MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON LIFE IN MEXICO
I know last time I wrote, I promised stories of artifact analysis and pictures of broken bits of stuff…. This was yet another empty promise (in the tradition of “really, I’m gonna update my blog more often!”). But, also as usual, I do have good excuses!
Most of my time of late has been spent pursuing funding for this summer and/or next year and applying for jobs in case the funding doesn’t work out. Summer funding was successful (big sigh of relief). In addition, it looks very, VERY likely that funding for next year is also set. A very good friend in NYC made finding money for me her full time job. She beat the funding trees with a large stick until money rained down. She is still beating, but things look very, very good!
As a result, I’m officially announcing that I’ll be in Mexico for one more year. All of you who haven’t yet found time to visit now have a whole year extra to buy tickets and come on down. (Just let me know ahead of time, Casa Elizabeth fills up quickly!) I’m currently accepting reservations through New Years...
In addition to the fun money tasks, I’ve been teaching, grading, and preparing to teach some more. This past spring, I accepted a part time teaching position at the University of the Americas here in Cholula (largely to get a work visa through the university so I don’t have to drive across the border every 90-180 days to renew my tourist papers…). So, along with everything else, I’ve been teaching “Cross Cultural Communication for International Business” at the business school. No, really, I’m not kidding. It seemed, at the beginning of the semester, like something of a cruel joke. I mean, I’ve spent my whole life doing everything I could to avoid ending up in business school, and here I was, teaching in one!
Surprisingly, my students and I had a good time with the class! The course was basically an introduction to “culture” (subtitled: uhm, no, not everybody is just like you!), and we spent a lot of time discussing things like, “When going to a meeting with business people from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, you should be on time.”
The topics of class ranged far and wide within the framework of “cross cultural communication.” One day, one of my students raised his hand during lecture. I called on the student.
“Uhm, Miss, may I ask a question?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Uhm, well, I was watching on tv this show from the U.S., and in it, they made it seem like in the U.S., people trust police officers. They even told kids in this show that if they have a problem, they should go to a police officer for help! That isn’t really true, is it?”
There were looks of wide-eyed bewilderment and disbelief from the students.
“Well, actually,” I replied, “it is true. And yes, we do teach children that police officers will protect them and help them if they need it.”
More looks of disbelief and protest from the students….
So I told them about Constable Knight, who had the job back of going around to all the elementary schools in Victoria, BC and talking to school children. I told them about how he taught us that jay walking is the worst possible thing you could do. I told them how he would take the bullets out of his gun and pass it around for all of us to handle (so we wouldn’t be afraid if we had to go up to a policeman for help), how we got to watch cartoon movies of a talking car teaching us how to cross the street safely, and how we all got stickers for our lunch boxes at the end of the annual visit (“Walk wise with your eyes!”).
The students were totally appalled.
“So, Miss,” asked another, “are police officers different in the U.S. than they are here?”
“Uh, well, yeah,” I said. “And actually, this raises an important travel point. When you are in the U.S., if you have an encounter with a policeman for any reason, you shouldn’t try to bribe him!”
“What!” one of the students burst out, “What are you supposed to do then?”
This led into a discussion of bribery, and I explained that in the States, it isn’t really common practice to bribe anybody ever. I told them that this made it very difficult for me in Mexico because I had no understanding of when it is appropriate to bribe someone and when it isn’t, that I never knew if I was expected to offer a bribe, or if I would be offending someone by doing so.
One of my students leaned back in his chair and said, “Miss, don’t worry. In one month when I graduate, I will be a lawyer, and I know this system very well. I will explain to you how it is you know when you need to bribe someone.”
I waited expectantly.
He said, “Any time anyone gives you two options for something, one good and one bad, you must bribe them.”
The rest of the class nodded happily. And as you see, the class was educational for me as much as for my students!
That class is now finished with (as of this past Friday when I turned in my grades), and I am preparing for two more in June. I am going to be teaching an intensive lab course (eight hours a day five days a week) in Animal Bone Analysis (in Spanish!) for the Anthropology Department. I’m looking forward to that, and we will be using the materials I excavated this past winter, so I get a lot out of the deal!
In addition, I’ve been asked to teach a special two week course (two hours a day five days a week) in Mexican politics and economics for six MBA students coming from a Business School in France for the summer. It turns out that the University here hires and fires based on course reviews (imagine that!). Mine are always very good (thank god for years spent learning how to teach!!!), and so suddenly I’m in much demand around the university. I’m actually finding myself in the unusual position of turning work down (paid work!!!!) just so that I can have some time to do my own research! A novel position for an archaeologist! At least in my experience…..
Outside of all this work stuff, I’ve also taken some time off and had some fun! My friend Lee flew down from Virginia for ten days and we had a great time escaping real life and responsibilities. Lee and I drove to Oaxaca for a few days, which was really lovely. We spent a few days at my house (and toured the Hacienda Acocotla so Lee can see where I dig), and then popped down for a few days in Mexico City. If you scroll to the bottom of this blog, you should see a slideshow with TONS of pictures of our adventures.
On a daily basis, I escape work by spending a bit of time training up my two foster puppies (for cute doggie pics, see the slideshow below the pics of Lee’s vacation!). When I returned from my travels at Christmas last January, I was greeted by a little black cocker-mix doggie who was being attacked by the dogs who live in our street. I took her in, temporarily, until Zee and I could get her to the dog asylum near here. She had a broken hip (and mange, but that is another story), and so couldn’t get away from the street dogs, who were intent on making her leave.
Before she (who was subsequently christened Lily) could be taken off to the dog asylum, my friend Kim decided this was just the dog she was looking for. So, I am taking care of Lily and training her up until I can get her to Kim. Lily has recovered from the broken hip and the mange nicely (after baths in special shampoo three times a week….), and is now a happy, healthy and fiercely protective pup.
Word of my success with Lily must have spread. On Easter Sunday, I took Lily downstairs to let her outside for a bit, and discovered that the World’s Cutest Puppy had been abandoned on my doorstep.
I had actually encountered, from a distance, the W.C.P. earlier in the day. While sipping my coffee and checking my email earlier in the morning, I heard a noise outside. I peeked out the window into the driveway and saw two pick-ups parked in the street in front of the house. Apparently, some people from one of the local churches were delivering palm leaves to all the “observant” households in the neighborhood. In the bed of the second truck was a little boy, maybe about four, and the W.C.P. I looked out the window and thought, “Wow, that sure is a cute little dog,” and, not thinking any more about it, went back to work.
Apparently, unwilling to make me feel left out, and unable to leave me the palm leaves due to lack of church attendance, they decided to deposit the puppy on my doorstep. There she patiently waited until Lily and I emerged about three hours later. She took one look at a well fed Lily and me, and all eight pounds of her promptly decided she was staying.
Zee later christened her Chula (which means “pretty”). Chula is as sweet as Lily, and is possibly going to go live with Kim, as well. (Kim is trying to decide if she really wants two Mexican street dogs). In the meantime, Lily and Chula are having a wonderful time playing together and chasing the groundhogs around and around the yard.
Me? I’m just thankful they left the puppy instead of the four year old…..
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
FOR THOSE OF YOU....
Some of you have expressed a desire to know more about exactly what it is my work is about. Those of you who know or couldn't care less should ignore this post.... Those of you who are interested, read on! Below, I've pasted an informal introduction to my studies that I wrote as part of one of my current attempts to get some money. It is a VERY non-academic introduction to how I think about things. Those who want to know more about the pure archaeology of it all, just skip to the post below. I'm trying to wrestle some pictures into a posting I've already written about more "daily life" fieldwork stuff, but for now you can get the text under the heading "La Patrona".
In 1529, Bernardino de Sahagún arrived in New Spain, one of 19 Franciscan missionaries. During the following sixty years, he learned Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, he taught indigenous men Spanish and Latin. He taught them to read and write, he taught catechism, he trained them to be priests, and all around, he saw what he believed to be the complete destruction of the pre-Hispanic world. This was not an unreasonable assumption. Modern estimates place the indigenous death toll at 90% of the population in the first 100 years after the arrival of Cortes (Knight 2002). This was devastation on an unimaginable level for both the indigenous population and Europeans[1]. How could any culture survive such ruin?
Sahagún was an unusual man. He was not only a missionary, he was a humanist, a scholar, and he was, many argue, the first anthropologist to set foot in the New World. The destruction he witnessed seems to have worried him. He was, of course, in favor of converting the Indians to Christianity, but he wanted to document the world that had existed prior to the Spanish arrival before it completely and irrevocably disappeared. He did so in the form of a twelve volume encyclopedia known today as the Florentine Codex. The Codex contains descriptions of everything in the Aztec world: history; a complete sketch of their deities; Aztec social structure; their catalogue of the natural world. He wrote his encyclopedia in both Spanish and Nahuatl with the help of native informants who had lived in pre-conquest times. His informants most likely created the lavish illustrations accompanying the text. It is an incredible piece of scholarship, by any standard, and today it provides us with our most reliable glimpse of pre-conquest Mexico.
