My new jobs and stuff

I’m gonna try and make time to write another post now, the last two weeks have been really busy so I haven’t had time to sit down to write anything and it looks like the next two will be a hell of a lot busier so if I don’t do it now you may not get another till I get to the US, so I’ll make my best effort to sort it out now.

Like I say, I’ve been extremely busy for about two weeks. Basically remember how I said they gave me like six jobs to do, if you didn’t read it then go back and read all the posts that you’ve missed out you rude, rude bastard, you should be keeping up, especially since it takes me so long to write new posts. Anyway, they gave me more, so now I have a huge list of jobs and I can’t actually remember most of them, but knowing how organised they are here they probably don’t know what I should be doing anyway. Basically the guy who run’s the restraint has finally sent me the Business plan for me to look at so while I’m here I have to try translating the thing to English so I can understand it. Once I’ve read it I’m not 100% sure what they want though, I’ll give you an example of they way they give me a new job here so you can understand that the reason I don’t know what I’m doing all the time is not all because I’m incompetent:

Maria (volunteer “organiser”): Hi Richard, I have something new I need you to do (In Spanish)

Me: Ok, what is it? (in Spanish)

Maria: Thathathathathathathatha (really fast Spanish, shes from Spain where they speak a

crappy type of Spanish)

Me: ( I look perplexed) Como? (basically means “what?”)

Maria: Ok, in Engilsh… Isaul would like you to write a business plan for Buga Mama (the restaurant the charity owns in town) can you do it?

Me: Well I can… but it’s not really my area, so I can only do so much.

Maria: That’s fine, just talk to Isaul about it. (translates as, I stopped listening after “I

can” and no longer care)

(4 days later in town)(everything else is conducted in Spanglish)

Me: Hey Isaul, Maria said you needed me to help with writing a business plan

Isaul: Hola Richard, yes we have a business plan, it’s nearly done, can you help us?

Me: Yea, I can help a bit

Isaul: Ok, good…

Me:…

Isaul: (looks like he’s about to wander off to do something else)

Me: Can I see the plan?

Isaul: Yes

Me: Where is it?

Isaul: I’ll email it to you

Me: Ok, do you still have my email?

Isaul: Ummm…. No

Me: Ok (I write down my email and pass him it)

Isaul: Ok I’ll send it on Monday

Me: Ok… wait no, the internet at the project never works, can you do it before so I can get it while I’m here. It would be better if you just put it on my Ipod now.

Isaul: Ok, I’ll send you the email (something tells me we don’t understand each other all

the time)

(1 week later, back in town)

Me: Isaul, I never got that email.

Isaul: Oh yes, we have been very bust with the restaurants

Me: Could you put it on my ipod now

Isaul: Yes I have another job for you (you’ll find out more on this later, so I’ll skip this part. In the end I don’t get it on my Ipod, he says he’ll email it again)

(1 week later, back in town)

Me: Hey Isaul, I still haven’t got a email from you

Isaul: Ah yes, can we have your email address (I write it again)

Me: It would be easier if you could just put it on my Ipod

Isaul: Oh, ok that would be easier (at bloody last)

Me: So what exactly do you need me to do?

Isaul: Help with writing it

Me: In what way?

Isaul: We need you to help write it?

Me: So you want me to write it?

Isaul: No, we’ll write it.

Me: Ok so what do you need me to do?

Isaul: Look at the plan and help us in writing it

Me: Ok (I still don’t know what kind of help they need but talking in circles tends to

make me slightly embarrassed, or at least frustrated)

So now, two and a half weeks later I have this business plan translated into English and don’t know where to start, there are a few problems but most of them cannot be solved by me as I don’t actually know what the “plan” they are writing is. I can tell them a few ways to improve what they have already written but we’ll see. Or maybe not, from the looks of the plan they started writing it in 2002 and stopped in 2006, all the deadlines in the target section are in 2007. In other words, it dosnt seem like they’re taking this too seriously.

