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.
Everyone is telling me that I will be arriving in Cuba for a time of great change and not all of those changes for the good, depending on who you are talking to. The Cubans apparently are going to go through some tough times as the paternal arm of communism untangles itself and they are left with …….. who knows? Rations are going, enterprise is arriving, property can be bought and sold and a lot more tourists will be coming they say. But in the meantime I think your average Cuban will have to suffer to move forward and that does not always seem fair.
Meanwhile in Guatemala the elections are approaching and I realise once more how rightwing this part of the world is. It seems incredibly possible that they could elect rightwing candidates involved in the genocide of the 80s and there is lots of finger pointing from the right to people who were involved with the guerrilla, as if it is an automatic given that to be involved in the guerrilla makes you more dysfunctional than the people involved with the genocide. Otto Perez Molina you know what you did in the name of God we have film footage! When I talk about what I call the rightwing here, they are the kind of people that make Margaret Thatcher look like a pussy cat. I do not think that even she would have wanted to kill a trade unionist. Maybe bop them over the head with her handbag if she got the chance but I don´t think she would have been up for massacring a few mining villages up North where I am from, even though they gave her a big headache and did not go easily into a future of mass unemployment and social deprivation. But I digress …….
When I mention that I am going to live in Cuba, a lot of Guatemalans (most of my friends excluded) have a reaction that I am beginning to find of sociological interest. It is a kind of trigger response. The very mention of Cuba seems to make them nervous. It is as if they have to justify their country´s inability to move out of its poverty and narco violence and corruption by pointing out how great it is that they can buy what they want in the ever increasing shopping malls in Guatemala city or in the pretty tourist shops and delis of Antigua. How they are free and can fly wherever they want. (I do correct them on this one though as now any Cuban can leave Cuba for a holiday but like most Guatemalans they don´t have the money). Anyway, these people don´t seem to have a clue how most of their country lives and that maternal mortality, malnutrition and domestic violence and murder rates are all on the up to name a few social problems. But evidently as long as the richer people can buy what they want and even fly to Miami to do it, that makes all the other things ok, because they are free to consume. But right now in Cuba nobody is starving, Guatemala however has a child malnutrition problem that is worse than a lot of African countries.
I begin to think about it a lot this week in the last balmy days before the rains arrive watching the fireflys play in the back garden. Thinking am I one of those people? Selfish and happy to live in a bubble. I have to admit I do like shopping (but in the markets and boutiques of Europe looking for a steal or something entirely unique that I will treasure all my life …… rather than in Gap or Target or Dolce Gabana). As long as I can buy my nice things for me and my family am I happy to live in a country blighted by violence and poverty? Can I ignore the realities of Guatemalan society, as long as I surround myself with good people and beautiful things and fine wine? Issues such as gendercide and chronic malnutrition. A people who have grown stunted for generations due to the slavery and apartheid they find themselves born into. It is their fault they should have less children. It is their fault they don´t know how to eat properly. It is their fault for getting involved with the rebels. I have heard it all! I am still baffled as to how people can be starving in a country like this where everything grows. But one thing I am sure about ……..it is not their fault.
But in the end what can I do? I have 3 little ones to bring up and that overwhelms me most days. But I can try to always be informed, know the truth, try to see other people´s arguments and make sure that my children know the truth about both their countries and their adopted ones. Just keep learning I suppose.
I am not sure why, but certain people from the US think that they are the oracle of world opinion, as they quite clearly are not ………. just go and read some Chomsky, Democracy Now or Consortium news or any quality European paper and you can see that a lot of us have different opinions and we are not crazy foaming at the mouth commies or fundamentalist ragheads (a popular term for Arabs in the US). A rich surburban gringo in Antigua told me with such authority that Cuba has been a disaster since they kicked the US out. By that I suppose he meant the Mafia, Batista and the CIA. And don´t get me started on the weird and shameful existence of Guantanamo. I am just relieved that there are no longer British prisoners there but Obama´s promise to close it is still pending. And Cuba has human rights issues!!!
