Patrick Mexico Adventures

Guatemala, Part 3

2010-01-10T22:53:00.001-06:00

And suddenly we were back in Guatemala City again, at the Holiday Inn, getting ready to sleep and then to leave the next day.
They had 6:00 or 7:00 AM flights, so I was not worried about waking up late. We got up early, and went to eat our free continental breakfast. They left me there, and I found a taxi about 8:00, which I figured should get me there in plenty of time for the 9:30 bus to Tapachula. I bargained a hard price because I knew I had just a little money left in my account. I had figured it out like this: 200 pesos for the bus ride to Tapachula, 630 to Mexico City, 72 back to San Felipe, and maybe like 100 for food. Maybe there was a little more, but then again maybe there was a little less. So I better just not spend anything, just to make sure.
I arrive to the bus station, pay the driver, and walk inside. There is hardly anyone. I walk up to the counter.
“One ticket for the 9:30 bus please.”
“You mean the 3:30 bus?”
“What? Uh, no, the 9:30.”
“Yeah, the 9:30 leaves from Tapachula and arrives here, to then turn around and leave at 3:30 from here.”
“Doesn’t that sign say… wait…” I look up. What I had thought meant “leave for Tapachula at 9:30” actually meant “leaves from Tapachula for here at 9:30.” That was a terrible way of putting it, but I was in trouble either way.
“Wait, isn’t there a morning bus?”
“Yeah, it left 15 minutes again. The next one is at 3:30. Do you want to buy a ticket?”
“Uh, is that the only other one?”
“Yes.”
“Um, yeah, give me a ticket for that one.”
I get the ticket and go sit down. I’ve got to work this out in my mind. OK. So I leave here at 3:30, I arrive at the border at 8:00, hopefully get across even though I don’t have a stamp, the hour changes forward, and we arrive at Tapachula at 9:30, local time, at earliest. I suddenly felt really sick. I suddenly felt really alone. I had no money. I had no friends. I had no one to help me out. I felt like calling mom and dad, the prodigal son arriving home with his tail between his legs, but realized I couldn’t call them even if I wanted to. And what would I say? Come pick me up? Send money? To where? How? I couldn’t call Kike or Adalid or anyone, no one could help me, no one could come get me, I was simply all alone, by myself, in a place so scary and with so many people that seemed to want to hurt me. Why had God suddenly abandoned me? Why did it seem like he just dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, without anyone to help me? Why didn’t he open my eyes to read that bus sign correctly? Why didn’t he make me leave earlier for the bus station? Why did he make the guy at the bus station a complete jerk? Why did he put the bus station in the middle of the worst ghetto I had ever seen?
I wanted to cry. I wanted to fall apart. I did fall apart. I walked into the little deli and fell apart mentally and spiritually. I tried not to cry, no matter how much I wanted to. I felt like a little kid who had lost his mom and suddenly felt like panicking and screaming out. It felt terrible. I probably whispered some upset words. I definitely thought some angry thoughts. I bought a yoghurt, looking for the brand my friend from the bus sold, not finding it. I put my head on the glass table and tried to sleep. Tried to sleep so I wouldn’t have to think about how mad and alone I was. Tried to sleep to make the seven hours I had to wait there go a little faster. It never came. I had already finished my Vonnegut book, wasn’t about to pick up the C.S. Lewis book, had nothing to write but things I knew I would later regret, and even when I tried to found I had lost my pen. I wasn’t leaving that place to walk out into the God-forsaken world.
I was uncomfortable. I felt something pulling at me, but I shrugged it down. Another realization dawned on me, and that was that the last bus from Tapachula left at 9:00, and we wouldn’t be arriving until 9:30 at the earliest. And since the bus station closed, and I didn’t have money for a hotel, I would be sleeping on the street in a Mexican border town.
I pulled the book out of my pack and sighed. Even if I was going to hate what I read, it wasn’t as bad as thinking about how screwed I was.
I opened it. I opened it and started to read, picking up at a part near the end. A sentence into the chapter, the room started to mist over and dropped away, while a soft rush ran over my ears and all sound melted into silence. The booming voice of the narrator beat upon my heart as I feared it might. And this is what I read, in my own words:
How quickly your faith disappears when you are in situations that you believe are impossible to get out of. Sure, you believe God can save you when He holds a plane for you five extra minutes, but when you are truly in a state that you need Him, how quickly are you to forget how big He is. How is a sports player supposed to improve in his sport? Simply play in games? No, you practice and condition so you are ready when the big game comes, you are in shape and ready to play. You hardly need to think about it because your body has been trained to react to whatever position you are in. You cannot hope to grow in faith, or in patience, unless you are put in situations that you need to use that. Yes, you can practice patience sometimes in your house with your siblings or your parents, but God needs to put you through strong conditioning sometimes. How can you grow in your faith unless you trust that God will bring the good, but also deliver you through the bad.
I stopped and prayed for forgiveness. I already broke down so this was simply God picking me up and putting me on my feet. Carrying me. That’s what He was doing, not picking me up. He was carrying me.
I continued:
It is like you are a house. You have a leaky sink and you are so sick of it so you call God up and ask Him to come fix your house. So he comes over and fixes your sink and then without you asking fixes your dishwasher and fridge. You are happy that He is fixing things you didn’t ask for, but suddenly He is remodeling your basement and adding a courtyard and running up pillars. You are suddenly mad that He is changing all this that you didn’t want changed. You wanted Him just to fix your kitchen, but He isn’t just fixing your house; he is completely rebuilding it because He is going to come live inside.
Like a flowing metaphor the fear and anger and loneliness and abandonment left. I put down the book, got up, grabbed my bag, and left the bus station. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die. If God is going to protect me, He is going to protect me. I walked out, turned left, and started walking. I didn’t look behind me, I didn’t look to the sides. I saw police in front, which normally would have made me just as scared as if I saw criminals, but I walked on past, down the next block. I made it another block, and one more, and suddenly saw a Burger King. And just past the Burger King was a main street with government buildings and nice statues and a perfectly fine area. I bought a pen and went to Burger King and sat down and wrote. This is what I wrote:
Bus Missed
15 minutes late, six hours early
Connection bus sure to be missed
Status in country: illegal
Hardly enough money to make it home
How can one have more faith? How can you be braver?
How can you be more sure of God, without more difficult situations?
That is why I am here alone
Danger of thieves, kidnappers, homeless, drug addicts, corrupt police, corrupt army, darkness of night, of the unknown and strange
Only God is for me
Only He can save me from the circling vultures of the devil.
Will I believe or will I run and hide?
Will I allow this to bring me closer to God, or run away?
Will I face Ninevah or run to the docks?
More importantly: if this gets tougher, and I persist,
And that means that God will take me a step further
And make things even more difficult, is that just too much?
Options: give up now and go live in the country, a quiet peaceful life until it ends
OR
Continue on through the terrifying jungle, fighting wild beasts and disease,
to find the treasure
Give up now, go home and get fat
OR
Train harder
Run faster
Tired and weary
Falling and hurting
Desperate and alone

But not too alone.

I looked at the clock. I still had two hours. I would go back with 20 minutes to go, because if I’m missing this bus, well I’m missing this bus. It’s not in my hands anymore. I read the rest of the book and thought about it. With twenty minutes to go, I got up and left. I saw a cash machine and got 200 Quetzales out. I don’t know why I did, but I just figured I would need it. I did it out of complete instinct of my gut feeling. Or soul tugging. I walked back without incident to the bus station and waited.
The bus borded about 20 minutes late, but if we were getting there late, we were getting there late.
We left heading North, approaching the border just about 8:30. I watched for churches as we went, hoping they were within walking distance and hoping I could take sanctuary in them if I was denied access into Mexico.
We get to the border and run the same drill: fill out the paper work, 20 minutes to get across, if you have to take more time they are leaving you, sorry, and good luck. If I’m crossing, I’m crossing.
I get off the bus first, and suddenly realize what had happened: there were two spots where I was supposed to have checked in. There is one crossing for Guatemala, a bridge which must just be anyman’s land, and then Mexico. You have to “check out” of one country and “check in” to the other. The Guatemala side, as I said, is just a little booth with maybe three windows in it that you just look through and hand them your stuff, but the Mexico side is a big gate with guards and stuff.
It is at this moment that I realize I probably should just walk across, not stopping at the Guatemala side, and just walk to the Mexico side. But you know what? If I’m going to get deported, I’m going to get deported.
“Where is your stamp, son?”
“What?”
“Your stamp, I can’t find it.”
“Uhh, I don’t know.” An honest answer.
“How is it possible that you got into the country without getting a stamp?”
“I was going to ask you guys that same question.”
They look at each other and shrug, as if this has never happened before and they don’t know what to do about it.
“Come on inside.”
Uh oh. I go inside the little hut. Maybe it has four rooms inside, it looks like. I enter behind the guard who told me to come inside. He pulls out a chair and tells me to sit down. I can see everyone from the bus there on the other side of the window. They are talking about me – it’s not hard to see.
“Uh, that’s ok. We just had a six hour bus ride and I’m kind of tired of…”
“Sit down.”
“OK.”
Another guy comes in.
“How did you get into our country illegally?”
I wanted to laugh. “Well, it’s not like anyone or anything is here to explain all this. And it’s not like security is very tight.” Maybe I shouldn’t be sarcastic. “I mean, it was kind of just a big misunderstanding. This is all very confusing.”
“You are here illegally in our country.” I find this to be mildly funny and hysterically ironic. I want to say “I’m probably the first one to do that!” but I refrain myself.
“That is a felony.”
“This has to be a spirit of the law type of thing because you can see there was a lot of confusion and this is an honest mistake. I mean, I didn’t cost anyone anything, I haven’t been working. I have just been here spending my money in your country.”
He is not going to be reasonable. I need to bail and bail fast. He starts lecturing me.
“This is like if you are in your house and you leave the door open. That doesn’t mean I can just come in and hang out. I need to ask permission.”
“Yes, yes, of course you are correct.” I am really thinking about calling his bluff.
“Ok, what we are going to do now it send you back to Guatemala City and then we are going to deport you to the US.”
Now, I knew this wasn’t true. I mean, I knew that not only would it cost him a lot of time and trouble to do that, he would take a lot of flak for wasting government funds to deport me. There was no way that he would follow through. I thought about calling his bluff here too. But then three thoughts occurred to me: maybe he might do it just to spite me, maybe they won’t let me back into Mexico if they do deport me for real, or if not, he probably will just detain me long enough for the bus to leave and then send me across, screwing me royally. And that time much be running low as we speak. None of these are good options, so I go for the pity route. I breathe heavily and look sad.
“Look, this is just an honest mistake. This is just so stupid. I mean, I never have done anything to hurt anyone and I would hate to cause any problems for you guys.” I know everyone outside can hear me and see what’s going on. I figure they aren’t going to hurt me here or anything, so I might as well look as if I am going to waste their time as much as I can, rambling on about nothing.
He takes the bait and quickly cuts me off.
“Or you can pay the fine.”
“How much is the fine? I don’t have that much in cash…” thinking of the 200 Quetzales.
“200 Quetzales.”
Whoop whoop whoop! I pull out the only 200 I have, and put it in his hand. He puts the “fine” in his pocket, grabs the stamp and stamps my passport. I smile and thank him, and walk swiftly out of the booth and across to the Mexico side. I see that the bus is still being searched, so I got some time left before I can get back on. I walk across the bridge crossing the invisible water below, happy and free, go into the Mexico booth, which is much nicer (a real government building, instead of quite literally a small mobile home, give them my passport, ask for 90 days on my new Mexico visa, pay it and walk to customs. I hit the button for green or red, which gives me green, and I leap for joy and smile at the guards. Not like it would have taken long to search my bag, but I have a streak going: out of the three mission trips and now five more times I have crossed the border coming into the country, I have always hit green. That is a streak I’d like to keep rolling.
As I wait for the bus, a very nice couple comes over and asks me what the problem was. As I start to tell the story of coming down here and crossing the border, people start to gather around. I have a great chance to tell everyone all about me adventure, as it is so far. They are all pretty happy for me, seeing how they don’t know me.
We’re back on the bus in a jiffy.
We get rolling again, and are just about to arrive in Tapachula at 9:45.
“If I’m sleeping on the street, I will be protected.”
…
“If I’ve ended up here, why should I doubt now?
…
“We just radioed up, and the Mexico City bus arrived late. There are still five seats left, if anyone wants them. Does anyone? We need to call in and tell them to wait.”
I close my eyes and decide I will give up my spot to someone else, whoever else needs it. I wait and open them again to see the nice couple and another girl behind me with their hands up. I slowly put my hand up, as I hear many people are talking about me, the ones who heard my story, and are genuinely happy for me. And people say God is boring.
I’m off the bus and onto the next one, helping the couple with their baggage, and hoping my debit card goes through. It does, and I’m off to Mexico City. It is the long bus – 18 hours – but I’m just happy to be there. It is extended by constant border patrol boarding our bus and pulling people off. I hate to say the darker colored people were yanked off, but that’s pretty much what happened. They would make them say certain words, and for whatever reason would decide to haul them off the bus or let them stay. There was even an African looking guy. He must have quite a tale to tell. He got pulled too. And didn’t get back on.
I was really scared, but they didn’t check my ID even once.
(All of this would make sense later).
I check my cash account when I get back to San Felipe – four dollars is all I have left.

Guatemala, Part 2

2010-01-10T22:52:00.002-06:00

The kid cuts in. “I went to Guatemala City once. Go to Tapachula, and there is a nice bus, ‘Golgos,’ that is a straight shot right from Tapachula to Guatemala City. Six hours in the bus, seven because of the time change. They will totally take care of you.”
I think about it, and decide to take the locals’ advice. I turn to ask the driver how much I would need to continue to Tapachula. As I look over I see him standing and pound on the table. “It’s four o’clock,” he shouts, almost like he is crying, “they just came and said they won’t open the road until five. They are never going to open the road! Bring me a beer!” As he sits down everyone is laughing and he quickly receives his beer. I quietly tell him I would like to go to Tapachula instead, to which he smiles and says it was an hour out of the way to Ciudad Cuautemoc anyway, so I am really going to help everyone. “But it’s not like it will matter since they are never going to open the road!” He spends the next half hour getting absolutely trashed. Another Cristobal Colon bus shows up, the one that left four hours after us.
And then, just like that, it ends. Everyone dashes for their car. The pasta man runs back to his truck on the other side of the road block, the tienda girls clean up our scattered soda and beer bottles, we all get back into the bus, except for the bus driver who is now, perfectly on time, horrendously drunk. Luckily, the extra bus driver from the second bus volunteers to drive our bus, and we are on our way. In a half hour I see the turn off for the town I would have gone to, and give a quick thanks that I am not going there.
Scenery, trees, jungle, blah dee blah and we arrive at about 10:30. Tapachula. I immediately purchase a bus ticket for the 6:00 AM bus to Guatemala City, the first available one. It’s quite hot and humid and late. I am tired. I walk down the street and see three hotels immediately. Their sleepy desk clerks all tell me they are full. I go back to the bus station, relegated to sleeping on one of the hard benches. It’s closed. Lights off, doors locked. The town is relatively alive, outside of the bus station and hotels, so I am not really nervous to be out. From where I am I can see a grocery store, a sign for a McDonalds, a pharmacy, and plenty of lights. The sweaty, large doored restaurants remind me a lot of Taiwan restaurants. It actually feels pretty nice. I finally find a hotel for 120 pesos that provides me with a bed and a fan. Nice. Now just to find food and possible internet to inform Eddie that I will not be arriving on time. I find the food just down the street which is fajitas with especially delicious tortillas, hot and thick, just out of the pan.
I finish that and head down the street. I find an internet place that has a couple inside but door closed. I look in and folds my hands like I’m begging and look sad. They smile and open the door. “We weren’t going to go to bed anyway” they say. “But don’t take too long.”
I write Eddie that I will be there at 2:00 the following day, and go back to my hotel. The guy is still at the desk. It’s like 11:45 and I don’t think they will get any more customers this night. I suddenly remember that I have no alarm clock and need to be to my bus by 5:50.
“Hey” I ask him. He smiles. “Can I borrow an alarm clock or something?”
“Oh, I can wake you up.”
“With a… wake up… knock?”
“Yes. I just sleep here on the sofa in the lobby with my clock. I’ll wake you up.”
The lobby is really just like a reception area; it looks like any sort of office space. The hotel itself looks a lot like a homeless shelter I once stayed in during a mission trip to San Francisco, except that almost everything is outside, there are tin roofs on the rooms, and there is a little restaurant you have to cross through to get to the back where the rooms even are. I open my door to the fan going and the big bed. I search the room for bugs, in the sheets under the bed, above in the cracks of the tin roof, and in holes and cracks in the room, but it appears to be pretty clean. With that, I pray quick that the man wakes me up in time, and fall asleep almost immediately.
The knock came just at 5:30 like I asked, and I rallied myself together and pulled my way out of the room. I thanked the man, who was really happy for it being five thirty AM. I get out, walk drearily down the street to the bus station, wait a few minutes, try to buy a water that they are charging 15 pesos for, forget it, and get on my bus. There are probably only five people on. Two girls about 18 years old. An older lady. A younger guy, maybe 27 or 28. Maybe a couple other random people. Maybe there are 12 people. There is another white guy across the isle from me. He must be about 45 and is balding. He is flittery, if that’s a word, like someone constantly trying to get comfortable but never getting there. He looks at me and I smile.
“Canadian?” He asks in a gruff voice.
“Umm, no. I assume you are. What part are you from.”
“Vancouver, BC”
“I’m from Bellingham. I’m right there” I say with a certain enthusiasm. He couldn’t care less. It appears that I am not Canadian, and we could live five minutes apart for all he cares, he isn’t giving a crotch’s rash about it.
A guy gets on the bus and looks at his ticket. A bigger man, and somehow looks really nice. Like a big mariachi singer, the guy who plays the huge guitar that sets on his equally huge belly. He sits next to me which is obnoxious because there is hardly anyone at all on the bus and a million seats, but there he is nonetheless. He smiles and I smile back, lean my head against the window and am out. At some point I am given a sandwich on my lap, which I awake to which ends up being like twenty minutes before the border. The bus driver pulls off the road and gets out, goes in a house, and comes back and we are off again. Already a strange ride. We pass by grove after grove of trees that are all leaning forward in the same direction, as if the wind has always blown in the same direction and is slowly pushing them over. Some lady who works for the bus hands out the customs form and tells us that once we get there, we have a half hour to cross the border, that if you can’t make it across in that time they will have to leave you, that 150 pesos is worth like 100 “Quetzales,” the Guatemalan money, and that we can change it at the border, but to be careful crossing. The Canadian apparently knows no Spanish, and looks to me. I kind of give a barebones explanation, not wanting to be mean but feeling that if this man is going to survive on his own here, I better not give him a false sense of safety or let him think it’s going to be hunky dorry the whole time. I figure I am doing him a favor by seeing if he can swim or is going to sink right away. I have no idea how he got this far, got on this bus, or where he is going. When I did find out, it was too late anyway.
Anyway, we get to the border and we all get off. I get to the front of the line quick, even though there is hardly anyone. I hand them my passport.
“Where is your visa? The piece of paper you got when you came into Mexico?”
Uh oh. It’s at home in San Fe. “Uh, it’s at home in San Felipe.”
“Hmm. Well, I can’t give you a stamp then.”
“Uh, ok… wait… uh, does that mean anything? I mean, can I get back across without any problems?”
“Hope so.” They all laugh.
“Yeah. I hope so too.” Jerks.
I walk across, a little confused. It’s maybe a quarter kilometer, up a ramp, past a run down Western Union that is closed and looks like it always has been. I am hounded by money changers. I finally find one that will change me my only 150 pesos for a hundred Quetzal. There is a bridge crossing a river, and then the bus. The Mexico side has a pretty tight border, but the Guatemala side has hardly a guard. I go to the bus and find that there is a little room where the bus people are waiting.
“Go ok?” one asks.
“Uh, I guess so. I didn’t get a stamp. Does that matter?”
“Did they tell you it was ok?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, you’re across aren’t you? I suppose it’s ok.”
Whatever. I look around outside and see everyone coming except for the Canadian. My seat buddy gets there and asks if I got across alright. I explain the confusion and he just shrugs and talks about how it seems to be a little more easy going than the US-Mexico border. But I still have the paperwork unstamped and untouched in my hand, the same goes for my passport. Finally the Canadian guy shows up, looking more than flustered.
“You ok?”
“I think they fucked me.” (his words)
“Beg your pardon?”
“I gave them 200 US dollars and they gave me 200 of… their money.”
Man, he certainly did get…screwed. I brought one of the bus ladies over and explained. She took the money from him and walked back over the bridge. Not real tight security. She came back with about 1200 Quetzales more, for which he was quite grateful, but still flustered. To get his mind off of the money incident, he pulled out a map and looked at it. He showed it to me. It was like a map of the main highways and like 12 major roads. As much detail as a globe would give you. He pointed out our highway, which lead from Guatemala City to our point in “Talisman.” There were maybe three roads on his map that headed off from our highway to the western coast.
“I’m going here, to the coast. I take this highway to ‘Rio Bravo’ and then head to the coast.” I thought it odd, that being the name that Mexicans call what we call the Rio Grande. It looks like it’s another two hours to the turn off, and should be an obvious highway or major road. I was going to look out for it for him. “I am a fisherman. I am always comfortable with fishermen. I am going to stay there for like three weeks.” I raise my eyebrows in skepticism and smile.
“Cool.”
We get back on the boat and sail off. The man who was sitting next to me, sits next to me again. He starts chatting, about funny things that have happened, asking me where I am going and where I have come from. Some really fun questions, nothing about if I like their country or nothing about his uncles who are in the US, non of the normal questions I get. We know some of the same places: Angangeo, El Oro, Tlalpuhajua, whatever. He has a great story about hanging out in Tijuana drinking beers. Apparently he and a friend got to drinking on the beach in Tijuana, and started walking down the beach. They walked for like four hours straight, and ended up in San Diego. They got scared because they had heard bad stories about illegal immigrants being treated bad by the police and all, but at the same time they were way too tired to walk back down the beach. I think they slept on the beach that night or something and then walked back. They thought about turning themselves and getting a free ride back home, but were nervous so they ended up just walking back. All the Mexicans who are trying to cross illegally, paying lots of money for “coyotes” and they just started walking and arrived on their own.
As the time went by, I found out that he sells dairy products, has a big family, is on the road a lot, other random stuff, but mostly a lot about working hard and good morals and other things that I was impressed with. I also was impressed with the number of protestant churches I saw as we drove down. About an hour and a half I see a sign near a little creek that says “Rio Bravo” and chuckle at what the Canadian said to me earlier. I see a little tienda that has a sign advertising “Gallo” beer, which was just a big funny looking rooster. Just after I saw some green starts and blue hands, which probably represented political parties (they did). The bus was stopping. I was trying to figure out what the “PNL” could stand for when I see the Canadian with his large backpack gets off the bus. “Oh crap,” I think. My neighbor is looking at me and says “what is he doing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” The Canuck nods to the bus driver, and we start to pull away. “Ohhhh noooo…” It all went in slow motion, me completely frozen to stop anything. He must have seen that sign back there and thinks we are in the town of Rio Bravo, even though there is nothing around here. The last thing I see as I crane my neck to watch him is him asking something to two guys eating (the only people I can see) and them motioning towards the direction we are going, making big arm motions like it’s a long way away. But we are gone. I think about saying something, but I don’t think the bus driver is going to stop to pick the guy up again. Man, that guy is going to have some adventure. It doesn’t help that the Guatemalan newspaper he was “reading” had an article about a group of German tourists who had been assaulted and robbed. I take little joy in this situation, even though it would seem like he deserved it, but I honestly felt bad for the guy.
I got back talking to my dairy friend, who got us some yogurts and granola, which were tasty, and suddenly we were arriving in Guatemala City.
Obviously local public buses were pouring out smoke and diesel fumes, the names of their destinations written in soap on the front windshield, often nearly covering a good portion of the right side. They read locations and destinations that I pictured in my mind, inventing poor communities, bright colors, churches and cement homes, farmers, small tiendas and taco shops along the way, or else rough urban neighborhoods, lost, forgotten and pushed down in the large sprawl and bustle.
Guatemala City is way more Americanized that Mexico. The bright rotating signs of Chuck-E-Cheese, Dominoes Pizza, Chevron, Shell, TGI Friday’s, and Wal-Mart line the streets of broken pavement and broken backs. We rolled into the downtown-ish area, passing government buildings and statues of unknown heroes.
The bus station was in a rough area, and we all knew it, getting down off the bus. I said goodbye to my friend, everyone with their game faces on. I walked to the exit, and looked out. There was a burned out building with people sleeping inside. There was two people with matted, filthy hair sleeping on cardboard just out of the reaches of the bus station property. A Shell gas station was across the street, the only thing that reminded me of civilization as I knew it. Mentally crazy people walked by, violently, and usually shirtlessly.
I remembered that I should probably check the time when the bus leaves, so I can catch it on my way home, without having to return here. It reads “Tapachula” and below it “9:30, 2:30.”
The inside of the bus station was free of crazy people, but not that nice. There was just the long counter in front, maybe 50 uncomfortable looking chairs between that and the front windows and doors. Facing the counter, there was a little deli or something to the right, selling pop and sandwiches, apparently, which was walled in with glass panels to make it a separate entity from the bus station. The same was true on the left side, but was taken up by a tourist agent, a nice looking older lady.
Sweet. I see a kid from the bus who is talking to the tourist agent. I wander over that way, hoping to get directions to the “Holiday Inn” where Eddie had told me to arrive the previous night. The lady smiled as I waited at the door. I heard the kid say that he was trying to find a hotel, she recommended a hotel, and I piped in and said that I was heading that way and that we could share a taxi if he wanted. Which of course I just prayed he would say yes, as I was already terrified of the area we were in. A friend would be welcome company.
A funny thing happened then: the son or maybe grandson of the lady, who was only like five years old, ran up and tried to get into her lap and whispered something into her ear. She turned to him and said “Hablo con usted cuando termino con estes muchachos” which translates to “I’ll talk to you when I finish with these boys.” It was funny because she used the formal version of “you” as if her child were her boss or some person in high position. Maybe it’s not so funny, but it was at the time. It was something to note, obviously a slightly different way of speaking than I was used to. Which probably was to be expected, since Guatemala resembled Mexico, but was unique and different in its own ways. Right.
We go get a taxi. We haggle a price and put the kids luggage in the back, and are about to leave when a cute girl runs up and asks us if she can split it with us. We look at each other and nod, and she gets in. She is really friendly, thanks us, and starts to ask us all about us. She is maybe 20 and speaks really fast. My money on that she is American. I don’t know why, but I just am feeling it. She has a colorful cloth pack filled with who-knows-what and fun earrings and necklaces and rings. Very pretty. She is asking me all sorts of questions, and when I stumble and half joking/half serious say I don’t speak Spanish very well she says “no! You speak great!” I blush, if I haven’t already been. She says some word a lot that makes me laugh. It’s like “chido” or something, that wants to say “cool” or “nice.” I don’t remember the word, but she kept saying it after each answer we gave her to whatever question about our past and future she asked. I put the word in my mind to remember, assuming it was popular in Guatemala, but I never heard it again so I forgot it. I ask her about herself, and she says that she was born in Nicaragua, moved to Los Angeles when she was young, and just recently got into college in Mexico, and is traveling through Guatemala selling handicrafts that she makes by hand, selling them to tourists to pay for the trip. Which apparently has been going really well. Speaks to me in English just to prove that she is American, which proves my theory correct making me strangely satisfied, just to be right, I suppose. I laugh and say that she is quite international, existing in four countries at the same time.
The hotel was arrived to. The car doors were opened, the taxi driver was paid and goodbye’s were said. I walked into the Holiday Inn lobby and sat down. I noted that this was the nicest Holiday Inn I had ever seen, and probably the nicest in the world. It was huge, maybe 40 stories (who knows) and had big comfy chairs, bell boys rushing around, the flags of the world out front, and valet parking. “Now it’s time to play the waiting game…”
…
Mmmm…
“Uh, waiting game sucks. Let’s play…” oh here they come! Eddie, his sister Rebecca, and his cousin Amy (who I didn’t previously know) came walking up to the hotel doors, only like fifteen minutes after I arrived.
Throughout the the following five days, much fun was had. It was tense at time, due to my lack of money, the girls’ desire to do all the shopping and touristy things they could do, long bus rides through winding roads, and a lack of flexibility. We went to four main places: Antigua, the old capital of the city that was abandoned like 40 years ago due to an Earthquake that damaged most of the buildings, almost completely inhabited by trendy ex-pats or tourists like ourselves, or now wealthy Guatemaltecos. Lake Atitlan, a gorgeous lake that you have to drive down from the towering hills above, giving unbelievable views the entire way down, where it rained the entire time. Chichicastenange, a huge marketplace that smells of burning tree sap, filled with artisans used to hard bargains, surrounding a food market where we bought roasted chicken, rice and cooked vegetables while seated at a handmade wooden table, chatting with an old woman about the traditions of the area. Those three are all in central Guatemala. The fourth is Tikal National Park, the home of famous Mayan ruins, deep in the howler monkey-filled northern jungle of the country. Tikal was something special that I had not counted on, did not know about, and did not have the money for but Eddie helped me out with in a fabulous investment in fun. It was certainly worth it for me, but even, really, it was worth it for him because it would not have been anywhere as fun. There were massive ruins of temples that had been so long buried in the forests of the Maya, including the fabulous Temple 5 that pokes up above the canopy of the jungle, giving you an endless view of the lush landscape in all directions.

