The boys are leaving their little school here in Guatemala. They have only been there half a year but have been very happy. Academically they have both excelled which really helped their confidence, especially Nico who learnt to read and also discovered that he is pretty good at maths, better than his smarty pants sabe lo todo big brother who excels in all the communication departments.
It is their last half day tomorrow but today they had a party. Unfortunately, the teachers in prepa, neglected to do a party for Nico so the pile of doughnuts we sent all got eaten by first grade and he was so upset that I had to give him 4 fairy cakes when he got home. Paulo´s class had all made him cards and given him little presents. A lot of them were quite religious giving him blessings and the virgin etc etc.
The most heart wrenching letter was from his little nobia Emilia who has been incredibly loyal these last few months! She printed it on the computer and had even put a photo, her email address and telephone number and a little cuddly present. This girl is not giving up on her man. And this is what she wrote translated from Spanish.
Feliz Viaje Paulo
You were the best friend I have ever had and I will never forget you. I am so happy that we got to spend this time together. Your friend Maria Emilia
Sweet Emilia ........ bless her cotton socks
I don´t really believe in moving cats from home to home too much, but definitely not from country to country. So although I am feeling guilty as hell, we are leaving our two cats behind, and so far I am not quite sure where! Every time I look at them I feel a huge pang of guilt. On top of all that, they seem to be making a huge play on the fact that they are happy and smug right now, like only cats can!
Chloe was from Aware, an animal rescue centre run by an eccentric Brit (you find these British animal lovers all over the world) and his Guatemalan wife in a place a few miles away from Antigua. Our dog had died leaving our first male cat Smudge a bit lonely. He had run away a couple of times looking for love but we always managed to find him. I remember once noticing his weighing up as he thought freedom and insecurity versus food and tough love from toddler Nico.
We took him up to Aware for the snip and by chance a kitten had been left at the end of the road a few days before. Anyway along came the noble and dignified Chloe, who was allowed one litter of kittens, one of which was such a beautiful Siamese generation throwback that we just had to keep her. Smudge disappeared and then there were two.
Mother and daughter have not always got on and I am not that surprised. Sophie is a naughty, cheeky, fish stealing youth who pushes in front of her mother at every opportunity. The children love her though as she deals with them with the same cocky cheek she uses on her mother. Chloe on the other hand has always been my cat. She waits for the children to go to bed and sneaks inside for a bit of sofa time with me.
Suddenly starting to snuggle up close .....they know you know ..........
Bizarrely, lately they have been being really affectionate towards each other which makes me think even more that I want them to stay together. I fear that everyone wants to adopt the pretty, cheeky Sophie and noble Chloe will be left to her fate like a poor Guatemalan campesina widow. Oh the guilt ………. I am just hoping that perfect home will appear and my cats can maintain the safe and easy life they have had with us because I ain’t getting on a plane to Cuba with 3 kids and 2 cats.
Here in Guatemala all my friends have nannies, niñeras, muchachas or whatever terminology you care to use. It is par for the course, and a well known advantage of the third world lifestyle – a hangover from a colonial past, or a reality of the present apartheid labour system. It is also a common pastime for mothers to get together and sit around complaining about their nannies´ incompetence. Not me …… no never. In this one matter I am quite splendidly smug.
My nanny is the BEST.
In my native country, to have a nanny is a status symbol of the super rich or royalty. It is also something which harks back to another time. An England of AA Milne and Winne the Pooh and Edwardian nurseries. Not one of my friends in the UK has one, or had one when they were children. I didn’t grow up in a house with a nanny, neither did my parents. And really, I did not expect to live over 6 years with a nanny coming into my house 5 and a half days a week. But serendipity played me a huge hand when I was introduced to Judith Han, who will always remain one of the most wonderful and amazing people to have come into my life. I don´t have a nanny, I have Juju. She has been my support system, my social services, my home grown remedy advisor, comedian and all round superstar. How will we all manage without her?
Smiling and laughing as usual .......
Juju, as she was christened by Paulo, has a Chinese grandfather and comes from a different part of Guatemala out towards the Pacific coast. She has a strong, happy face that always is a mili-second away from a giggle and we have laughed so much with her that I am seriously worried if I can live without her laughter, never mind anything else. Just listening to her good natured funny ramblings to my baby girl and my boys over the years is enough to put a smile on your face. But on top of that huge attribute, she is a person who can grow anything, fix anything, cook anything superbly, clean the house, mend clothes, ……… the list is endless, and all this while playing and chatting with my children.