Early in the summer of 2004, I was in Central Mexico visiting a project I had no intention of becoming a part of. I spent the first two years of my graduate education determined to study the archaeology of ethnic identity in Oaxaca. On my way to Oaxaca and the project I thought I was to spend the next few years with, I stopped in Puebla to introduce myself to the then-director of a new project studying the history, archaeology, and anthropology of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla. Dr. Harold Juli was leading a field school of students from the University of the Americas in Cholula, Mexico. Their subject was ethnoarchaeology and ethnology, in preparation for excavations of the Hacienda that Dr. Juli had scheduled for the following summer. I sat down and spoke with Dr. Juli and his students, largely with the intention of making connections in the small but burgeoning field of Mexican historical archaeology.
The students had been collecting oral histories and conducting basic interviews in the descendant community of La Soledad Morelos. Out of curiosity, I asked them what the people of La Soledad Morelos had to say about animals. My specialty is the analysis of animal bones, and, regardless of my interest in a project, this is a question I always ask. The students started giving me the expected list of animals that the people of La Soledad Morelos recognize as part of their world, ranging from European-introduced domesticates such as cow and goat to the native domesticates of turkey and dog. One of the students laughed and said, “Oh, and then there are the animals that don’t really exist!” The rest of the students laughed dismissively, but my curiosity was piqued.
“Animals that don’t exist?” I asked. The student nodded and proceeded to offer a description of a two-headed snake, completely unknown to modern science. The other students laughed and supported her with their own accounts of this mysterious two-headed snake. I was fascinated. The description could have been taken, word for word, from Sahagún’s volume on natural history in which he describes an Aztec “two-headed snake.”
I had a new dissertation project. Since 2004, I have assumed directorship of The Acocotla Project with the assistance and support of the faculty and students of the University of the Americas. My dissertation examines the maintenance of pre-Columbian identities through foodways (the practices surrounding the acquisition, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food). Foodways is not just about food, but about all the “stuff” that comes with it. Imagine any festive, celebratory meal. You have to plan a menu appropriate to the occasion, you have to get the food, you have to prepare it (for which you need equipment), you have to serve it (which requires more equipment). Serving food requires deciding who among your guests receives what portion. After you’ve decided on the food but before your guest arrive, you have to decide what to wear and how to set the table (and the tone) for the meal to come. Every single step in this unconsciously complex process is culturally-loaded. Decisions made are based on social identity. Standing at the head of the Thanksgiving table, you have to decide who will receive white meat and who gets dark. The answer to this dilemma isn’t obvious to those outside your cultural parameters. The material manifestations of this process are the basis for my study.
My excavations at the Hacienda Acocotla are producing large quantities of food remains in the form of bones and charred plant remains, as well as the vessels used to prepare and serve the meals. As recently as the end of the 19th century, women prepared food using traditional, pre-Columbian stone tools. The material remains indicate that the pre-conquest corn tortilla accompanied meat from European-introduced domesticates. Families sat down in front of the calpanaria to share a meal served on ceramics painted brightly in the Spanish tradition but produced locally. The women of the family made themselves pretty with brightly colored glass beads and brass and copper jewelry. The men proudly wore pre-Columbian-style ear spools that they had made themselves out of a reworked piece of brick. The undoubtedly lively conversation that passed among the diners was in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.
The grandchildren and great grandchildren of those diners sit down to similar meals today. Superficial things have changed. Spanish is the only language spoken, and the ear spools are absent. In spite of this disconnect, much is still the same. Today, it is Gaudencio’s birthday, and everyone in the village is invited to eat. The women of his family spend two days preparing a delicious mole using exclusively pre-Columbian ingredients. I ask them about the ingredients. They turn their noses up when I ask if they use the European-introduced chicken. Laughing, they gently explain to the ignorant gringa that chicken is awful in mole; the only meat ingredient for a good mole is turkey. We sit in the courtyard together around a modern “reproduction” of the ceramic vats (or cazuelas) that I have excavated at more than one pre-conquest site. While we sip our beer, we toss chopped chiles and turkey into the mole simmering over an open fire. We watch while the most accomplished cooks prepare an indigo-colored tortilla out of blue corn. Though many Mexicans claim that tortilla machines liberated the woman of Mexico, the women of La Soledad Morelos are rightly proud of their hand-made tortillas.
Eventually, after hours of preparation, the mole is ready and the party begins. The women’s jewelry is indistinguishable from what we find archaeologically. The dishes we eat off of, while clearly modern versions, owe their design to those I find in my excavations at the Hacienda. The food we are served owes nothing to European heritage and is drawn exclusively from pre-Columbian ingredients. When it comes time for me to take my leave, there is a rush. The hostess must prepare the ētecate, a Nahuatl “doggie bag.” No guest may leave without a portion of the food from any party in La Soledad Morelos, and though nobody speaks Nahuatl, there is no known Spanish translation of this word.
This is the basis of my dissertation. These unspoken continuities intrigue me. Today, the people of La Soledad Morelos identify as mestizo rather than indigenous because it is fashionable. To be indigenous in Mexico today is to belong to the lowest class. Yet, with the exception of the most blatant material items, they maintain indigenous practices, identifiable in the archaeological and ethnohistoric records, from times pre-dating the Spanish Conquest. The label they apply to themselves is important, but so is the material reality upon which they construct the label. That material foundation is what I study, from the founding of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla in 1577 through the present day.
[1] For comparison, the highest estimates for death due to the infamous European Black Plague are, at their highest, 30% Ziegler, P. 1970. The black death. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books..
Some of you have expressed a desire to know more about exactly what it is my work is about. Those of you who know or couldn't care less should ignore this post.... Those of you who are interested, read on! Below, I've pasted an informal introduction to my studies that I wrote as part of one of my current attempts to get some money. It is a VERY non-academic introduction to how I think about things. Those who want to know more about the pure archaeology of it all, just skip to the post below. I'm trying to wrestle some pictures into a posting I've already written about more "daily life" fieldwork stuff, but for now you can get the text under the heading "La Patrona".
In 1529, Bernardino de Sahagún arrived in New Spain, one of 19 Franciscan missionaries. During the following sixty years, he learned Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, he taught indigenous men Spanish and Latin. He taught them to read and write, he taught catechism, he trained them to be priests, and all around, he saw what he believed to be the complete destruction of the pre-Hispanic world. This was not an unreasonable assumption. Modern estimates place the indigenous death toll at 90% of the population in the first 100 years after the arrival of Cortes (Knight 2002). This was devastation on an unimaginable level for both the indigenous population and Europeans[1]. How could any culture survive such ruin?
Sahagún was an unusual man. He was not only a missionary, he was a humanist, a scholar, and he was, many argue, the first anthropologist to set foot in the New World. The destruction he witnessed seems to have worried him. He was, of course, in favor of converting the Indians to Christianity, but he wanted to document the world that had existed prior to the Spanish arrival before it completely and irrevocably disappeared. He did so in the form of a twelve volume encyclopedia known today as the Florentine Codex. The Codex contains descriptions of everything in the Aztec world: history; a complete sketch of their deities; Aztec social structure; their catalogue of the natural world. He wrote his encyclopedia in both Spanish and Nahuatl with the help of native informants who had lived in pre-conquest times. His informants most likely created the lavish illustrations accompanying the text. It is an incredible piece of scholarship, by any standard, and today it provides us with our most reliable glimpse of pre-conquest Mexico.
Early in the summer of 2004, I was in Central Mexico visiting a project I had no intention of becoming a part of. I spent the first two years of my graduate education determined to study the archaeology of ethnic identity in Oaxaca. On my way to Oaxaca and the project I thought I was to spend the next few years with, I stopped in Puebla to introduce myself to the then-director of a new project studying the history, archaeology, and anthropology of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla. Dr. Harold Juli was leading a field school of students from the University of the Americas in Cholula, Mexico. Their subject was ethnoarchaeology and ethnology, in preparation for excavations of the Hacienda that Dr. Juli had scheduled for the following summer. I sat down and spoke with Dr. Juli and his students, largely with the intention of making connections in the small but burgeoning field of Mexican historical archaeology.
The students had been collecting oral histories and conducting basic interviews in the descendant community of La Soledad Morelos. Out of curiosity, I asked them what the people of La Soledad Morelos had to say about animals. My specialty is the analysis of animal bones, and, regardless of my interest in a project, this is a question I always ask. The students started giving me the expected list of animals that the people of La Soledad Morelos recognize as part of their world, ranging from European-introduced domesticates such as cow and goat to the native domesticates of turkey and dog. One of the students laughed and said, “Oh, and then there are the animals that don’t really exist!” The rest of the students laughed dismissively, but my curiosity was piqued.
“Animals that don’t exist?” I asked. The student nodded and proceeded to offer a description of a two-headed snake, completely unknown to modern science. The other students laughed and supported her with their own accounts of this mysterious two-headed snake. I was fascinated. The description could have been taken, word for word, from Sahagún’s volume on natural history in which he describes an Aztec “two-headed snake.”