Part 3: Guatemala, Part I

2010-01-10T22:52:00.001-06:00

At some point my friend from high school, Eddie, wrote me and told me he was going to be in Guatemala in late May. I didn’t quite understand, but I gathered that his sister was studying somewhere in Central America, and wanted to know if I could make it. He additionally offered, knowing I was fairly poor, to spot me for what I couldn’t afford. Another investment in fun, if you will. No I take that back; not if you will, that’s exactly what it was. I even informed him of the investment in fun plan, and he loved it. I made a general promise of 10 years, which I think is reasonable.
He says that he will be there from said date to like six days after, and I see why no reason why I can’t make it, so I plan on it. Like any American, he sends me a million emails trying to “plan” the whole thing, getting secure dates and whatever, finally realizing that my end of it didn’t really involve anything more than simply showing up on time to meet them. That time was then set: May 24th, 9:00 PM, Holiday Inn, Guatemala City, Guatemala, lobby.
Sweet. Classes and whatever other life events happened, and suddenly it was like a week before. I ran to the hacienda to find Hi-may to see if he knows anyone or bus schedules or any related info. He does. Horray. He tells me this: the bus line is Cristobal Colon (“OCC”), buses leave every couple hours, it’s about 600 pesos, he knows some people in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, but recommends a cheap hotel that is easy to get to. Some other random information is useful, mostly the info about it not being as scary as I think it is. Oooo, Chiapas. Mufasa. Apparently, he tells me, Cristobal de las Casas is a pretty chill place with tons of things to see and lots of tourists. As it turns out, he is correct. He recommends some places to see and recommends a week stay there to see everything. He tells me to see the Laguna de Montabella, which, quote, “is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and probably the most beautiful thing on Earth.” It’s on the list, but I just don’t know if I have time. I don’t have the money, and need to be in Guatemala City at 9:00 on May 24th in the Holiday Inn lobby. Whatever. He tells me to see Palenque and San Juan Chamula and some other stuff that means nothing to me.
I arrive. At Mexico City. Observatorio bus station. I take the Metro. Five stops and I’m at San Larenzo i.e. Tapo bus station with service to southern cities. The bus ticket is 600 pesos (although the guy tries to rip me off 30 pesos) and leaves in a half hour. “Well, I suppose this will be another wacky adventure” I think. I purchase a meat and cheese sandwich on plain white bread wrapped in saran wrap, which as I found out later also came with a packet of mayo and another of mustard. I found out the hard way. Learning from previous bus experiences, I buy one bottled water and no sugar or salt or oily snacks. They turn your skin into a pizza-y surface within hours of sitting on long bus rides. It just somehow knows you are already miserable and, wait, I am running away with myself here.
Ok, so I get on the bus, and watch there cheesy little animated buckle your seat belt video (the first I have ever seen) with real animations of what would happen in a real crazy bus accident, but all done in a comical manner, complete with vomiting punchline. Classic.
I have brought with me the following: one pair of shorts, four shirts, four boxers, five pairs of socks, my digital camera (a must), “Bluebeard” by Kurt Vonnegut, “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis which I had partially started but was moving along slowly, my Ray Allen hat, a couple of pieces of paper and a pen, and my cell phone which I thought would be, at worst, my bailout option. I didn’t figure I’d get much reception in Guatemala, but it turned out I didn’t get much reception south of Oaxaca anyway. Ni modo. I had my wallet and had checked my account before I left, seeing that it had just over 300 dollars in it. Should be enough to get me there and back, and Eddie’s investment in fun should be able to cover the rest of it. He was working as an electrical engineer (just out of Stanford) for some fancy business in San Diego that makes satellites or something for the Defense Department, so I figured he had more money than he knew what to do with anything. As that turned out, it was true.
I had packed so scantly because I figured that 1) I didn’t want to carry too much around 2) I didn’t want to have to worry about my stuff ever and 3) I had learned to wash things by hand anyway, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal. I had learned to tough it out too, which is what I ended up doing anyway. Anyway.
As the opening credits of some B movie start, I watch out the window as we climb out of the southern end of the Mexico City valley, clouds circling the two famous volcanoes to my right. I try in vain to take a couple of pictures. My pictures on trips are always like that: pictures of stuff that is happening when nothing is happening. When we are out doing incredible stuff, I never get pictures. When I simply pass by cool things, I take pictures out of the bus window trying not to let others see what I am doing, getting about a dozen pictures of blurry green somethings or cloudy grey conical shapes, a couple dinner pictures of people, people walking on the beach, and if there happens to be any “tourist” site, a couple dozen photos of the same pyramid from different angles. I do take great photos of cool stuff when I put my mind to it, but generally I am engulfed in being in that moment, trying to capture it in my mind and not so worried about capturing it with zeros and ones. I used to hate when my mom would run around taking pictures of everything, but now I am kind of glad that I have so many pictures of my childhood to remind me of things I would never have remembered. At least now I can invent memories.
This and much more is running through my head as I think of the 13 hour trip I have ahead of me. It’s probably 7:00 PM, so I figure I’ll get in about 8:00 the next morning, assuming there’s no time change. I fall asleep to this thought, and sleep through the movie and the next one, apparently, waking up at 3:00 AM or so (I have no watch and have not yet learned how to program my cell phone). My eyes pop open as the bus rattles, as if driving over gravel. I look out the bus window to see us absolutely barreling down the highway. I don’t know if this is because it is a dangerous stretch or because he wants to make up for lost time somewhere or just because he can, but it is scary fast. I look up to see the red light at the front, saying “95 Km/h,” brightly illuminated. “It must be kind of a challenge sometimes, taunting the drivers” I think. The light stays on for the next two hours. I would say we are going at least 200 kilometers per hour. This is no exaggeration. We are pummeling down the highway, flying by distance markage signs I cannot even pretend to read with the headlights of the bus approaching and passing faster than my eye can catch. As the sunlight begins to peak over whatever skyline we are near, we reach the border of Chiapas and are soon in the capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez. Besides a brief stop in Oaxaca, it is the only stop we make between Mexico D.F. and my destination, San Cristobal. Most everyone gets off the bus in Tuxtla, but there are probably eight left to go the extra three hours to San Cristobal. And what a sight all those other people missed.
The road from Tuxtla to San Cristobal is a windy road that travels up into the mountains, while giving you an incredible view of the valley all the way up. As you reach the pass everything turns from desert into lush jungle, with crevasses slithering down slits in the cliffs that shoot up and fall away. There are little huts built strangely at the top of many cliffs, high above and below the road that we are wandering along. The road is untypically non-Mexican, nice and smooth and well engineered. I sat in still wonder, seeing what few foreign tourists have ever seen. Where the sidewalk ends. Who else is stupid enough to go by bus. (As it turns out, most tourists come into San Cristobal by plane or by tourist vans from the Yucatan/Cancun/Eastern side whereas I am coming from the west). The road dips and weaves, the bus moving like a halfback running through beautiful holes created by large stony linemen, agile leaps over green rolling linebackers, spinning around flowered terraced strong safeties. As we tiptoe into the endzone of San Cristobal, I feel a strong sense of panic come over me as I realize no one is coming to help me and if something happens, no one is calling the cops. But as I leave the bus station and see a tacky travel agency across the street, I remember this is a place crawling with tourists and it shouldn’t be a scary place. I flag down the first taxi I see and ask him where the city center is. He takes me about 10 blocks which gives me enough time to ask about the hotel Jaime recommended and recant my short bus ride story to him. I already have one friend when I get out of the taxi and hand him 10 pesos. Already things are cheaper than the horrendously cheap central Mexico area.
It is still early and there is almost no one around, so I walk around the main square and step into a place advertising trips to the places Jaime told me about. Turns out most of the places were a good three to four hours away and a good 250 to 300 pesos which I didn’t really have but really wanted to spend. I saw that one place, San Juan Chamula was only a fifteen minute ride and cost 75 pesos for a full tour. I figured I could get there cheaper on my own, so I held out. It looked like there was a lot to see around the city, with at least four churches on the hillsides above the city, so I decided to go find my hotel and drop off my stuff. I followed the taxi driver’s directions to a passing bus and followed that directly out of the city into the little hotel. As promised, it was a mere 150 pesos, which included a room with full accommodations, internet access, and a meal to boot, located on the outskirts of town about two blocks away from sheer upward cliffs of San Cristobal. San Cristobal is located in a valley in the mountains, two sides bordered by steep cliffs, one side by not so steeps cliffs and the other just a hill, where the main road comes in and out. Tall trees, cool temperatures, white people, and overcast conditions made me feel like I was back in the Seattle again. I took a short nap, a pleasant shower, and headed out to catch that same bus back into town. Eager to find San Juan Chamula, I asked around to where I could find a bus. It turned out to be a real tricky location and I literally had to ask someone every single block for like eight blocks, and one more time even as I stand directly outside of it not realizing it. Jaime had said that there was a really old church there, built when Cortez was still alive, in the style of the Mayas, and that you couldn’t take photos inside. The bus is a van that waits for 20 minutes for other people to show up, and we head out. It is up steeply into the mountains, a nice drive overlooking the whole city. We get out to Chamula and I get out. It is a single street leading into a main town square with some surrounding houses. The church is a normal looking stone church, except that it is highlighted with very “Mayan” colors like teal/green. There are a few government buildings, a small marketplace, and a couple restaurants. Facing the church, I can see a poster that shows what appears to be a firewalking ceremony of sorts, which as I read happens every year as people run down a path of coals that leads away from the church door. I can’t find out why or what it means. I walk to the church doors where I read a sign that says “No entrance without written permission.” Well crap. I thought it was just pictures that I couldn’t take, but it turns out that I can’t even go in. I see a large group of white people heading for me, and I decide to try to blend in with them, to at least see what’s inside. The find the entrance, and I huddle with them and no one cares but they are all speaking French. But I really want to see inside. The guide is a young Mexican who notices me immediately and looks and me disapprovingly but says nothing. Whatever. I want to see inside. They all go in and I follow. What wonders I then saw can never quite understood in words. I see people in circles on the floor with candles surrounding boxes that hold saints in them. The walls were bare but at the end were holes in the wall with candles and banners and all sorts of things hanging out of them. Incense was being burned like there was no tomorrow, and bizarre tunes of songs I had never heard were being sung. There were a group of local men sitting and talking, with trowels in their hands… and wood beams sitting around…oh wait. They are doing construction. Actually, placing, in my mind, the saints back on the walls and the candles on stands in front and the banners on the walls like normal, it isn’t so different than the normal cathedrals. I do see a sign on the wall that says it was built sometime like at the end of the 1400’s or something, which makes no sense so it was probably after that, but it was really really old. There is scaffolding to my right and some more at the end. It looks like just some basic repairs and a good paint job. It actually looks like it will be pretty nice when they finish.
The groups is still blabbering along in French, and the guide is still looking at me. “Ok” I think. It’s time for an escape. If I just pretend like the incense is getting to me, I can make an easy escape. And the group is starting to cross the church to the other side and I really don’t want a confrontation with the guide without a good escape, so I start to back up, coughing and holding my chest but not enough to call any real attention to myself. Bong! I go down hard. I am on the floor and my head is killing me. What is going on? I look up and see a steel pipe that was hanging off the scaffolding that is sitting just at my head level. Now everyone is looking at me, and I am getting pretty nervous. I smile sheepishly and stand up and walk to the door. I figured that the Mexicans probably still just thought I was with the group, and the group didn’t care one way or another.
I stepped out into the cool air and rubbing my head walked out of the square and down the main street to where I had seen some sort of old ruins of something. There was a sign that said “museum” so I followed it.
I stopped by a tienda for a cold pop, but found only warm ones. I bought a Pepsi and sat down to watch the movie the store clerk had on, which was some Mexican shootem up movie. I turned and laughed and said to the clerk “this is what everyone says that Chiapas is supposed to be like!” He looks at me and gives me a pity smile and turns back. Right.
The ruins turn out to be another church that actually was built after the other one, but built anyway and then abandoned. The only cool thing about it is the bizarre cemetery that is totally ragtag here and there graves and mounds above the earth and flowers everywhere. The museum is one of the creepiest places I have ever been because it’s all these really poorly made dummies in this mazelike walkway under a thatch roof and it’s completely silent and you really think that maybe some of the dummies are really people or even worse maybe some play tricks on you. The scariest two are the ones with machete and the other with the accordion.
And then, it’s back to San Cristobal!
The only fun things that happen that night is that I find a church on a hill to climb up to, another one in a lovely little park, a spaghetti dinner, and a churro. Back to the hotel for a nice sleep and an early morning.
Oh, I forgot to say that as soon as I got to the bus station that morning, I had asked about possible Guatemala borders and was told that the nearest one was Ciudad Cuautemoc, and that “it was easy and buses are there to take you right to Guatemala City. And that there is a 9:00 bus. Sweet.
So I wake up and get to the bus, looking back giving a fond farewell to a pleasant little city with lots of fun things to do but not enough time to do them. The bus is late, like most buses, but we get on a little after 9:15. It is two straight hours south where I will get off and walk across the border with my backpack and catch the first “chicken bus” that I can find. A little nervous, but I’m feeling good and confident. An hour and twenty into our ride down the pleasant highway two lanes wide, traffic is backed up. Stopped, in fact. We come to a stop, and the bus driver gets out and walks up ahead to find out what’s going on. A good majority of the 25 or 30 people get off the bus and sit down in the little tienda next to us. Actually, we had been driving almost all of that road intermittently hitting small towns but mostly just jungle surrounding our drive, but had stopped right in front of a tienda and to the other side a small restaurant. I, of course, stayed in the bus waiting to see what would happen and not wanting to even think about considering the possibility of accidentally being left behind if I ventured into the bathroom in the restaurant, or some other distraction, for even a second. I heard people saying stuff like “the road is closed” and “they closed the road” and “when are they going to open the road” but had no idea who or how or why. I stayed on the bus until the last lady got off with her mother, mostly due to the heat in the bus, and I followed them, leaving everything on the bus. I sat down in a white plastic chair around a plastic table that said “Corona” across it. The bus driver sat across from a lady that had jumped off the bus when it first stopped, who seemed like an upper class socialite, undoubtedly from Mexico City. They were just one table to my right. A kid of about 20 years sat across from me, and everyone else seemed to be sitting around us all facing inwards, either in the conversation with the driver and upper class lady, or hushed chatting with themselves. A large man comes from behind me and sits in the chair that separates me and the upper class lady. He sits and asks who I am and if I speak Spanish. Not talking to me though. They tell him they don’t know but that I got on in San Cristobal and that I haven’t said a thing. I tell them I am one of the people blocking off the road, to which they all laugh and suddenly the conversation is completely turned to me. Who are you? Why are you here? Where are you going? Why are you going by bus? How old are you? Do you like Mexican women? Do you like older Mexican women…? (Mufasa). How did you learn to speak Spanish? Do you like it here? and such questions. At one point the older woman points to a bus filled with people, as the bus flies down the wrong lane, heading towards the barrier. She asks if I want to be on that bus. I just stare at her as she laughs at her own joke. They explain in chorus that the bus is filled with illegal immigrants from Guatemala who tried to get into the US. I suddenly imagine my self flagging down the bus, jumping in and giving a big “what’s up” to the Guatemaltecos who, I don’t know, do something. My day dream doesn’t make it that far because they continue with the questions.
The larger man to my right is the most piqued, and when about twenty minutes later most of the others lose interest, he continues. We speak in English a little, or what he knows, we talk about his pasta business and my living situation and my life goals. Finally I stop him and bring up my main curiosity which is who what and why is the road being blocked? He says that they are PRDistas, fighters and politicians, tools in the overall scheme, but needing to do something to help their state.
“So they aren’t soldiers or government officials? Ordinary people can shut down the roads and no one cares or can do anything about it?”
“Well, they don’t want a fight so they just run trucks of soldiers back and forth along this road to see if the people will let the official vehicles come through. If they fight the soldiers, they can clear them out with good reason. And if not, maybe the people will get nervous or realize they are just inconveniencing their follow citizens.”
“So they are just normal people?” My question is answered by a pickup truck full of people holding machetes driving towards us from the roadblock. My heart skips a beat. “I’m not going to have any problems, am I?”
“No, they won’t care.” I’m not so convinced. The people are chanting some slogans that make little sense to me but probably have to do with their local government. I smile at them, as most of them watch me as they drive by. Their rattling of their machetes makes me nervous but I figure that someone of my new friends will stand up for me and talk them out of causing problems for me, if it came to that.
He actually explains to me that I would probably have more problems from the real government, because there are rumors that rich Europeans are helping fund and helped fund a large part of the rebellious groups, specifically the Zapatistas.
We meander through a million conversations in the next couple hours, talking with the kid sitting across from me who apparently is going to his cousin’s wedding. I slowly get the impression that most people are ending up in Tapachula, a larger city about a half hour from the border, west of here, fairly close to the Pacific coast. I ask if this is true, and they ask me where I am going. Ciudad Cuautemoc.
“No, you don’t want to go there. It is the same as the ugly border towns on the Mexico-US border. It’s a lot of people who saved up money to try to cross the border illegally, to find a job in another country, who got to the border and couldn’t get across and have no money and now just have to find ways to steal or beg or do whatever they can just to live. You’d be an easy target. Plus you aren’t getting there until nighttime anyway making it more dangerous. Plus the buses are horrible from there to Guatemala City.”

2008-06-10T00:44:00.002-05:00

This is, verbatim, an essay Adalid wrote yesterday. She edited it once, but pretty much is the original version. I think it is absolutely amazing:

Do Not Be Quiet

As we get older, many of us have noticed that certain things become easier for us because the knowledge we have acquired and the confidence that the years have given us. A child usually does not know when it is appropriate to not say or do something, but over the years she begins to understand why sometimes silence is better than words. Over the years she also has to learn how to act with family, friends or others. We must to know our culture and how to live in it. In the Mexican culture there are certain topics that can’t be mentioned in vain. For most Mexicans their religion and their mother are sacred. In other words, a person has to be really careful if he wants to talk about those things, otherwise he will be in trouble. My mother isn’t a saint for me, but without question she is the greatest woman in my life. She is devout to her faith and family. Although she always has loved her family, her faith is the reason why our family exists.

It was a day in the winter of 1991, when the mornings in my town are frozen, but during the day the temperature reaches up to ninety degrees. The day seemed to be normal; my sister and I were coming back from school. Our daily route took us one hour walking from home to school, and one hour going back from school to home, since there were no taxis or buses to ride at that time. For us winter was the worst season because in the mornings we had to wear warm clothes that we then had to carry all the way back, walking under the suffocating heat. That day, just like every day on the return trip, we made our usual stop to ask for some water in a house owned by a kind noble lady, whose name we didn’t even know. Yet after several months of giving us water, she knew us very well. Sometimes she had prepared plastic bags filled with water, and to make it easier for us, she used to close the plastic bags making a knot and putting a straw into them. That way we could take the water with us to continue on our hot journey.

Our walking was slow, as it almost always was, and we weren’t talking; we were too tired to say anything. We had left behind the town where our school was, and we were approaching to the first houses of our town. My sister was a few steps in front of me, stopped, turned and looked toward me nodding. I knew what that meant: we had to get ready to run. I despised that because the only fresh shade we could get was there, right where we had to go running past. I hated that dog, but I hated more that older woman because she never did anything to stop her dog. She just sat in front of her house, embroidering. While we were running and yelling “buenas tardes,” hoping she would do something to help us, she would just sit there, watching us.

Finally, we got home. My mother wasn’t outside washing clothes as usual. I opened the door. The house was fresh, almost cold, and there was a tenuous smell of soup. The concrete floor was still humid after my mother had mopped it. My mother was seated next to the table in front of the window with her hands resting on the table, holding a New Testament that my father had given to her a couple months before. My father was seated across the room, in front of my mother. The light coming through the window was hitting his face, so his gray-green eyes looked even more beautiful. He was wearing his typical Charro clothes: white shirt, black vest, gray pants and black boots. His gray hat was resting on the floor. I suspected something was going on because he was supposed to be working, and of course, we wanted to know what was happening.

“It’s so hot out there Mami,” I said, while I was walking toward her to kiss her. “I’m so glad you are here honey,” she said. I kissed my father too; then my sister and I dropped our back packs and coats under our chairs and sat next to each other as if we were ready to eat even though we were taught to go away when adults were talking. But I was really hungry, and I’m sure my sister was too. I really wanted to hear my parents’ conversation, and I’m very sure my sister wanted to hear it too. To our surprise, my mother let us stay there.

After heating the tortillas and serving us soup, she went back to her original place and position. “You decide,” my father said to her. My sister and I had food in our mouths, so we couldn’t talk, but my sister hit my knee with hers; again I knew what that meant. We both knew what they were talking about. “I have told you that if some day I would leave you it would be for someone better than you, and definitively I prefer him,” answered my mother. I stopped eating. My father looked at us then toward my mother. He didn’t say anything else. He grabbed his hat and stood up. My mother got up too. My sister was crying, and I was almost. My father opened the door and the sun came into the house. It was still really hot, and I could feel the heat in my face. He looked outside and wrinkled his face. I wasn’t quite sure by the expression in his face if he was trying to hold back tears that were already in his eyes, or if it was caused just by the bright light that was hitting his face. He looked at us again without saying anything. My mother had called my younger brother and sister to say goodbye. I didn’t know if that was a definitive goodbye or if we would see him later that day, so I stood up, kissed him and hesitated a little before hugging him. Nobody said anything, and he left.

I was seven years old when he left; after that I saw him twice, may be three times over the next fourteen years, but we never talked. My mother had been a mediocre catholic for thirty years until the day she read the New Testament my father had given her, and she discovered someone that loves her so much that he had died to save her family and herself. After that my father forced her to choose between him and her new faith. I remember my mother cried many nights. I thought she missed him, but she wouldn’t say it though she asked us to pray always for him.

Two years ago I went to invite my father to my wedding. It was hard to recognize him because he looked much older than I remember him being. While we were talking, we were walking down the school’s corridor where he works now. We stopped in front of a big window; his eyes looked as beautiful as in that winter day, fourteen years before. I wrinkled my face trying to avoid tears in my eyes, and pretending it was for the light coming through the window in front of us. “You have my same look.” He said. I wanted to tell him many things, but I didn’t because I wasn’t sure it was appropriate to say anything. I left, and now I ask myself why I did. Why it is so difficult to say “I love you, forgive me” and “I was wrong?” I don’t know, but I would like to tell my father that I have forgiven him and how much I love him. Some day I might tell him. I hope there is time.

2008-06-10T00:38:00.001-05:00

Chapter 23: Wheelchair Sports in Toluca

We meet in Atlacomulco at like 8:30 in the morning. A little bus is there to pick us up. There are like 15 or maybe 16 of us there, all there to participate except Liam, myself, and Juan Pablo’s sister Laura. I lift all of them into the bus, one by one. All of them. Maybe Liam helped some. And then we folded, took the wheels off, and stacked all the chairs on the bus too. And then we rode with Laura all the way there, facing backwards on a wooden plank leaning against the bumping speaker in her beater Volkswagen van.

When we got there, we jumped out, unloaded unfolded and reassembled all the chairs. We got all the seat cushions down and into place, and then all of them down and into their chairs. Some did it themselves.

So I’m not always gracious; I don’t always like this job. Judge me if you must.

We get into a real gym, with real tennis courts outside. It is a nice 70 to 80 degree day. Liam and I both get chairs to play in. We wheel around and shoot hoops. The best part of the day. This is actually the first time that I have ever been allowed to play wheelchair basketball in a real gym with real hoops and real wood floors. It is difficult, but awfully fun. Shooting from outside of 15 feet is extremely difficult, and I could only do it using momentum from my lower body which of course they don’t have. Juan Pablo is built like a horse and can easily throw the ball that far, but with little accuracy. I teach them how to shoot the ball from immediately under the hoop, spinning it up off the backboard. They teach me how to move in a wheelchair. They knock me out of it at their own will.

There are maybe 20 to 30 people in chairs total. We dominate the chaired numbers. There are two guys teams and two girls teams that are made up of deaf individuals. They play both basketball and soccer. We got play tennis while they play basketball, and then we finally get a sweet full game of wheelchair basketball going while they go play soccer outside.

The funniest part was the awkwardness of the political situation. What happened is that the event was sponsored by both the city of Toluca, which is the PAN political party, and the state athletic department which is the opposing PRI. Kike pointed this out to me as soon as we got there, and said that both the mayor of the city from the PAN (who I knew from his huge billboards) and the head athletic chair from the PRI (who Kike knew from TV) were there, and both wanted credit for helping these poor unfortunates. And they both gave speeches to that end. All the local and national TV stations were there, who were all interested that Liam and I were there. Not to get on TV, but interested to chat.

Don Memo was invited up and gave a long pompous speech about being there. I love the guy, but he is way too into himself. I think he just wanted to be on TV.

Kike ended up being on TV. He got a great interview (he is definitely the most photogenic of the group, with maybe the exception of Juan Pablo) and was totally relaxed and himself, talking about how much fun it is and how people need to stop thinking people in wheelchairs are contagious and start building more ramps and sidewalks and stuff. We saw him on TV that night, as did a lot of friends who told us later.

And we loaded up the people, chairs, and equipment and headed home. This is the day: from 8 AM to 8 PM we spend a total of three hours on the road, one hour loading and unloading, an hour listening to bogus politicians rant about who deserves credit for helping people out, an hour awards ceremony that was fun but way too long, an hour waiting, an hour eating for lunch, an hour for dinner, an hour for TV interviews, and whatever is left over for playing. This is not good or bad. It just is a different style. It’s patient and slow and no one is in a rush to do anything. It’s just what it is. Some days I love it. Some days I hate it.

2008-06-10T00:37:00.000-05:00

Chapter 22: San Felipe

As it was getting later on in Spring, I started going more and more to San Felipe. I would go early in the day, check my email, buy a delicious torta in the torta store in the corner of town, do whatever errands I had to do that day, and wait for Adalid to arrive. I don’t completely recall if it was really to kill time, or if I really enjoyed it there. Regardless, one day I ended up at the high school and told them that I would be willing to help teach English there. I met the English teacher (a very nice lady), we chatted (she knew quite a bit of English for what I expected), and I was brought around to ALL the classrooms in the school to be introduced. I instantly knew that this was going to get me in trouble, as they now all knew me, and I was expected to remember all 400 of them.

I was told that I was invited to come to sit in on any class during the day that I wanted – the only thing they could offer me in return for my services was the opportunity to learn more Spanish by sitting in on, for example, high school economics – and then taught an after school English class that really bombed from the first day. There were no requirements for being in my class, no minimum standard or anything, so kids who knew not a word of English were mixed with kids who had lived years in the US. The worst was that I couldn’t even bail because the word on the street that English was being offered got out and kids would come in, we would play games that were either way too easy or way too advanced for them, and the turnover rate ended up being incredible. Like basically a new class every week. And those that stayed completely frustrated.

But by this wandering around and hanging out in town, I started to get to know some people. The guy at the torta shop asked me if I’d give him classes. He was a pretty quiet, serious guy, but I had time before my class at school, so I started giving him class.

Marco is a very sharp, straightforward kid. It took a while to get even a smile out of him, and he liked to wax philosophical on different subjects, many of which he knew nothing about. A lot of it turned to theory of things that I had facts for, but was unsure of how to go about telling him he was wrong. It turned out he was about 8 months older than me, the youngest of four kids. His girlfriend was quiet, nice, and very polite. She always kept working as we had class. Shorter and very white for a Mexican, Marco’s parents lived poorly in a very old house that they probably could have sold and made a lot of money off of. Actually, the position of the torta shop, along with the tienda just around the corner that his two brothers owned and operated, were prime territory, probably the highest property value in the city.

Soon he opened up, we starting laughing and talking about common interests, and I met his family and friends, their family and friends, and a huge network of people opened up for me. I still had to be home by 7 or 8 (after daylight savings), because the walk up to Las Rosas in the dark was brutal, and there were no taxis or buses after dark, so I never got to go to any family parties or anything, even though I was often invited.

This was an interesting time in my life because I was suddenly meeting people from all walks of life, and involved in so many conversations about countless subjects. The real characters were Marco’s two brothers, Gabi and Chucho, and Marco’s friends Chava, Chaparro, Chicote, and El Maestro. The two brothers were very large men, maybe 25 or 30 with a couple kids each. Very serious men. Whatever they did, they did it with complete conviction. They worked everyday, open at 9 and closed at 11, seven days a week, 365 days a year. They wouldn’t take one day off. Each had very serious life goals of building houses and new businesses and they were set out on paper and achieved each in their own time. Tuesday night drinking was a VERY serious matter and I was only let off because I explained my situation.

Chaparro was a typical Mexican build with the Mariachi gut and typical Mexican style with cowboy hat and boots. It was funny to me that he fit in the group. But he did. He loved his mother and the Virgin and spicy food and tequila. He was a violent drunk they told me, something I vowed never to see. Chaparro was well know for failing at everything. He had been in every type of business there was in town, and had always got tired of not getting instantly rich, and looked for something else. He currently had about a dozen video game machines that he was trying to expand into a larger business (he never would).

Chava was a totally different type. A stereotype of the developing middle class Mexican. A kid of a rich family, he had his own car and was always in school for the lack of a real opportunity to work. His parents just figured that if he got enough degrees, someone had to give him a good job. He had an easy life, an allowance, freedom to do as he pleased. They constantly mocked him for his liberal ways and his love of the strip clubs. He had a nice girlfriend and always cheated on her.

Chicote loves America. That is the one striking feature about him. He is short and skinny, talks fast and with a lot of motion. He talks almost constantly about his two year experience of working in LA. Always saying how it was in the states, how it is different there, how the people are different, what Chicanos are like and how they are different from Mexicans, whatever you can possibly imagine that there is to say about the US, he has said it. Every time I see him, someone tells him to shut up. I laughed every time he wanted to talk about the “ook-la” because in Spanish you always say your acronyms and never the letters (he meant UCLA). He was there maybe a year before he returned to the US, never to come back to Mexico again.

El Maestro was a crack up. He was tall and skinny and had this bright red “Toluca Red Devils” coat that he never took off. He was a teacher at the middle school, a lazy teacher at that, and lived from day to day. He was conservative and never liked to do anything that would take up too much time. I have no idea what he did that he didn’t want to waste time hanging out for, but he was always on the move. He had sayings that would make everyone within hearing distance fall over laughing.

Soon they each had gotten to know me and always called me over to chat when they saw me in town. After a while working at the high school, I saw them altogether one day out on the curb in front of Gabi and Victor’s store. They had a bottle of tequila between them. They called me over. The first question I was asked was this:

Gabi: Could you possibly marry a woman that isn’t a virgin?

I answered slowly: Umm, yes. Yes. I mean it depends. I mean like is her heart virgin? I mean, if she is a woman running around with guys and then wants to marry me, I couldn’t do that. But I wouldn’t date a woman like that anyway. If a woman had made a mistake or two and had repented of that and assured me I was the only man for her, I would trust her, yes. And it wouldn’t make a difference that she had had sex before. Her past has nothing to do with me. I can’t change that anymore.

Chaparro: But you can never really know, of course. Until you see it. You can’t trust a woman one hundred percent because you never know what she actually is doing. I know what time my wife should be home. I know what she does all day. If she strays from that routine, something is going on and I am going to find out what.

Me: I don’t know. I guess I feel I can trust Adalid completely. She is a big girl. She knows the consequences to her actions. It certainly isn’t worth it for me to mess around with another girl because I love Adalid so much. If I actually risked that for one stupid fling, even if I didn’t get caught, it just wouldn’t be worth it. I am pretty sure she is the same way.

Chaparro: That’s crazy, my friend. She wants you to feel jealous, and will do things to make you react. If you don’t react, she will just keep pushing it. That’s how it is.

Me: No, what’s crazy is you guys who feel that you can sleep with all the women you want but that your wife should be a virgin. How is this possible? Can you do the math? Do you all really honestly think that all your wives were virgins when they met you?

Chaparro: If I found out a guy had slept with my wife before we got married, I would kill him. That simple.

Me: But YOU slept with women before you got married. Are their husbands coming to kill you?

Chaparro: No, because I would never say anything to anyone. And I know she wouldn’t say anything either.

Me: So you think your ex-girlfriends have an obligation to you over their husbands to be dishonest, but your wife has the obligation to you over her ex-boyfriends to be honest. This just doesn’t make any sense.

Gabi: A woman wants you to be experienced. She doesn’t care that you aren’t a virgin. On the contrary, she wants you to please her so you have to know what you are doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t feed her needs, she will find a lover a huevo!

