Forward

From August 1997 to August 1999, I served a proselytizing mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was nineteen years old when I left, still a boy. I returned two years later, dramatically changed for my time in the jungles and highlands of Guatemala. But it wasn’t Guatemala that changed me—it was time itself.

Every culture has its rites of passage—initiations from adolescence into adulthood. In the Mormon culture serving a full-time mission is that rite of passage. But like all initiations, there is the inherent risk of failure. I failed mine.

What you are about to read is an account of what happened to me over the course of those two years.

Introduction

In order to understand where I’m coming from, you’ll have to know somewhat of my background. The problem is, I can’t really paint a picture of who I am without going back to tell you about my mission, which is what I’m doing here. And then there’s the problem of brevity. If I filled you in on my life story first, in this Introduction, then the Introduction would be longer than the story itself.

Another problem is that I’ve changed quite a bit in the time since my mission. I’ve redefined myself and, I feel, matured considerably; so there is the risk that I will impose too much of who I am now upon who I was then. But all of our memories are subject to reinterpretation…it’s a constant process we go through. I’ve often felt that life is just a series of births and rebirths.

But this memory—the memory of my mission—has somehow eluded me. It flickers around my mind, evading all of my attempts to understand it and (failing that) to repress it. I would absolutely love to forget my failure. I say that candidly, and with only a hint of embarrassment. It’s strange to say that you want to forget something because you’re actually saying that you would trick yourself. I know that we do that anyway: we are often deluding ourselves, justifying our actions, evaluating ourselves in the best light; however, this are usually done with such artifice that even our conscious minds our unaware. It takes place in our subliminal mind—our shadowy mind whose only purpose is self-preservation. Because that’s what these little lies do: they allow us to survive. But I’m not talking about that. What I’m talking about is an actual, conscious-minded erasure of memory. Auto-amnesia, like on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

But I can’t do that. I’ve tried to let it go and it hasn’t happened; so there must be a lesson there that I haven’t learned, something that’s holding me back. And then, there’s always the fear that someone will find out what I did…especially my family. When you’re afraid of something, you should do it. I’m afraid of disclosure, so I’ll disclose (if that’s a word).

But here’s a few things you need to know about me. My name is Jared Lee McPherson. I was born on July 27th, 1978, in King County Hospital, Kirkland, Washington. I was the fifth of seven living children, born into the most wonderful, loving Mormon family. When I was ten I moved with my family to Fruit Heights, Utah, nestled in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. My childhood was idyllic, my adolescence picture perfect. I learned how to think for myself, I learned how to work and to love. I had everything I could have ever hoped for. That’s not to say that I was spoiled: it’s tough to be spoiled in a family with seven children. But I had everything.

I graduated high school with decent grades and applied for college. Even then, I really wanted to get off on my own and “discover myself.” I had begun an identity crisis—as is the fad—at the age of fifteen, which hit its apex at seventeen and was mollified at eighteen until it lay, hidden, just below the surface. You see I was dissatisfied with my decision, afraid that I had substituted my desire to define myself with a desire not to upset my family. I was warring within, at odds with whether it was more important to find out who I was or to allow myself to just be what my family had always expected of me. Once, at seventeen, I had hinted to my family that I might not serve a mission and was surprised at the emotional outburst it created. So I kept my mouth shut and dreamt of the day I’d go off to college and be free to make my own decisions.

As I say this now, it seems as if I was under intellectual repression or something. That’s not true: my home was hardly stifling. We valued individuality and creativity--and we wereall brilliant in our own way. Because of this, we would have very intense, deep conversations about any number of subjects; but when it came down to it we were a team, and no one wanted to let the team down. So rather than be honest at that time, I did the cowardly thing by skulking about, awaiting my escape to college.

I applied to two schools: Brigham Young University (BYU) and Utah State University (USU). In Utah there are only three major schools: Utah State, University of Utah, and BYU. U of U was out of the question to me, since it didn’t ha.ve the live-on-campus atmosphere. So I filled out my applications, sent in the $30 checks, and held my breath.

I come from a long line of BYU graduates. Both my parents went to the Y (BYU), as well as my older brothers, Lamont and Eric, and my oldest sister, Shauna. I had visited them a few times, of course, and had spent some time on campus. It’s a massive school – with 35,000 full-time students. Situated in Provo, it has a gorgeous campus and wonderful community.

