Conversations with a Guatemalan


Orlando, the condo maintenance guy came to my apartment yesterday afternoon to repair the hole in my ceiling. Whenever some "guy" comes over to fix any non-specific appliance or non-specific home issue, you never know what kind of dude you're gonna get. Is he gonna be scary looking? Resemble a thug you saw on TV or on a scary MTV music video? Is he going to look like Brad Pitt or Gumby? Not that I have actually had this last thought... but you know what I'm saying.... maybe...

So, when I heard a knock on my door this afternoon around 2 pm, I was wondering... what is this guy going to look like, and how much should I trust him? And then, of course, you don't want to seem like you're adopting some sort of stereotype by acting like every maintenance guy is going to like jump you or something. However, I'm a small female, and I'm innately paranoid about any strange fellow, so I proceeded to open the door with extra caution.

Turns out Orlando was really nice and friendly. He was talkative too, which made me kind of suspicious, but he told me he had a wife and two kids, so I felt better. Orlando is from Guatemala, and his mom brought him to the U.S. at age 7 to get away from his father and from the political unrest in the country. She wanted to get away from my dad, he said, and i didn't probe further. He did say that he would never want to live in Guatemala, because anyone can kill you for free there. yikes, I thought.

I didn't know anything about Guatemala, so I did a search on the country, and here's what I found on wikipedia.com:

1. Mayans flourished in Guatemala from 3rd century BC to the 11th century
2. The country was conquered by the Spanish in 1523
3. Independent from Spain in 1821
4. CIA (that's us!) overthrew Guatemalan gov't in 1954, which led to a war that lasted 3 decades in which 300K Guatemalans were killed. (yay for the americans)
5. Belize used to be part of Guatemala, and there are still disputes as to where the border lies between these two countries.
6. Currency is called quetzal!! i love it!!!
7. 1% of the population practices Mayan religion
8. official language is Spanish, with an additional 23 indigenous languages

I thought that was interesting.

But anyways, my ceiling is fixed. And Orlando wasn't scary. So I'm quite pleased.

There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza...

My family and I returned from fleeing Rita last Saturday to Clear Lake, where we found no flooding, no damage, and no tree sitting in the middle of my living room. We even had power! I was amazed, and I felt blessed.

My father wanted us to check on my condo, but I figured that could wait till later in the week. I finally made it over to good 'ole BriarGreen yesterday, and found everything in order except for some weird lookin' stuff on my kitchen floor. I figured it just fell of of my trash can when I emptied the trash before I left my apartment. Oh boy was I wrong.

Later on Tuesday night, I opened my pantry door and I realized that the "stuff" was insulation. There was a hole in my ceiling in the pantry closet, and insulation had spilled out onto some cracker and cereal boxes inside the pantry. It almost looked like someone had punched a hole in my ceiling!! It was kinda freaky.

So then i did what I usually do when I didn't know what to do. I called Ahila. The conversation initially went something like this:

"Ahila, there's a hole in my ceiling." Laughter on the other line. "Ahila? Did you hear me? There's a BEEP hole in my ceiling!" More laughter.

I'm not quite sure why she found this so funny, but somehow she managed to get over her laughter, and she came over to help me repair the hole until I could call someone in the morning. She brought her flashlight, and I decided that the hole was "non-communicating" with the outdoors. Ahila said I was a nerd for using that term, but I was kind of proud of myself. I also told her that the hole was approximately 8x3 inches, which I was proud of also because I had measured it. I mean, I knew a lot about my hole in my ceiling.

Well, everything except where it came from. I also happily realized that nothing had fallen through the hole, such as a racoon or a skunk or something. I told this to Suneal on the phone, that I was happy that a racoon hadn't come in my house to give me rabies. He pointed out that rabies was most commonly found in bats. Damn my microbio memory.

Anyways, we fixed the hole with duct tape and some plastic. I was pretty proud of what it looked like, and I hoped nothing would crawl through.

This morning, I got "Shawn," one of the "condo guys," to look at the hole. He decided that he looked like someone had stepped through the ceiling. He said, "Yep, looked like someone just stepped right through. That hole is the size of my foot." He said someone musta been up there in the attic doing some work and created the hole.

The condo guy made the diagnosis and I had failed. Maybe this reveals my insecurities, but I felt kinda dumb at this point, like I have many times in clinics when I present a case to my upper level or attending, and they make the diagnosis in a snap. I mean, damn, I should have deduced that the hole was in the shape of a foot. See! This is what med school has done to me. A hole in my ceiling turns into a competition with Shawn the condo guy to see which one of us can figure out how the hole got there first. Ahhh well. I've talked to the condo property management since then, and they've agreed to fix my hole. So I'm happy. As long as nothing crawls through ...