The other job I was given has been fairly interesting, basically me and one of the students from the project go over to another town whenever a cruise ship comes in and try to sell the handycrafts from the communitys. They have to send me because cruise tourists seem to be under the impression that everyone in the world speaks English, the students can get quite distressed when the 20 stone wrinkly white people start having a conversation with them in a foreign language. And it isn’t that kind of “if I speak louder then they will understand me” thing. This is more like they will ask a conversation like “what is this made of?”, the student will then reply with something like “$6”because all they know how to say in the English is usually prices. The tourist then looks sceptically at the bowl/pot/bag/whatever the product is, as if they are trying to work out how you would make a bowl/pot/bag/whatever the product is, out of six dollars. Then instead of giving up or trying again, they’ll ask something else like “did you make this?”, the student will then look round frantically, not knowing what to say. Sometimes they will say “$6” again, but usually they’ll be to distressed and just want rid of the person, so they start talking Spanish back. This has one of two affects on the tourist, either they become terrified of foreign language and hurry away. Or they go on trying to talk back in English, as if it’s a completely normal conversation. Last time that happened to Byron, the student I work with, he pretended to drop something under the stall, crawled under and didn’t come out until I was free to divert the attention the persistent tourist.

When the job was proposed to me, in that conversation with Isaul, I was told that “you will got to Santo Thomas the night before the boat arrives, stay in a hotel for the night, don’t worry we will pay for all the food while you are away from the project, then you will get up in the morning and go to sell the things to the tourists and come back here in the evening.”

There were a few things wrong with what Isaul told me about the job.

1. HOTEL MY ARSE.

I became suspicious at first on the afternoon before leaving for Santo Thomas, I met Byron and he began referring to the “hotel” as a “room”. But I wasn’t worried, “how bad could it be” I thought. Anyway we got to Santo Thomas in the evening then ate, then we started walking down a dirt track and I was thinking, what kind of hotel would they have round here. Now don’t get me wrong, I have lived in Guatemala for a few months now and I don’t expect luxury from hotels, all I expect is access to running water and a bed with sheets on it etc. That’s all. Byron walked up to a gate and I heard two dogs barking, he opened the gate and went inside closing it behind him. I looked through the gate and saw him trying to calm down these dogs, one looked like Oscar the grouch on a bad day, but the other looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles on steroids. Byron beckoned me through the gate, I wasn’t worried because the dogs had calmed down and dogs don’t bother me usually anyway. After closing the gate I turned round and saw the bigger dog staring at me, then without making a sound it went for me, it nearly had my bloody arm, but I managed to stick the bag I was holding in its mouth before it got me. It spent a few seconds trying to kill my bag before the owner came out and called it off. The damn things name is Tyson, that just sums it up, although I think Kujo would suit it slightly better.

Anyway, we opened the door to “the room”, it was an empty room apart from one bare mattress on the floor, how nice, all that was missing were the spent syringes and tin foil covered spoons. The owner was kind enough to give us a second bare mattress, so at least both of us had the luxury of sleeping on a possibly bed bug infested mattress. Oh and mattresses in Guatemala don’t contain springs, so they’re more similar to hard duvets or something, not very nice to sleep on, even with sheets.

Also we had no access to running water, or water in general as it happened, the toilet didn’t have a functioning flush (obviously) and when I asked the owner he said, you need to pour water into the bowl. When I asked where to get the water he just shrugged. So you can imagine how pleasant it is staying there for the night, especially when you have to run across the yard inhabited by the man eating dog to get to the toilet or anywhere else for that matter as our door leads directly out there.

2. The trip there is a health hazard

Ok its not like Isaul said anything to the contrary but still I think he should have warned me that all the Lancheros between Livingston and Puerto Barrios are clinically insane. They are more mad than the Lancheros from the project, and these guys have more highly powered boats. Basically the lancha we set off in was about 16 feet long, the sea was extremely rough with waves that caused the boat to pitch 45 degrees upwards whenever we hits one, this meant that when the boat reached the top of the wave, the front fell about 10 feet back down to where the sea was, now if the lanchero was sensible then maybe we would have just felt quite ill by the end of the trip. As it was, the lanchero still thought he wanted to attempt the trip in 20 minutes, which would usually require a perfectly calm sea and a less heavily loaded boat. But this gut gunned it at 40 miles an hour or more, which is pretty quick for a boat, I swear we actually got airborne a few times. The front of the boat would fall and crash back into the sea then we would all fall after it back onto our seats, somebody was transporting desktop computers and you could hear all the boards inside smashing as they collided in mid air and crashed back into the boat while the deck was on it’s way back up again. Luckily my spine is still fully functional but I’m not sure if it’s gonna last me till April when Cruise season ends.

