Sunday, January 8, 2012

Well, shit...

I should preface this post by saying this story is pretty gross but too amusing/bizarre to not tell.

I caught the 5 a.m. bus out of Salquil Grande this morning as I usually do whenever I head down to Nebaj. It was dark and cold and as we picked up more and more passengers the overhead racks quickly became filled with backpacks and the like. It was market day in Nebaj so lots of people were bringing down goods to sell. Mainly firewood but there were also vegetables and…chickens. The racks were packed.

So we’re riding along and I suddenly feel something hit my shoulder as it falls from the rack above my head. It was dark and I figured it was probably some vegetable that had fallen from a basket so I reached down on the seat to pick it up. In doing so I unknowingly dug my hand into a nice index-finger-size turd. Yep, shit. God I wish I could have seen the look on my face when it happened.

I’m guessing it was a chicken above me. To quote our 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson: “Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.”

Regardless of what animal it was, I didn’t stick around to find out. I immediately climbed over the Guatemalan next to me and proceeded to a seat at the back of the bus. Needless to say the next hour sucked. But as I sat there fuming, with shit on my hand, crammed between two Guatemalans in a seat designed for elementary school children I couldn’t help but think about how much I’m going to miss all the crazy shit (pun intended) that happens to me here; the unpredictability of it all and the wild stories that have come out of my two year stint.

I got to Nebaj and finally washed it all off. That damn bird soiled my hat, jacket and hands. But then again he's being taken to the market to be sold and eaten so I guess all in all I probably had a better day. Deciding on the title of this post was just too much fun. “Shit Happens”, “A Shitty Situation”; the possibilities were endless.