Me: But if she’s a virgin, how will she know what is good or not? It seems like anybody having sex for the first time will think it’s incredible. If you are honest with each other and trusting each other it would probably be fantastic sharing such an intimate thing, even if the other person doesn’t know any more than you do. It would probably be better that way.

Chaparro: It’s the culture, my friend. I could not live with the idea that my wife was disrespected by another man. If someone disrespects her now, just saying something sleazy to her on the street, I would probably (hand motions a gun out of its holster) BOOM BOOM BOOM. (They all laugh)

Me: How would it be disrespect if she chose to have sex with that guy? Along the same logic, wouldn’t you be required to kill your wife too, since she somehow disrespected you before she even knew you?

Chava: You are talking to a big, ignorant, bunch of country folk. They are stuck in their conservative ways. (Gabi, Chucho, Marco and Chaparro starting ripping at him, telling him he just a drunk who knows nothing of real Mexican culture)

Me: But I don’t agree with you either. You do the same exact things they do, like running around to the brothels, but just feel like you can excuse it because you are somehow more liberal than them…? Just because you could marry a woman who is not a virgin, you would still fool around behind her back. You would probably only marry her once she got pregnant. That’s the other half of the culture I see around here.

Marco: We may be ignorant, but at least we know it. We know it is hypocritical, but that’s the culture.

Me: At least you guys are making me look good. I can tell Adalid I am a virgin and because she thinks no guy would ever brag about that, she knows it’s true. It gives us a deep trust for each other that goes beyond our language barrier or communication problem.

Flaco (or “Maestro”): Yes. Exactly. (His arms being thrown in all directions like he is flashing complicated gang signs)

Me: The only person who agrees with me.

Marco: It’s only because he’s so ugly that he hasn’t got with a girl. It has nothing to do with morals.

Me: You guys also make me look good because I tell her I will help her with housework, which of course would be totally expected of me by any American woman, and she thinks I am some savior.

(This gets a rowdy, dissenting laugh)

Chaparro: No, my friend. You can’t do that.

Me: No, you don’t understand. I have to. Even if I didn’t want to, I have been trained to this way of thinking my whole life.

Chaparro: No, no no. Listen. A man has like five major responsibilities here: to work. To cut the lawn. To carry heavy things… um, if there is no water, the man gets a big pole on his back with two buckets and walks down to the well to get the water. And he has to come home, lie down on the couch and say “my love, bring me a plate of fruit.” (this gets a good laugh out of everyone)

Me: No, even though that sounds great, I have been conditioned to help out with all the housework. Right now I do all the housework in my home. It will actually seem like a great help for me just if she helps me out.

Chaparro: No, you are missing the point. We are not asking you. We are telling you. You cannot do that. Otherwise your wife will be so happy she will tell our wives and then we will all be doing housework like you! (this gets another good round of laughter)

I have a good laugh just thinking about that. It was different. I don’t know if I will ever have friends like that again.

There were others too. I met maybe 100 people in the course of the first month I wandered around in town by myself, and maybe another 150 from the kids in the school. I would show up early for my class to play basketball or eat with them or whatever there was to do. Most people treated me very nice – even the teachers liked me a lot. One guy was always trying to invite me out to drink pulque. I just smiled and laughed and pretended like I didn’t understand.

Oh, and I started to see Elias there a lot too, working every other day. I already knew a lot of his friends, but I met even more of his co-workers, probably on a first name basis with at least half the police force in town. This would later thoroughly weird most of my friends out.

And everyday Adalid would show up, we’d walk around, I’d introduce her to the new people I met (even though she already knew, or knew of, most of them). She’d tell me the gossip about this or that person, what they were known for, whatever it happened to be. We’d eat free tortas (my fee for teaching Marco) and chat. I’d walk her to her taxi or bus and she’d be off with a kiss.

I made about 40 pesos a day off classes, which was enough for transportation and food. Carefree, happy days passed one after the next.

2008-06-10T00:34:00.001-05:00

Chapter 21: Jokes

I forgot to mention something that happened in Mexico City. As Kike tells it, here goes this story:

No bro, you won’t believe it but we were in Mexico City with my cousin, in her car. We went to go fill up the tank at the gas station. So we roll in, pull up to the pump. Some kid is selling candy, and comes over to see if we want any. We buy a pack of gum and off he goes to the other cars. Of course the nerd pumping gas takes forever but finally comes over and asks us how many and we are like “you think we are rich or what? Just because we have a Gabacho? 50 pesos.” As he is filling it up we see this motorcycle drive up. This huge guy with a leather coat and everything. The beard and whatever. We see the kid with the candy go over and offer the motorcyclist some. We see him smile a big grease smile and tell the kid that if he drinks a liter of gas, he’ll buy all his candy and give him 200 pesos on top of that. A little macabre, but we all watch in horror as the kid drinks the liter. The man is laughing but pays the kid what he owes him, and the kid takes off running. He runs down the street and around the corner. We all look at each other and, you know, ayyy. We pay the man and take off, deciding to follow the kid to see if he’s ok. As we turn the corner and see him lying face down in the middle of the street. We got out and turned him over and you know what had happened to him? He had run out of gas.

When we were in Acapulco, as we were walking down the beach in front of million dollar hotels, Adalid looks out at the ocean she had seen for the first time just the day before and asks contemplatively, “do you know why the ocean is blue?” I begin to slowly explain the reflection of the sky and what causes the hue of the water to look different colors. I am struggling greatly without all the words I need, but I am pretty sure I am getting the point across. We walk in silence a few minutes and she says, “…no.” I look at her and think maybe I didn’t explain it well, or didn’t have the right words to express myself. “Yes, it’s like… it’s like…” and she cuts me off “no. It’s because the fishes say ‘blue blue blue.’” It took me a minute to get but I guessed that in Spanish the fishes say “blue” like the roosters cry “kee kiree kee!” I guess it was pretty funny.

Here is another joke (I was told this one at church):

There is an American and a Mexican on either sides of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) hunting ducks. A duck flies between them and BOOM both hunters shoot. The duck falls into the water and the Mexican hurries down and picks it out of the river. The American, quite adamant, tells the Mexican that he shot the bird and it is rightfully his (although the joke was told to me making the American guy as stereotypical as possible, you can imagine the Mexican as a blatant stereotype, because I am telling the joke and I can tell it like I want to). The Mexican says that he is sure he shot it, but if the American would like, they can make a deal. “Here is the deal” the Mexican says. “I am going to kick you in family jewels as hard as I can and for as long as I want to, and then you can, and then I can, and so on, until one person gives up. The person who doesn’t give up gets the duck.” “Fine,” the American says. So the Mexican kicks him and kicks him and kicks him until he is tired from kicking him so much. “Great” the American says, “now it’s my turn.” “Aaagh,” the Mexican says, “go ahead and take duck.”

Everybody else is laughing but you don’t get it, do you? I don’t either. It makes no sense! Why is it funny?

2008-06-10T00:33:00.000-05:00

Chapter 20: Climbing San Agustin Hill

So, when she suggested we should climb up the hill above the Las Rosas, with Kike, it came as the greatest idea I had heard, and especially cool coming from Adalid. The biggest surprise, I guess, was that we hadn’t thought about it before. It would be the biggest physical feat that Kike would have endured up to that point in his life, but an awesome challenge. And Adalid wanted to both help and be part of it. Obviously.

So we talked it over, packed a lunch, and started up the trail. The challenge was this: to get him, in his wheelchair, about 2000 feet up the hill, along a “road” that was mostly boulders, cactus, and eroded trail. We would have to back track about a fifth of a mile, along a grassy path, to get him to the main road that would get us about a quarter of the way up the hill. The next half was pure boulder, maybe a mile, and the last quarter would be cactus, plants, and otherwise uphill gravel to reach a lookout point that the San Agustin church had built for Easter Sundays some years back.

We didn’t really treat it like a challenge, like something we were going to conquer, though. It was a definite battle getting him up the poorly paved, winding road, but we would stop and chat and laugh and throw rocks. It was more like an adventure, one that would take hours but we were set on doing it, so there was no turning back. There are houses up as far as the road is paved, so we stopped to buy chips or cookies or whatever we wanted. I had finally got my Spanish down to the point that if I wanted to throw something in, some side joke or whatever, I would start to, they would wait, I would think about it, and then at some point it would come out, better late than never. It was great.

The view out across the valley was a curious site, as we climbed higher and higher you thought there was no way that you could possibly see more, that it could possibly get nicer. As we moved forward, the valley lost its contour, all the little hills and bumps became a flat plane that ran all the way across to Mount Joco across the other side. All the little towns lost their borders and houses met corn fields wherever they felt like it, order and organization lost in the vast layout. It felt like I was flying over head, instead of looking down from the hillside.

When pushing Kike’s chair – Adalid and I took turns – Kike doesn’t really let you push him. He more uses you as propulsion to keep him moving forward. I mean, he is always pushing, as if you weren’t there. But obviously it would be a lot more difficult for him to get over boulders and through shifty gravel if we weren’t there keeping him moving forward. The motion of pushing and pausing while you reach back to push again really hurts your momentum. Sometimes Adalid and I would each take one handle, throwing our other arms around each other, each doing half the work. It was more fun than effective, but we weren’t in a race.

Then, as I was almost at a 45 degree angle, full force into the chair, something scary happened. We came up over a ridge and as I looked up, coming straight at us was the one armed man. Have I mentioned the one armed man? He is a guy that lives somewhere up the hill, I think all the way up actually, who comes down the hill everyday to catch the bus to go somewhere. And he always stares me down. He scares the living daylight out of me. People generally tell me he’s a really strange guy and to be careful of him. He is tall with a long twisted beard and has long hair that is always topped off with a blue wool hat. He looks like he is coming right from jail. The three of us reacted, all of us facing directly forward looking past him as if he didn’t exist. The protocol in San Agustin is to say “good morning” or “good afternoon,” depending on the time of day, in Spanish or Mazahua, to anyone you pass, simply because they are in your community. But we froze. Nobody said anything. I could see he was staring us down. I swear I was ready to grab Adalid, throw us over Kike’s chair and hurtle us back down the hill at full speed. Luckily without a word he passed us by and at a great stride, continued down the road. We stopped and watched him continue down, waiting until he was out of sight before saying anything.

“Oh my gosh”

“Aaaaagh”

“Oh, let’s run for it.” I grabbed Kike’s chair and pretended like I was going to go full speed into a cactus patch.

We were at the last house on the hill. Which meant the last stretch of moderately smooth ground. The really rough stuff was coming up, and we could see it. We had three switchbacks left until the final ascent. There was nothing crazy steep, nothing a car couldn’t climb if it really wanted to, which made me relax a little. From the bottom of the hill it looks like there were pieces where rock climbing was going to be necessary. I hadn’t really figured how we were going to get Kike up that, but now seeing it from here, I realized that it wouldn’t be necessary. We continued to move slowly, sometimes have to work all three together to get over certainly places.

Up ahead we could see a stretch of where the pavement continued again. As we got closer to that point, I started to see that the concrete made no sense. It was a stretch of about 30 yards of straight road that looked like it probably got washed out constantly, and that was the reason for the pavement. But where it ended and began, it was maybe a foot or two up or down, where the dirt had eroded away in front and at the end. If any car tried to take it, it would totally scrape up the bottom to pieces. I couldn’t imagine any car high enough to make it cleanly. We pulled Kike up onto it and he could help push again. It made the going much easier for us, but I could see no other logical use for that road.

The view was exponentially sweeter than it had been down below.

Chapter 19: Frijol

2006-07-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

Kike bought two mousetraps. These traps are not like what you think. They are called “glue traps” and they are basically flypaper stuck onto a piece of plastic that you put somewhere along your floorboard so that when mice run by they try to run right over it and get caught. It was a remarkably simple solution that if I stopped to consider exactly what had to be done after the mouse was caught (the instructions show you wrapping up the trapped mouse in newspaper and putting it in the garbage) and how the mouse stopped “being,” the whole situation became rather morbid. But the mouse that we had for a week now that constantly kept me up at night with its nibbling on things that I knew were of value, as well as the one incident when I found him below my pillow, made me easily forget the consequences of the glue traps and simply place them, one at the corner of the room where I knew I had had heard the mouse run past many a night, and the other outside around the corner so that if anymore tried to come towards our room, they would not make it even to the door.
And as simple as the traps were, the mouse was no more complex and that same night we had him wrapped in newspapers and out with the pile of garbage. We rested easy now, no more chewing on my boxes or clothes or waking up to push all our stuff into the middle of the room and attempt to beat it senseless with the broom.
The next night we caught a cat. We heard the trap moving in the early morning, and we both got up to see why the mouse could be sliding the trap around on the ground. Except, as I said, it was a cat. A sandy brown, black, and white cat, that was no bigger than a four month old kitten except it looked like a full formed cat, not a kitten at all, and was staring up at us. It was sitting contently, its back right foot firmly stuck in the glue trap, looking as if he had no idea that he was stuck at all. Of course the trap is not stuck to the ground or anything, so that cat stood up, moved its front feet forward, and then lifted his back right foot, complete with trap and all, as high as he could almost over his head and set it down as if he had been walking like this his whole life. He sat back down and looked around as if taking in the view, and then attempted to shift his weight to his left side and bring his right foot, with trap, up to his mouth to clean the front of his paw. He managed to do this, which was quite a feat, and licked his paw clean until he looked tired and without noticing that his whiskers were stuck to the trap, set his foot back down which pulled his whole head down to his right side. He yanked his whiskers loose and shook his head, sticking his tongue out to lick the sides of his mouth.
This was all entirely too amusing to free the cat, but finally I felt bad and approached him to see if he would understand that I wanted to help. He seemed to not really notice my existence, and when I grabbed his back leg to pull off the trap, he looked back to see what I was doing and once free, even though it pulled a good many hairs off his back leg, he didn’t complain but only proceeded to clean the area that was stuck a second ago. We laughed and went back to sleep.
When we woke up an hour or two later, the cat was in the trap yet again.
That night Kike and I were out on the balcony chatting. The moon was out bright and Kike had his notebook out, drawing a picture of whatever. The cat came wandering up the ramp towards us, and found its way under Kike’s chair. He sat there the whole time, just sitting and looking about. We tried to coax it out so we could play with it, but it just sat there like it had no where else to be. As Kike shifted his weight forward to try to grab the cat, he was careful not to lean too far forward and thus tipping over. However, he couldn’t quite reach the little thing and just barely grabbed it by its right ear, pulling it forward. When he could get a little better grasp, Kike grabbed the cat’s whole head and lifted him out to the side and up onto his lap. Anyone would have gasped seeing a cat picked up by its head, which I did, but the cat, like everything that had happened so far, didn’t notice or seem to mind at all. Kike held it down and searched it for fleas. We weren’t going to keep a dirty cat around. That would just be trouble.
“We will name it ‘Frijol’” he said.
“Why?”
“I like the name.” I laughed and watched as Frijol jumped off Kike’s lap and came over to me. He put his claws on my jeans and used them to begin to scale my body, slowly moving up. I was so entranced, I didn’t mind the occasional scratch on the leg as Frijol made his way up into my arms all by himself.
“This is the coolest cat I have ever seen. Look at him! He is actually climbing up me and doesn’t even care what I think.”
The next few nights he became our official third member of the tribe. Frijol would come into our room and jump up on one of our beds and snuggle underneath the covers. One time he was sitting up on the edge of Kike’s bed looking at me. I grabbed my wool hat and threw it at him. It hit him directly on his head, and he fell straight backwards off the bed, landing square on his back on the blanket below the bed. I jumped up.
“Did you see that? He landed on his back?”
“Yeah, that was strange.”
“Is that allowed? Does that break some law of physics? Are we going to jail?” I am not joking at all. Square on the back.
And he ate everything. We fed him cooked green beans on a tortilla and he ate it right up. I could not believe some of the things that he would eat. I never knew any dog or cat to love vegetables, but he ate everything we put in front of him. Sometimes we would eat and he would bring a mouse in and eat it there with us. You think I am starting to exaggerate but I am not. He would occasionally kill mice and leave them around. The girls who worked there would find them and scream. It was like he was setting them up for a good laugh.
Adalid didn’t care for him, but we didn’t mind. I think she hates all cats, not just Frijol. He was our friend and we were used to being outcasts, being thought of as strange. Hey, no problem.

Chapter 18: Strawberry Picking

2006-05-25T17:46:00.000-05:00

An instant classic, as it would be called on ESPN, was the following weekend. This was on the list before I got home to write it down.
We were exhausted, Kike and I, after the long week with the camp, my friends, and all that. So we went up to Kike’s house for the weekend, just to relax and take it easy. We got there and his entire family must have been there. Grandma, Grandpa, like six or seven pairs of aunts and uncles and flocks of cousins were hanging out, riding the horses, chasing the sheep, sitting and chatting. Tia and Tio were there with all the kids and grandkids, and Tia wanted to go to Michoacan to pick strawberries. It was the next state away, probably an hour away, but everyone was excited to go, so we went. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
In about ten minutes they showed me in what we were going to go berry picking: an old beat up UPS truck driven by one of Kike’s cousins. Everybody in! We piled in to the back, which is about as comfortable as you can imagine sitting inside a big tin box is, and we’re off. People are telling jokes, old stories about the grandma dancing all night to rap music, pointing out how uncomfortable we all are. We stopped every so often for pop or tacos or sombreros. We drove on through three different cities, finally came to a stop and all got out. There were no strawberries but we certainly were in the middle of some tiny town I had never been to. The told me it was a town of all women. All the men in the town had decided to go to the US, so they left their wives there alone, the men working together and sending the majority of their money home. I guess they had a town meeting, votes, made the plans, and all headed out together. And they were right. All we saw were women. We had actually stopped to ask directions in this town of women, but we bought some chips and looked around. They told me that there are a fair number of towns like these, and they are well known for being calm, crime-free, and except for a few garish scandals, generally well respected.
It was quite rural at this point, on the edge of Michoacan. You could tell because the roads were suddenly well paved and everything was a little neater than our trashy state of Mexico. They let me sit up towards the front so I could see out, which was quite nice. Maybe another fifteen minutes and we came to what they said were strawberry fields, but I didn’t see any hut or little stand, any buckets to pick with. There were maybe a dozen women with bags walking up and down the rows of what I saw were very small strawberry plants. We got out and in a few minutes a man came over.
Are these your fields?
Yes. We pick these strawberries and deliver them to all over the country. We sell these baskets for 40 pesos.
The straw baskets were huge. Maybe like four gallons of milk. Or maybe a baby.
Actually, we wanted to pick some, if that is ok with you.
Pick some? By hand?
Yes. How much would you charge us for that.
Umm… you can just help yourself. I don’t think you are going to demolish my fields. Due to the climate and good soil, they grow back pretty fast here anyway. Actually they grow here year round.
So for the next hour I sat and ate myself silly with free strawberries. Kike and I joked around and laughed at the rather amusing situation, the little kids with red smeared across their faces, the grandma cross-legged filling her shirt with delicious berries. Kike had a huge advantage, as he put his wheels on either side of a row, and just leaned down to grab a few, ate them, and continued down the row. Quite the tactic.
We did buy maybe a dozen baskets from the guy, which I’m sure made up for the ones we ate, and headed back.
On the way back someone decided that we were going to take a side trip to the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. This is one of many areas in the state of Michoacan where huge Monarch butterflies migrate to every year. You could see it from a distance, millions of these insects fluttering above the trees, like a tornado had just hit a paper recycling plant.
It was a little hike in, us taking turns pushing Kike’s chair up the mostly dirt path, but once there you are covered with butterflies. I remember being amazed at some big butterfly when I was a kid. I saw all the world’s most beautiful ones together sitting on my shoulders within the span of five minutes. I mean, just everywhere. You couldn’t stop them. We were crunching them under our feet because we simply couldn’t avoid it. I did feel pretty bad both about invading their home and how many I plastered on the ground, but we didn’t wait around that long anyway. Some of the kids were trying to capture some of the bigger ones, their parents chasing them around telling them they didn’t have room at home for more pets. It was pretty funny.
Me thrown into an old delivery truck with a huge family of Mexicans treating me like their son, heading up to pick free strawberries and play with butterflies? How fun is that?

Chapter 16/17: The Great Sports Camp (Year I)/Water Park Adventure

2006-05-25T17:39:00.000-05:00

The hacienda has been sponsoring a Wheelchair sports camp for the last bunch of years. I’m not sure how many it’s been, but it is always in Spring, when the corn is coming up through the ground, making the broken, burnt floor of the earth into a living green. I actually suddenly got bizarrely homesick, and I think it was from all the green.
Oh, but the camp mostly consists of the great Richard St. Denis, the head sports guy for Mobility Project worldwide coming down and kicking these kids around. Richard is a big rugged man who treats everyone the same and doesn’t take slacking off or bowing out from anyone. When the A team is on the floor playing basketball he crashes into them, plays hard, and turns up the intensity. When they do relays with the people who can maneuver their chair with only one hand, or need someone to push their chair, are on the floor, Richard makes them all run the whole length, cheering them on. Kike often draws him into his notebook as Johnny Bravo or Popeye in a wheelchair. Adalid calls him the most “valiant” man she has ever known. I think that is a great description.
The first day the kids get there, they get the usual name tags and candy and are running around the property. There are maybe 20 to 40 invited, about half can move about at ease, maybe a quarter have partial movement, and the other quarter need constant attention. You would think the steep cement ramps, uneven stone surface basketball court and grassy fields would be a deterrent for wheelchair bound kids (I call them kids but they are people of all ages), but actually compared with their home situation or even most town’s (like San Felipe) poor excuse for pavement, it’s pretty manageable. They are each handed a piece of rubber “liga,” a rubber rope or band used for stretching and exercise (and slingshots). They circle up, still chatting, and stretch their torsos and arms, pulling on the liga. Most families come with them to drop them off. There are both old and new people in the group. An older man with only one leg, a little girl in a terribly beat-up wheelchair, maybe 10 or 12 other new people I don’t know. As well as the old faces from the tennis court.
Actually Richard had arrived a week early and we had an exclusive tennis camp with the better players. It was every day for four days, three hours a day. We would have had a fifth day, but we had a big meal instead. On the first day, Richard says he wants me to help out. He says they have asked if he can train me to help out. I tell him that I actually have been to the last couple of practices. He asks what I’ve been doing.
“Pretty much matching them up to play against each other, showing them how to serve. Whatever.”
“Ever you versus two of them?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. Here’s the first lesson: get in a wheelchair.”
“OK. But actually it goes faster if I can run around and get the balls and…”
“That doesn’t matter. Get in a wheelchair and stay there for the whole practice. Fall over if you fall over or lean over to get the balls. That is how you can teach them; you need to learn first.”
Sure. Why would they listen to someone who doesn’t want to see what it feels like, to see what it is actually like? You can’t teach tactic and strategy of normal tennis, and you don’t understand wheelchair tennis if you don’t get in the chair. They will only respect you if show them you are willing to play on the same plane.
The rules of wheelchair tennis are the same as normal tennis except you get two bounces instead of one. But the style of play is what makes this game very unique. It is a much more up and down game. Richard worked with them all week on forward movement to attack the ball and then back to the line. Once I got in a chair, I saw how immobile you are sitting in a chair that can’t strafe left and right. Rich taught them (us) about how if you attack forward, you can move forward left and forward right at a much higher speed. You hit it and turn and head back. You can’t push your chair straight back or you are going to flip. And you can’t charge the net (which I like to do normally) because sitting there you only cover as much ground as you have wingspan, which isn’t that much really. But if you start from the back, moving forward, you can pretty much get to any ball that is hit.
I did do some translating for him, so I felt like I helped out at least some. Richard speaks adequate Spanish, but you don’t realize how much specialized vocabulary you need until you actually get put in real life situations. Playing tennis or basketball, cooking or cleaning up, teaching math, watching a TV show about doctors, buying food you’ve never heard of. At school you can learn tons of vocab: verbs, colors, numbers, clothing, animals, whatever. But when do they teach you “put spin on the ball” or “charge the net?” How do you say “to the power of,” “dunk” or “rebound?”
So for those four days we worked on form, power, accuracy, and all other aspects of wheelchair tennis that you can fit in over a couple hours each day. There were visible gains made, which was awesome to see, but more importantly just a general rise in the level of confidence. Looking back on it, it really was the day that most of the guys there made the leap from trying to get the ball over the net to really understanding where they are, where they want to be, and probably most significantly how to get there. By the end of the four days Richard could no longer beat them easily. I guess, to quote one of my favorite movies, “students will rise to the level of expectations.”
Anyway, we finished the four days and went to Juan Manuel’s house for a big feast on the fifth day. About 20 of us, the team plus Juan Pablo’s sister and Adalid and a few other random family members who had also helped a couple days each. Manuel lives up by Kike, but on the main road, on a big hill. Five of us had a race in the wheelchairs, up the hill about 50 yards and back down. Kike’s two brothers Ivan and Alex, Juan Pablo, Kike and myself. The uphill push is incredible as your arms literally stop functioning. Your mind is telling them to let go and grab the wheel farther back and push it forward, but they won’t. They just sit there. Stupid arms! Go! Reaching the top I wasn’t far behind the other four guys, so I turned and just let myself fly down the hill. I was probably going 15 or 20 miles per hour when I realized I had no brakes and probably wasn’t going to make up ground anyway. I tried to grab onto the rims to no avail. I put down my feet and skidded half the traction off them before coming to a stop way past the finish line. I got out and pushed the chair back up. Richard looked at me and smiled.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, me to. It just felt like a bike, but I forgot I have no brakes.”
We ate a huge meal. We told stories. We laughed as people tried beer or pulque. The taboos broke down as normally reserved people laughed out loud and became “themselves.” I was so used to the artificial walls almost everyone keeps up while at the hacienda, it was amazing to see how people relaxed and enjoyed the time together. Sometimes I get the feeling that Kike, myself and Adalid are the only people I truly know. Everyone there became someone new to me that day, except normally extroverted Kike and polite, traditional Adalid. I think this was good. I love being there, watching people slowly come out of their shells and laugh out loud.
The hacienda makes people uncomfortable, although it will be difficult to explain. It is not like a community where everyone works together for the common good, as much as it wants to be. There is a bizarre social structure where expectations are unclear and how to achieve them is even more so. For example, there is a general expectation that you should work hard. Fine. But at the same time, the pay is miserable and a general mistrust of the people higher up is present in just about all parts. Constant gossip about who is making what, or what privileges someone else has, or people possibly stealing this or that, comes from all angles. Or another example: there is a general expectation that people should be saving money and improving their lives because of the job they have and the opportunities that are given to them. So some workers who stay too long are tried to be convinced that they should leave to start their own business. Or other workers who leave too soon or not when they are expected are hunted down and accused of treachery. You end up finding yourself watching carefully what words you choose for each person you talk to.
I should also mention that most people are connected through the hacienda; without the hacienda, there is no central connection between all the players. A few work there (like Leti and Kike), a few just live near there (like Juan Pablo), some use the hacienda for a connection (like Mario) but all end up at the yearly camp. A few years later when the hacienda wants to abandon the camp, we start to use Richard as our common connection. He never lives there, or near, but we all now use him as our common bond, a connection that transcends country, ability, language, and the hacienda.
The next day we are all in the hacienda, stretching. Everyone has picked out a bed, figured out where the bathrooms are, met most of the new people. Richard is asking the group, situated in a circle, who is missing, what they have been doing the last year, how life is going. Everyone takes their turn saying something, even the new people feel welcome within the group. People are given nicknames, or stories about other people are told in front of them. Jokes from the previous year come out. Everyone is laughing. It is the brightest morning I can remember in a long time.
There is one girl who is new. She is in a blue chair that has huge spokes and handles on the wheels, like the old captain’s wheels on a clipper ship. The chair is awkward and clunky. She is beautiful. She is calm and has a soft smile. She has a nametag on that says “Shomara.” Hey Kike. Who is she? He just tells me “someone new. Sounds like stripper’s name, doesn’t it? ‘Showme’ we can call her…” Don’t be mean. Where is she from? Shoulders shrug.
Relay races are first. I am assigned to help push those who cannot push their own wheelchair. Down and back. Easy. Shomara looks capable of handling her chair, but she appears to lack confidence. She has her hands folded laying on top of a blanket that is covering her legs. I introduce myself so that maybe she will feel a little less shy. She asks me to help her because she can’t move her chair well. Which I find incredibly hard to believe because she seems athletic enough, except that the chair does seem rather large and quite heavy. I help push her down and back and she gives little pushes on the wheels here and there. The large handles certainly do impede her ability to push the chair quickly; your hand gets totally whacked if you aren’t careful. I try to treat her like everyone else. To make her feel welcome, but not overdoing it like as if someone had awkwardly told me to make her feel welcome.
Next is basketball. They use the two ends of the court, one using the real basketball hoop, one with a large garbage can they have hauled out for a basket for those who can’t put enough acceleration on the ball to get it up to ten feet. Richard called me over.
Hey, can you help Shomara? How? Put her in my other chair. Look at her. She is fully functional, but that chair is killing her. She can’t get the right motion or momentum behind her shots. Just be careful. I think her legs have screws in them, so try not to move them very much.
He was right. As we moved her to the other chair, she held on to her legs and grimaced fiercely. But he was also right: the sports chair suddenly opened up a whole new world of possibilities for her. She tried it out slowly, but it was obvious she was going to improve quickly. Her shot suddenly reached the hoop. She went after loose balls with the others, throwing the blanket off her legs and forgetting about her handicap for one moment. It happened so fast, you could say it looked like a miracle. Maybe it was. And as she became more aggressive and enjoyed herself more, she became social and started making friends.
That day a group of about 30 Americans arrived. Actually, Adalid, Israel and myself went to the airport in Mexico City for them. My buddy Casey was also arriving that day to come hang out for a week, so it worked out just fine. Casey was arriving a little earlier, so we got there plenty early. As it worked out, six or seven Americans from the group arrived on the same plane as Casey, so we got their luggage and stacked it in the Suburban. There was a bus to take the people, but because the group was bringing a stack of wheelchairs along with their bags, we brought the big rig to hold the baggage. For an hour between groups, we broke out the wheelchairs and had wheelchair races around the airport. There were the predictable moments when someone fell and people everywhere scrambled to help us up. When we got up on our own strength people laughed or looked amazed or got angry. It was fun anyway.
We got back, took Adalid home, the group finding their rooms and beds at the hacienda, and Casey and I staked out a vacant room. We went and hung out in the kitchen with the girls, if nothing else to get a free meal. They make a lot of great meals there, but the orange chicken they make is the best. Some spaghetti Mexican style, bread, and orange chicken and we were set for the night.
The next day we got up and started with a little devotional. I was told that a group of students from Guadalajara was coming that day and would lead devotions the rest of the days. I was told good things about them, but hadn’t met any of them. We read a few passages from the Bible, welcomed the American group, got to know each other a little bit, and off to breakfast.
Stretching, and it was back to the court to play soccer. Soccer in wheelchairs is probably more akin to rugby or ultimate frisbee than soccer, but it is fun anyway. The people who could maneuver were the defense and forwards, or both. The ones who had a harder time but still wanted to participate were made the goalies, the goals being two chairs set up maybe four or five feet away from each other. The teams were set (Casey and I were given chairs and allowed to play), and the ball dropped. A standard kickball ball, you got two pushes in your chair and then had to pass it or shoot, either way a difficult task with the amount of people on the court at once. Strategy developed. Screens came into play. People knocked each other over and mercilessly attempted to continue play while Americans ran on the court to help whoever had been tossed out of their chair, making sure they were ok. It got cruel, but everyone was laughing. There were no mean spirits, except that Kike was intent on beating me. He refused to believe I could beat him at his game, as he called it. As a student of “sport”, I like thinking up strategies, plays, seeing how people play and finding their weak spots. How to pass behind your back and behind the wheelchair, instead of reaching for a loose ball moving your chair over it so the other person can’t reach it, trying to spin around oncoming screens, “out of the box” type of things. So even though my wheelchair experience was slim, I scored the last, winning goal off a rebound I saw coming, faking out the keeper. To Kike’s chagrin. But to everyone else laughing.
I don’t know why but at that moment I thought about the idea of having wheelchairs in grade school physical education. Why couldn’t a school department buy like thirty decent chairs and like maybe each week one school has them. The P.E. classes would have wheelchair races and play basketball and stuff like that. Or maybe a different class gets them each day, and they have to use them all day long. Or something like that. It seems like it would make a huge difference in the way people treat handicapped people.
Casey and I went and hung out the rest of the day, while the campers went to do “manualidades” as they called them, which were mostly arts and crafts projects. The Guadalajara group had arrived, I had been told, and were in charge of that. “Too many cooks in the kitchen” I thought, with a tinge of jealousy. Casey and I got out of there, if nothing else to avoid what would be maybe 35 campers and 40 people helping them out.
I had a friend who once worked at a wheelchair camp. They called it “handicamp.” Doesn’t that seem a little, maybe, non PC? I don’t know.
We got back for dinner, which was as good as the night before’s dinner. We helped in the kitchen washing dishes and helping to get ready for the next day’s breakfast. It was fun to hang out with the girls. All my girls, plus Judith and Rosalba, were there working. We finished up and headed out to where the three groups (campers, Americans, Guadalajarans) there were having a bonfire, singing songs and giggling. It was situated down in a little pit that had three big steps going down towards the center. Most of the wheelchair people had been loaded down to the grass below the stairs, closest to the fire. Everyone else was on the stairs. Most people had jackets on as it was a little cool, being March still. There we met the Guadalajara group which consisted of two Japanese, one boy one girl, one Korean guy, two fairly white Mexican boys, and three pretty girls. I was told the Korean is authentic Mexican, born of Koreans who came to Mexico. A Japanese girl, Hazuki, had been in Guadalajara since she was nine or ten years old. Three years later she would be Mrs. Richard St. Denis, and I would go stay at their house for a week. The two other boys were brothers, maybe 17 and 19 years old. Hector was the oldest, and was the one who explained most of this to me. I didn’t know if we had anything in common at first, but he had this great laugh and used it a lot, making you feel really funny. He would, one year later, hang around a week more after camp ended, rooming with Kike and I. He would stay because he liked and then dated one of the Las Rosas girls, Chelo (Consuelo) which would end a month later and make my life much more complicated as the “common friend.” The other Japanese kid, maybe my age, was Yoshi. He spoke little English and little Spanish, but was quite amusing and not shy at all. He was tall and lanky but besides that he was, let’s say, quite the stereotype. We sat down with Hector, sang some songs, listened to some songs in Mazahua sung by a couple campers, and broke out the marshmallows.
In the next hour I would have two flaming marshmallows shoved in my face by the kitchen girls, along with Hector and Casey and two Americans Paul and Andrew. We would get our revenge in the same way, but more in their hair. Buckets of water came out, people were screaming and running and falling over laughing. There were a lot of expressions of disbelief that anyone would shove a flaming marshmallow in the face of anyone else, three people were burned, but I guess it all ended ok. It was a little chaotic, but one of those moments I just have think about and it makes me laugh out loud.
I have maybe six or seven moments like this. Where I just have to think about it and it makes me laugh out loud or smile and lean my head back in wonderment. But it seems like these moments are hardest to explain, because no one will laugh out loud with you because they weren’t there to see it. One of those stories you tell laughing the whole time but feel stupid by the time it ends because the other person is just staring at you.