3. If when you say morning you mean 4am, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY MORNING

I don’t care what anyone else has to say about it 4am is still night for Christ sake, it’s not morning until the sun is out, and even that is too early.

I have to get up at 4am, evade the killer dog in the yard, wash my face in the one bucket of water that the owner might put out for us, if we’re lucky. Then try to get back to the room in safety, where I get the handy crafts ready to load into a taxi to get them to the port with the cruise ship for 6am. We have the stall ready before 7am and have to wait at least another 2 hours for any tourists to turn up. Guatemalans just seem to love getting up early.

The job is actually quite amusing, cruise tourists are strange people. Generally where our stall is only gets the older people because young people actually go out into the country. The complex we set the stall up in is only for the tourists who come off the boat, walk 20 meters to the building we are in, buy some local products, then head back onto the boat to play shuffle board or whatever. I’m not sure why they go on cruises because it seems to me they might as well just go on a normal holiday then shop at Oxfam when they get home, cos you can but the same stuff there and it would be cheaper than going on a cruise. The point is, they don’t actually see Guatemala, they see a port and a big room full of people trying to sell them crap that no one in Guatemala actually wants, like bowls made of crushed banana stalks and bags they claim to have woven by hand which fall apart within about 7 minutes of you putting anything in them.

The kind of old people are strange as well, there’s enough botox in that room to paralyze a blue whale, and enough hair dye to drown the bastard afterwards. Some of the old ladies look like aliens, they have eyes which are the size of grapefruits from the way they have been stretched out by the botocs. Also their faces don’t have a wrinkle on them as they are so taught, but then they decide to wear a strappy top or something and their all veiny and disgusting. Why don’t they just admit, they’re old and decrepit and aren’t young enough to dress like a 16 year old anymore.

Last time this guy came up to the stall in a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and he actually had spurs on. What the hell is that about, who the hell needs spurs on a cruise ship. I know the ships are pretty big, but I doubt there´s space for a coral on there for Christ sake. You can imagine what the guys personality was like, so I won´t bother going into details, needless to say, he was an arse.

So anyway I planned to write more but unfortunately I have to go off to another cruise ship soon, so I´ll leave it at this for now and write more later.

Later Guys

I can´t think of a title for this one

Hey guys, here’s the next instalment of my Livingston update. Ok, for those of you who didn’t get this from the last post, I spent a weekend in Tikal. I’m sure Zoë is feeling very intelligent right now, thinking “I know what Tikal is, ha-ha” but for the majority of you, who haven’t studied or travelled through Latin America, I will tell you. Basically it’s this huge national park in Northern Guatemala. Most of it is not accessible and is just a protected reserve, but the central attraction is a site of Maya ruins, there are six huge temples around the park and hundreds (according to the guidebook thousands) of other buildings scattered around. Also the site is in the middle of the jungle so you can imagine the amount of wildlife hanging around the area. Every time you climbed to the top of a temple you could see monkeys leaping from tree to tree, I was reminded of Matt and CJ swinging about on the scaffolding at the drop zone, congratulations boys, you look like a pair of spider monkeys… actually Matt probably looks more like a Howler Monkey but I don’t imagine many of you know what the difference is, basically just imagine a monkey with Matt’s head and you pretty much have it, those of you who don’t know what Matt looks like, don’t worry about, if you really want to know can do a Google image search on howler monkey, then imagine it with cloths on, walking around drunk and shouting unbelievably loud, it’s probably best to also imagine it following around an 18 year old female student.

Anyway enough of insulting Matt, I better get back on topic before I lose my non-skydiver audience.

