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November 14, 2005
Sam Plank’s Disco
It’s taken me just over three months, and a friend going on holiday to make me realise that I can simply pick up a phone. Why yesterday? – this is the second time Brendan’s gone away since I’ve been here, and as I’ve essentially stopped using Messenger in the last two months, we’ve had little contact since then.
I had decided to phone him, to wish him Bon Voyage, and then my father, but Brendan’s first words were to tell me that a mutual friend had died on Friday night. My first thought was to try and reach Julian and Kate to ensure they knew, but I don’t have a number for Kate, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to reach Julian, either. I couldn’t. I spoke to my father a few times – the second time to let him know we’d had a power cut, the landline was down, and to give him a cheap number for ringing me, the third time (once my English mobile had resurrected itself at last, for a second time) to give him the equivalent number for phoning my brother, and the fourth time for a longer chat once his video was over. On a whim, I tried Julian yet again, and managed to reach him - the first time we’ve spoken in about six months, despite our constant emailing. It was nearly midnight in England by that time, but I felt as though I’d discovered a new power, and was reluctant to let it go just yet; I needed more people to talk to. I tried Dave, admittedly concerned about how rusty my humour skills have become; got his answer machine, gave up. Got dressed, went to an internet café, and sent a group email to the friends I’d have phoned if I’d ever normally phoned them.
I probably wasn’t too coherent in the last few weeks before I left England, but I’d hoped that friends would be able to come here, to see this country which has been such a large part of my life; or failing that, caught a cheap charter to Cancun and hung out on the beach in Playa del Carmen for a week or two. With my 30th birthday a week and a half away, I still long to be able to ship my English friends and myself over there, but not only do I accept that that’s not going to happen, I also accept that it would be a very unsightly mess. John would probably enjoy watching it all fall apart, but then, he seems to get his kicks that way anyway. But I still want them to see what it’s like over here – what the country’s like, what life is like here – but instead, all that seems to happen is my losing contact with them.
When I first arrived, I’d joke that I’d lived in England for too long. Now I realise that I’m far more English than I’d ever appreciated, which should be alarming given how hard I’ve tried over the years to avoid exactly that. Mind you, given the strength of the American expat community over here, at least I’m glad not to be in any way involved with them (says the owner of a new, only slightly mangled American passport). My mother broods over why, after a meeting at the American Embassy with two women to organise a Life Coaching weekend, they concluded, ‘Well, she’s not like us, but…. ‘; similarly, an American at work mentioned an expat I’ve never heard of, who’s in a hospice, who reassured me, ‘Well, if you’d been here a little longer, no doubt you’d know who she is…’ Oh, for God’s sake. I know the expats I work for. I know the expats they hold informal tea parties with on a too-regular basis. I know the expats I used to work for, when I used to live here, and I’ve done a lovely job of avoiding them ever since. I know of the expats my mother used to be friends with, but Christ, when I go out, I’ll be babbling in Spanish till I can barely keep my eyes open.
Rant over. My alarm clock will go off in just over six hours. Weekends, wherever you are, are never nearly long enough. Either I grill up some sausages for breakfast, or it’s pretzels or plataninas for me tomorrow morning.
Work. I work for a magazine which I’ve been reading for at least eight years, if not longer. Since I discovered a year or two ago that they have a website, I’d usually read it online in England, but didn’t always remember to do so. Back in London: up, dressed, out the door in 20 minutes. Since I’ve never before had to get up early in this country – as I never had to work before 7pm as a rule, it now takes me almost an hour. Instead of an hour by train and Tube, the office is only three blocks away, two of which is spent gazing at my favourite volcano. The return journey is spent gazing at my favourite hill.