For the following day was planned a water park adventure. I had no idea of what to expect except that it was called Tepetongo, everyone and their mother was going, and they were bringing a huge fat lunch for all. It couldn’t go wrong. The group, which had about 60 people going in all, had rented two buses. For once there were other large males there, so I hardly had to do any of the grunt work. I mostly just translated for the bus drivers to the people throwing the wheelchairs under the bus and vice versa, to make it the most organized we could. We had to lift the wheelchair bound people up into the bus, which was out in front of the hacienda, and then store their chairs under the bus. The only person I got on was Leti, who was the first one ready. Being light, I just lifted her up and muscled my way up the steps, setting her down in a seat about half way back. As I turned to step out the door, my knee hit some knob at the front. I got off to see extra strength Paul in front of me with Mario hanging onto his back like a baby monkey on a mama. I laughed and he stepped up into the bus. The buses were parked on the lower part of the road in front of the hacienda, almost down to the gate in front of the church. As I jump out, I hear a muffled sound come from inside, and turn to see the bus start to roll down the hill. I jump and yell to the two drivers, and I run towards the door, not sure at all what I am going to do, but hit the brake is probably the correct action. I am sprinting forward and the bus driver shoves me to the side, jumps on, and pulls, later to my embarrassment, that same knob that I had hit on my way out. Ahh, the air brake. I see. Paul got down off the bus trembling.
“Dude, I thought that was it.” He’s laughing. I can hear Leti inside giggling like a crazywoman.
When we got to the water park, as the American group set down all their rules of what you could and couldn’t do and where you could and couldn’t go. People yelling at other people and everyone trying to be in charge. Casey and I got yelled at a couple times for “wandering off from the American group” to talk to Juan Pablo who I had not seen in a while. As if I wanted to be a part of their group. I almost missed the headcount (oh dear), and certainly there would have been tragic, or at least life threatening, consequences. I entered with my cynicism turned on full, expecting it to completely ruin my day.
When we finally got everyone counted up and actually got inside the gates, I searched out the chill people of the American group, hung with Kike and some of his friends who are also in wheelchairs, and looked around for what the park had to offer. Little Yoshi tagged along too (Norberto’s son).
The three of us, Casey, Yoshi and I, got our trunks on and went to see what there was. We first encountered a cement spiral staircase that lead up to two rides where, ones where you sit in an inner tube and go down. One looked pretty harmless: an open-air white tube that twists and turns its way down. The other was similar style, except solid black so you couldn’t see, and consisted of some harsher twists.
Now this is when I have to make a tough decision. I am, personally, in no way a shirt off kind of guy. Not even a tank top kind of guy. Not a “wear your shirt when you swim” kind of guy, but not a “let your torso dry before you put your shirt on” kind. But this is Mexico, and there are both guys in Speedos and guys in cut off jeans and shirts in the water; both ends of the spectrum. I don’t want to get burned, but I don’t want to look stupid in front of all the chicas.
It is a certain type of guy, that I am not, that can pull off the “bare chest all the time” play. And I mean the “no shirt walking around the mall” type. He needs to be decently tall, medium to fairly muscular build, and not too fat nor too skinny. He needs decent pecs and a moderately low waist, little or no chest hair and flat or broad shoulders. And plenty of self confidence. He needs to have had at least a good count of girls tell him he has a nice body. He lifts weights regularly, both in the “heavy/free weights room” but also the aerobics room where all the girls are. Being good at some sport also helps, as it gives you a regular excuse to go shirtless. It seems that being a jackass helps, or maybe it’s just a byproduct of some, but it is not necessary. Self confidence does not always take the jerk route; there are plenty of nice, shirtless guys. If you’re a shirts off guy, you commonly hang your shirt or towel out of the side of your pants, or over your shoulder.
My first girlfriend, a long time ago, wanted me to be this guy. We would talk about shaving my chest hair, or wearing different clothes. We would hang out with her shirtless friends, a year older than I, out on the lake. She was a two-piece bathing suit girl, and needed a shirtless guy. They had boats, barbeques, hot tubs, trampolines, girls in bikinis, attractive mothers, and Ford Explorers.
A step down from these men are what may appear to be level oners playing basketball shirtless. But there is a definite level down. This guy is a little too tall, short, skinny, fat, a little too much or too dark of body hair, acne, or simply for some reason lacks the self confidence that level 1 shirtless guys have. Or maybe he is just more cold blooded. He goes shirtless for pick-up basketball, beach volleyball, or anytime it is a nice day and he can see the water. Or if he is in charge of the barbeque. He usually has a girlfriend who gives them a little extra push of confidence. She strokes his chest in public and usually helps him groom himself. This can also be a guy who is much too large, but has a lot of self confidence, like a defensive lineman or a competition weight lifter.
The third and fourth levels are a far cry from one and two, and themselves similar to each other. The third is the guy who is too small, too big, too fat, but most commonly too skinny to allow him to be level two. Shirt off at the beach is acceptable, because everyone is and who cares. Shirt off at pick-up basketball is also acceptable, but he tries to get on, and is secretly happy if he makes the “shirts” team. Comments are usually made when the shirt comes off. Ribs can be seen clearly. Or a jiggling stomach. But you are in control of your shame.
This is similar to level four, but level four has, well, you get the idea.
Here is me: too much chest hair, extending to my shoulders and a little on my back. Too skinny, too tall, and legs to long. I am not proud of my body, but not ashamed either. If Adalid were here, shirt off, no questions asked. Normally I suck it up and get a little pink, but today I opt for the shirt on. I figure, who do I care about impressing, and why do I want to get sunburned? I am only joking anyway, and we are like at 10000 feet or something where the sun is going to kill me.
We climb up to the top of the tube slides. Yoshi and I start with the gentler looking one and Casey takes the blackness. We reach the bottom without incident, but Casey took a little while longer. He flew out laughing, but kind of a nervous laughter. “That was absolutely terrifying” he said. “You go down, you can’t see a thing, and you totally expect to just drill a kid. It was awful. I’m never doing it again.” We climb up again, and I take the Black Hole of Premature Death down and realize just how correct Casey is. And how old I’m getting. It’s difficult to explain the fear, but it was like it was a little too unknown. You hit these violent turns you can’t see coming and get your back totally whipped around. I am taller, and it feels like some turns are going to snap my body in half. Your arms rub against the non-wet part of the tube and burned. And you had this constant fear that maybe a little kid was somewhere in there and you were going to just drill him. Yoshi laughed at us, but we left that area anyway.
To the side of that ride was a pretty standard speed slide that starts at the top and dips down like 30 meters, with three or four bumps. You sit in a double tube with another person on a slide that ends in a straight stretch before the end which is about a one foot bump to hopefully stop whatever momentum you might carry upon reaching the end. We were skeptical of our ability to stop before the end, but ventured up to the top with our double tube anyway. Terror filled my heart as we slowly pushed our way off the edge and down the slope. All was calm until we reached the second to last bump, and the tube lifted completely off the slide, along with us, and luckily came down on the slide again. We hit the last bump and Casey put his feet down, pushing hard to make sure we didn’t reach the end (although he insists that we would have). Needless to say, that was enough of that ride, and we moved quickly on, lingering only to watch a moment if anyone else would reach the end of the ride.
The next deathtrap was called the “Velociraptor.” It was definitely the biggest, but nonetheless looked like it was engineered for small Mexicans and not two big Americans. It was another double tube ride, that wrapped around a few twists, which fed to a straight drop that threw you down and then up a 30 foot wall that tried to hold you in, and then back down, over a small hill and into the waiting pool. We walked up the endless stairs, and after a short wait nervously put our tube down and again gently pushed off as slowly as possible. We took the turns ok and suddenly launched down the steep decline. There was no water pool or anything to slow us down before we shot up the wall that we prayed would keep us. My stomach fell into my lap as Casey’s feet reached the top of the wall and I closed my eyes. We slowed just enough to cheat death yet again, and plummeted back down. We come down the hill backwards and over a small hill, one that sufficiently had slowed down the small Mexican children before us, did nothing to affect us and we careened over it into the waiting pool where we drilled the lady who was taking the tubes from riders, along with another bystander. Everyone, including us, was cracking up as we stood up out of the water. Casey said he was tired of testing the reaper, so we went and had lunch. Most people were smiling and I could hear them talking about us. And Casey’s not even that big.
After the fat lunch, prepared by the kitchen girls, that consisted of beef slabs, sausage, grilled onions, some great avocado salsa, and orange soda, we had some requests by my friends who wanted to go on the Velociraptor. So we carried them up and went down with them. I carried Kike, Felipe carried Richard, and Casey carried three tubes. It wasn’t nearly as scary going down with Kike, as he was fairly smaller than Casey. We urged some of the bigger Americans to go down together, but they said they saw when we had gone and didn’t trust it. Good call.
The other rides left, besides two wave pools, were the standard Death Drop and Speed Slide slides, but both non-innertube. The only catch was that they were completely unsupervised, and that instead of the slide coming to an end, they simply dropped you into a pool. That meant that when you went down, you hit the bottom like a stone being skipped. People would hit the bottom and come to violent halts, flipping and somersaulting and whatnot. It was hysterical to watch. Kids would dive headfirst, go upside-down on their back, on their knees, jump at the end, and other amazingly dangerous moves. Women with two piece swimsuits didn’t dare to go down. Probably a good idea.
We watched that for a while, hung out in the wave pools and chatted with anyone we ran into. It was all in all a good crazy time, but Casey and I had to get to Mexico City that night to meet our friends Collin and Bernice, so we went looking for Felipe to tell him we were leaving. We found him near the second slide that we went down, the one with the bumps and the double tube. We meandered on up and were about to tell him, when he pointed to the top of the ride. We looked up to see two fairly heavy Mexican guys on the tube about to go down. They pushed off strong and absolutely flew down the slide. They got down the bumps alive, hit the bottom, where the water did nothing to stop them at all. They skimmed over the water and, with eyes like plates, drilled the hump at the end of the ride, flew off the end of the slide, over the set of stairs that followed, and landed on the cement landing below, hitting into an ice cream cart. At that point I was on the ground, unable to breathe from laughing so hard. They both raised their arms in victory and climbed out alive. As I said earlier about the carnival in San Felipe, usually the thrill of an amusement park is that you feel like there is a chance of dying. But here, the thrill is you actually might.
We made it back from the airport that night fine with Collin and Bernice in tow. We crashed in the same room we picked out, stealing a couple mattresses and dragging them in.
The next two days were part fun and part annoying. The four of us would head out to see this or that, while the Americans worked. It created this kind of tension, like they thought we should be doing something too. We were too many to join in the wheelchair games, although we did watch quite a few. But there were already plenty of people to help out. We weren’t about to help them pour cement or paint old abandoned storerooms; my friends were on vacation. So I kind of bounced around between my friends, the kitchen, the campers and their games with the Guadalajara group, and the Americans. One thing that helped out a lot was that the Final Four was going on. Since in the Hac there is no communication with the outside world, I would run into town, print out the updated bracket, and have it back for the group of guys to see. There were about eight or nine guys who were interested, and it helped me make quick friends. My Zags lost in the second round to Arizona, which was generally considered the best game of that tournament. Actually, my dad taped the game for me like I asked, but the tape ended with 40 seconds to go in overtime. How brutal is that. Even though I knew the ending, and I finally watched it like 4 months after it happened, it still wasn’t believable how great that game was. Even if I didn’t see the final buzzer.
But the last night I stayed with the campers. They kicked everyone out of the chapel except for those who participated in the camp. It was mostly the wheelchair people, Hector, his mom, Richard, a couple kitchen girls, and me. Everyone looked kind of anxious, like there was something I didn’t know. Richard started by thanking everyone who had come, encouraging them to help others, and continue learning, and playing. He said he wanted to hear everyone’s reaction from the week and how it affected their lives. We went around the circle and each one got their five minutes or so. By the third person we were all crying. Most people had been given new wheelchairs and were thankful for that. Most gave thanks to each other for being welcoming and open to becoming friends. Many gave thanks to God, their family for having arranged things for them to be able to come. A few mentioned the strength they get from the camp every year, and how special it is for them. Mario gave thanks to his family who he loves and cares for and they work hard and help him out a lot. Shomara gave thanks to each person individually, thanking especially a couple kids who can hardly move for the inspiration that they gave her, the happiness she gets from seeing them smile. She was depressed coming to the camp but didn’t know how much it would change her life. I sat next to Kike which was a bad call because he told the story about how I have helped him so much in the last few months, and what our friendship means to him. I was next, but with so many tears of joy that I could hardly speak. I finally didn’t get anything out, and just listened their thankfulness.
After about three hours everyone had finished saying what they had to say, we had sung a couple songs in candlelight, prayed with each other, and given each other all hugs. It was a great moment. Maybe one of the best ever.

Chapter 15: New York Group Arrives to Las Rosas

2006-05-03T19:19:00.000-05:00

Oh, this was great. I was sitting in my room, waiting for Adalid to show up so we could go to a wedding up in the church above Las Rosas. Kike was getting ready to head off to his parents’ house and stuffing his bag full of dirty clothes for his mom to wash. He was telling me the story about his parents wedding. I was starting to get a hang of this “Spanish” stuff.
“My dad had asked his then girlfriend to marry him, my mom. I guess he didn’t have the money for the wedding, and it was in three months.” He pulled out a picture and showed it to me. It was of his dad, at age maybe 25, with his now wife and wife’s sister, sitting on a bench in front of the Alameda Park near Bellas Artes in Mexico City, where we had just been a few weeks ago. It was a classic 70’s picture, the stereotypical faded colors, below the knee, puffy dresses, bell bottoms but not too exaggerated, mixed with stereotypical Mexican – shirt buttoned up to his lower chest where he tries to show off about three chest hairs. Everybody looking serious but not intimidating. “His brother told him about an opportunity to work on a place in an island in the Gulf of Mexico, up towards the border area. I can’t remember what the job was, but some sort of construction or something. It wasn’t construction, it was something more permanent. Anyway, he thinks he’ll just work the three months, because the job paid pretty well, and head back a week or two before the wedding. So he disappears, just saying that he’ll be back before the wedding.
I guess when he got up there he liked the place; they took them out on a boat, they housed the workers and gave them what they needed to eat, and took care of them. Well just when the three months was about up, he figures he’ll go tell his boss that he needs to get going. He goes to tell his boss and his boss laughs and is like ‘no, no, we are leaving for another three months. And I don’t pay my workers until they finish at least six months of work here.’ My dad is totally panicking thinking he is stranded out on this island, needs to get home, no phone or any way of calling home, and isn’t getting off the island for another three months. He goes and talks to his brother and I guess some guy overheard and said ‘oh, don’t worry. Just wait until he has about ten beers in him. Once he is a little drunk, he turns into a really REALLY generous guy. You can ask him almost anything.’ So that is what he did: he waited until a few days later when the boss got pretty hammered, and my dad came in a just happily said ‘guess what? I am getting married in four days, so I need my paycheck and I need off this island!’ The boss was so happy he gave him his money right there, got him on the boat that day, and my dad made it the next day, three days before his wedding.”
Almost on cue, a car rumbled up outside our window and the horn sounded. I gave him a high-five and helped him bring his stuff out. I say hi to his brother and sister and mother and cousin. He climbs in and the maneuver the car trying to turn it around the really tight road. They head off and I go back to my room to wait, having nothing else to do.
I hear a knocking on my door, and I go let Adalid in. But instead, it’s Osvelia knocking.
“What’s up?”
“There is a group here. Come down and meet them.”
It sounded like fun so I went out on to the balcony to see what kind of group was here. It was about eight Americans and one Mexican guy, a guy who I knew from somewhere before, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly where. Some crafts fair, or in some way associated with the hac. I knew he knew little English. I went back down through the courtyard and down through the big wooden doors. They were out there giving candy to the neighbor kids. Which I knew was going to mean the kids now wouldn’t leave us alone for one second. The Mexican guy, skinny and confident, came up to me with a look of relief on his face.
“Oh, it’s great you are here. I want to show them the stained glass stuff, but I can’t get the words out. Can you give them a tour of Las Rosas?”
So I say “yeah. Sure.”
The Americans come walking back up to their van, which says “World Vision” on the side – the apparent connection I have with the Mexican guy (I meet all kinds of people from tons of different organizations that work with the hacienda).
I give them a hearty “hello” and they all finally realize my presence as another American, but one who isn’t with their group. There is an older, larger man with his wife. There is another older couple there too, although younger than the first one. Then there are three people, two women and a man who are seemingly together – maybe siblings or friends or something. And then a kid, maybe about my age or so. The large man and his wife are immediately stunned by my presence.
“What… who are you?”
“I’m Patrick. I live here. He,” motioning to the Mexican “brought you guys up here to take a tour of my house.”
They’re like “do you own this?” “What do you do here?” “Why did you come here?” It’s like “Apocalypse Now,” when Charlie Sheen gets to the end of the river and finds the fat Marlon Brando with all the skulls and everything at the end of the river, a place where you would never expect to find another white person. Maybe we need some skulls or something. I hadn’t shaved in a while either, so I had the extra “mountain man” effect going. I answered all their questions, feeling suddenly proud of my position, being one of wonder and bizarre for them. I assumed they hadn’t met anyone who spoke English as they passed by the hacienda (which was a correct assumption), and the cause of their bewilderment because if they would have known there were more of us, they probably wouldn’t have been that surprised. I showed them around, and told them some of the history of the place, making up facts where needed. I told them the story about the robbery. They liked it.
They told me about them. They were from New York, coming to see the State of Mexico to report what World Vision was doing. I gathered that Norberto felt we might get some money from them if they liked what we were doing here. I told them about the school and ceramics and stained glass and stuff. We went to show them the stained glass stuff, which they were very excited about. I asked Osve for the keys. She didn’t have them. Uh oh. We need that door open. I knew we’d sell a lot if we could just get that door open. Osve and the Mexican guy who brought them searched around for them, while I entertained the guests. The kid said he was living in Mexico City, having just recently arrived, and knew little Spanish. We talked about his church and about Union Church in Mexico City, agreeing that it was little more than a country club or social center for resident Christians.
Adalid had showed up by then, so I presented her to all of them. The keys still had not been found. Geez those two better hurry. I knew that any minute the group was going to say not to worry about it and we would lose those sales.
“You know what, don’t worry about it. We don’t want to cause you any trouble. We need to be going anyway.”
Crap. OK. Ok. Think fast. I knew I could get that window off if I had a screwdriver, which I knew we didn’t have. A butter knife! Right. I went into the kitchen and came back.
“Uh, you know what? The two girls here…” Adalid and Osve “…both do stained glass and they really want you to see their stuff.” Not exactly that true, but by then I really wanted them to see the stuff. I start to take off the screws around the window. They are coming off easy, and the Mexican guy is helping me. We get them all off, the ones off the small window on the door, and try to pull the glass off. It was hot glued onto the frame. Crap. I start to pry. Must…get…window…off… It pops and breaks leaving just a small piece in one of the corners, but coming 80% clean. Whatever. I smile and stick my hand in the door, turning the handle. Which doesn’t turn any more than it would from the outside. Which I should have known. The thing is like a built in dead bolt with no hand knob: you need the key to open it, no matter which side you try to open it from.
“It’s really ok… don’t worry about it.”
My Mexican buddy has a great call. He grabs a chair, and slides through the hole, the only person besides Adalid who could have made it. Actually Adalid followed him in, seeing the vision. They just pull stuff out of its paper wrapping or off the shelves, bringing things over for us waiting outside to see. They oooh and ahhh over each piece, commenting like collectors.
Each of them ended up buying quite a bit, making it worth ripping the window off. By the time they left they bought enough that it would have been worth just breaking the whole window in if we hadn’t found a way to take it off.
As the group left, I shook all their hands and thanked them. They wished me well, shaking their heads and smiling at the idea of me living up here in the middle of nowhere.
When they left, Adalid turned and finally gave me a hello kiss. “I thought you said Americans don’t shake hands to say goodbye.”
I just nodded and smiled, shrugging my shoulders.
I got dressed quickly and we walked up the hill about a few dozen meters to the church above. We ended up at the wedding about three hours late, which got us there just in time to see the vows, or what I could make out were vows, a figure-eight rope thrown over their heads, and then them walking up the aisle towards the five-piece brass band playing a lazy wedding march at the back door of the church, shaking hands and hugging, and getting confetti thrown all over them. We immediately went to the inclined field on the hill above Las Rosas for the reception where we sat on chairs at about a 20 degree angle sideways, or backwards, or leaning forward. The cakes, I was sure, were going to fall over on the slanted table.

Chapter 14: The Start of Something

2006-04-17T14:32:00.001-05:00

Adalid and Angeles had come from Las Rosas to make a little extra money, selling ceramics and stained glass to the people in a group who were there at the hacienda that week. They sat outside my room, right below my upstairs window; I had not gone back to Las Rosas the previous night so I could help out in the kitchen to help serve the group that was there. It was a frigid blustery day. The winds had finally shown up, and short showers had decided to choose that day to hang out above the hacienda.
I showered and looked outside my window to see Angeles leave, one leg stepping forward and then the other pulling up along side it. She had to stable her bad leg with one hand, just to pull it even with the other. She wore the same long black wool skirt that she had worn everyday, and would wear everyday, every single day for as long as I have known her. I knew she was walking to the kitchen, where Judith, Leti, Rosalba, Osvelia and Olivia were sure to be. Adalid sat down below me on a white plastic chair, reading a book, seated behind a folding table that held the ceramics and stained glass. There was also a cart, sort of a vendors cart with two wheels, maybe like a large wooden wheelbarrow with an arch over the top and a countertop with a hole for keeping the candy and chips and food they were selling. Since no one had any idea of when the vacationers/campers would be by, someone had to sit there and wait. It could be four hours before they came by, or four minutes. You just never knew. You had a captive audience there, but only captive for short periods during the day and you had to take advantage of those moments.
I walked downstairs and out the door. I smiled and said good morning. I asked if the stained glass was selling well. I had been practicing that sentence upstairs. Adalid smiled and said good morning. She looked at me and said they hadn’t sold anything. She looked into my eyes. She held her stare into my eyes. Which was something I had been told girls don’t do with boys. A memory came back to me, when I had been told that before I went to Mexico, that girls or women wouldn’t look me in the eyes. But I now couldn’t think of a time in the entire past six months that Adalid hadn’t looked at me. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I motioned towards the kitchen and left to go eat.
I sat at the table eating Mexican spaghetti and orange chicken, completely lost in my thoughts as to what I was going to say to Adalid when I got back. The five (six with Angeles) kitchen girls buzzed around the kitchen, laughing and splashing water around and doing normal kitchen stuff, as I sat there staring into the wood grain of the table.
I could think of anything to say to her, anything of importance. I suppose that didn’t matter. I thought about hurrying back out there to talk before Angeles came. It seems like when we are alone, we always can find something to say. But when we were with other people, it is all so silly that we both feel strange, like people will laugh at us trying so hard to communicate. When she and I and Kike would hang out, the two of them would chat about whatever because I had a hard time popping into the conversation. When one or the other would ask me to tell a story, I would get through it. But really if we weren’t off by ourselves, I had little to say that either everyone would like, or that could be directed to her but interesting to the other people too.
I came back. I sat down next to her and opened my mouth but she beat me to the punch:
You know, I don’t like your eyes.
Really? …Most people here like my blue eyes.
Nope. I like dark eyes. I like black eyes. No color.
Hmm. I like yours.
I like your legs.
Seriously?
Yes. They are big. They are muscular. No one here has legs like you do. Most men have skinny ugly legs.
I can’t stop smiling… she continues:
I like your eye lashes. They curl up like you make them do that.
But of course I don’t. They are just like that.
Yes, but it looks nice. And I like them even more because it is natural. And I like how your hair curls when you let it grow longer. You should stop shaving your head every four months. And I like your beard. It makes you look manly. I like all your hair. You are a man. You should act a little more like a man. Do you not like your body hair?
No. Not really.
Why not? That’s the way a man should be.
You like guys with lots of hair? (Ok, yes, I just want to hear here say it again.)
Yes. I don’t want a little boy for a novio.

I wish I hadn’t just sat there grinning like an idiot. I wanted to give her a compliment, but I couldn’t think of anything that would match what she just did. I guess it seemed a little forward, but I think it was just the confidence that we had gained speaking so much together, just trying to be ourselves.
Those were the most fantastic four compliments of my life put into one conversation (and the best constructive criticism I have been given). The only other conversation that I have had that got anywhere near this kind of compliment was when my buddy Ethan and I were in Taiwan with our friend Amanda. We went to a little secluded beach that you had to cross a hanging bridge to get to. We went swimming, but when I started to feel burned, I came out and sat on the sand. I went to put my shirt on and Amanda is sitting there and looks up and says “you don’t have to put your shirt on.”
I don’t get a lot of this. I have to go to other countries just to feel good about myself. Which I won’t deny that I like. Maybe you already caught that.
But from now forward, we really started to click. Not as a direct result of the compliments, nor did it change anything, I just remember that as being part of the time where things started to go really well.
This is what I know I like about her: she is very similar to other girlfriends I’ve had, “my type,” but put in a society where that is completely unnormal. For example, she likes to work. She later on will insist that if we ever get married she is going to keep working, because she likes it a lot. She later gets a job working for World Vision, working in a side project of theirs called Fundacion Realidad. It is like a loans office, but they are really low interest loans. Goodwill loans. And since people don’t really have a lot to put down for collateral, they have to form groups of at least 16 people to make sure everyone pays. She promotes the project, goes out into the county to form the groups, teaches them how to save, basic accounting principals (saving is not a valued skill here), and then keeps them how to be accountable. She loves it. Her office covers a range of four counties, so any given day she is off up into some small town and then another somewhere else and so on.
But the point is, is that here, most girls are expected to stay in the home and have kids after they get married. And that’s it. That’s another thing: kids. She doesn’t really want kids although she loves them, she would hate to have one. Which makes her completely normal, as far as girls that I know, but for here, it is quite unique. She not only will not accept that she is going to do all the housework, which of course is fine by me, she finds the men who feel that the women should cook and clean and completely take care of the kids and wash clothes to be completely ridiculous (a good 98% of men here). Which also is good. But again, rare. This is not like a femininity thing, nor a liberal girl, nor rejecting her culture, not anything like that. She is fairly conservative, as far as that goes (we are not talking about politics), it is more about a respect thing.
Which I start to find very attractive.

