Got some sudden ideas on this. I feel like I'm being very bad as an anthropology student. Like I'm carrying on stereotypes and stuff, but hey. This is a story and it seemed like a cool idea. So lay back and enjoy it. There's a reason people don't read ethnographies for fun.

July 21 –

I have spent two more days with Abuela and Radioshack. He got me piss drunk night before last. I am sorry for it. I don't remember what we did and I am concerned that I breached my secrecy protocols.

He said to me this morning as I stepped out of the bathroom fresh from a shower, "I'll get some girls together so you can watch them in there. I know you like that kind of thing, right."

First of all, I believe that all heterosexual men would be lying if they disagree, so it is unfair to tease me as if I'm a pervert. And secondly, Abuela was in the room and heard him and said, "He would like no such thing! He is very good! You have the brain of a dog that humps the master's leg."

I giggled like a little girl to hear Abuela say that. She pets me and praises me and calls me the GOOD grandson, while glaring at her real one. I know she's making a point with it, but I'm trying not to mind it.

He couldn't let that go and said, "He did to say it! He said he wanted two girls in the shower with him instead of his brothers when he got home."

Um… yes, well…

I made my goodbyes and couldn't refuse the goat. It has a long name that I can't remember and Abuela told me it will run away if I change its name and she gave me a hug with one arm and a funny air kiss and said, "You be good. And do not get hurt! And you must write to me and tell me how good you are. And no people in the shower with you unless they are brothers. Radioshack needs to be castrated."

Well, I couldn't disagree with that and then Radioshack gave me his cell phone number and said to hang up if a guy named Loco Joint answers.

July 21 pm –

I despise you, no name goat. You are slowing me down.

Monkeys are teasing my goat and I'm letting them.

I can't move through the brush with this animal. I'm calling it El Stupido.

July 22 –

My goat disappeared in the night. I guess Abuela was right.

Well, partially. I found a pile of goat remains. I think it was eaten in the night. Something else got a free meal.

There is a small village nearby and I may have to do something desperate to get a meal soon. I don't really feel like eating a monkey. I had planned on swapping the goat, but that is no longer an option.

I am fighting a creeping fear. Those guerillas know the jungles so well. I don't. That's why I was caught. I have to pay better attention to my surroundings. But it is very difficult. They could be anywhere around me and I would never know it.

I hear loud voices now. There is a small village and they seem to be in distress.

July 22 pm –

This is a very jacked up situation I have gotten myself into and it feels like I was written into it by a script. I cannot believe how this came about.

I crept closer to the village to hear what they were saying and they were yelling in an indigenous language. It wasn't Spanish. It doesn't do me much good out in the backwoods areas. Well, they were pointing at a fallen down statue in the middle of the village and there was quite a commotion of yelling and pointing and old women crying. Don said it is called keening. It sounds like loud crying to me.

Then I heard a familiar voice yelling in Spanish, "This cannot be, old women! Go back to your houses! It is a vandal! I will call the police!"

I could not place the voice at first.

It was Eduardo, the Mexican anthropologist. I almost yelled his name. I followed him along on the outskirts and waited for him to leave the village or at least until he was out of sight of others. But it took hours. He is too popular. He talked to the men of the village for a long time and they were all very unhappy about something. And then he finally went into the bushes to relieve himself. I thought it would be a great joke to scare him and snuck up behind him and then put the tip of my katana to the back of his neck and he cried out, "Puta madre!" as he zipped himself up.

Then he saw me and his mouth fell wide open. He said, "American lizard! I never thought to see you again! How did you come so far and so fast?"

I gave him a two sentence summary of my travels and asked him the same thing.

Eduardo said, "My friend asked me to come to this village. She works several towns away but heard of this local commotion. They believe that the spirit of (I cannot remember the name. It sounded like Wheat-See-Lohan) is now haunting the village. Some people have defaced this stele. It is Mayan and they worship it as a Catholic saint and also as their Mayan god. It is fascinating, no?"

"Why are you here? Isn't that something for the authorities to handle?"

He said, "It is being handled by them. But my friend Helen DeVos wanted me to assist her with the legends of these people. I know much about Mayan culture and how it has been incorporated into modern religious practices and she does not. She is interested more in subsistence patterns of semi-nomadic peoples. She does studies Neanderthal populations of Europe and believes that modern people with similar subsistence patterns may be comparable."

I tried not to feel stupid as he told me this. I had a flashback to all of those lessons with Don rattling off nonsense while we all nodded. Sometimes Raph beat him up and Mikey and I usually let him.

He took me to his house, which was similar in style to Abuela's, but even smaller and with a thatch roof. Insects and rodents buzzed and crawled inside. He said he must prepare Helen for my appearance.

She came in the house and I was sitting on the bed, trying to look dignified. She was very short and a little beyond middle aged with glasses. She looked like an elderly doll. And she had a funny dark bob haircut. She said, "I am pleased to meet you, Leonardo. Mr. Montez-Lopez speaks highly of you."

We had a fairly uninteresting conversation. She was very… I don't know. I don't think she liked me much.

July 22 pm –

I am…

I heard Ms. DeVos speaking with Eduardo in heated tones outside as I headed off towards the outskirts to do something private and she was saying, "What kind of thing is he?"

"He is some kind of animal, but has human intelligence and anatomy. I would think someone as culturally minded as you would be able to see this. Unless you have become too emic to humanity to see it in him."

I wish I knew what that word meant.

