June 17 - 10 am

Up late filing cards and reading material I downloaded from OCLC, so I decide to work from Jean’s house part of the day. At 7 A.M., there’s the work bell. I believe it’s from the finca next door. It’s a tired, windy sound-- as tired and repressive as the colonial institution of the coffee plantation-- and it reminds me of the whistle on a child’s electric train set. There is the smell of roasting coffee and burning trash.

Tere and I meet in the kitchen and she tells me that Thursday is market day. I beg her to let me go because, quite frankly three days of filing and shelving has taken its toll. She agrees, no problem. At 9.30 Tere, Maria (the housemaid), Joey (Tere’s 18 month old grandson), Ana (his babysitter) and I pile into the van with half a dozen shopping baskets. We head into Antigua and drop Ana and Joey at one of Tere’s numerous relatives’. Then we’re off to the market.

The Thursday mercado in Antigua is extraordinary; crowded, noisy, a riot of color. There are narrow covered halls specializing in every imaginable edible thing: red tomatoes, small green tomatoes (militomate), chiles, garlic, a whole hallway dedicated to meat. To the left of the food market, a bazaar of tiny dark cubicles from which people sell all manner of brightly woven cloth, jewelry, and leather sandals. It seems incongruous that people so poor have so much agricultural plenty. But this is the thing I’m finding about Guatemala: it’s a place of sharp contrasts and sometimes they juxtaposed so sharply they crash into one another.

In the meantime, I’m plodding after Maria and Tere. Tere leads the way down crowded little corridors. Maria runs (in heels) to keep up with Tere, weighted down on both sides with the shopping bags. In this place where the women make the most beautiful woven bags, I’m surprised that the ones Maria carries are made of some sort of synthetic. When she puts one down to examine some beans with Tere, I pick it up and nearly fall backwards. Maria wants to take it  back but I stagger along behind barely able to keep up. At another stop, I discretely put it down and she picks it up.
 
At some point after about an hour of shopping, weaving and darting, the load is too much even for Maria and she heads back to the car with two loaded bags. Tere and I each carry lighter ones as Tere makes a final stops at the coconut man’s stall. Here we all get refreshment. The man punches holes in three coconuts, inserts three plastic straws and voila! we have a drink. Tere gets another one for the road—her grandson loves this she tells me. Maria reminds Tere that she needs flowers to lay at her parents’ graves, so we stop and look for flowers. Again, I am amazed at the bounty: flowers of every size and color.