Chapter 13: Tuesday, February 8th, 2003: Sick

2006-04-17T14:26:00.000-05:00

So I have been sick here four times now. Which is four more than I would care for. But the thing that cracks me up about being sick here is that no one is afraid to ask you what is wrong. And they want details. I have been at the house of a family, not feeling too well, and we are all sitting around chatting, and they ask me if I want something to eat. I say I don’t because I’m not feeling great and someone (like every time) asks “what is wrong? A cold?” And you are like “no, no.” So they continue: “Diarrhea?” And you are (shrugging your shoulders) just like “yep. Diarrhea.” Or whatever your symptom is.
Now the thing is I never really have taken much medicine before, but natural remedies I find to be acceptable. For instance I find Echinacea to be a delightful deterrent for the common cold. And it is nice because they have many natural remedies here. The problem is that people here diagnose my illnesses is such crazy ways that I can’t believe their remedies are actually going to help. For instance, I am currently sick as I write this, diagnosed with “suffering from the cold.” No, no, not “a cold,” Frio. Cold. Now, I am not a doctor, but I certainly believe my churning stomachache and inability to keep food inside me is probably the result of consuming bad food or water over the past few days, and not “because your insides are too cold” (if any nurse or doctor knows something I don’t, please let me know differently). Some of the things I have been told to do/eat include: eat toast with rice, drink some sort of thick, unexplainable liquid, wash myself with raw eggs (I am not joking) and lastly, drink this tea that will simply make me instantly vomit. Which is kind of a joke because it’s what Leti here suggests, with this excited look, for whatever you have. But at this point in time it’s not that bad of an idea.
To add to this, when Miriam (another American I met) was here in December, she was at a Bible study, put on by one of the mothers of some of the workers in the hacienda, and was complaining about her back hurting. The older woman, along with some of the younger women at the Bible study said that Miriam “had too much air in her back” and their remedy was to take a candle, set it on her back, light it, and put a cup over it. When the candle went out it created a vacuum with her skin, and they moved the cup around her back, “removing the air.” Once again, I cannot professionally vouch to whether that is an accurate prognosis nor cure, but my logic says that that something isn’t quite right.
Regardless, right now I prefer to lie in bed and wait it out. Right now, it’s like this:
I wake up sick. It feels like I have a boulder in my stomach. Like everything I ate the night before clumped together in my stomach and formed to solid rock. The pain feels like my intestines are getting squashed below the stone. I have this taste in my mouth like after you eat stale cheerios dry but before you realize they are stale. I would love to throw it all up, just to empty my stomach. Or take something to just flush it out, which seems like a good idea. But then I think that with some crazy medicine or mineral or herb, is there any chance I could actually get worse? It’s probably a bad idea to take something. Probably just going to make everything worse. I think back to what I ate. It was probably the mole (“mol-eh”), or the sheep. I mean, mutton. It’s mutton what we have, but that word does not give it justice. It’s not lamb either. I mean, mutton is an old drunk Irishman sitting over a slab of mutton in some pub with a stein of Guinness. Lamb is the guy off of the New Yorker sitting in a French restaurant staring down his nose at the lady across from him over his lamb steak. This is more like really soft, um, meat, cooked just right. “Barbacoa” – Barbecue – as if anything else would be fit to barbecue after you’ve had this. The wedding food. The celebration food. The big “15th birthday for girls” food. Sunday dinner food. But I think maybe sometimes it could use a little more barbacoaing. Cooked underground wrapped in huge leaves of the maguey. Imagine like a really soft beef cooked in a ton of oil, hot and greasy and really soft and delicious off the bone, right out of the hole in the ground.
The taste in my mouth tells me it might be the tortillas that made me sick, like people have suggested before. But I can’t figure out how corn, cooked well or poorly, could make me sick. Can vegetables make you sick? Anyway, I don’t want to throw up. I hate throwing up. I’d love to every time I’m sick so I could feel better. But once I start to vomit, I want to die.
I really should just shove my finger down my throat and get it over with. But I can’t corral enough courage. I just lay there and suffer, my lower organs getting squished and causing my intense pain.

Chapter 12: Basketball at the Hac, and other places

2006-04-10T14:53:00.000-05:00

We started to play a lot of hoops at the stone floor court in the hacienda. The girls and I would come down from Las Rosas and we would get the guys from the hacienda, maybe 12 or 13 of us total, a good three times a week. It was great. I had a lot of fun playing with Adalid, both on the same side of the ball and opposite teams. I started to learn the meaning of “home court advantage” as they already knew the nuances of the court, the bad places to dribble, the weak backboards you could easily chuck the ball at and the soft rims giving only short rebounds. Playing on the semi flat stone surface didn’t help my game much either.
Rogelio started to invite friends. I was a little sketched out at first, but they were all pretty nice guys, and we got to know each other well. The girls would usually bow out just to watch, as the new guys would come and demand that we bet on the game. “Just for a Coke” they said. That now put meaning into the game, and I turned on the jets. I don’t remember if I even lost, but I know I never helped buy Coke so either I never lost or my team covered it for me. But I am pretty sure it is the former. Being a meter and 89 centimeters tall doesn’t hurt either among an opposing team that is an average of a meter 58.
I learned a fun trick too. One of the rims was bent on one side, so if I just lined up on that side, called for the ball, it almost always fell. As long as you got it over the first lip, the backside of the rim was sure to ease the ball into the net. Almost foolproof.
They started inviting me to play with them on the weekends. I really had not a lot to do, unless I was going to hang out with Adalid, so I went with them as much as I could.
I specifically remember three times. We played a lot but three specific games come to mind the most. The first was the very first game they invited me to. We played in a four team tournament in a court alongside the highway just outside of town. There were two speed bumps on the highway to keep cars from flying through the pueblo, the first set heading out of San Felipe towards the hacienda. It was the first game where I poured all I had into it. The first two games were fun (the two in which we won the tourney) except that I was getting extremely tired. Rogelio and his friends who I played with are mostly in their late thirties, and wanted me to stay on the floor. Even though I had been here for a while, I hadn’t really ever ran consistently or anything, and wasn’t really in shape. And being up in the mountains just killed me. I begged to come out but they said I was better playing half the floor, not getting back on defense at all, than any of them were. The third game of the day was a killer though, as the “coach” from one of the teams demanded we put all the best players from the other teams together to play against our team. Which we did, and my ego kept me in the game. But the “coach” had the idea to stop me by putting two guys on me and absolutely hammering me every time I touched the ball. If this had been at the intramural building during my previous year at college I would have been obligated to beat them down. But I was pretty new to town still, I didn’t know any of them, and really didn’t want problems. I mostly just took it and threw elbows at opportune times. Which took some of them out of the game, trying to keep up on defense, but since it were one team comprised up of three, they just put more substitutes in one after the other. We didn’t win that one just because I came out after a quarter from sheer exhaustion.
The second most memorable game is one that we went way up into the mountains to play. We were Rogelio, me, his friend Elias, a couple other buddies I didn’t really know, and one other kid name Matu. Matu was pretty fast, if not that great of a shot, and was pretty smart. We played against a team that had exactly two players worth anything, who were both pretty good (as in they both can dunk which is rare for here). To make a long story short, we beat them playing a triangle and two defense, I playing man to man defense on the larger of the two, and Matu going up against the shorter. The other three played a triangle zone. We shut them down, and since the two better players tried to avoid passing the ball to their teammates as much as possible, they couldn’t do anything and we won. They were so sure they were going to win (also with a “coach” who does nothing), it made me even happier to beat them.
The third game is just a pick up game we played up in Portes Gil, where most of them live. It was really the first game I played where I could run full speed and play the whole game, after a good few months of living here. It was just funny because they knocked me to the ground and I totally scraped my arm. I had a bleeding hole like the size of a half-dollar. I went to the store to get something to clean it up with, because it was bleeding decently. The old lady gave me some home remedy that I splashed on there and wiped off. It worked pretty good, but I still had toilet paper held to the spot. “Get back in here!” they kept yelling at me. Which was funny to me because in these days of not letting kids play if they are bleeding, I am used to the idea that bleeding equals you simply don’t play. That is how it has been since… since I can remember. If you are bleeding you are treated like you are playing with leprosy. But they forced me back into the game, even though I bled on three different guys’ shirts, but we did win in overtime. The wife of one of my buddies volunteered to wash our shirts. Which was nice of her. Since I don’t know how to get blood out of a shirt anyway. Turns out all you need is a little stiff bristle brush. Who knew?

Chapter 11: The Dog

2006-04-10T14:52:00.000-05:00

Adalid arrives one Saturday morning, maybe the next weekend after getting home. We chat in my room while Kike takes a shower. Meanwhile, about two miles down the road, between the fourth and third set of speed bumps, counting from San Felipe to the turn off to Las Rosas, a couple of mangy dogs have been up since the first light, wandering around looking how they will spend the day, avoiding as many people as possible.
Kike comes back into the room and shakes his wet head. He holds out his hands and drops his head back, the universal sign for feeling good. He turns his wheelchair to pick up a shirt out of the stove cupboard, his scar on his back like a pegboard with dots of scar tissue alternating sides, back and forth. I have this urge to poke what looks like screws. I touch Adalid’s leg instead, pulling it towards mine as I sit next to her.
I am not sweating as we leave, but I know I will be before we get to the road. I choose to not wear a hat, just pulling the hood of my zippered sweatshirt, left unzippered, up over my head. It’s not really that warm, but it will be soon with the sun cooking me inside my sweatshirt. Hey, being warm is better than burnt.
This is still part of the year when the corn has not yet grown. When my time here began, the corn was tall, so tall people were afraid to walk home at night. They said thieves could easily hide and attack them as they walked home. I didn’t change my routine at all, and never had any problems. But I certainly carried two big rocks at all times. But right now, the corn is all gone and it is just sunny and nice. I know that soon the winds will start and walking away or back to Las Rosas will mean avoiding getting my teeth filled with dirt and dust. So for now, I just enjoy the nice view the absence of the cornstalks provides, and the nice cool breeze that drifts across the fields.
I support Kike’s chair as he leans back on two wheels, heading down the hill, navigating the large rocks on the steep part. He is the motor, the breaks, and the steering wheel; I am just the training wheels. We get a standard wave from the father and grandmother of the family that lives below Las Rosas, as she murmurs something in Mazahua. The little daughter smiles her adorable smile and turns away, shy. “Cjimi” we murmur back, the assumed response to whatever she said.
Adalid asks if she can push his chair as we get off the semi paved part and onto the unpaved. The day seems to be so pleasant, almost moving in slow motion, as we have nothing to do, no timeline, just out to have fun. Dealing with the hassle of the wheelchair off and on the bus or taxi seems to be less of a problem today when there is no rush. We can take all the time we need. Adalid always giggles when she pushes his chair. He makes sudden moves and turns and she gives little screams and says “Kike!” the first syllable punctuated and the second falling, when anything goes slightly wrong. The weekend always has some family out in the field, plowing. It almost looks like fun: there is usually a couple meals, people chatting and laughing, bulls or horses pulling a flat board that someone stands on and surfs across the tilled ground. Or they have a plow, which looks like much less fun. They are usually talking to the animals, softly in Mazahua.
Out there somewhere between the third and fourth sets of speed bumps, the small pack of feral dogs are rolling in the dirt, just off the highway. They bark at the cars speeding past, nip at each other, and gnaw on anything that’s not a rock. They sniff at everything, licking up anything that is or was made of organic material. One limps, having been hit by a car. This does not stop him from running out in front of cars; it just makes him a little slower. He has been limping for at least a year probably, the bone well healed but refusing to test it. Some oxen graze nearby, but they pay no attention. Oxen, unlike cars, don’t swerve or slow down for dogs. They just give swift kicks and throw their heads. They are no fun to play with. One dog doesn’t chase cars, but due to bad water and mal nutrition as a pup, has very unrefined instincts and poor response time. His situation is not unique. This can be due to inbreeding, pollution, malnutrition, physical mistreatment, or just plain bad luck.
As we hit the small uphill about 30 meters in front of the entrance to the main highway, I give Kike a running start and we hit the rocky stretch rattling. We start left landing in a flat part, swerve right popping over the small bump that shows where the water runs across the road during the rainy season, and onto a softer part of the road near where the corn field starts. He flips his chair backwards and I pull him up onto the pavement of the highway, checking both ways. Cars are easy to fairly easy to see coming down and around the hacienda, but coming the other way immediately make their way around the bend coming into view. You can hear them before you see them. But sometimes they come quite quickly. You always have to stay on the very edge, ready to get off the pavement. Kike lets go of his wheels, heading downhill towards the one lane bridge. He yells “I’m the king of pavement!” as he flies ahead of us. I start sprinting to catch him, looking back to see Adalid smiling. I am completely wasting my time trying to catch him, so I stop and turn around. I wait for her to catch up, and I take her hand and look at her eyes. “What’s your dream?” I ask. “To be here with you” she says. “What’s yours?” “To be here with you. And Kike.” I smile and she smiles. “I don’t like it when you aren’t here, because when I have to talk to you only by phone, I can’t explain things with my hands, or see what your face wants to tell me, or pinch you if you laugh at me.”
Of course that wasn’t ever really my dream until that exact moment. I guess maybe I should have clarified that it wasn’t exactly my dream, I would have liked for it to be. How could I have dreamed that? Not even in sleeping dreams can your mind invent things that you can’t imagine. And you hardly would ever think of things that you actually sleep-dream. I don’t even pretend in real life, but in my dreams I have played six times for the Sonics. With-out-question best dream. Usually I am on the bench, and the Sonics are getting drilled. I am usually watching nervously, tapping my foot or something. Nate McMillan looks down at me and throws his hand up which is the sign that he is angry at someone so I go in so that he can yell at whoever it is. I come and make like play after play on the defensive end, and dish the ball to Ray Allen who drains three after three. That was pretty much the script for three of them. One of them I am just on the bench, happy to be there. One I came in and just drill a three and then woke up. The most recent one, the Dream Sonics are still coached by Nate, even though in real life they aren’t any more, but he gets me in the game early on. I can’t remember who I am guarding, but I block his shot or strip him of the ball like ten consecutive trips down the floor. Maybe it’s Dwayne Wade. And I start getting some courage, and begin to talk a little trash which I know is dangerous because he could light me up at any moment. The dream game goes pretty fast, and I get taken out before half time and then wake up in the middle of a TV timeout. Man I hate those TV timeouts.
We catch up to Kike. The road right before the bridge heads up to Portes Hill. It is a large entrance, wide enough so that one truck could be waiting to go right, one could be next to it waiting to go left, and one could be entering from either direction as well. We stand right in the middle, so that if four trucks happened to show up leaving and entering, they would pass us on either side, two and two. This allows us to catch taxis coming from any direction. One arrives shortly, coming from the direction we came from.
Getting in a taxi is relatively easy from the wheelchair. Kike pushes it up to the door, and I hold it as he puts his head against the window, puts a hand on the door and another on the seat. He prefers the back, but takes any seat on the outside. If people are already inside, they usually have to rearrange themselves so that he can hop in. He launches himself into the car, usually leaving a decent amount of hair gel on the window. I grab the chair, pull off his backpack and hand it to him, pull the seat cover off, and pull up on the seat which allows the chair to collapse making it easy enough to throw in any trunk. If the trunk already has stuff, we usually pop the wheels off, making it even more compact. I usually get dirty, shirt pants and hands, but it is nothing compared to how dirty he gets just using it, so I learn not to mind or complain. If I do complain, he shows me his filthy hands and lines along the sides of his pants where the wheels rub. We can both pack into the front seat of any Ford Acura or other bucket seated car (standard Mexican “collective” taxis won’t leave unless there are at least three people in back, and at least two crunched into the front seat next to him). But Adalid is with us so we just all sit in the back.
Kike is chatting with the driver as we pull onto the highway, towards the hacienda and Dolores, the home of the fourth set of speed bumps. Another taxi quickly catches up behind us, and another pulls out in front as we get over the first of three speed bumps that makes up the fourth set. The taxi in front is an old beater – maybe a Chevy or an old Buick. A boat at best. Those were outlawed the second year I was down here. Or maybe they just went out of fashion. They are usually stick shift, but the stick is on the steering wheel like an automatic would be. They can fit four in back, four in the front, and I have seen two in the trunk before. Twice before. They also usually sway down the road. Making broad turns and heaving around corners. And the large front windows are absolutely always cracked.
We get over the third bump and we are off to the races with the other two taxis. There is a left corner, and then a little hill where you can see up to the left a quarter mile if cars are coming or not. But you can’t see around that corner so you go to count to like four before passing to make sure no hidden car is down in that gulley, the blind spot. We pull out to pass the car anyway, and speed past it. Sure enough, there is a car in the gulley but coming fairly slow, so we have plenty of time.
At that moment, the dog with slow wits decided it would be good to cross the road. It just felt that at that moment it needed to get across. And with our car moving quite smoothly, it watched us intently, hypnotizing, as it hustled across our lane. Its slow instincts caused it not to hear or see the other car coming in the other lane, which heaved right trying to avoid it, but wasn’t going to end up in the ditch to save the poor thing. As the dog watched us coming at him, the gramma car coming towards us smacked it in the head, making contact with its front right fender directly into the skull of the slow creature. The dog was lifted off the ground, and spun with such force that even though its body spun back into the side of the car that hit it, it hit the ground and spun twice more on the concrete. Adalid gave a screech and grabbed my arm. Kike and I both pulled our heads back grimacing. No internal parts came out (of the dog or the car), thankfully, but it was an unquestionably fatal hit.
“Do you think it’s ok?” Adalid asked, in a way that suggested not naivety but compassion. Kike and I smiled almost mockingly, nodding our heads.
And then forgot all about it.

Chapter 10: Acapulco

2006-04-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

Shortly thereafter, Felipe asked if I wanted to take Adalid to Acapulco. Felipe had planned a whole trip out where we would drunkenly drive for six hours from the hacienda, over the mountains, down to the Pacific Ocean along the part of Mexico where the coast stops going more southern and starts going in more, west to east. It would take us a lot of patience, a lot of car games, a couple battery jumps, and two six packs for Felipe. It was Kike and his girl Adelaida, Felipe and his girl Isabel, and me and my girl. In the old brown van.
Did I not tell you she’s my girl? I suppose the last bit made no sense. OK. This is what happened: against all advice (American advice), instincts, and intention, I decided I like Adalid enough to ask her to be my girlfriend. At least I think it did. Here is pretty much how the conversation went (sitting in the central garden in San Felipe, avoiding the birds who are crapping on us from above:
You know everyone talks in the hacienda. Gossip. You know?
She nods.
You know they say maybe I like someone. A different person. You know?
She nods.
But I no like her. I likes you.
She smiles.
You want to be a girlfriend? Uhhh, mine girlfriend?
Let me think about it.
Umm. OK. You have to think?
Just let me think about it, ok? I’ll tell you tomorrow.
That is how it went. I am awesome. We had hung out quite a bit at Las Rosas before I asked her to go see the movie with me. The movie was like a real date, and it felt like that. She knew what it was. We started going into town together, I accompanying her since she had to go that way anyway to get home. I got to meet her younger two siblings when they came one weekend to cook us lunch. They were pretty quiet but it was fun anyway. And they made a great meal. She looked at me with this smile that I couldn’t get away from. I couldn’t think straight when she looked at my eyes. She helped me get acquainted with the town and showed me new fun places.
Once we were in this little park, actually an amphitheater, behind the municipal theater, just chatting when some drunk guy started yelling at me. He pointed at me and started saying something of which I had no idea. It was kind of funny, but I didn’t want him to do anything crazy or hurt Adalid or anything. I had the idea that I might have to try to look macho here, so I stood up and got ready to take this mother down. I new he would go down with one punch, and it would be in self defense so what was I worried about? But Adalid grabbed my arm and pulled me out of there. Let’s just go. What are you going to do with a knocked out drunk guy anyway? A good question, plus I figured there would be inevitable problems with police, so we got out of there.
But most memories are good. She was working at Las Rosas, working away at the stained glass butterflies or whatever, when I decided to take a walk, or head into town or something. I poked my head in the door and said I would be back in a bit. I walked out and heard the other girls hurriedly tell Adalid to walk me out. She is a little shy, so it was good to have a little help. I remember she had all these little braids that came down to her lower back. She had just done it the night before. It was quite sexy. She touched my hand as I walked out of the outer gate, to head down to the road. I smiled and took two steps. I turned back. Smiled again sheepishly, looking mostly at her hair. I stepped towards her and I guess since she didn’t step back or out of my way, I kissed her. It was the most wonderful kiss of my life. I didn’t know if it was a good call or what, but I did it.
How did she get permission to go with me to Acapulco for a week? I assume her mom didn’t know there would be boys there. And since we were a Christian group anyway, there would have been no reason to believe anything was less than kosher. And certainly not suspecting of Felipe, a “recovering” alcoholic.
Actually this happens all the time. People trusting Felipe. I can’t see how they don’t notice he is constantly drunk. And how they don’t notice his constant drunkscapades, out and about town with plastic six pack rings littering the floor of his car. He loves to show up in his huge boat of a Buick and invite you out for tacos. You get in the car at like 5 or 6 in the afternoon, sometimes with Kike, and he tells you you are going to get tacos and it’s going to be a great time. As soon as you are on the road, he mentions he needs to go by his house, which is the opposite direction. So you go to his house where he does whatever he needs to do. Then you get back in and head back in the direction you came from. You stop and the first tienda in sight but out of sight of the hacienda and he buys a six pack of beer. He gives you one which you don’t really want, but certainly don’t want him to down the whole six pack himself, so you take one for the team. I should mention he usually starts this trip drunk, but it’s sometimes hard to tell. He shows you pictures of his ex-wife and two kids who live in Mexico City. He talks about the things he is going to do for them, or plans for visiting them. Whatever the situation of the beer is (finished or not) you stop in 10 minutes and pick up another six pack. As he finishes each one, he rolls down the window and throws out the cans. He explains that women will be attacking each other in the morning to recycle that can. You know he is officially drunk when he does one of two things: he starts not seeing the speed bumps or else he asks you for money. He ALWAYS does both, but it’s always funny to see which one comes first. You tell him you don’t have any, and anyways he invited you for tacos, not the other way around. He says he has some job coming up and will have the money to pay you back with in a week or two. You change the subject. He starts talking about women, usually someone you are friends with and he starts saying lude things that you don’t want to know. You finally get to the town with tacos where he says he needs to go see a friend. It’s usually about someone buying his car. He doesn’t let you come in, and it seems incredibly suspicious. He usually urinates in public before getting back in the car where you are really wishing you had never come. Occasionally you actually end up getting tacos, but usually you just get some chips and head back. He wants to go back to his house and hang out and make dinner, but you are so tired of it all, you just want to go home. He of course doesn’t want to drive up to Las Rosas because it would be bad for his car (saying that after having hit all 32 speed bumps at full speed) and you grudgingly get out and walk the 20 minutes up the dark road home.
THIS was the week long version of that. It started off great and ended terribly. Adalid, along with Kike and Ade had never seen the ocean before, so that was incredibly romantic as we arrive at night, and go down and sit on the sand, listening to the stroke of the waves and the lights surrounding the bay. The “cabin” we were staying was that of some uncle of Felipe's, which sat directly behind the monstrous “Copicabana” hotel. It would have had a wonderful view of the ocean except for that large detail, but did give us excellent access to the waterfront. A 30 second walk around the hotel sat us out on the beach, and just a 10 minute walk from the beach front clubs and restaurants.
The first night was the best. We sat out on the beach, her sitting between my legs leaning back against my chest, looking up at the clear sky. We talked about everything that I could come up with words for. I taught her some constellations, in English of course. She taught me “pelican” (which there were and we could see fly by in the moonlight, and “sand” and “bay” and other basic words I should have known.
“Have you ever been here before?”
“No. This is the first time. And the first time I have ever seen the ocean.” We sit there in silence.
“What?”
“This is the first time I have ever seen the sea. I have never been to the coast before.”
“What? Really? I mean, how… what?” I can’t process that, living within five minutes of the ocean view practically my whole life. Back as Las Rosas, I actually start to expect to see the ocean over the rolling hills. In San Agustin we have the huge hill to our back, and hills out to our right, left and in front. It is pretty much up and down all along the roads no matter which way your are going. It’s the strangest feeling, to expect to see water and have it not be there. Especially cresting a peak of a hill or mountain, that I am going to see the water just over the next ridge. Every time up or down, I keep looking for the ocean like its going to appear the next time we have a good view. Every time I go hiking or driving at home, I know that most of the time the purpose is to get a sweet view of the ocean and islands. Every peak I cross just leads me to more peaks. “How have you never seen the water before?”
“Only in the movies. It is so much more beautiful than in the movies. I have never seen snow either.”
“Seriously?” I suddenly get a huge feeling of pride, like I have done something incredible by living in a place that is 5 minutes from the water and 45 from snow year round.
“Yes.”
“You’ll see snow someday.” I regret saying it, sounding like a promise to bring her to my home, which I know would be difficult. I don’t want her to think I am saying anything I am not, not hinting anything or saying anything subtle.
“I imagine that it must be the softest thing there is. Like the feeling of the softest cotton floating down and landing on you. It hailed really hard one time at my house, and I took a picture. It looked like snow. We threw hailballs at each other. It hurt.” I can’t see her face but I know she is smiling. I laugh at her story. I put my arms around her shoulders, resting my head on one of them.
The next day we paid to ride on the “banana boat” which is a big long inner tube that is pulled behind a boat. It was only at this moment that I realized (was told) that Felipe and I were actually the only ones who knew how to swim, and actually the others were terrified of this ride. This must have been like sky diving for them! We just held on and rode until Felipe plunged the nose of the banana into the water, dumping us all. I came up laughing only to have Adalid panicking and grabbing onto me, despite the life jackets doing a fine job by themselves. She grasped onto me, and I saw the Kike and Isabel were doing the same to Felipe. Adelaida was the only one with enough sense to grab onto the boat itself. How funny.
I later took Adalid Seadooing, which was just as funny, her gripping my waist like the wind would rip her off if she didn’t hold as tight as possible, giving little shrieks every time I turned at all.
Besides that, we played in the waves, sat inside eating lunch to try to avoid the sun somewhat, sat on the beach under a big sun umbrella, and otherwise just hung out.
The second night there I decided I was going to take the four of us out to dinner. Felipe wanted to show off his girlfriend, who was popping out (literally, every so often) of her small bikini top all over the place. The rest of us went for a walk down the strip. I found the nicest restaurant I could, and I invited them all in. Alongside the fancy dressed up crowd inside, we were rushed away to a small side room of the place. The waiter came over to our table and scoffed at us. It was obvious even to me that we were country folk inside a city folk eatery. We were not welcome here. We would be served and led out as soon as they had our money.
But I was not there to be looked down at, so I asked if there was another waiter that could help us. The large man looked at me, tilted his nose up pushing his head forward, brushed his hands on his apron. He set the menus on a pile on the table and left. I wasn't sure if I had asked the question correctly, but he appeared offended, so I figured it had done the trick regardless.
And actually a really nice younger guy came and waited on us. My three friends didn't have a clue what to order. The hardly knew what anything on the menu was. Steaks, fish, ribs, and pasta, was not foreign to them, but “fettuccine,” “medium rare,” “full rack,” and “served in a light garlic sauce” certainly was. The waiter patiently explained everything to them, as they giggled and finally decided on a couple things that we would all share. We got dessert to share – some cheesecake, and some spumoni ice cream. They laughed and loved everything. It was great. We all tried a little of everyone else's choice, and enjoyed it all. I enjoyed every second. They hoarded the free mints that were brought us with the check, making sure only our waiter saw. Not that it really mattered. I left a twenty dollar tip, which I am sure is more than anyone else left that night.
The next day we drove to another part of the coast, away from Acapulco bay. It was a beach near some cliffs where the waves crashed way out and rolled way up onto the sand. It was out of a movie, or a Corona ad. The grass huts with wooden chairs that let you slouch, the water actually washing up to your feet and past your chair, only a half inch deep no matter how far behind you it kept going. Waiters made sure your coke was always full, pelicans swooped down to dive bomb fish swimming too close to the surface, and life was good. Life was great. There was hardly even anyone around. Maybe I could see 20 people within sight range. Some little children and their parents. Some teenagers with boogie boards. To our right were the cliffs, to our left the beach went down out onto a sand bar a good mile or two, where six or seven huge hotels sat down at the end. But no one was in them today. I sat there, letting the warm salt water wash my feet, bathed in a soft light coming off the water, a cold coke in my hand, my girl reading a book in the chair next to me. How could I screw this one up?
I grabbed Adalid's hand and pulled her out into the water. Even a dozen yards out, the water was only a foot deep. The waves were crashing maybe forty yards out, and it was still only above waist deep, maybe a little deeper, at that point. We ran, falling over in the sand, into the feet of water. I held her against me, as the water would come up quickly and spin us around. I pulled her out deeper. She complained and said she didn't want to go out any farther. I kept pulling her out, telling her not to be scared. She looked nervous but I told her to trust me. As we got out to where the waves were breaking, it felt a little deeper than I had anticipated. In fact, when the wave crashed it definitely went over your head. A wave came down on us just as she was looking at me, giving her a huge face full of water. She went under, coming up giving one of those sounds that come from the back of your throat that sound like a violent thrust of your gag reflex. I picked her up in my arms. Another broke on us, which pulled us under again, but this time the undertow pulled us out farther than the break line. The next swell came and crashed after us. I looked back at the beach only to see us much much farther towards the cliffs, and rocks, than we started. Actually I could watch us moving left to right with a rip tide that was moving very swiftly. Here is where she panics. She grabs onto my neck, and tries to use me to push herself up out of the water, like someone climbing a tree to get away from a bear. I tell her to calm down. I keep saying “tranquilo.” I just keep saying that. I can't think of any other word, or anything else I can do. We are moving out to sea, and towards the dangerous rocks to the side. I can keep us up, but I can't swim.
“OK. I gotta think.” I've got it. If she can grab my leg, and keep her head above the waves, I can possibly get us back. We are in a lot of trouble, but I think I spot an area I can get us to. But she has to grab onto my leg. I try to explain it but no words come out. OK. Gotta to understand.
“Touch my... no, I mean, take here.” This makes no sense. A hand grabs me and another one grabs her and puts her hands on a boogie board. Three kids who I hadn't seen are there and take her back in, as I swim my own sad butt back into shore.
Talk about being an idiot. All time biggest “showing off backfires” moves. One for the record books. “Idiot foreigner drowns girlfriend.” Awesome. I come in, where she is back on her wooden chair. I can't look at her. I sit down in mine and slouch more than usual. I don't say anything. I feel like throwing up. I want to run away. I want to beg for forgiveness. I want to cry and her to tell me its ok and I'm not a terrible boyfriend and I want to tell her I won't ever do anything that dumb again, even if I know I will (I'm a guy). I sit there for three or four minutes it painful silence. I feel something against my hand. It's hers.
“Let's go for a walk.” We do. We walk down the deserted beach down towards the large hotels in the distance. A couple on horses go trotting by. I try to beg for forgiveness but can't come up with the word. Apparently the groveling gets the point across and she tells me to shut up (I am just babbling) and why am I even worried. It was just a stupid mistake. An accident. We walk and talk, holding hands and chasing seagulls (or the Acapulcan “annoying, squawking bird” equivalent) and sand crabs that can flat out run. Much faster than me. And we collect shells. We find a sand dollar. I translate it to “a dollar of sand” which of course makes no sense regardless, much less if she has never seen one before and looks nothing like a dollar nor sand. No starfish but I sure would like to show her one. Oh well. We kiss there in the surf. It would be so much more romantic if I hadn't almost killed her a half hour ago.
I wake up sunburned the next day, and promptly get food poisoning that night, laying in bed for the remaining two days. We are supposed to go home but the van doesn't work and we have to stay another day. Adalid takes wonderful care of me, staying with me although there is much more interesting stuff to be doing. But I am just throwing up and wanting to be on the beach. Finally we pile into the van, which has no windows except for the two front ones, and of those two one doesn't work. It must be 95, with no AC, no air, seated on the only seat at the far back of a bumpy van, horribly sick. We drive home in misery.
But I suppose we only spent 20 bucks each to get there. For whatever reason, the hacienda gave us 50 for gas (I think this was a long standing promise that was finally being delivered) and we each pitched in 20 and somehow that paid for five days worth of food and one bottle of tequila the Felipe practically polished of by himself. I bought the one meal for the four of us, and actually also bought the meal that got me sick. So I probably dropped a little more than the others, but it was a solid deal. Two and half days sick did not overshadow two days of two and a half days of Heaven.

