To Market, To Market, To Buy Somthing Strange

Today I set out to find a few necessities that got left behind, namely hand sanitizer and an umbrella. Rather than go the the modern, WalMart owned mall, I´ve been trying to do all my shopping local-style. Shopping here in Guatemala, as with the rest of Central America, is always an adventure.

Like banking and the bureaucracy, shopping is meant to maximize human contact. There are all of two supermarkets in the city, and they are sorely lacking. But there are literally hundreds of corner bodegas. Almost all of these stores and stalls sell exactly the same assortment of odds and ends. You would think phone cards, gum and Fanta were the equivalent oxygen and water. Prices are never marked and most stuff is behind the counter, so you have to ask. Of course, many products have regional names and there are tons of false cognates, so confusion reigns supreme. My favorite: ¨¿Este pan tiene preservativas?¨ Which translates to, ¨Does this bread have condoms?¨

Even better than the bodegas are the markets, where the sheer number and variety of stalls boggles the mind. So far, I´ve only been to everyday markets in Xela. On Mondays and Fridays the city swells with crowds of people from surrounding pueblos going to market, but I have yet to join them. The everyday market is already overwhelming, a little frightening and a little fun.

The fun are the fruits and vegetables. Outside the market there are always indigenous women selling their wares. Their brightly colored traje, rainbow umbrellas, and fruits and vegetables make up a motley melee of color. The produce is piled into precipitous mountains and and spills out of baskets on the street. The women sit and shoo the flies away, chatting and offering advice. There´s an amazing variety of stuff, including some alien produce which can´t be procured in the States. Pictured here are rambuesas, one of my new favorite foods.

There is also an immense assortment of dried goods. All sorts of beans, rices, chilies, and herbs sit in rows of big, upright bags, to be sold in itty-bitty increments. I love sinking my hand down into the bags, and feeling the beans surround my fingers, a la Amelie.

The frightening is the meat section, where huge hocks of cows, pigs and goats, as well as whole chickens, ducks and geese, hang exposed on big metal hooks. The meat is chopped with cleavers and machetes, which often appear to be rusting. Flies buzz about these stalls, and rat poison is always present on the floors. Needless to say, we make sure everything is well cooked.

To buy bread products here is more of a challenge. Guatemalans don´t bake. Stoves are gas, and the infrastructure is lacking, so gas has to be bought by the tank, and is very expensive. Instead of using their oven, my family keeps all of their cutlery and table linens in their oven. I met a woman who was trying to teach herself to bake. She sold me a chocolate chip cookies, it didn´t have any chocolate chips in it. When I enquired about their absence, she added the chocolate chips after the fact, pressing them into the top of the cookies. To get bread I usually go to the one major bakery chain here, called Xelapan. It´s pretty unremarkable, except for their pastries shaped like dragons. But by far the best bakery in town is run by a group of Mennonite missionaries. While I don´t usually approve of evangelism, these people are bringing cookies to the fine people Xela, and I can agree with that.

The more specialized stores and higher quality restaurants are a different matter. Businesses here tend to keep odd hours and open and close on a whim. Combined with the confusing calles, it´s hard to find the same store twice. I think of finding what you want in Xela as a bit like finding Narnia in a wardrobe: If you wish hard enough, what you want will eventually appear.