It isn't the battery

Well, last week I was in Cunen, in the Quiche, a long way from anywhere.

I was going to meet Reina and Kat in Los Encuentros and go up with them, but they didn't show up, so I took a bus. We stopped for a break and who was outside my window but Katherine! They hadn't been able to get the car started at first, so they were late. We got to the center in Cunen around 430, and shortly thereafter it stormed and poured like there was no tomorrow.

The next morning, the truck wouldn't start. Again. So they replaced the battery, while Kat and I were picking Jacaranda flowers to use as an anti-amoeba medicine. Well, after replacing the battery and tinkering for a good while, then recharging the battery, the truck started. Briefly. At this point I'm thinking, I don't think it's the battery. I guess alternator. But Pedro is convinced.

The next morning, guess what? Truck won't start. Must be the battery. So we get someone else to give us a ride into an aldea called San Juan Xeul. Not actually into the aldea, just as close as you can get on a road. Then you hike 20 minutes down the hill. We were planting lemongrass--good for the stomachaches everyone seems to have here, because of the water. But the dirt here is incredibly hard and rocky, so we dug big holes to fill with compost and real dirt. This took all of Wednesday, and we still didn't finish.

Wednesday night Emilio, who knows about plants, showed up. And also, the truck had been jumpstarted so that Reina could drive to Xebul, but once there, they stopped for a few minutes and it wouldn't start again. But it isn't the alternator, nope, it's the battery. Thursday morning we were in S.Juan Xeul finishing the holes and planting the lemongrass. That afternoon Emilio jumpstarted the truck again and we left together. At this point he thought the alternator was the problem, but Reina had somehow decided it was the alarm. Oy, veh. Hopefully the thing got fixed.

Kat and I spent the night in Antigua with a friend of hers, then she went to a meeting of the Canadians who are in Guatemala, and I went to Monterrico. I stayed in a hostel on the beach and hung out with a girl named Marta. Good fun, although the trip back was a wonderful Murphy's law-in-Guatemala. Missed bus connections, broken busses, full-to-bursting busses...the whole thing.

Monday I got to Xela to work at Proecos. Unfortunately, Tina, the woman who's in charge is in the US right now for a month and a half and the project is kind of in chaos right now. SO....I decided to try it for at least this week, see if there are things I can do and learn, and then decide what I'm doing. The place is beautiful, Esvaldo, Tina's husband, who's now de facto keeping the project going, is nice. I just don't really know what I'd be doing, and neither does anyone, until we hear back from Tina by email. A bit nutty. So I may be going back to Cedescri. It would be nice to go back to Cunen...but we'll just wait and see.

Oh, and everyone who emailed me but didn't get a response, I'm sorry, I read all your emails, but all last week the power was hit-and-miss so I didn't write many replies. Also, my SURF proposal wasn't accepted, so if any of you lovely people know of summer job opportunities, let me know.