Notes from Guatemala III: Unwanted Attention

Trigger Warning: this post contains details concerning sexual harassment and minor assault.

 ***

Chh! Chh!

I'm window shopping in a large-ish city near my site, waiting for fellow PCVs to meet me at the park, when a city bus pulls up alongside the sidewalk on which I'm standing. Chh! Again, the obnoxious hissing. I ready myself. I know what's coming.  Fight or Flight?

Chh! Chh! Negra! Moreniiiita! Colocha! 

The men have begun their ritual. 

 Fight.

I keep my back to them and pretend to look through the window of a cell phone shop. I say nothing, only imagine the men as I think they are: leaning haphazardly out of the bus windows, lazy smiles plastered across their faces, desperate in their attempts to match the bravado of their friends. 

I'd like to walk away, but embarrassment and anger prevent me from turning. If I'm able to size them up, to see their faces, I don't know what I'll say (or do.) It's not fair, but I'll stand there until they're gone.

I wait, and my mind wanders. 

I remember:

It's raining hard and I'm standing at the corner bus stop. An old man makes small talk about the dreary weather, and I return his pleasantries by relating how I was able to run back to my house for my rain boots and jacket. He nods, smiles, and an instant later, I feel his hand on my chest. Weird. I back away, thinking he's made a mistake. Hell, he's old! He might be blind, who knows? Maybe he lost his footing... But then he does it again, his hand groping my breast. 

I say nothing, only react, pushing him away so hard I feel the bones of his old arms twist. He doesn't even seemed shocked, just looks at me with the half-smile of a boy. I almost expect him to shrug and and say, "What'd you expect?" Suddenly, another Peace Corps Trainee is by my side, and we're shuffling off to the bus as she asks me, "Did he just touch your chest?" I report nothing to Peace Corps because it's my decision, and I'm realistic: the incident was isolated and I don't feel unsafe. 

Flight. 

The bus driver pounds on the horn, impatient. As usual, traffic has bottle-necked into a jam as the road narrows. Of course, the men continue their harassment, but I'm thinking about my current site, and those 4 days when a sad drunk man follows me around, mumbling about Belize and wanting to shower with me. 

My town is 3 or 4 streets wide, so he always manages to find me as I go about my day. "Don't worry about it," a shopkeeper says, lightheartedly, as the man wanders over to me, asking me questions in a slurred gibberish only he can understand. Everyone in the shop stares at me as I try to maneuver away from his slow, floundering gait. My host family only laughs when I relay the stories of this troubling cat-and-mouse game, and I join them (though I feel I've put a laugh track in my belly.) Ironically, I'm never really afraid when he happens upon me. In fact, I find the reactions of everyone around me more disconcerting.

When I tell my sister and trusted PCV friend what's going on, they urge me to call the Peace Corps Safety & Security Officer. "Be that Volunteer." My sister tells me. She's talking about being that Volunteer that hounds Peace Corps day and night to keep her safe. I make a deal with myself: if on the 5th day the drunk man bothers me, I'll report. But I never see him again. 

I have a right to report. I have a right not to report. Isolated incident. I feel safe. This becomes my mantra.

With one last honk of the horn and final rev of the engine, the bus spurts off, and the voices of the men fade away against the banging music and chatter of the park. I turn away from the window and make my way across the street to meet the others. 

Another episode of unwanted attention: survived.

Street harassment in the United States always occurs in pockets for me. I know when to cross the street, which streets to avoid, and which men are the main perpetrators. Here, I have none of that background knowledge. It's hard to understand why folks just laugh at drunks instead of getting them away. It's frustrating to see a man cajole his young son into yelling, "Morenita rica!", especially when said son looks eight years-old. It's difficult to hold back when all you want to do is scream at a bus full of idiots interjecting their chest-pounding man-games into your quiet life.

Of course (friends and family), if I ever feel unsafe, I will call Safety and Security.  I will also never stop believing I have a right to my own space. I will never resign myself to believe the harassment "just comes with the territory."