I had a new dissertation project. Since 2004, I have assumed directorship of The Acocotla Project with the assistance and support of the faculty and students of the University of the Americas. My dissertation examines the maintenance of pre-Columbian identities through foodways (the practices surrounding the acquisition, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food). Foodways is not just about food, but about all the “stuff” that comes with it. Imagine any festive, celebratory meal. You have to plan a menu appropriate to the occasion, you have to get the food, you have to prepare it (for which you need equipment), you have to serve it (which requires more equipment). Serving food requires deciding who among your guests receives what portion. After you’ve decided on the food but before your guest arrive, you have to decide what to wear and how to set the table (and the tone) for the meal to come. Every single step in this unconsciously complex process is culturally-loaded. Decisions made are based on social identity. Standing at the head of the Thanksgiving table, you have to decide who will receive white meat and who gets dark. The answer to this dilemma isn’t obvious to those outside your cultural parameters. The material manifestations of this process are the basis for my study.
My excavations at the Hacienda Acocotla are producing large quantities of food remains in the form of bones and charred plant remains, as well as the vessels used to prepare and serve the meals. As recently as the end of the 19th century, women prepared food using traditional, pre-Columbian stone tools. The material remains indicate that the pre-conquest corn tortilla accompanied meat from European-introduced domesticates. Families sat down in front of the calpanaria to share a meal served on ceramics painted brightly in the Spanish tradition but produced locally. The women of the family made themselves pretty with brightly colored glass beads and brass and copper jewelry. The men proudly wore pre-Columbian-style ear spools that they had made themselves out of a reworked piece of brick. The undoubtedly lively conversation that passed among the diners was in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.
The grandchildren and great grandchildren of those diners sit down to similar meals today. Superficial things have changed. Spanish is the only language spoken, and the ear spools are absent. In spite of this disconnect, much is still the same. Today, it is Gaudencio’s birthday, and everyone in the village is invited to eat. The women of his family spend two days preparing a delicious mole using exclusively pre-Columbian ingredients. I ask them about the ingredients. They turn their noses up when I ask if they use the European-introduced chicken. Laughing, they gently explain to the ignorant gringa that chicken is awful in mole; the only meat ingredient for a good mole is turkey. We sit in the courtyard together around a modern “reproduction” of the ceramic vats (or cazuelas) that I have excavated at more than one pre-conquest site. While we sip our beer, we toss chopped chiles and turkey into the mole simmering over an open fire. We watch while the most accomplished cooks prepare an indigo-colored tortilla out of blue corn. Though many Mexicans claim that tortilla machines liberated the woman of Mexico, the women of La Soledad Morelos are rightly proud of their hand-made tortillas.
Eventually, after hours of preparation, the mole is ready and the party begins. The women’s jewelry is indistinguishable from what we find archaeologically. The dishes we eat off of, while clearly modern versions, owe their design to those I find in my excavations at the Hacienda. The food we are served owes nothing to European heritage and is drawn exclusively from pre-Columbian ingredients. When it comes time for me to take my leave, there is a rush. The hostess must prepare the ētecate, a Nahuatl “doggie bag.” No guest may leave without a portion of the food from any party in La Soledad Morelos, and though nobody speaks Nahuatl, there is no known Spanish translation of this word.
This is the basis of my dissertation. These unspoken continuities intrigue me. Today, the people of La Soledad Morelos identify as mestizo rather than indigenous because it is fashionable. To be indigenous in Mexico today is to belong to the lowest class. Yet, with the exception of the most blatant material items, they maintain indigenous practices, identifiable in the archaeological and ethnohistoric records, from times pre-dating the Spanish Conquest. The label they apply to themselves is important, but so is the material reality upon which they construct the label. That material foundation is what I study, from the founding of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla in 1577 through the present day.
[1] For comparison, the highest estimates for death due to the infamous European Black Plague are, at their highest, 30% Ziegler, P. 1970. The black death. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books..
LA PATRONA
March 13, 2007
March 13, 2007
In memoriam….
O.K., so clearly, I am not good at this whole “regular updates” thing. Those of you who feel miffed because I don’t write more often can feel good about the fact that it clearly isn’t personal!
But this time, I have REALLY good excuses! The happy news from Mexico at the moment is that I have just finished eight weeks of excavations (and turned up lots of cool stuff!). More on that soon….
The not happy news is that my project director passed away a few weeks ago rather suddenly. He was diagnosed with cancer last summer, but seemed to be responding well to treatment. He and his family, and the doctors for that matter, were feeling positive and cheerful. He d
ecided that he was well enough to teach a few courses at Connecticut College this spring, and he even gave the first day of lectures. Unfortunately, it turned out that his radiation treatments were just making the spread of his tumors undetectable. While he was undergoing treatment, they ran rampant and spread throughout his body. Two days after giving his first lecture, he was admitted to the hospital. Twenty-four hours after that, I got the message from his son that he wasn’t expected to survive the weekend. He hung on for a week, and he got to spend a little more time with his family and his new grandson and to say goodbye.
Leaving aside the whole personal grieving from a distance, worrying about his wife, not being there to support the family or say goodbye awfulness of it all, it has made for a sad and lonely time here in the field. I’ve been on my own here for quite awhile, but I always knew I could pick up the phone and discuss the project with Harold and ask his advice. All of the sudden, it’s all me. Every decision about the excavations is mine and mine alone. In archaeology, there is rarely a right or wrong answer to any decision. Mostly, we just have to weigh all the options and try and decide what fits best within time and money constraints. In my experience, the best way to do this is to kick around ideas with lots of people and get everybody’s view on what will or won’t work.
Even though I had ten employees, Mexico is a very hierarchical kind of place, and nobody really wanted to leap in and discuss options. It didn’t matter how much I encouraged group input, asking them what they thought just caused a whole lot of discomfort. Everybody would look at each other and shift from one foot to the other. Finally, someone in the group would say, “Oh, whatever you think is best, patrona.”
So here I am. La Patrona.
Somehow, I muddled through. If I made any wrong decisions (which I won’t know until I’ve finished the artifact analysis), it is probably for the best. Any decision that would have resulted in more artifacts would have been an issue. As it currently stands, I can’t get to my couch due to the few hundred 5 gallon bags full of artifacts and soil samples in my living room. They are full of lots of fun stuff. Ceramics and bones and stone tools and little figurines. I’m certain that Harold is happy we managed to keep digging and is as excited as I am by all the interesting things we found!
So, to recap….
Eight weeks ago, after returning from Christmas in the states, I began excavations. I hired a field assistant, Su Lin, after my original field assistant, Adriana, quit the night before we were supposed to start digging. Some might view this as another negative chapter in the drama that has plagued this project for the last year, but I didn’t find it to be a problem at all. In fact, I think it was rather a blessing! Last summer, my friend Kim, who has a way with words, nicknamed her “Twisty Knickers.” I remain uncertain if this was due to the fact that after meeting with my “assistant” I would come home with my knickers in a twist, or due to the fact that my assistant’s general attitude was indicative of a certain level of knotting in her undergarments. Regardless, the change in personnel made for a much smoother couple of months!
We began ex
cavations with only six workers rather than a full complement of eight as we intended, but we were happy to take what we could get and finally start! Once word spread in the village, our numbers slowly increased. After telling our workers that we needed more people to help, they showed up at the beginning of the second week with a half dozen children between the ages of 8 and 13. The youngest of the children were actually the local animal herders, and so brought with them approximately 6 cows, 15 goats, a dozen sheep, a donkey and assorted dogs. To keep things exciting in the dog department, one of my workers also arrived daily with all 10 of his dogs.
My days in early childhood education came flooding back as I spent the first few days of that week trying to deal with the fact that I was now not just the patrona of The Acocotla Project but also, apparently, the patrona of The Acocotla Day Care and Petting Zoo (Central Mexican’s first Hacienda Day Care!). After breaking up the umpteenth doggie battle and shooing the donkey out of one of the excavation units (again!), I decided enough was enough. I took the spokesman of the workers aside and explained that if the Mexican Government or funding agencies found out I was employing children, I was going to have a problem, and that my patron could visit at any time and there would be trouble!
Making yourself the subject of somebody else’s authority is always a good negotiating tactic in rural Mexico. Everybody understands having to answer to SOMEBODY in a village like the one I work in, and NOBODY wants to come to the notice of the government for any reason at all! My problem with our demographics was immediately understood on these terms, and my foreman apologized and promised to find some older workers for the next day.
Slowly our workforce built up, bit by bit, as word made its way around the adult population of the village that there was a cash salary to be made out at the Hacienda. I had soon exceeded my complement of workers (all adults this time), and things were truly under way!
O.K., so clearly, I am not good at this whole “regular updates” thing. Those of you who feel miffed because I don’t write more often can feel good about the fact that it clearly isn’t personal!
But this time, I have REALLY good excuses! The happy news from Mexico at the moment is that I have just finished eight weeks of excavations (and turned up lots of cool stuff!). More on that soon….