So we started the weekend by heading upriver to Rio Dulce on a boat, as per usual the Lanchero filled the boat beyond the point anyone could have thought possible, if they hadn’t already been at the project long enough. I have started calling it “Lancha Buckaroo” it’s this game the Lancheros seem to play with each other, “how many suicidal people can we force onto the boat before it sinks”. They haven’t managed to sink one yet, but it has to happen eventually. Anyway if I don’t get drowned by these insane lancheros, I’m sure to lose my legs through blood loss, last time I actually spent the trip in a position where I went numb from the waist down, I had one leg tucked round under my seat and the other being crushed by a bag, then the seat is so hard that your arse goes numb and my waist was being crushed against the back of my seat by this huge suitcase that was thrown on my lap. This wouldn’t have been too bad if it was a short 20 minute trip, but no, unfortunately it was an hour and 45 minute boat ride. And what makes it worse is the fact that the lancheros go about 20 minutes out of the way to drop their mates off in the arsehole of no where, what the hell are they doing living out there, maybe they’re forced to live away from society because they’re so bloody inconsiderate. If you live that far away from everything, why haven’t you got a boat for Christ sake, and how do these people get to town, it’s not like boats would ever go past, they’re too far out of the way.

Anyway back to the story, the Lancha took well over an hour and a half to get to Rio, then we went and caught a coach to Flores, which is like a little Island in the middle of a lake, you can drive to it via the bridge though. We found a pretty nice hotel for 40Q a night, that’s about £3. They had a shower there and if you turned it on a low enough pressure, low enough so that the water dripped out rather than ran, the water was actually not cold… Amazing, ok it wasn’t exactly warm but wow, that’s the closest to hot water I have had for over a month.

That night we had pizza, I ordered the double cheese one, don’t worry Skydivers, it was tiny compared to the one in Seville. It was great because in Guatemala you cant actually get good cheese, in fact there are only 3 types of cheese here, well I suppose there are 4 if you think that the kind of cheese in a McDonalds Hamburger counts. The types are Queso Blanco, Queso Duro and Queso Seco. These translate as white cheese, hard cheese and dry cheese. Basically Queso Seco is a dry version of Queso Blanco, and Queso Duro is exactly the same except a little bit less crumbly.

So pizza was great as they seem to import some kind of semi-decent cheese for that. Anyway, due to the extreme lack of cheese in my diet since arriving in Guatemala, my stomach wasn’t happy in the morning, I’ll spare you the details.

We left for Tikal at 2:00pm, well we were supposed to leave at 2:00pm but it was more like 3:00pm, I’m sure I have already laid out the principals of Guatemalan time keeping, it goes something like “get there when I tell you, then I’ll turn up when I have nothing better to do, but if you aren’t there when I arrive to bad, you still pay and I don’t wait round”. On occasion it turns out to be something more along the lines of “I will tell you a time, I may not turn up at that time or at all, but when you find me and ask me where I was I will insist that I sat there and waited an hour for you, I may lie and tell you I waited in the correct place but what this actually means is I am sat in the office watching Mexican wrestling and eating a Burrito or seven”.

So anyway after a frustrating hour of waiting for our bus to show up, it eventually arrived, as if it was on time, when we asked why the bus driver was so late he claimed he’d had to drive round Flores to pick up the other passengers, there are 2 problems with this: 1. it takes 20 minutes to walk the circumference of Flores, so a bus should do it in 5 at the most. 2. The bus was empty…

We decided to cut our losses and put up with the fact that the driver was covered in crumbs and sauce, probably from the 8^th burrito he had decided to eat on the way. The drive was about 1 hour and 15 minutes so I used the time to listen to one of my pod casts bashing the ignorant cretin known as Sarah Palin. On the subject of her, it’s the 5^th of November today and I’m pleased to find that she wont be blowing up the world in the next 4 years, obviously she would have had to wait a few weeks for McCain to have a stroke or get involved in another plane crash, or for his left gland to swell so much he actually floated away. But after the inevitable happened she would have had plenty of time to monumentally screw the world over the same as the current President, George “war on reality” Bush. Also hopefully Mr “I’m a fuckin’ redneck” won’t be forced to marry her daughter anymore, or has that already happened, I don’t know we don’t get good news coverage here. Imagine that, forcing that guy to be a father, what kind of idea is that. Although I did feel sorry for the guy as well, even though he has got to be one of the most pitiful examples of a human I have ever seen, imagine having that as a mother in Law for the rest of your life.

