The Ghost in the Machine, part 2

Spyware, I have found, provokes a succession of emotions not unlike the stages of grief. First I was in denial: these error messages don’t mean anything, these folders with “.exe” don’t mean everything, Windows always does weird things, etc. Next I panicked: I realized forces beyond my control were operating behind the scenes; I realized there was a ghost in the machine. I began by trying to root them out through official routes, using virus programs, diagnostic tools. They found nothing, so I just opened my C:\ and start deleting anything that looked suspicious.

As it became apparent my clear cutting had no impact on the ghost, I settled into acceptance: “Perhaps we can coexist,” I thought. “After all, not having internet is a mixed blessing. I cannot download an update that would destroy you, while you, my friend”—by this time I was having mental conversations with my ghost—“cannot communicate with your master.” Like a dog carrying a snake across a river, reaching the shore would put us both in danger.

But then the messages started. Every time I start up my computer I have to fight off half a dozen or more messages from my virus program urging me to “restart my computer to remove new threats.” If I were to say yes to each of these, I’d never actually use my computer. It seems even my friends have turned against me.

Add this to the little discoveries. I can’t display hidden files and folders, the option doesn’t even exist. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete brings up a “disabled by your administrator,” despite the fact that I am the administrator. My virus program—friend? enemy?—quarantines about one new file every minute, each of them either 409, 410 or 18 kb in size. My laptop’s power gauge has disappeared.

Thus, I have now reached the final stage: cautious confidence. In the battle over the fate of my laptop, a conflict that has taken on Deep Blue vs. Kasparov proportions for me, I’m optimistic. After all, this is more like Bridge than Chess, and my trump card is the update. In the meantime, I’m watching the quarantine file build—while writing this post, I found 62 new friends.

A Ghost in the Machine, part 1

The battery light on my laptop is blinking. It makes me worried. Things weren’t always this way.

It started about a month ago. I began getting more notices of mysterious programs terminating, encountering fatal errors. “_CLS_PCCGuide”, “amvo.exe”, “ino6.com”. I didn’t give it much thought.

Then my USB drive, my connection from laptop to outside world, started acting funny. Every folder suddenly had a “.exe” after it. A couple folders I didn’t recognize popped up: “RECYCLER”, “FOUND . 000”. I would tried opening them, but there was nothing inside. I tried deleting them, but they reappeared.

I got worried enough to act. I ran a virus scan. Nothing. I ran a Scandisk. Nothing. I went to PC Doctor and ran every diagnostic they had. Still nothing. Confessing to myself that unfortunately it all depended on my virus program—which I had, in my infinite wisdom, neglected to renew some six months ago—I cursed my stupidity. I couldn’t download the update now, I had no internet. There was only one option left. I had to go straight to the source. I had to cut out the bad with my own hand.

I started searching for those mysterious terminated programs. Microsoft’s little search doggy told me there was no “_CLS_PCCGuide” or, for that matter, “CLS” or “PCCGuide.” He smiled and denied the existence of “amvo.exe” and “ino6.com.” I grew suspicious. I searched “Windows.” Nope, no files, no folders of that name, he told me. They had corrupted the doggy!

“Ok, who needs search?” I thought. I would track down these infiltrators on my own. Going off a path directory one of those failed program messages had displayed, I opened my C:\ and clicked on Windows. Instead of opening the folder, the explorer window refreshed and, lo and behold, there was no longer any Windows folder. It was like opening up a phonebook to find half the alphabet missing. It’s not there, but here I am. Hmm.

The People You Meet: Giovanni, part 1

When I signed up for classes and a homestay at La Casa en el Arból, my language school in San Cristobal de las Casas, I was excited to see there was a two-meal-a-day option. I had signed up for three meals a day in both my previous destinations and, faithfully attending those three like any student on a budget, I missed out on a lot of local food. The price difference was $10, which seemed like a good deal until I did the math. I had about $1.42 to spend per day. Even in Mexico, that doesn’t go far, but I seldom eat a big dinner here, so I figured something small off the street would do.

Two weeks after later—boy it’s been short, but so rich—and my only street experiences have been a single pork tamale and a cup of esquites, cooked corn with mayonnaise and chili powder. Instead, I ate with Giovanni.

I met Giovanni my first night in Chiapas. It had been a long day. Thanks to an overnight bus, I had arrived early enough to watch dawn break, then sat in the cold in front of my new school reading The Conquest of New Spain until the doors opened. Introductions at my homestay, a long sweaty search for a laundry mat, Spanish classes and a brief stroll into town followed. Thus, night settling in, I wasn’t eager to venture far for my meal. The pizza place I had already passed four or more times, just a curving three-quarter block from my new home seemed like a good choice. Besides, at $1 a slice, it would fit my budget.

