my new friends

Let me start at the beginning.

My most recent adventure began at 4:00 a.m. Thursday. I was awakened to the sound of deafening explosions outside my home. Once again, back in the states this would be a grave call for alarm and a definite call to the police. Here, it registered little more than sleepy annoyance. Then the church bells began. Then the praise music, complete with a bone-rattling bass. This is all a part of the continuing celebration of Guatemala's Independence from Spain. At 5:00 a.m. I summoned the will to get out of bed, and by 6:00 a.m. I was on a bus headed for Huehue, from which I would take another bus to Xela. The purpose of my trip was to poop in a cup and hopefully discover the cause of my ever-more-frequent trips to the outhouse.

Just past the neighboring town of Colotenango, the bus came to an unexpected halt, and, after some deliberation, everyone on board, including myself, got off and continued toward Huehue on foot. We walked for hours, through the rain, through throngs of angry indigenous men protesting a national identification card program. I walked until I found a ride with an extremely zealous evangelical man.

"I asked God this morning, 'God, who can I share the Word with today?'" he said. "And here you are!"
And share with me he did. He told me his theories on original sin, the fall, the follies of Catholicism and Mary worship. The truth is, I didn't agree with hardly anything he said, but I swallowed my words and my pride and smiled and nodded the whole way. I sold my soul for a 20 kilometer ride to Huehuetenango. Lord, please don't let me have a real moral test, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King, Jr.

I did finally make it to Xela, a day later and much poorer than I expected to after having to buy a hotel room and several suppers when the bus protest continued for the rest of the day.

I have occasionally written here about my loneliness. Well, I have one source of comfort, at least for a little while. When I feel sad, alone in the universe, I have this mantra to soothe me: "At least my parasite friends are with me."
That's right. As I write this right now, there are a significant number of amoebas gallivanting around my stomach lining.

And any of you who have ever attended one of my dinner parties know that if nothing else, I am an excellent host. :)