I don´t profess to be an expert in geopolitics and certainly not in the unique and fascinating history of Cuba but I think there is one thing that I will never stop thinking. For better or for worse, Cuba is an ideological miracle and still is. How the hell did the CIA never manage to poison Fidel? Just that is a miracle. I know the Miami Cubans and a large part of US population won´t agree with me but not sure I care! In fact I have never met people so full of hate as the Miami Cubans. That can´t be good for them or anybody. And unfortunately their bad taste and bad humour does get transmitted back to Cuba along with an extra layer of white trash mentality born in the USA.
And yes I am packing carefully for our move to Cuba and I am slightly nervous about being in a no consumer zone but I hope I can survive happily without faceless shopping malls, guns on every street corner, apartheid, darkened car windows, suited bodyguards, awful cable TV with more advertisements than programmes, schools like prisons with gun toting armed guards at the gates …….and all the rest which goes with a narco capitalist state.
I can only promise the Cuban people that I will try to understand and not to judge them when I am living as a guest in their country as they are put through yet another sociological challenge. Good Luck Cuba! I will write about and record your hardships and your happiness and your apparently famous ability to resolver.
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 week has flown by and I am trying not to get my proverbial knickers in a twist about this move and approach it in the manner of a great British colonial wife! Brave and stoic and full of optimism rather than having a semi-nervous breakdown and sobbing me socks off.
I have always embraced the moves in my life as adventures realised but this is the first time I have moved my family lock, stock and barrel – an altogether different undertaking. We know where we are going, my husband has a great job set up and we have a house waiting for us, so in some ways we are not jumping into the unknown. I am trying so hard not to worry about anything but easier said than done as really I am jumping into a totally unknown and unique world. To this end the most cynical girl that I have always been, is trying to do Reiki and meditation. At the moment the most operative word is the TRYING. Will let you know how it is going!
Havana will bring me an exciting and safe city that I can walk around with my children and explore. I hope I will find lots of interesting people that the uniqueness of Cuba has attracted. I was hoping to get away from cheap American consumerism but have been warned that things are changing so fast in Cuba that that will not be the case. Bugger! In fact I am beginning to think that we may be there for the avalanche of fat gringo cruise ship tourists (the worst kind after British stag parties!).
The boys seem to be taking everything in their stride about the move. We visited en famille in February when the weather is perfect and the Caribbean breezes are warm. My recollections ..
We arrived and were met at the airport as VIPs and I will never forget following a rather sexy female airport official swinging her hips and bottom as though dancing Salsa, my two boys holding each hand stunned and OBEDIENT ….. through the faststream to the VIP lounge while they collected all our luggage for us.
We met with ambassadors, film school staff, bloggers, mums from their school. Visited the filmschool, ate in some great restaurants, dipped into Habana vieja like terrible tourists. Swam from our own private beach. Saw what we need to take and leave from here. Fell asleep every night listening to the Caribbean sea and woke up to early morning turquoise shimmer and a nodding coconut palm outside our bedroom balcony.
So needless to say the boys are pretty happy about the move generally, helped a lot by the fact that when we visited Havana they had a freezer full of cornetto icecreams in the bodega of the house. Also they loved their future school, their house with their own beach and the Aquarium they visited just down the road . Oh to be a child and view the world in such a wonderfully simple way.
But what am I going to do while my husband is busy at the film school? How can I give my life some structure when I arrive and before I have found my friends to play with? I have lots of ideas of research I can start doing and have already found some interesting women working on social issues in Havana but that will take some time to sort out. There is a British Council in Havana so I can offer my services to pull together some lectures on the English Language. Still not sure how I can earn money in Cuba, but all in good time. I will have my little Saskia at home still to keep me busy and we can explore and dance our way around Havana. But on that note I am looking to do something I wish I had done 20 years ago and that is ….train to be a dancer. Maybe I can end up being the oldest professional dancer in the world! Anyway, as dance is my nearest thing to meditation and the most fun way to get fit, my search for my dance school or dance master has already begun ……….. will keep you posted.
