Rio Bravo, Suchitepequez, Guatemala, 1992.
This was to be my second and final Christmas spent in Guatemala during my 2-year mission for the LDS Church. And oh, how the mighty had fallen by this point in time.
See, I was a mission big-wig up until a couple of months before this time. Some of you reading this are former Mormon missionaries yourselves, and so you may be able to relate to what I'm about to tell you, but for the rest of you, maybe I ought to delve into a little detail.
You see us wheeling around town in white shirts and ties on mountain bikes, our helmets securely fastened around our chins. To you, we're all the same. Quiet kids from Utah out knocking on doors and calling everyone "sir" and "ma'am".
But there's a sort of hierarchy that goes on in these missions. Most of us just go out and knock on doors, but some get called to positions of leadership. District Leaders watch out for small groups of maybe 6 or 8 missionaries; Zone Leaders look out for 3 or 4 of these districts; and then the really big Kahunas, the 2 Assistants to the President, or AP's, rule over all of them.
I shot through these ranks early on. I bypassed District Leader altogether and instead spent 5 months as the Mission Financial Secretary. I learned quickly that even among humble servants of Christ, everyone loves the guy who controls the purse strings. (waitaminute- didn't Judas control the purse strings...? Never mind. On with my story.)
After my time in the office, I spent another 5 months as a Zone Leader in two different zones. With 6 months left before I went home, I was on the fast track to AP. Everyone expected it of me. My name was legend.
Then we got a sudden influx of 20 or so missionaries who had to be pulled out of Honduras due to a political uprising. Suddenly, we had to open up a bunch of new areas to missionary work that either had never seen missionaries before, or hadn't seen them in over ten years.
That's where I got sent. For two months, I was banished into relative obscurity in a village deep in the Mountains, walking its hot dusty streets and struggling to adapt to its local dialect of Cakchiquel. While I was there, large groups of missionaires went home, and even larger groups arrived. By the time I was brought back out of the mountains, nearly a third of the mission had never heard of me, and any thought of me rising into the highest levels of leadership were long since forgotten.
Suddenly, my huge head had to deflate and adapt to the idea that I wasn't anything special anymore.
That's when I got sent to Rio Bravo, Suchitepequez, to finish out my last 4 months.
It was a small, steamy, sweaty little town on a major higway running along the Pacific coastal plain. People here walked and talked and worked a little slower due to the heat, and the effort required just to cut a swath through the thick wet air from day to day, moment to moment.
Rio Bravo, like any small town, had its own peculiar cast of characters. There was Noe Revolorio, the pastor of the largest Evangelical church in town. He was a quiet and unassuming man, thin, bespectacled, gaunt- but once he took stage to deliver a sermon, it could be heard echoing through the concrete canyons of the town's streets, from one end of town to the other.
There was Sister Victoria, the local friend-to-Mormons. Not a member of the church herself, she nonetheless loved it, and loved the Missionaires, and made sure her Mormon-suspicious husband rented us our house/chapel at the cheapest rate possible, and even showed up at meetings on occasion when she could sneak out without letting the husband know she was gone.
There was Victor. Victor was a young guy in our local congregation. A bit effeminate and socially awkward, he was a short, skinny little guy with a front tooth missing and a prominent lisp because of it. Which did nothing to reduce his effeminate nature. Victor was an all-around good guy. If something needed doing or someone needed helping, Victor was there, usually without you even having to ask him. Or even INFORM him- word got around that town quickly, and Victor would just know, and he'd show up to help.
There was the town drunk. Every town had one, but this guy was the angry variety. He'd wander town in stinking clothes and with an bitter disposition, barking at anyone who was unfortunate enough to cross his path to give him some money, or food, or at the very least, a little respect. His local nickname was "Mi Perrita," which translates into "My Little Doggy," but "Doggy" in its feminine form, just to add another list twist of indignity to his already miserable life.