So anyway we arrived at Tikal and went to ask how much it was to stay in a Hammock at the hotel, it turned out the hotel no longer provided that service, we could however pay $15 (I hate the way touristy places charge in dollars, it’s cos the majority of the older American tourists don’t bother changing them, actually a lot of them think that the currency here is dollars) each and stay in a 6 person room. Now that may not sound a lot to you but in Livingston $15, or 108Q as it should be here, can get me a private room at a hotel and pay for all my food for the day, and then 2 or 3 beers in the evening. So I wasn’t happy about this. Basically before taking the room which we had to do eventually we went to check every where else, $30 each was the next best offer from a hotel. But we could rent hammocks for 35Q and hang them up in the campsite, I was defiantly up for that but one of the girls hadn’t brought a sleeping bag and didn’t want to get cold. This pissed me off as the plan from the start had been to stay in a hammock, the only difference would have been that the other hammocks would be hung outside a hotel, these were gonna be hung 100m away in the campsite. Basically exactly the same. After asking her why she had neglected to bring anything she said she didn’t have room because she only brought a small bag and she thought it would be warmer here. Let’s see, she was freezing in Livingston, in moving from Livingston to Tikal we have moved 7 hours further away from the Equator, 7 hours further up into the mountains and 7 hours further away from the Caribbean coast… hmmmmmmm. In England we call this kind of person a moron, apparently in Austria they call them doctors.

So in the end we had to take the room because she whinged so much and Christoph was anxious to get into the park to see the sunset from temple 4, the biggest one. So we went and got the room, unpacked, then rushed to the entrance of the park. Apparently it takes 30 minutes to reach the grand plaza, where temples 1 and 2 are, 20 minutes if you gun it. We got there in 12 which makes me think that whoever worked that out must have had short legs, which would make sense as I am at least a foot taller than most of the Guatemalans I have met.

It’s then another 15 minutes to temple 4 and as we reached the top the sun had just started to set. Ok blah blah blah, very nice, I’m getting bored of telling you about Tikal now, the next day we went in a 6:00am and were planning to get the bus back to Flores at 6:00pm, some of the girls were told however that the 6:00pm bus doesn’t always turn up. Christoph refused to believe this and got very grumpy, he wanted to catch another sunset at 5:30pm. Buses not turning up as you can probably work out is quite a plausible occurrence. The other buses left a 4:00pm and 5:00pm, the time was 3:30pm and we were not all together so we decided to search for the others and meet back at 4:15pm to try and catch the 5:00pm bus. Christoph insisted on going to talk to the bus driver of the 4:00pm bus to ask if there would be one at 6:00pm. I tried to tell him that if he said there would be it wouldn’t mean anything, they don’t like giving people bad news here so there was a good chance he would just lie. When we got there however the bus driver not only said there was a good chance of not having a 6:00pm bus, but also it was doubtful as to weather there would be a 5:00pm bus also. The bus driver agreed to wait for us until 5:10pm as no one else needed the bus.

I said to Christoph there is no way on earth I am paying for that room again. So we ran back in to tell the others to get back out for 5:00pm, Christoph was still grumpy having to miss sunset. We managed to hitch a lift with some rangers and arrived at temple 4 on time, but no one had found Alex and Nico, another two Austrians.

We went and searched the Grand Plaza and still didn’t find them so resigned ourselves to missing the bus, we headed back down to the entrance to see if they were waiting out there. We got to the car park at 5:07pm but they weren’t there. Then the bus driver popped up and said, don’t worry, there’s defiantly a bus a 6:00pm now. Great, there wasn’t time for us to head back into the park to see anything unless we felt like more running and I was sick of it by this point. Christoph had a grump on for the day and a half till we got back to the project and Nico and Alex came out just on 6:00pm to catch the bus.

We ate pizza (this time I had a bigger one but decided not to go for double cheese, I also saved some for breakfast, I learnt my lesson in Seville) in Flores again then travelled home on Monday, which was a day of as it’s a national holiday.

So that’s the massively cut down account of the weekend in Flores. Since I have the better part of a page left before I hit the four page mark, I’ll bulk this out with a few more Livingston Characters.