Chapter 9: Smoothness

2006-04-02T17:56:00.000-05:00

After that, I knew that Adalid would put up with my bad Spanish. Perfect. So I asked her if she wanted to go see a movie. I had noticed that the second Harry Potter movie was playing at the theater in nearby Atlacomulco (although a few months later than when it came out in the states, I believe). I ask Norberto if I can use the van. I am extremely hesitant to ask favors, as every time someone does me a favor I end up blowing it in some way. He is nice enough to say yes, but he warns that one of the tires is low and in really bad shape. I take the warning and the keys and sprint up the hill to the van. I pop it in gear and head up to Las Rosas where Adalid is working. I really don’t want to make a big deal about it, so I figure I’ll just tell her they want to talk to her at the hacienda. That way the other girls won’t give her a hard time about anything. In fact, I know that at the hacienda Norberto and Israel, as well as most people there love the gossip about the fact that I am taking Adalid to a movie so much that they won’t have a problem with her leaving work a few minutes early. I don’t know if they love it so much because they want their nice Mexican girls to get married to American guys, or if they are just suckers for romance. But I have a suspicion they like gossip. That seems to be the trend – people just like stuff to happen so they can talk about it. People love tragedy and comedy and fights and affairs and soap operas because it’s a great conversation piece.
So we are in the car, heading for Atlaco. Affecting factors include: I have been there a couple times but am generally unfamiliar with the road itself, this is the second time behind a wheel in Mexico, the first not in Mexico City. Oh, and I have a cute girl with me. I have no idea what time the movies start, nor end, nor an idea how I am getting her home. I cut one guy off, driving a little faster than should be, getting a feel for driving aggressively and probably yes trying to show off a little. I get to San Felipe where I take the correct turn onto the highway and take the highway all the way past San Miguel and into Atlacomulco. Adalid is quiet but smiling and mentions some things about her brother being in Mexico City studying. I nod trying to follow it all. Not having anything to add, we continue in silence. I ask what movies she likes, and she says probably “Life is Beautiful” or “Forrest Gump.” Taking the huge circling road to the right, we arrive in maybe 20 minutes, leaning into the parking lot of the mini mall and get out. I am careful to lock the doors and remember the keys and lights off.
Inside she suggests buying some candy before we go in. We goof around finding absurd items here and there. I try to explain things I find funny, such as “Cossack” brand premixed vodka drinks, and the terrible English on the back of a chocolate made in Cuba. I mention that the English is probably like what my Spanish sounds like but in written form. She thinks it’s funny how I don’t take myself too serious. I think a lot of people she knows probably take themselves too seriously. But I know nothing.
We walk over to where the movie is playing, which we see is going to start in 5 minutes. Sweet. She sees a poster of Bad Boys II and swoons over Will Smith even though I assure her the movie will be crap. I tell her I actually met Will Smith and she grabs my arm as if I had just told her I won the lottery. I tell her am joking and she punches me.
“Do you come here a lot?”
“I used to when I had friends with cars. Not anymore.”
“What have you seen here?”
…Is what I would like to be asking her. Instead:
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” Spanish 1 questions.
“Four. One older brother who is going to school at the University of Mexico City, one older sister who is studying to be a teacher at the college in San Felipe. I also have a younger brother who is at the high school and a younger sister who is in the middle school.”
“When did you graduate high school?”
“Two years ago.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Huh.”
She does thing where she straightens her skirt and pulls it down as if it’s riding too high. She has a jean skirt that goes just up to her kneecaps when she sits. We are on an ugly metal bench painted white. She has black boots that have a heel and close with a zipper up the side. They are only a few inches above her ankle, maybe to right about where her calf muscle starts. I don’t really like them actually but I don’t actually care. She has a jacket on over a sweater. It’s not like I’m looking, but I am pretty sure she doesn’t have a shirt on under the sweater. This strikes me as odd, although I am not sure why. I guess she wants to look skinny and so isn’t overdoing it with shirt, sweater and jacket. She looks straight ahead, smiling, but rarely at me. It doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I rather like the conservatism. It makes me believe that maybe she likes me for me and I can put away ideas of her being a gold digger or just trying to get a visa for the US or whatever. I wouldn’t think that of her, but it seems like a lot of girls down here are willing to go that road.
She undoes her pony tail, and then looks around like someone might be watching and puts it back up tighter, more comfortable. Maybe it’s reading into it too much, but it feels as if in little things like that she is opening up to me a little, letting me into her world. I know I cannot force my way in, I cannot talk my way in, I cannot slide in or caress my way in or impress my way in. I can just by myself because if I’m not she’ll see through me. I hope she likes who I am.
“Did you tell your mom you are going to a movie with an American boy?”
“Oh, no. No. No.” She shudders her shoulders and smiles guiltily. She tries out a fake conversation. “’Mama, I am going out with a boy to the movies…’ no no no.”
She is delicate. Firm, straight, smart, not weak, but delicate. If she does let me into her life, I will have to be careful. This seems to be a product of her family life, culture, and personality. My guess is that her conservatism comes from her family, which takes its cues from old traditions. It’s an educated guess, and I can’t imagine it’s not a true statement. Which is difficult, because when I look at the culture which includes social norms (not staying out too late and end up looking like a prostitute, not taking a taxi home by herself after dark, being polite to elders, etc), family relationships and ties (respect to all family members no matter how distant, absolute respect of parents’ wishes, etc), and general expectations (if you drink alcohol you are only drinking to get drunk, playing cards and pool are serious no-no’s, etc) it is sometimes easy to carelessly brush it off, assume that other people will conform to you. “Who cares what they think? I am going to do what I want and they can say whatever they want. They can just break out of that tradition silliness.” And these are just the things I have picked up so far. I am in her culture, and if she allows me to walk across the threshold, which I am not so sure she is going to, and at least not in the immediate future, she is going to look to me for support, answers, and guidance.
“Your eyes are nice.”
“Thanks.” Now its my turn to be nervous. She steals glances at me now and then.
“How come your eye brows are blonde but your hair is brown.”
“Grr. I don’t know.” Playfully.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you didn’t like it.”
“No, it’s just a lot of people make fun of me.” I want to insult her back just for fun, but I am not sure she might not take it the wrong way. Answering the previous question, “The same reason I have lots of hair on my body. God just made me that way.”
We go in the theater where the last movie is actually still playing, just finishing, on one of the two screens. We sit down and watch the last thirty seconds of some romantic comedy I never actually got the name of, the credits roll, and Harry Potter instantly starts. No previews, no ads, no intermission, just straight into it. And as the first words are uttered, I come to a terrible realization: the whole movie is going to be in Spanish. I have watched a couple movies that we rented at the hacienda, and they were always English with Spanish subtitles. On TV the movies are usually dubbed, but I just assumed it would in English. I think back to Taiwan where they explained that all kids movies were dubbed because how were kids going to read the subtitles when many couldn’t read at all? I hunker down and get ready for a rough two hours. The movie proceeds to make absolutely no sense whatsoever, and it finally ends after an exhaustive stretch of utter silliness. I am completely exhausted from translating for two straight hours coming at me like a freight train, a freight train that is just hitting me over and over and over again. She turns and asks if I liked it. I have nothing to say. I can’t even come up with an excuse except “I didn’t understand anything.” She says she didn’t understand anything either, which makes me feel better that maybe part of it was the plot and not just the lack of grasping the dialogue.
We get back in the van, everything in place, and it fires up ok. We see the time and she is nervous that she might not have a taxi home. So I go a little faster than I would like to. I get back on the highway heading out of Atlacomulco and try to get her to talk so she won’t worry about being late. As we reach the half way point into the village of San Miguel, I hit a huge pothole that I couldn’t see in the dark, going like 60 KPM. There is a loud bang and the van immediately pulls right. There is a large drainage ditch to our right but my arms lock onto the wheel and pull it up, trying to keep us alive. We dip forward and back as I hit the brakes, causing us to veer right again. I let it go right, finally, and we come to a stop in front of someone’s yard. I stop and breathe.
“Are you ok?” I ask. I have no idea what I am going to do now. I have never been to San Miguel before. I don’t know anyone. I can’t call anyone, I have never picked up a taxi or bus right off the road, and am generally terrified. She says she is fine, so we get out. I am jumpy. I don’t know what to do. I want to be a man and take care of everything, but I have to sit and let her get help. I have let her make the decision because I frankly have no ideas left. We wait as cars go past. A bus pulls up but waves us off and speeds past. We begin the walk towards the main intersection in town, figuring the chances of someone stopping would be better. I feel terrible. I am breaking all sorts of social rules already; I can’t help out, and I feel responsible. Finally a taxi stops and we get in. I breathe a huge sigh of relief (this all, taxis and buses and getting around, will become commonplace and simple later on. But the first time always seems the craziest) as we get moving back to San Felipe. In San Fe, I ask her what to do and she walks me over and gets me in a taxi heading towards the hacienda.
“Thanks, I can take it from here” I assure her, trying to rescue any sense of manliness I have left.
The taxi takes me right back to the hacienda where I go tell them what happened. They laugh and laugh and in the morning go get the van. It arrives in the early afternoon, to the delight of everyone except me. Felipe especially can’t let it go.
“How fast were you going? The tire looks like Cookie Monster took a huge bite out of it! Ha ha ha!” Ha ha ha.

Chapter 8: Mexico City Adventure

2006-03-06T11:49:00.000-06:00

A few weeks later, Kike, Adalid and I went to Mexico City so that Adalid could take her university entrance exam. She had asked us if we would accompany her it the big scary city.
Actually, it happened more like this: after classes Kike and the however many girls sit around a big table making ceramics or stained glass stuff, chatting. When I have nothing else to do I sit in and learn Spanish trying to talk to them. But this time the girls who are not subtle have decided that Adalid should be my girlfriend, so they are forcibly pushing her towards me (both figuratively and sometimes literally). Kike, who is more subtle, heard that she wanted to go to the MC, and since he has relatives there he volunteered himself and myself, thinking it would be a good idea to get the two of us together, away from the other girls.
I understood all this but since Adalid was cool, I didn’t figure it would be a problem. Actually I thought it would be pretty fun. I turned out to be right about both. I was also very glad to see that Kike was up for our first real adventure, and it seemed he was glad I was up for it too.
So we went. As we were on the bus, I had the sweetest idea.
“Kike, I have the sweetest idea. Maybe the best idea I’ve ever had. When this weekend is over, remind me to tell you what it is.” He looked at me strangely, and nodded.
We took at taxi from the bus station to Kike’s aunt and uncle’s apartment, which is in a great location right near downtown (Everyone calls his uncle “Tio” and his aunt “Tia” - “uncle” and “aunt” - and that is what I got to call them too. It’s like I have more new relatives. But they are cool like that, so it’s not a problem). From the first second there with them, it was fantastic.
First, I got my first cheek to cheek kiss from his attractive cousin. I still don’t get this much at all, but it’s hot. I kind of want to go to some country where they kiss you on both cheeks. That’s even hotter. Second, his Tia is a great big wonderful loving woman a lot like my Aunt Sarah is. She sat me down and asked me a million questions that I struggled through. The whole family – Tia and Tio, the older daughter Areceli with her two young sons, the middle sister Ana, and the younger brother Omar all came in and shook my hand and met Adalid and hugged Kike and were attentively listening and helping me through difficult sentences. Adalid did some good translating because she had already heard these questions asked in earlier classes back in Las Rosas.
They were thrilled to have us. They immediately took me out to all the places that white people without a posse should probably not be, and got to do all the things I have been told not to do. We went to the ghettos and shopping markets where everything is stolen and really cheap (although I bought nothing). Rolling with the family, I never felt worried about anything. I was a little bit nervous when we drove through a barrio and one of Omar’s friends, who had come with us, said, “that house to the right is where you can buy guns. Or grenades. Whatever you want.” There were three guys sitting outside of the house, and I made sure not to look at them.
And I got to drive in downtown Mexico City. Areceli got tired and handed me the keys. How fun! It’s pretty much like driving in Seattle, but with wider roads and I don’t have to pay attention to traffic laws as much. More like traffic suggestions. People had earlier hyped it as the most crazy driving situation in the world. Which is nonsense, at least until they have a few million mosquito-esque scooters flying around, like in Taipei. Expensive mosquitoes that have humans riding them. The only really funny part was that everyone kept giving me directions from the back seat by saying “go there,” or everyone arguing over where to go meanwhile I am driving the wrong direction down a one-way street because there is no signs or anything but luckily the policeman who was driving the correct way moved to the side with hardly a glance so I could continue breaking the law. It was pretty hilarious. At one stoplight along the Reforma, I stop and watch a kid work for money. He lays down a towel on the ground, across the crosswalk, which is filled with shards of glass. He rips off his shirt and falls down across the glass. He gets up and rolls over, laying down on his back. He then hops up and goes around to the cars with his hand out collecting the “cooperacion” for the show. As he passes, a guy with a water bottle filled with diluted soap sprays our window and starts to wash it. “No!” we are yelling at him. The light goes green and I hit the gas, bumping him off the car as I fly into the intersection. The car explodes into chaos.
“No manches!”
“Que perro!”
“Que malo!” Apparently all are impressed with my no nonsense style of driving.
What else? I took the Metro Subway at 7:00 morning by myself. I went to drop off Adalid at her test, which is at a nearby college, and on the way back have the luck of getting on a train car with a bunch of Japanese tourists who attracted the attention of the locals and for the first time I was not interesting to anyone.
The metro is fairly well known as being a place you can get pick pocketed easily. I have heard stories about people holding onto the straps to their camera with it around their neck, only to look down and have the camera gone, cut off with a knife. Or people’s entire luggage just suddenly gone. The only scary story I heard was that sometimes they will bring a knife and on really crowded subway rides, walk around, jab it into you, not to pierce the skin, but enough to make you freeze, and then just take everything out of your pockets. If you make a noise they jab you. And it’s so crowded it’s hard to see. But if you know what you’re doing, the Metro is another really over-hyped experience.
Tia had a great story. She said that a couple months before she was in the Metro on payday. She had taken her “quincena” and put it in her bra, like most ladies do on payday. She was getting off the subway behind an old man, when she spotted a bag laying on the ground. The old man picked it up and exclaims, only to look around hoping not to have attracted attention.
“Did you see this too?” he asks Tia.
“Um, I saw that it was on the ground. I saw you pick it up. That’s all.”
“It’s filled with money.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Since you saw it too, I would be fine with splitting it with you. Here, put it in your purse before someone mugs us.” So she delightedly puts it in her purse. They are chatting about how they are going to deal with it when a lady comes up to them.
“Have you seen a brown bag here? It must have fallen and I need it.” Tia says she looks like a rich lady, but is about to give it back when the old man speaks up. He tells the woman that they haven’t seen anything, but that they feel really bad for her. He says that maybe Tia can give the woman something to help out, just to get by. He pats Tia on the shoulder and motions to not open the purse, but to take money out of her bra. He is just assuming she has money there, but he is right. So she takes out her bimonthly earnings and gives it to her.
“I hope that can help,” the man says. The woman turns and leaves. He signs in relief and tells Tia that he trusts her and that she should meet him back here the next day with his half of the money. The man then leaves and Tia nervously walks up the stairs to the street level.
She takes her purse into the nearest bathroom, opens up the bag, and sees that it is completely full of newspaper and nothing else. What a sting.
I used the taxis to get myself to church Sunday morning all alone too. No one else wanted to go with me. A respectable adventure, venturing out into the city for the first time by myself (not counting the solo subway).
We did get to go to Garibaldi, a sweet park filled with Mariachi bands. They range from full 10 piece orchestras to a single guy with a drum and a plastic bottle that he blows into. My favorite was a father who played the guitar and his two sons who played the ukulele and the electric harp. It was awesome. We chose mostly to walk around and listen to songs other people were paying for. It is near enough to Tia and Tio’s, near the Alameda park, that we just walked there. In fact, they live within walking distance of most of the touristy sites: the Palacio de Bellas Artes that contains many famous murals including a Rivera, the museum of Diego Rivera itself which is on the opposite side of the park from Bellas Artes, down to the Zocolo to see the huge Catedral Metropolitano, the Presidencia where the president resides which also contains a Rivera mural, the Templo Mayor, the headstone temple of the Aztecs. A lot of things I had seen before on a previous trip when I was younger, but it was fun to see them in a new way. With Kike, his cousins and friends, we also got to see a large piece of city life as well. We talked to the people painting temporary tattoos in the center, and down to the shops of cheap goods in Barrio Colombia or Tepito or Brazil. Curious strangers wanting to know why my eyebrows are blonde but my hair brown. Sidewalk vendors selling tacos or tortas, willing to tell stories that I only half understand. Even just being with Kike’s family was a blast. His younger Cousin Ana is a real city girl – short hair, hip clothes that cut low and ride low and flair out, a man hater but in love with all the boys. Cousin Omar is the same but more easy going. He gels up his hair and streaks it back. He loves going without a shirt even though he is quite skinny. He loves chains and crosses and piercings (although he has none) and tattoos (neither). His older cousin Arecelia, or “Are” (pronounced “Ar-eh” strong on the first syllable) is much more down to earth. She has two kids but no husband, as he is (was) a younger guy who knocked her up twice and then took off. Kike says someday we are going go hunt him down and beat him up. Are runs a little stand in a better part of the bad part of town, where she sells fashionable girls clothes. It provides for her needs and those of her kids. Actually a few years later he would come back and beat her up. Omar would get a posse of his own and took care of business.
But the two kids may be the highlight. They are hysterical even though they can hardly talk. Carlo is the older, at four years old. His uncle Omar and Aunt Ana teach him to wear stylish clothes, gel his hair back, not cry, be strong, and don’t back down from anything. But he is so tiny. The younger is Itsael, whose head is shaped like a football. You can put your hand over it sideways completely from ear to ear. It’s a good thing there aren’t stitches on…um…anyway... They chased balloons all over the square, ask if they can bring home baby chicks that have been spray painted crazy blue and pink and yellow colors, and fight like normal brothers do. It takes all of us taking turns entertaining them or carrying them or holding their hands or taking them to go to the bathroom in the middle of the street or everything. I love every minute.
Across the street from Tia and Tio’s apartment is a little hole-in-the-wall comic book store, which was something I wouldn’t have expected to find. I spent an hour browsing through comics I have seen tons of times, but never in Spanish. There was a lot of Spanish-speaking Archie. I’m not sure why, but it was hypnotizing. I couldn’t stop reading them.
Ana and Tia asked me a lot of questions about racism in the US. Interestingly enough, that topic has come up quite frequently. Now the funny thing is that pretty much everyone who asks me thinks there is still a ton of racism in the US (I am not here to debate that claim, but I have not seen very much in my life in the tranquil Pac NW). This question is funny to me only because of the amount of racism that I have felt here against me in small town Mexico in a mere 7 months far outnumbers the amount of times I have seen it in the US. She wanted to know “how much racism is there in the US?” I laughed and made the comparison that it is like corruption in Mexico: it’s probably present, but you don’t see it a lot, and when you do it is usually in the context of talking about police (with a chuckle). She looked at me and said “then you do not understand nor comprehend Mexico still.” There was an awkward pause, and she continued, “corruption exists in every facet of every persons life. I see it on small or large scales numerous times everyday.”
Not holding such a pessimistic view of this country, I thought about it for a while and asked her for examples. She said it came down just to the fact that it has been institutionalized for so long, and that everyone thinks they don’t have enough money to be able to uphold personal ideals except for a small few. To get into such and such school, “una mordida.” To get gas for your house when you want it, to get your electricity fixed, to get a job, to get good grades, to get out of traffic tickets, mordida. To get out of paying taxes, to get out of paying for food permits, to get away with stealing a car, (of course a much larger) mordida.
I thought back to my friends telling me that a police pulls you over, and can give you a 1500 peso ticket, or you can give him a bill and it’s a lot cheaper. For him, he doesn’t have to do the paperwork and take you in or whatever. I thought about how many people pay off the police or government officials, people whom I respect. When someone pays someone else off, who is the guilty party? Doesn’t corruption exist on both ends of that? If I get pulled over and just pull out a 200 peso bill (I have never been pulled over), I am more or less guilty than the policeman who takes it? It doesn’t really seem like you have a choice, that if you don’t pull out the Mr. Bribe things will get much worse for you, but whose responsibility is it to stop the cycle?
Anyway, we debated this point for a while until she stopped, moved her face really close to mine, and said “your eyes are beautiful.” I blushed and got a little angry at this obviously aggressive move to what ends I could not understand. Besides, Adalid was right there.
On the bus home Kike was dozing off. When he was just about to sleep, he mumbled “you were going to tell me what the best idea you’ve ever had was, or something like that. Right?”
Oh yeah!
“I have no clue what I was thinking. I really don’t remember.”

Chapter 7: Theft in San Agustin

2006-02-08T12:11:00.001-06:00

During this time of the year, there are a lot of fairs around the county. So occasionally there are few people around the pueblo. This night, San Ag was pretty much empty. Kike and I are laying there, each in our own bed, relaxing, watching TV. We are watching black and white comedy shows that borders on funny, but is securely in Not Funny with no visa and no passport, staring across the river into the promised land of Funny. I should read, I should write, I should go swim in the filth canal, anything to get away from this passive destruction of my brain.
Outside I hear sounds of a few kids playing. It gets a lot louder as apparently they come running down the hill, passing our window that faces the street, playing some loud game. We hear “get them! get them!” as they run past. The noise seems to grow and grow as if more and more people are playing. This is maybe like 10:30 or 11:00 at night.
“What is going on?”
“Who knows… crazy country folk.” Bam! Like a loud balloon popping.
“Ay, buey.”
“What was that?” I am thinking gunshot but I don’t want to say it in case just saying it might make it be true. Kike slides into his wheelchair, still in a relaxed position tipped back against his bed. He finally props himself up and opens the door and we go out to the balcony that overlooks the valley. We move close to the edge to see above us to see that there are a lot of people coming down off the hill. I didn’t even think that many people were around.
Since most of the people in that town are fair or tianges vendors of miscellaneous goods, almost everyone has a truck with only a front bench in the cab, a big bed in back surrounded by a custom frame that stretches up much higher than the truck is long, and usually a few kids hanging off the back. About 15 of these are coming down the hill, except that they have to go about 2 kilometers out of the way and back around because the road that goes all the way up the hill isn’t connected to our little dirt road that runs just a short ways past our place. Everyone has a flashlight and most people have sticks or canes. A lot of old people congregate just below where we are looking down from, wrapped up in blankets and coats. People are everywhere in the empty corn fields below, flashlights and all. Obviously some people went to bring the other people, because more and more trucks arrive. Most start plowing through the fields like useless tractors. There are people everywhere. They have broken into and are searching the unfinished house that sits down in the middle of the fields, a house that was started years ago and stopped once the owner realized there was no practical way to get electricity to the house, the lines running completely in the wrong directions. They are also above us, searching the canal of filth. More trucks arrive, each carrying like ten people in the back all with high powered flashlights. Kike looks at me and I just smile nervously.
“Let’s go down there.” I cringe but he is enthusiastic to find out what is going on.
So we go down. There are, as I said, like a dozen old people sitting on the short wall that lies below our place. They are all wrapped up talking among themselves mostly in Mazahua.
“What’s going on?” Kike asks.
“Three kids robbed the church above. They ran down the hill and disappeared. Who knows where they are?”
“What did they steal?” I am not talking at all, just looking nervous and smiling and trying not to get in anyone’s way. This is clearly a moment that the herd instinct has taken over and I am not about to get run over in the stampede.
No one answers the question. He turns to me: “probably some forks and knives and offering plates.” He laughs and I look at him and bob my head as if I am laughing but make no sound in hopes that no one will notice me. They go back to speaking in Mazahua, not ignoring us but having nothing else really to say to us; just smiling and search the fields down in the valley with their eyes. The valley is interesting because with the exception of the one unfinished house it is completely corn. There is a small river running through it, although difficult to see, and at one point to the left there is a small plateau that has been made basically by erosion. It doesn’t look natural, but it does give the otherwise plane valley some character. Oh, and then more corn. Right now there is no corn, but normally it is completely covered. Every piece of the terrain is divided into plots, all full of corn. Normally. But it has all been harvested in early Winter and has yet to start growing again. As soon as you get out of the valley up onto the hill, the houses start. As soon as you reach the first hill, just on the hill, you turn around and already feel like you are looking down onto the valley from way up above. We are like the fourth house up. It really feels like the fields are far below. Each step you take upwards you really feel like you cannot possibly get higher. Even at just the first house. The valley is like a huge oval, stretching out left to right, with hill on three sides and the highway the border for the fourth side. Like a huge oval with one long side cut thin. You can see the entire stretch of planting fields from where we stand. At least during the day you can. We can just see the outline of lights from the houses that border it.
This is not what I am thinking about. This is what I am thinking about: what on Earth are they going to do with the kids if or when they catch them? I imagine that they aren’t going to do anything too drastic because they stole from the church, so they probably will just yell at them and then forgive them and send them on their way telling them to come to service on Sunday at 1:00 AM or whatever ungodly hour they usually start the service, keeping us awake until the wee hours of the morning. Every Sunday I go to sleep to the sounds of a guitar, drums, and the dreaded keyboard that overpowers them all, stuck on the “accordion” setting.
I can stand it no longer.
“What in God’s green Earth are they going to do with the kids if they catch them?” Is what I am repeating over and over in my head, translating and memorizing it so it will come out perfect once I decide to vocalize my question.
“What are going to do kids if catch them?” is what I say. Kike understands and repeats it to them but in words they can understand. They smile and chuckle to themselves. Kike says something I don’t catch, and they respond with more things I don’t get.
The next thing I understand is one old man who smiles and says, “there was those Pepsi truck drivers who stole money from that lady who lives above the middle school. That was about ten years ago. They burned them alive.”
Another woman pipes in. “And those kids who had stolen from the store, that store about half way up. I think they scalped them.” Her words were “took the skin off their heads” but I figured maybe there isn’t a direct word for “scalped” in Spanish.
Good God. Kike laughs nervously. “No maaaanches.” I look at him, and he looks at me and squirms in his chair.
A couple of kids run up, coming from the left. One is bleeding from his forehead and they all look serious.
Kike motions with his head towards Las Rosas, and we excuse ourselves and go back inside.
Safely inside, I finally speak again. “No way. I heard that right?”
“Yep,” and then repeated what they had said, just incase I hadn’t really got it. That is one thing he is getting good at. Looking at me and affirming that I understood regardless of whether I did nor not, and then repeating it as not to patronize me but to make sure I am getting what is going on. It comes out naturally now after a lot of practice and trial and error.
We go back up to the balcony, and this time out onto the roof on one side. Now we can see down the valley and to the left and up the hill.
“Did you see that kid with the blood?”
“Yeah. That was funny. He probably just fell down and knocked his head. He wanted to look bad so he just let it bleed and ran around like that.”
“You know what we should do? The people are all down on looking for the kids. We should go up the hill and steal stuff from their houses.”
“I like the way you think.” There are probably like 400 people all over. Standing in the back of trucks, walking around doing nothing, running with flashlights, like busy dancing phantasms, across the corn milpas below.
“What is those noises we hear that sound like balloons exploding?”
“Gunshots.”
I knew it. Why did I ask?
“Yeah. Quite a few of them have guns.”
So he has been told. He also was told that it is illegal to cut down trees here. Whatever. Whatever.
“Whatever. Go get the flashlight. We’ll find these little criminals.” I run to get the flashlight from our room. I also get the pole. I actually stole the pole from a playground. It is one of those poles that you do pull ups on, or more commonly girls swing one leg around and go round and round. It was about to fall off, so I figured I’d take it to fight off the inevitable ghosts that we would encounter in our 250 year old residence (boy was I right). I scurried back looking behind me the whole way. I now had it in my head that the thieves were inside our walled Eden of Las Rosas. They had entered through the canal of filth that ran directly under the courtyard, or jumped the 8 foot walls, or more likely just come in through one of many wholes in the walls. Or had grappling hooks. In my mind they were also well armed. In my mind they think they have me surrounded, surprised, but they don’t know one crucial thing: I do know.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“Check down below in the molds room. I thought I saw something move.”
Ohh gosh. They really are here. Kike sits up there on his nice roof with one singular entrance and exit, with pieces of rebar sitting around, completely defendable, and tells me to go check below in the room with a million doors. And the flashlight batteries appear to be dying. I change course, still running at half speed, towards the ceramics molds room below. This is not the “downstairs downstairs” old general store part which you would enter and be eaten by ghosts if you entered at night (or as one friend said, “you would wake up in the morning with white hair because you have dreamt a thousand years of nightmares.”), but it is pretty scary. It makes up the fourth wall of this place, the bottom being the store and old rooms, and the other two the animal pens that are now classrooms or workrooms. It is now more scary here because I know the thieves are inside. But they won’t see me coming. I slow down so they won’t hear me coming. I am going to catch them from behind and hit them on the heads. No, that would be gross and I don’t really want to kill them, just knock them down and keep them down. Once they are there, I will yell and yell and yell and people will come running and then I will run so they won’t think I am part of the band of thieves. Or maybe I shouldn’t run because if I run they will think I am part of the band. Oh: I will yell and keep yelling and yell that I have them and that we need to haul them off to jail and not burn them alive or scalp them. Or maybe I’ll just hit them on the heads and save them being scalped. They will thank me. I speed up again as I enter the adobe building, and freeze. The first room. Of five. Actually three, but in the center room there are doorways left and right leading to small courtyards. So it’s like five rooms. The middle room is definitely the scariest. Room one, clear. Deep breathe, metal pole held high, ready for action. Middle room appears to be clear, but I cannot see into the courtyards. I dash through, ducking, and dive into the third room, slashing with my metal pipe. Scan scan scan Clear! OK, courtyard that now is to the left can be seen by Kike from above, so if anyone is there he will be able to see them and yell. And I don’t want to make a fool of myself. So just check the courtyard right, knock them all out, and back to the balcony. Go! I hurry out, turning the corner of the middle room into the courtyard to the right, and looking looking looking they are here somewhere…come out you thieves… clear!
And I’m out! Running around the courtyard and up the ramp, up to the balcony and out onto the roof where Kike is, I am breathing fast and furious and he is looking at me like I am crazy. I bob my head back and forth like I have been exercising. Nice. Nice. I sit down on the concrete roof.
“Nobody?”
“Nobody.”
“Hmmm.”
We sit in silence. I mean no one was talking. We sit there as I breathe heavily and cars drive through the corn fields and people yell here and there. Then we hear somebody shout from the top of the hill.
“They are in Dolores! Dolores! They are in Dolores!” Dolores is the small town on the other side of the hacienda, about two minutes up the road, the highway, if you were to go straight down from here to the highway and turn left. If you were to come from San Felipe, it is the fourth set of speed bumps. As you hit the hacienda on the right, you curve down to the left. It wraps back to the right and you go down, over a bridge that is over a little creek, and then you can go left into Portes Gil or right up to where we live in San Agustin. Or you go continue straight, heading down the highway. People start to yell, and all the cars turn back to the road and in minutes everyone is gone. A ghost town. Just gone. And in five minutes they are back, searching through the fields again. False alarm. Ten more minutes and we hear it again.
“Portes! Portes Gil!” That, as I said, is on the other side of the highway from us. About three times the size of our little town. Gone. Everyone. Again. Apparently everyone wants a piece of the action and no one is going to be left behind. Five minutes and they are back. Searching in the fields, the house, around Las Rosas, and wherever they feel like it. Just in front of us I see something move in the bushes below.
“Kike, what’s that?” whispering loudly. He turns the flashlight on the object below. It is an old woman squatting to go to the bathroom. She leaps up and turns to look at us. We both dive onto the floor.
“What was that? What was that?” he says, laughing, mocking me.
“Hey, I didn’t say to put the flashlight on her, I just asked what it was.” We are both trying to stifle our laughter but it is getting difficult. I could not be more embarrassed but I am just hoping the woman didn’t see us and happens to not have known or heard about the American who has been living with the wheelchair kid in the haunted house for the last few months.
I help him up and we go back and go to bed. Screw this, we are wasting our time. Nothing cool is going to happen. Minutes after turning off the light, there is a knock at the front door. The big black steel double door.
“Go get it.”
“What? Are you kidding? I am not going to the door. You go.”
“Yeah, shut up. Go get the door. I am not going to get up, pull pants on, and roll out there. Hurry up.”
“Unngg” I mumble as I pull myself up and shorts on and put feet in shoes and out door to the main door. They knock again just as I get there, and I open one door to about 15 men standing there.
Oh, what have I done. Each one is armed with something unique. One man has a cane that is not being used to help him walk. Another man has a piece of PVC pipe, a few inches in diameter. Another man has a 2 X 4 with nails through it. What have I done, indeed.
“Yes?”
“Can we come in and look? We think they might have jumped the wall.”
“I already checked.”
“Can we please come in and check?” A gruff voice that I probably should have just agreed with from the first moment.
“Uhh, yes. Come in. Wherever you want.” I go back the room, shut the door and lock it. I go to bed and pull the covers tightly up to my chin, rolling over so I am against the wall below the window. If someone throws something through the window, it’s not landing on me!

