Time to Go

I was beginning to feel that it was time to go. Zapata is not designed to be a town for hanging out, and although I was spending my days helping as much as I could with cleaning, laundry, taking the kernels off the corn to make hand-made tortillas and cooking, I still felt that it was time to move on. I was getting anxious to make my way north to start work at the orphanage.

Leaving is not an entirely easy thing. I could have taken the camioneta out…another 9-12 hour ride in the back of an old truck with 30 other people and assorted luggage, animals and whatnot. However, the camioneta left at 3 am from another town, which meant we’d have to walk to that town at 2:30 am and I was just not up for that! The other options were to fly out when the plane happened by, but that was an expensive option, not to mention totally up in the air as you never know when the plane is coming by. We could also take the lancha, which is what I figured I would do. There was a lancha leaving immediately, but I didn’t feel that gave me the time to say goodbye, so I said we’d wait for the next one.

The next one didn’t leave for several days. There was a group of Italians who came to the lake to spend a few days and were going to leave by lancha, so I figured I’d leave with them. I was assured there were plenty of combi’s going to Comitan, so I wasn’t worried.

We were supposed to leave at Noon, and the lancha driver was there right on time. We were all packed up and ready to go and had spent a few days saying good-bye. I was ready to go. When it’s time to go, I hate waiting around because it feels like it’s just limbo and I’m all about getting a move-on. No awkward silences and re-hashing the same stuff for me!

Well, Noon passed, and then one. Where were these Italians?? Finally one showed up and said that all of their stuff was still up at the lake (a 2 hour hike!) because they didn’t want to carry it out and they wanted someone to go get it for them. They wanted me to run around and get someone to go. They said the girl with them was throwing up on the hike out and someone else had been stung. They said this all very expectantly, as though we should jump up and be outraged that this had happened to them.

A few more showed up. They took all their muddy clothes and just dumped them on Maria’s front porch…no apology, no asking if it was okay…and demanded some cold beers, sodas and waters. I thought they were incredibly rude, demanding and thoughtless.

The girl finally showed up and she seemed fine. I treated the insect bite with some anti-itch cream. Another guy twisted his ankle going to the river to rinse off. They all demanded plastic bags for their muddy clothes. I was not impressed with these young Italians!!

We FINALLY loaded up into the lancha and many of our friends walked with us to the river to say good-bye. Others made themselves scarce and refused to say good-bye to us! We were a little sad about this, but tried to understand. We took some last minute pictures and were on our way. We were all teasing each other about who would cry, and in the end we were all a little teary and thought this was funny. I find that the people of Mexico often meet sad times with laughter or pretending it doesn’t exist…I suppose lots of people are like that.

On the lancha, the Italians were passing around food, but didn’t offer us any. When we finally got to Amatitlan we had missed the last combi going to Comitan. I asked the Italians if we could ride with them as they had come in a tour group and had a private (12 passenger) van waiting for them – they said no!! I was so mad….there were 9 of them plus their luggage and they said they didn’t have room! They were going to leave a single woman and her child stranded. This just capped it off and I was totally offended. Jerks!

Well, I figured we could stay at the same place we had before and take a combi the next day. We started that way, but this old man insisted we come say hello to his wife and visit with his family first. He was not going to take no for an answer, so we went with him. His family was so nice, and I felt sorry for them because he was a crazy old drunk. They were very protective over me and Sierra and kept shooing him away, but he’d bring this little baby pig up to show us how he fed it from a bottle and kept trying to get Sierra to sit in a chair, but she wanted to be right at my feet. We finally left there and went up to the house we’d stayed at before.

Bad news…the room was already taken! What were we going to do? They said to wait there and watch tv for awhile, so we did. Karate Kid was on tv in English, so Sierra was watching that.

I heard some singing and asked what it was; the girl told me it was a church service. I decided to go check it out. I walked down the road about 25 yards and saw a little blue building and some people singing in it. I just went right in and started to sing with the people…well, I actually just listened because they were singing songs that were unfamiliar to me, not to mention they were in Spanish!

Mostly I just sat in the service and soaked in the love of people loving the Lord, and prayed. There were only 6 people there, but they were fervent. Afterward they each came up to me and welcomed me. I explained that Sierra and I were there with nowhere to stay and it turned out that one of the women there was visiting her family, who were all church members and Christians, and she was the one staying in the extra room. She said not to worry, we’d work it out.

We all walked back to the house and visited for awhile, and they invited us to have dinner with them. Meat!!! And no eggs!! It was the best meal we’d had yet and everyone was gathered around – there were about 15 of us in all. The dad had on a “Jesus for Mexico!” t-shirt and I commented that I liked it…he didn’t know what it said as he couldn’t read! I told him and he was very happy. One of the people eating with us asked if I remembered him, and I didn’t…turns out he was the guy with the horse in the back of his truck who gave us a ride from Maravilla previously. I felt so happy and secure being with a family of Christians, and was really thankful.

After dinner I broke out my harmonica and we spent the evening teaching each other songs and playing the harmonica.

We ended up being able to stay in the room. I was willing to share, and put a mattress (another gross one) on the floor, with Sierra on the top bunk and the bottom bunk available for the woman who was visiting. Si and I went to bed early since our combi was leaving at 3 am, and I woke up to see a few of the guys moving the lady’s mattress out of the room into the kitchen…turns out she slept on the floor in the kitchen to allow us some privacy. I felt badly about this, but thought it was really sweet. We were once again very thankful for our sleepsacks!

Two-thirty came quickly, and we got up to catch our combi. The combi’s park right in front of where we stayed, and when they are ready to go, they drive through the town honking their horns! I imagine people must learn to sleep through this racket. We climbed in and Sierra went back to sleep. It was a pretty uneventful couple of hours while we made our way to Comitan, and then from Comitan to San Cristobal de las Casas.