We got our firewood today! Here we see the firewood salesman and his delivery vehicle; it doesn’t tear up the yard like the pickup truck that brings my dad’s firewood every fall. This turned out to be another “cultural moment” for us. You see, we paid for this wood about three weeks ago. “I can get you a good deal,” Manuel told us, and being new here, we figured he could. So we gave him 275q and said “thanks.” After two weeks, we started to wonder where our wood was… we waited that long, figuring this is Guatemala and all, before we even asked about it the first time. But he assured us it was on its way. After more badgering, it did come; miraculously before our existing supply ran out. The day it arrived, our neighbor Lina came by to tell us it was here. “But it’s green!” she said, frowning. We have this problem, where we tend to get taken advantage of a lot in this kind of situation, being gringos and all. But there wasn’t really anything to do about it, so we went up to check it out. “How much did it cost?” Lina asked the firewood guy.
“250,” he replied.
“That’s a good price, that’s what we paid the other guy,” she replied.
Nice. So, yeah, Manuel skimmed 25q. And we got green wood. After a little conference (in English), Emily and I decided that next time we are going to give Nas Palas the money and let him buy ours the same time he buys his, since we share it anyways and he is scrupulously honest.
Manuel has hot been our favorite lately anyways. His wife came by two weeks ago, asking to borrow 300q for an emergency to buy corn for their family to eat, and she would pay us back the next day after she was able to get to town. Well, a week later, no money. I asked them if they were going to pay me back, and Manuel said, “Oh, i have to go to Soloma for a job tomorrow, i get paid there. But i don’t have enough money for the trip, can you lend me 50q?” And, dumb as i am, i actually DID it. And, of course, he didn’t bring me any money the next day. By this point, Emily was so mad she couldn’t speak with him, so I had to badger them daily for a week to get it back, and they were amazed that I wanted it ALL back. He finally gave me 300q a few days ago, to get me off his case. I bugged him about the last 50q this morning, and he looked uncomfortable, and said he’d bring it tomorrow. Vamos a ver.
Needless to say, we learned our lesson. We are officially out of the lending business. We were dumb to do it in the first place, but you get so used to this role of “community helper,” you sometimes forget and cross into unsafe territory. And with Manuel it’s even trickier; he does a LOT to help us and make our job easier, and he’s 90% of why we’re in Temux in the first place. He’s useful, but like a wild dog, we have to make sure that we never let him into a position where he can harm us.