Sleeping in San Jose, Guatemala

Well, trying to at least. I´m not sure how many of you reading this blog have ever had the experience of sleeping in some small, rural town in a developing country, but in my experience there tend to be certain reocurring themes such as roosters, dogs, and crickets. The following is an account of trying to sleep on our last night in San Jose.

To start things off I`ve got a little bit of a head cold which never makes sleeping easy anywhere. Having a cold I am making sure to drink a lot of water which also causes sleeping problems, namely getting up in the middle of the night and walking all the way to the outhouse, and if this isn´t enough to wake you up, the smell in there is.

Next, I can´t go to bed because my host family`s twin seven year old brothers are in my room as always asking the same questions as the night before and ringing my bike bell pretending to sell helados (ice cream). This consists of ringing the bell as loud as they can and yelling at the top of their lungs "Helados! Helados!" and running to the door outside to see if anyone is coming running to buy their helados.

As I finally get a chance to lay down, the crickets are loud enough to cause a ringing in my ears, oh wait, they are what is ringing in my ears. It´s funny when you hear them stop because only then can you really realize how loud they are in the first place. Just as I´m dozing off for the first time the rooster decides that he wants to assert himself and crows. When this happens it is never a one hit wonder. Ineveitably the rooster across the street crows next, then the domino effect continues until you can hear the faintest of crows from clear on the other side of town at which point my rooster crows-- picture the wave in a stadium. This generally lasts for about a half an hour. After the rooster has shown that he can cause the whole valley to light up with sounds, the turkey has his go, not nearly as impressive. He can´t get anyone to answer, but the turkey gobble is annoying just the same. Well I finally get to doze for at least a few minutes when there is a knock at my outside door and footsteps running off, I still have know idea who it was, but I suspect a certain set of twins. Well after this I got caught up in listening to the sounds outside waiting for the culprit to come back. They never do, but I hear plenty of people heading down the road, either walking and talking or zooming by on motorcycle, for town to take part in the feria, the town festival. Their return later in the night (early in the morning, slightly less sober, really) will also keep me from sleeping. Around this time the rooster wave starts up again but my rooster is not the instigator this time.

A little bit after the roosters, all of the dogs in town starting barking, pretty sure it wasn´t a fight, but it definitely lasts a long time. I fall asleep for just a little while and am awakened by the "bombs" of the feria. Now I know it´s 4AM, they always set off the first bomb at the same time every morning. The "bombs" (as they call them here) are not much of an exaggeration of the word, besides the destruction of course, as millions of vibrations are felt from head to toe with each bomb. Just after I doze off the closest church bell starts ringing, I counted 66 rings before it paused, then an additional 24 rings, I think this was the mark of the beginning of Semana Santa, Holy Week.

Here is where we add in Leah´s part of the story, which is essentially the same as mine but add more birds and babies. She has the great addition of some "pet" pidgeons (with what sounds like extra long toenails) that live on her tin roof. Right around 5 am, they start flapping and scratching right above her head on the tin roof that seems to multipy sound exponentially. To boot, baby Marcus (18 months old) also sleeps on the other side of a plywood partition that doen´t go all the way to the ceiling. He often likes to wake up and start playing with his toys or practice making various sounds (not words yet) at 3-3:30 am. Just before the bombs...and pidgeons.

After this sequence of cacaphony, it´s at least light out and it just makes sense to get up and start the day. Of course with a big smile on and the polite response of "bien, bien" when asked every morning by our families how we slept.