Tag Archives: mexico

Rabid Dogs and Hypochondria and All

8 Jun

Now that I am pretty confident that I don’t have rabies, I think I’m ready to discuss the dog situation around here. If I turns out I do have rabies someday, then scratch this whole piece and go ahead and shoot me. Meanwhile, read on:

 

Like many countries without a giant budget for animal control, there are a lot of stray dogs. In fact, apparently only about 30% of dogs in Mexico have homes.* And since no country throws out food like the U.S., stray dogs are not fat little scoundrels roaming the streets. So even though we made fun of her a little, we all also understood when my stepmom Karen, an animal lover and protector by nature, freaked out at the massive amount of skin-and-bones canines as far as the eye can see.

 

First she tried to buy a (tourist-priced) hamburger for them. Instead we talked her into the more reasonably priced order of pescadillas (fried fish tacos) sold by one of the numerous women who walk around selling homemade food on the street. Then she insisted on buying actual dog food, so she could just carry it around in her purse and feed a little to every dog she sees. You can imagine what a process it was just to walk down the street with her and her dog-pity like this. Once we were eating at a beach-side restaurant, and the staff came and asked us to please quit feeding the dogs.

 

Once she came back from a jaunt to go feed a particularly skinny and sad-looking dog, and she was very disturbed. “I think he might be dehydrated or something because he didn’t want to eat the food. It took a long time to get him to take it.” And she told us all the details. Conan’s mom, Paulina, was there, patient although unimpressed by this care of all the strays. “I doubt he’s dehydrated. I think it’s much more likely it’s the first time he’s ever been offered anything but leftover tortilla! He’s never seen dog food before!” And we all had to laugh, even Karen.

 

The stray dog situation doesn’t really bother me much, probably because the majority of my sorrow-for-strangers goes to people; hunched-over grandmothers carrying huge loads of firewood on their backs so they can cook a meal, small kids out selling junky souvenirs late at night with no parent in sight, folks walking around barefoot because they can’t even afford a pair of flip-flops, not to mention the things you don’t see, like families who just had tortillas with salt as an entire meal.** (This is what it looks like, dear “conservative” U.S. citizens who complain about taxes, when there are not social programs to help vulnerable populations.)

 

So I can appreciate Karen’s concern for the dogs, because her heart is big enough to worry about all the people and all the animals, while mine just isn’t, apparently. Furthermore, I can’t worry about the wellbeing of all the dogs when some of the time what appears to be a stray dog is actually somebody’s pet. But don’t get confused, dear compatriots, by the term “pet” in the U.S. versus Mexico. While of course there are some folks with enough money and extravagance to treat their canine like children and/or royalty, for the most part you won’t find dogs with their own bed, their own hairstylist, eating gourmet food, having expensive surgery and the like. Of course, I know people here who love their dogs, take them on walks, have pictures of their dog on their cell phone, make their dog part of the family.

 

But in general, as a cultural norm here in Puerto Escondido, dogs have a much lower status and priority than in the U.S. My next door neighbor leaves his dog tied to a tree for long periods of time, sometimes for days on end. Some dogs never leave their yard. Many, many people here have dogs only as a form of protection for their house, and sometimes folks mistreat their dog to make it meaner, without anyone blinking an eye about it. (Of course there is mistreatment of dogs in the U.S., too, but there it’s a giant scandal and people raise a bunch of money for the publicized dog, which, sadly enough, they don’t usually do for mistreated people.)

Lucia playing with Nery's puppies, who are far from mistreated

Lucia playing with Nery’s puppies, who are far from mistreated (by Nery at least. by excited children, maybe)

 

As much as I hate the idea of people mistreating their animals, I think I am more pissed off by this general culture of dogs as guard dogs, when half the time they are not even fenced in with what they’re guarding. Sometimes I’m walking down the street and there’s a dog presumably protecting its territory, but there’s no dividing line between the dog’s territory and the public domain. And you don’t even know if the dog you’re about to approach is a furious guard dog or a lazy bum who won’t even glance as you pass. Meanwhile, Conan has taught me that often being more dominant than the creature will make it back off. So you pick up or rock and get ready to throw it, or at least yell at the dog and swat your hand. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but it has worked for me some in this crazy jungle of dogs in my neighborhood. Mostly I felt okay to walk around wherever in the daytime, although less so at night when mean dogs have even more free reign.

 

Until a couple months ago. I was buying tortillas from this woman a few blocks away. She has two or three dogs who seem nice enough, probably neither mistreated nor spoiled, like a lot of dogs around. There was a super skinny-scrawny stray dog hanging around as well that day, but for the most part strays are not threatening. They are usually caught up in their own dog drama, quests for food and pleasant naps, so while I don’t rush up to make friends, I don’t fear them, either. I got my tortillas and strutted right past this one, but when I went to throw my leg over my bike I felt a sudden sting in my leg.

 

It took me a second to realize the dog had bit me, I was so surprised. I put the bike between us and it started to go around the bike. “Me mordió!” It bit me, I think I said, aghast, and the lady who makes the tortillas started yelling at a little girl, who was also buying tortillas, to get her dog. “Go take your dog home!” She scolded the girl. “It’s not my dog, ok,” she assured me, in case the dog put me off from buying tortillas there. The little girl was holding onto the muzzle of the dog I was sure had been a stray. I just nodded, got on my bike and rode back home.

 

Once I was at home and completely free from danger I discovered I felt a little shaky from the surprise of being bit when I was so utterly not expecting it. I inspected my leg and discovered it was a very small spot where it had broken the skin. I cleaned it with peroxide. I sat down and told myself it was no big deal. When I was four, I’d gotten a dog bite on my face that needed 20 stitches (from the beloved pet of a dear family friend), so certainly this was nothing in comparison. I started to calm down. But then, like any good hypochondriac, I started to think about diseases. I was up on my tetanus shots, so that pretty much only left rabies as a possible danger.

 

‘Rabies, once symptoms are present, is incurable and almost always fatal’ I read on the blessed information superhighway.  I checked to see what “almost always” really meant- only a handful of cases of survival, mostly of people who had previously had a rabies vaccine after a bite. I read about the agony people suffer while dying from rabies- including being terrified of water, unable to swallow, with excessive saliva running down your chin. “Death usually occurs within days of the onset of these symptoms,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site reassured me- although can you imagine passing whole days like that?! Not sounding good for the home team.

 

I sat at the internet cafe and read about the rabies vaccine and the timeframe for effective prevention. I started to panic that I had cleaned my tiny wound with peroxide instead of the copious amounts of soap and water recommended by the internet. Hours had passed, so it was probably already too late for soap and water to wash out the dog’s saliva. It was probably already traveling through my bloodstream, while I was there wasting time reading about it.

 

Although it was not on my agenda for the day, I decided to pursue a rabies vaccine. But where to go for such a thing? Who to even ask? You don’t just google things around here and get answers. So I went to one of those pharmacy doctors, where you can get a free or cheap consultation, usually with no waiting.

