found in another highland Guatemala location, not near Antigua – but serpentine was also used in the same way that jade was. Of course, that has made me keep my eyes peeled for more. And though there are some more, few of them have good color, and they are spread far and wide across the city. A few more recon missions through the city, and I'll have enough for my replica experiments on jade. Tuesday afternoon, I had driven back from the internet café, leaving Matt there to do some more emailing. When he got in, he told me to go back and check my email. Again. Between when I left and he left, the director of the National Science Foundation emailed him to say that, based on his reviewer letters, Matt was going to be recommended for funding through NSF. All of it. A proposal that had only been submitted 2 weeks before. I have never heard of anyone ever getting it pushed through that quickly. Just amazing. And I ran to check my email. Nothing. And every day since, also nothing. I even emailed Will at one point, and he must have heard the panic in my tone. Matt and I submitted at the same time, and even though I know the process by which grant recipients are chosen, I got to feeling concerned that I still hadn't heard. I asked Will if I should be concerned, or whether, as I already knew, the reviewers had simply not returned the reviews yet. After all, the web site says to allow six months, and the archaeology division turns it around in less than three. Will wrote me while he was on vacation to talk me off the ledge. It worked. I am still anxious to hear, especially now that I know it is possible to hear results so quickly, but the panic is subsided. Holy Week was interesting. From the descriptions I had heard, I thought that people would be jamming the streets, and the whole of the highlands would empty as throngs packed the narrow cobblestone streets, with endless fireworks being set off. But the reality was quite different. One firework incident did get to me. I was working on the lithics one morning, and my laptop informed me that I needed to plug in the computer to avoid losing my work. Which was fine, but it was plugged in. After checking all the connections, I unplugged it and went to plug it back in. The moment the connection was made, fireworks went off right outside my window. Five seconds into the assault, my brain started sending frantic messages to the hand: "JUST FIREWORKS! JUST FIREWORKS!" The hand, of course, knowing that the brain had no idea what was going on, continued to twitch in the death throes of non-electrical electrocution. And is twitching still. But the majority of the week was calm. On Palm Sunday, after Mass, I walked with the crowd of people to follow the procession down the street. It was pretty moving. Ingrid, my roommate, spotted me in the crowd, and we walked down to another crowded intersection to see the procession pass by. Years of New Orleans Mardi Gras have made me feel more comfortable in a jostling crowd, and this was not a particularly bad one. In the middle of the wait, Ingrid started talking to one of the brightly dressed Maya ladies. She turned to me and said that the woman had caught a man with his hand in Ingrid's purse. But she had seen it and scared him away. A couple of minutes later she realized that her camera was missing. His hand had gone through the hole he had cut in the bottom of her bag. But he had not gotten the wallet or, more importantly, Matt's Nicorette we had picked up for him. The camera was a ph,d model (push here, dummy) and was not worth much, but it is still a weird feeling to be robbed. She was amazingly philosophical about it. We wandered back to the house and put in a good afternoon of work. Unlike New Orleans, which completely shuts down for Mardi Gras, Antigua didn't change much. There were more people, and hotels were booked, but even on Good Friday, shops were open and people were working, with a few exceptions. We waited until late morning on Good Friday to go out. There were processions that began at 3:00 am. We worked until we smelled the incense through the window, and walked out to join the party. Mostly, it was more of the same, with alfombras of pine needles or sawdust (not sand, as I thought) decorated with numerous motifs. The processions were interesting; the teenage girls carrying the float was still poignant, but perhaps not as shocking the seventeenth time as it was the first. It was interesting to note, however, that the Virgin float (she always follows the Jesus float) depicted her has having a sword stuck through her chest, from above the shoulder almost straight down. We went to the square for the crucifixion scene. I was under the impression that they put a person up on the cross. Not so. Between the two thieves they raised the carved wooden statue of Jesus. Meanwhile, Ingrid and I ate our way across the square. We stopped first for some ceviche, a wonderful concoction that some of you are familiar with, made of some combination of uncooked seafood and a lime salsa - the lime actually cooks the seafood. Those of you who have had it know – it is wonderful. But it is also food typical for the beachfront – the fishermen bring raw materials in, the cooks add lime, tomato, cilantro onion and pepper, and you sit overlooking the beach. Matt and I have been daring each other to try highland ceviche – our form of Guatemalan roulette, since Antigua is not anywhere near a beach. Ingrid and I got some from a vendor on the square, and it was actually quite good: a delightful blend of shrimp, shark, and salsa. Two odd things about it – one was that the shrimp and shark were stored on ice, the other was the presence