I should probably mention that BYU is Church-owned and administrated, so its Honor Code is structured along LDS guidelines This meant that all students (no matter their religion) are expected to live an LDS lifestyle: clean-shaven and well-groomed, maintaining a strict curfew and living morally without alcohol, tobacco, or pre-marital sex. That was actually quite similar to my home life, so there was nothing novel there; however, I imagined that that same conservativeness would spill over onto all aspects of BYU life and education…while I was thirsting to see the liberal side of things.

Utah State University is in Logan, Utah, and is reached only by driving up Sardine Canyon, a windy hour-long drive. When you emerge from the canyon you look down over a wide, agrarian valley, as beautiful as it is pastoral. USU, like BYU, was very pretty on its shoulder of the mountain. Only USU is less landscaped than BYU, less planned.

I spent a few days at USU one summer when I attended Art Camp. It was delightful to me to associate with the hippies and free spirits that the camp attracted. I’ve always been a bit of a free spirit myself, and have always loved rustic settings, so though I wasn’t the drug-using anarchist like a few of the kids there, I still fell in love with the atmosphere.

That wasn’t my first visit to USU however: I had spent one weekend there before, visiting my older sister, Marci. Marci and I had always been close. I hate making statements like that, since I’m close to every one of my brothers and sisters. However, Marci and I had both undergone our rebellious years at close to the same time in High School, and even shared many of the same friends ... so I had always felt she was a bit of a kindred spirit. Marci had also been the first sibling to break tradition by going to Logan instead of Provo -- recruited to the Visual Arts program. Marci had fallen into a bad crowd of friends but, after a year, had sifted out the better ones, so when I came up to visit I quickly fell in love with her roommates ... especially a gorgeous, dark-eyed girl named Ember. The highlight of the weekend was either when Marci showed me the tricks of college food preparation on a dime, or when Ember and I spent an entire afternoon watching MTV together.

All these thoughts were running through my mind when I turned in my applications. I had a good deal of trepidation: it was as if I were watching a horse race wondering which horse would pay out. I decided aloud that I would go to whichever school offered the better scholarship--knowing full well that USU, being less prominent than BYU, would surely give me the better deal. My mom must have known this and was worried about it, because she said on a number of occasions that I shouldn’t make a scholarship the primary criterion in my decision. I brushed that thought aside and kept my fingers crossed.

As an afterthought, I decided to pray and ask God to show me which school to attend.

You see, though I had become an agnostic at seventeen, I had recounted at eighteen. So I was willing to admit that though I had a difficult time believing in God, there was still the possibility that I was wrong. So for some reason I prayed, hoping the answer would be “USU.”

Imagine my surprise when I got the admission letters back from both schools. BYU offered me a one-year, renewable, full-tuition scholarship. USU offered me nothing. I was falbbergasted! If USU had at least matched BYU’s offer, I probably would have gone there -- but it was tough to convince myself to pay the $3,000 and go to USU instead of paying nothing at the Y. My principles only went so far...

I spent one he next year at BYU, living a decent Mormon lifestyle but—along with my roommates—doing everything I could to get around the small rules. Meanwhile, there was the nagging doubt in the back of my mind that I was doing the right thing by being there. I had never truly answered my questions about God and, though I no longer considered myself an agnostic, I wasn’t exactly a front-pew Mormon either.

I enjoyed those two semesters immensely, but all the while my nineteenth birthday was rolling around drawing me inextricably closer to my decision about whether or not to go on a mission. Of course, in the Mormon church you are not required to go on a mission. But the Mormon culture is unkind to those who pass up the opportunity—questioning their faith and upbringing.

There was a lot riding on my decision to me ... especially since my friends, one by one, received their mission calls and shipped out. Since I had a summer birthday, it seemed that all of my friends were called before I did, and I went to numerous Farewells and open houses as each of them left. In my own family, I would be the fourth missionary. Lamont had served in Spain, Shauna in Argentina, and Eric had served in Taiwan. I was the next to go, since I would turn nineteen (the age boys normally serve missionaries) before Marci would turn twenty-one (the age girls normally serve).

My time rolled around and I hadn’t really decided, so my indecision made my decision. I sent in my packet, filling out the lines and checking the appropriate boxes, and then waited and watched that mailbox for my mission call to come.