 

I explained what had happened and the doctor examined my wound while- I’m pretty sure- trying not to laugh in my face. I tried to explain that I just thought it was better to be safe than sorry; that no, I didn’t know if the dog had rabies or not but that not knowing was exactly why I’d prefer to go ahead and get the vaccine. He said the hospital probably didn’t have it, and even if they did they probably wouldn’t give it to me because it’s a very expensive and hard-to-get vaccine. I tried to pressure him for any other possibilities on where to get the vaccine, and he assured me that my chances (both of getting rabies and of getting the vaccine) were low. Then we had a nice statistical chat about the risk of getting rabies when you’re bit by a dog versus being bitten by, say, a raccoon. And he threw in that really if you’re in the kind of place where you get bit by those kind of wild animals then you probably deserve it (okay maybe those weren’t his exact words, but close enough.). I was not impressed by the statistics because I could be in that small percentage and then there will be 100% of me dying a horrendous death in the very near future. I did not feel like he really appreciated my angst and anxiety about this rabies thing, to say the least.

 

Meanwhile I had called Conan to come get me, so after the unhelpful doctor I went and found him. “I just need to freak out for a minute,” I warned him, and proceeded to cry like a baby. “I know it’s super unlikely that I have rabies,” I choked out between sobs, “but I might! And it’ll be too late!” I continued.

 

“Okay. We’ll go find the vaccine.” Conan tried to reason and assure me.

 

“I don’t want the stupid vaccine. I don’t think I’ll get rabies….but I might!” And then he tried to tell me again to at least go find out if they’d give me the vaccine, at least make an effort if I was going to be all weirded out and worried about it. But still I refused. And still I continued to be upset, to lay out all the facts I had learned, to throw out some statistics, to reason about my odds. Unfortunately, it started to make Conan upset, too. We went to a friend’s house close by so I could (rather belatedly) wash my leg correctly with copious amounts of soap and water. Then I called my mom, the expert at letting me freak out and talk through everything without getting upset herself (or at least not showing it…must be all that psychology training I used to bitch about).

 

Talking through it helped, and I didn’t further pursue the rabies vaccine. And here I am writing this, not frothing at the mouth, a couple months after the fact. But now I am more cautious than I’d like to be. I don’t like to walk and bike around in fight-or-flight mode every time I see a dog, because I see dogs like every 10-60 seconds. And I’m not even particularly worried about being bit in and of itself; I’m not scared of the pain of it. I feel like I just need to be prepared for it. Well, and I might still be scared of rabies.

 

I’ve tried to figure out why this rabies thing was so panic-inducing for me. I mean, sure, mortality is always a little scary, but I do things that are much more likely to cause death than passing by dogs on a regular basis, and it doesn’t phase me. A traffic accident is much more likely to kill me than maybe getting rabies from maybe being bit by a dog, yet I don’t get scared crossing the street or riding in vehicles. I don’t flinch when there’s turbulence on the airplane. I smoked cigarettes for years, with only a nod at the very likely possibility of that killing me, even after watching my paternal grandmother die from it. And I certainly enjoy other little risks, like roller coasters. In general, I know it’s senseless to walk around calculating and worrying about everything because of course I could die at any moment from just about anything, just like everybody else.

 

Maybe it’s the idea of days of frothing at the mouth, hallucinating, afraid to even calm my thirst. Or maybe it’s the fact that there is this life-saving vaccine that I may or may not have access to. Or the most likely possibility, knowing myself, is how much I know I would beat myself up for not spending the time and energy to get a vaccine if I actually did get rabies, however unlikely. It’s imagining that regret would eat me alive before the rabies, spending whatever hours or days there were, between realizing I had rabies and losing my mind, repeating all the what-ifs that would make it un-happen, being mad at myself for not seeing it coming and doing something to change the fates. Absurd, right?

 

I guess it’s not so much about rabies, but about getting comfortable with things that make me uncomfortable, for better and for worse. I don’t want to get comfortable, for example, with people’s poverty and misery. Or at least I don’t want to be complacent about it. But I also realize that I can’t go around, say, handing out nutritious meals the way Karen can hand out dog food. Nor does it help anybody for me to be in a constant state of distress.

 

But I do want to get comfortable with the dog situation, with the complete unpredictability that is their animal nature. They’re not going away. Sure, I can keep being pissed off about the percentage of people here who train their dogs to “protect the house” aka be aggressive to people. I can be nervous every day, the multiple times a day I walk or bike down the street, but it’s not going to change anything.

 

I’d like to get to the point where I can be just slightly cautious, be aware of the dogs around me, without my heart racing in preparation every 30 seconds. I’d like to get to the point where I wouldn’t waste time blaming myself if something did happen, where I could put just a little more faith in the universe, where I could keep in mind a little better that what’s going to happen is bound to happen. So there’s my message to myself for the week: work on getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, rabid dogs and hypochondria and all. But I still expect somebody to put me out of my misery if I suddenly start to salivate.

 

 

*according to statistics from the House of Representatives (la Cámara de Diputados), from this report:

http://www.cronica.com.mx/notas/2013/721525.html

**Almost 20% of the population in the state of Oaxaca suffer from malnutrition, according to a report published by Mexican governmental agencies, and that’s a bit lower than some statistics from other sources- link

http://www.ciedd.oaxaca.gob.mx/info/pdf/16oct_dia_mundial_alimentacion.pdf

More than half the population under age 15 (in the state of Oaxaca) is living in “multidimensional poverty,” defined as a situation in which a person is not guaranteed at least one of his/her basic rights and the household income is insufficient to acquire needed services and goods. (loosely translated from this report (which is a really eye-opening read if you can read Spanish):

http://www.inegi.org.mx/inegi/contenidos/espanol/prensa/Contenidos/estadisticas/2013/niño20.pdf

 

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Mama’s Revenge

19 May

“If you ever bring home an iron and have the audacity to call it a present, it’s grounds for instant divorce,” I’ve warned Conan since before we were married. Not that he’s the type for that, but just in case anyone around here were to put crazy ideas in his head. Because the most typical presents for moms around here are pots and pans and tupperware and a million other items with which to do chores. Stop the excitement; it’s just too much for me.

As if this suggestion that Mama’s only interest is her household duties were not bad enough, here in my very own beloved neighborhood in Puerto they took the cake this Mother’s Day. It’s always celebrated in Mexico on May 10, and this year it was a Saturday. At least all the moms didn’t have to get the kids ready for school. Maybe Mama could sleep in a little bit (unless she has a 2 year old like mine that has a 7 AM internal alarm).

I had to work early-ish anyway, so it wasn’t like I was planning on sleeping till noon. I was not planning on the fireworks starting at FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, either. That’s right; two hours before I needed to get up, that jerk-off, arrogant neighborhood delegate down the street decided to “celebrate” and “congratulate” all us excited Mamas in the neighborhood. He set off a bunch of fireworks, first, and then put Las Mañanitas (a sort-of Happy Birthday song in Mexico, much longer than the “happy birthday to you” business) on his loudspeaker.
It sounds something like this:

Now every neighborhood has their own loudspeaker, their own announcer. You need this to make important announcements. Like the other day, they got all the men together to clean up the creek bed down the road. Or they announced info about Kids’ Day events recently. Or they might announce that there’s a vaccination campaign at the health center. Or they announce that there are tacos being sold at so-and-so’s house, or discounts at the pharmacy today. And yes, of course they use the announcer to congratulate and celebrate people on their birthdays or for other special moments. This is reasonable.