What am I worried about ………… no skype, no broadband, getting used to dial up internet connections, no deli supermarkets down the road, no markets, no shops full of every plastic item you could wish for, no volcanoes, no delicious avocados all year round, in fact lots of food issues in general, no Juju (my Guatemalan nanny of the last 6 years). In fact no Juju is quite possibly the biggest factor worrying me right now ……..
As always when you are about to leave somewhere I am suddenly having the best time. Lots of visitors from all over Bosnia, San Francisco, Prague and London to name a few. New friends appearing at the last moment and spending quality time with old friends. I have been socialising way too much and embibing too much red wine and the even the odd very cheeky cigarette (scandalous). So this mother of 3 is feeling exhausted.
Mothers Day arrived during all this madness (it is huge here to the point that mothers get the day off work!) and my two boys greeted me from school with handmade presents. Two strange but interesting items that I shall cherish (no really!). I colourfully painted wooden board to “put hot things on” and a “thingy to hang my earrings on”. Lots of kisses and cuddles and promises of how they were going to be good boys all day! We hit the supermarket and the negotiations began.
– Mummy it took me 3 days to make your present. I think you should buy me a Kinder egg.
– (3 days I thought!!!!) No the whole point of presents is that you do not expect anything back.
– Oh ……… but will you buy me a kinder egg anyway?
– No
(in Unison) You are the baddest mummy in the world, you never buy us anything. Semi double tantrum ensued ……
They were bundled in the car and lectured all the way home on RESPECT; SELFISHNESS and the art of present giving. The karma of mother´s day was slightly ruined for a moment, as I sighed and glanced back at their tantrum stained dusty faces in the back of the car. Anyway it was salvaged as we, Mummy and boys met up with friends for dinner and friends nanny took them to the play room, to play not eat in Pollo Campero (Guatemala´s famous friend chicken fast food chain, coming to Europe soon apparently!) leaving the Mummys to drink red wine and eat Camembert next door in my friend´s beautiful restaurant. Papa was at home with his beloved baby girl. The boys returned from Campero and gorged on papas fritas and pain au chocolat. A children´s equivalent of crack cocaine. We all rocked up home at 9 to be welcomed by another cool Mama (Rafa´s cousin) on the phone from California, great excuse for Rafa to get the boys into bed while I caught up. Another mothers day, my last in Guatemala. Not sure what date this joyous occasion is in Cuba yet.
Still getting the hand of blogging so promise next blog may even include photos ….
I have to admit to being a slightly reluctant blogger. Just as I was a slightly reluctant facebooker but now I have been sucked into that time-consuming world …….. and worry that I am stepping into another yet more sinister world of self absorption and unbridled opinion sharing. I fear I am guilty of enough of that anyway without forcing it onto a bunch of people who don´t even know me! However here I am for better or for worse. I promise to try to blog away from the banal and self absorption or self promotion as much as I can! I challenge all bloggers to respect this rule.
However despite my hesitance, narrow minded I certainly am not. I do enjoy reading good novels and news articles from around the world but have very little time to do so (as my children and more recently Facebook seem to take a lot of that time). I am lucky enough to have my mother send me a great publication from the UK called The Week. Their tagline is …….
all you need to know about everything that matters
Here, in a brief form I can read articles from newspapers all round the world, as well as film reviews, book reviews, gossip, talking points, finance news, obituaries, travel articles, art reviews, music reviews, a letters page, sport, Health and Science amongst other interesting titbits. If you want to find out more, go to
Recently I was having brunch with some fellow bloggers, as now I suppose I am one. I expressed my fears of adding to the self absorbed banal drivel available on line and that I needed to try and find a way of writing something that was worth reading and I showed them a copy of The Week. Unfortunately, there was a picture of April Ashley on the cover and they sneered at the transexual´s picture in a rather narrow minded way. Poor April Ashley.
I admit to being very ignorant and possibly a little judgemental like these bloggers when it comes to transsexuals but I was intrigued to read about this character and thus learn a little more about the lives of these often fascinating characters.
