Fragments I

Yes, folks!

To your enthrallment, we're back with yet another edition of Merryus-sits-on-his-ass-doin-fuck-all. But, then again, that's not all he's doing. He's doing some thinking, and he's doing some looking, and who knows what other senses he might be using - they're all there for your exclusive benefit, that's for sure. Anyway, I'm telling ya, this town put the cult intah culture, then avidly - or, rather, procrastinatingly - exchanged the c with a not-so-popular v; which reminds me, I'm gonna get a picture out here of those bastards, the bastards being, as some readers with academic leanings may already have noticed, the vultures of Todos Santos. Or, on second thought, firstly, picture publishing; internet lines seem to be not-so-bad-as-I-thought, the machines around here being the bottleneck - a word, which in spite of what my provisional English teacher Kelsey - the (female) coordinator of my language school and the greater part of my social life, as I am still not able to have a decent conversation in Spanish - anyway, the bottleneck, in spite of what Kelsey (God bless her) said, does in fact have the same metaphorical implications in English as it does in Norwegian. Hah. That being out of the way, I will commence publishing a few photos, as it is a time-consuming, but not impossible task. The photos will be published at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mangseth/ , as the blogspot interface is less than impressive. Not to worry; before publishing too many pictures, I shall employ an excessive amount of uneccessarily complex words an sentence structures to convey next-to-nothing with eloquence. First, I proceed to reveal the implied vultures: There are, in fact, relatives of vultures flying around the garbage dump here, the dump basically being she side of the road on a spot were it's really steep. Although not very official in appearance, there is a sign: Basurero Municipal, basurero funnily meaning both wastebasket and garbage dump. The whole of Guatemala is basically a wastebasket; the windows of the buses are wastebaskets (ie the entire road/ditch), and you'll find garbage lying along even the most remote mountain paths. Anyway, the garbage is slightly more concentrated in the Basurero Municipal of Todos Santos, as well as the scavenger in his different avatars: vultures (at least, black lookalikes); dogs; children. A little farther downhill, naturally, is the town river, the Rio Limón, ostensibly named after a lemon tree that grows or grew - my Spanish tenses still require some repetition - somewhere in the area, by the river. The raw sewage is also disposed of in this area; bathe above this point. Come to think of it, there are people living upriver as well. Stay dirty, that's my motto. For real. Which brings me to my current project; no washy-washy. Not as in, I'm not taking showers, rather; I'm off the soap. This idea popped into my head upon encountering the lively Dutchman Jan, who is forty-something, looks pretty good and claims he hasn't been using soap for twenty years; strangely, I believe him. Soap is basically bad for your skin, he says, which basically everybody knows, because it removes your natural protection coating, leaving your skin dry, old and in need of moisturizer. The question here is not the negative effects of the soap, but rather: is it possible to get off the soap without getting on the stink? I gathered I'd never have the guts to try out this shit anywhere else, and thus, I find myself on day nine of nonesoapness, the only problem areas being; predictably perhaps, armpits and scalp. According to Jan, things improve given time for natural restoration, the question is; do I have the faith necessary? Do I have the patience necessary? My hair is beyond greasy, it's a bleedin' oil well; wearing a cap alleviates some of the unpleasantries by way of the ostrich-strategy. I need to change shirts daily because of the fear of old sweat, and I don't have a lot of shirts, which is why one of the muchachas (housemaids, we have two girls between 15 and 18), by request, is teaching me washing by hand tomorrow. All this about filth being said, the dirtyness seems to stabilize, or recede even; my hair is not quite as filthy as it was three days ago, and my armpits are not really a problem even though my own stink is new to me, it's not that bad as long as I keep washing with water regularily. The real test will be when, or rather, if I should encounter female company; that's gonna put the soap theory and the pheromone theory and, I'm sure, lots of other theories, to the ultimate test. The observant reader is sure to be wondering about the hands by now; and yes, they're getting their soap, their sanitizer, their everything. What puzzles me is Jan's claim that he washes them (as well) with water alone, without getting sick in Asia, in Central America, nothing. Who knows, I ain't going there, Hand City, that is. About the rest of the body, I'm giving it another week before I snap unless radical improvement occurs hairwise. My skin is real smooth, though.