Waking up all the tired mamas, all their cranky babies, all their excitable kids, and everyone else in the neighborhood in the darkness of the five o’clock hour, however, is totally, completely outrageous. And rude and presumptuous. How dare they set off fireworks in our honor at such an ugly hour! Who’s gonna see those fireworks at that hour? “Doesn’t he have a wife, this stupid announcer of ours? Isn’t she a mother?” I asked Conan, who was pretending to sleep, in vain. “Doesn’t his wife have any sense or decency, even if he doesn’t? Does he think moms around here need to wake up any earlier, what with all the cooking and cleaning and washing they already do for umpteen hours a day? Does he think moms haven’t lost enough sleep thanks to the wonders and magic of motherhood already?! Does he think anyone cares about his stupid fireworks!?” I was becoming hysterical, using up excessive amounts of pre-coffee energy on my ire.

“Try to go back to sleep,” Conan advised me. I almost bit his head off, too, until I remembered that he was on my side, and that trying to go back to sleep was probably the only reasonable thing to do. Tragically, though, I’m not always a reasonable person, especially early in the morning before caffeine. So instead I lay there stewing, listening to repetitions of Las Mañanitas, listening to the other “celebratory” songs he alternated with. I wanted to throw things when he again muttered his confident and totally ironic congratulations to all us proud and ecstatic moms out there. (And I say he muttered because nothing on these loudspeakers ever comes out really clearly; it all sounds like muttering to me.)

So there I lay, plotting my revenge. Planning the organizing for my protest. Mulling over the pros and cons of going directly to his house, by myself, immediately (cons: still dark out, possibility of biting dogs loose at this hour, have to get dressed, doesn’t exact revenge) or waiting and organizing among the other (surely as rabid as I) moms in the neighborhood (cons: requires patience, probably still won’t involve me making a giant scandal outside his house at 3AM when he least expects it, won’t give me back these 2 lost hours of sleep).

In the end, the darkness of my house, the comfort of our family bed, and the hope of future revenge convinced me to stay home. By six all had quieted down outside, though not in my dark and bitter heart. Since then, Conan investigated some for me and found out that another guy in the neighborhood who got out of control with his announcing duties had a vigilante neighborhood group come together and take away his loudspeaker. So something, certainly, can be done. Some collective mom action can and will be done, if I have anything to say about it. Whether it will be sufficiently just revenge or not is for the future to tell. I’ll let you know, and I promise I won’t set off fireworks in front of your house when I do.

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Down the Drain: Cultural Contrasts via What We Waste

8 Jan

I was watching the steaming hot water swirl down the drain, over the gobs of ice cubes and plastic straws and lemon wedges. I was still in that day-dreamy state that results from the incongruence of transitioning- from facetime-ing Conan (with him in Mexico) and being in my Mama’s kitchen in Louisville with my daughter, and then to work in a corporate restaurant. I was at the 3 month mark of being in the U.S., thinking about how I was supposed to be headed back by then, when a more pressing thought invaded my head: “Paulina would be soooo pissed.”

IMG_2843

<A wonderful convenience! A baby seat in the airport restroom! I took a picture so that people in Oaxaca would believe that it exists. The U.S. is so wasteful, but so damn convenient and sometimes luxuriously useful!>

Way before I lived in Mexico, working in a restaurant disgusted me with the extreme wastefulness, and now that I’m back to it after 11 months in small-town Mexico, it’s even more horrific. When you live in the U.S., it’s optional to try to waste less- it’s something maybe you do if you’re a hippie, or maybe because you want to pay less on your electric bill, or maybe because you don’t have a car these days, etc. It’s not something that’s part of the culture, to say the least. You have to really think outside of the box to even realize how much you’re wasting just by breathing in the U.S. (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a tiny bit on the breathing part, but the excessive use of resources is so ingrained that it might as well be breathing.)

My mother-in-law, Paulina, is the queen of thrift and what my Nonna called “waste not, want not.” Paulina puts my thrifty-ness and ability to save to shame. Many people in Mexico, and especially in the money- poor state of Oaxaca, are used to the type of conservation and repurposing that comes with not having money. But Paulina would quickly get over the shock of the wastefulness and scold everyone to death about it.

IMG_2810

<Paulina and Lucia in the kitchen in Juquila>

Because in Mexico*, you conserve because there may be no water tomorrow, and you’ll just be standing there with shampoo in your hair, shit out of luck.

In Mexico you conserve because if you live in a hot place you don’t need any more heat so you don’t buy gas for hot water.

In Mexico you conserve because the garbage truck picks up different elements of the trash on different days, and they don’t even come every week, and you can earn a few pesos for a kilo of tin cans, and that organic waste can help feed the chickens anyway.

In Mexico you don’t drive everywhere because you probably don’t have a car for each person in the household, if you have one for the family at all.

In Mexico you take reusable bags on your shopping errands because the woman with fresh eggs doesn’t have a bag to give you, because even some stores don’t stock plastic bags, because carrying your errand bag is a way of life.

In Mexico you don’t turn on the light until nighttime, because “you should be ashamed of yourself” if you waste it like that during the day, and regardless you’re grateful because your friend who lives down the road can’t get any electricity because they haven’t set it up in his neighborhood yet.

In Mexico you do your part to put less waste in the landfill because maybe they don’t even sell things like baby wipes in your town.

In Mexico the food that women sell on the street is organic, although you won’t find any labels on  it, because “who can afford chemicals?”.
In Mexico people take great care of their clothes and shoes so that they last, because sometimes there’s no money to just buy more; in Mexico people often wear some form of sandals or flip-flops even to work construction or to go to fancy events, and they still consider themselves better off than the folks who go around barefoot.

In Mexico (especially among the older generation) you don’t need to buy fancy care products like deodorant because limes are cheap and plentiful and just as effective.

In Mexico if you’re a little gringa who wants weights to lift during her exercises, you (or your partner) ask your neighbor for a little bit of concrete when they’re working on their house and fill soda bottles with it.

In small-town Mexico there’s no Walmart or Target or Staples or FedEx or Kroger or a million other conveniences with their entire aisles (entire aisles! like practically a whole store in Mexico) dedicated to semi-useless extravagances like “party decorations” or “bathroom accessories”. In Mexico you have to get creative if you want to decorate, you have to be dedicated and patient and resourceful if you really want to buy something that’s not a basic necessity; you can’t just get in your car and go to the store and find your aisle. In Mexico there are no tacks to hang stuff the wall because the walls are made of concrete probably, or maybe plywood, or hopefully not tin. In Mexico you reuse and repurpose and recycle and refuse to buy stuff because it’s a way of life. Period.

And I have to say, in a lot of ways it’s a way of life I really like. Okay, so sometimes it’s extremely inconvenient, like when you have to go to the locksmith 3 days in a row to get a copy of a key because every time you go it’s closed and there are no official hours. It’s frustrating when you have to pay through the nose and/or go to a bigger town for something that is fairly basic (like, say, sealable plastic bags, which hell yes we wash and reuse.) It bums me out to leave lights off when it’s a gloomy day, even though I technically have enough light to see just fine. There are days that I pine for enough hot water for a 20 minute steaming shower, which will just never happen in Paulina’s house with the hot water heater we have (at least we have one!).

That’s not to say that Oaxaca is great for the environment, either. People often burn their toxic trash right outside their house. Many rivers are full of sewage thanks to lack of good town planning. People mostly use a ton of (albeit reusable) plastic products (mugs, plates, etc.- instead of porcelain like many folks in the US use). It’s not perfect, by any stretch. But it’s a refreshing change from the excess of the U.S.