Right now as I am writing, the rain is pouring down and all I can hear is the sound of Nico laughing with her. Yesterday she spent the afternoon playing football in the garden with Paulo whilst carrying a smiling Saskia. A mother of 6, she takes multi-tasking to a whole new dimension. She helps them with their Spanish homework, plays chess and Monopoly with them and hardly ever has raised her voice to them in 6 years. I wish I could say the same for myself.
I always thought how weird to have a stranger in your house. Not used to servants, it took me a while to get used to the concept, but if there was ever a person that I could hang out with peacefully it is Juju. On Saturday mornings she sneaks into my house so not to wake us up. Faultlessly thoughtful and incredibly kind, she regularly arrives with a little present from the packa for my children: some clothes, some books, toys, silly bands (the latest craze). She always knows the name of a plumber or a painter or a mechanic. She has plastered walls, macheted huge parts of the garden during the rainy season and is always available for more. She drops Christmas tamales at our house every year around midnight. She has come on trips with us to San Salvador and Atitlan. If you have Juju with you, a family holiday almost feels like a holiday! All my friends love Juju and she likes a lot of them too. Especially my great friend Felix who makes her laugh even more than usual.
5 of her 6 children on my famous sofa
Some Guatemalans would warn me about being too close and relaxed with my nanny. The apartheid rules are hard to shake. But bollocks I thought. I will eat lunch with my Juju trust her with my life and share my worries and my secrets. I went to her daughter´s wedding, her oldest son´s graduation ceremony, she received me home with baby Nico in my arms with Sopa de Gallina and so much love, and 4 years later Saskia too. Her husband helped us move house, has rescued me from flat tyres several mornings, and often plays football with our boys. All her children adore mine like siblings. And my children love hanging out in her house and garden with all the animals and friends and family. They even met the famous tacuazin in the jaula. Juju caught it while walking the two blocks home one night. She shared the hunting technique with me if anyone´s interested. You see there is just no end to her talents.
Juju in days gone by with my boys and her youngest
Husbands are husbands, and mine is a pretty good one most of the time, but over the last few years if you exclude time spent sleeping next to each other, I have easily spent more time with Juju than Rafa.
Juju has been there for me when no-one else has. She has seen my tears, two panzas, my pain, my laughter. My children are blessed to have known her and be loved by her. She has been my rock. To think that I will no longer have her strong light in my family is the thing that is breaking my heart these last few days. Juju we love you and we will miss you. What more can I say ……………..
Home is where the heart is, that´s what they say. But what exactly does that mean?
For Sale. The Chair Rafa has rocked for the last 7 years ......
A few days before my present home will be torn apart and broken up I have this weird nesting feeling. I want to enjoy these last few weeks in my little home before I have the task of making a home somewhere else. When I look at the larger items I think, well yes I know that some big strong men are going to come and take them away or we will sell them ……. but it is the endless amount of little things that are stressing me out.
I do not see myself as any kind of domestic goddess or material girl obsessed with possessions but I do know how to put my stamp on a home and make it cosy and personal. Now that I am looking around my present home and imagining that in a matter of days all this will be gone: sold, given away or heading on a truck to Puerto Barrios to cross the Caribbean and meet with the famous Cuban customs, it moved me to reflect on the many moves and homes of my life.
So here is the list of my many homes:
North Yorkshire England 11 Years, Co Durham England 7 years, Newcastle-upon-Tyne England 6 months, Dormagen West Germany 6 months, Nottingham England 3 years, South London 6 months, Rambouillet France 6 months, Paris France 2 years, Wissant France 1 year, West London 3 years, The Peak Hong Kong 1 year, East London 5 years, Antigua Guatemala 4 months, Buenos Aires 1 month (short but it felt like home!), San Lucas Guatemala 1 year, Antigua Guatemala 1 year, San Pedro El Alto Guatemala 5 years …………and now La Habana Cuba 4 years and then who knows ……. because we don´t.
So I have been in my present home 5 years, quite a chunk of my life and lasting early memories for my boys. Two out of my three children learned to walk here. All 3 of them learned to talk here. One of our cats was born here. I went to 5 Icaro film festivals whilst living here and twice to Guadalajara festival. We had visitors from all over the world sleeping in our little guest room. We had a few good parties in the garden, some planned some not! I grew a lot of flowers and herbs. We had too many piñatas!! I painted walls and tables. Threw together quite a few meals in my tiny kitchen. Designed my own furniture and had some made. We lit fires and sat by the fireplace many nights. Paulo lost 3 of his teeth here. Saskia was conceived here. We all survived Agatha the storm and a whole load of other stuff ……..
A favourite corner of our garden
So what does it really mean to be a homemaker? For a lot of us women it sounds like a nasty 50s concept of being a wife but to me it means something more. For me it is how you make your home feel, as though it has a heart and soul. A place people want to come round to see you. Primarily, a place where your family can be safe and happy and together.