The not happy news is that my project director passed away a few weeks ago rather suddenly. He was diagnosed with cancer last summer, but seemed to be responding well to treatment. He and his family, and the doctors for that matter, were feeling positive and cheerful. He d
ecided that he was well enough to teach a few courses at Connecticut College this spring, and he even gave the first day of lectures. Unfortunately, it turned out that his radiation treatments were just making the spread of his tumors undetectable. While he was undergoing treatment, they ran rampant and spread throughout his body. Two days after giving his first lecture, he was admitted to the hospital. Twenty-four hours after that, I got the message from his son that he wasn’t expected to survive the weekend. He hung on for a week, and he got to spend a little more time with his family and his new grandson and to say goodbye.Leaving aside the whole personal grieving from a distance, worrying about his wife, not being there to support the family or say goodbye awfulness of it all, it has made for a sad and lonely time here in the field. I’ve been on my own here for quite awhile, but I always knew I could pick up the phone and discuss the project with Harold and ask his advice. All of the sudden, it’s all me. Every decision about the excavations is mine and mine alone. In archaeology, there is rarely a right or wrong answer to any decision. Mostly, we just have to weigh all the options and try and decide what fits best within time and money constraints. In my experience, the best way to do this is to kick around ideas with lots of people and get everybody’s view on what will or won’t work.
Even though I had ten employees, Mexico is a very hierarchical kind of place, and nobody really wanted to leap in and discuss options. It didn’t matter how much I encouraged group input, asking them what they thought just caused a whole lot of discomfort. Everybody would look at each other and shift from one foot to the other. Finally, someone in the group would say, “Oh, whatever you think is best, patrona.”
So here I am. La Patrona.
Somehow, I muddled through. If I made any wrong decisions (which I won’t know until I’ve finished the artifact analysis), it is probably for the best. Any decision that would have resulted in more artifacts would have been an issue. As it currently stands, I can’t get to my couch due to the few hundred 5 gallon bags full of artifacts and soil samples in my living room. They are full of lots of fun stuff. Ceramics and bones and stone tools and little figurines. I’m certain that Harold is happy we managed to keep digging and is as excited as I am by all the interesting things we found!
So, to recap….
Eight weeks ago, after returning from Christmas in the states, I began excavations. I hired a field assistant, Su Lin, after my original field assistant, Adriana, quit the night before we were supposed to start digging. Some might view this as another negative chapter in the drama that has plagued this project for the last year, but I didn’t find it to be a problem at all. In fact, I think it was rather a blessing! Last summer, my friend Kim, who has a way with words, nicknamed her “Twisty Knickers.” I remain uncertain if this was due to the fact that after meeting with my “assistant” I would come home with my knickers in a twist, or due to the fact that my assistant’s general attitude was indicative of a certain level of knotting in her undergarments. Regardless, the change in personnel made for a much smoother couple of months!
We began ex
cavations with only six workers rather than a full complement of eight as we intended, but we were happy to take what we could get and finally start! Once word spread in the village, our numbers slowly increased. After telling our workers that we needed more people to help, they showed up at the beginning of the second week with a half dozen children between the ages of 8 and 13. The youngest of the children were actually the local animal herders, and so brought with them approximately 6 cows, 15 goats, a dozen sheep, a donkey and assorted dogs. To keep things exciting in the dog department, one of my workers also arrived daily with all 10 of his dogs.My days in early childhood education came flooding back as I spent the first few days of that week trying to deal with the fact that I was now not just the patrona of The Acocotla Project but also, apparently, the patrona of The Acocotla Day Care and Petting Zoo (Central Mexican’s first Hacienda Day Care!). After breaking up the umpteenth doggie battle and shooing the donkey out of one of the excavation units (again!), I decided enough was enough. I took the spokesman of the workers aside and explained that if the Mexican Government or funding agencies found out I was employing children, I was going to have a problem, and that my patron could visit at any time and there would be trouble!
Making yourself the subject of somebody else’s authority is always a good negotiating tactic in rural Mexico. Everybody understands having to answer to SOMEBODY in a village like the one I work in, and NOBODY wants to come to the notice of the government for any reason at all! My problem with our demographics was immediately understood on these terms, and my foreman apologized and promised to find some older workers for the next day.
Slowly our workforce built up, bit by bit, as word made its way around the adult population of the village that there was a cash salary to be made out at the Hacienda. I had soon exceeded my complement of workers (all adults this time), and things were truly under way!
Over the course of the eight weeks, we excavated five rooms in the workers quarters and an enormous midden (archaeology speak for a pile of trash!). In the summer of 2005, we excavated a small test unit, just a one meter by one meter, and found what we thought must be a midden. This year, our plan was to expand that area and get as much as we could out of it. For a historical archaeologist, the only thing better than a midden is an outhouse (awesome preservation due to moisture and the place where people hid all the trash they didn’t want anybody to know about!). When planning it this year, I thought to myself, “Well, I’ll just go ahead and dig a HUGE area to make sure we get the whole midden,” and I figured it would be quick work. HA HA. Famous last archaeological words!
We opened up what I thought was a big area, 5 meters by 2 meters, with last year’s little test pit right in the center. When we were down below the surface by about a meter, I realized that we were still smack in the center of what was turning out to be a VERY BIG midden. We dug and dug and dug and dug for weeks and weeks and weeks. Literally. I put trenches off it in all directions trying to find the edge. After a week of trenches, I still didn’t have the edge of the midden, but I did have a building we didn’t know existed. To be accurate, I had approximately 12 inches by 12 inches of collapsed wall in the very end and very bottom of a trench. Peeking out from underneath it was the tiniest bit of plaster floor.
So again we dug and dug and dug and dug… We reached the end of the collapsed wall, feeling very good about things, the week before we had to start filling the excavations up again. As we cleaned the edge, one of the workers said, “How come there are some bricks here?”
I looked down into the pit, and sure enough, there at the bottom, was the edge of a beautifully laid brick floor. I took a deep breath.
And we dug and dug and dug some more….
By the end of the excavations, we had uncovered everything. But don’t ask me what it is just yet! I’m not prepared to guess until I’ve had some time in the lab with the artifacts.
Over the last week, as I’ve talked to a few people over the phone, a number of people have said to me, “You’re done? But what are you going to do now!?!? I thought you were there to dig!”
Very simply, the bulk of my work is only now just beginning. Digging is the quick, easy part of things. As a general rule, for every one day we spend digging in the field, an archaeologist needs 6 days in the laboratory to process and analyze the artifacts. Since Mexico prohibits my bringing artifacts back to the States, all that work has to be done here. I have a lab set up in my house, I’ve programmed a database, and now I’m beginning the “important” work. When you are out in the field digging, all sorts of wild interpretations run wild through your head. You are out in the sun in a high altitude desert, where you spend eight hours a day five days a week doing heavy physical labor. There is no shade, you’ve run out of water, it is 95 degrees, and you have
n’t had time to sleep more than four hours a night since excavations began. Your brain starts writing all sorts of stories. It is the really fun part of archaeological fieldwork (and no, I’m not being sarcastic! It really is a blast!). But the truth is, until you get back to the lab, plug all the info into a database, and run a bunch of statistical analyses, those stories are nothing but semi-delusional, water-deprived fantasies. 
So, keep tuning in to find out what it was I dug! I’ll let y’all know as soon as I decide myself!
And that is it for now. I think it is time for bed here. Next time, check in for pics of my favorite artifacts (like this one!)!
And that is it for now. I think it is time for bed here. Next time, check in for pics of my favorite artifacts (like this one!)!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
SO YOU THINK YOU HAD A BAD DAY AT WORK?
A few years back, Zee was working with Patricia, the department chair here at the University, on a small archaeological survey in the nearby countryside.
Side note for those who don’t know (the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph), an archaeological survey can be either a surface survey, where you walk lines across an open area and collect everything you see on the ground surface, or a test pit survey, where you dig a series of small pits in pre-determined locations to see what is under ground. The idea is usually that you can narrow your area of focus before expending invariably limited resources on a large scale excavation. There are other reasons for doing the survey, but since this is a blog rather than a lecture in archaeological method and theory, I’ll spare you the details... You get the picture!
So Zee and Patricia were doing a test pit survey. They were out in the countryside, just the two of them, digging pit after pit. After the first week, they started having trouble. The men would come out from the villages with their machetes and stand around threateningly. When they arrived in the mornings, Zee and Patricia would discover anything and everything portable had been stolen. As time passed, the men got bolder, and they would surround the pit, machetes pulled, and demand to see everything that came out of the ground. Patricia and Zee were pleasant and placating, said all the things they should say, and showed everybody and anybody all the things that they were doing. Usually, this takes care of lingering doubts among the local population. Often, people go back and get their families for tours. Not in this case!
One Monday, they came to work and discovered that the pits had been filled with human waste. Apparently the entire village had saved up all their urine and feces in buckets all weekend, and came out very early Monday morning to fill up the pits that Zee and Patricia were working on, filled them up right to the brim. Patricia and Zee, being the sort of women who don’t walk away from a challenge, put on gloves and masks, got buckets, and did their best to salvage the excavation. They worked the rest of the week without incident.
Yeah, really. Those of you who envy us archaeologists for our exotic life of glamour and adventure can think about this next Monday morning when your alarm goes off. At least you aren’t going into work to haul buckets of shit out of a hole in the ground while angry men with machetes stand around watching... And just because it happens in Mexico doesn’t make it more fun!
The following Monday morning, they arrived on site wondering what was in store for this week. They were right to be worried. They approached their excavations and discovered that somebody, or bodies, had spent the weekend filling the excavations with concrete, concrete that was now hard set. Patricia and Zee finally admitted defeat. The excavations were officially closed. They were not terribly happy, however, and went into town where Patricia reamed out anybody and everybody with even a bit of authority. Most people just turned their heads away and shrugged, refusing to get involved. Finally, however, they found somebody who let them in on the secret.