In just a few days** I’ll be back in Juquila, our small town in the mountains. It will be a shock, I’m sure, after having internet capabilities on my cell phone, after having a washer and dryer and dishwasher all the time, after, well, all these outrageous and wonderful and excessive and time-saving conveniences. Yes, Juquila will be a slight shock this time, but I’m sure it won’t be anything like the shock that’s gonna come in a few weeks when we move to our new house. With no electricity. Which means washing diapers and clothes by hand. Which means no refrigerator (by far my biggest worry). No blender for soups and smoothies. No light at night. I can’t think too long or hard about the changes or it seems too impossible.

Meanwhile, I think about the hot running water wasting away, the Mexican dishwasher who turned it on and whether he must have felt the same outrage and disbelief I felt the first time they told him this was how to do his job. I think about all these clashes and juxtapositions that come from our modern globalization, for better or for worse. At the end of the day, I’m happy to be a witness to it all, trying to learn to take it all in stride, one little moment at a time.

*My use of “in Mexico” here really means in the two small towns in Oaxaca that I know intimately. I don’t pretend to speak to Mexican culture as a whole, since Mexico is gigantic and diverse, much like the U.S.

**When I wrote this I was packing to go back to Oaxaca. I’ve been back a while now.

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A Cold Conspiracy

17 Jan

I have many theories about the ways in which women (all over the world) are manipulated into submission. I have a particular theory about how women in this town are trapped in their houses as soon as they have their first child. It’s due to this belief that cold (or, in my perception, slightly chilly) weather makes babies sick. Not germs. It surely has nothing to do with all those germy hands people like to put on my child’s hand which she then puts directly in her mouth. Nor could it be related to the fact that people’s sick kids come up and kiss and hug Lucia or play with her toys, without the parents doing or saying anything. No, no. Couldn’t be that. It’s the weather, and I’ve failed to protect her from it by leaving the house (and sometimes just my bedroom) after dusk.
I also dress my daughter all wrong for the weather (in addition to often dressing her all wrong for her gender). People here put babies in about 15 layers of clothing, and then still put a blanket over them (including over their head) when they leave the house. Even in like 85 degree weather (real temperature; not an exaggeration), you can bet that babies in Juquila are wearing a warm hat, among other things. Mothers here see Lucia and freak out that she will probably drop dead from the cold any second now. I see babies here and freak out that they will die of overheating any second. It’s a mutual disapproval, although it’s an entire town against little ole me.
This weather-illness situation is also the only thing about my mother in law that I’m violently opposed to. Luckily, we get along great on most fronts, and I respect and like her loads. But I can’t stand the way she does this grandmother-knows-best thing about these beliefs. For example, if I bathe Lucia at night, she’ll say something like “Do you need anything from the kitchen before you give her a bath? You know you can’t bring her up to the cold air in the kitchen after you give her a bath.” (Our kitchen is a room made of wooden boards, so it is airier and chillier than the rest of the house downstairs, but it is by no means the ice house it’s made out to be.) And I want to (but don’t) tell her, “No, I don’t know that, and I don’t believe that. And I refuse to be trapped in my own bedroom, unable to even go to the kitchen in my own home, because of what I believe is an irrational fear about my daughter’s health.”
So sometimes I hide out and brood in our bedroom, dreaming of the day when I don’t feel like a prisoner in the place where I live. Slowly, stealthily, but surely I break the rules, too. Sometimes I appear in the kitchen anyway, and when someone says something to me, I say something like, “Oh, I think she’s okay.” Or I head out the door with Lucia already in the wrap, saying bye instead of explaining in detail that I’m going out.
Granted, I don’t actually believe that my mother in law is out to limit my liberty. In fact, she is most certainly on team feminist. But these weather-related beliefs are too ingrained. Conan reminds me that these rules and beliefs were invented for a reason- that people surely observed babies getting sick after being in the cold. While I’m a big fan of empirical evidence, I remind him that correlation doesn’t equal causation. There are more babies born in areas where storks live, too, but that doesn’t mean that storks really bring babies (it’s because storks live in rural areas, where birthrates are higher- thank you, Dr. Newman and Intro to Sociology).
These assertions about illness and weather also make me crazy because I have so many logical, reasonable responses to disprove them, but I don’t like to tell people (especially my awesome mother in law) that I think their (deeply ingrained cultural) beliefs are wrong. But really, obviously people here have not been to Ireland, for example, where there is nearly constant cold and rain and wind. Irish babies would no longer exist if these assertions about cold and sickness were true. And I can think of much colder places where I would also bet that they don’t try to keep moms and babies inside through their entire infancy. Plus let’s talk about all the really hot places, where it’s never really cold and nasty, and yet people still get sick there. Explain that, people of Juquila! Ah. There. Now I feel a little better.
Of course, the other reason I don’t bother with all these opinions and theories of mine is that someone would surely tell me that babies get sick from the evil eye, which is a whole other belief system I’m not prepared to argue against. “Le hicieron ojo”- they put the evil eye on him or her- is something I’ve heard from folks of all ages and education levels around here. And I’ve even seen with my own eyes someone suddenly (after walking by someone who dislikes him a lot) get blurred vision and other weird symptoms, which were then just as suddenly cured by some cool ritualistic-looking rubbing with an egg, and prayer, and I don’t know what else. So I reserve judgment about the evil eye, although I’m still putting my money on Lucia having gotten a cold from being passed around at a party and someone there sharing their germs. Alas, nobody asks me; they only tell me their theories (which they do not call theories, but rather fact).
Don’t get me wrong; I believe in the power of energy, I believe in the effectiveness of traditional healing and folk medicine, and I believe in the wisdom of people beyond and before “modern” medicine. But I do not buy into all those things blindly and purely, by any stretch. When I get sick, I am much more likely to take certain herbs and eat certain foods than I am to take “modern medicine”. But you’ll never convince me that staying in my room is more effective than thorough hand washing in preventing illness. Likewise, until I see fathers staying inside with the baby to “prevent illness” while mothers are free to go out whenever they want, I’ll continue to believe that these ideas about the cold are part of a larger conspiracy against women that is designed to keep us in the home, and to put the blame on us when something is wrong with our children. I refuse to take the blame, and I refuse to buy in. Even though nobody asked me.

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A Visit From the Dead, Multi-Cultural Style

3 Dec

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Halloween is by far my favorite holiday. Partly for the costumes and the candy, for the creepiness and the revelry, for the possibility of being scared, for low-budget horror films and late night parties.  But I also love it for the idea that it is the night when the veil is thinnest between the worlds of the living and the dead. I love the idea of celebrating our dead loved ones, of believing that our dead do indeed come to visit us. Needless to say, I was a bit conflicted about missing Halloween, even though it meant I would finally get to experience Mexican Day(s) of the Dead.

When I was in college, I did a presentation once (in Spanish) on the Day of the Dead. It seemed even more fascinating and meaningful to me, in some ways, than Halloween.  I remember being a little confused, though, about what exactly went on, since all of my sources said something slightly different.

When I was in Chile, I was totally disappointed by the lack of celebration. I vowed that I would be in Mexico one day for Dia de los Muertos, since I knew people really celebrated there. Now, realizing that almost-forgotten goal, I see that not only do people celebrate differently depending on the country, but that here, even regionally people celebrate very differently. Thus I can only tell you about how people celebrate here in Juquila, and about the new traditions of our little mixed-culture family.

