The flipside

After spending a month in Guatemala and getting quite comfortable, it was apparently time to see the different side of life here.



The Story:
Friday, 30.10.2009, we had planned to travel from Antigua to Comalapa right after school ends (17:00). There’s two Brendas (teacher-Brenda, and secretary-Brenda) from Comalapa working in our school, and they both were going to escort us all the way. They pretty much travel to-and-from Comalapa everyday, and thus knows a lot of the drivers. Teacher-Brenda had reserved the front row of the chicken bus for us From Antigua you can take a bus to Chimaltenango (for Q5) and from Chimaltenango to Comalapa (for Q7).



So there I am, sitting on the front-row, right behind the driver, in the middle of two beautiful Maya-princesses, trying to ignore the crazy-driving and practice a bit of Spanish. Ingrid and Franz is sitting on the other bench, next to a mother with a small child. It’s Friday evening and the bus is pretty much packed with people everywhere, in fact so much that the bus doesn’t even pick up more passengers, unless someone is leaving.

Somewhere before Chimaltenango, in a small pueblo, the bus stops to let some passengers of and some on. Suddenly I hear a “pop”, feel some glass-particles hit my face and see that the driver is falling/slipping/jumping/diving of his seat.

My instant reaction was to crouch down and try to make the three of us as small as possible. I then heard some more “pops” from outside the bus, but no more bullets entered the bus. I was sure this was a robbery and was ready to give away all my money, camera and even my sombrero.

However as we we’re crouching on our seats no one entered the bus. I got kind-of confused, since I was crouching behind the driver seat I didn’t really see anything. For a split-second I thought we might just have popped a tire, then I saw people streaming around the front of the bus, and I thought that perhaps we had hit someone. But that didn’t really make sense since there was a bullet-hole in the left side-window. Then I noticed the blood, there was a lot of blood in the bus, and a lot more in front of the bus. The poor lady with the child had been sprayed with a lot of it. We decided it was best to leave the bus (as everyone else apparently already had done), before we left I tried to hand the driver a sterile compress to stop the bleeding, I’m not sure if he got it though. There were already people trying to help him. (Time-wise I’m not sure, but all this cannot have taken place in more than 2-3minutes, at max, probably a lot less)

Outside of the bus there was some confusion as to what to do, we decided we wanted a taxi of some sort and ran over to the other side of the street. No taxis to be found, but we found a young couple with a small child and a big car, after explaining what was going on and where we needed to go, they accepted to drive us to Chimaltenango. Teacher-Brenda had already called her brother, and he was going to pick us up there.



In Chimaltenango we waited approximately 20-30 minutes for the brother to arrive, he had a pick-up and Franz and myself had the pleasure of riding in the back with the luggage (it was actually a nice way to travel, a little cold, but silent and good time to think). We arrived safely in Comalapa at about 20:00.



Afterthoughts:
There’s a couple of things that amazes me about this situation (well, for a naive norwegian there’s nothing that doesn’t make me go “wow” about this situation).What amazes me the most is how real this felt, I’ve always imagined that a situation like this must be really surrealistic, but this felt very, very real.



At no point was I actually afraid, I felt my pulse rise a little, and could definitively feel the effects of higher levels of adrenaline and endorphine (yes, science-stuff). As we were waiting in Chimaltenango I felt more awake and aware than I’ve been in a long time, I was calm, but my brain was spinning, evaluating the threat-level of every little detail: the cars, the buses, the police, the little five year old girl with a teddy-bear.



I’m very thankful for being accompanied by the Brendas, It would be a lot more difficult to get a grip of what was going on, and get a ride to Comalapa without them.



It’s also important to get through that this is not normal, and does rarely happen on the routes of Antigua-Chimaltenango and Chimaltenango-Comalapa. The bus from Antigua-Chimaltenango is supposed to be safe, there’s been trouble before, but no-one has actually died on this route before. In the capital it’s (from what I’ve been told) a totally different story.



Exactly why this happened I’m not sure, I’ve heard the theory that it is some sort of extortion-thing, but no-one knows yet. The driver got hit in the chest, very close to, but luckily above, the heart. The last I’ve heard is that he’s stable and should hopefully be ok, but it’s a risky procedure getting the bullet out. Apparently the target of the assassin was another busdriver that was a passenger of this particular bus, he had just left the bus and was shot dead with two bullets to the head. There might have been a third victim as well, but I don’t know. I was really impressed by how quick the ambulance arrived at the scene, the whole thing was far more efficient than what I expected from the stories I’ve been told. The guy that shot has been arrested, this guy didn’t shoot to harm or to frighten, he shot to kill, and that’s what bothers me the most, the one guy actually died..



As I said, at no point during the experience I actually felt afraid, there was no time, my brain was to busy working out the present dangers. I still haven’t felt afraid, but there’s still two scenes that keep replaying in my brain: the scene where the driver is falling of his seat, and the scene where I’m lying crouched over Brenda, pulling the other Brenda closer and wondering WTF is going on?



The thing is though, at no point was anyone actually trying to hurt me or my friends. We simply happened to be on the bus driven by someone with really bad enemies.



But still, thinking back, the bullet-hole in the window was at most 50-70cm in front of where I sat, and that is kind of close.



The rest of the weekend was really good, and pictures will (eventually) follow on Flickr. There is of course no pictures from Friday.



Update: The surgery went well, and the driver is apparently getting better