Paraiso Found

Rinque Morales, whose favorite phrase is fotos? mas fotos? fotos?

All I knew is we were taking the bus somewhere about an hour away, where there was lots of stuff—we would need a whole afternoon, and sure I could bring my camera. That was all I could understand, I couldn’t even catch the name of the place where we were going from Anna, the excited 11 year old from our host family. The idea had come to her after admiring some of the local handicrafts we (okay, okay, me) had selected at various local markets. It seemed she wanted to take us somewhere really cultural that a lot of tourists missed out on. When Jueves rolled around, the day for our family outing, I still had no idea where exactly we were going or what to expect. ¿Estás lista? Ready for what? In hindsight, the answer was no, I was definitely not ready.

When Thursday rolled around, plans were underway for our adventure, the whole family was going, after all. After lunch everyone got dressed up, the 2 year old was given a clean jumpsuit after purposefully pouring soup on herself at lunch (and because I’m not her parents it was adorable). Anna, did her hair and changed from her usual jeans and a t-shirt into a skirt, leggings, and flats. The mom, grandmother, and father all looked noticeably nicer, was I dressed up enough?

Everyone was excited as we left the house and headed towards the center of the city to catch a pullman bus. Pullman buses are old converted vans outfitted with fold out chairs whether there’s space for a person to sit there or not. They are characterized not by their crazy driving, which is every second-class bus driver in Guatemala, but their assistants, who hang out the windows and doors hustling any and everybody on the street to get in the van. There is no such thing as full, or room for no more where the public transport in Guatemala is concerned. They sometimes pack so many people in, that if the van were to crash, I don’t think anybody would be hurt because they’re all packed together like packing peanuts. It’s actual quite comical how many people they can get, including Señoritas from the daily market with their large baskets of vegetables and the plastic chairs they sit on during the day. All the while the assistant is practically grabbing people from the streets to push them in. There’s also no such thing as an arranged stop or pick-up, they will drop you off wherever you yell out, and pick up anyone showing even the least interest in going.

After half an hour of watching the parade inside the Pullman bus ebb and swell, we arrived, the excitement was palpable. A big warehouse obstructed our destination, it was just around the corner...HiperPaiz! At first I just didn’t understand, it was a huge warehouse shiny and bright and full of trinkets and advertising convincing you to buy more trinkets, exactly like Wal-mart. Slowly it dawned on me, we had taken a family outing to the mall...uh-uh. Once I got over my initial shock at a family outing in Guatemala to a mall of all places, I actually had a good laugh. Here we were all the way in Guatemala, and instead of dragging our around a museum or monument of national pride, the entire family dressed up for one big outing to the mall. Perhaps the most American place in Guatemala, was actually vastly culturally different. Sure most of the stores were the same, selling junk and mochilas with plastic Hannah Montana faces on them, but most of the families weren’t here to buy junk (although there was plenty for sale). Most families were casually strolling around window grazing, as if we were all at some scenic promenade rather than an blown-up department store. There were even plenty of families in their indigenous clothes full of colors. Maybe in a city full of four or five tiny, crammed tiendas two store fronts down from the next, and streets full of dusty traffic and noise, the mall was one place to relax in a clean and somewhat interesting environment.

Nobody ended up buying anything, I honestly think we just went to the mall to enjoy ourselves and each other’s company. Passing what I can only describe as a very Latin pants store (special technology to enhance the pompis), Anna asked me if I thought this mall prettier than the ones in America, how could I even begin to explain the vast differences? The malls of America each more huge and gluttonous than the next, blighted with the disease of consumption, the frenetic crowds and claustrophobia and this plastic paradise, for lack of a better description. They were worlds apart, and here I was thousands of miles away window-shopping for cell phone dangles and gold hoops in Spanish...