We had a message last week that Cuba will not let us move our things to Cuba. I spent 24 hours horrified that I would have to sell all my precious and personal things and arrive in Cuba with a couple of suitcases and 3 kids. Was I a material girl or a sentimental nomad clinging on to my possessions like an orphan?
If Cuba possessed Ikea, ToyRUs, Ebay and the packa it could be possible to tell the children wave goodbye to your bicycles, your strange items of artwork, your favourite toys but alas Cuba is not a place you go to buy stuff and whatever stuff you do find it does not come cheap. Right now this family does not own a property anywhere in the world and soon, for a few weeks, we truly will be homeless all 5 of us. but we don´t have much! Which means that what we do have means a lot to us.
Was I being a material girl? I felt like a princess insisting on moving my caravan of possessions! What about the Lego, the wooden train set brought down from New York in the suitcase of a noble friend, all my pictures and photos? The second hand books bought and trafficked back to Guate in my suitcase. My sofa from San Juan that I designed with all my love, imagining the hours I would spend on it with my children. The salvaged old cupboard in the living room that Rafa rescued. Our old door coffee table that has seen many spillages and naughty boys climbing all over it. Our incredibly comfortable bed that we love to come home to. Saskia´s cot that has been in Rafa´s family for decades used by all my children. The boys matching blue wooden beds given to them by their abuelos and Tia Maria Luisa, lovingly restored and painted ………….
Maybe I am a bit of material girl but my beautiful things are not worth a great deal of money to anyone else but us, and they all have their stories. As the song goes ……… these are a few of my favourite things. I am not willing to lose or leave them in a warehouse to rot or be forgotten in a country where we do not live anymore.
Does this sofa and table look flashy??!
Rafa is not a man who enjoys consuming, he prides himself on his lack of possessions. I was a little nervous that he would make me feel un-buddhist but now the father and the husband knows his family needs their things to feel at home.
So we have decided to take our stuff, the things we need or love and see what trials and tribulations we will have to go through to get them into Cuba. One option we have been told is to file much of the children´s toys and clothes as future donations – fantastic I said. This I am more than happy to do, its what I do anyway. When we leave Cuba in 4 years the children will be older and we can shed quite happily all the stuff they have grown out of.
Anyway, we are still waiting to see if we will get permission to enter Cuba with our things if not we are stuck with the lottery of customs and keeping our fingers crossed that we get a nice one on a good day. Otherwise we may end of very out of pocket.
But please Cuba, we are not flash or ostentatious capitalists just a very normal (??) family of 5. And Cubans, I would love to invite you round to sit on my beloved sofa and have a cup of my English tea in one of my English china mugs given to me by my Aunt. I will even bake you a Victoria sponge with jam and cream in my cake tin bought in Guate. I promise …..
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I would like to begin this post by telling anybody who stumbles on to my site by accident that you should visit La Antigua Guatemala. It is a unique, incredibly beautiful and special place. When I am an old lady, and still relatively mobile, I shall return to spend the winter months here and potter around the colonial cobbled streets hanging out in my favourite places with a few of the wonderful people that became my good friends. Also you can´t beat the amazing volcanoes that surround the city.
View of Antigua
I arrived in Antigua in October 2003 and already had a good Guatemalan contact through a friend in England. Through him, I met a handful of good people who have remained in my life on and off over the years. But that was in the early days when I had come for a 6 month adventure, and not to settle down and have 3 children, which is ultimately what I ended up doing.
Antigua is certainly not representative of Guatemala. It is described by some as Disneylandia, and in many ways this is true. You can enjoy a certain kind of life here that you cannot find in most of the rest of the country. Smart restaurants and shops on every street corner. A McDonalds, a Burgerking, 3 or 4 overpriced delis, travel agents, gift shops, silver and jade shops, art galleries, clothes boutiques, every kind of hotel, millionaires who have come to live like kings in this paradise, lost in the last centuries. And most importantly, it is a wonderful place to stroll around with or without children. There are not many Central American towns that can rival its beauty. It boasts magnificent plazas, bougainvillea and jacaranda-lined streets and easy going, smiley people who have mostly accepted the ex-pat invasion here for better or for worse.