April Ashley has just celebrated her 75th birthday and as Britain´s first transexual she has some pretty extraordinary memories. She grew up an abused boy in the slums of Liverpool and later as a young merchant seaman she began to grow breasts (I actually know some very untranny men that have this problem!). After years of trauma she ended up working as a dancer in Paris and then heard about a pioneering operation she could have in, of all romantic film locations, Casablanca. She was seen onto the plane by an American dancer called Skippy who made her promise to be her first lover when she returned. She lost her virginity on Bastille day when the whole of Paris was celebrating in the street. She later went on to become the toast of London with an array of lovers that ranged from Peter O´Toole to Michael Hutchence. She however was never under the illusion about the reason for her celebrity.
You say I met everybody but it was the other way round. Everybody wanted to meet the Freak
And yes I wanted to read about the beautiful freak and how she had turned her life around. Happy Birthday April Ashley, and maybe I can share fascinating snippets from the Week from time to time when I am blogging.
The Bodegona (literally meaning large warehouse) is, I suppose, the nearest thing Antigua has to a supermarket, but that is stretching the term somewhat! It is more a ramshackle collection of things organised in a way that still defeats me (they keep moving things around). Some of the aisles are impossible to get down with your trolley, and trolley plus baby, absolutely forget it. You need to abandon trolley and make a kamikaze style manoeuvre to get what you need. select.com/…/sd_photoandcomment.asp?id=424
Hygiene standards are not their forte. The latest rumour, and I almost have CSI type evidence, is that they turn the fridges off at night, which is a tad worrying to all of us who live in a country with more than its fair share of tummy bugs.
The place has however improved a lot in the last year or so and at some stage a visit is a necessary evil. Now they have proper checkouts and trolleys and there is even a private carpark opposite, so when you are desperate you have the option of paying 6q to park so you don´t have to walk 2 blocks with all your shopping and a baby strapped on. That said, I usually find some 10 year old hanging around the door who wants to earn a couple of quetzal carrying shopping. So there are advantages to third world supermarkets!
However, all things taken into account, I have grown used to this strange place and it is often the only time I bump into expat friends and neighbours who I wish I saw more. I also have been treated with extraordinary kindness, especially by the people who work there. I can´t imagine it is a great place to work, but generally they all seem remarkably cheerful no matter how grumpy I am when I make it to the checkout. (By the way the 10 year olds that collect the rubbish (trash that is) look fiendishly happy too, a subject for future investigation I promise).
Last Friday, I was dragging myself around the supermarket when I should have been having my first glass of wine of the weekend and with that in mind was cheering myself up, selecting a bottle of my usual Chilean delight when …….. some weird looking guy sidled up to me. I sidled away from him in what I thought was a graceful manner but no. I smashed a bottle of unidentifiable liquor on the floor. It caused a palpable little flurry of excitement around the booze aisle. At that moment a neighbour (British Belize) appeared next to me with her new gorgeous baby boy, after a brief, ooh ahh cluck cluck mummy session, we looked down at the booze on the floor, which by this stage seemed to be burning a hole in the cheap dirty lino. As we were both marvelling somewhat at this, I admitted to have never done this before, and not knowing what the supermarket etiquette was, here or anywhere on this matter, I was biding my time.
At that point I noticed the gap in the shelf where said bottle had been, and believe me, it did not look up to supermarket standards, in fact it looked as though a dog had been chewing it! Some poor guy who had been chosen to ´come and admonish the tall gringa´ appeared at my side.
Hombre, fue muy mal puesto which translates to something along the lines of mate it wasnt very well shelved.
I offered to pay half and the deal was done with all parties happy. What was it? I still dont know but it was luckily very cheap and I will never be drinking it after what I saw!
Five minutes later when I had finished buying all my things and was saying goodbye to my neighbour the same young guy dropped what was left of the bottle all over the floor in an even more spectacular fashion than my earlier attempt. At this point everyone around us was laughing. Mire, es vivo, yo te dije! Look, I said, I told you it was alive.
