Pilgrimage to San Luis, Peten, Guatemala

Doug has written:

Monday, August 18, 2008

The three of us, Pia Nicolini (my wife), Pia Brintnall (my daughter) and myself (Doug Brintnall) awake a 4:00 AM to pack the van to drive from Philadelphia to Newark Airport. As we make the drive we pray the rosary together. The intentions of the prayer are for the success of our trip to Maya Assumption Center in the town of San Luis in the Peten of Guatemala. We have never been there before and we have minimal information about it or the surrounding territory. We don’t know the conditions we will find. Sister Gladys, the Assumption Nun who heads the center, e-mailed us that transportation is an issue and it would be preferable if we could rent a vehicle that is able to handle rough terrain and please not to travel at night.

So, we putting ourselves into uncertainty with prayer and trying to trust in Holy Spirit to guide us. But is this pilgrimage really any different than our everyday life? In the United States we have an illusion of certainty when we make a trip and, trusting our own efforts, may forget to ask for God’s help in everything we do. Yet, is our first-world certainty really just an illusion, an illusion that is shattered as soon as the unexpected occurs, and it always does. It is with the unexpected that we are likely to turn to prayer. I guess the only difference is that in our pilgrimage, we have chosen uncertainty and have done so trusting God to turn any evil that may befall us into something good, if not for ourselves then at least for others.

Our five-hour flight from Newark to Cancun is uneventful. Our worry is getting all of our bags through Mexican customs without questions. We have a total of six suitcases, not just clothes but also sheets and pillows. Plus. we have a whole suitcase of school supplies we had purchased at Staples. Spread throughout the luggage we have six brand-new stone carving kits for a stone-carving workshop planned by my daughter, Emilia, and her friend, Chris Terrell. They traveled ahead of us on a flight to Guatemala City and will take a day-long bus ride to meet us in the jungle lowlands town of Flores. My worry is that customs will take us aside and demand tax payment, either in Mexico or Guatemala, which might be costly and also cause delays. The checking of bags is randomized. You press a button and a light comes on either green or red. I say a Hail Mary and press the button. The light comes on green, and we pass through with all of our luggage unopened. We were to have no problems in Guatemala either.

And what if the light had turned red? And then we would have had to open up everything, give explanations, perhaps argue about import taxes, and perhaps pay a tax just to be able to catch the next flight. If that had transpired, our spiritual challenge would have been to accept the cross and bear any injustices with patience and forgiveness. The flight to Flores, just one and a half hours from Cancun, was in a small plane with air conditioning not functioning even close to well enough in the tropical heat, which seemed no less even at a higher altitude. I did my best to be cheerful

Once through customs at Flores, I decided it was prudent to call the Alamo car rental office before going to the car rental location. I was concerned about having made the arrangements via the internet just the day before and without ever talking to a human being to confirm that everything is OK. Calling the local office, I get an automated phone answering system with a menu of choices. I go through the choices wondering how long it will take to get to a human being. I finally get to the choice of speaking to a reservations representative, but there is no answer. I try several times, following other menu choices and always with the same result. It is 4 PM in the afternoon on a Monday. I think to myself that the office must be open. I decide we’ll have to take a taxi and hope that the car is there.

I ask the woman at the airport restaurant for directions to the Alamo office, showing her the local address on the printout. She tells me that they closed their offices because of a lack of business about a week ago! She explains that very few tourists are coming to Guatemala this year, perhaps because of the generally poor economic conditions in Europe and the US. She says this has made conditions difficult for many businesses. She calls long distance to the Alamo offices in Guatemala City (8 hours away by bus). She speaks to a representative who takes my reservation information and says he will call back. But the call is never returned. Sympathetically, the woman finds car rental options for me.

One option is an independent dealer just two blocks from the airport. She refuses to accept any reimbursement for the phone calls and when I ask for her name to be able to say who recommended us to the dealer, she tells me just say to him the “woman at the airport restaurant.” So, she remained anonymous, like an anonymous charitable contribution. She smiled; she was generous with her time; she was helpful with cheerful. Like Mary at the marriage in Cana, seeing a problem she interceded to help, but she herself stayed in the background and did not look for a personal recognition. The car dealer just happened to have the vehicle we needed, a four-wheel drive Mitsubishi SUV that should be able to navigate any rough back roads. Thank you, Lord!