And there was the Snake House. Nearly every town I had lived in had one- a house with 2-4 attractive sisters living in it, aged anywhere from 15 to 25, who loved to flirt with the celibate missionaries, and use their womanly wiles to drag them down the path to hell. Or at least get them to flirt back. In Rio Bravo, the Snake House was right next door to our own house, which doubled as the local church building. And the Snakes were Alma and Sarah, two sisters, ages 19 and 21. Alma was the brighter, less-attractive of the two, but by less attractive, I mean in the way that Jessica Simpson is slightly less attractive than Pamela Anderson. Sarah was the more attractive of the two, and was also far more open in her flirting, blowing loud kisses to me every time we left the house in the morning to do our daily visits.
And then there was my missionary companion, Elder Calderon. A young rich kid from some little village on the border of Mexico, his heart just wasn't in this whole mission thing. And frankly, at this point in time, mine wasn't in it as much as it once had been, too. I was tired, and I wanted it to be over with. I still put all I had into my daily duties, as did Calderon, but we were always good for staying somewhere a little too long if the conversation was enjoyable, or taking the longer, more scenic route to an appointment, even if that meant arriving a little late and having to leave a little early to take the same route back.
Christmas in Guatemala isn't like Christmas in the States. It's a lot more like the 4th of July. Fireworks are set off all night on the 24th, in increasing number and frequency as the night progresses, culminating in a cacophony of violent explosions at midnight to celebrate the birth of our Savior. As missionaries, we'd visit as many people as we could, both members of the church and members of other churches, delivering a brief Christmas message and then being stuffed with fresh-cooked tamales. By the time you've had you tenth tamale for the day, you want to puke every one of them back up, but we were troopers- we just kept on going, kept on visiting, kept on eating as the night grew later and the noise of the fireworks louder and harder to talk over.
Our second-to-last visit of the night was to the Snake House, our next door neighbors. Now I know, I labeled it the Snake House, and in so doing diminished it to house-of-sin status in your minds, but it was more than that. Alma and Sarah were just two of the 5 sisters who lived there. They lived there with their niece, Llesika, their mother, and on holidays like this, their father would come home from Guatemala City to visit.
I really liked their father, and loved any chance I got to come and sit and talk with him. The daughters knew their social places during visits like this; Me, Dad, and Calderon were left to sit on the nicer seats by the fire and talk, while they would enter and leave the scene with tamales and drinks and softly-spoken inquiries as to our general level of comfort and whether we needed more to eat or drink. They'd then back out of the scene, ducking behind Dad and winking flirtaciously when they were pretty sure he couldn't see it. Not that he'd really care; if one of his daughters could land herself an American husband, he'd have been all for that.
We sat and talked for way too long, and as much as I enjoyed it, jousting good-naturedly over our differences in religious views, and laughing and joking around, I subconsciously knew we should be getting on to our last appointment.
That appointment was at Victor's house. See, as nice a guy as Victor was, he was also overly sensitive to perceived slights. Arriving late was taken by him as an indication that we really didn't value him or his friendship. Inattentiveness was another indication to him that we really didn't care too much for him. He was wrong, of course- we loved this guy. When he loosened up and stopped worrying about how people were treating him, he was more fun than anyone else in town. We cared for the guy like a brother. But always being watched for any indication of ingratitude was exhasusting, and it created a strange situation where, as much as we knew we'd enjoy the visit, we wanted to put it off for as long as we could, even though we knew that so doing would only make matters worse.
Finally, I presented the Snake House Dad with his gift, and then we wrapped up the conversation and politely made our departure, awkwardly declining the traditonal Christmas hugs from Alma and Sarah before finally relenting under their insistance and enjoying the carnal body press from the hottest babes in town. We did duck the kisses, though, much to their dismay.
Victor lived right around the corner from us, and we cautiously made our way over. I was bracing myself for the guilt onslaught as we approached his gate and called out to announce our arrival.
"We're here, Victor!" I called out, expecting to hear him say in response, "A la', Elders, we expected you 45 minutes ago!"
Instead, his voice drifted over from the fire in the back of the property. "Over here, Elders, come get some Tamales!"
Mmmmmm, tamales..... more tamales. Well, hell, it was Christmas, so we dished ourselves up a couple and sat down by the fire.
