Guatamala

At the Guatamalan border they wouldn’t let us through.

We queued for what seemed like ages (my husband tells me that everything always seems like ages to me!) in a crowded room in intense heat.  We were surrounded by the sounds of Guatamalan workers heading home after a work stint in Belize, male and female, with or without children, chickens and large cloth bags bursting with old clothes.  The adults are on the whole short, and dark, and have a certain smell to them which seems to be a mix of sandalwood and rice, not unpleasant. They were all dressed the same in baggy trousers or wide skirts, with the exception of a couple of totally ghastly women who were dolled up to the nines, make-up, earings, tight little jeans (must have been very hot) and high clickety heels.  The cacophony of sound as children cried and chickens swqualked was overridden by the Spanish chatter as they discussed how much they had (or had not) earned and how long they’d been away.

Conditions are better in Belize, certainly in these small rural towns.  An unskilled Guatamalan earns the equivalent of about £5 a day at home, often less,  but in Belize can earn as much as £10 a day, often more.

At the end of the queue we showed our passports and answered a variety of questions about why we were entering Guatamala.  We want to visit Tikal, we replied.  Ah yes, of course, they said.  They stamped our passports and then grunted something in Spanish which I didn’t catch.  A friendly local – and suddenly we were utterly surrounded by friendly locals, all hoping to get a tip of some sort – showed us that we had to queue up again at a different place, which we did.  More chickens, more children, more high-pitched chatter and more cloth bags bursting at the seams.

After another long wait we were asked for our car documents.  It is our own car (we keep one in Belize, as one does).   A man rose from his seat and accompanied us outside.  The car was incredibly dirty, inside and out.   By this time we had driven up through the Yutacan peninsular in Mexico,  over to Merida and then down to San Andres via  Campeche.  Our plan had been to enter Guatamala via the Mexican border at Tapachula, cross Guatamala and re-enter Belize by boat via Honduras.  However, we discovered  that the mountains in between were very cold, and we only had shorts and T-shirts with us. Compared to the Mexicans we are Very Big People and after a mad hour trying to buy warm clothes we gave up.  Then we found that we could not get our car on the boat in Honduras … so we abandoned that trip for another day, re-entered Belize via the border at Corozal, spent a day in Belize visiting a club-foot child whose parents don’t understand about the operation to right the foot, and entered Guatamala via  St Ignacio.

Which was what brought us to this border.

You may not go through, the border-wallah said, not with your car anyway.   Why ever not ? we asked. The papers are wrong, came the reply.  No they’re not, we said, we have got all the insurances, everything is in order.  The car documents had been carefully written out in Belize by a dear little lady using her very best handwriting.  But on close inspection we found that she had got one digit wrong.  She had written the digit 1 instead of a 7.  The border official held his hand out discreetly to one side, palm up.  You may not take your car through, he said.

Oh never mind, quoth-I.  Just loan me your biro and I’ll correct the mistake.

No, no, he replied, still holding his hand discreetly, palm-up, to one side.

Bribes are the downfall of so many of these countries.  There are times when one is forced to pay a bribe and there is nothing you can do about it (in Turkey we had been forced to fork-out around £500-worth of bribes a few years earlier).  But if there is a way you can avoid paying a bribe, you must absolutely not pay it.

“Oh, no matter!” I said gaily.  “We only want to go to Tikal, so we’ll take a taxi!”

Before I had even registered what I had said, we were surrounded by men, young and old, volunteering to be our taxi.

“My frennd he e-hav ze car!  I go now !  I go run!”

Taxi licences were out of the question, probably driving licences too.  We were finally taken the 4 hour ride to Tikal in an old Ford that knew nothing about MOT tests and was driven by a boy who appeared to be aged twelve.   Very nervously he told us he wanted the equivalent of £10 to take us there, and then £10 to come back and fetch us three days later.  He was flabbergasted when we agreed to it.

I did the sketch somewhere en route for Tikal … a child of nine or ten carrying another child of two or so.

Gossip

Conversation with my cleaning lady:-

(but in French)

“Me, Madame, I’m no gossip.  Not never.”

“No, of course not, Marie.”

“That’s just me, it is. I knows when to keep me trap shut.”

“Yes, of course, Marie.”

“That’s always bin my policy, Madame.  Never say nothink about nobody. Best that way.”

“Yes, yes, quite right Marie …”

“I mean, that girl next door – you know that huge fat cow what I was telling you about ?”

“Er … ?”

“You know, Madame!  I was telling you about how she nicked the neighbour’s washing off the line ?!”

“Oh, er, yes …..”

“Well, her.  Never said no more about her did I?”

“No …”

“Ooooh, I knows when to keep mum, I does!   I mean to say, when she fell pregnant, did I say anything ?  No.  Never a word.  Never said a thing.  And the father unknown!   All four of her kids by different men, y’know!”

“Mmmmmm …”

“Nah … none of me business, that’s my motto.  Just like her mother, she is.  Just as bad as her mother.  ’Cept there weren’t no CONTRACEPTINGS in them days, so the babies just kept coming.  Father – or fathers, I should say, unknown.  All of ‘em. Disgusting.”

“Er, are you running out of polish Marie?  A clean rag, perhaps ?”