The next day there is much discussion about it among the workers. Kike is telling the stories from the night before, from the bleeding kid to the gunshots to the woman going to the bathroom, or “doing a two” as he said, word for word translation. They all said they had heard about it and were worried for us. I pretended like it had been no big deal.
Everyone had their own story:
“I was told it was six guys.”
“I was told it was nine guys, and that they are from Mexico City.”
“I was told that it was six guys that are from around here and that they are going to go get them today.”
“I was told that it was 12 guys and that they are saying that one of them is tall and light skinned.”
Nice. That’s just what I need. To be scalped.
“Just kidding.”
Jerk.

So exactly one week after that, the same thing started where people began shouting and yelling and guns going off, but in the afternoon. And farther up on the hill. We looked out, but I was too nervous to leave this time. We waited about an hour, and finally hunger forced us to leave for the nearby tienda to hunt and gather. As we leave about 40 trucks are coming down the round about road, with people shouting. We wait for them to all go by, and hike out to the small store. We get there ten minutes later, having successfully avoided riot and avoided falling in the Filth Canal. We go into the store and the old tienda woman is there.
“What is going on?” Kike asks.
“Oh, they got them.”
“They got who?”
“Those kids who robbed the church.”
Ohhhh. I cringe. But filled with intrigue.
“Where are they going?”
“Down to the other church to see what they are going to do with them.”
“What are they going to do with them?” I inquire.
“Oh, probably just burn their car, beat them up a little bit and let them go.”
“Craziness.”
“Yes, but on one side it is a good thing. About three years ago a guy came into my store. He came in and asked for a half kilo of ham. I went to get it and when I turned back around he was holding a gun. He said ‘give me all the money you have.’ For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I just said to him ‘look, you obviously don’t know where you are. Here you have three choices. You can come around and take the money, but as soon as you leave I am going to start yelling and everyone will come down the hill, and you won’t leave alive. OR you can just shoot me and everyone will hear the noise and coming running and you won’t leave alive. OR you can just turn and leave now and I won’t say anything.’ He stood there and looked at me for a minute, grabbed the ham and ran out.”
Extreme awe filled pause.
“Wow.”
Needless to say we didn’t purchase ham but we did purchase enough chips and cookies to last us the evening, and paid for every last cent.

Chapter 6: A Fun Fun Story

2006-01-23T12:49:00.000-06:00

So a few weeks later the girls in my classes are talking about a carnival that apparently is set up in San Felipe’s “Centro.” I didn’t know that a town with like 4000 people could even have a downtown, but they explained to me that pretty much every town, city and village in Mexico has a city center where the old Catholic church is located. Usually there is a little park and shops surrounding it too.
I didn’t quite gather what was going on, but I gathered that they had at least one car loaned to them and that I was invited. And apparently there was going to be “a huge fireworks display,” as far as I could figure out, at least from what their hand motions and sound effects described.
We arrive into town that night, the borrowed van full of friends, and descend upon the tiny town square packed with people. Lights, sounds, smells, it’s quite the scene. A lot of carnival rides. The first ride we encounter is the classic “spin till you puke” ride where you side in the seat and it goes up and down and rotates round and round on a flat platform. It looks like it was used in the US, broke down, and was sent to Mexico, “Land of No Laws” (nor lawsuits, apparently). It is making some horrible noises, being spun around on tires that are low and are having a hard time operating. No one seems to notice but me.
As I am giving Kike a push past the kiddie rides, I almost get drilled by one of the little cars going around on the tracks. There is absolutely no fence nor guard rail nor people nor anything for that matter separating me from jumping on the ride, or getting hit. And to make matters sweeter, people are crowding through pushing me in front of the oncoming kiddie train.
We make it through past the kiddie rides, and move our way towards the SkyTram or whatever it’s called, the standard “big ride” of every carnival. I check it out, and after it runs twice without killing anyone, I decide I can probably survive a go, even though it’s a debatable decision to get on the biggest ride first. Leti Alcalde – wheelchair Leti from the hacienda – tells me she has purchased me a ticket, and laughs hysterically. I, smiling, pick her out of her wheelchair and carry her up the stairs and towards the seats where we all are going to sit. It was a good thing there was no “you have to be so tall to get on this ride” signs because I don’t know how I would have held her up vertically next to the sign. It would have been awkward. Everyone is on a large bench together, like 25 of us or so in a row with a shoulder bar over each person. We sit there a minute before the ride starts which simply takes you really high into the air and drops you, rotating in a circle left to right and then vise versa. I was in the last seat on the very end, and upon being lifted up and reaching the top could see the whole fair below me. We then dropped to the right, and after a few spins around, I was quite certain the squeaking wheel we were on was due to snap off and roll down the main street that lay to my right. I thought about it mathematically and wondered how many times it had gone around already without having been greased since arriving here, and how many more it would last before breaking off. I assumed it was due, and that I am due anyway for something bad to happen (Another of my biggest fears is that somehow I am “due.” A feeling I have after nothing bad has happened for a long time. It’s a bizarre complex I have that continues to haunt me. I have never seen anything terrible in real life. I have never been punched nor physically assaulted nor anything like that, nor have I ever known anyone really close to me that has died, not at least since my great-grandmother died when I was 12. I fell backwards over a bike and pulled my leg across the gears, leaving me with 16 stitches, but that is the only real pain I have felt, and that was like eight or ten years ago. So it just feels like it’s a matter of time until something bad happens. Oh, and the saying “bad things come in threes” just makes my fears three times worse). Which wasn’t really a bad death, I figured, because I’ve lived a long full life. But since that was just a joke and not really how I felt, with no on around to tell it to I decided that I would actually rather continue living, and thus started to pray. It was kind of fun though because it was like when you were a little kid and went on rides and thought there was actually a chance that you could die and that was half the thrill. It was like that.
Now, if this wasn’t enough, I had noticed prior to getting on the ride that there were like 15 large wooden towers loaded with fireworks located about 50 yards away from my ride that were starting to be lit. That, I was to understand, was the “fireworks display.” I didn’t really pay attention to them until they lit a tower on fire, it started up, and one huge firework flew our way, exploded, and I literally had to duck to avoid a red ball of fire headed straight for my cabeza. About this I am not joking. Technically they were going everywhere, including right into the crowd, which concerned me but honestly the one headed right for me worried me much more. The ride lasted like 12 or 13 loops, which is a lot more than 4 or 5 you get in the US, and finally started to slow down. We got off and I checked to make sure all my body parts were still firmly attached. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought about kissing the ground until the girls said they wanted to again. I asked them if they had heard about people dying on these rides. I think I was the only one who had felt the cold breath of the reaper (or “Santa Muerte” I guess I should say, as long as I am in Mexico). I also think they thought I was joking.
The rest of the evening and night was not as nearly as scary, as I proceeded to stay off the Wheel o’ Gruesome-Unholy-Rolling-Down-Main-Street Death, as well as the Decapitation Coaster and the Insanity Unsanitary House.
I did spend a good amount of time dispatching Mexicans at foosball, only to have my arrogance repaid with a game of “soak the Gringo in shaving cream” which I was hopelessly outnumbered in, but was a good sport about. Good times had by all and my desire to boot small children carrying shaving cream cans was held under control.
Kike had a friend who was selling ceramics there at the fair. A good majority of the fair is small shops set out in the streets. Most of the streets are closed down, leaving just one letting traffic move in and out of the town. I noticed that people definitely live on streets that were closed off. I don’t know how they survive the week of the fair, but it must be not fun. Or maybe awesome fun all week long. They do get a good view from their balconies. While Kike chatted with his friend Pablo, I walked around with Lolita, Chelo, and Angeles looking at clothes, jewelry, cowboy attire, posters, pots and pans and dishes, tropical birds in cages, until we got to an open space where there were huge stacks of blankets. Plastic bags filled with maybe two or three blankets and two or three pillows each were stacked all over the place, and a man with a microphone perched on top. There was a pretty good crowd around, so we looked on. The man would tell one of his three helpers to grab a bag of blankets and pillows, and then he would auction them off, starting at 350 pesos and moving down. If someone really wanted one, they would buy it more expensive so someone else wouldn’t get it. Otherwise, mostly people waited until they fell to 200 and bought them. Then the three helpers would heave the bag to the winner. It was quite a frantic scene. The auctioneer would only drop below 200 like once every 20 bags. If no one got it at 200, most were thrown back onto the heap and another was chosen.
It looked like fun, so I looked for a bag that looked good and got my 200 pesos out and waited. I turned to Lolita and showed her the bag I wanted. About ten minutes later they finally got to it and started to auction it off. The auctioneer started off at 300 when I suddenly for no real reason yelled out “200!” and waved my 200 in the air. I have no idea why I did this except maybe because I didn’t want anyone else to get it for more. The girls with me started cracking up. The auctioneer stopped and looked at me. He was clearly a showman, so he was going to make fun of me at least a little. “Oh! American!” he said in Spanish. “No one is going to outbid you! Hey, give it to him. Don’t let anyone else have it.” Everyone was laughing but I got my bag and gave him the 200. I was laughing too. A lot of people started coming over to see the commotion. I can’t imagine they are packed with people every night, but I certainly helped their sales right then. I stuck around there for a while, just to watch. Sometimes the auctioneer would yell at me to hold up my blankets and would yell “the American won’t outbid you! Come on people! He already has his! Now who wants one?”
And there was a lot of crazy food that I got to try that was really tasty. I can’t describe it, other than it involved normal food with more sugar. That’s a lie, I can explain it: there was ears of corn on sticks, soaked in mayonnaise, covered in powdered cheese, and then sprinkled with chile powder. There were stands with friend bananas and pancakes, both covered in cream and jam, sprinkles, and peach halves. There was “festival bread” which is just round cakes of semi-sweet bread, some sort of bread, like… I don’t know… like something I can’t think of. And there were whole shops dedicated to candy. But candy like I have never seen. Lime peels filled with coconut, jars of creamy homemade caramel, blocks of different colored sweets that I guess were dried fruit, sugar and gelatin,
Yes, we did continue to dodge fireworks for the rest of the night, that is true. Like I said, they had towers of fireworks that would be lit from the bottom explode into light and flame. The crowds were not monitored at all, so they pushed all the way up to literally touching the wooden towers. I was maybe a few dozen yards back, and I got sprayed with sparks a good handful of times. Oh, they had these great inventions, which were basically metal framed rings of fireworks that were put onto the end of poles and lit. They would spin incredibly fast and then released shot up into the night sky. You could see them fly up into the sky, but when the fireworks finished burning out, the nearly invisible metal rings would plummet back down onto the crowd. They probably weighed about ten to twenty pounds, just from observing the force of them hitting the pavement. People would watch them and then scream as they came back down, everyone laughing as people dived left and right to avoid them. Dude.
You probably have heard about Mexican fairs where fireworks are exploding around you and you are covering your head trying to avoid them. Well, much like this story, those stories are mostly true.

Chapter 5: Ghost Stories

2006-01-10T14:28:00.000-06:00

I don’t believe in ghosts. I say that to keep them away, in case the secret trick of keeping ghosts away is to not believe in them, like in Peter Pan, or what’s the kids’ story that comes up in? I don’t figure they can open computer programs and read what I am writing, nor turn on computers, especially since any ghosts living in Las Rosas are probably at least fifty years old and old people are bad with computers. And it is probable that these ghosts don’t speak, much less read, a lot of English. I’m safe for now.
I have heard them all now, all the stories. Most are about the hacienda, a good safe twenty minute walk away. The only good one about here is that some guy came in one time with a pistol and killed everyone who worked at the general store, the downstairs part. I guess that must have been the early 1900’s, because it was definitely implied as being pre-revolution. More recently on the road to the hacienda people have claimed to see glowing, floating women who tried to kill two kids. At the bottom corner of the hacienda, where the current owners reside, use to be a cemetery. And in the corner of the cemetery is a huge tree where they used to hang people. The tree has to be as old as the hacienda. People say that they would hang someone and leave their body up for days. This is mostly true, I am pretty sure. I later met a buddy, Marco, whose grandfather had been the caretaker of the hacienda. His parents told me a lot about the hacienda and the cemetery and the tree. I actually would later eat a delicious torta in Marco’s restaurant, which used to be the original place where the workers would go to get paid.
Anyway the tree is still there, and we use it to hang a rope swing now, not people. “They” say that the tree has been lit on fire and tried to have been chopped down but it “won’t let them,” as I am told. Very vague language is used. Things like “the tree put the fire out.” I don’t know what that means, but that is what I am told.
Another time a worker supposedly saw a “troll” (not a true translation, but as they told me, “a real gross troll-like creature, not a person” or anything). He apparently told them about it and promptly left work and never came back. Another worker arrived to the kitchen one night completely white and foaming at the mouth and couldn’t talk for a few days. After he could he said that was walking along one of the outer walls and suddenly the wall groaned and “threw” or “spit” blood all over him. He didn’t have any blood on him when he arrived at the kitchen, but he said that’s what happened. He also left. A lot of people are scared to stay at the hac (pronounced “h-aa-ss,” long and drawn out. That’s the way the cool kids talk).
I’ll tell you what I’ve seen: I have not seen anything. Although I am generally terrified of any dark enclosed areas, thus having refrained from haunted houses my whole life. Now I felt like I live in a real life haunted house. But:
The craziest story is this (it’s not really that crazy): I am sick, in bed, and Kike is out doing whatever. I don’t really care what he is doing because I am sick. All I know is he comes in and says “were you out on the balcony and the old rooms?”
“Nooo.” The end trails up, almost a question.
“Were you out on the balcony and/or the old rooms?”
“Nooo. Why?”
“I heard someone walking around up there.”
“Oh…Kay…” I get up, the adrenaline allowing me to temporarily forget my sickness with my new-found fear, grab the metal pole (don’t you have one by your bed?), and a kitchen knife and my flashlight and peek my head out the door. Creeping towards the walkway, the four stairs, and the soft reflection of light off the three swaying, creaking, doors of the “old rooms.”
OK. Umm, it’s like…ok imagine this: you find an old cathedral, an old stone Mexican church that looks somewhat run down. You walk in and see that it is rebuilt but not like you would expect. You would expect it to be remodeled in the same style it was originally build in, but instead it is completely redone in very practical but somewhat modern ways. The paintings on the walls and ceilings have been recolored, but not the greatest job was done and some faces look rather silly. The arched doorways have wooden or smoothed cement supports now, in complete contrast to the textured original form. A room where they used to have some sort of pastoral scene set up is now a storage room used to house floats and other parade paraphernalia. Supports in the ceiling keep it together where you would have expected them to redo it in order to not have to see the beams in view holding it all up. It looks rather unsturdy.
This is a pretty good metaphor for all old remodeled buildings, but in this example you instead of a church you have to imagine a general store. Like the cowboy movies, but of stone. Sitting alone on a hillside. With three hotel rooms on the floor above it complete with grand balcony, a courtyard surrounded by animal pens on three sides and the store and rooms, and above that a large storeroom made of adobe bricks.
Now some years later it is not alone on the hill, and most of the animal pens have been turned into classrooms, workshops, a kitchen, and an office. The courtyard has a basketball hoop in it. And everything else is run down and full of death traps. Something that in the states you would never be allowed to touch, much less enter, much less live in.
I mentioned earlier that my favorite part is the actual original bar downstairs. That still exists in its entirety: the winding, bending bar, the ornate shelves behind it, the original cash drawer with secret compartment. It is probably the only thing that is still exactly as it was 200 years ago. It is a beautiful sight, one I love to go down and just stare at thinking of what is must have been like before.
Back to the scene. I as I stand outside my door with my steel pole, knife, and flashlight, I also hear the footsteps. Slow, hard, coming from the room in front of me. My heard leaped into my throat. I figured I had the advantage with my pole and knife and no shoes to make sound. I walk slowly up the four stairs, and towards the old rooms and footsteps. The old rooms were constructed so that you have to go up the stairs, and you enter the middle room of the three. The room to the left is used as a storage room for some carpet, rolled up in the corner, and some floorboards that you would fall through if you stepped on them. So you have to be careful. If you turn right and walk into the room on the right, you can go straight to a tiny balcony in front, another spare, but much smaller room to the right, or to the left out onto the main balcony. It is the only available door out to the balcony. So if something is here, and it is not in the left room, it has to get through me to get out. That is an assurance because I know nothing can sneak up on me from behind. That could be my biggest fear in the whole world. Driving at night, I have often stopped the car to check the back seats to make sure no one is there. If anyone ever snuck into the back of my car and I noticed them, I would crash the car as fast and hard as I could to at least kill the both of us. That’s how nervous I am about people sneaking up on my from behind.
I swing up into the first (middle) room and directly into the left room, scanning quickly to see that there is nothing. My biggest fear was that something was going to be in that room, which you really can’t walk through. There are two bats in the corner, and they kind of look at me except I remember that bats are blind so they must not be looking at me after all. I turn back to the right and take a huge breath. I go to the light switch on the far wall, and click it on. That is, the switch clicked on, because the light did not turn on. It was like an inverted scare, something I expected to be there not being there. Great. So I walk into the right room, look right into the small room. Nothing. These rooms are made out of wood, and the only thing left, the balcony, is made of stone. So this is beginning to make me wonder, but in a terrified out of my mind type of way. I take a step out onto the balcony and look around. I know I heard someone out here, so he has to be somewhere. The moon is out, the valley is completely black, but the lights in the distance give a comforting glow. I shine my flashlight around to see that there is nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all. As I back up, the foot steps are right behind me. I turn, and run into the right room, into the middle room, down the stairs, down the walkway, turn left into the room slamming the door, scurry around Kike, drop the knife on the windowsill, the pole on the floor, and jump into my bed. I pull the sheets up to my mouth, breathing fast and remembering my sickness and feeling suddenly really terrible.
“What was it?” Kike moves over and picks up the pole.
“Who knows.”
What could it have been? I don’t know. I guess a ghost. Is that what you want me to say? I really don’t know.
There were other times. We heard what sounded like leaves being rubbed together, also coming above from the old room. We have heard whistling in the morning coming from down in the old bar. Another time two girls, Leti and Osvelia were going up to buy food from a small tienda above Las Rosas, staying late to fire ceramics, Kike was trying to fix the hot water heater in our bathroom, and I was in my room. In the stained glass storeroom, which is below to the left of the general store, the light suddenly for no reason turned on. Kike and the girls both saw it and when the girls came back we all went to investigate. The doors were locked shut with the padlocks, like normal, and Lety had the keys in her pocket. We had to unlock it all just to turn it off. I guess it’s an old house, but talk about creepy.

Chapter 4: Rabbits

2006-01-03T12:43:00.000-06:00

That first night, Kike bought a rabbit. He went and took it from the rabbit pens that are in the big warehouse just above our room, and lets it loose in our room. I found it later when I went back inside to sort my stuff out. It was kind of funny to see a rabbit there hopping around my room. I picked it up and played with it until he came in.
“Oh, you’ve found our dinner.” Uh oh. I was already attached to the poor thing (although it was pretty fat) and it was going to be tough to see it go.
“Dinner? How do you cook it?”
“Kill it, skin it, put it in the pan.” Although, honestly, I only caught the “kill it” part at the time. I would soon find out the other two parts.
So in about an hour later, when most everyone had gone home, I heard him calling my name. I run out to see him down in the courtyard holding the rabbit by the neck with two fingers and a hammer by the other three in his left hand, my Gerber utility knife on his lap which, along with his chest and arms, is covered by a long painting smock, and the rabbit’s furiously kicking back feet in his right hand. Without warning he lifts up the hammer and BAM! hits the rabbit on the head which causes quite the blast of sound. I jolt back, not expecting to see that coming. The rabbit shudders for a few seconds and his head falls to his chest. Not used to such violence, I reach with a funny face, and then turn squeamish when I see him pick up the knife to cut open the rabbit.
He cuts at the neck, pushing hard. But because it is all on his lap, he has to use a lot of caution not to cut himself. He is really giving it quite the go, me holding back covering one eye and squinting with the other to not have to see any squirt of blood or anything extra gross. He is cutting and cutting on the underside of the neck but I still see no red. He stops and breathes out heavily. “This thing is way harder to cut that I imagined.” He starts to cut again when suddenly the rabbit pops away and goes crazy. Our dinner is shaking and kicking and we are screaming like girls. Kike grabs the hammer and BAM BAM BAM again knocks him on the head and again it shudders and falls limp. We laugh and laugh and Kike gets back to cutting. We are completely on edge. Cut cut cut cut nothing. Kike looks at me for advice when again the rabbit jumps to life and we scream and I go hide and come back in an hour where the now furless rabbit lies in a frying pan.
We eat it straight, with tortillas. This is my first true meal with tortillas. I start to eat the meat right off the bone, but Kike stops me, heats up tortillas over the open gas flame on the stove in the kitchen, and puts them in a little hand stitched napkin, or washcloth or whatever it is. I guessed that it was to keep them warm (I guessed right). I finally pulled the meat off the bone with my teeth and dropped them into the tortilla, which I then ate.
It was party showing Kike I wanted to try and partly recognizing the relevance of the tortilla. You could afford to have a small meal of meat or vegetables or whatever that tasted good, and just add tortillas which fill you up and keep you healthy. This was a great service to both the Aztecs back in the day as well as anyone who has little money now. You could always life a simple life with tortillas and a little salt.
We grew a plant in Las Rosas at the time called “amaranth.” As opposed to corn, amaranth grows naturally in just about any soil. Heck, it can grow wild. It gives little seeds that when ground looks a lot like flour. My buddy Nick, studying Botany, did a little research for me. As it turns out, amaranth is a terribly boring, basic plant that gives a healthy crop without any complications or caring for it. The Aztecs used it for everything, which, unfortunately included mixing it with human blood sacrifices for tasty munchy munches. Of course the Spaniards would have nothing of the sort, and so banned amaranth from being used for anything. And so to this day, it remains unpopular even if it would be much healthier, easier, quicker, and just as simple to use as corn.