Every person has the express and inherent right to walk down any street without the fear of being cat-called, harassed, or touched. Even as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Selected posts on the subject from fellow PCVs and RPCVs in Guatemala:

I Don't Want You to Make Me Feel Like I'm the Only Girl in the World
Now I Know The Meaning of Machismo 
Guatemala Through My Eyes

Notes From Guatemala II: Me, The Finca, and the Possom

To be completely honest, I don't believe I was originally supposed to accompany my host family to their coffee finca, but upon seeing me laying aimlessly on my bed, my host sister wandered over and, leaning against the door frame, invited me along. She said it with hesitation, though. Perhaps my predecessors had never wanted to go?

I jumped at the chance – to get out of the house and to see something else besides the dusty streets and desperate chuchos pawing hungrily at scraps of garbage.

After throwing on a pullover, my boots, and gulping down a full cup of instant coffee, I was out the door and in the car, driving away from the road that had brought me to this town. Volcan de Fuego stood firm in the distance. Another day, I promised. My host mother probably wondered why I smiled, but before I could tell her "I'm gonna climb that damn thing", my host sister pointed to a unassuming cemetery positioned at the edge of the road.

"See! There it is!"

How old was the cemetery? Were some family buried there? Or someone else important? My host sister had offered no explanation as to why it was so important to "see", but as we passed it, our eyes lingered on its tall white walls and the stalk-like crosses sticking up from the grass and rocks.

After a few more minutes down Ruta 14, we pulled through the finca's grand iron gates. A figure waved us up the narrow road, and we parked next to a worn pick-up truck. At first I didn't notice the elderly man sitting placidly in the bed of the truck, but as I stepped up to greet my host mother's brother (the one who'd waved us on) the anciano gingerly stuck out his hand, eyes gleaming. We shook, he smiled, and I gave him my Spanish name. 

Then Grandfather, he didn't introduce himself as anything else but, climbed out of the truck and immediately brought his hands to the ground.

“There's trash here! Who comes to throw trash?”

My host uncle's sudden silence implied some sort of guilt, and Grandfather shuffled closer to the ground, his hands sifting through the grass and dirt. I coughed under my breath, embarrassed. Who wanted to watch an old man chastise his children? I turned and fixed my stare on a wilting coffee plant. Brown spots lined its edges, and portions of its green leaves had been stained by perfect, deep brown circles. 

This plant was sick. 

After a while, the three of them (Grandfather, my host mother and her brother) wandered off through the brush, and all seemed well enough again.

But my host sister pulled me back, and I fell beside her, our steps crunching lightly on fallen branches.

“My grandfather is necio,” She said. “This finca used to bring us thousands and thousands of quetzales, but now the harvest only gives us half of what it did before...if even. He lives in the past.”

Necio. Foolish to want to hold on to dying land. Tough words coming from someone who probably never had to till a day in her life. (Tough words once you realize the finca is named for Grandfather's wife, the late matriarch of the family.) Tough, and probably true.

But my host sister didn't speak about Grandfather anymore, and I followed closely behind as she continued through the finca, past the weeds, and the avocado trees, until we stumbled upon a hissing, agitated thing. The thing paced back and forth at the bottom of a large cement basin set deep in the earth. It tried vainly to climb the steep, flat sides of the basin's thick walls. Of course, it failed, every time. The thing (a possum, as far as I could tell) was stuck.

“Mariana!”

The others had made it there before us, and my host uncle motioned me over, pointing down to the decaying body of a second possum. In a flash of morbidity, I wondered if my troubled, living possum, in an effort to survive, had taken a few bites of his dead, same-fated friend. 

My host uncle struck the possum with a few twigs, and it scurried under a shelter of sticks and leaves. I felt for the little thing. There he must have been, minding his own business, likely stalking a bit of to-be food, when suddenly he found himself sliding headfirst into a cement cage from which he could never escape. I looked at the possum again, his body shaking back and forth under the leaves and rocks.

"Ugly, isn't he?"

My host Uncle didn't wait for my answer, and the family moved on. But I stayed for a moment longer with the possum. And I thought about a plane ride, two weeks prior, where I sat staring out at the greens and blues of a land I did not yet know. 

Yes, maybe I felt like the possum, then.