"An animal? Why does it talk like that? Is it some person in a suit? I'm surprised that you would fall for some hoax that easily. I suppose it is some religious group trying to disprove Darwin with this stunt. To make us look foolish, believe that we have found a freakish reptile-man."

I didn't stay to listen to the rest of the talk. The words died down and I tried to sleep. But I felt very small and alone suddenly, even though I was in the little house with Eduardo and I find his presence very homey. I tried not to cry over something so stupid as a snooty and paranoid anthropologist, but I could not help it. I was in my bed, choking in tears when he came back and he ignored me for a while and sat at his desk, writing by an electric lantern.

After a while he said, "I know you must have heard Helen's words. You are a skulking ninja." He said it in jest and I believe he was trying to elevate my mood. "You are not a freak by any definition. You are kinder than any human I have met in a long time."

Things were so hard tonight. I got up and told him what I saw with the little children. He was very upset and said that he would report it to the authorities. He said, "You look so thin, Leonardo. I will introduce you to the village tomorrow and they will be glad to know you and the old women will make you fat."

So he sent me back to bed.

July 23 –

Well, the meeting with the villagers went… well… if that's the way to put it.

They immediately deemed me some kind of emissary from the creator and the big man of the village ordered me to go fight a god in Copan on their behalf. Helen took notes like her hand would fall off and Eduardo tried not to laugh at me and didn't do a good job.

"You look so shy with these people!" he said, mocking me afterwards. "You have eyes like a frightened cow and are so polite. No wonder all these old women want to bathe you."

I made him stop laughing to explain.

"Oh, I misspeak. I mean, they wish to put you through rituals to purify you for this fight with these gods. You are to fight as Huitzilopochtli and you will be his champion. They say that the breaking of the stele and your arrival are predestined. They want you to go to the pyramid of Copan and wait for Quetzalcoatl himself."

He helped me with the spellings.

I am not sure that I believe these things about the spirits and gods. But I will be open minded. Stranger things have happened to me in my life and I know that things we wish away do exist sometimes. I told him not to have such little faith in these people and their beliefs. He told me he values them as part of their heritage, but they are stories told to explain the world. He said that they imagine the world to lie on the back of a turtle… So that explains their delighted reaction as I entered the meeting house.

I have just returned from the first stage of my purification ritual. There are three stages to prepare me to carry the spirit of Huitzilopochtli. For the first stage I sat in a sweat lodge for several hours. It was a small hut full of steam and I was actually very happy with this stage. I took off all my things, which admittedly aren't very much and lay down on my stomach on a plank. I just lay there and sweat and thought about many things.

But it would have gone much better if the village women would have left me alone. A few times giggling girls opened the door and I just smiled slightly and ignored them. One of them dared her friend to come in and speak with me. And then they ran away. I wish Eduardo would have put a stop to it. He knew I was in there. And then a few older women came in and asked if I needed food. I was lying there with the sweat running off my body and puddled up on the floor and no weapons or gear and the last thing on my mind was food. And a young woman came in to refill my water bottle nearly every ten minutes. I would have gotten sleep or napped if it hadn't been for all these curious voyeurs.

Eduardo just told me that he told the women that I wanted company while I was in my "state of glorious nakedness" as he put it. I am very awkward now. I have to eat dinner with them all. He finds my blushing and fidgeting very amusing, I see.

He says that I had "cow eyes" again at dinner tonight and that I enchant the women. I am about ready to tell him off.

I am to begin phase two tonight.

July 23 –

Well, at least Eduardo was here to keep me respectable.

During the second phase last night, they had me smoke some kind of tobacco and I choked and coughed and they informed me that I had to smoke quite a lot. I had to induce some kind of shamanic trance as they called it and I only remember the first part. I remember thinking everything was really funny and I laughed at nearly everything. A lady dropped a plate and I remember laughing. But then it goes very blank and I'm quite happy with that.

Eduardo says I nearly corrupted one of the young ladies in the village and I don't really believe him.

The big man told me that I mostly babbled like a child and he listened to me talk and giggle about my brothers for several hours. I hope to high heaven that I did not giggle. He said that I tried to kiss his daughter, but she turned her face away from me. Then I talked to her for several more hours and said that I can't get married because my father is too far away to ask permission and some other garbage about April and how she used to let us see her naked all the time.

Eduardo just told me, "You talked quite sweetly and followed that little girl all over the village and held on to the back of her dress like a puppy and cuddled her."

I hope they are making these things up. I would prefer taking advantage of the chief's daughter rather than talking for hours straight like an eight year old and holding on to her apron strings like a little kid.

Oh, I also hugged all the old women and said they were young and beautiful and a lady said it was such a shame that I was going to get killed the next day in the battle.

I am going to hide in my bed now and hope Raph never finds out about this and I plan to never take any kind of mood altering drugs.

I wonder now how I behave when I've been concussed or given strong medication. I suppose I know now.

July 23rd pm –

I have just gone through the third stage of preparation. The old women painted my entire body. I have animal stripes on my thighs and Mayan letters and calendar symbols on my plastron. I have some abstract symbols on my arms and a black stripe across my face. And my eyes have been made up to look very catlike. Eduardo calls it were-jaguar. He took a picture of me to send home. I think I look very good. It was… an interesting experience being painted. I had to sit there and let them paint me all over with the cold paint and I jerked and jumped so much at their touches and they made very many comments to each other at my expense.

I am now wearing my swords and they said some very distressing prayers over me that sounded rather frightening and portentous and then sent me on my way. I suppose I will sit there all night looking very awesome and with no one to see. Pity. I may make up a battle to make them all feel better when I return.