Apparently, the week after they began digging, the local priest announced in Mass that the American women who claimed to be archaeologists were in fact spies in the employ of the American Government. He explained in his sermon that they were there digging holes into which, in the middle of the night, they would be installing missiles. He exhorted the townspeople, as good Catholics and good Mexicans, to do anything and everything in their power to prevent the American spies from filling the fields with missiles aimed at Mexico City.
To this day, nobody knows why this sounded like a likely plot to the priest who invented it or the people of the village who bought into it all. Regardless of why, however, the priest continued to harangue at every available moment and helped organize the people to chase off Patricia and Zee. He succeeded, of course, but the local higher ups of the Catholic Church were alerted to the, uhm, “unstable” priest out in the countryside. They decided to reassign him to a remote village high up on the volcano with people too poor to buy concrete, unwilling to waste good fertilizer, and prone to settling disputes with a quick and decisive short-range shotgun blast.
(One of the Anthropologists here works up in one of these villages on the volcano. I asked him awhile back how the annual fiesta had gone. His face lit up as he exclaimed, “Oh it was wonderful! And only three people were murdered this year! I can’t believe how much things have improved in the last ten years!” So I’m thinking that priest had his hands full and no time to be watching James Bond...)
This is my long-winded way of explaining how very important local relationships can be when you are trying to run a project. It is the most amusing of the stories I’ve heard and the only one that doesn’t end with somebody in intensive care recovering from a machete attack. (No, really, I’m not kidding!) And this is my roundabout way of explaining why you haven’t had any updates on my excavation work just yet. As I mentioned last time, I finally got the permit in time for the height of the rainy season. After returning from the states and ready to work, I contacted Don Antonio, the land owner from whom we have permission to excavate. I explained that we were ready and he said, “Oh, fabulous. That is just great. You know, it is the jicama harvest until after Day of the Dead and I can’t give you any workers until then, but otherwise....”
I took a deep, silent breath. Jicama harvest.... Right.... “So, you’ll have men available for the week after the Day of the Dead?”
“Oh yes, yes...” he assured me.
So I settled in to write some grant proposals for next year and apply for a job or two. The Day of the Dead came and went (another blog story on my adventures there, but you’ll have to wait...). We called Don Antonio right after November 2 ready to start work.
“Oh...” he said vaguely, “Uhm, we are still working on some things for two more weeks...”
Two more weeks!?!?!?! It was time to take extreme measures...
I should mention that the grant that is paying for the excavations has to be used up by Dec. 31st. If I don’t use it, I have to send it back. And if I have to send it back, I have no dissertation project. Extreme measures were indeed called for.
I went out and bought a very nice bottle of reposado tequila in a hand blown, hand cut bottle. Very pretty. I forged a note from Harold, the project director back in the states, all about how I was there to run the project for him and he was sending this bottle of tequila from his hospital bed in the United States in hopes that Don Antonio would be able to help poor little Elizabeth who is just trying to do Harold a favor because he is so very sick and misses the village and the hacienda so very much. I put the note on the bottle with a pretty ribbon. I collected my field assistant. We drove to the village in time to catch Don Antonio right after church.
(Harold, incidentally, is doing quite well, his treatments seem to have worked, he is planning a visit to Mexico for late next spring, and he is far from needing to write from a hospital bed, but I didn’t want to ruin the dramatic effect with excessive honesty....)
Don Antonio and his family received us well and with generosity. They found enough chairs for my field assistant, Don Antonio, and me so we wouldn’t have to sit on the dirt floor and opened three bottles of Pepsi. We sat in the windowless adobe room to begin three and a half hours of negotiations.
I’ll spare you all the roundabout discussions. No there was nobody, oh but we only need one or two, well maybe, but couldn’t you, perhaps, well how do you feel about working with a cripple, he isn’t much help with the harvest, oh a cripple would be just find we have no problems with the fact that he can only move slowly, etc....
Finally, after much negotiations, Don Antonio felt he could provide us with two workers to begin the next day. Hooray!
Don Antonio’s daughter joined us with another round of Pepsi’s. She sat down and we began talking about her time in the United States. She had recently returned from New Jersey where she, her husband, and their four daughters had lived for six and a half years. My field assistant and I asked her about her experiences there. She sighed. “Well, the money was good of course....”
We asked what she did. She explained that she worked in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant serving hot dogs and her husband had worked in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant. She said that she worked, seven days a week, from 7 in the morning until 11 at night, and her husband worked similar hours. “Oh,” she added, “But we got to go home at 6 pm on Christmas day.”
Adriana and I said that sounded like a lot of work. She shrugged. She said, “It wasn’t too bad. I mean, the money was good. We were able to send money to my father and help him and my mother. But I never got to see my children and that was hard.”
Adriana asked, somewhat increduously, her why she and her family had returned.
She sighed again. “I was lonely. I know the money is good and I know everybody here thinks I’m crazy to come back. But the truth is, I’d rather have nothing more to eat than a small plate of beans here with my family then the biggest meal, with meat even, alone in the United States.”
She hugged her father and went back to overseeing whatever was happening in the next room. Adriana and I firmed up or arrangements with Don Antonio, and we took our leave. We both felt happy to be beginning work the next day.
That night, Adriana called Don Antonio to confirm the hour we would begin and confirm that the town cripples were indeed ready to work. As luck would have it, they weren’t available after all. The peanut harvest had begun....
A few years back, Zee was working with Patricia, the department chair here at the University, on a small archaeological survey in the nearby countryside.
Side note for those who don’t know (the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph), an archaeological survey can be either a surface survey, where you walk lines across an open area and collect everything you see on the ground surface, or a test pit survey, where you dig a series of small pits in pre-determined locations to see what is under ground. The idea is usually that you can narrow your area of focus before expending invariably limited resources on a large scale excavation. There are other reasons for doing the survey, but since this is a blog rather than a lecture in archaeological method and theory, I’ll spare you the details... You get the picture!
So Zee and Patricia were doing a test pit survey. They were out in the countryside, just the two of them, digging pit after pit. After the first week, they started having trouble. The men would come out from the villages with their machetes and stand around threateningly. When they arrived in the mornings, Zee and Patricia would discover anything and everything portable had been stolen. As time passed, the men got bolder, and they would surround the pit, machetes pulled, and demand to see everything that came out of the ground. Patricia and Zee were pleasant and placating, said all the things they should say, and showed everybody and anybody all the things that they were doing. Usually, this takes care of lingering doubts among the local population. Often, people go back and get their families for tours. Not in this case!
One Monday, they came to work and discovered that the pits had been filled with human waste. Apparently the entire village had saved up all their urine and feces in buckets all weekend, and came out very early Monday morning to fill up the pits that Zee and Patricia were working on, filled them up right to the brim. Patricia and Zee, being the sort of women who don’t walk away from a challenge, put on gloves and masks, got buckets, and did their best to salvage the excavation. They worked the rest of the week without incident.
Yeah, really. Those of you who envy us archaeologists for our exotic life of glamour and adventure can think about this next Monday morning when your alarm goes off. At least you aren’t going into work to haul buckets of shit out of a hole in the ground while angry men with machetes stand around watching... And just because it happens in Mexico doesn’t make it more fun!
The following Monday morning, they arrived on site wondering what was in store for this week. They were right to be worried. They approached their excavations and discovered that somebody, or bodies, had spent the weekend filling the excavations with concrete, concrete that was now hard set. Patricia and Zee finally admitted defeat. The excavations were officially closed. They were not terribly happy, however, and went into town where Patricia reamed out anybody and everybody with even a bit of authority. Most people just turned their heads away and shrugged, refusing to get involved. Finally, however, they found somebody who let them in on the secret.
Apparently, the week after they began digging, the local priest announced in Mass that the American women who claimed to be archaeologists were in fact spies in the employ of the American Government. He explained in his sermon that they were there digging holes into which, in the middle of the night, they would be installing missiles. He exhorted the townspeople, as good Catholics and good Mexicans, to do anything and everything in their power to prevent the American spies from filling the fields with missiles aimed at Mexico City.
To this day, nobody knows why this sounded like a likely plot to the priest who invented it or the people of the village who bought into it all. Regardless of why, however, the priest continued to harangue at every available moment and helped organize the people to chase off Patricia and Zee. He succeeded, of course, but the local higher ups of the Catholic Church were alerted to the, uhm, “unstable” priest out in the countryside. They decided to reassign him to a remote village high up on the volcano with people too poor to buy concrete, unwilling to waste good fertilizer, and prone to settling disputes with a quick and decisive short-range shotgun blast.
(One of the Anthropologists here works up in one of these villages on the volcano. I asked him awhile back how the annual fiesta had gone. His face lit up as he exclaimed, “Oh it was wonderful! And only three people were murdered this year! I can’t believe how much things have improved in the last ten years!” So I’m thinking that priest had his hands full and no time to be watching James Bond...)