First let’s start with crazy voodoo lady, this is what we have started calling here, however we have no idea of her real name, no one seems to. Crazy voodoo lady has probably thrown you off a bit however, your probably picturing her as some woman with crazy hair and a bone through her nose, running round with some heads on a string and sacrificing chickens. This is not what she is like at all, in fact we have no idea if she has anything to do with voodoo. She is a pretty large old woman who walks round in some kind of orange dress and a summer hat. The reason we call her crazy voodoo lady is because she has a habit of hanging around outside our hotel and crotch grabbing as people walk out. The only way we can account for this is that she is a) crazy or b) practices voodoo and it’s some kind of weird ritual or something, since a prerequisite of the latter is that she would have to be crazy, we have labelled her crazy voodoo lady. Luckily she has never been around when I’ve been on my own so she has never gone for me before but I have seen her go for other people and it’s bloody funny, although quite disturbing. According to Berti she is also a serial flasher who is prone to sitting outside her house on the porch and shouting “amigo” then lifting her dress while wearing no underwear, luckily only Berti has seen this before, it’s not something I would imagine to be a pleasant site. Berti’s explanation is “eizer she’z crazy or she really juzt needs a prick or zumzing”.

Rusty next I think, he’s the owner of a local hostel and bar named Casa Iguana, he’s also very very gay. Not that that’s a bad thing, I just want to make it clear that we aren’t talking about your common, garden variety, Ian Mckellen type homosexual. No, we are talking about your full on Liza Minnelli, Madonna gay, the type that call everyone “darling”. He looks very similar to someone who used to be on the English big brother, but I can’t remember his name or what series it was in. Basically it was a bald gay guy who was obsessed with the transsexual woman. If you know who I mean, just imagine him but twice the height and you’ve got Rusty.

Anyway, I haven’t known him very long as he hasn’t been in Livingston recently, he left a few of the other guys from Casa Iguana in charge. But he got back recently and me and some of the other guys are regulars at Casa Iguana. So we were sat talking to him over a few beers, then he went upstairs suddenly, we were talking to some of the other customers at the time so didn’t notice. Then suddenly he came back wearing nothing but a fish net leotard and a pair of cat ears. He then began dancing on a table to Christina Aguilera and that just about sums Rusty up.

I was planning on telling you about Insane Mexican Restaurant owner woman (I think her names Maria), or Sid the drunken Barman, but I’m almost up to the four page mark, so I’ll save it until the next post and give you something to look forward to and me something to actually write about, since there is’nt much else meant to happen any time soon.

Later

Ps. Liz was complaining because she wasn´t in the last blog so... Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz, Liz. Is that good enough