The main problem at work – besides the Californian luvviness – is that, in all my years of working and living in Central America, I’ve never worked with local women, and almost never had any female friends here. Except for a part-timer, a late starter, and three mostly-absent men, the staff is essentially female. And Guatemalan. For God’s sake, I don’t know the social niceties, and I hate wasting words. Especially on people I don’t particularly like. I far prefer a smile or a wave to having to say hello twice, their name, and ask how they are, all in one breath. I never call people by their names. You’re like the Antichrist if you don’t mention the other person’s name at least several times per sentence. You’re meant to say Bon Appetit when people start a meal as well as when they finish it, but I choose to overlook the latter. They’ve stopped saying goodbye to me at the end of the day (I’m generally the last to leave; Antonia came by one day at 4.45pm telling me it was 5pm and time to leave, not understanding why I was mildly harrassed by all the work I still needed to get through before I could justify leaving), so I’ve stopped bothering to say anything when I go for lunch. Officially, I’m meant to be on phone duty when the latest Elsa is on lunch, but not only have her lunches been lasting for up to over three hours while the owners have been away, I ceased to officially work with her the day before they left. They’re back now, and I’d like things to stay the way they have been for the last few weeks. Except that I’d really like to get paid. I’m meant to be paid fortnightly, and it’s been three weeks now.
The extent of my attempt to bond with my colleagues has been to bring the newspaper in every day. Theoretically, it’s so that I can read it during my fag breaks, otherwise I’ll never get around to it. Sylvia likes to read it over lunch, and doesn’t seem to particularly like me, so that helps too. What doesn’t help is Elsa bloody nicking it so it’s not around when I want to read it. I started bringing it in during the hurricane, so she could see the latest statistics. During the hurricane, the Accounts people had the radio on, and would give us the latest updates, or at least I assume they did, as I have a separate office. If you’re in a country where the phones and roads are down, and the cloud cover is too low for helicopters to get any visibility, it takes a long time to get any news during a major national disaster. Even now, over a month later, when I mention to people that I went to the Lake last weekend, they anxiously ask me what it’s like there.
Part of what I love about being here, is how much more simple and basic life seems to be. In uni, I’d go to France or Holland at least once a month for the same reason; since then, I’d come here, or Fuerteventura, once I found out about it. This is a country with its last President in hiding in Mexico, with an extremely high crime rate, even higher mortality rate, frequent earthquakes, even more frequent road accidents, far greater social inequality than in Europe, but stronger sense of acceptance. Life is cheap: about a year ago, there was a robbery wave, but when people went to the police station to report it, they found themselves reporting it to the robbers themselves. The Highway Code is a myth here, where half the country is mountainous and there are few straight roads; there’s not many people who will wait for a straight stretch to overtake, or even anything resembling visibility. They just assume that whoever’s behind them will get out of the way when needed. There’s a broken-down car I pass on the way to work every day; after a few days, someone spread an advert across the windscreen. A few weeks later, I saw someone shoving it down the street, trying to start it. Since then, it changes the side of the street it’s on, and sometimes it’s not even there. Several of the windows are missing, and most of it’s caved in, but apparently it’s still roadworthy. Friday morning, as I walked to work, I noticed that every house and building had strips of red plastic tied to the windowframes. I’ve not yet asked why, but just thought ‘Oh,’ and admired them fluttering in the wind as I passed.
It’s 2.30am, so I need to wrap this up. And then find a floppy and save it, as my mother went to the Lake with the modem but left the cat. Poor substitute. The internet cafes aren’t open nearly late enough here. It’s gorgeous here. It’s stunning here. I love being able to speak Spanish again, but hate that I don’t get to use it often enough to improve it in any way. It’s mid-November, but I still roast while walking between the house and office, and start grumbling it’s cold when it drops to about twenty degrees Celsius. Of course, I grumble a hell of a lot more when there’s no water every evening, and I can’t have a sodding shower, and I’ve stopped being online after work due to the mosquito parties around all the laptops; but it only took me about a month to find out when my current favourite TV show is actually on: only three hours before the advertised time.