Chapter 3: Teacher Patreek

2005-12-07T13:33:00.000-06:00

This is really the beginning: I set down the remainder of my belongings, looking at what I had: two boxes of clothes, one box of teaching supplies mostly untouched, one box of games and sports equipment and some dishes and my Nintendo 64 and its odds and ends, one tube with some posters, a cowboy hat (not mine, technically), and a backpack that contained a laptop which recently had stopped working, a digital camera that did (but now doesn’t) a Discman that works but not well, a case with 64 CDs, only 2 originals. I had also “obtained” and brought: two sleeping pads, one chest of drawers, one night stand, one wooden folding chair and two towels, all taken from the hacienda, all handmade with the exception of the sleeping pads. The bed frame that awaited the sleeping pads was also handmade. How did I bring this much stuff with me to Mexico? I don’t really remember.
I do remember sitting there listening to the music that emanated out the room across from the bedroom I was in. There was a guitar being played and apparently all the workers there singing. The tune of the songs they sang were familiar but the words were in a language I knew not to be Spanish.
I pushed the dresser into the corner and threw the bed pads on the frame. A few blankets that were already in the room were then thrown on top. I sat on the bed and looked at the mostly empty room with its paint chipping, dirty tile floor, and Kike’s possessions: his bed, black and white TV, some books, a boombox CD player, a broom and a broken metal dustpan, and some plastic cups which I knew weren’t his. I sat there, took a breath, and thought about crying. I think I knew what that moment meant; I could almost see the future, or whatever. That’s only a half truth because I suppose that if I really had known the future at that point I would have cried a lot more.
The black steel door flew open and Kike rolled in, threw his hands in the air and yelled like a baritone rooster, “ooohr ohr oohhr ohr ohhhr!”
Kike is like this: 19 years old, second in a family of five, the only one who lives away from home. He is very short, maybe five feet, maybe not, which doesn’t really matter because anyone in a wheelchair is going to be short anyway. Relatively. At least to my almost 6 foot 2, skinny, frame. Kike is a full-blooded Mazahua Indian, which says nothing about him personally, only that he is dark skinned, has a wide nose, speaks a little Mazahua but not too much because evidently it’s not cool to speak dying languages these days, and lives in the mountainous region of central Mexico. And at this moment in time, he’s my only friend.
As the story goes, he grew up in Santiago Casandeje, a small pueblo about an hour away from where I threw my stuff down and we began to be roommates. He went to elementary school, playing soccer and basketball, fighting with his brothers, and so on. His favorite story of his childhood is how there was a disfigured kid who everyone hated in his first grade class. Kike says he didn’t know why but he wanted to be this kid’s friend. He says that at the time he didn’t know why; he knows now.
“What up, Homie?” he yelled in English, forcing my surprised face to look at him, allowing him to see that I was crying.
“Where did you learn that?” I ask in Spanish, which, at the time, probably sounded more like “where you learn this?”
“From the movie ‘Sangre por Sangre,’” he says. “You are crying for me!” More of a funny statement than a question.
“No, I…” I couldn’t even begin to come up with words to even make an excuse. “I don’t know.”
“No problem. Come on.” He turned and rolled out the door. I followed him out onto the walkway and around the corner to where the classroom was. I use the word “classroom” but really names like “ceramics shop” and “stained glass shop” and “storeroom” and “office” are just names for what the room is being used for at that exact moment. Here, all rooms and materials are used for whatever current purpose is desired. The bathroom is really the only room that was built to be what it actually still is, and most likely will continue to be. I have seen the ceramics room moved to three different places. I follow him into the classroom and there is my class. English class. Kike, ten girls, me. I am not exactly sure what is going on, but all I know is that I am in no way prepared to give class, nor really ready to try out my struggling Spanish without anyone to help me.
This is January. You won’t believe me, but it’s freezing cold. It must be like 5 or 6 Celsius, but with no indoor heat anywhere, I have my jacket on, as well as gloves and a wool hat.
I had actually arrived here because I wanted some job teaching English that would allow me to learn Spanish. A Mexican man and his American wife invited me to live at their little mission. This is January, but this is my fifth month. It goes quickly like this: I had been told that my mom and sister were going on a mission trip with my church to some place in Mexico and that they were leaving in the summer and were fundraising, but one day that summer they came up to me and informed me that two weeks before the trip was going to be taken, one of the leaders couldn’t go and there was a space open and that they needed, and wanted, another “adult male” to go along, and since I, being good friends with most of the then high schoolers, was voted to be put in her place without having to raise the money or anything. So I said yes. We ended up in a three-hundred-year-old hacienda in the west part of the State of Mexico where we did a few work projects and ate some real Mexican food and had some fun. When the week was over, the owner, a nice friendly guy of like 55 years or so told me that he wanted me to come back to be the English teacher at the school he was starting. He said that at what used to be the old general store for that hacienda, which he had purchased just a year before, he was going to start a project that paid local people to come and work half day, study half day. I laughed and said “yeah, I’ll think about it,” intending to not think about it. But two more years of college went by and I graduated and realized I really didn’t want to go get a job and work for the rest of my life to live comfortably and would rather go have a wacky, less comfortable adventure so I wrote them and asked if the offer was still open to which of course they responded yes and that following fall I went. Just like that. No, no other real purpose.
I originally got there in September, and spent a good three or four weeks trying to find something I could help out with. It was difficult because I found the whole mission completely unorganized and I pretty much spent most of my time either working on computer projects that would never amount to anything and never be used by anyone, or hanging out with any groups that came to the hacienda. That is how they make their money: it is like a retreat center, where groups come and stay and the money is used to pay the workers so they don’t have to go to Mexico City or Chicago to find work. About four groups a year are Americans, and thus I stuck to them whenever they were around. I then went home in December and thought about staying there for good.
A couple days before I left for home, I actually went to the school for the first time, in the old general store called “Las Rosas,” about a 20 minute walk from the hacienda. That was where I was originally going to teach English, but the school was still stumbling around in bureaucratic problems and I hadn’t yet made it there. They promised that by the time I returned, there would be a school and they would have hired like 15 people to paint ceramics or make stained glass windows or little glass trinkets and go to school. Kike was living there at the time by himself, and Miriam suggested that I go live there with him and be the teacher and whatever. I hung out with Kike some and it seemed like a much better idea than being frustrated with nothing to do in the hacienda and also a better idea that a real job in the states.
The “mission” consisted of one large ex-hacienda, like a flat-topped castle, that they used as a getaway spot for groups of people wanting a different sort of cultural experience, “Las Rosas” which is the old general store that was associated with the hacienda back in the day, and a few pieces of property here and there. There was a cathedral next to the hacienda, but was not part of the mission. That was public property. Their idea was to pay local people to work at the hacienda when groups came to use it, giving them jobs so they would not have to search in Mexico City or the US. At Las Rosas, the old general store that was now being used as ceramics and stained glass workshops, lived Kike all by himself, and they decided it would be good for all if I was to live there. Actually I just went because I wanted a wacky adventure. Wish granted.
So I arrived once again in January, “obtained” some furniture from the hacienda and in one van load had everything up there to start my new job as English teacher.
“Paktreek” he said “can we start class?”
“Uh, uh, uh, I am not very ready” I stammer as they all stare at me smiling. “You permit me, um, go my notebook and book” as I turn and back out the door. I turn and as I scurry down the walkway to the room, I hear catcall whistles behind me. “Oh gosh,” I thought, “please don’t let that happen again when I get back. I’m already as nervous as I need to be.” I go to the room and grab my mostly blank notebook in which I have written “English, Class 1” on it, a line under it, and nothing else. I snag the homeschool English 2 book they gave me and hustle back to the room where they are chatting among themselves.
“OK, ok, ok” I am stammering. I can’t help it. “Um, what were you, um, where are you in the book?”
“What class are we starting with?” the girl closest to me asks.
“What? What class?” I want to say “what do you mean” but instead I just stare blankly with my mouth moving pretending to try to come up with some sound.
“What classes are you going to teach today?” I understand most of that.
“Umm, English. Yes? Am I the English teacher?”
“You are the teacher.”
“What?”
“Umm, English. Yes? Am I the English teacher?”
“You are the teacher.”
“What?”
“You are the teacher. I would like to learn English, math, and computers.” Others concur.
“Oh good God,” I think as it hits me (not a frivolous use of the Lord’s name in vain, but an honest prayer of help). It’s not a huge life changing realization: it comes quickly and passes, but certainly scares me more than I was before. This is Little House on the Prairie, this is “The Classroom,” and I am “The Teacher.” Not being one to show much fear, I simply smile and blink. “I did not know” I answer. “Other class you want to learn?” They inform me that they have both Spanish and History already, but that those are homeschool courses learned out of studying their books together, and subjects that I will have a hard time supplementing with my own knowledge. They say they used to have a mandatory micro-management class on Saturday mornings, but they didn’t like coming on Saturdays and it was cancelled. We somehow work out that we will have English three times a week, three separate math classes each twice a week, and a computer class if we find a way to get a hold of some computers, which supposedly actually exist and are floating about someplace, so I am told. I have no expectations for computer class.
I think I grasp most of this, and it turns out I did. At least enough to continue.
“Can we start by you telling me your names?” it comes out straight and true. I hope.
“Angelica.”
I am writing this all down.
“Adalaida.”
“Angeles.”
“Adalid.”
Oh please let this be a joke. This is already hard as can be.
“Hilda.”
Finally, a name I can remember. Ok, note to self, Hilda is the short Mexican girl. Nice.
“Silvia.”
“Angeles.”
“Again?” I ask.
“Yes, there are two.”
Oh my gosh.
“Leticia.” Leticia is a Mexican name? I thought it was an African American name. I have my full concentration on how I possibly spell that, and if it is unusual for a Mexican to have a African American name. I’m hardly even looking at them except to smile and nod. It is African American, isn’t it?
“Consuelo.” Who they immediately call “Chelo,” confusing me all the further. Sweet.
“Lolita.” That’s a keeper. The only one I will have no problem remembering. She has a funny smile, easy to remember. And the only one I will possibly remember for the next month. Lo-LI-taaa.
I tell them to open their books to page blah de blah, some exercise that I stare at for a minute, “changing active voice into passive voice.”
“Umm, can you do?” The activity. That is what I want to say: “Can you do this activity? Can you understand what is going on and complete the sentences.” Nice first try though. I turn to put an example on the whiteboard behind me. Immediately I get whistles. I blush bright red and turn to look at them, whereupon they simply laugh. “Laugh it up. Have your fun. Pick on me when I can’t comeback with any witty retort” I think. This look back was, of course, the key that opened a huge door of more to come, and I realized it much too late. Focus would become quickly moved away from English to trying to make my face as red as possible.
“We are going to try the exercises on page. Please. Here is example.” And I write on the board “Johnny ate the cake.” “What is that in voice passive?” Blank stares. “Ok. This is…um… that one person does something… but we want to say something is done… by… something.” Blank stares. Did that not make perfect sense? I am starting to get the impression that this is not that they have not arrived at this point in the book, but that the book has not been used at all, ever, and this is more than just my inability to explain. Huh. “Do we know numbers?” Some heads nod. Well, let’s start there.
“HOW OLD ARE YOU,” I say loudly and slowly, in English. Blank stares. Nice. “How old are you,” I repeat, in Spanish. “But you tell me in English.” They all look about 18. I am 22. Whatever. “Lolita?” Told you I would remember her name.
“Twenty.” English, good. I guess she could be 20.
“Consuelo?” Her sister. Easy enough as her name sits next to Lolita’s on my list.
“Twenty One.” There is no possible way that she is older than Lolita, but I should be concentrating on English.
“Good. Yes. Umm, you, Hilda.” I am avoiding the A’s and the African American Mexican.
“Twenty Two.” No possible way.
“Very good. Ummm, yes, Kike.” Nice bailout, as I search the rest of the names desperately trying to come up with a match.
“How do you say ‘19’?” Spanish.
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen.”
“Good. Umm, the rest of you?”
“Twenty Two.” Could be.
“Twenty.”
“Twenty Seven.” Bwah? She looks older than me, but not 27.
“Sixteen.”
And finally the last girl, the second Angeles I remember but not in time. She looks like 20 or 21.
“Fifteen.”
“What?”
“Fifteen?”
Awkward pause. I open my mouth and shut it again. More pause. “Tell me in Spanish.”
“15.”
“Are you sure?” Blank stares and polite smiles. Right. I only believe it in the slightest because I figure if she wanted to impress me or lie, she would give herself more years than she has, not less.
“You know what? We are going to play a game. OK?” Smiles. Horray. I run to my room and grab a deck of cards. Screw this. We’re playing “spoons” until the bell rings.
My favorite joke when I was teaching English in Taiwan with my buddy Ethan was this: when telling each other about a class that hadn’t gone well and we were about to bail and just play some stupid game, we would say to each other, as if we were talking to our class, “listen up. I am going down to 7-Eleven for a smoke. You, um, Johnny or Hoo-Cho-Crum or whatever your name is, you guard the door. If the principal comes, tell him I am in the bathroom and look like you are busy with English.” Of course neither of us smoked, but when we were especially tired and wanted to tell the joke, we would just pretend like we were smoking a cigarette, taking a deep inhale and exhale, finger and thumb holding the imaginary cigarette. Most of our jokes were pretending like we were being extremely culturally insensitive, or extremely “American” like our Australian buddy Paul liked to say. That was his favorite joke, I think. We, of course, are not quite the jackasses like I might portray us as. The worst thing we probably have said or done is that Ethan says he votes only for men, because he is sure there are women who only vote for women and he wants to even that out. I say that I like to only vote for the people who I think will win, kind of like filling out my college basketball Final Four bracket, trying to predict the winners. Our friend Liz says that makes us horrible people. No one else has called me a horrible person except for her.
Just to let you know, for the sake of my good name, I will faithfully fill out Final Four brackets for the next three years even though I will watch zero games. I will do exactly as well during those three years, having known nothing, as I had done the previous ten years. Just pick upsets here and there!
I pretend to smoke my cigarette, grab my cards and get back and motion for everyone to gather around one table. I have realized the brilliance of non verbal communication. A lot can be accomplished with hands and facial expressions. These should be greater revelations, as each one makes my life a trillion times easier. But they aren’t. They come too quick to be thought about and just happen and I hope I am not taking them for granted but I figure I probably am.
So we all circle around the table.
“OK, is what we do, we are going, ok, sit. OK, I am going to give everyone one…these…”
“Cards.”
“Right. Cards. Four. Every person four. Understand? OK, only 8 people. Only small cards. Only eight people, four cards. Now. Do you have pencils? Give me pencils.” They break out the pencils and I put seven pencils on the table. “So. Eight people have four cards. So I will start, I will take one card and give one card to you. You say yes or you say no and you give one card to her.” I sound like a child and I know it. I am actually using “so” in English. “We are going…just to play.” I say “just” in English too. I have no word to replace it. Actually I take off the “t” from the end, saying “jus” and hoping it sounds something like what I hope its Spanish equivalent is. So I go. I just start picking up cards and handing them to the “A” girl sitting next to me, who is smiling at me, looking at my face every time I turn her way. It is making me incredibly uncomfortable. I swear that if she has “Te Amo” written on her eyelids I am out of here. She is not doing anything, so I motion for her to pass her cards, which she does. I just keep going as everyone watches me, passing cards to the girl on my left but obviously not knowing why. I am looking at Kike hoping he is figuring it out. He is not. OK, so I get four jacks and show them to everyone, and pick up a pencil. I motion for them to pick one up, which they do nicely, leaving one person out. She looks at me like “what?” and I smile and say “you lose. Change with you” pointing at another girl.
There is a tremendous “aaahhh” as a collective understanding occurs and suddenly I feel a lot better. They chatter among themselves as those who didn’t give the “aaahhh” shout out the first time now give it. Sweet. Sweet. Yes. I smile and nod like four or five times and deal the cards again. Four out to each, and here we go again. Pass left pass left girl still looking at me and not her cards but at least the others are suddenly really into it and catching on really fast. I got the four again first, and grab a pencil to have five of them grab pencils leaving on the table one pencil and two of them staring. The others chatter and they both dive for the pencil. One is out and another in, and everyone has grasped the idea. We are not in any way learning English but I figure they are getting used to me and that is probably good enough to keep going like this. Around the cards go and the pencils are out and someone loses and a new person is in, and everyone is now not only understanding but intensely interested in winning.
This goes on for like a half-hour. I couldn’t put the breaks on this train if I wanted to. Finally two pencils break as a result of people fighting, so I stand up and say: “ok, ok, ya. Fun fun. Is all. Math class 1 tomorrow. OK?” I get some head nods and Kike’s gives me the thumbs up so I clasp my hands together, smile, and everybody watches me as if I am going to do something. I turn and walk out of the room and they all laugh. Man I am smooth.
I would later find out that the two sisters’, Lolita and Chelo, real full names are Maria Dolores and Maria Consuelo. “Dolores” of course means “pains” or “sorrows,” and “Consuelo” which means “consolation” or “comfort.” I never would find out what it was, but there has to be a story there. There has to be some great story behind that one.

Chapter 2: Stories

2005-12-02T13:40:00.000-06:00

About me: the hair on the back of my hands makes them look rugged. They aren’t really. When she slides her fingers through mine and turns my hand over to see how her dark, smooth brown ones look on my long, kind of fat, white ones, mine look exceptionally manly. I got that from my grandpa. He has the same hands I do, except he is a carpenter, a house builder, a handyman, so his not only look sturdy but they actually really are.
OK. So everyone has their story right? I mean, everyone has like one or two great stories, stories that you bring up for them. You are with a group of friends and even though the moment is not at all appropriate, you want to hear it again so you say “hey, tell your story.” It’s so good you feel they must be just ready to explode, like you are, so you try to give them a place to start, which never really works out the way you wish it had.
My story is that I stole a car. On accident. A buddy asked me to pick him up from the airport with another friend’s car. I went to get the car from where he had told me. I parked it in the underground parking and took his bags back to the car while he waited for the other friend. The other friend of course knew the car wasn’t hers, so I called the police and had them come out. I actually was nervous for moment that they might arrest me or something, but I have had the cops called on me three or four times before for things I didn’t do or wasn’t doing, so I knew it would probably be chill. We took a taxi home and left five bucks on the seat for the guy to pay his parking fee (which probably was more like 100 by the time he actually came to get it, but I didn’t stick around to find out).
The story is better than that, but I’ve told it so many times it has gotten a little tired.
What really happened is this: My roommate Chevas went to visit his fiancée in Wisconsin whom he had met only a few weeks before. He had no way of getting back to the dorms from the airport, but he had another friend coming in that day, maybe a half hour later. It worked out for all of us for me to bring her car and pick them both up. A totally different friend ran the keys by my room, and gave me directions. Up on 65th street. We are on 45th. A nice walk. So I make it up there and see two cars like the one she had described: red Ford Acura’s. I try the key on the nicer one, no luck. The older crappy one I hop in, fire her up, and bring her down to the airport.
I get into the temporary parking, grab my ticket, and find Chev. His friend won’t arrive for another half hour, so we go to put the bags in the car. As we walk out into the parking garage, we approach the car. “Where is it?” he asks. “Right here.” He stares and it and says it doesn’t look like hers. I open the door and start the car. He shrugs and I go to open the trunk. The key won’t work. I try and try getting a little nervous. I try the passenger door and it doesn’t work either. Hmm. I furiously get in the car and open the glove compartment. I ask Chev what the girls name is, and it is totally different than the registration. What in the world? I can’t think straight. What is going on?
“OK,” I say. Let’s go find her and bring her back and she’ll fix this whole mess. So we go find her, bring her back, and she says “nope. That’s not my car.”
Beeep!
I think hard, and remember when we were filming a movie one time and we were shooting a fight scene. Someone didn’t see the camera and lights and called the police. They came and we all had a good laugh and they told us just to notify them if next time we are going to do something like that. We asked if we just call 911. They said “yeah, that’s fine.” We laughed about going to rob and bank but first just calling 911 to let them know we are filming a movie there first. They will never show up.
So I walk over to the pay phone and dial 911. The operator comes on and asks me if it is an emergency. I say no. She asks me what the problem is. I say this:
“Ummm………….I think…………” Huge pause. I open my mouth and no words come out. “I think…….. I think I just stole a car.”
“What?”
“Yes. I did. I’m really sorry.”
“You stole a car.”
“Correct. On accident, kind of.” I tell her the story as best I can. She seems incredibly confused. She asks for the license plate and I give it to her. She pauses a minute and says “Ford full size van?” I think “oh great, I stole a stolen car.”
“Um, no, a Ford Acura.”
“Huh. OK, where are you?” I tell her. “Stay by the car. An officer will be there in a little bit.”
Meanwhile Chev and his friend go to call another friend to come get us. Chev is getting a huge kick out of calling people and telling them I stole a car. I sit by the car and wait. About ten minutes later a police car lazily winds up the parking garage ramp. He stops in front and steps out. “A good day to go to jail, huh?” I laugh my best non-nervous, loud laugh but he smiles too so I feel a little better. “Yeah.”
“You stole the car, huh?”
“Yep. First strike.” We take a look through the registration and whatnot, and he runs the plates. Chev comes over to get the details. The officer comes back.
“Well, they don’t have insurance, which I sure report, but let’s just let this one slide since they really haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Do you have their phone number? Should I call them? I could just bring it back if you want. I just am nervous of showing up to a 300 pound man with a shotgun asking me if I enjoyed my joyride in his car.”
“A good point. No, just leave it here. I’ll contact them.”
“OK. Well, some friends are coming for us. Is there anything else I need to do?”
“You might want to leave them some money for parking. It will be a dandy ticket by the time they get here.”
“True. Chev, got any money?” He has none. I have five bucks. I leave the ticket and the five bucks on the seat. I want to leave more money, but I really just want to get out of there.
It turns out the actual car hadn’t even been there at all. Her roommate had taken the extra keys and gone shopping. I have no idea what I would have done if there hadn’t been the other car there to steal. But certainly not ended up with a good story.
That’s what you’re here for, right? I mean, if you are looking for wisdom or insight, you can find it yourself because I just have stories. Some aren’t even mine. Some I adapt to make them better. Some I take from other people and put myself in them because it would be stupid to tell someone else’s story for them. Most I just recount as I remember them, which may be completely inaccurate or maybe or maybe not as someone else may have seen the same incident. I try to keep the events linear, but usually there is something I forget and have to add later. So I guess the stories aren’t linear unless I’m thinking really clearly. It happens. Some stories I have to tell for other people, because they aren’t here to tell them, maybe they don’t speak English, or maybe the details don’t allow me to put myself into them, but they are too good not to tell. Like my friend Lazaro’s story:
“I used to be a world class runner. I ran at the Estadio Azteca when I was 19. A guy tripped me coming out of the blocks. The track was this spongy substance that I had never ran on before. I complained ‘hey, that didn’t count,’ so they let me run in different heat. I won, with a time of 2 minutes and 28 seconds. That was the one kilometer of course. When I won, another guy in the heat said ‘that wasn’t fair. He had a motor.’ Everyone laughed. I had had some gastro intestinal problems that day and as I ran I made a lot of noise coming out of my behind. I guess they heard it too. I had a great time. That was the Olympic qualifying race for the Olympics in Los Angeles, 1984. The first place ran a time of 2 minutes 24 seconds. That was my friend, Carlos Barragon. He is from around here, Atlacomulco, too. He set the world record that year, there is Los Angeles. In the 10K. I came in third in the qualifiers, no more than the alternate, which makes you hope something bad will happen to the other two. Not career ending, but a pulled hamstring or something. I had never run in spiked shoes before that race. It was something I could not have imagined. And the track. I ran like the wind. Whoosh!
Carlos told me ‘you pull for me in the 10K, get out fast and get the group moving. After four or five kilometers I’ll catch up and go from there. Then I’ll pull for you in the 24K. We’ll help each other win.’
There was another winner from around here that year. Alfredo Sea, his name. From Ixtlahuaca. He won the gold medal in handball. Or the world championships. Or something like that. No, not that year. He won it in, let’s see, Barcelona in 1992. I have played him a few times. No, whoo! he’s good, give me a break.
I did get to go with the team to Los Angeles though. They gave us a visa so I stayed after, for almost a year. Did I tell you I almost got married to an American? “Caroline.”
I learned a little English there. I wish I had learned more. I think I want to speak pure English, all the time. I am tired of Spanish. I have worn out the language. It makes me tired to speak in it all the time.
Oh I could run all I wanted. Here it is like 3500 meters above sea level. But there in Los Angeles, I never got tired. I could run until my muscles ached. Run run run run run run run. I ran the marathon, the 10K, the 20K.
I wanted to come back and go to school, but he stayed and trained in the U.S. Carlos. He married an American woman. Soon after the Olympics, they invited him to run in Japan. They paid him 10,000 dollars just to go. And he won, and took home 70,000 more. He won in Las Angeles, Houston, Holland, England, Africa, Asia. Rotterdam, Germany, too. He took maybe 500,000 home just that year. Imagine that! Wow. Every year he invited me to go train with him, but I was in school then. I wanted to finish. Maybe I should have gone. He lives up there now. In Saint Louis.
I ran in Monterrey, the stadium there. Whatever the name of it is. In Puebla too. Pachuca, Guadalajara, Morelia. Many stadiums. All those soccer stadiums and I have never seen a soccer game. I have always felt strange watching someone else participate where I ran. I liked it more when everyone was watching me.”
Of course you have to imagine it with huge thoughtful pauses. After each sentence he would wiggle in his chair, take a drink of coffee, something active. Contemplative, yes, but not silent. He is always doing something, even when he is thinking about what to say next. He wants to train hard for the next few years and go try to win again, in the veterans division. He wants to go run and see if he has a chance. He wants to travel and figures it is the best way, even if he doesn’t win.

Chapter 1: Really Really Thirsty

2005-12-01T12:55:00.000-06:00

“You rip off a chunk, like a small piece, and turn it over between your fingers and pinch the food you want to pick up with the piece so you don’t get germs on your food.”
“But you are holding the tortilla.”
“But the tortillas are clean.”
“How can that be true? An old lady whose hands are all gross, who has no water to wash them, rolling the dough around in her palms before they go on the heated steel plate that hasn’t been washed ever, and heated just until warm.”
“No…” and then he did this thing where he laughs once loud, buckles over and hits his knee with his fist. You don’t know if he is angry or happy until he comes up with a huge smile, face red from laughing at you. This was the first time I saw it. “Ok. Take the piece and eat your tuna. There is no other food, so just eat. Next time you can buy bread instead and have it all be clean. OK, now, if you want to eat a taco, you take your tortilla and put it in your hand like you think you would. Scoop the tuna in with that chunk of tortilla you previously ripped off, and there you go. Oh! You only hold it with one hand. That’s the Mexican way.”
It was in those first days that Kike and I both realized that we either had to quickly become best friends or it was going to be an incredibly taxing, difficult situation. So we had to make bad jokes, explain them slowly and loudly with small words, repeat them a couple times, and then laugh helping the other person see where to laugh.
Food was a trick, and one of the things that helped bring us together. I poked fun at the meager meals we ate, laughing and asking about the food and manner of eating, the cultural things that he never thought about. We would go buy handmade tortillas and tuna fish, or just fruit and bread, or buy some small homemade meal from the neighbors. We would scoop the tuna out of the can, or whatever we were eating, and onto the warm tortillas. I told him it was some of the most boring meals I had ever eaten. He told me I was in for a lot more boring meals. He taught me to eat with tortillas.
“Eating it with one hand? That’s what you guys have for traditions around here?”
“Do you want to be Mexican or not?”
“Fine, fine.”
We eat what we have. Actually after a few meals like this, you begin to be thankful for what you have and not griping about what you wish you had.
The tuna is gone but there are still two tortillas left.
“Ok. I get one, you get one.”
“What?”
“Eat your tortilla. I am eating mine.”
“You don’t have to eat the last tortillas. You always buy more than you need. If you find more food, you can put it in the tortilla and eat it. But right now we don’t have anything else.”
“Listen, there are starving children in China right now and you have more than you need. Eat your tortilla.” I am laughing eating my tortilla plain. Kike makes this face like he can’t believe I am eating a plain tortilla, but he laughs and puts some salt in his and does likewise.
Of course I am just paraphrasing what actually took many sentences to get out. He had to repeat himself, and I had to talk slowly, thinking of words, and come up with completely original creative ways to work around words I didn’t know.
We made a pact that night: he cooks, I wash the dishes. I was terrified of throwing the tortillas around over the live gas flame, and he couldn’t navigate his way down to the wash basin very easily, so it worked out great. He just sat there and smoked a cigarette and we chatted.
“You smoke?”
“No.” I’m answering. “You?”
“No.” He throws down his cigarette.
“Cool. I mean, not that I care...” He pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil from the backpack he had kept on the back of his chair since that morning. He started to draw. I had seen him paint the ceramic plates and bowls and salt shakers before, and I knew that he had an incredibly steady hand. I figured that simply meant he was a good artist, with plenty of practice. It turns out I was right. He drew for five minutes, and had a graffiti impression of me washing dishes. I laughed. I was a stereotype, but then again how else was he going to draw me?
“I love sitting out here watching the stars. When the moon is out, it is even nicer.” He takes a deep breath, putting his hand on his chest. He shrugs and wiggles his chair back and forth. My hands are freezing from washing the dishes.
“Before you came I would just sit out here and not do anything. Just by myself. I didn’t mind it, but it got so boring. I loved it when people came up to visit. I love it when we fire ceramics because sometimes Leti and Osve come up and stay until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. Israel comes up with tacos for dinner and we chat.”
“Did you hear that mouse in our room?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what there is to eat in our room though.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Not really. It’s not like there are a lot of places to hide. I’ll ask them to bring us a trap tomorrow. It’s pretty easy.”
There is just a huge basin of water that I just want to dump all the dishes into and wash in that. But you have to put the dishes to one side, where there is a drain and pull water with a bowl or something out of the basin and splash it over the dishes. You then grab a sponge and scrub them down with soap. Then more water scooped out of the tank. It takes me forever to get all the soap off the dishes. I am scooping and scooping. Finally I just pile them up, hands red from the cold, and bring them up to the kitchen.
The next night I bought instant soups (although without a microwave, not so instant), and taught him how to use chopsticks (I had brought two pairs for fun). He ended up eating it with tortillas anyway, and I ended up with a fork.
A couple days later, the handyman Davíd called me to go help him. I didn’t understand what was going on, but suddenly we had two pieces of four-meter rebar that we were attempting to connect by bending the ends, through the means of banging it curved with a hammer. We ended up getting them satisfactorily hooked, and used some wire to make sure they were somewhat together in a now almost eight meter rod that I still didn’t understand. We took it out to the back forty (which was really like back “half”) and made our way along the ancient stone wall that used to house so much more 200 years ago. There sat a cement water basin that held probably a couple hundred liters of water. It came from the stream that came down the hill. I looked up and saw that the stream came down between two houses that were remarkably close together for having a stream between them, and above that water spilling out of a pipe that poked out from under the thin curving road, so the water wouldn’t flow over the road. Still further up was another similar basin that allowed for a large amount of spillage, and above that somehow an actual stream again winding it’s way through houses and trees. It was easy to follow just watching the heavy vegetation that wound its way up the hill amongst barren land filled with cactus and rocks.
It appeared that there was a concrete pipe about five inches in diameter that lead out of the side of the basin, into the ground, and then a few feet passed and it reappeared again. At that point there is a plastic tube, just a little bit smaller in diameter, shoved into the end of the concrete one.
“What’s this?”
“Where the water goes.”
“Our water?”
“Yes. Did you think we get our water from the channel?”
I physically shudder at the thought and Davíd laughs. The channel of course is a man made waterway that runs pretty much directly under my room, and out the other side of Las Rosas. It runs horizontally along the hill, bring water from the reservoir above the hill down and then laterally from South to North. There are big “keys” as the call them which are the irrigation gates that are opened a few times a year to let water flood down the hill and onto the plain, watering the corn. After the gates are opened, it floods down the land uncontrolled unless some farmer guides it by digging ditches. The water in the channel starts clean, but the channel is so filth, we have often discussed how you should carry a knife with you so that if you were ever to accidentally fall in, you could kill yourself quickly and not have to agonize through it. We see dead dogs or sheep floating around, the whole bottom lined with garbage, and crazy sorts of bacteria filled plants. No animal besides the water snakes we occasionally see would possibly survive here.
We spend about ten minutes pulling on the plastic tube, trying to dislodge it from inside the cement female end. It comes off with a pop, and water spouts out. The pressure quickly fades until it is nothing more than a dribble falling off the end. We look inside, but we can see nothing but black. I reach my arm up into it, and pull out a few large rocks, but surely nothing jammed that would have plugged the water.
I step back and finally see what the rebar is for. We pick it up and with me at the back start to negotiate it in. We get like three meters of our eight into the pipe before we hit something. We start to ram the thing in there. We give it a couple good knocks before we back up and give it a running start. It isn’t like a rock, it is like something soft with a little give that we are hitting but can’t pull out or push in farther. We need a fishhook to get past whatever is in there and yank it out. But all we have is rebar so we keep going at it. We actually get the rebar past the blockage and far enough past that it comes out the other end up into the basin. We pull it back out, black guck coming out, like leaves and stuff, but nothing solid. Each time we get an influx flow of water, but it quickly decreases and runs out again.
I went up to the basin to check things out. First of all I noticed that clothes were hung over the walls of the basin, not quite touching the water. So laundry is clearly washed in here before it makes its way down to our showers and sinks. I start to walk above and see garbage sitting on the sides of the stream. There are a lot of wrappers, bottles, and even a diaper. Yuck. That is there right above, or in, our water source. Not that we drink it, but I certainly wasn’t going to want to brush my teeth in that anymore. Man, that’s gross. I shudder again, and David laughs again, assuming I am thinking about the channel still. I am not.
I walk back down and Davíd is trying to bang a hook into the end of the rebar, to make it a wider stab into the pipe. We get it up and going again, working away at whatever is inside it. We probably toil there another fifteen minutes before we catch the clog, and give a few tough yanks, pulling it free. The water now flows, as we pull the rest of the rebar out. Out come two bags, both filled with now crunched plastic pop, detergent, and bleach bottles. We sit there, watching the water flow into the field below. We let it go a while, flushing out some more garbage, and reconnect the plastic tube.
We head back, and I go inspect the water system. It seems that in order for water to get into the bathroom, it has to be pulled from the water line through an electric pump, that goes into an underground reservoir, which is just under the classroom actually. It’s like a good swimming pool lane in width and pretty far back. There is a ladder down into it, so I could swim around if I wanted to. But the lid is only like a foot and a half across, so it would be kind of scary. So anyway, the idea is that if there is solid material in the water, it would just flow on through the system, into the channel with most of the water that goes through. But if we wanted water, it would be pumped out, in theory through some sort of wire screens or something inside the pump, into the reservoir. But when I open the door to the reservoir, a fat frog that was swimming at the surface sees me and dives down. Great.
I continue to follow the line, which appears to need yet another pump to pump it from there up into a tank on the roof. The line pulls water from the tank about half way down, so if there is garbage or animals, hopefully it is floating or has sunk, not getting sucked into the hose. And then from the cement tank on the roof, uses gravity to flow into the bathroom or the hose.
So it was somewhat poetic injustice that that day was the day that we ran out of drinking water in Las Rosas. Kike and I ate dinner without anything to drink, and finally went up to buy water from the tienda just up the road.
The next night we realize that we forgot to get drinking water again. Usually the water guy comes once or twice a week, but we haven’t seen him for a while now. And I forget to pick up water in town. Again, we go to the tienda. The next day the same thing happens, except there is no water at the tienda. Apparently, the water guy hasn’t been up for over two weeks and no one has water. I balk at the idea of the water guy not coming around, and don’t buy water in town, thinking about carrying that huge jug of water up the road twenty minutes. But again there is no water.
The fifth night we are dying of thirst. No one on the hill has water to buy from. Oh, and amusingly enough, we also run out of gas that day to cook with, and the gas man hasn’t been around for a while either.
So we are out there, me washing dishes and him cursing his physical ineptitude to stop pouring deadly smoke into the part of his body which hates it so much than all the other parts, dying of thirst.
“We don’t have water, we can’t buy water, and we can’t boil water. We are so stupid. Why don’t I just bite the bullet and haul that garrafon up here?”
“I can’t handle this. I am so thirsty. I won’t be able to sleep tonight I am so thirsty. We haven’t drank water in like two or three days. We have had pop, but that is just making it worse. I need water.”
And so, much like a Braveheart slow motion shot, I look up at him and nod, knowing what must be done. What must be done in the name of survival. Trumpets blast the death march, or the Imperial Theme or something, as I set down the dishes I am washing and walk up the stairs to meet him at the kitchen door, wifes and kids crying and holding out their hands. I pause, and then enter, picking up two plastic glasses. We do an about face and walk back outside. We stride towards the bathroom entrance, not saying anything, both knowing what is about to come.
Noooooo!!!!!
I go to the sink, and drop my head in defeat as I turn on the faucet. I fill both cups up, and set them next to each other on the counter. I look at Kike, thinking of my past, non-diarrheal, youth. We each take a cup and stare into the water. I dump mine out and fill it up again. It looks the same. There is nothing floating, but your eyes can for the first time actually see batrillions of microorganisms chomping their large teeth and doing unmentionable things inside the water. I grimace and say: “well, if I’m going to be sick, so are you.” And with that we both down the entire glass of water.
For the rest of the night we start to feel sick. At least every twenty minutes someone says “I think I’m feeling sick.”
We both woke up the next morning fine.