Picking some plums: a lesson in economics and humanness

The other morning, the Abuelo and I went to go pick some plums.  This may have been considered irresponsible considering my recent adventures with the medical community, but in my defense, the information that I received was that we were going to go on a walk.  This explanation did not include the fact that we were walking to the town on the other side of the highway, taking a pick up truck up the hill, nor walking through the fields on a quest for a ladder and a plum tree.  I'm glad I didn't know all that; I probably wouldn't have gone out of responsibility for my body... responsibility for one's body is way overrated when it comes in the way of life lessons.


So, we went to Estancia on my under-informed adventure.  It was excellent.  We walked for about 45 minutes through and over a river bed.  The cool and sad thing about rivers here are that they are gorgeous and disgusting at the same time.  We don't have trash collection in Cantel so everything is either burned or dumped.  Unfortunately, a popular dumping spot is by the rivers because people don't live there.  Like trash collection, we also don't have sewers so that waste goes to the rivers too... Which leads us with brown, foamy rivers surrounded by trash in beautiful canyons.

When we got to Estancia, we jumped in the back of a pickup (and by jumped, I mean belaboredly climbed since he's 84 and I'm gimpy) and up the hill we went.  At the top of the hill, we went to some relative's house down the road and walked through there to some fields in back.  It was gorgeous!  We found some trees that had plums and as I began picking the plums, Abuelo went off to find a ladder.  Note:  Ladders here are not like ladders in the States.  They are 2x4s nailed together in the shape of a ladder and most ladders have been around this earth longer than I have. 

He came back with the ladder and supported it against a branch (another fairly bad idea in my opinion) and climbed up it.  As he was reaching with all his might for the plums at the top of the tree, I decided that the tall, young gringa needed to be the person climbing the ladder, not the short, 84 year old abuelo.  So, I took over the operations, much to both of our relief.

After an hour and a half or so of picking, we piled our plums in a basket and put the basket in a wheelbarrow and wheelbarrowed across town to another house of a woman who sells produce in the Terminal Market.  After talking for a lot of time in K'itche, including her asking "what does she eat?" in reference to me (evidently she thought that I wouldn't eat typical Guatemalan food because I'm not Guatemalan...), we weighed and sorted the plums.  There were 14 pounds of big plums and 2 of small plums.  She and the abuelo agreed on 1Q per pound for big and 50 cents per pound for small.  So, we made 15Q!    Except, we paid about 5Q for transportation, so we netted about 10Q.  That, my friends, is $1.25 for three hours of work.  (Which, I guess is good because when we got home, everyone was quite pleased with that net income!)

As I've thought about it, I've been processing, what can you get for 10Q?  Well... you could get 10lbs of onions. Or you could get a head of broccoli, dozen carrots, lb of onions, and pineapple.  That makes a pretty good meal.  You could also get a bag of beans, two eggs, an avocado and 8 tortillas.  So, I guess we worked for our lunch!

While I was in the midst of my economics lesson, the woman who was buying our plums wanted to show us "her canche". (Canche is a slightly derogatory for white person... not very derogatory anymore though).  She sent her 3 year old granddaughter to go get "Canchito" (little male Canche) and he came over with her.  He is a three year old albino boy.  He lives in an all-indigenous community.  He has to always wear longsleeves and a hat if he goes out.   He makes me look almost Guatemalan.  He is going to have such a hard life.  I had heard about him from both Tina and my host families.  They both refer to his albinoness as a disease.  It definitely could have the disabling effects of a disease.  Playing with him and his cousin was so fun; they are adorable, but I couldn't help but just have my heart break for him in the future.  Life is going to be really hard.  Even as a little kid, everyone refers to him as "Canchito" or "Hijo del Sol" (Son of the Sun) - I never was told his real name.

But, he's also loved.  After he left, I played dumb and asked the grandma if they had other white people in the family.
"Only him," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Dios solo sabe" (God only knows), she said.
But then she followed it up with, "pero Dios tiene plannes por todos"  (But God has plans for all)
"Verdad, Dios tiene plannes por todo" I said.
Yes, it is true.  God does have plans for all things.