Life is not always stimulating but it is an easy life and a lot of people get stuck here for that reason. Unfortunately, not all of these people are the most talented, although many of them, God bless them, really believe they are. When I lived in Hong Kong there were some wonderful expressions for the passing ex-pats. As condescending as it gets, my favourite expression was FILTH. Failed in London try Hong Kong. A friend commented that people come to Antigua because they are wanted or unwanted. Wanted by the law, or unwanted by everyone else. After she introduced me to this expression, I went through a period of meeting some of the weirdest characters of my life and developed my own expression. The 3 Fs. The fakes, the freaks and the felons. People come to Antigua and they reinvent themselves in more ways than one. The small fish in a small town can easily become a big fish with the right amount of bullshitting. People acquire more servants than they ever dreamed of and something else happens to them, the princess complex. The fact that they have more control over other people can make them a little deluded as to their own importance, and then there really is no going back.
Although I appreciated the ease and beauty of Antigua I can´t say it was ever my kind of place. Brought up in another beautiful small town in northern England by 18 years old I ran from small town life. I was drooling for the city, the gritty, the glamourous, the ethnic minorities, the underground music scene………
I like to be a small fish in a big sea, lucky enough to bump into some big fish worth listening to and I suppose when I left London my life reflected that. I was a few years down the road into a new career path and although I still hadn´t established myself I was meeting some big players in my field. Writers, researchers and visionaries that were inspiring. I was even lucky enough to have found a couple of mentors who were benevolent enough to give me their time and wisdom. When I arrived in Antigua to take a 6 month break and carry on with some of my own research I was still buzzing with these ideas and it was my research that led me to meet my husband on that fateful day 27th February 2004. But I met my husband in Casacomal in Zone 10 in the City and discovered that another world existed outside the slightly fake one in Antigua. The world of my husband and his friends in film and art and embassies. My spanish was still rubbish and it took a while for me to join my husband in his social life in the city, so Antigua was my goldfish bowl.
During my first few months in Antigua, pre motherhood, although I was having fun, I actually felt repressed, limited, frustrated. I couldn´t always be myself and I would have to escape for a few days to have my adventures. I felt as though I had made a mistake. I was too old to hang out with the freshfaced backpackers, to fall for the charms of the young Guatemalans who wanted me to buy them drinks, or even less so for the sad old guys that had come here to pick up women. Too old and cynical for this trip. I was bored out of my mind with the guitar playing, sad faced guys in shabby bars. I missed the cosmopolitan underground of London and my other favourite haunts. Ironically just after I met my husband I already had a flight booked to Buenos Aires as I thought I would go crazy if I spent one more week in the one horse town. Little did I know …..
( Incidentally Buenos Aires delivered everything that I was looking for when I arrived in March 2004, but that is another story ….. coming soon).
Suddenly I had a new life and finding myself back in Antigua in a completely different guise as an accidental (serendipity) mother of a Guatemalan from the city, meant my loneliness drove me to look for things for my children and myself to break the domestic grind of two baby boys. My enthusiasm and openness led me at times into a bland world where I would find myself at the usual Antigua events but feeling as though I was having the blood drained slowly out of me as my eyes glazed over. I was becoming a zombie!
A large proportion of people have come here to keep on living a life of suburban gringodom. La Antigua can wrap you up again in a safe blanket of ignorance which, lets face it, is what most people want. And if I let slip that my husband was an ex guerrilla it would ruffle feathers. My husband had warned me, but at times I would think why do I have to keep it quiet like a dirty secret. I am not ashamed of him, in fact the opposite. When his film came out, I admit I was a little worried that old hatreds die hard but when you watch Las Cruces you find a balanced film more about philosophy than politics.
We now live just outside Antigua and I have given my 3 children the first precious years of their lives in this beautiful place and that has been my mission, to share with them the paradise, as seen through their innocent eyes. They know nothing of the reality of the violence, hardships and sadness. Unfortunately they have seen a lot of guns, overheard a few whispered conversations about kidnappings and shootings, and at times witnessed their mother´s alienation and disappointment. Their father, well he is older and wiser and knows how this part of the world works.
My husband wasn´t too happy to leave his cabaña just outside the city and embrace Antigua life. He was a city boy who already had a great social life established around his world of films and culture, and old and loyal school friends. I, on the other hand, needed the beauty and convenience of Antigua in my first wobbly steps into motherhood. I have never regretted the decision to set up home here although at times the small town mentality has driven me crazy, but I have been lucky enough to find the good people living on the edge. But honestly I had to metaphorically lift up stones and look behind hedges to find my like minded people, and I did. They are an eclectic bunch, but all the better for it, my friends.
But on a light hearted note. Come and live in Antigua if:
– you are a man looking to pull. For some reason there are way to many pretty and interesting woman living here that strongly outnumber the good available men. I was one of the lucky ones!
– you enjoy living in a clique! (pronounced like leek not click). Antigua like all small towns has a multitude of claustrophobic cliques with the usual bored bitching and backstabbing that goes along with it. Sometimes you get into one without realising and it is not always easy to get out. Take care!
