On Becoming a Local

I think this place is beginning to accept me, the six foot four rubio.

A couple of weeks ago, a Tuesday or Wednesday I believe, I went with my teacher Lucy to this little presentation in the Quetzaltenango municipality building. The building is one of the oldest in Xela, what with a few hundred years or something. The presentation was on Marimba, the ancient art of xylophone-esque music that, as I learned, was created in Guatemala and later dispersed. It’s a very sacred art. I’m pretty sure I saw the same presentation a few days earlier in the Wal-Mart. I served as the translator for the group of gringos, and got my picture in the local Quetzalteco paper along with some quote that I didn’t actually say but was in pretty decent Spanish so I didn’t complain.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, I needed to purchase a cough medicine. The herbal remedies that my host-mom was making me from plants and flowers outside were helping, but I love a chemical remedy, so I decided the best thing to do would be to go to Wal-Mart and buy Robitussin.

I had a cough for about three weeks. I felt like the “Karen” in the room that everyone hates from that Dane Cook bit. “Here comes Warren, the jackass who coughs all the time and interrupts my classes.”

Circa week three of the cough, I was sitting at the computer with my lovely teacher Antonietta. She was having me listen to some song about Jesus or something, I wasn’t really paying attention because I was concentrating on not coughing. I was doing that thing where you hold the cough in, but end up looking like you are choking, thereby causing more of scene than you would if you just let the stupid cough out.

Towards the end of the song, I finally decided it was time to release the demons inside me. And out it came like molten lava from an erupting volcano. But then all of the sudden I simultaneously hear and feel a “pop” from my lower thoracic area. A rib. Antonietta detects that something is wrong, seeing as I am writhing in pain in my chair and gasping for air. I continue to listen to the song.

After struggling to catch my breath all afternoon I decided it was a good idea to go visit Dr. Cifuentes, the kind orthopedic surgeon whom I charmed into giving me her personal cell phone number. She tells me I need to get an X-ray and gives me some pill that will “help the pain.” I walk like 20 minutes to find the hospital to get the X-ray, but I feel really good at this point so I don’t care that I have no idea where the hospital is. Eventually I found it because I asked a man changing his tire where it was. It was the building next to his broken-down car.

Suffice it to say that for the equivalent of 50 American dollars, I rapidly received 2 X-rays, a diagnosis from a radiologist, and a consultation with Dr. Cifuentes. I cracked my rib and tore a muscle in my chest, and had congestion in my lower lungs. I was in and out of the hospital/Doctor’s office in time to make it to the Quetzaltrekker’s fiesta that evening, albeit I was wearing this chest brace but I didn’t mind too much because it made my pecks look super toned.

Navigating the Guatemalan health care system made me feel like I was beginning to become a local. It also made me feel like an idiot because I had to explain to people that I broke a rib from coughing.

That’s right folks, I broke a rib from coughing. Happy (belated) Independence Day.