This is my long-winded way of explaining how very important local relationships can be when you are trying to run a project. It is the most amusing of the stories I’ve heard and the only one that doesn’t end with somebody in intensive care recovering from a machete attack. (No, really, I’m not kidding!) And this is my roundabout way of explaining why you haven’t had any updates on my excavation work just yet. As I mentioned last time, I finally got the permit in time for the height of the rainy season. After returning from the states and ready to work, I contacted Don Antonio, the land owner from whom we have permission to excavate. I explained that we were ready and he said, “Oh, fabulous. That is just great. You know, it is the jicama harvest until after Day of the Dead and I can’t give you any workers until then, but otherwise....”
I took a deep, silent breath. Jicama harvest.... Right.... “So, you’ll have men available for the week after the Day of the Dead?”
“Oh yes, yes...” he assured me.
So I settled in to write some grant proposals for next year and apply for a job or two. The Day of the Dead came and went (another blog story on my adventures there, but you’ll have to wait...). We called Don Antonio right after November 2 ready to start work.
“Oh...” he said vaguely, “Uhm, we are still working on some things for two more weeks...”
Two more weeks!?!?!?! It was time to take extreme measures...
I should mention that the grant that is paying for the excavations has to be used up by Dec. 31st. If I don’t use it, I have to send it back. And if I have to send it back, I have no dissertation project. Extreme measures were indeed called for.
I went out and bought a very nice bottle of reposado tequila in a hand blown, hand cut bottle. Very pretty. I forged a note from Harold, the project director back in the states, all about how I was there to run the project for him and he was sending this bottle of tequila from his hospital bed in the United States in hopes that Don Antonio would be able to help poor little Elizabeth who is just trying to do Harold a favor because he is so very sick and misses the village and the hacienda so very much. I put the note on the bottle with a pretty ribbon. I collected my field assistant. We drove to the village in time to catch Don Antonio right after church.
(Harold, incidentally, is doing quite well, his treatments seem to have worked, he is planning a visit to Mexico for late next spring, and he is far from needing to write from a hospital bed, but I didn’t want to ruin the dramatic effect with excessive honesty....)
Don Antonio and his family received us well and with generosity. They found enough chairs for my field assistant, Don Antonio, and me so we wouldn’t have to sit on the dirt floor and opened three bottles of Pepsi. We sat in the windowless adobe room to begin three and a half hours of negotiations.
I’ll spare you all the roundabout discussions. No there was nobody, oh but we only need one or two, well maybe, but couldn’t you, perhaps, well how do you feel about working with a cripple, he isn’t much help with the harvest, oh a cripple would be just find we have no problems with the fact that he can only move slowly, etc....
Finally, after much negotiations, Don Antonio felt he could provide us with two workers to begin the next day. Hooray!
Don Antonio’s daughter joined us with another round of Pepsi’s. She sat down and we began talking about her time in the United States. She had recently returned from New Jersey where she, her husband, and their four daughters had lived for six and a half years. My field assistant and I asked her about her experiences there. She sighed. “Well, the money was good of course....”
We asked what she did. She explained that she worked in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant serving hot dogs and her husband had worked in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant. She said that she worked, seven days a week, from 7 in the morning until 11 at night, and her husband worked similar hours. “Oh,” she added, “But we got to go home at 6 pm on Christmas day.”
Adriana and I said that sounded like a lot of work. She shrugged. She said, “It wasn’t too bad. I mean, the money was good. We were able to send money to my father and help him and my mother. But I never got to see my children and that was hard.”
Adriana asked, somewhat increduously, her why she and her family had returned.
She sighed again. “I was lonely. I know the money is good and I know everybody here thinks I’m crazy to come back. But the truth is, I’d rather have nothing more to eat than a small plate of beans here with my family then the biggest meal, with meat even, alone in the United States.”
She hugged her father and went back to overseeing whatever was happening in the next room. Adriana and I firmed up or arrangements with Don Antonio, and we took our leave. We both felt happy to be beginning work the next day.
That night, Adriana called Don Antonio to confirm the hour we would begin and confirm that the town cripples were indeed ready to work. As luck would have it, they weren’t available after all. The peanut harvest had begun....
No, really, I'm not kidding. No jokes here....
The peanut harvest lasts until Christmas. Our options now are to either wait for the harvest to finish or to bring in workers from the outside. The problem with waiting, of course, is that we have to give the money back. The problem with bringing in outside workers is that we risk alienating the community as a whole, hence the story I began with.
In addition to running the risk of bringing in somebody’s grandfather’s arch enemy from the next town over and possibly showing up for work to discover an inter-pueblo riot in our tidy excavation units, we also have the problem that if salaries are going to people outside the village, the people in the village have no real reason to support the project. When you are paying 10 guys from the town two and a half times minimum wages, there is a certain incentive for the village as a whole to not, say, come out and rob you at gunpoint on payday (or fill your excavation units with human waste and concrete, or to attack you with machetes because they hate the guy you have working with you....).
So here I am. Firmly in between the proverbial rock and hard place and working the politics on all fronts in hopes of making something come together. We’ll see and I’ll try and keep you all posted! I need to go buy a few more bottles of tequila.....
Monday, November 13, 2006
NOTES FROM THE ROAD WEARY ROAD WARRIOR
Monday, November 13th, 2006
I imagine most of you have given up hope of ever hearing from me again! It has been a busy few months, but I finally find myself with some quiet time and figured it was time to write again!
Plenty has happened since I last wrote on uhm, blush, August 2nd. Best news, at least for my dissertation, we got our permit to excavate! Hooray! Just getting the permit was quite the adventure. I spent three days, eight hours a day, on the phone with the permitting people while a dozen people successively searched for our file. Eventually they found it. A little while after that, they faxed it to the university here, and I had my permit in hand. Finally! Just in time for the height of the rainy season. Since I’m not trained in underwater archaeology, I decided to wait until things dried up here (around mid-October) before beginning work.
This left me with a new problem. If I began digging in mid-October, I would still be digging when my tourist visa ran out. I decided to take the time until the rainy season passed and use it to drive back to the states, combining a trip to renew the visa and a trip to Michigan for Heather and Lenny’s wedding. In addition to enjoying a beautiful wedding and getting caught up with lots of friends, I got a taste of crisp, fall weather in the countryside. Quite the treat for an archaeologist exiled to the tropics.
The drive back was as eventful as the wedding, but much less pleasant! I took a new route this time through the Central Highlands of Mexico. I crossed the border at MacAllen, TX into Reyenosa, a really ugly border town. The immigration authorities were unpleasant about my wanting another six months in Mexico, gave me only three, and told me if I wanted to stay longer, I needed to get an FM3 Visa (for work or students or whatever. LOTS of paperwork!!!).
After fighting the immigration battle, I drove as far as San Luis Potosei. The drive was much easier than the coastal route, with two lanes in each direction in most spots, but also much less friendly. In San Luis Potosei, my hotel room was broken into and I was robbed. In the end, after much drama and nasty letter writing, everything worked out. My things were returned via DHL delivery to the University. At the time, though, I really had no hope of the situation being resolved and I was in a very unhappy mood for the second day’s drive.
I didn’t get out of the hotel until 11 am due to all the fuss. I headed south on the highway, hoping that by some miracle, I’d actually make it all the way home before dark. The prospect of yet another night in a hotel was not appealing! The road trip gods did their best to discourage me. After the eighteen wheeler in front of me blew a tire (sending the big bad tire straight at me, and me with no place to go thanks to the truck on one side and the jersey barrier on the other...), I missed my turnoff to take the circuitous route into the mountains to the east of Mexico City. It would have made for a longer trip on worse roads, but it also would have allowed me to miss Mexico City.
The key, of course, being “would have....” As I said, I missed the turn off. Before I’d even realized my mistake, I found myself lost in Mexico City at 4 pm on a Friday in my giant truck. The upside to being lost during rush hour in the largest city in the world was that nobody was moving very fast, which helped with nerves. That, and the traffic was so bad that people were selling sandwiches in the lanes for the hungry commuters, so I knew I wouldn’t starve. The downside was that I was very, very lost, and changing lanes to follow what few signs there were was almost impossible. As I trundled along, I saw a big gathering of federales, the federal highway police, in front of me. Normally, one wants to avoid the federales at all costs as they tend to be untrustworthy and out for bribes or worse.
But I was desperate. Really, really desperate. I decided to take my chances. I pulled over, got out of the truck, and walked towards them. Two guys broke off from the group and walked towards me. I decided to go with “helpless Elizabeth” and widened my eyes. They came up to me, and before they could say anything, I burst out, “Oh, I’m so happy to see you guys! I’m so terribly lost! I’ve driven all the way from the United States and I’m all alone and I don’t know where I’m going!” The wave of testosterone almost knocked me over as it surged towards me. They looked at each other, clearly thinking, “Well, now, the little lady needs our help!”
All joking aside, they were unbelievably and unexpectedly kind. While one drew me a map, complete with illustrated landmarks and approximate driving time with and without traffic between each one, the other called my truck description and license plate number in to all his buddies and told them to leave me alone. Once I was set with directions and ensured of a bribe and harassment free drive, they stopped traffic so I could pull out again safely. I watched them wave me on my way in my rearview mirror and plunged back into the hell that is Mexico City traffic.
