Ok, I'll Eat It!

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Unless you are a heavy sleeper, sleeping in Guatemala is kind of a difficult thing to do. The houses here are not built to block-out sounds from the outside. You can actually hear cats �meowing� that live across from you. Thankfully for me, at this point in my life, God has blessed me with being able to sleep through tornados and bomb-raids. But I have found that there is one thing that wakes me up in my room here. Believe it or not, it is the faint sound of a Guatemalan mosquito flying over my face while I lay asleep in bed.

One morning I talked with Mark about my blood-sucking friend and how he kept waking me up and leaving all kinds of itchy goodness all over my body. Sometimes he will get really close to my ear and just stay there. �zzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZ!� Then I will swipe at it with my hand in complete darkness and I will hear the annoying little bug take a hit and buzz off. Then Mark laughed at me and said, �Well, are you sure it�s just one?� And I replied with, �Of course man! He always has his dinner on me all night long!�

Well last night, while I lay in bed about to fall into a deep sleep, I hear this �zzzzZZZZ,� but this time there were two distinct �zzzzZZZ� sounds. I said in my mind, �Ala gran puchica!� (Roughly translated means �What the heck!�) And I turned on my nightstand lamp to see if I could find and destroy these two blood-suckers to prevent future itchy bite marks. When I waited there sitting up in bed for a few minutes and no evil sounds of vampire bugs, I turned off the light and tried to get my badly needed sleep.

Once I finally fell asleep, I was abruptly awoken by a sound that was so faint and innocent coming from this bug that wasn�t even the size of half a dime, yet was so atrocious and evil. As it flew over my head, I had had it with this blasted curse of a bug and got up from my warm bed, and hit the light switch to the room. When I looked at the wall, I saw that my thought of one little mosquito was so very, horribly wrong! As I finally realized the truth about �my little friend� and his little posse of� actually, I would say arsenal of friends hanging out on the wall, I knew my mission had officially commenced; kill all bugs in this room before going back to bed, or the nights sleep will be interrupted by violations to my precious veins and arteries.

I approached the wall with intent of simply squishing each bug against the wall with my thumb, but as soon as I raised my hand, the arsenal dispatched and flew in different directions to safe locations throughout the room. With my hope of getting many an hour of sleep leaving me like the sounds of mosquitoes fading away, the search (and the night) had just begun.

After searching a great while, I was finally able to find and smush one mosquito in between my hand and the wall and it exploded with my precious blood that it had undoubtedly taken from me without my consent late at night while I lay helplessly paralyzed in a deep sleep, smear onto the wall. Getting excited that I was actually able to kill these blasted things, I kept searching. Sometimes they would fly around looking for a new hiding place, and I could catch them in mid-air and squish them with my hand. Some found refuge on the ceiling, so I would climb up onto my bed and try to smack them with my bare hand.

After what seemed like forever and a day, all mosquitoes were finally terminated. A sigh of relief came over me as I got back into bed and pulled the covers over me knowing that the next morning would not bring discoveries of new itchy bumpiness. As I turned out my nightstand lamp and darkness filled the room, I closed my eyes knowing that I would only get a few hours of sleep, but I was going to try and enjoy every peaceful, mosquitoless moment of it. But something weird happened; I thought I heard a buzzing sound off in the distance. I held my breath to try and listen harder but there was nothing but peaceful silence � a rarity in Guatemala! �It must be my head playing tricks on me,� I thought as I sank into the bed deeper. But all of a sudden, out of the complete blue, a �ZZZZZZZ� is ringing directly into my left ear. I said to myself, �Forget it! Eat me. EAT ME, you stupid bug! EEEAT MEEEEE!� I think I was going crazy at this point.

Well boys and girls, the moral of this story is, if you want to rid yourself of all mosquitoes at night, close the frigging windows.

Although I have been in Guatemala for quite some time now, I still haven�t come to an understanding about everything cultural here. Today, I made one of those �it�s a cultural thing� mistakes. It all started when I was eating lunch at the snack stand in front of the school with Antonio and Aleman when Emmerson, another one of the teachers came up and unwrapped his sandwich. He tore off a big chuck of his sandwich and held it up to me and said, �You want some?� I politely refused and I will never forget what happened next. His face went from all smiles to a face that you would only see from someone if you spat in their face. Immediately, I turned to Antonio and said, �Is it bad manners here to refuse food when they offer it?� And he got completely serious and said, �Oh, yeah man! If you refuse their food, you are saying that you are better than them, that you don�t trust their food, and that you don�t trust in them.�

Oh man! I immediately went to Emmerson and was telling him about how I was totally unaware of the impoliteness. Good thing I had just learned how to say the words, �I didn�t know,� in Spanish only a few days earlier! Then I asked Antonio what else is considered rude here, and do you know what the first thing out of his mouth was? �Passing gas.� Why do you think he said that? Well, with young American guys like myself, when you are around all guys that you know well, you pass gas and everyone laughs. Then it becomes a huge battle to see who can fart the loudest and it�s a whole lot of fun. But here, it�s a bad thing to pass gas in front of anyone, even the guys you are close with.

I know I am chasing a rabbit here, but you should have seen Aleman�s face the first time I passed gas in his presence. It was obviously the least expected thing he would anticipate from me. Anyway, back to the food thing.

I tried to explain to the Guatemalans that in the Sates, people will offer food to other people, but both parties know that the person offering food is just trying to be nice and doesn�t actually want you to take it. It is polite to decline. And also, when an American offers food, they offer something so very minute, like a single potato chip, or an M&M, but that�s IT. No more for you! In Guatemala, they will tare their whole sandwich in half and offer it to you. Unless you want to spit in their face with your manners, you will take and eat the food. But Americanos like their food. You had better not get between them and their food, unless you want your fingers bitten off. Am I right? I mean, I don�t offer my food often because I want to EAT IT! :p Oh well, it�s just completely opposite here.

After school today, I went to talk with some other missionaries here about the food rejection incident, and they were like, �Oh yes, been there, done that.� I was happy to hear I wasn�t the only one who accidentally ticks people off because of the cultural differences.

And now a word from my Guatemalan buddy, Ivan:

I all ways think about Guatemala like the country were the impossibles becomes posibles. You guys need to come down here, cause you think you know but you got no idea!. Before I started to write this, I was reading �Green Eggs and Ham�, Mr. Smith says that is the ultimate American experience. I just got to say how great full I�m, with the Smiths and with Mr. Powers, because they left the first word, the comfort of their country, the safety of their communities, for this broken and bad functioning �paradise�. You got to be creasy or God guided to do such thing. This people here are making a difference to hundreds and hundreds of families. Probably they don�t even know, but people is gating hope when the use to be hopeless, thru they daily job they are showing the possibility of a future for hundreds of kids. Tanks God for them may bless them and their country for generation.

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