I’d read about people going and celebrating in the cemetery, and was hoping that would be the case here. It wasn’t. There is some visiting the cemetery involved, though. The day before the spirits come, you visit their grave to decorate, light candles, say prayers. It seems like a moment to invite them. .  If your dead are buried elsewhere and you can’t get to them, there’s another place in the cemetery for you to have your space with your dead. And the day after the visit, you do the same thing, but then it’s that gentle shove telling them ‘thanks for the visit; it’s time to go home.’

Here, October 31st is the day of angelitos (little angels), a day for the children and babies who have passed away. This is especially meaningful for me this year. I became a mother shortly after the (separate) deaths of two children whose parents are friends of mine. The deaths of those children (one a newborn and one a ten year old) were really painful for me, and so I can’t even imagine what a nightmare it was and is for their parents.

But somehow it is really comforting for me to imagine that their spirits are able to come and visit for a day. It’s comforting to leave them tiny little dishes of chicken soup with rice, tiny little cups of hot chocolate, little servings of arroz con leche (a sweet dish of rice cooked in milk). You leave candy and fruit and nuts and miniature servings of bread for them, too. Here’s a picture of our altar for the angelitos:

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The idea of inviting their spirits, enticing them with treats, makes a lot of sense to me. The trail of flower petals that goes from just outside the door  and leads to the altar, to help them find their way, fills my heart with an immense sensation of love and a strange kind of joy. Because at the end of the day, death doesn’t make sense to me. The death of children, particularly, feels so horrendous and unjust and cruel. In my mind, in my heart, leaving them these sweet little offerings is a way to, if not make sense of it, at least pay some respect to their life and their death. It is a way to honor them and remember them that I feel like we don’t know how to do in the U.S. It seems to me that we shun death, we don’t want to talk about it. When a family member dies, you are allowed some days of utter sadness, and then you’re supposed to go on with life. Forget about it. This celebration and ritual, on the other hand, seems like a way to not forget the dead but to do something, and not just drown yourself in the sadness of it. It is a way to try to make peace with death, to mix those realms between the living and the dead, to feel like we are not alone, and to maybe give us less fear of death, with the thought that our loved ones won’t forget us, and that at least we can come and visit them, if only for a day.

The day after the angelitos come to visit, you take away the offerings for them in order to put up offerings for your grown-up loved ones who’ve passed. You’ve got till 3pm to change out your offerings- apparently the grown-ups don’t show up till then, although the angelitos arrive at noon the day before. For the adults, mole with chicken is the traditional meal to set out for them. (Mole, pronounced mol-eh is a thick sauce made from hot peppers and tons of other spices- it’s very elaborate and delicious.)You also set out other things they would like- sweet bread, nuts, fruit, etc. You can even set out some tequila or a cigarette or whatever else they might have liked in life. Here’s a picture of the mole.

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On our altar, we put up a large photo of Conan’s maternal grandmother, whom he was extremely close to. Next to her, so they could meet, I put up my favorite photo of my Nonna, my mama’s mama, whom I was very close to. In the photo, she’s young, my age or younger maybe, on top of a mountain in Italy, close to the town she was from. Her face is triumphant- as it should be when you’ve climbed a mountain. She’s wearing this cute outfit with polka dots, a sleeveless shirt and what I’d call short shorts, and she’s looking totally self-assured and content. As you should be when you climb mountains all the time, literally and figuratively.

Besides the photo, I broke all rules and traditions and put up my plate of pasta al buro- pasta with butter, Italian style, just like my Nonna used to make, just like my mom makes, just like I learned to make. As I was lovingly preparing it, I was remembering going to my Nonna’s house, and her having all kinds of different shapes of pasta in her cupboard. She would let me pick out which type we’d eat that day- shells or wheels or tubes or various other kinds.  I remember thinking that the pasta tasted differently depending on what shape it was in (and I still believe this). It was the kind of thing I could tell my Nonna and she would never laugh or say it was silly. She would probably ask me why I thought that, and listen attentively to my answer.

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Making the pasta for her, setting it on the altar, lighting the candle for her (and another for my paternal grandmother), was the first time in a long time I’d let myself really think about her and what a gift she was in my life. It was one of only a couple times since she’s passed (about a year and a half ago) that I’ve let myself just talk to her. It doesn’t matter to me if there’s really an afterlife, if she can really hear me, if her spirit really comes to visit or not; it felt good to commune with her spirit, to just believe, the way you could when you were a kid, to let go for a minute of the hurt and the loss of her death and to feel her legacy as the joy that it is. For that, I am grateful.

So even though I missed seeing the kids trick or treating, even though I didn’t dress up, even though I missed some of my other Halloween traditions, this is definitely a worthy holiday that we will continue to celebrate in this family. And we’ll keep on doing it with bowls of pasta next to the mole, and however else works for us, because we like to break the rules in this family, and we can mix up and remake our own traditions, happily ever after.

Here’s a picture of Lucia and me at a friend’s house, drinking hot chocolate and eating special dead bread (okay, that’s a literal translation of pan de muertos- a more appropriate translation is something like, Day of the Dead bread)

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The bread on our altar here below is from the coast- different regions make different breads, of course. Also pictured are some local foods- chayote (like a form of squash), corn on the cob, and hijos de cuateco (Don’t ask me to translate that. It’s a food that grows wild around here.)

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A Little Dose of Positivity

8 Oct

ImageThis blog could use some positivity, as could I. To take some time to focus on the good things in my new environment. Because some days you might believe- and I might, too- that it’s all difficult and crappy. And it’s just not true. (And yes that rainbow is in our backyard.)

So I made a little list of things that make me feel like sunshine on a cloudy day. Number one on that list is my family here- my daughter, my partner, my awesome mother-in-law. But this is more of a cultural list, stuff that I like specifically about this place, not about the people around me.

Granted, the things that I love are mostly food-related. But I am, after all, that girl that prefers the kitchen above all other places in the house. “The kitchen is the heart of a home” said my friend Luis de Leon, and food is like glue that further binds people into loving friendships and family relationships. So I hope you enjoy my little rainbow list, and I’ll cook something for you if you come to visit!

Please not that my list is not in order of importance.

-Epazote… And you thought cilantro was exciting. Epazote is another fragrant and delicious herb that for some reason I could rarely find in Louisville. I especially recommend it for chilaquiles and for black beans. And while we’re on the subject, yerba santa (especially in black bean tamales) is pretty exquisite as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_auritum -go here for more yerba santa info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphania_ambrosioides -go here for more epazote info.

-Chepiles… Looks like spinach, tastes like artichokes. Not like vinegar-soaked canned artichoke hearts- like artichoke leaves. If you’ve never had a whole artichoke, you need to immediately go buy one. Boil for 45-60 minutes. Melt some butter and squeeze the juice of a lemon- a real lemon. Add salt to the lemon juice. Take an artichoke leaf, dip the edge in either butter or lemon juice, then scrape off the meaty part, now dripping in butter, with your teeth. Repeat until you get to the heart, which is a seriously orgasmic example of a vegetable. Then you’ll have an idea what chepiles taste like. Here’s a chepiles tamal:

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-Tropical fruit…. including mango, pineapple, coconut, different kinds of banana, and much more are all close by, accessible, and fairly cheap (definitely cheap compared to Kentucky).