There directions were excellent, and had I not had to stop for gas, the rest of the drive would have been uneventful. Unfortunately, my tank was low enough that I had no choice but to stop to fill up in Mexico City. I pulled into PEMEX and asked the attendant to fill the tank. I made the mistake of also asking her to check the oil. In the time it took me to pop the hood and climb out of the driver’s seat to supervise, three men had descended. They were taking apart my radiator and by the time I reached the front bumper, at a run, they were flushing it and had covered the pavement in hot radiator fluid.
One of the skills I have acquired in all my travels is the ability to yell at people in Spanish. I discovered my talent for bilingual loss of temper while backpacking alone through the highlands of Peru and have called on it regularly ever since. People don’t expect me to be able to do it, so it has an extra strong impact when the sweet, innocent girl standing before them turns into a howling banshee. I channeled my inner banshee that day. I stood in front of my truck and hollered at them while they put everything back together and restocked the fluids while trying to placate me. When they were finally done, I hopped into my truck and roared off into the diesel fumes.
In spite of all the drama, I pushed through and arrived home on the evening of the second day after crossing the border at about 9 pm. It was dark, it was cold, I had no groceries in the house (oh for pizza delivery...), but I was so happy to be home! Just writing this makes me dread the next drive at Christmas time, but for the time being, I’m home and still happy to be here!
Well, there is lots more to write about, but it is dinner time here, I think, and this entry is already pretty long. But check back later in the week for more news on things like the commercialization of day of the dead, how I ended up agreeing to be a professor in Business School at a major Mexican University, and why I’m still not in the field and what I’m doing about it. I’m going to try and get caught up and then stay caught up from here on out.
Monday, November 13th, 2006
I imagine most of you have given up hope of ever hearing from me again! It has been a busy few months, but I finally find myself with some quiet time and figured it was time to write again!
Plenty has happened since I last wrote on uhm, blush, August 2nd. Best news, at least for my dissertation, we got our permit to excavate! Hooray! Just getting the permit was quite the adventure. I spent three days, eight hours a day, on the phone with the permitting people while a dozen people successively searched for our file. Eventually they found it. A little while after that, they faxed it to the university here, and I had my permit in hand. Finally! Just in time for the height of the rainy season. Since I’m not trained in underwater archaeology, I decided to wait until things dried up here (around mid-October) before beginning work.
This left me with a new problem. If I began digging in mid-October, I would still be digging when my tourist visa ran out. I decided to take the time until the rainy season passed and use it to drive back to the states, combining a trip to renew the visa and a trip to Michigan for Heather and Lenny’s wedding. In addition to enjoying a beautiful wedding and getting caught up with lots of friends, I got a taste of crisp, fall weather in the countryside. Quite the treat for an archaeologist exiled to the tropics.
The drive back was as eventful as the wedding, but much less pleasant! I took a new route this time through the Central Highlands of Mexico. I crossed the border at MacAllen, TX into Reyenosa, a really ugly border town. The immigration authorities were unpleasant about my wanting another six months in Mexico, gave me only three, and told me if I wanted to stay longer, I needed to get an FM3 Visa (for work or students or whatever. LOTS of paperwork!!!).
After fighting the immigration battle, I drove as far as San Luis Potosei. The drive was much easier than the coastal route, with two lanes in each direction in most spots, but also much less friendly. In San Luis Potosei, my hotel room was broken into and I was robbed. In the end, after much drama and nasty letter writing, everything worked out. My things were returned via DHL delivery to the University. At the time, though, I really had no hope of the situation being resolved and I was in a very unhappy mood for the second day’s drive.
I didn’t get out of the hotel until 11 am due to all the fuss. I headed south on the highway, hoping that by some miracle, I’d actually make it all the way home before dark. The prospect of yet another night in a hotel was not appealing! The road trip gods did their best to discourage me. After the eighteen wheeler in front of me blew a tire (sending the big bad tire straight at me, and me with no place to go thanks to the truck on one side and the jersey barrier on the other...), I missed my turnoff to take the circuitous route into the mountains to the east of Mexico City. It would have made for a longer trip on worse roads, but it also would have allowed me to miss Mexico City.
The key, of course, being “would have....” As I said, I missed the turn off. Before I’d even realized my mistake, I found myself lost in Mexico City at 4 pm on a Friday in my giant truck. The upside to being lost during rush hour in the largest city in the world was that nobody was moving very fast, which helped with nerves. That, and the traffic was so bad that people were selling sandwiches in the lanes for the hungry commuters, so I knew I wouldn’t starve. The downside was that I was very, very lost, and changing lanes to follow what few signs there were was almost impossible. As I trundled along, I saw a big gathering of federales, the federal highway police, in front of me. Normally, one wants to avoid the federales at all costs as they tend to be untrustworthy and out for bribes or worse.
But I was desperate. Really, really desperate. I decided to take my chances. I pulled over, got out of the truck, and walked towards them. Two guys broke off from the group and walked towards me. I decided to go with “helpless Elizabeth” and widened my eyes. They came up to me, and before they could say anything, I burst out, “Oh, I’m so happy to see you guys! I’m so terribly lost! I’ve driven all the way from the United States and I’m all alone and I don’t know where I’m going!” The wave of testosterone almost knocked me over as it surged towards me. They looked at each other, clearly thinking, “Well, now, the little lady needs our help!”
All joking aside, they were unbelievably and unexpectedly kind. While one drew me a map, complete with illustrated landmarks and approximate driving time with and without traffic between each one, the other called my truck description and license plate number in to all his buddies and told them to leave me alone. Once I was set with directions and ensured of a bribe and harassment free drive, they stopped traffic so I could pull out again safely. I watched them wave me on my way in my rearview mirror and plunged back into the hell that is Mexico City traffic.
There directions were excellent, and had I not had to stop for gas, the rest of the drive would have been uneventful. Unfortunately, my tank was low enough that I had no choice but to stop to fill up in Mexico City. I pulled into PEMEX and asked the attendant to fill the tank. I made the mistake of also asking her to check the oil. In the time it took me to pop the hood and climb out of the driver’s seat to supervise, three men had descended. They were taking apart my radiator and by the time I reached the front bumper, at a run, they were flushing it and had covered the pavement in hot radiator fluid.
One of the skills I have acquired in all my travels is the ability to yell at people in Spanish. I discovered my talent for bilingual loss of temper while backpacking alone through the highlands of Peru and have called on it regularly ever since. People don’t expect me to be able to do it, so it has an extra strong impact when the sweet, innocent girl standing before them turns into a howling banshee. I channeled my inner banshee that day. I stood in front of my truck and hollered at them while they put everything back together and restocked the fluids while trying to placate me. When they were finally done, I hopped into my truck and roared off into the diesel fumes.
In spite of all the drama, I pushed through and arrived home on the evening of the second day after crossing the border at about 9 pm. It was dark, it was cold, I had no groceries in the house (oh for pizza delivery...), but I was so happy to be home! Just writing this makes me dread the next drive at Christmas time, but for the time being, I’m home and still happy to be here!
Well, there is lots more to write about, but it is dinner time here, I think, and this entry is already pretty long. But check back later in the week for more news on things like the commercialization of day of the dead, how I ended up agreeing to be a professor in Business School at a major Mexican University, and why I’m still not in the field and what I’m doing about it. I’m going to try and get caught up and then stay caught up from here on out.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Just a Sidenote...
For those interested, my parents have just started a blog of their own. They are building a house up in Maine, and they have just begun chronicling the adventures. (And when I say building, I don't mean they hired a crew of guys to come put something together, I mean the pair of them are putting together a house on their own...) If you want to check out the trials, tribulations, and joys, catch their blog here: http://www.stonehamfirstday.blogspot.com/
For those interested, my parents have just started a blog of their own. They are building a house up in Maine, and they have just begun chronicling the adventures. (And when I say building, I don't mean they hired a crew of guys to come put something together, I mean the pair of them are putting together a house on their own...) If you want to check out the trials, tribulations, and joys, catch their blog here: http://www.stonehamfirstday.blogspot.com/
LANGUAGE BARRIERS – AUGUST 2ND, 2006
A short preamble is required… I started writing this quite some time ago. In the meantime, I got distracted with, gasp, work (oh no, not that!), and fun writing sort of fell by the wayside. As a result, though this starts out with “last night”, none of this happened last night but rather about two weeks ago…. Still, here it is! Better late than never!
Last night, about eight o’clock, I went out to let Tofi back into Zee’s yard for the night. As I was coming back across the road, I realized I hadn’t checked the water level in the cistern for quite some time. I try to remember to look regularly so I can let the landlady know I need water before I run out completely. So, before I went back inside, I walked over to the cistern to see how much water was left.
The lid to the cistern is a concrete block about 24 inches by 24 inches by three inches deep. It has two pieces of iron rebar threaded through it to act as handles, and the lid itself is reinforced with more iron rebar. The entire setup weighs quite a bit, but effectively seals the cistern up from anything larger than a smallish rabbit, prevents unfortunate accidents, and just generally protects my water supply. I rate it pretty high on my list of important household items.