of Salsa Ingles (Worchestershire sauce) in the finished product. The salsa ingles was actually OK – it provided a nice salty touch to the tartness of the lime. But the shark on ice thing meant that it was prepared in lime elsewhere and then put on ice, then replaced in lime for the ceviche. Odd production, but I suppose it keeps lime from sloshing all over the truck on the drive from the coast to the highlands. And it was quite tasty. And I haven't had a need for the antibiotics yet, so it must have been OK. After the ceviche, we still had time to kill before the hoisting of the Christ. So we walked around until we found a girl carrying a tray of 15 or so individual ice cream cones. It was pretty warm, and we decided that ice cream would be just the sort of treat we wanted. Followed her back to her home base, and got the cones from the man with the cart. Ice cream carts are everywhere. And all of them have infernal little bells that get rung incessantly. After this vendor gave the girl refills for her tray, he turned to us. We had to ask what flavor it was – I have never seen ice cream quite that shade of yellow. Vanilla. Who knew that vanilla came in day-glo yellow? No flavor to speak of, but fun nevertheless. After the ice cream was gone, it occurred to me that the ice cream the girl was carrying around did not melt while she made her sales. 80° and more, and the dang things were not melting. I guess it makes a difference how much lard you put in the mix. The amazing thing along the parade routes, as in the neighborhoods, is the vendors. They are interspersed among the crowds, no big deal. But between the last anda and the sweepers (who remind me of the Rocky and Bullwinkle parade where the guy is sweeping up afterwards) is a parade of vendors. Right behind the Virgin are guys with candies on poles, cotton candy, sunglasses, balloons, water, cokes, ice cream, Spongebob Squarepants puppets, they have it all. There was even a guy carrying three nets filled with hand-painted kickballs. Now, you would think that kickballs would not be an ideal item to try and sell in a crowd setting. Beach balls, sure. Balloons, no problem. Sunglasses, cokes, food: yes, yes, and yes. But something you are supposed to kick? Hmm. Seems like a formula for disaster to me. I sought one of the vendors out before the crucifixion scene to buy sunglasses. Bought a pair of scratched Nike sunglasses for 25Q (~$3) and sat down. It was the most expensive pair of sunglasses I have ever owned, pro-rated for use. Fifteen minutes later, I am walking out of a store and put on the glasses – SPRING! – the arm falls off in my hand. I found a safety pin in the street to put them back together (it didn't work) but never found that vendor again. Another odd thing that I saw happened just before one of the processions came our way. It was still about 30 minutes out, but suddenly there was a horde of ice cream vendors all coming towards us at the same time. Ingrid looked over, and said "Do you think they know something we don't?" It really did look like rats leaving a sinking ship, or the animals fleeing in advance of an earthquake. All moving as fast as they could (which, given the crowd, was admittedly slow) and dinging their bells full blast. Still haven't figured out what they were fleeing. After the processions went by, we grabbed more food. It was a bit like Jazz Fest in New Orleans in that regard – you do something, then eat. Do something else, eat something else. We bought a mixed grill – pork adobado, beef, two kinds of sausage, guacamole, salsa, handmade black corn tortillas and salad – all for less than I paid for my defunct sunglasses. All cooked on la plancha, with some grilled green onions for good measure. I have some pictures that will be developed this week (disposable camera – keep your fingers crossed) of one entire procession, from the creation of the alfombra to the clean up afterwards. At the hour that Christ died, all of the purple in the city turned to black. Flags and pennants all over were exchanged; robes of purple were turned inside out or exchanged. It was a pretty moving spectacle. The other thing that struck me was the hanging of Judas in effigy. There are a number of elements here that I don't pretend to understand, but basically effigies of Judas are hanged around the city, usually with a handwritten sign over his head. He is, I am told, a conflation of a number of different individuals, including San Simon, Judas, Maximon, and the ladino landowner. After the excitement of Holy Week, its culmination at Easter was a bit of a let down. There were no processions, and everything seemed to be back to normal. The week then settled down to a pretty heavy work schedule, to make up for the time we took off to see the processions. Matt left yesterday for Utah to go to the national meetings for archaeology. He is giving two papers at the conference – one on soil classification, the other an overview of the site. I, meanwhile, have been measuring my rocks. And dreaming of jade. I have a new target, as green as the one I picked up last week. The problem is its location on the busiest thoroughfare. That means that even at 5 a.m., every car, bicycle and pedestrian funnels into the city via this route. I am working up a plan that will pop it out without me having to hammer through all the concrete. I'll let you know how it works. And then I'll have something that I can sell door-to-door. Excuse me, ma'am? Would you like to buy a piece of jade? How about a set of ginsu knives? It slices, it dices! Look at that tomato! I have to go now. There is a vendor at the door, and I have to go find out what I need. Best, Crorey
|