Your long awaited post

Finally I have a chance to write the next part of the blog. I think it’s been about a month since I last posted, or 3 weeks at least, I don’t have internet access at the project right now so I have no way of checking, this also means I don’t know what I have already told you so I’ll try starting from when I stepped off the boat onto the dock at the project.
The sun had just gone down about 20 minutes earlier so it was dark, the boat had just pulled up to a dock in the middle of no where on the bank of the Rio Dulce and the lanchero ushered me off as quickly as possible, then left.
So I’m stood on this dock, there’s no light so I can’t see a thing and there’s no one around to ask what the hell I should be doing. As my eyes adjust to the light I can see all these faces sat in boats down along side the dock staring at me, it looked like something out of silent hill or something. I walked down to the end of the dock and all the eyes followed me, the problem was I had no idea where I was going, there was no light anywhere so all I could see was the outline of a building so I headed towards that. After standing around looking clueless for long enough someone a voice came from no where and asked something in Spanish, I don’t know what because I wasn’t expecting it so didn’t listen properly. Anyway I just said I was a volunteer then he ran off, so I followed him, he went up some steps which lead into a corridor, I followed him down it . Luckily he was wearing a white hat so I could make out where he was because there was just enough light to make out the hat bobbing off down the corridor. At the other end were a load of people wearing head torches, so when they looked at me I was completely blind. So I had no idea what was going on and there were these people blinding talking at me in Spanish. I couldn’t understand a word because the loudest one was speaking Spanish at a million miles an hour with a French accent, so it wasn’t the most comprehendible thing I ever heard.
Anyway it turned out that electricity wasn’t turned on till 7pm and was then switched off again at 9pm. Also the volunteers were not expecting me because the volunteer organiser hadn’t told them and wasn’t there at the time. I managed to find her number and rang her up and it turns out she was expecting me to turn up a week later because I had asked her for an extra week in Antigua to learn Spanish. All I could think was if you got that email, why the hell did you not reply to it so that I could have taken an extra week so I wouldn’t have had to go through all that palaver. I mean if there’s no reply, why would I take that as a yes?
Anyway due to the fact that they weren’t expecting me, there was no bed for me or job waiting etc. The volunteer organiser said she would call a few people to arrange them to start my job and have them make (when I say make, I don’t mean tuck the sheets in, I mean get the wood, saw it up and build a bed out of it) my bed etc.
So I went for a meeting the next day with the community development department, luckily for me the woman heading the meeting was completely incomprehensible also, all the indigenous people round here speak so softly that most of their words just disappear into wind, and it’s not even breezy round here usually. One of the volunteers could understand her, and she just happened to be at the meeting with me.
It turns out the job she wanted me to do was write a manual for the students, who attend the school here, on how to start up and run a business. It’s not really my background at all but as you can imagine, people who do have a background in it don’t usually volunteer. So I’m having to make the best of it, I have my GCSE business studies to fall back on, and I’ve been having to teach myself some stuff at the weekends when I get internet access but the manual is going ok. The English version is pretty much complete, it just needs a little reworking and I’m slowly translating it. I’ll have it complete before Christmas I imagine. Recently I have been given a few more jobs, I now have to write a manual which instructs on how to teach the people what’s in the other manual. This is because very few of the Maya which the project works with actually speak Spanish, most speak only speak one of the Maya languages, also most cannot read, let alone read Spanish, therefore a manual would be somewhat redundant for them. So the new manual is intended for translators to read and teach in workshops.
Another job I have been given is to find company’s willing to donate enough money for us to fund a new micro enterprise project. Up till now it seems that the project hasn’t been teaching about budgeting, financial forecasting, business plans or anything, therefore the people always end up spending all their money and not being able to continue reinvesting in new stock for the business etc. So there no funds available for any new businesses to start right now. Also after Christmas they want me to be good enough at Spanish to run the workshops myself so I’m definitely heading back to Spanish school at some point. My other job is advising some of the charity run businesses, such as Buga Mama the restraint we use for raising money, how to write their own business plans, as none of them seem to have one yet. At the moment I’m waiting for an email from Buga mama with their progress so far so I can check it and tell them what it’s missing.
You’ll also be pleased to know that we now have 24 hour electricity in the Galera, that’s like the shack over the river that we live in, because we now have solar power which was only put up 3 weeks late. I also have a bed which only took 2 hours for them to make… unfortunately they didn’t make it until I’d already been here for a week and a half but that seems to be the way things work here. There favourite word is “mañana” which literally means “tomorrow” but actually seems to mean something more along the lines of “not today”.

