Xela what?

Here´s the travelers pun in the city I´m living in at present.

Xela who?

It´s a riff on the city´s Mayan moniker -- Xelaju. The proper Spanish name of the city is Quetzaltenango. No one calls it that. Or Xelaju, for that matter. People call it Xela. Pronounce it Shay-la. Like a Sha-na-nas knockoff.

As it turns out, Xela is the pretty name for an ugly city. Outside the city center -- which is charming in a disembodied faux Greek kind of way --most of the streets are fronted by 8-foot-high cracking concrete walls and heavy metal doors. In places, the city feels like a giant strip mall.

You wouldn´t know it, but there are a handful of beautiful homes behind some of the walls. I happen to be staying in one while enrolled in the language school. Lydia, my host, has a single-story, three-bedroom home with a hot water shower. Much of the house has pretty familiar feel, aside from the concrete walls that get a cold dampness wood would never abide. The exception is the kitchen. Like most Guatemalan homes I´ve had cause to visit, the kitchen and the yard seem to merge. Think of it as a shop where food is prepared. It has a massive concrete sink with two basins and a counter space. The gas range has six burners, the middle row of which heats a cast iron griddle.

Elsewhere in the city, away from the center, people live much more simply. Without rhyme or reason, the city fades away into the ring of hills that surround it. City blocks melt into corn fields, concrete tile streets into asphalt roads then dirt tracks. Out there, people live in shacks built of concrete blocks and plastic sheeting.

The feeling I get, though, is that most Quetzaltecos live somewhere inbetween. Most families rent a room or pair of rooms in a house. Those with two rooms tend to cook in one and sleep in the other. There aren´t really many apartment buildings to speak of, and most are luxurious.

During the day, Xela´s streets are crowded with cars, tiny motorcycles and old school buses. If you´re not careful, you can step right into an tar black cloud of exhaust from one of the latter. Not pleasant.

At night, the city seems to curl into a ball and cry its self to sleep. People go to bed early in Guatemala. I can walk for blocks at 6:30 p.m. without seeing a soul. Not that it´s particularly menacing. Just when I get a little nervy, some Mayan lady with a basket of bread balanced on her head will wander past.

The city does have it´s charms. The people are friendly in a closed way, and not overly interested in foriegners. Folks are happy to talk about the innocous -- weather, soccer, weather. There´s plenty of entertainment, and even a few places that serve decent coffee. You can make a lot of the fact that, though it grows some of the world´s best coffee, Guatemala sends almost all of its best beans abroad and serves NesCafe at home.

So next time you hoist a decent cup, think of me, staring down into my full cup, reading the writing on the bottom through the tan brew.

P.S.: Things are actually going really well here. It´s a very interesting place, and the school is wonderful. But I´m beginning to see why Xela´s not Wild On E.