– you want to get pregnant. The men down here seem to have pretty good sperm! Although be careful good sperm does not always lead to good genes! I got lucky again.
– you are Catholic. Semana Santa and Hermano Pedro put this place on the catholic map and the cathedrals and churches are wonderful.
– you are an evangelical missionary. Plenty of your sort down here enthusiastically wearing T shirts and building churches and schools where they can put the fear of God into people. You´ll feel right at home!
– you want to recreate a certain kind of imported condo suburban life. You can hang out with bland but very NICE people just like you, have more servants, still buy from Pricemart and Walmart and Trader Joe´s, fly to Miami to do your shopping and have cheaper medical insurance, botox and plastic surgery, work less hours, have more servants, drink cheaper coffee.
– you are an alcoholic. Being a drunk is cheaper and easier in Antigua and there are plenty of bars to be thrown out of, but if you have enough money that will never happen. Its a small town so you never have too far to stumble home. If you pass out in your own vomit and pee in the gutter, don´t worry its a regular occurrence, people will walk round you or step over you.
– you are a painter. Its beautiful and peaceful and you can rent studio space cheaply. The colours and volcanoes are amazing. Also you´ll probably get a solo exhibition in no time in one of the many galleries or bars. But you´ll have to deal with the fact that most of the people are there for the free wine and not their love of art!
– you are a bleeding heart or need some work experience to get you that university place. Plenty of opportunity to get involved with niños in the huge NGO industry that surrounds Antigua and Lake Atitlan. You can talk up your good work in the bars around town too if that is your way.
– you are a middle aged pseudo intellectual male. You can hang out in a bar and enjoy the sound of your own voice seducing naive young women, but boring the pants off the rest of us with your arrogant inability to listen. If you can´t bore enough people in the bar you can even write in a magazine.
– you are one of those people who thinks the world owes you something, you can come and beg here, pretty successfully from what I have seen. Beg for a job, somewhere to live, beg for expensive hospital treatments, flights, meals and many free drinks. I do not understand why these people chose to come here and moan about their sad lives, it seems terribly inappropriate if you look at the struggles of the average local but I suppose everyone deserves a helping hand.
– you are looking for a comfortable base to tour around the region. Antigua is the perfect place to wash your clothes, chill out, eat some good food, take some Spanish classes, potter around, watch some films, replenish your backpack with some vital bits and pieces etc, etc. That was my plan, but serendipity got in the way!
– you are a single mother who wants to work from home. Never an easy thing to do but Antigua supplies you with great internet access, great nannies and hired help and everything else that you might need at a more competitive price.
– you are a crazy new age freak. You will find it all here and great prices. You can do yoga, massage, reiki, crystals, love therapy (??!), meditation, Buddhism for westerners and hot rocks can even be thrown at you if you so desire and a whole bunch of stuff including shamans real and fake. You can join the party and talk up your new found peace or like me find the good people and keep it to yourself ……
– you are a millionaire who pretends to be Indiana Jones but really is stealing and smuggling artifacts from a country where corrupt people can feel at home!
or, last but not least
– you are a thirty something London girl who fell for a guy from the big bad City and needed somewhere beautiful, safe and convenient to bring up your children (and find a great nanny).
So thanks Antigua and your people (especially our nanny!) for seeing me through these years and sorry to our friends in Guatemala City that I wish I had seen more. We are leaving but we will be back. Besos y abrazos.
If ever there was a girl born to go and live in Cuba it is my little Saskia.
All my children enjoy music and dancing like their parents but she has taken this love to an extreme. She lives for music, even when nobody is paying her any attention.
I knew I was in trouble months ago when she used to gyrate to the liquidiser in the morning when I was making her breakfast. A random passing motorbike could get her going, that´s how desperate she was to find a beat. When she went to her first Piñata she was fascinated when everybody sang Happy Birthday. She only likes watching TV when there is musical accompaniment. Do you remember that Abba Sang Thank you for the Music? (go on course you do!) There is a line in it about describing how one of the Swedish popsters could dance before they could walk and sing before they could talk. Well that´s my daughter, she really could dance before she could walk. And now that she can walk she wants to walk right off and find out where the party is ……….
Apart from the fact that she is only 14 months old and can dance Reggaeton with the best of them, she has other things about her that remind me of Cuba. She is always hot hot hot, in fact a little bit sweaty sometimes. She wants to hang out in the calle as much as possible and often is found banging on the front gate of the house or standing next to the car waiting to be whisked off to hang out in the streets. When I take her walking around Antigua in the mornings she shouts across streets to complete strangers waving at them like old friends. She has a certain confidence and languidness that reminds of the Caribbean, saying hey boy I got all the time I want to hang out in the streets looking good and shaking my hips.