Ok, there’s more to say about the charity but I’ll do it some other time or I’ll be home before you’ve finished reading.
So I’ll tell you some stuff about Livingstone. Basically it’s about 30 minutes down river, when we have a normally packed boat. Unfortunately the lancheros like to overfill the boat, the “lanchas” hold about 16 people, maybe 18 at a squeeze. However on the last trip back from Livingston we had 42 people on board, and that’s no exaggeration, on top of that we had a huge amount of luggage which took up about a quarter of the boat, and weighed about the same as 10 people. This means the top of the boat sits about 20cms out of the water, in turn this means the boat has to go at a speed comparable to a snail covered in pritt stick on its way home from a party with Lemmy Killminster. If you do the lancha basically sinks.
So after a one and a half hour boat ride we arrive in Livingston. It’s a small town, of about 17,000 people, however you only ever see the same 100 people give or take. The population consists mainly Garifuna with the rest being made up of Ladinos, there is also a separate Indigenous community about 1km up the river, but they don’t have much of a presence in town really.
There are a few local characters who I see without exception every time I go in. One of these is “Alexander” or “Alexander the Great” as he calls himself, his nickname is “Chiledrin” to the locals or just “Chile”, I know him pretty well so that’s what I call him now. He’s also a bit of a crack head but you have to forgive him that because if you hang round Livingston and decide you are going to not befriend anyone who has anything to do with drugs, you’ll have a bit of a lonely life unfortunately. He’s also quite a useful guy to know because he knows where everything is and if there’s anything you cant find in a shop (Lighter fluid is the main example I can think of right now) that you want he usually manages to find it somewhere. How I don’t know but he does, he has a nasty habit of always whinging about how hungry he is and if he doesn’t get any money that way he comes up with something else like how he cant walk so he needs to rent a bicycle, which he will tell you as he is walking with you down the road. Another favourite is when he starts talking like he has just eaten a kilo of sand and starts moaning about being thirsty and needing water, as he sips out of one of the coconuts from the tree in his back garden. You may be thinking that he sounds like a beggar, which is kind of true, but everyone here tries it on with the tourists and at least you can tell that Chile will try it on a mile off, he never pushes to hard as well like most of the others who don’t even try to get to know you first.
Another one of the locals is “Owens” I didn’t know his real name until yesterday when Berti, the German mechanic who has lived in Livingston for a few years, told me about (actually Berti is pretty interesting I’ll have to inform you about him in the next post). It turns out his name is Dario and I don’t really have a problem with him because he’s one of the few guys who has never tried to scam money out of me, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t on crack, meth or coke which is unusual. He is however a dealer and I think he has a tendency to smoke his own product quite heavily, what exactly he deals I don’t know because I’ve never asked, I’m sure if you did ask he would claim he sells every kind of narcotic you could think of. I suspect he’s just a dope dealer though. He tends to walk round in some kind of American sport clothing all the time, all from different teams and different players. We call him Owens because that’s the name on the back of his favourite football jersey, I have no idea who this player is and I guess he doesn’t either but he wears that jersey the most. He tends to walk like he has a razor blade under each arm and his ¾ length shorts worn round the top of his thighs so they look like regular trousers. This makes him walk a little bit like John Wayne on drugs. He has a habit of putting his arms in the air and shouting “RASTA” for no apparent reason on random occasions. He also has a wide range of ways of asking you to buy drugs, on favourite is “Hey bredren, come-on, let’s go to the candy shop to buy some sweets”. When I asked Berti about him he said in his “Ah, you muzt e speaking off Dario, you now talk of ze secont biggest asshole in town” so as you can tell Berti doesn’t like him. I don’t know though, after the first 2 days when he tries desperately to have you buy something off him, he chills out and you only get the occasional proposition maybe once or twice a week, he’s quite useful when your getting hassled by one of the hustlers as well because if you see him you can just give him a nod and he’ll think it’s another dealer so he’ll run over and get rid of them, of course you have to put up with him trying to sell you something again, but I can put up with it from him now since he doesn’t throw in any requests for spare change.
Polo is another guy you see all the time, he cycles round on his bike and just chats to the tourists. I quite liked him when I first met him, he looks like he’s about 65 and he’s always pretty chilled out, he went to university in the US and he can talk for quite along time about social sciences and so on. He is also a drummer in the band Punta rebels which is apparently the best Punta bands in the world, this sounds ridiculous but it’s not too far from the truth. Apparently they are definitely one of the most popular Punta bands in the world and that’s according to Berti, who, upon me asking about Polo said “Ahh yes, well now you are speaking of ze biggest asshole in town”. According to Berti he is renowned for stealing from tourists so if I ever get into a conversation with him again (which isn’t unlikely) I’ll just be wary of that fact. But that said he is definitely interesting to talk to.
Ok that will do for now, maybe I’ll give you a few more next week or something. This is 4 pages long on word right now so I’ll leave it before it’s too long.

Later

PS. I did’nt manage to post this on the weekend because I went to Tikal and all the internet cafes had broken USB ports, so next time I get Internet I’ll try again.

PPS. I calculate that I have eaten Beans Rice and Tortillas approximately 77 times since the last post, however this is not 100% accurate as there were plenty of times when the rice wasn’t on the menu.