Did I mention Guns drives a motorcycle? Just wanted to throw that out there...
We took a second-class bus through the bends into the Oaxacan mountains one weekend. By we, I mean a couple of other American girls in my class, and their 'intercambio' partners - Mexican students trying to learn English. In sum, there were 8 of us. And that was enough.
To give you an idea of the difference between first and second class bus service in Mexico: the first class bus has TVs, reclining chair backs, assigned seats, and a clean, flush toilet in the back.
The second class bus has none of the above. The second class station, however, did have toilets, but they did not flush. Maids swished the loos out with buckets of water, which I found, frankly, off-putting. More for them than me.
The mountain puebla we visited was gorgeous. The air was clean, the food was yummy, and they served us bowls of hot chocolate with breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. Bowls. Of hot chocolate. I took a picture.
We went on a nature hike and zip-lined through the cacti. We wandered the puebla and discovered ancient women, faces leathery and wise, rolling dough in a smoky, wood-fired panderia (bread shop). Their lungs must be immune, black, or both, because the smoke hugged the building like a chubby fleece blanket, blobbing its way out the one open window. Standing from our cabana above, it looked like the panderia roof was levitating. I wondered if it knew about the human body levitation exhibition I talked about in class the week before (see previous post).
The puebla was peaceful, tranquil, effing freezing at night and very oddly empty. There were a lot of children and grandparents, but I noticed a generation was missing: mine. Then one of the intercambios, Judith, dropped this little revelation on me:
'They're all in the United States. They're the ones working in your fields, not their own. The people Arizona wants to keep out? They are from pueblas like this one.'
Ladies and gentleman, a dot has just been connected.
I don't know who I thought migrant workers came from, but it wasn't sleepy little mountain villages, crisp and verdant where even the donkeys seem to bray in a better mood. And you get bowls. Of hot chocolate. At all meals. If the standard set forth by the 75-year-old woman toiling in the smoky bread house is any indication, its no wonder men and women are willing to break their backs picking the organic strawberries I blend with my non-fat organic yogurt and wild harvested honey from the Eugene farmer´s market to go with my free-trade coffee in self-conscious Portland. And thus begins an entirely new chapter of liberalism in the life and times of Jules.
The nights in Oaxacan mountains are cold, even in August, so we huddled around the fireplace in the cabana. (As an aside, the fire would not start. No, seriously. This after I told the group, rather optimistically, ´Don´t worry! I´m a Girl Scout! I can start a fire underwater!´It wasn´t true. I was neither born to dance salsa, or start underwater fires, so please feel free to call me on it next time I utter either falsehood). To keep warm, our group of 8 did the usual - drink beer, tell ghost stories, play truth of dare... they all spoke in English and we all spoke in Spanish and it became a fabulous mismash of incomplete sentences and modifiers dangling in mid-air. Our compadres were college students, around 20 years old, some older, all Catholic. This made for what I thought was becoming a rather boring game of ´Would You Rather´...
´Would you rather marry a rich man who was cruel, or a poor man to painted your pictures in the sun?´
´Would you rather kiss a pretty girl with braces, or an ugly girl with nice teeth?´
´Would you rather make a fart in school, or walk around with toilet paper on your shoes?´
It felt like I was reading letters to the editor at TigerBeat Magazine. Then, just as it all became too Disney for what I´d refer to as a worldly soul, rather than a jaded soul like mine... this little gem popped out of nowhere from a 19-year-old university student:
´Would you rather sleep in a room full of lesbians, or a room full of strippers... who are sick.´
She said this last part, ´who are sick´, with emphasis, realizing this last detail would probably make the strippers look really, really bad. It wasn´t clear, though, just what said strippers were indeed stricken with. Was it gout? Did they just have a headache? Was it the black plague? I had to find out, but I couldn´t form the words because I was laughing so much. So were my American classmates. We snorted, chuckled, slapped our knees, completely lost it and, with all of our stomach clutching and tear wiping, completely freaked out the Mexicans with our reaction to their very innocent game.
