Guatemala-2006: Lake Atitlan: The fruit seller

Greetings from the incredibly beautiful Lake Atitlan. I'm staying in a small pueblo on the shores of the lake. Yesterday, I had a hankering for a mandarin orange. It seems like when I deliberately go out to buy something, I can never find what I want, or the quality is not what I want, or the price is high. I know from experience that I can get 3 to 4 mandarin oranges for about 4 quetzales. So yesterday, I thought I´d get a couple of mandarins for my road trip today from Lake Atitlan to Antigua. I headed to the open market but arrived too late in the afternoon. The fruit sellers were already packing up and leaving.
I walked back to my favorite outdoor cafe, had my cafe americano, and returned to studying verb endings. It was about 6:30 p.m., dark, and balmy. About the only light was the bare bulb hanging above my table which the owner of the cafe turned on for my benefit since he knew I´d be sitting there for an hour or more.
It seems like, in Guatemala, when you go out to look for something, you can't find it, or the price is too high, or there's some other obstacle to obtaining the item. However, nothing beats shopping like sitting in a Guatemalan cafe. Sooner or later, it seems like the whole world will come to you.
Sure enough, a woman came down my empty street, doubled over with age and the weight of a huge basket of fruit on her head. Standing upright, she couldn´t have been five feet tall. She asked me doubtfully, "Frutas?" I said sure, what have you got. She immediately beamed this infectious smile and placed the huge basket on my little table. She wore the usual brightly colored huapile. Her skin was dark and leathery. Only her bright eyes seemed out of sync with her otherwise ancient appearance.
She had a surprising selection of fruit, all the usual tropical stuff from mangos to papayas and heavy stuff like a melon and pineapple. I asked her if she had any mandarins and she scrounged around in her basket and came up with three good sized, good looking mandarins. I asked her how much and she said the three would cost one quetzal twenty. I gave her 3 quetzales and said they were worth that much to me because they looked so good. Her face lit up and she told me the fruit all comes from her house. She then gave me a banana for good measure.
I helped her put the basket back on her head. It was heavy! She was stooped over by the weight, but not at all wobbly. She wished me well. I wished her well and both of us told the other to go with God.
I watched her walk heavily over to the internet cafe next door. Inside about 8 to 10 gringos were sitting tansfixed before computer screens. I could see her leaning against the door frame, outlined by the light coming from inside the cafe. She said "Frutas?" but no one paid her any attention, and she stepped out of the light of the internet cafe and disappeared into the dark cobblestone street.
Like so much of the fruit here, the banana was marvelously flavorful and a great complement to my coffee. Today on the bus, I reached deep into my knapsack looking for my notebook and a pen and came up with a last wonderful looking and smelling mandarin orange. As I peeled it and slowly ate it, I consciously tried to send good thoughts to the wonderful old lady who gave me so much more than a few pieces of fruit.