Stuck in Guatemala# 2

Hello from my beautiful quarantine

Things are going a little more on lockdown, but not as chaotic as other places. The local Tiendas are open. The Mercado was open until this afternoon. It is now closed until next week and will only be open for limited hours. Restaurants are still doing takeaways. There has been one case in a nearby town in the lake so the streets are being fumigated. We are now supposed to be wearing masks. The police are insisting on this and will do a temperature check every now and then to people. The Mayan and Amerindian communities seem to be really upset with the masks. I have heard this and I noticed a poor little girl crying to her father in Kimche or some other Amerindian language when I walked into the store to stock up on a couple of items for the next few days. So it is difficult as some people are more comfortable with the mask and others are very uncomfortable seeing people wear them.

Well, the healing crystal people and the hysterical GET-ME-HOME-NOWpeople seem to have been successful with border crossing. I owe them more credit than I initially gave them. Good for them! Enjoy Trumpland and no toilet paper. I am not sure how much longer the border will be open. Rumors have said it closes this evening, but they are still letting people cross to catch flights. I still think staying put is the better option. I don’t have a life or death emergency to leave. I am not one of those families with kids that were stuck here. I don’t have to return to a job that will fire me. So, I am lucky about that. I should probably think before I mock these other people. Although, sometimes it is too easy. Guatemalan airspace will open in 10 days. I will have to do another quarantine when I arrive anyway and who the hell knows what the situations there is going to be like, so I am not enthusiastically rushing back.

The main concerns and fears that I have with staying are that I could force to be here for a very long time, supplies run out, and things get volatile. I have not seen this yet and do not think this could be the case if I am really am able to leave in 2-4 weeks. But in the event it is a couple of months or more, I am not sure I would want to test the situation. There are some villages and towns in Guatemala nearby that are trying to propagate the locals into thinking it is the fault of the foreigners that the virus is here. These claims are mostly false as all the cases here are from Guatemalan citizens that were recently in Spain visiting family. I don’t doubt some foreigners brought in the virus as well. It wouldn’t be the first time Europeans brought diseases to this part of the world. But, to have people go by on trucks on loudspeaker try to reinforce this us vs them situation scares me.

As much as I abhor this behavior from anybody, I realized a lesson could be derived from this. Trump and many right-wing European politicians go around all the time, saying that immigrants carry diseases. Well, now some people here are saying this about us! My how the tables turned! I know it is just a few people with this mentality there, but it gives a tiny taste of what a Mexican or Central American immigrant in the states goes through daily. Of course, these loudspeakers do not come close to the terror many immigrants and refugees are facing, but they sure as hell still manage to scare me. I have not encountered a more uncertain time since I was helping along the borders in 2015 at the height of the refugee crisis. However, I am managing. I am listed with the embassy. They are discussing sending a flight of some sort in the next week. I don’t know how much I can rely on this, but it is out there.
In the meantime, I will keep writing, doing my work remotely, and applying for all kinds of new projects taking things day by day. Peace out everyone and take care of yourselves