All this led to a very interesting discussion the next morning about homosexuality. Some were fine with it, others didn´t want lesbians sitting next to them for fear of molestation (lesbians, you really have a lot of work to be done here in Mexico). In the end, we all agreed it would be best to make friends with a homosexual in order to better understand their lifestyle. So an SOS to all the gays and lesbians reading this - please come befriend Mexicans. They need you.
Infirmed strippers, however, might want to vacation elsewhere.
I would tell you all about a beach weekend that included 18 hours of overnight bus travel and a night sleeping in a suspended ´bed´on a cliff at the hippie commune, but the story sort of ends when I vomited my papaya and yogurt breakfast all over the sea turtle rescue park and I´d rather not memorialize that tale in writing. Whatever you´ve heard about Mexican drinking water, it´s true. And I apologize to the sea turtles, because I love them.
Living in Oaxaca for the last month has been a fabulous start to my adventure. I´ve been living with a 78-year-old woman who makes her living renting rooms and a hot shower to mostly American students. I´m just one of about 300 who have stayed in her casa over the years, and I think all 300 of us should count our blessings - Maria Elena´s food is made from scratch, of the authentic Oaxaqueno style, and super yummy. She is forever cracking jokes, none of which I´ve ever understood, but giggling in solidarity doesn´t really need translation.
She has 8 children, 11 grandchildren and 2 dogs. Everybody wants to talk, until they realize I don´t talk back. Or at least not well.
"Years, how many?" I asked one granddaughter.
"´How old are you?´" she replied.
"No, years, how many?"
"Of course, ´How old are you?´" She was trying to help. It didn´t stick.
"Oh shoot! You don´t understand the word `years`?"
She is 15. I had much better luck talking with another granddaughter, age 5, about our mutual admiration for butterflies, specifically in colors pink, red, and yellow, but not black. They´re scary.
The house is huge, I suspect. Two student rooms in the back garden, 5 rooms in the main house, 2 dining rooms, 2 parlors, a back garden, a front garden, a cactus garden, and a special zone for the maid (who travels one hour each way and earns $15 a week) to iron, wash clothes or do whatever. When I asked Maria Elena if her house was typical in Mexico, she said, ´No.' We did not discuss further.
Everything was going great until Crazy Sandra arrived. Last week at lunch, a woman in her 60s buzzed the door, with chopped white hair that stood straight up, shocked, like her wild, sad eyes. She had stayed at the same house 9 years ago as a Spanish student and had been living in South America teaching English. She was on her way home to North Carolina. Did I mind sharing my bathroom?
At first, Crazy Sandra was very nice. She took the room adjacent to mine and she told me of her adventures teaching. I found her very worldly and brave. Then she invited me for a beer - I had one, she had three, and learned she hates the United States, she´s divorced and her two daughters think she´s nuts.
"You mean crazy, as in ´my mom´s so cool, she´s traveling around the world, following her dreams´kind of crazy?" I asked.
"No. I mean crazy, as in pathologically." Her wild eyes got wilder, and I swear her hair started quivering. I know I did.
Crazy Sandra told me her dentist thinks our host sister is bipolar. She complained about the maid for moving her books so she could clean. She wears pajamas at all hours. She is constantly sick, tired, victimized, and tells me all about it. She also feels at liberty to correct my Spanish, which is really a lost cause for any human being. And the final, damning indictment against Crazy Sandra? She doesn´t like the dogs. The wiener-beagle was crying one day and she threatened to bust his nose. New rule of thumb: people who tell you they are pathologically crazy should be trusted with that fact, and that fact alone.
And so it is with some bittersweet feelings I move on to Mexico City tomorrow, and off to Ecuador next week, away from the beauty of Mexico and its people and away from Crazy Sandra. And Guns. Que triste. More adventures to follow...