Hanging out in the Calle
So we will dance in Cuba Saskia and I. We will find our groove or in my case get back my groove. Although I find any excuse to get up and dance here in Antigua it is not something that has been in my life as much as in my London, Paris, Barcelona days. In fact the last time I got up and danced here, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a bunch of middle aged po-faced tourists staring at me as though I had just been let out of some hardcore rehab centre, which sometimes isn’t far from the truth. I need dance rehab!! Every year my husband runs the film festival here in Guatemala and always has great bands and DJs and I am sure I am beginning to get a reputation as his crazy wife who makes everyone dance. I can take a while to get those Guatemalans on the dance floor but I am sure I won´t have this problem in Habana!
I wanna be in the calle
But back to Saskia my Cubanita. She also loves to talk like many Cuban although right now it is some wonderful language of her own peppered with a lot of Mamas. And she does enjoy food like a Cuban with the enthusiasm of someone who is not sure when they will next be able to get hold of a mango or an avocado or anything right now!
They say children open a lot of doors in Cuba. I think my Saskia will be banging on doors looking for the party. I am just glad that we are not in Cuba 10 years later because the way she dances I might have been leaving Habana an abuelita! (note 1)
But one thing is sure. Saskia will be the Cubanita of the family a walking, talking, dancing doll giving it back as good as she gets. And maybe, just maybe her Mama too!
When asked about our move to Cuba my sons always respond with ………… our house will be right on the beach! People even react to me in a similar way especially when they see the photos. It is believed to be some kind of Nirvana living right on the beach and my cynical side (whom I am trying to keep under wraps more and more) says yeah great but that wears off in a couple of weeks …… and I won´t have internet. If a psychic had told me 10 years ago that I would be living in a house on the Caribbean with my Guatemalan husband and 3 children I would have asked for my money back or paid them more (not quite sure). Now that I am thinking about it, I did visit a psychic once when I was living in Hong Kong and contrary to my cynical self, really enjoyed it as well as finding it quite useful.
In Hong Kong in 97 post handover days, I didn´t live on the beach but right on top of the Peak looking down over the city. It was a turning point in my life. I was with the wrong man, still doing the wrong job and living in what I called (at the time) the armpit of capitalism. Most of the Hong King Chinese made it quite clear that they were more interested in money than making friends with me, and I longed for the Europe I had left behind. I ended up hanging out with (cocaine-fuelled) British journalists, French ex pats working in wine and fashion, and an eclectic selection of artists with their Asian girlfriends. I refused to hang out with the bankers that my ex knew. It was a strange year that unhinged me slightly, mainly to do with the toxic relationship I was in. Anyway, one day I found myself catching the ferry to one of the islands to visit a psychic. What have I got to lose I thought? She was not a little chinese woman as I expected but an Australian about the same age as my mother and actually, bizarrely looking a little bit like my mother. I spent 3 hours with this woman and was intrigued that she seemed to know a lot about me. She was quite radical and told me that I had to change my man, my job, my country. Quite risky really as for all she knew I had just started a new life with said man. I caught the ferry back to Hong Kong island feeling calm and cleansed and changed on the way to go and see The Opera, La Boheme. Needless to say that all things she warned me about did change, it was hard to get on that plane alone back to London, apply to go back to University and put myself through a masters, buy my own flat, keep away from more destructive men, start a new career and then further down the line, get on a plane to Guatemala. But I did it.
I feel as though I am at another turning point in my life right now and I want to seize this moment too! Yes I know I will be back to dial up connection internet, no skype or much facebook, no supermarkets, no shopping malls …… but I have to see this as a good thing. I know I need to take my life to another spiritual level for myself and my family and yes maybe my lifelong goal of trying to meditate will happen in Cuba sitting in my garden listening to the waves. Or maybe I´ll just turn into a cigar smoking, rum drinking, bar dancing lush ………….. hmmm. Or maybe something inbetween.
A message just arrived to remind me of what is good about facebook, a friend from another great turning point in my life; in Buenos Aires, when I was discovering that I was going to be a mother. It was Marianita who I woke up to show my pregnancy test, it was she I dragged to a health food restaurant to sit and contemplate in a trance-like state my soon to be changing life. Special times in a special city. One day I will write about my first wonderful month of motherhood in a city that opened its arms to me and my little panza.
Anyway so far as to say that I will not have much time to waste on facebook, maybe one day a week I will check in. I just tried to trim down my friends list (harder than I thought) remembering that we do still have those old fashioned communications called emails and I will have this secret blog ………….