Mission calls, by the way, are sent out from Church headquarters, in Salt Lake City, by a Mission Department. This department is headed by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the senior-most leaders of the Church. Through prayer and inspiration (as well as current logistical need), missionary packets are looked over and then a call is extended - through a maled packet - letting the missionary know where they are called to serve. Of course, a call doesn't have to be accepted, but that usually doesn't occur.

Fruit Heights, Utah (pop. 5400), is dependent on Kaysville, Utah (pop. 21,000), for its mail. Because of the heavy Mormon population and the number of mission calls being sent out from Salt Lake City every week, the Kaysville City Post Office usually extends an early morning phone call to those residents receiving mission calls, letting them know that they can come in and pick up their mail before the post office officially opens. I received a phone call early one morning in the summer of 1997. It told me that I had been called to the “Guatemala, Quetzaltenango” mission and that I was to report to the Mission Training Center (MTC) in Provo. I filled out the acceptance letter, affixed the stamp, and turned it in. What happened next is my history...

Chapter One: Arrival

MY plane set down in Guatemala City on Aug 2oth, 1997. I wore an itchy gray suit, white shirt and tie. Of course, I was also wearing the black name tags associated with Mormon missionaries: one clipped to the collar of my suit and the other on my left shirt pocket. They both said the same thing.

Elder McPherson
La Iglesia de
Jesucristo
de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias

(Elder McPherson, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

It used to be that the name "Jesus Christ" was in the same sized font as the rest, but it was enlarged as part of a Church public relations campaign to let others know that we too are Christians. All I knew was that the font was more modern, the style more hip, than the tags my brothers and sister wore on their missions. I approved of the change.

The name "Elder" is actually a title, just like “Reverend” or “Father.” It’s the priesthood office held by male missionaries when they go on a mission. It’s a general title. Female missionaries, by the way, don’t hold the priesthood, so they're called “Sister”-- which is the common form of address in the Church. Instead of referring to another Church member as Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Banks, we'll say Brother Thompson and Sister Banks.

We had been traveling since 5 a.m., and so were exhausted by the time we touched down. We'd had one layover, in Houston, but had otherwise been flying all day. Our plane was small, our clothes were hot, and we weren't smelling too fresh by the time we disembarked at the Guatemala International Airport. Despite that, we were so excited to be starting our mission.

Guatemala is called "The Land of Eternal Spring" due to its moderate climate and geographical sheltering from tropical storms. It's beautiful year-round, with rich greenery and beautiful hills and mountains. I'd studied up a little on Guatemala, so I was quite excited to finally see it from the air. Unfortunately we landed at night, so my first glimpse of the country was of the capital lit up with streetlights. It was impressive, of course, but not what I'd been expecting.

That being said, my first thought of Guatemala City was that it was massive! It stretched out in every direction and all along the coast, like lava coming down the hills and pouring into the Carribean. From above, the contrast between black and red is astonishing, and I almost felt we were landing in some Central American Las Vegas.

All similarities between Las Vegas and Guatemala City ended as soon as we stepped off the

plane. Guatemala International is a circular concrete building -- like a run-down Roman colliseum -- only decorated with garish advertisements from floor to ceiling. Our's had been the only plane to land the past few hours, so we were the only people in the airport except for the haggard security personnel and immigration officers. Our passports were stamped with a quetzal stamp: a miniscule red and green tropical bird with remarkably long tail feathers. It's also Guatemala's national bird.

We grabbed our overstuffed luggage and waved off the locals, who wanted us to let them cart our bags for money. We refused, more than likely, not out of a sense of miserliness so much as fear: our bags were our last connection to the States and we weren't going to let them out of our sight. So instead the six of us dragged our luggage through customs and out into the colliseum. The airport was as cavernous as it was empty -- so unlike the bustling, busy American airports we were used to. It was somewhat disturbing.

Even more disturbing was that no one was there waiting for us. We were expecting to see a missionary dressed like ouselves standing with a smile and a sign, perhaps; but we were alone except for a few stragglers from our flight, scurrying off to destinations unknown. We glanced at one another, shrugged, and headed for the front doors.