I really miss having my own home. I won’t let myself miss my garden back in London, due to how screwed-up that’s become. For some bizarre reason – the night I was stranded in Texas on the way here, or since then – I’ve been missing France a lot, so I’ve thought at length about moving there, not least so I could be on a more compatible time zone with the friends I’ve left behind. But with the recent rioting, and my recently-dead hard drive, I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. The whole point of moving here was for it to be a stepping-stone to the States, a stepping-stone to better jobs, better money, better opportunities. Better ability to return to England from time to time to annihilate people’s livers. When I was gearing up to leave London, my mother was sick, my grandfather was sick, and my grandmother had been diagnosed with Menieres disease; my mother’s fully recovered now, my grandfather died, and my grandmother has fully confirmed all my reasons for never wanting anything to ever do with her. I get occasional emails from English recruitment agents, puzzled that they can’t reach me by phone for yet another SQL Server DBA or other such ludicrous role, but it wasn’t till I chatted with Matt recently that I remembered how vile and brainfree such recruitment agents are.
I should have seen it coming, from when I was out here a decade ago, but I never realised how much I’d miss my English friends. I rarely saw most of them anyway, so I assumed we’d continue on email etc as before. Then my grandfather died, and I stopped emailing; then the hurricane hit, and I was too angry at the media’s indifference. I’d anxiously awaited the clocks changing, as Guatemala doesn’t bother, and not only would it be 11pm, not midnight when I finished work, but I’d also have two whole hours at work before people went home – but I got used to people not being online at midnight, and have become too used to reading for a few hours now when I get home (as I said, I *really* miss having my own home!) to arm-wrestle my mother for her laptop. (Can’t be bothered to set up my own). Once people are in bed, there doesn’t seem to be any real urgency to email them, so I’m severely backlogged on email.
I’ve spent the last six and a half years trying hard not to get sucked back into this town, which is severely addictive at its mildest. I’ve made few friends here, put few roots down, which is no doubt partly why I miss my English friends all the more. Sure, I’ve exchanged phone numbers a few times with people, but have since learned that if you do so at about 3am, you’re almost certainly not going to hear from them again. (Mostly I get wrong numbers. Here, they phone you and ask who you are. Next time someone does that, I’ll ask them why the hell they’re phoning me if they don’t bloody know who I am). A few weeks ago, I proudly announced that I’d made three friends so far, outside work, old friends and family friends: Dikla, who works in the second-hand bookshop I’ve been caning, whose boyfriend looks like the lead actor in one of my favourite films, and whose band I want to join; Mariela, who works with them, and Cristina, who works in the bar I usually end up in. I’ve not seen any of them for a week and a half.
As I said, I assumed my friendships would stay the same once I was over here, as it’s all internet-based anyway. I never accounted for how little free time I’d have here, or how lazy I’d get. But, oh God, the other thing I miss that I never thought I’d be deprived of: humour.
I remember back at RCN, Neil coming into the office to ask how I was settling in. They replied fine, but I seemed kinda quiet. I told Martin A., who replied, ‘You?! Quiet?! Any office with you in it quiet?!’ When I managed to switch offices for a few weeks, a few months later, my two chief memories (besides taking most of a day to update my CV, because I’d done more or less sod all in that job) are of cranking the music up louder and louder, even when the manager’d returned; and of innocently turning the volume up while Fil flicked through a .pps with a loud revolting noise at the end, specifically not warning him. Before he left the RCN, when I changed from Southwark to Waterloo East on the way home every day, I’d chuckle at the jokes we’d swapped during the day. Afterwards, I’d chuckle at Forum jokes of the day, at Julian’s or Brendan’s posts.
Now, I sit in a small office, mostly by myself, signed into Messenger as Offline, discreetly checking email, the Forum and the Forum chatroom – especially as almost nobody talks to me, life is too short to be adopted by the female clique – and I’d never thought I’d survive this long in an office all by myself. Martin A. seems to be caught up with his new job, Matt and Jenny are the only ones who send me jokes these days, now that Kate’s in Fuerteventura, and about the only humour to be gained these days is from laughing at the cat. I never realised that humour might be optional.
It’s probably just a phase I’m going through, but I’m severely missing my friends, and that’s creating a dark shadow over my life here. Maybe I miss them enough to fly back for a short visit, but surely never to live there again. Sure, I’d rather they all came here – not that I have any confidence I could get that much time off work – but given how little I sleep at the best of times, I seem to spend way too much time thinking about Happy Ever Afters.
Either I need a strong sleeping pill, or a sledgehammer.
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