Thus, at about 7 p.m., I came in and met Giovanni, the thirty-something owner who uses “chido” as liberally as a California surfer says 'cool'. (They mean the same thing, by the way.) He told me he hadn’t cooked any pizzas yet, but if I came back in about 30 min’s he’d have one ready. I came back about three hours later and, well, he invited me to a party. That's how it all started.

Back from the Sick

I've already broke my new schedule and partly it's because I've been sick. Fever came and went, a stuffy nose came and gave and gave and gave and went, then fever did a comeback tour, then a cough showed up on the scene. Then last night my neighbor's dog bit me. In case you're wondering, it really does hurt to be bit by a dog, even when it comes in the fleshy part of your thigh. If my coming blog posts take on a distinctly rabid flavor, then you'll know I've got rabies.

The Gringo as a Funnel

Salvadorians rarely wear raincoats. They’re smarter than that.

I spent three hours a couple Sundays ago catching up on my virtual life in a windowless internet cafe inside San Salvador’s too-good imitation of an American mall, Metro Centro. Virtues of that use of time aside, when I exited I found not only the sky had grown dark as expected, but the streets were wet. Halfway through my wait for the cross-town bus, the drops started. I put on my raincoat. Then came the rain. I zipped up my raincoat. Then came the downpour. I had an epiphany (a small one, ok?).

People seldom wear raincoats in El Salvador because they make no difference. Rain here, after tickling you with wispy drops then feinting at blowing over, comes down like paint. It coats you, it envelopes you and, in my case, it comes right through the front and down the sleeves of my expensive all-weather windbreaker. The little that is held at bay rolls down my sleeves into my pockets, down my back onto my pants, and down my front onto the tops of my shoes. In an El Salvador rainstorm, I’m not just a sponge, I’m a funnel.

Even Guatemala’s solution, the poncho, is hardly seen here. Umbrellas are popular, but many people rely on a method that they can’t forget at home: waiting. As I run from bus to home or from store to bus stop, I provoke a lot of quizzical looks from more relaxed and, let’s face it, more sensible Salvadorans standing at ease under the eaves. Besides, the rain usually lasts only twenty minutes (it’s like emptying a watering can through its top instead of its nozzle—quick and heavy) and those pupusas look so tempting. Why rush?

The People You Meet: Ruben Lettuce, part 1

I met Ruben Lettuce the other day. I was sitting in La Nevería, finished with my ice cream but lingering, reading an six-month old copy of The Nation, when he stumbled in. After trying the other two customers, he swayed his way to me and held out his hand. “¿Podría darme un moneda?” he asked. I fished in my pocket and came up with a nickel (I stake no claim to generosity, but in a city where bus fare is a quarter and a decent meal can be had for $1.25, five cents is not throw away money). He held it up for a look then turned his eyes back to me and cocked his head. In a voice as off-kilter as his balance, he asked: “You speak English?”

His real name was Ruben Pacheco Lechuga. I know it exactly not only because it stuck in my head—Lechuga means lettuce—but because he wrote it for me on a sheet of lined paper torn from my notebook. Below it is his mother’s email and two guesses at his wife’s—“I’m educated and all that, I just haven’t used it in a while,” he told me as he paused, pen in hand, drawing a blank on the address. I’m to email them to say he’s alright. That he’s been drinking, but he’s alright. Ruben, by the way, is an alcoholic.

His tale weaved more than he did. It shifted from his current lover to a past girlfriend to his present wife, one foot in the last decade, the other in the present. He drunkenly slurred, he soberly thundered, he—who painted his English with swear words—switched to Spanish to ask me how to say ‘water’. He repeated, he revealed, he trailed off. Talking with Ruben was like watching a man peel an onion, moist eyes and all.

First layer: He had lived in Canada, in BC. “Way up there,” he said, his finger shooting toward the ceiling as if Canada was there, above the white rectangles of the plastic ceiling. Second layer: His mother still lives there. “She’s a foster mother,” he kept telling me, as if the detail were a wayward flake clinging to the back of his finger. Third: His wife, “a native Canadian girl”—another flake of husk—lives there too. He hadn’t seen her for three years, when she came to visit him in El Salvador. He hadn’t been in Canada since 1994. Fourth: Oh yeah, also in Canada were his two daughters. The acid hit the nostrils.