“Nah, I’m not done on this ‘ere table yet.  And then this morning – you’ll never guess!”

“No, I’m sure I can’t guess.  The windows perhaps ….?”

“Her sister the same!  Pregnant!  And her just out of prison an all!”

“Oh dear ….”

“But me, I’ll say nuffink.  Knows when to keep me trap shut I does!”

Book Reviews

Thank you so much to one and all for all your lovely words about my books. “The Man With Green Fingers” continues to be a bestseller, with “A Call from France” hot on its heels.   I do very much appreciate your comments – they go a long, long way in an extremely competitive world.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-France-Catherine-Broughton/dp/1475116659/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357651930&sr=1-1

One of my Published Poems

(published in Aquila)

I am tired of gecko poo on the table,
And on the cooker, the shelf or the chair.
I am tired of doctor-flies and ants
And mosquitoes everywhere.
I’d love to hear English rain,
And feel the breeze in my hair
Wafting down the Downs in Sussex
To the seas of Brighton there.

I am tired of bats, though they thrilled me,
The first few months I knew.
Tired of the burning sandy sun
And never a decent loo.
The parrots that coloured my eye
And the lizards that cling like glue,
But most of all I am tired,
Really sick of gecko poo.

Catherine Broughton

The Pixie and the Blue Teapot

During the first 5 or 6 years we were in France I was dreadfully homesick. My husband reckoned it was bad for the children, that I should keep mentioning England and home in front of them. So I changed it (lord knows why) to a pixie and a blue teapot. So I would say for example, 'I dreamt about the pixie and the blue teapot last night...'

Shopping in France

When we first came to France in 1989 we were staggered at what poor stock there was in the supermarket. There were no cereals at all.  There was  no fresh milk.  There was no sliced bread.  There were just one or two brands of shampoo and a sad stock of tinned and frozen foods.  Anything fresh was fine if it was local produce, but almost nothing out-of-season was to be had.  I remember buying chicken, and it was like trying to eat old rope.  The only wine and cheese to be had was French, of course.

Mark you, we landed in the centre of France, a backward back-water (though the residents didn’t think so), and we had come from the south-east of England, a well-heeled area.

I have spent many years in third-world countries and am accustomed to making-do with whatever is available, but I was amazed at how mediocre things were in France, the very country that claims (note use of the word claims!) to have the best food. (This is a myth and always has been, but that is for a different blog).

However, not only did France swing in to action and catch up with Britain, but in some ways it – arguably – overtook Britain.  The huge migration of the British in to the French countryside was a part of the reason, and that is undeniable.  The British certainly triggered the meteoric rise of the DIY shops.  The first time we set out, in 1989, to find paint (terribly expensive to this day – bring it from England!), planks, plaster-board, nails and the rest of it we had a truly hard job finding the appropriate shops.  And, having found them, we had a truly hard time locating anything worth buying.  Ready-insulated plasterboard didn’t exist, wood panelling didn’t exist, and half of everything else.  But as demandfor the derelict country cottages and fermettes increased, so the demaind of quality building materials increased.  From pathetic little stores these places transformed, within a couple of years,  in to wonderful havens of everything-for-the-home.  There is a huge selection, even in a dull little town like Marennes.

There are a few things I miss from the UK.  Boots the chemist is a great shop.  You can get quality make-up at reasonable prices, and a wonderful assortment of anything and everything for body and face, inside and out.  Chemists in France really just deal in medical matters; you can now buy things like make-up and shampoo but it is invariably very expensive.

Shops like Marks & Sparks are few and far between.  We have quite a lot of them in the UK – British Home, C & A and so on.  Clothes in France seem to be utter rubbish from the supermarket or quite expensive stuff from individual boutiques.  There are nowadays several in-between boutiques popping up, but very little in the way of big places where you can buy all your clothing items (and more) in one hit.

Still, on the whole, shopping in France is excellent these days and stores have long since branched out in to other countries; you can even get South African wine now – lovely! .  The one thing they still get utterly wrong is customer service – woe betide you if you take something back because it is faulty.  You will be treated like a criminal. The cashiers and shop assistants are on the whole very rude and unwelcoming.  They seem to be automatically on the defensive and most certainly do not wish to do anything other than the bare minumum.  A supermarket cashier will prefer to stare at the ceiling rather than help load the bags.  I recently took a faulty suitcase back to a shop (it split in half on the first trip) andwas treated so sooo badly – in fact the young assistant launched in to a lecture about how aeroplanes treat suitcases.  Mademoiselle, I told her, I was hopping on and off aeroplanes before you were even born!

You can’t get double cream here.  Their creme fraiche is our version of soured cream.  My husband, who suffers from Meniere’s disease, cannot get decaffeinated tea or even Red Bush tea.   But on the whole it is great these days.

One of my Published Poems- Grass Grows

Tiny fingers of breeze slip through the grass
And over the field.
Reaching between the blades, gentle
Caress across the Weald.
They grip on sometimes, cool fingers
That would stay if they could
But move on to the hills
And travel through the wood
and beyond the seas to other shores,
to the grass in the sand.
And finds the salty stalks, brittle,
Browned in the land.
Flattened under ice, frozen,
And where the wind blows …
It often strikes me, when I look at grass,
Grass always grows.