Another Semana Santa, Holy Week or Easter has just passed me by in Antigua. For those who don´t know, the Semana Santa processions here are one of the highlights of the Catholic Church calendar in this part of the world. It is a spectacle of flower carpets, incense, purple robed cucurucho (people that carry the anda, the procession float I suppose we would call it). The purple is worn until Good Friday and then apparently they change to black. I have to admit I hadn´t even noticed this important dress change. Antigua is invaded by thousands of pilgrims and tourists and you have to forget about driving anywhere for a few days. People take to their bicycles, motorbikes or walk. So far as to say, it really is a big deal and Guatemalans fly home from all over the world to take part in this event.
Semana Santa for me (oh so spiritual that I am) has begun to mean lots of hassle and no nanny for 4 days but this being my last one for the foreseeable future, I did plan to get out and about and see some processions with the tribe but was struck down with food poisoning for 2 days which destroyed my will to fight my way into town through the crowds. I was planning to make it to one of the processions at dusk when the lights, the incense smoke and the beauty of the whole thing even makes this confirmed atheist feel a little spiritual!
Although I am not religious I have to admit to liking the Catholics more after my 7 years here in Guatemala. I am not sure why, but it may be something to do with their history and their discretion. My friends who are catholics here never try to justify themselves, their faith is something private and they are not interested in preaching to others. It is something that most of them feel is so culturally embedded in them that they would never question it. I even have to admit to being a little bit jealous of their faith and the peace and composure that comes with it. Also you have to admire the beautiful churches and cathedrals that fill Antigua, if nothing else.
On the other hand the evangelicals who are down here taking over, scare the living daylights out of me! This fundamental, fervent, self righteous bunch never miss a moment to tell you all about their faith and why they are better than anyone else. Missionaries with T shirts that proclaim to the world that they love God and he loves them more than anyone else. I´ve seen it all! Huge grotesque churches with multi-storey car parks shooting up where money could be better spent on education and food for the poor.
The evangelicals were the ones who were killing in the name of God as far as I can work out.
Anyway enough about that and on to another Antigua subject. The NGO industry! Antigua is full of people who have come here to get a do-gooder star on their CV. If you want to skip around in your own moral high ground for a few months this really is the place to do it. There are no end of people here hanging out in bars talking up all the good work they are doing. The longer I have been here the more I have realised that the people who really are doing good work are the ones with the lowest profiles and the most humility and to those people I take off my hat! You know who you are my friends 😉 However for every one of those there seems to be about 100 self righteous dullards propping up the bar night after night telling everyone about all their good work and their hearts bleeding fake blood all the way home to their moralising little beds.
I tend to steer clear of these kind of people especially as my connection to Guatemala is profoundly deeper ………. my man and my three gorgeous hybrids. I sometimes feel that I know more about Gautemala and it´s psyche than these zealots as I married it and gave birth to it. But hey who am I to get on my high horse?
So it was with this jaded attitude that I discovered Dita and her skirts and fell in love with her project. This project reached out to me as a mother of Guatemalans and a discerning fashionista. I would not be seen dead in most of the hippy, traveller rubbish that gets peddled everywhere. But these skirts are BEAUTIFUL and look good on everybody. So here I am plugging them big style:
1000 Faces is a community-based initiative that is designed to help provide economic support and stability to local Mayan communities around Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Each of the unique skirts, made partially with recycled materials, are sewn and hand-embellished by “Single Mayan Mothers” from villages around the lake. The 1000 Faces project is as complex and interdependent as the threads we weave together day by day to make a Skirt That Makes Sense. When you purchase a Skirt That Makes Sense, you help weave together the threads of nutrition, economic support and stability, and environmental protection.
Check out the website above and click on links to see her collection of very cool designs ……..skirts (my favourites), T shirts, bags , scarves and dresses.
One of the things that got me off my sick bed this semana santa was hooking Dita up with a new friend in town and starting to sell her skirts, brainstorm ways that we can help her wonderful project and share and show them to as many stylish discerning women we could. It is very much a work in progress and if anybody is interested in a skirt let me know!
I would like to dedicate this post to three women …….my oldest and dearest Guatemalan friend Fatima, who has always shown me the love and compassion of a good catholic woman and my new friends Lissette and Dita who have the energy and passion to help other women in this country by giving them the respect they deserve.