I let my eyes adjust and looked around the fire as we sat down. Victor was there, with his mother, and his niece, and then there was some guy I didn't recognize at all, sitting almost directly across from me.
Victor made an introduction. "This is Juan."
I nodded my head, stood up, circled the fire, and shook his hand.
Now that the fire wasn't between us, I could see him a little better, and I recognized him this time. Startled, I hesitated before I shook his hand, and then offered it and shook it firmly.
I hadn't recognized him at all, because I had never seen him bathed and in clean clothing. I had never been that close to him without smelling that acrid, oily stench that comes from rubbing alcohol sweating out of your pores all day every day. I had never heard him talk to me, only shout, or growl. I had never seen him quiet, or humbled, as he was tonight.
It was Mi Perrita. It was the Town Drunk. Cleaned up, smelling good, sitting quietly and politely, and enjoying a tamale with the family.
"Hi, Juan, nice to uh- meet you," I said.
"Nice to meet you too," he said back, keeping his head down. See, he knew I knew who he was. The whole damn town knew who he was. And as much as I wish I could say I had never laughed openly at him in public, it wouldn't be true.
Now, I had never openly MOCKED the man in public, but there had been times when he approached a group of us on the street and started to berate us, and in those times, it often seemed that the only was to defuse the situation was to laugh and walk away, or run, sometimes, if he was particularly loaded up and aggressive.
To me, I was laughing at the situation. Here I was, a middle class white kid from the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island, running down a street in Rio Bravo, Guatemala, with an angry drunk guy screaming at me. That was funny! So I laughed.
Mi Perrita- or Juan, as I guess he was actually called- didn't find it as funny. To him, he was the source of my laughter, not the situation itself.
And now here we were, face to face, on Christmas Eve, eating tamales around Victor's fire.
I sat down, and Victor pulled out his bible. "Let's read the Christmas story," he said, and we did, passing the bible around the fire, each of us reading a few verses from Luke Chapter 2 between staccato bursts of firecrackers out on the street behind us. Juan could read fast and loud, something not often seen in Guatemala, where 5th and 6th grade students often struggled to read a full sentence.
The night wore on, and the conversation was fun and lively. Then Juan told us his life story, which I only vaguely remember now. He was from neighboring El Salvador, and had somehow ended up in these parts on a work assignment of some sort. He started drinking while he was here, missing his family, and ended up a full-blown alcoholic, and now spent his days wandering the streets of Rio Bravo. He was embarrassed and ashamed, and cried openly as he got to that part of his story. We sat silently and stoicly, not really sure what to say.
He pointed to the fire and said he was was burning his clothes and starting over. I looked in, and sure enough, there were the last few burning rags of the outfit he had worn every day for months now, probably for years. His fresh clothes were Victor's, donated to him. Victor didn't announce that; I just recognized the shirt. Victor only had three or four shirts to begin with. I made a mental note to come back in the morning with some extra clothes.
Finally, the fireworks in the background reached such a crescendo that conversation became impossible. We stopped talking and walked out to the street with our own fireworks and added to the noise of celebration. Juan lit them and threw them like a champ. Victor danced around like a fool with his little niece as they blew off entire chains of them. It was midnight. The Christ child's birth had arrived.
We went home and went to bed. I wish I could tell you that Juan's life changed from that moment forward, but it didn't. By the end of the week he was walking the streets again, drunk and angry. But he was now a frequent visitor to Victor's home, between these drunken binges, being fed a fresh meal and getting fresh clothes from a family that really couldn't afford to give him either. Maybe he wasn't clean and sober overnight, but at least now he had a place to go to renew his commitments when he fell off the wagon, where he knew he was just loved and accepted, and not judged.
I left Rio Bravo 2 months after that and returned hom the the United States, and I have no idea what ever became of Juan. Maybe he finally cleaned up. More likely, he stayed drunk, and improved his life in fits and starts, only to fall back down again, over and over and over.
But more importantly, as I saw it, Juan now had friends, and family, that he could turn to. he had a home to go home to.
And Victor? Victor proved to me once again that most everybody I met in that country understood Jesus and his teachings a lot better than this arrogant white boy ever did. Well, I'm better off for it in the end.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
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