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.