If we were disappointed by the lack of people in the airport, we didn't have to wait long. When we reached the front doors we were greeted by a throng of screaming, angry taxi drivers and "baggage handlers" (like those inside the airport only more vocal). This mob was held back about fifteen feet from the facade by a large yellow riot barricade, over which they beckoned toward us calling for our luggage or offering to take us in their cabs. We didn't want to leave relative safety of the terminal ... until we noticed among the flailing arms a very welcomed sight: a tall gray-haired American wearing a suit and missionary tag, accompanied by a lanky young missionary. It was our mission president, President Lunt, and one of his Assistants.

I had seen President Lunt in pictures, of course. He had been mission president of the Guatemala Quetzaltenango mission for one year, so his picture was on the wall of the Mission Training Center (MTC), where I had spent two months getting a crash course in Spanish ... and learning how to proselytize. Of course the picture hadn't done President Lunt justice. He was about 6'6", with a footballer's shoulder span and an impressive gut. His bulbous nose narrowed to a pinched bridge, where his owlish glasses rested over glaring eyes. The entire time I knew President Lunt, his default expression was a glower. He could be very humorous and warm, but his large size and perpetual frown made him quite intimidating when he wanted to be.

To us -- seeing his towering form above those locals -- the President was our savior. He waded easily among the short Guatemalans like a giant among Liliputians, and then reached out and took our bags in his large callused hands. One by one he plucked them from us and gave them to the tall missionary, Elder Grant, who tossed them in the back of a dark blue Montero Sport. The professional baggage handlers, of course, glared at President Lunt for not hiring them, but he thanked them curtly in Spanish, saying, "No, gracias."

Behind the Montero was a silver mini-van, and in it we could see Elder Grant's companion gripping the steering wheel like a racecar driver awaiting a green light. President Lunt moved like a man with a purpose as he took our luggage and ordered us over the yellow barricade. We jumped over quickly and then split up, some of us heading toward the mini-van and others climbing into the Montero with President Lunt. Of course, all of us wanted to ride in the same car as President Lunt: he was going to be our boss for two years, so it would be good to feel him out. But we didn't have much time to haggle, and I didn't want to be a kiss-up, so I voluntarily climbed aboard the mini-van. We got situated quickly and then sped off into the Guatemalan night.

Chapter Two: Westward, Ho!

I'M not going to spend much time talking about Guatemala City. We didn't see it again for two solid years. All I can say is that it's the biggest Central American capital: a veritable concrete jungle, plastered with glaring handpainted signs and strung up with people's laundry. You'll find that large cities in developing nations all follow the same pattern: there is a large bus terminal in the middle of the city, a large open-air market nearby, and then sprawling alleys and narrow streets in every direction until, eventually, city blends into jungle or desert or fields.

We spent that first night at the Centro de Capacitacion Misional, the Central American equivalent of the MTC. There were latino missionaries there, of course, and they quickly mobbed us and asked us all sorts of questions about America and American culture. Except for the two sister missionaries, who were accelerated Spanish speakers, most of us couldn't understand a word they said; so eventually the latinos who could speak English became the translators for the whole group. Elder Grant and his companion - the Assistants to the President (AP's) - had instructed us to speak to the CCM missionaries only in Spanish in order to improve our language abilities, but we gave up on that rather quickly.

When you can't speak a foreign language but persist in speaking it (despite the fact that the foreigner can speak English), it becomes very awkward and very annoying very fast. In fact, even once we learned Spanish fluently, the natural tendency is to switch back to English if your listener speaks it (such as a fellow American missionary). It's a natural tendancy. This was a major issue the whole time I was in Guatemala, since we sometimes alienated our latino companions when we did this. Most foreign missions have a rule that missionaries always speak the local language. My sister Shauna, who served in Argentina, says that missionaries in her mission were very compliant to this rule. In my mission absolutely no one followed it: It was the least of our problems.

All of us were very tired that night, so most of us excused ourselves from our conversations and turned in.

The next day was spent driving all over "Guate," taking care of our visas and residence paperwork. This isn't that hard to do since Guatemala is all too happy to have us spending dollars in their country ... it's just time consuming. Guatemala is an extremely poor country. In fact, 75% of its population lives below the poverty line.

I can't remember much about that day except that it was hot and we spent a lot of time in dusty bureaucratic offices. Also, we were solicited all day by beggars ... which was a new experience for me. The APs shrugged them off like old pros, something that kind of bothered me but would eventually become natural.