I had no specific plans to emigrate from my country and if I did, in my daydreams, it was to my neighbouring countries of France or Spain that I pictured myself setting up home. I had lived or spent enough time in these countries already, enough to feel comfortable with their culture and lifestyle and more importantly, comfortable with the fact that they knew my culture the good and the bad. I always imagined that I would stay close enough to my country so that phonecalls and quick trips home for family occasions and weddings and laughs would never be a problem. But following my philosophy of serendipity I always had a sneaky suspicion that I would not be living in suburban England. And also, maybe more importantly my biggest fear was boredom, of ending up like Lucy Jordan of Marianne Faithful´s famous song. That awful feeling that you would just get to a certain age and realise that you hadn´t lived and done all the things you wanted. I had already achieved many of Lucy´s missed dreams including driving through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair . (see note 1)
When I set off for Antigua Guatemala for a 6 month break I had no idea that I was making such a huge step into a completely new life on a new continent. (check out the archives on this site and you can see how I arrived). For me the geographical isolation was also a huge physical and cultural barrier in this part of the world. Two huge oceans separate this continent from the rest of the world. On my other travels I always felt that I was connected by land and small sea hops from London to Beijing, Paris to Cape Town, Yorkshire to Afghanistan. Here on this continent it is easy to forget that other continents exist, especially with the empirical mass culture exporters who live right above us. In Guatemala, such a small country, you can swim in both the Atlantic and the Pacific in the same day, if you set your mind to it or own a helicopter!
Now after nearly 8 years here, who am I? I gave birth to 3 children, learnt the language and the cultural issues, tried to make sense of the society whilst recognising the history, stopped being Jo (at times) and became Josefina or Doña Jose, my Spanish speaking alter ego!
I know that I will never know how it feels to be Guatemalan but my affection and acceptance of the country that gave me my husband and my children and the last 8 years of my life has been part of a long and interesting journey.
It has not been easy and I missed my country and my continent so much it hurt at the beginning, like a physical pain. I missed the OLD WORLD, the British sense of humour, the great music that enters your psyche like osmosis, cricket, pubs, Sunday newspapers, delicious apples, the best cheese (700 of them!), from the gritty working classes to the eccentric aristocrat I missed them all. I got tired of people talking to me every day of dollars, estados and gringos. I was frustrated that people knew very little or nothing about my culture even the ones that should. Generally people here view us as all the same. We are all gringos, white people from the North. I rarely get any acknowledgement of my own culture. A poor muslim peasant knows more about Britain than a rich Latina. How could I explain that this gringa felt more comfortable with an educated Iranian or Bosnian than someone from Idaho who looks just like her.
But I am who I am ……. a foreign mother who does not know if she will ever live in her home country again. What does that mean? How do I instill my children with the Britishness that made me who I am? These days the two older ones speak less and less English to each other as they always used to (mother tongue), their apron strings are now more elastic and Spanish is the language. Last year I only managed a trip home with my baby girl and left my two boys for two weeks. They missed out on their little month of immersion in all things British. Which can be anything from Bagpuss (note 4) to the use of the word bollocks!
I did not flee into exile from my country like my husband and his family but I live in serendipity exile never-the-less and the feeling is similar. I have never been a mother anywhere else and I will always be grateful for the kindness and acceptance that I have received from the ordinary people of Guatemala. Will I find it difficult to be a mother anywhere else now? Or does the emigre mother live in a different bubble of multi-culturalism which at times feels as though I don´t belong anywhere anymore ……….. just the unbearable lightness of being. (see Note 2)
As the last weeks of my adventure here in Guate are dwindling I wonder how I will live without the volcanoes, the sweet kind humble people, radiant colours of the flowers, the fun of market day and our nanny who symbolically represents to me and my family the best of everything this beautiful and troubled country has to offer. (see note 3)
So Cuba here we come, I hope now I have learnt how to move as an emigre to see the best in the cultures that I immerse myself in. As my husband said all those years ago (in a wise and reassuring moment) when I shared by deepest fears about leaving Europe.
You are not losing your world you are gaining another.
My family and I will be enjoying a few weeks in my old world this summer with family and friends before heading to a fast-changing Cuba for four years.
Note 1 The Ballard of Lucy Jordan was one of my mother´s favourite Marianne Faithful songs and I listened to it with her as a teenager and the lyrics never left me. A surburban housewife full of regrets for the things she never did. I don´t think my mother felt like Lucy Jordan but maybe all of us mothers have Lucy Jordan days! I was determined to never feel as trapped as she did.
Note 2 I read Milan Kundera´s book The Unbearable Lightness of Being at an early age and at the time I felt the power of his writing and began to understand the importance of identity for people forced to change their lives due to ideological or geographical issues. One of the characters ends up in California looking out to the Pacific and feeling not the freedom but the unbearable lightness of being as she thinks about her old world and the people that inhabited it.
Note 3 I will be writing more about Juju ………..
Note 4 Bagpuss is classic BBC children´s TV from the 70s