While I’m at the car dealer, I receive a cell phone call from my wife, Pia, saying she is being eaten alive by mosquitoes in the airport waiting area where she is stationed with our suitcases, waiting for me to make the car arrangements. I tell her to open my suitcase to find the insect repellant we had brought with us. We had started taking our anti-malarial tablets a week before. You take a tablet once a week. Malaria is a risk in this part of Guatemala. In fact, the malarial mosquito is making a comeback, not just in Guatemala but worldwide. After World War II, malaria was almost eradicated with DDT. But the mosquitoes evolved! A few were DDT resistant, and their millions of DDT-resistant descendants are retaking the Guatemalan lowlands.

Reflecting on the fall and rise of malaria, I ponder how we Americans have convinced ourselves that we can have quick fixes to problems through our science and technological progress. Yet, so often the gains prove to be short-lived or to have unintended negative consequences, like poisoning our environment and ourselves. How hard it is for us to be patient and careful in technological development! How often businesses rush to make profits off of a new technology? We hope in science. We think we may eliminate disease, that we may extend our lives nearly indefinitely with organ transplants, bionic limbs and embryonic stem cells. In other words, we will save ourselves through our own intelligence and skill, and not through God. Yet, as we pursue these illusions, reality breaks through, the reality that we actually cannot save ourselves and that short-term gains often turn into long-term losses or lead to new, anticipated problems. The suffering servant of Jesus remains the fundamental truth of human existence. Why do we have malaria and then the failure of DDT? Perhaps it is so we can come to our senses, understand who we are, and turn to God.

The car dealer drives us to a hotel in nearby Santa Elena where, ignoring the pained looks of my family, I decide we will spend the night. In the back of my mind I am thinking that I have no idea what our living conditions will be in San Luis and the Mayan Assumption Center. So let’s stay at a poorer hotel as a transition. The hotel is primitive by US standards. It is clearly a place for locals, not tourists, to stay. The rooms are bare, illuminated by a single bare fluorescent bulb. The water in the swimming pool is murky. But they have a ceiling fan and even a wall air conditioner. Even though there is a restaurant, we are told that it is not serving dinner. In the morning we find out that they are not serving breakfast either.

We are to meet Emilia and Chris at the bus terminal in Santa Elena, a short walk from the hotel. The bus from Guatemala City is slated to arrive at 6 PM. We walk to the terminal and they are not there and the bus has already arrived. Fortunately, our cell phones are working, we call and find out they are at the adjoining town of Flores, a place nice enough to attract some tourists because of its beautiful lakefront. Most tourists, however, just fly into Flores, go directly to the Mayan ruins of Tikal, and then fly out without even setting a foot in the town. After picking them up, we go directly to a fancy tourist restaurant that overlooking the lake.

Except for the five of us, the restaurant is empty. We say a prayer before our meal, giving thanks that we have arrived safely and asking that our visit bear fruit for the Sisters of the Assumption and for ourselves. We dine on the local white fish from the lake. It is truly delicious. The fish comes with vegetables and rice. We have bottled water, sodas and beers. Asking what they have for dessert, they say they have ice cream. So we decided for the ice cream. The waiter returned to say that, unfortunately, they actually are out of ice cream. As we ask for the bill, we note that there are still no other patrons in the restaurant. The meal is quite inexpensive by American standards, only $66 dollars for the five of us. We compliment the food and thinking of the waiter, the busboy and the chef working in an empty restaurant, we leave a generous tip. Hopefully, the restaurant workers sense the genuine love of God reaching out to them through us.
Back at the hotel at night, I do the Examen, reviewing the events of the day and how I handled them and where I fell down. On balance, I am thankful it was a good day. Yet, one always wonders about self-delusion. We all have a tendency to see ourselves and our actions in the best possible light. It is so difficult to truly know ourselves. Lord, reveal to me the sins of which I am as yet unaware.