Driving in a Third World country is an experience so harrowingly dangerous and gut-wrenchingly exciting that anyone who hasn't had the opportunity should make every effort to do so. During my two years there, I never lost my affinity for Third World driving; I loved the complete freedom of it, the stuntman ease with which drivers would go racing through traffic lights, up on sidewalks, or into on-coming traffic. When you ride as a passenger in Guatemala it's with suicidal giddiness -- you think, "We're going to die, but this sure is fun!"

The APs had obviously picked up the nuances of Guatemalan driving, and would go barreling through intersections with lights flashing and horn blaring. We quickly finished all our errands.

It is a six hour drive from Guate to Quetzaltenango. In the United States, with a well-paved Interstate, you could drive the distance in a couple of hours; in Guatemala, however, there is only one east-west highway, and it takes a circuitous route -- rising up and down and snaking around hillsides and farmsides, all the while with the same scenery on all sides: corn fields, corn fields, corn fields.

Corn, maiz, is the major staple of the Guatemalan diet, and it is grown wherever there is room for it. I even saw corn fields growing on terraced mountains ... or even on unterraced, 45° slopes.

The only thing to break up the monotonous blur of cornfields was reddish-brown cliff faces. Each cliff face was graffitied with either soda ads or political party emblems. I saw Pepsi logos and Coke logos and acronyms for every kind of political party imaginable: FRG, PAN, ANN, PLP, etc. Guatemala had undergone a few recent military coups, but democracy was getting popular again, or so it seemed. In addition to cliff faces, we also passed numerous houses and villages. These followed no real system of spacing, but were scattered in groups and clumps all the way from Guatemala to Quetzaltenango. There's no such thing as urban sprawl in the Third World.

We were still trying to get over our travel fatigue, so we all pretty much fell asleep at some point or other during the drive. Only waking up occasionally to get a drink or use the bathroom in some grimy restroom. We got to Quetzaltenango late that night, pulling up to a fortress-like house with a rust-colored metal gate and high concrete walls topped with cemented broken bottle shards -- "Mexican barbed wire," I once heard it called.

President Lunt pressed a bell and a few seconds later the gate was opened by the gardener, who had been expecting us. The Montero pulled in and parked, while the rest of us unloaded our luggage from the back of the van. The APs helped us unload, then climbed into the silver mini-van and drove off to their apartment. We had reached our mission headquarters.

Chapter Three: My trainer

We spent the next day playing basketball and talking to the gardener and Sister Lunt. The gardener was an leathery, middle-aged church member. He had a number of kids, all of whom had served missions. He was a die-hard member and it was no wonder he worked for the Church.

My first impression of Sister Lunt was that she is a character! Even as the President was tall and broad, Sister Lunt was short and round. She wasn't fat ... but there was a sort of softness to her features that made her very motherly and not at all scary. She seemed President Lunt's opposite in so many ways. He was stern and sharp-minded while she was bubbly and somewhat scatter-brained. He was always frowning while she was never without a smile. President's glasses were large and thick, while Sister Lunt's glasses were square and elderly and perched on the tip of her nose like a librarian's. I liked her immediately.

The only thing I remember of that time was the nervous energy I felt, the fear of the unknown and of being in a new country -- foreign in every way. When we ate breakfast that morning we looked out the kitchen window at a volcanic peak, Santa María, which rises, green and lush, above Quetzaltenango as if straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.

That day passed too quickly, and that evening we each met with President Lunt in his office for a one-on-one interview. It was quite daunting to sit across from President Lunt, especially in a tiny office with pictures of missionaries wallpapering the wall. The President kept plasticized cards and pictures of every missionary in the mission on the wall. These were organized by companionship, area, and zone, for easy reference by the mission president. He would also use these when he was reorganizing companionships once a month.

I should probably take a step back and explain some of this terminology for anyone who isn't familiar with Mormon missions. Mormon missionaries almost always travel in pairs called "companionships." With older missionaries a companionship is a husband and wife pair; but with young missionaries, a companionship is always Elder with Elder or Sister with Sister. You're assigned to your companion for a period of time dictated by the mission president, ranging from a month up to six or more. Once a month a mission will have "transfers" or (as we called it in our mission) "change day," where a missionary (usually the missionary with more time in an area) will leave to a new area and new companion.