-Organic produce is cheaper than commercial pesticide-covered, genetically-modified shit…. Although it’s not labeled or anything, (and there’s no supermarket, either, but this will NOT be a complainy post), the ladies who sit on the ground in the plaza to sell produce are selling the stuff that they grow in their town, which is chemical-free, delicious, local, and cheap.

-The view of the river and the mountains from my window is gorgeous. Look! The picture doesn’t do it justice, but you get the idea.

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-Almost everything is local business…. People put whatever business they feel like in the front part of their house. This is how many families make a living. So while in the cities you might have a supermarket or other big corporations, most businesses there and all businesses in towns are the businesses of the people who live there. I both love and hate the chaos and randomness of it, trying to figure out where to go to buy what we need. You might have to ask around and get sent to several different places before you find what you’re looking for- like a mosquito net we got to put around Lucia’s bed. You might have to go to a place 3 different times before you catch them open, like when we wanted to get a key made. You also might have 10 different places in the plaza that sell practically the same thing, which is just a little ridiculous. But at least it’s local. And in some ways, it’s more convenient- like you can count on there being all kinds of necessities (basic food products like tomato, hot peppers, rice, beans, eggs, etc.) right around the corner- most of the time.

-Loudspeaker announcements… okay I don’t actually love this but it does amuse the hell out of me. The local government has a loudspeaker that they put on top of a car and drive around making important announcements. Unfortunately, to my untrained ear (and Conan’s too), it mostly sounds like the parents on Charlie Brown. I hear something like “wha wha brr wha arrr importante…. Wha wha brr ig colonia 3 de mayo…. Wha wha pa arr 20 de septiembre ” The other day I caught  only the words “papanicolau” (pap smear) and “mamografia” (mammogram). But I have no idea when, where, or for whom. Oh, well.

-The products people sell via drive-by/walk-by…. First of all, there’s a bunch of fantastic street food- tamales, chiles rellenos, breads, sweets, etc.- that passes by our house every day. People walk by selling whatever it is that they’ve made (including fresh tortillas twice a day), which is unbelievably convenient when we need a snack or don’t have time to cook. And then there are the things that get sold via truck- the gas we use for the stove and the hot water heater, the big bottles of drinking water, pizza, mattresses, and more. We woke up our first morning in Mexico to a car driving by announcing “Atole! Atole!” (which is an oatmeal-based drink), and realized we were definitely in Mexico after all. Selling heavy stuff via truck is great because we (and many other folks) don’t have a car to go pick stuff up and bring it back. The downside is you have to be home and paying attention to get those things. The gas truck at least makes a weird moo-like sound, then plays some music, and announces “gas de Oaxaca”.  I refuse to buy pizza because the announcement/song is too irritating. But many things aren’t announced- you just have to watch for them, which is how we missed the water truck that has the water that tastes good for like 3 days in a row.

-Cheap(er) access to medical and dental care. What’s not to love about not stressing out about whether you can afford to go to the doctor or not?

-There’s not a lot of processed food (also a downside occasionally!).

-Breastfeeding wherever, whenever, with no dirty looks, rude comments, or even the bat of an eye…yep. I know, all you breastfeeding moms in the U.S. are jealous now.

-Street-life exists…. The town feels alive. There are always people walking to get places (and horses and cars, too). Big events happen outside, usually in the plaza. Houses are open. The environment is more public, open, not private, shut out.  

-Handmade, fresh tortillas every day…. Yes, I mentioned this in the products people sell via walk-by section. But it’s worth mentioning again. It’s pretty great.

-No lawnmowers- only machetes… First of all, people don’t have stupid lawns like they do in the U.S.  (and not a lot of grass that’s not eaten by cows and such anyway). But when there is excess grass you cut it with a machete. That’s right. No lawnmowers. No leaf-blowers (the bane of my existence/the epitome of US waste and laziness, in my humble opinion). None of that ridiculous noise and poor use of petroleum. And you can even hire someone to cut your grass. We had some insanely overgrown mess all around the back of the house and a guy cut it down for like 15 bucks (US).  I know, you wish you had a machete.

-No tornados…. That’s right, I can finally enjoy a storm in peace. No sirens. No National Weather Service beep beeps giving me panic attacks. It’s just a simple storm.

-Patriotism is reasonable and for a limited time only… Mexican independence is celebrated in September, and the whole month you’ll find flags everywhere, and other signs of patriotism. But then, it’s over. October 1 rolls around and all that blatant national pride disappears from view. Sure, people still love their country. But they’re not all up in your face about it, and they don’t go around insisting to everyone and their mom that they’re country is better than everyone else’s. It’s patriotism I can respect. Fancy that. 

….I’m sure there are other aspects of life here that I appreciate and enjoy that haven’t occurred to me in time for this post, so I’ll keep you updated, and try to keep busting out these little rays of sunshine from time to time. Since we’re almost out of the rainy season, and I’ve been here over two months now, I’m sure sharing the positivity will get easier. Stay tuned! 

