The dead man turned out to have been the head of a local gang - the next morning the entire town police force fled in fear of lynching. As the town began the preparations for its annual horse racing fiesta, preparations mainly involving getting fantastically drunk, the infamous Guatemalan army rolled in to keep the order.

That weekend, six other people would die, and the host family I was living with would fall into crisis when the father punched his wife in the face.

Friday, 31st October 2003: I wake to find my language teacher's brother dead and my host family distraught at the news. The family are pure indigenous Guatemalans - the rather diminutive mother and four daughters have fantastically long blue-black hair. Everyone in Todosantos wears the same clothes - the traditional blue woven dress for the women; red trousers and white shirt with a huge red, purple or green collar for the men. They speak Spanish to me, and the Mayan alien-sounding “Mam” language to each other. The two youngest daughters, the sweet Juana (age ten) and the bubbly Melissa (age nine) are my main Spanish conversation partners. Without much apparent direction or scolding, the daughters cook meals, tend the log fired stove, wash vast amounts of clothes and blankets, sweep, wash the floors, and weave in their spare time. One magical evening, with everyone else out in the family shop, I watch Juana sit singing to herself while Melissa cooks a simple meal for about seven people.

That night, an old man drinks himself to death and a young man dies from a knife wound - why, no one knows.

Saturday, 1st November 2003: I wake up at six am - my horse-racing neighbor is unconscious lying face down in the mud. By eight am, his friends have revived him and seated him on a horse - he is led across town to the racetrack.

The Todosantos horse race fiesta is not actually a race at all. There are no winners; the aim is to ride one's horse all day back and forth along the two hundred-meter track, taking a drink at each end.

That night, my friends and I go to the town's annual fiesta disco: tourists and locals dance in a huge cold hall while a semi-circle of twelve soldiers watch impassively, assault rifles at the ready. Early the next morning, a man lying in the street is killed when the arriving bus runs over his sleeping head.

The remaining deaths discovered that weekend were less well documented - rumor and counter rumor were so widespread it was hard for me to know what was real. Many attendees of the fiesta were making their annual return to the town from their jobs in the United States – stories spread of old scores and inexplicably pregnant wives dealt with violently.

Monday, 3rd November: I wake to find my host family’s house turned black.

I try to decide what to do. After taking advice from the long-term foreign residents of the town, I decide to move out, to send a message to Augusto and to avoid getting involved in any violence from him. I move out to a "Ladino" (as opposing to Indigenous) family, who drink Pepsi and power their stove with gas instead of logs. The sense of rejoining the cold West is jarring.

I had, and still have, little idea what the correct moral decision would have been in a situation like this. But I was missing the girls too much; the new family I was assigned to weren't that keen on me - so after a few days I moved back in with Dominga and her daughters. As before, Augusto spent most nights sleeping in the family's shop further up the hill, so I rarely saw him, but suspect it didn't even occur to him why I'd left the house for a while.