Tortillas

The first time the corn grinder roars to life I think that a plane is landing. The sun hasn’t yet risen over lake Petén Itza, in the northern tropics of Guatemala, but villagers are already trudging up the steep hill of the town, stepping over crumbling cement and curious piglets. They arrive and pour their lime-soaked buckets of corn into Julian’s gas-guzzling grinder. A thick, yellow paste oozes out in return.

Mamá Zoila, in her wood-shack kitchen next door, begins patting the fresh dough “thunk thunk thunk” onto the table. Her tortillas are as small and fat as she is and cooked on an iron pan over coals. From beyond the smoke blackened walls of her place, a shimmer of pink is opening over the lake. “Comida!” She yells. “Food!”

The girls and their babies fill up the outdoor kitchen, sitting on broken stools, talking, breast feeding. I’m a female but also a foreigner, a Spanish language student and a boarder, so I am ushered inside to sit with the boys. We are given instant coffee, tortillas and sweet oatmeal. The boys dig into their food and Julian, Mamá Zoila’s husband, rubs his belly. “This is my family,” he says in Spanish, grinning. “But it’s so big, they call it my pueblo.”

There are 35 grandchildren in all. Across the hallway from me, three kids nestle in one bed. Their mom Yorleni is a teacher in a remote Northern village, to which she commutes three hours by bus and one hour on horseback. In the neighboring town of Flores, there is an International Airport, providing thousands of tourists quick access to the nearby Mayan temples of Tikal. There are no flights into the bush however, so Yorleni sees her kids once every two weeks.

After breakfast, the granddaughters lead me shyly to the outdoor sink in the yard, where chickens scuffle in the dirt and a dog lurks, waiting for scraps. They show me how to pour pink powder soap on a rag, and wash out my bowl. Then they stand back and giggle.

In the afternoon, it’s the grandsons' turn. They take me to Gringo Beach, an old restaurant partially claimed by waves. Spanish students and volunteers go there to swim and locals go to bikini watch. “Mira!” The little boys call, “Look!” They strip down to their train engine underpants and fling themselves into the emerald water. Cement pillars and rebar poke ominously up from the floor of the lake. They are missed by centimeters. The boys scale the wall and do it again.

I look out over the lake. The island of Flores, glimmering in the distance, is full of hotels and trendy cafes. On a calm day, you can hear their music. Here, on this flooded shell of a building, the sun begins to slant and the grandsons slow down. They’re thinking of Mamá Zoila in her kitchen on the hill making the evening tortillas, and they’re hungry. It’s time to go home.