Can a game of tag bridge cultural divides?

Meredith Morckel

Personal Essay/ Travel Writing

“The Firefly” was originally published in "The Messenger" magazine, 2005

I traveled to Guatemala the summer before my senior year at Bluffton University. The brochure called it a “faith expedition.” I'm not sure if I would've gone if it was a “mission trip.” I've never been an evangelist or a teacher. I don't know how to build a house or dig a well. So I was thrilled that the “expedition” had simple goals: learn about the native people and, hopefully, from them. About their culture, beliefs, politics, language, family and priorities. That didn't sound so hard.  

I joined a group of a dozen college students led by the quiet, contemplative leader and his six-year-old son, Zach. Zach wore a red, sweat-stained baseball cap and socks rusted from dust. His cheeks were swollen with baby fat and his blue eyes were intelligent and mischievous. 

For the first time in my life as a North American, Caucasian, I experienced what it was like to truly be a minority. I was careful not to take pictures of the shacks that most of the Guatemalans lived in. How would I like it if Bill Gates or someone else obscenely rich put a picture of my home in some scrapbook?

The people we met were so happy and accepting, and extremely generous in spite of their poverty. One family fed us their only chicken, which meant that they wouldn't have meat for months. Even though the meat wasn’t thoroughly cooked and there wasn’t a salt shaker in sight, it was the best meal I’ve ever had. 

We went to a remote Mayan village in the mountains. We traveled north in the bed of a pickup truck that vibrated like an unbalanced washing machine. I don't remember how many hours it took to reach the peak of the mountain but we started at sea level and ended up inside the clouds.

The village was little more than a general store, an old church and a cluster of wood and tin huts on the edge of a cliff. The scenery was beyond breathtaking. A crazy quilt of teal-brown fields cascaded below us until the world curved. Columns of brass sunlight transformed the forest into a palace hall. Spider webs twinkled like tinsel on a Christmas tree.  

“The Mayans will be afraid of you,” our Guatemalan guide and translator warned us. “Many of them have never seen white skin. All they know about white people is that they murdered their ancestors for bananas and coffee beans. They won't like you.”  

The first villagers I saw from the truck bed were little kids with baskets balanced on their heads and firewood slung over their backs. Their feet were bare and their clothes were worn. We said “Hola” (unaware that Spanish wasn’t their first or primary language) and waved our hands in a universal greeting.  

The children froze. Then they turned and fled, shouting “Gringos!” like I would shout “Fire!” if I saw something burning. After that we went through a gauntlet of glares. Men walking home from the fields fingered their machetes as if preparing to defend themselves. Women scowled from shadowed doorways while children hid behind their frayed, fuchsia-colored skirts. I wished I knew how to say “we come in peace,” but all I could do was smile and try to look harmless.  

At dusk, we shoehorned ourselves into a tool shed beside the sand-colored Catholic church. We stayed on a dirty concrete floor while spiders rappelled from the rafters and rats burrowed into our suitcases. It was so cold that I longed for the heat and humidity of Guatemala City that I'd cursed hours before. To stay warm I wrapped my body in every piece of clothing I had: dirty socks on my hands like mittens, extra bras wrapped around my neck, and shoelaces tied around the cuffs of my jeans to keep out the critters. 

Outside, the village kids threw rocks at the walls of the shed. I understood their child-logic. I knew that they didn't want to hurt us. They just wanted to poke us, the strange, foreign beasts, to see if we roared. Most of us in the expedition were from the Church of the Brethren, a historic peace church. We don't roar (at least not in our own defense).  

Between the rocks hitting the walls and the bugs crawling over me, I was anxious. I was on the wrong side of the equator. The people hated me because of the color of my skin. How could I accomplish our goals when I couldn't communicate? Meanwhile, Zach decided that we needed a bedtime story to help us fall asleep.  

He told us a story about a little boy in a red baseball cap who went to a strange land and became best friends with the people who lived there. I knew that he was talking about us, about what he hoped would happen with the Mayans.

While he spoke, silent fireworks appeared above my head. There were fireflies inside the shed with us!

Dozens and dozens of lightning bugs. Hundreds. They celebrated Zach’s vision. They hovered above me like stars in the night sky to wish upon. They broke through all literal and figurative darkness, and I was able to sleep.

Zach was bored the next day, and wanted to play a game of tag. He was “It” the most (on purpose, I suspect, as children sometimes play). At first I didn't notice that Zach's antics were drawing the villagers' attention. I was busy observing a spider crawling across our truck. It was tan-brown, hairy and as wide as the gas cap! In the Mayan village, women cook and eat spiders. It’s supposed to make them weave clothes, rugs and blankets as well as a spider spins a web. 

After awhile the mothers left their doorways to watch the game and the men took a detour on their way home from the fields. Another half-hour went by and there were almost a hundred Mayans. Initially the scowls were still there but then the villagers started chatting to one another and pointing, trying to figure out what we were doing. Their eyes and fingers followed “It” around the square as they learned the rules. The audience grew. Some of the men climbed up the telephone poles and onto the roof of the store to get a better view.  

Suddenly, Zach ran into the crowd.

Instead of tagging one of us, he went up to a middle-aged Guatemalan man who had a machete clipped to his belt. Zach ignored the knife, smacked the man in the arm and shouted, “You're it!”  

I gasped, and so did everyone else. The entire village went still. Everything on that mountain seemed to depend on how the man would react.

I imagined the worst case scenario: the man swinging the machete.

And I imagined the best case scenario: the man ignoring Zach altogether.

Incredibly, there was a better scenario than I imagined.  

The man dropped the machete and joined the game!

He raised his arms straight out like Frankenstein’s monster and chased after Zach, who yelled in delight as he ran. Soon two, then six, then ten villagers were playing with us. Zach even figured out how to climb up onto the roof of the store and the men perched up there pretended to be afraid of being “It.” They swung off the gutters like monkeys and slid down the telephone poles like firemen. Zach ended up on the roof alone with his hands on his hips, crowing with laughter like Peter Pan.  

The game continued until sunset.

For the rest of our time in the village the children played UNO with us, the women showed us how to weave (luckily they didn’t insist that we eat the spiders) and the men shared stories about their lives. Zach accomplished in a moment what a dozen educated adults couldn't in a day. He got the Mayans to play with us. One little boy and a simple game of tag bridged the barriers of race, culture and language, of light and darkness.

He was a firefly in the dark.