When the Lights Go Out

It’s raining and the electricity is out. I’m wearing two pairs of socks, loose convertible pants over jeans, a singlet, shirt, polar fleece and raincoat with the hood up. I’m inside. June and July are the months of rain here. Streets flood, the electricity goes, school becomes optional, cooking is done by candlelight.

In the U.S., as I told my host mom, I believe blackouts are a good opportunity to consider how the presence of electricity shapes our lives. From TVs to computers, from electric stoves to microwaves (without which there is little we Americans can cook) and from light bulbs to cordless phones (who hasn’t dusted off an 1980s vintage corded phone during a power outage?). In fact, I continue, sometimes as kids we got excited when there was a power outage. It meant candles at dinner followed by squinting games of Monopoly. It meant spooky shadows and not leaving the refrigerator door open. Yet, I tell her, now concluding, power outs can be a pain too—nearly all of our house’s clocks are electric.

Her response: when Hurricane Stan stampeded through Guatemala in the 90s, it took with it the electricity—but it also knocked out the bridges. The bridges from Mexico to Xela, from Xela to the capital, from the capital to the beach, from the beach to Honduras, from Honduras back to the capital; in short, from everywhere to everywhere else. With one storm, the country broke into islands. And with time, the privations grew.

There was, of course, no power. But quickly there was also no gas—the trucks couldn’t ford the bridgeless rivers. Then there was no bread—same problem. Then there was no pork, no chicken, no eggs, no beans, no corn—no corn in a culture where you eat a tortilla or tamale made from the grain with every meal. There was too much water and there was no water. That which fell from the sky snuffed out any attempts at a fire, yet they had nothing to drink—the purified supplies were cut off. This went on for weeks. “We suffered a lot,” she said, matter-of-factly.

I think of my childish giddiness at the prospect of a dark house. Then I think of my current philosophical conception: the power out as philosophical moment. Then I think of how much time it really took to reprogram all those clocks, all three of them. Then I realize, I came to Mexico, to Guatemala, to Central America, to Latin America for moments like these. To get my lights turned off.

Friendly Showers

[Fittingly, my first post in more than two months is about a country I long since left. (For those who don't know, I'm now in El Salvador. On that note, and as you may have noticed, I've changed the title of the blog. I'm seeing what I can do about the URL.) I had planned to post something I wrote about another country I visited during my silence, Guatemala, but it's not showing up on my USB. Instead you get this odd thing. In any case, that post and others will be put up in coming days, either here or at a new site. No joke this time—I've already written them.]

It goes on all day. I go into a stationery store and bump my head on a sac of soccer balls hanging from the ceiling. I pass through a shopping zone and have to sift my way through embroidered smocks, soccer jerseys and jeans suspended over the sidewalk. I enter the market and all but gash my forehead on a low-mounted swath of sheet metal. Elsewhere in markets I nearly get garroted by the taut rope holding a vendor’s tarp. Walking the sidewalk, roof eaves threaten to raise goose eggs. Even at home I can’t catch a break; entering the kitchen requires bending over, same with the bathroom.

At just under six-feet-tall, I’m often too big for Mexico. It’s not that there are no men and women of that height, there are, but they are a towering minority. (And I suspect they all end up like my current host dad: with their shoulders perpetually turned in and down.) The rest of the population glides under the hazards of the tall. Heck, every morning they hang the clothes and tether those tarps that I now duck under. Yet, there is an exception. A curious exception.

In the three months into since I arrived in Mexico, I’ve covered some ground. I’ve visited eight Mexican states—Puebla, Guanajuato, Districto Federal, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Guerrero, Michoacán and, now, Chiapas—and spent the night in all but one of them. Naturally, I’ve used the bathrooms in each of those seven. In some cases, I’ve sampled a wide variety of facilities. And you know what? I can only remember one shower whose head was mounted below the top of mine. (These are the kinds of things I remember.)

I remember my first encounter: San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, 7:30 a.m. on November 22^nd. I entered the shower a cynic, closed to the possibilities of the water closet, carrying a lifetime of subconscious resentment for chest-spraying shower heads. I left an optimist, a spring in my step. After all, if Mexico can do it, why can’t we?

I’m not sure how this state of affairs developed, but I have a good guess. If it’s right, then the difference is rather ironic. I assume that water pressure in Mexico is generally weaker therefore shower heads are mounted to take advantage of gravity. In the U.S., thanks to our high water pressure, we have shower heads that pound our breasts with water. We’re the country of Tall & Large. We’ve produced Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal. Why can’t I shower standing up straight?