Me and my little ´half pint helper´ chuckled across the road to the car with the groceries with him muttering under his breath es vivo es vivo and shaking his head at my rather successful little joke!!
To follow will be a more sensible blog on food shopping in Antigua for Mums. I don´t think it will be blog that will have global importance however I shall write it as if it does!
For those of you who don´t know quetzal (q) is the currency in Guatemala as well as the national bird that nobody has EVER seen. There are around 7q to the dollar I think.
My boys were not too excited about doing sports camp again this vacation. They said that it got boring and the teacher made them walk a lot, and they didn´t do much sport. This amused me as I think a bit of brisk walking is good for everybody, and my number 2 is very lazy. So with this is mind I was still planning to send them for one week at some stage during the whole ridiculous 2 and a half months they have to kill.
However, still on the lookout for a vacation course for my two boys, we were ambling around the plazuela in our pueblito on Sunday and heard a loudspeaker announcing ………. curses de vacaciones ……sport, dance, craft, music. I ran across the plazuela with the boys to investigate. When we passed through the gates I was amazed at the size of the village school – it was like a warehouse with a sports field in the middle and several classrooms leading off it. The late afternoon sun was dropping behind the volcanoes.
Nobody asked me for any money just to fill out my name and age, it was then that I was informed that the courses were only at the weekend. I think they are organised by an NGO of some sort, as there were lots of freshfaced youngsters in white shirts that declared something interesting about Social Cohesion. Well I´m all for a bit of social cohesion.
There was a nice atmosphere and everyone was asking my blond boys to join in their games of football and basketball including my nanny´s children. The boys were too shy to play sport with the big boys but we found tucked away in the corner, a chess room. My oldest has recently been taught by his Papa as a (partly successful) way to keep him away from TV and video games. Immediately. everybody made space for the boys and in seconds my oldest was setting up to play a rather cool looking 15 year old!
He lost both games but it was great to see how hard he was concentrating and he took quite a few of his opponent´s pieces. Very respectable for a 5 year old. The games were quite tense and there were a few people watching.
Meanwhile my young one was in the corner being taught some moves by the younger boys.
Living in a country which already has its own set of apartheid rules to get used to, means it is not always easy to know how to integrate as much as that will ever be possible for a 5ft 9 blond woman with an accent. I have wrestled with this problem for the last 7 years and find my own little ways to belong here in my adopted country.
I live just outside Antigua but fortunately not in a prison-like gated community but a large green sprawling one that has a modicum of security and a friendly atmosphere. My colonia is right next to a typical Central American village with its usual collection of shops, schools, colonial church, pila for washing clothes and gossiping and the usual collection of characters (the habitual drunk, the camp gay guy, the happy crazy bloke, the unfeasibly fat woman, the woman who never smiles etc etc). My children and I are well known in the village and I do as much of my shopping as possible in my community. I feel that this is one of the few ways I can connect on a daily level, otherwise I am just another gringa flying past in her car keeping my distance.
There is a hardware shop where I buy my bits and pieces, screws, nails, cement for repairs etc. from a young man called Wellington. We have joked about what a national hero he is in my country, he always looks slightly puzzled but flattered.
My boys have their haircuts for 10q in our village peluqueria. Don Byron with his slightly dodgy eye has a wild look like the 19th century romantic poet himself, but it doesn´t seem to affect his haircutting abilities and he always finds a little dulce in his pockets for the boys.
I buy most of my fruit and vegetables from Doña Letty who comes down with all her produce on the bus in the morning from the town of Santa Maria much higher up the volcano than us. Tomatoes, potatoes, avocados, limes, leaks, carrots, brocolli, onions, lychees, blackberries, local apples, local greens called acelgas, corn, cauliflower …… on a good day I don´t want for much. Doña Letty is one of those smiling, cackling, toothless women with her chattering daughters and nieces helping her, all dressed in their beautiful typical clothes. All the woman pass my happy baby girl around as I select my weekly produce and between them load it directly into the boot of my car. We chat about the weather, the children and whatever disaster big or small has struck our community lately. If I´m feeling peckish I get an avocado smeared tostado from the young girl with the large bust on display, who sits next door to Doña Letty.