The reasons for this are simple: first, it mixes up the mission dynamics so that missionaries don't get bored; second, it allows for one missionary to remain behind who is already familiar with an area. So, most often, it is the missionary with more time in an area who receives the change and the missionary with less time in an area who reamains -- no matter how much time either missionary has overall in the mission field.

Another thing you need to know about missionary companionships: they are usually comprised of a "junior" and "senior" companion -- the senior companion being the missionary with more time in the missionfield and more experience as a missionary. The general rule is that you are a junior companion for the first year and a senior companion for the second year. That is not always the case, but that's the rule of thumb.

One last thing: when a missionary first enters the mission field, they are commonly referred to as "greenies." Their first companion is called their "trainers" since they "train" you on the way to be a missionary and usually have a huge influence on you. When our mission president interviewed us that first day, he told us that he had already decided who would be our groups' trainers, but he wanted to get to know us some to see which of us should be paired up with which trainer. President Lunt sat me down and asked me a little about my family and background. He also asked me about my leg.

Before leaving to Guatemala, when I was still at the MTC, I had been playing soccer with some missionaries and had somehow managed to kick another missionary. My leg had bloated to twice its size and had turned green and red. At first I thought I had broken my leg but--not wanting to be held back from my mission--hadn't gone to see the nurse at first. Finally, my friends convinced me to go see her and, when I did, I ended up having to get a battery of x-rays to see if the bone was broken. It ended up just being a bone bruise, and I was given the green light to go on my mission, but President Lunt must have been worried about my ability to walk.

I answered his unspoken question by saying, "President, I can climb any mountain you throw at me."

I didn't know how wrong I was.

___ __ ___ _ ___ __ ___

Change Day was once a month, always on a Thursday, at a church in downtown Quetzaltenango called the Calvario Ward. The Church is big on organization: so the entire Church is organized into regions, then stakes, then wards -- each with its assigned Church leadership. A ward is thought of as the smallest unit. It's headed by a Bishop and usually has between 50-400 members. If an area has too few members to have a ward it can have a branch, headed by a branch president, who oversees 10-20 people.

Calvario is one of a number of Quetzaltenango Wards. It was chosen by the President Lunt for Change Day due to its close proximity to the bus terminal: which - though I didn't know it then - is how missionaries and everyone else travels in Guatemala. Most people can't afford a pickup truck or, God-forbid, a car. So the bus lines are pretty intense, reaching out to every part of the country. A person who knew what they were doing and was able to speak the language could travel anywhere in most 3rd-world countries if they were comfortable taking a bus.

The way Change Day works is this. If you are in a companionship and one person is getting "changed" out of an area, both companions will take a bus to Quetzaltenango either the day of or the day before Change Day. The missionary receiving the change will bring all of their baggage with them -- on the top of the bus -- and then take a taxi to the Calvario Ward. They'll leave their things out in the yard or tucked up against the church house, then mill around and talk to all of their missionary friends: some of whom they may not have seen in months. Two a newby ("greenie") like myself: the whole thing was rather scary ... especially since I couldn't understand Spanish yet and heard a lot of Latin missionaries conversing with one another or with the white missionaries, who spoke it so easily.

We greenies stuck out pretty bad. We only knew each other so we remained in the chapel for the most part, sitting up on the front row and knowing that - within the next hour or two we'd be saying goodbye to the only people we knew and heading off with an assigned trainer ... someone whose job it would be to teach us Spanish and get us learning what it means to be a missionary.

Even without our inability to speak Spanish and our tendency to hide near the front, we would have stood out in a crowed of missionaries due to our clothes: brilliantly white shirts, expensive silk ties, rigidly creased slacks and polished shoes. Compared to the other missionaries we looked like store mannequins.

Most of the missionaries in my mission wore graying shirts with permanently dirt-stained collars. Their shoes were heavy-soled and worn from trekking up and down mountainsides. Most missionaries had long ago ditched their stylish American ties for grubby 70s-era, woolen things with ugly brown and yellow stitching. And their hair was much longer than ours. Some even sported skater haircuts, making them look like they were about to go surfing.

In addition to this, there were Guatemalan woven "purses" everywhere, making everyone look like hybrids of North American and Central American culture.

Yeah, it was scary.