On their way here, Sal’s mom and dad had to make a connection at an airline hub in the US.  To do so, of course, they were put through the Homeland/Airport/Nonsense security ‘process’ we have all come to expect  including that quasi-X-ray screen and a metal-detecting wand and having to take off their shoes and explain any liquids in their carry-on.  Hard to find a stupider waste of tax dollars or human effort but I am sure the government will exceed those soon enough.

On the face of it, checking passports seems sane and logical if not just a little quaint by comparison.

Maybe not.

Sal’s father was in the passport line ahead of his wife.  He is 88, bald and has a prominent, if not large, aquiline nose.  And, of course, he is male, complete with a short beard!  The passport checker looked at his photo and asked him to take off his hat.  P complied.  The woman looked hard, nodded and then stamped him through.  As he stepped away, R, his wife, came in next.  She is also in her 80’s, is considerably shorter, has a shock of silver hair and is, of course, female.  Despite the cruelties of aging, she has been spared any facial hair.  She handed over her passport.  The official checked it, stamped it and sent her on her way.  So far so good.

When R& P got back together they realized that each had the others passport!

So much for US security!! (mind you, their shoes, clothes and carry-on were thoroughly searched, disassembled and commented on.  Seems octogenarians, as a profiled group, are pretty suspect, their borrowed airport wheelchairs getting the hardest scrutiny.)

Being here has settled into a nice, if not just-a-little-whacky, routine.  Sleep, write, eat, shop, tour a bit and then check computer for blog comments, happy-hour our way to dinnertime and then clean-up.  Chat, reminisce, fade early, go to bed, repeat daily.  Not really the recipe for adventure but a perfect alternative to Canada’s current winter conditions and a nice change from our normal off-the-grid routines.

Speaking of which………Guatemalans are very much on-the-grid.  Not so much in the same sense that we would mean it but they are ‘on’  nevertheless.  Even the remote and rustic village dweller-in-the-hills is woven into the ‘grid’ of their culture and lifestyle much more than is our common cul-de-saccer in the suburbs of Vancouver.  They are socially and infrastructurally tightly interwoven, you see.

Few of the poor have refrigerators, for instance.  That means daily forays to the local mercado.  Few can afford much ‘gas’ for their stoves and such and so that means frequent ‘fill-ups’ of small-ish tanks.  Even water-getting is often a daily chore accomplished at the village well.

In contrast, we often go as long as three weeks without any commercial or non-social contact.

And transportation is virtually bus-dependent.  It seems that every 5th vehicle on the road is a chicken bus filled with people coming and going.  And these are BIG chicken buses, not the little half-buses of yesteryear.  These puppies are forty or so feet long and loom large on roads.  Buses rule.

They form the real transportation grid and, in doing so, act as a veritable community-gathering-on-wheels since the people use them every day.   They are like rolling community centres in the morning and the evening ‘rush hours’.  Same Mayan hawkers, workers, employees and shoppers taking their labour, custom and goods back and forth together with their neighbours every day makes for familiarity and community.   These folks know each other and all their friends, family and relations.

And we may have forgotten the ‘glue’ that used to come from our religious affiliations since we have become more secular if not altogether irreligious in Canada.  It hasn’t been forgotten in Guatemala.  The church is another ‘thread’ in their strong social fabric.  The church is the centre of village life still.

These people are more communal, more linked, more interdependent with each other in so many more ways than we are.  (Not that I want that).  Their grid is different than ours but it still works – just in different but probably healthier ways.  It all serves to tie the people (Mayan, anyway) together and facilitate interdependence and it is very entrenched.

I dunno………….. as wussy as I am deep down, in my core, on the edges and on the surface, I still harbour a desire to be considerably more independent.  I have a Groucho Marx approach to groups and community as a rule. ‘Don’t really wanna join any group that would have me’.  Our island community group is the exception because, for the most part, everyone else feels as I do.  Some of our members refuse to show up for anything! Some are just names on the newsletter list.

THAT’s my kind of community!

The only way I can organize a work crew at home is to promise that any volunteer can show up and leave whenever they want, there will be no meetings, no paperwork, no supervision, no rules, no dues or even last names used.

Consequently, we work well together but, of course, no one knows anyone’s schedule, function or last name.  Think of it this way: if there are twenty hermits living alone in the same forest, does that make it a community of hermits?  I think so.

Of course, our ‘community’  projects take a bit longer as a result.

And, now, as I am older, that self-imposed separation-from-as-much-as-possibe seems to include BC Hydro, cable, TV, Canada census, regular newspaper delivery, lawn care, employment,  tax rolls (natch) and registries of any kind.  Hell, I won’t even sign petitions!

I don’t think I’d make a good Guatemalan villager, actually.