Although we live in the tropics we live at a very high altitude so firewood (leña) for a large part of the year is one of my preoccupations, finding it and making sure it is dry and good quality is a constant here. I am lucky enough to have a park opposite my house for collecting kindling (little twigs for lighting fires) with the boys, who start enthusiastically and then leave the rest to me. In one of the shops in the village I buy my wonderful organic firelighters known round here as ocotes. Ocotes are natural resin infused sticks that you light and stick in the fire to get it going in no time ……..bliss. On very damp rainy season days when dry wood is hard to find these things are my life savers and ridiculously cheap. There is nothing nicer when the hard rains fall to be inside cosy around the fireplace with all the family. My husband, after years of living in the mountains fighting to stop the genocide here (and that is another story), is the best fire lighter I have ever met. Known as Doctor Fuego by me and the boys!
Coming from a country with a national health service, I have never been keen on private medicine so had a hard time adjusting to life in Guatemala where rich white Guatemalans seem to think if they are not paying a fortune their doctor can´t be good. In San Pedro we have a project funded by a church in the US and staffed by local Guatemalans which has a very nice doctor, dentist and lab (for the inevitable endless poo testing that happens here). I have taken all my children there for their various ailments over the last few years and we sit chatting with the locals in the waiting room. They can never believe how Chapin (local word for Guatemalans) my little blond boys are when they start talking. It costs a nominal 18q which is about a tenth of the price you pay anywhere else and I prefer the doctor to any of the other doctors I have visited, he explains everything to me and my children instead of the arrogance I have experienced with expensive city doctors. They wont let me pay them more than anyone else so I pass all my old children´s clothes and toys and unused medicines back to them to distribute in the community.
My last favourite place in the village is the sastre shop. This could roughly translate as the old fashioned word seamstress. It is basically a room with a couple of guys with old fashioned sewing machines. ……….and they can fix anything for 10q. With two little boys they have patched endless pairs of trousers, made cushion covers out of old designer dresses (from another life!), hemmed skirts and trousers and altered old trousers into shorts.
My neighbours in the colonia who I see on a daily basis are all guardienes. That means they are the poor people that live in the gardens of the rich people to keep the rich people safe from the bad poor people. Crazy I know, but this is Guatemala. Doña Natalie next door has 4 beautiful girls and Doña Amanda on the corner has 4 cheeky boys they are always in the street for a smile and a wave as we pass. The boys playing how boys should: climbing trees, playing football and marbles or flying kites depending on the weather and the girls tending the garden helping their mother, and quietly watching the boys antics. Doña Amanda is also our resident babysitter on the few occasions we manage to get out.
Don Carlos has the village pinchazo …… a wonderful word for a great service. The roads around Antigua are not always that great to say the least, especially in the rainy season when they are habitually covered in debris and rocks. Puncturing your tyres is a common occurrence so it is a relief to have Don Carlos right there and my boys love watching him at his work, taking off the tyre and then slowly turning it in a water filled oil drum looking for the bubbles with the hawkeye of a professional. A couple of times I have been left with a flat tyre outside my house and good old Don Carlos has cycled over with all his tools balanced on the crossbar of his bicycle and after 5 minutes and a big smile he has me back on the road so I can get the boys from school or whatever other vitally important domestic task is awaiting me………..
I suppose I could drive to the city and buy all my things in Pricesmart or Walmart or one of those other faceless marts in another cheap and faceless mall all wrapped in plastic. Maybe it would be quicker and more convenient, maybe it would even be cheaper ………. but I don´t think so, and I get something a lot more valuable to take away with me ……. my interaction with my community ………. thank you San Pedro for treating me like your neighbour. Underneath everything we are all the same, just people wanting the best for our family and our community and maybe a little bit of gossip and laughter along the way ……..