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Nevermind the Pharmacists

8 Oct

Part One on Health and Safety: Doctors, Medicines, and Vaccines (oh, my!)
People in the U.S. have strong opinions and culture around health and safety. I hesitate to post this, because even while I feel critical about my new adopted country, I also feel protective of it. I know that my critique could be used as more fodder for the kind of people who are already xenophobic, people who are hateful and/or fearful about Mexico, Mexicans, and/or other immigrants to the U.S. Of course, all I want is to share some anecdotes about our adjustment to this country, and probably those xenophobes are not reading my blog anyway. Nonetheless, other well intentioned folks, potentially some people who I love and who care about me, are liable to be just as appalled, just as worried and upset and condemning about this country- which, after all, is the country where my partner was raised, and the country where we are raising our daughter for now. It’s a country where my heart lives now, and one that I’m not leaving anytime soon.
It is hard to share some of the negative or difficult things about my life here. People sometimes feel bad for me, feel pity, feel dismay, want to save me from it somehow, or just can’t fathom it. But I want to share, so that someday, when I go visit my city again, someday, when potentially we move back, someday, when you and I chat on the phone, the bridge between our experiences won’t feel so vast. So I hope that people can read this, and all the other negative, critical, difficult, or just wildly different things that I post, and keep in mind that this is just where I am. Every place has serious flaws, including and especially the U.S. I am not sharing this so that people will worry, or be shocked, or feel sorry for me. Rather, I want to give you an idea of my landscape, so here goes.
Doctors
My first experience with a doctor here was fantastic, since I didn’t have to leave the bed. Conan called his cousin who’s a doctor, explained my symptoms, and the cousin prescribed an antibiotic for me. Brilliant.
However, the same informality makes me nervous in terms of my baby. When we took Lucia for her first check-up, I diligently took all the paperwork from the hospital and the doctor’s office in Louisville. But the doctor didn’t even start a file for her- not a single note was taken, except by me. He also didn’t do all the same routine stuff like they do in the U.S., although maybe not all of that’s necessary? This doctor is a general practitioner, not a pediatrician, so maybe that’s the difference? I’m not sure that check-ups are the norm, so maybe that’s it? I did find out recently that there is one pediatrician (and one gynecologist!) in this town, so we’re discussing the possibility of going to see him/her for Lucia’s four month check-up.
It’s not like we have an appointment for her check-up. That’s because there are no appointments here. You just go to the doctor when you need to see a doctor. You wait if they’re not available. They have longer working hours, although they also might not be there at all, randomly. This is because most people work out of an office attached to their home. It’s nice for everyone concerned, as far as I can tell. The doctor doesn’t have to be twiddling his/her thumbs in the office if there are no patients- they can be in their house doing whatever they need or want to do there, and just slip in when a patient comes. The patient has more access to the doctor since the doctor’s “office hours” are longer, since the doctor doesn’t have to be there the whole time. The patient decides what time and day to go in. And wait times don’t seem to be longer than in the U.S., where you wait despite having an appointment.
Medicine
Antibiotics and other medications don’t come with 3 pages of warnings and information, either. They come with as little information as possible, it seems. The one bit of information mine had on it said do not use while pregnant or lactating. Even though I heard Conan tell the doctor on the phone that I was breastfeeding. Even though Conan says the doctor says that he’s gonna prescribe me a not-so-strong antibiotic since I’m breastfeeding. Even though Conan says the pharmacy person looked in some textbook to make sure it was okay. So why does my package say it’s not okay?
I’m 3 days into it at this point, and almost decide to panic. I’m also in Oaxaca City, not Juquila, so I can’t just go ask the doctor. I decide to skip my dose for the night and go ask a pharmacist in the morning. So when we pass by a pharmacy the next day, I say, “Hold on. I’m just gonna go ask about the medicine real quick.” There’s a guy that looks like a teenager working behind the counter- I avoid him. Then there’s a woman who looks like she’s at least a little more in charge, and not a teenager (no offense teens, but I’m looking for medical advice).
I approach the woman and explain the situation. “Well,” she says in a school-teacher voice, “that’s right. Antibiotics are bad for babies. It damages them.” I just look at her for a minute. “Really? All antibiotics? So pregnant women and breastfeeding women can’t take any antibiotics?” I ask, catching myself before I raise my voice. “Correct. It’s dangerous.” She affirms. I want to channel my Nonna and ask her where the hell she learned that. I want to tell her that I know that’s not true, that there are different classes of antibiotics and they affect fetuses and babies in varying degrees. I want to tell her it would be insane and more dangerous if pregnant and breastfeeding women couldn’t take any antibiotics ever. I want to scream at her that she’s probably doing more damage to women telling them they can’t take antibiotics. Instead I stare at her again for a minute, controlling myself, and give her my best sarcastic “thank you,” and storm out of the pharmacy.
“How can she be a pharmacist?” I ask Conan irately. “She’s not a pharmacist, Julia. She’s just some woman who works in a pharmacy.” He explains. “Then where is the pharmacist?” There isn’t a pharmacist, he tells me. So imagine, it’s like there’s just the Walgreens clerk there doling out your medicine. Not someone who’s studied medicines. Someone who’s maybe graduated from high school. This is the norm. Fabulous.
Antibiotics also don’t come in the quantity that you need, for some reason. They’re prepackaged, so you might have to buy a couple of packages and then have some leftovers. I didn’t realize this until Conan got an antibiotic. He was prescribed to take it for 7 days but there were only enough pills for 5 days. Then when he went back to get some more they were out of it, so he went back to the doctor and got prescribed a different antibiotic to take for another 5 days. Not particularly efficient, to say the least, but surely there’s some reason for it? I guess so the non-pharmacists can’t mess it up? Any other ideas, anyone?
Vaccines
Before we arrived in Mexico, we researched vaccines fairly extensively. Mexico and the U.S. have pretty much the same vaccines, and more or less the same schedule, which made things a little easier. We had decided, however, to delay the Hepatitis B vaccine (routinely given at birth), and had delayed the rotavirus vaccine, and were discussing skipping it altogether. Then we arrived in Mexico, and were told by a doctor that you can’t opt out of or delay any of them. They’re obligatory- and supposedly more necessary than in the U.S., according to some.
Vaccines are also free, which is great, though it means the demand outweighs supply regularly. They are only given at hospitals and health centers, not at doctor’s offices. When we went to the hospital to get the 2 vaccines Lucia hadn’t had yet, they were out. The rotavirus vaccine can only be given within a certain time frame, and time was almost up. Since it’s slightly unpredictable when a new batch of vaccines would get to Juquila, we needed to get it elsewhere. While I wasn’t that worried about her not getting the rotavirus vaccine, I didn’t want them to make her get it outside of the time frame that’s been studied as the same time frame for the vaccine.
Luckily, Conan’s mom knows somebody- a key factor in any country, as we all know. So she called her nurse friend in the next town over and got the okay for us to go to the community health center there. I, of course, have to pee while we’re there. The bathroom looks relatively clean, but I go to wash my hands and there’s no soap.
Now, this is a situation that happens often, and I could do a whole post on the lack of public restrooms and lack of toilet paper and lack of this and that, thanks to my incredibly small bladder helping to over-inform me about these things. But we’re in a community health center! There’s a sign over the sink that explains how to wash your hands effectively and tells you about the importance of hand washing. And there’s no freaking soap. And while I’d already learned to carry hand sanitizer with me everywhere, the idea of all those sick people and no soap is enough to make me ill on the spot. (I will say that the nurse in the health center washed her hands with soap in the sink right in the exam room before giving Lucia the vaccine, for the record. Thank you, hygiene gods.)
To be continued…..

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Epic Burgers

5 Sep

I didn’t plan to come to Mexico to eat burgers. Yes, burgers. Not burritos. Not chimichangas (which aren’t real Mexican food anyway). No. Burgers. Go figure. I’ve been a vegetarian, most of the time, since I was 11 years old. The exceptions have been mostly when I’ve been out of the U.S., which has been quite a bit in the past 10 years. Even so, the past several countries have all been in Latin America, and while I’ve eaten meat there (even Chilean versions of hot dogs!), I have not eaten a burger in at least 7 years. I believe the last time I ate a burger I was in Italy, with a horrendous case of boot-rot, and in an effort to avoid walking my travel partner got us McDonald’s, since it was the only very close food available where we were staying. (We swore each other to secrecy from the shame and irony.)I don’t even like burgers, or most meat, really. I eat it when I’m away because I want to try all the typical food in a country, because it’s convenient and I don’t always have access to what I would normally cook for myself, because I don’t want to reject food that kind people offer me. But I don’t get excited about meat, especially burgers.
But we walk down the street to visit Epic (whose name is actually Epigmenio, who people call Epig, which sounds more like Epic). I am not planning on eating a burger. But I am desperate to get out of the house, so I gladly accompany Conan, with Lucia wrapped up against my chest, of course. Epic is friendly. He speaks directly to me. He smiles- and has very cute dimples, by the way. He has that idiosyncratic I’m-super-busy-working-very-fast-but-it’s-all-cake-to-me, laid-back attitude that experts in the service industry do so well. It’s the first time I’ve seen that attitude here in Mexico, where tips do not prevail. It takes me back to that camaraderie of the restaurant business in Louisville. He chats with us despite the blaring volume of telenovelas, which he glimpses at from time to time- super multitasking, as busy as he is that night.
I can’t believe how many people come for his burgers. That night he runs out of burgers, so many people come, but he still has some hotdogs left…. More than the sheer quantity of burgers, I can’t believe what these burgers look like. I watch him prepare plenty of them before he gets around to taking our order- and by then I’ve decided that yes, I have to have one. Because these are Mexican burgers, after all. And not just Mexican burgers- these are fucking epic burgers.
Let’s see if I can manage to name all the ingredients:
-the burger (which I might add, is local beef, ground the same day, formed into patties by hand that afternoon- although I didn’t learn that till later)
-american cheese (or some equivalent of gross orange-yellow version of cheese, ew)
-bacon
-ham
-pineapple (for the Hawaiian burger, which I ordered)
-quesillo (delicious Oaxacan melty cheese)
-fried onions
-lettuce
-tomato
-avocado
-jalapeños
-ketchup AND mustard AND mayonnaise
And the verdict is in…. they’re fantastic! (Okay, so I got mine without bacon or American cheese. Even when doing as the Romans do and all that, you gotta have some standards.) You might think I can’t make a fair comparison, since I hadn’t had a burger in years. But come on, converting a vegetarian is a pretty impressive feat.  I advise you all to abandon your fast food burgers immediately, and high tail it to Juquila.
Even more important than the burgers (and what, you ask, could be more important than burgers?), I’m turning Epic into my first friend in Juquila. Call it instinct, sixth sense, intuition, whatever- Epic exudes friend-material energy; he’s friendly but also, I think, sarcastic and skeptical, he’s funny and giggles easily, and I think he’s strong and tough and nice and lovely. I don’t actually know him, especially not that first night when I go and eat his hamburgers, but I warn him that same night that he’s gonna end up being my friend. More details on that later, but I will mention that so far so good- he’s even the first visitor that’s come to the house to see ME (not for Conan, not for Lucia- but to talk to me!)…. I think it’s gonna be an epic friendship.

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Lucia in the sky with diamond… earrings? Or not. And other mama drama

5 Sep

Lucia, being a baby of not-quite 2 months old (at the time of writing this), looks pretty androgynous.  In the U.S., the color of baby clothing is what tends to identify a baby’s sex. I even had a nurse think that what was on the medical chart identifying my baby as a girl must have been wrong, since the baby was wearing green. In Mexico, apparently what identifies sex is earrings, or the lack thereof. So since Lucia doesn’t have her ears pierced, everyone assumes she’s a boy. When we say she’s a girl, people are shocked and dismayed. “When are you gonna do her little holes?” they ask. “When she asks for it,” we reply.  That stops some folks, but others insist that that’s silly; she really needs some earrings.
People also believe that babies here are cold all the time and must be totally bundled up, even in sunny, 80-degree weather. “Where are her socks? Where’s her hat?” someone scolded me (this is a theme, really). “It’s hot out,” I asserted. “When did she tell you she was hot?” Around the same time she told you she was cold- I didn’t say. What’s even better (“better” being more ironic and irritating) is when strangers insist on holding my child, and then when she cries they tell me it’s because she’s cold, or for some other reason which is surely my fault. It couldn’t be because she doesn’t want to be in their arms, even though she was not crying in my arms just 3 seconds ago and now that you’ve given her back to me she’s stopped crying again. No, no, you, the stranger, surely know better than I what’s wrong with my baby. Thank you.
Which brings us to another baby mama drama of mine: strangers snatching my baby from me. I realize it’s probably universal that people like to hold babies. I don’t normally mind other people holding Lucia. In fact, it’s often a nice little break for me and her papi. But my mama-bear instincts kick into high gear when people who haven’t even introduced themselves to me come up and try to take my baby out of my arms. There’s no, “oh, can I hold the baby?” or even, “hello, my name is so-and-so”. They just come and reach out their arms, and I’m a big bitch for not wanting to hand over my baby. I don’t care if they know Conan, or Conan’s mom Paulina. I don’t know them. And I am (one of two people) responsible for Lucia’s wellbeing. Even if it weren’t dangerous (and parents, you try telling me you like to hand your newborn off to strangers on a regular basis), it’s still exceedingly rude. I can’t imagine trying to take someone’s baby out of their arms without a) asking them if it’s okay, and b) INTRODUCING MYSELF, if it’s not already a friend of mine. Part of this is, I believe, another symptom of me not being a real human being here (or maybe there’s another reason why so few people will speak directly to me?). For example, day 2 in Juquila, I go to the corner store with Paulina, with Lucia in her wrap as usual. People in the store come make a fuss about Lucia (Okay, cool. She is an adorable baby and all that.), but they ask Paulina if it’s her baby. Ummm, have you seen Paulina pregnant in the past year? Is Paulina carrying this baby around wrapped up against her body? You obviously can’t really mean to ask if this is Paulina’s baby, so why are you asking that? Is it that important to not acknowledge my existence? We could make a comic book character out of me- the invisible mommy. Look! There’s a floating nipple feeding that baby! Look! That baby is walking down the street held up by thin air! Bless their little hearts, they surely just want to help poor Lucia, as it must seem that she’s all alone.
And then I have culture shock around safety. Car seats are practically non-existent, for example. We went out to eat tlayudas a couple days after arriving. A friend of Conan’s picked us up in their car, so we had our car seat ready to go. The friend rolled down the window and his 7 month old daughter was sitting on his lap. He says he’s teaching her to drive, and doesn’t understand why we’d want to use the car seat. Granted, I understand better as we drive around town- between all the hills and curves and speed bumps, the random livestock and the people in the street, you never actually pick up speed. But in this case my cultural idea of safety is soooo deeply ingrained that I can’t help but feel nervous and upset. All I can think is that of course it’s fine to ride around without a car seat- unless something happens. So I wrap her tightly in her wrap, pressed up against my body, put a seat belt around us both, and throw a prayer to the wind. What else can I do?
Being a mom in a foreign country adds a whole new dimension to what it means to adapt. I have always considered myself such a chameleon, so capable of accepting whatever happens as an interesting story, if nothing else. But between the fact that I live here now, that I’m not just passing through, and the fact that I have this adorable, precious, teeny-tiny being to take care of, it’s a whole new ballpark deciding where and how to stand my ground, where and how to refuse to adapt, and how to do it graciously. No one said that motherhood would be easy.

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That was then, this is now: the move

27 Aug

I was walking through the airport, pushing one of those carts that you can rent. It was almost overflowing, with 2 carry-on-sized suitcases, a backpack, a laptop, and a diaper bag. And those were just our carry-ons; we had 5 other full-sized suitcases we’d checked. It seemed absurd and excessive almost, but when you think about packing up your entire life- for you, your partner, and a 7 week old baby- getting it down to just a few suitcases isn’t really so bad.
But I was thinking more about 10 years before. I saw myself, barely 18 years old, headed off to spend 6 months in Europe, waking through the airport alone, my hair a mix of purple, red, and blue, a scowl on my face, hung over from my good-bye party that had lasted into early that morning, with nothing but a backpack. Not a backpacker backpack, mind you, but rather a school backpack. And that was all. No checked luggage. No purse. Just me and my backpack, and all my hopes and fears. I was sure I had everything I needed- essentially a couple changes of clothes, a toothbrush, a book, and a raging sense of adventure. What I lacked in packed items I more than made up for with my blank-slate-open mind and heart.
Ten years later, I’d like to think I’m just as adaptable. But I know I’m not. My life is different; I’m different. I’ve got way more baggage, in more ways than one. But that baggage is a mixed bag; it also means I have way more to bring to the table. And so this new phase begins.

 

 

 

Here we are on the plane:

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