So last night, I squatted down, balancing on the balls of my feet, and hauled this lid off the cistern. It is too heavy to hold up while maintaining your balance, so I tilted it up to rest it on the edge of the cistern opening. As I did this, the concrete slid back on the rebar and caught my hands between the concrete and iron. This, as I’m sure you can imagine, was quite uncomfortable. Startled and in pain, I shouted a few words I won’t print here and let go of the lid, expecting it to settle back into the cistern’s opening. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the difference in size between the hole and the lid is minimal. As I watched, the lid slipped easily through the opening, creating an impressive splash on its way to the bottom of my half-full cistern.
There I was, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of my feet, contemplating the opening in the ground that is slightly larger than me and the very necessary and very heavy lid sitting on the bottom some 15 feet below ground surface. All I could think was, “I wonder how on earth I’m going to deal with this in Spanish! I’m pretty sure no lesson I’ve ever had covered this situation…”
I know it’s trite. Everybody knows on some theoretical level that the words you learn in a classroom rarely apply to most real life situations. Once you actually spend some time living in another language, however, you begin to recognize just how deep that chasm is. There seem to be a number of reasons for the disparity, many of which I’ve encountered in the last week or two.
The first reason I find myself struggling is simply that I never learned the necessary words. Yesterday, I was driving home from the grocery store, and my check engine light came on. This seems to be a poorly named light, because all it really tells you is that you might want to swing by the bank on your way to the mechanic. Whatever is wrong with the engine, transmission, or exhaust system is bound to be costly! And you’ve still got to figure out what the problem is.
I came home and asked Zee to call her mechanic and tell him she was sending someone over. Luckily for me, Zee has a mechanic (and has had the same mechanic for 25 years!) who makes his living repairing all the work trucks (which are all Rams as well) for the University here. But regardless of how familiar he is with the inner workings of my Green Monster, I still had to explain the things I’ve noticed about the truck over the last few weeks. Standing in the yard of Miguel Angel’s shop, I realized that not only did I not know any of the words for the various hunks of metal underneath the hood of my truck, but I also didn’t know how to translate the things we say to describe their functioning (or lack thereof) in English.
While idling, my truck has been running roughly. Kevan suggested that this might have to do with the timing between the transmission and the engine. How, I wondered, was I going to explain this in Spanish. To me, describing a truck as running roughly while idling is loaded with colloquialisms. Can you translate those words directly to Spanish? Or are there a different set of colloquialisms in Spanish? Or do I just not know enough about mechanics to figure out what works and what doesn’t?
Miguel Angel is truly an angel. He was as patient as patient can be, and with a great deal of pantomiming and lots of laughter at the ridiculousness of it all, we seemed to manage to communicate. He kept the truck for four days. At the end of those four days, I was happy to discover that the pantomiming had been successful, and the truck seems to be happy again. We’ll see how it goes!
Yes, that pun was intended…
Sometimes, the language barrier is less about knowing the words then it is about being prepared for a situation. A few weeks ago, the kitchen sink developed a leak. Luckily, it developed it on Wednesday, the day that Zee’s handyman comes to fix, fuss, and garden. When he arrived, I asked if he could pop by to help me with a problem when he was done. He readily agreed and went off to do his work.
In the meantime, I realized that I had no idea how to say the word “leak” in Spanish. So, I popped into the office and looked it up in the handy dictionary. Armed with my new, handy word, I waited for Tonio to arrive.
Two hours later, he came to the door. I led him to the kitchen sink, proudly proclaiming that I had a leak in the sink. He bent down, looked under the sink, and said, “No you don’t.”
Just an aside here. Tonio is quite convinced I’m a total, complete, utter, incompetent idiot. Some days, I’m not sure he is wrong, but I know a leak in the kitchen pipes when I see one! I wanted to insist. I knew all the words individually, but together? For some reason, this situation just struck me dumb. Trying to wrap my brain around the conversation that needed to happen proved impossible. After a few false starts, with Tonio looking more and more disgusted at each one, I finally gave up and told him I’d let him know if the mysterious leak reappeared.
“Si, senorita” he responded, with a barely concealed roll of they eyes. He walked out, leaving me to ponder the workings of the sink pipes in English solitude.
Still, sometimes the language barrier, or the assumption of one, comes in handy. When Kim was here visiting, we drove to Taxco for a weekend away. The route is relatively straightforward, though at a couple of points the highway signage leaves a great deal to be desired, even by Mexican standards! At one point along the route, we reached a toll plaza. A line of booths stood in front of us. In the four left lanes, the booths were marked as closed with big red x’s glowing above each lane. Off to the side, the two right lanes had big inviting green arrows glowing above. No signs were in evidence. I did what seemed to me the obvious thing and pulled into one of the lanes marked as open.
As a rule, I make conversation with the toll booth man by asking him if I’m heading in the right direction. It gives us both something to do while one of us fumbles for change. So, as I handed him my bills, I smiled and said, “Is this the road to Taxco?”
“Taxco? You want to go to Taxco? But you need to be over there!” He pointed at the four booths marked as closed. I watched a car sail through. Oh dear…
Apparently, the red x’s, which everywhere else in Mexico indicate a closed toll booth, here indicated that there was no need to stop and pay a toll and you should feel free to keep driving right on through on your way to Taxco.
Sighing, I asked the man at the Tollbooth how to get back on the highway from the exit I was apparently pulling off at.
He sighed. He explained that this was quite impossible. There was no way back on the highway, he insisted.
Now, this struck me as problematic and illogical. Surely, if you can get off the highway, eventually you can get back on…. I decided it was time to “not understand”
I smiled sweetly, nodded, and said, “Oh, o.k., and am I going to go right or left after that?”
He looked puzzled. He insisted again that there was no way out of the exit and back onto the highway.
I nodded eagerly and said, “Yes, yes, but then do I go right or left?” I was determined not to understand.
By this time, a crowd had gathered. The army man with the submachine gun who guards the toll plaza sauntered over. The vendors who sell everything from a windshield wash to fresh baked bread to the cars stopped at the toll plazas gathered. The men all looked at each other, they looked at me. They decided that the easiest thing to do was to get the 8 cars and 5 tractor trailers lined up behind me in the lane to back up enough that I could get back on the highway. It was either that or make the gringa understand Spanish, and given the choice, well… It was no competition.
So the vendors fanned out waving madly for all the cars and trucks to back up. The army man conducted it all with his machine gun. High pitched beeps filled the air as the big rigs started moving slowly out of the way. The cars sandwiched between had no choice but to follow along. Soon enough, I had crossed back to the highway and Kim and I were on our merry way to Taxco, leaving the confusion of the drivers trying to get back into line at the tollbooth behind. Sometimes, language barriers can be most effective!
This all seemed quite funny until a couple of days ago (and yes, now I really mean a couple of days ago…). I was talking to some Mexicans the other day and, of course, we were speaking Spanish. Then some Americans joined us and we were switching back and forth between Spanish and English. After a few minutes of this, one of the Americans turned to me and, to offer a compliment, said, “Wow, your English isn’t too bad. Where did you learn to speak it?”
All I could think was, “Oh my god, I’ve been here long enough that I make only marginal sense in any given language at a time!” My new biggest fear is that I will return home to face the same language barriers, but in English! So please, when you next see me in the US, be kind and patient with my fumbling for words and badly constructed phrases. And rest assured, I don't make any more sense in Spanish!
A short preamble is required… I started writing this quite some time ago. In the meantime, I got distracted with, gasp, work (oh no, not that!), and fun writing sort of fell by the wayside. As a result, though this starts out with “last night”, none of this happened last night but rather about two weeks ago…. Still, here it is! Better late than never!
Last night, about eight o’clock, I went out to let Tofi back into Zee’s yard for the night. As I was coming back across the road, I realized I hadn’t checked the water level in the cistern for quite some time. I try to remember to look regularly so I can let the landlady know I need water before I run out completely. So, before I went back inside, I walked over to the cistern to see how much water was left.
The lid to the cistern is a concrete block about 24 inches by 24 inches by three inches deep. It has two pieces of iron rebar threaded through it to act as handles, and the lid itself is reinforced with more iron rebar. The entire setup weighs quite a bit, but effectively seals the cistern up from anything larger than a smallish rabbit, prevents unfortunate accidents, and just generally protects my water supply. I rate it pretty high on my list of important household items.
So last night, I squatted down, balancing on the balls of my feet, and hauled this lid off the cistern. It is too heavy to hold up while maintaining your balance, so I tilted it up to rest it on the edge of the cistern opening. As I did this, the concrete slid back on the rebar and caught my hands between the concrete and iron. This, as I’m sure you can imagine, was quite uncomfortable. Startled and in pain, I shouted a few words I won’t print here and let go of the lid, expecting it to settle back into the cistern’s opening. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the difference in size between the hole and the lid is minimal. As I watched, the lid slipped easily through the opening, creating an impressive splash on its way to the bottom of my half-full cistern.
There I was, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of my feet, contemplating the opening in the ground that is slightly larger than me and the very necessary and very heavy lid sitting on the bottom some 15 feet below ground surface. All I could think was, “I wonder how on earth I’m going to deal with this in Spanish! I’m pretty sure no lesson I’ve ever had covered this situation…”
I know it’s trite. Everybody knows on some theoretical level that the words you learn in a classroom rarely apply to most real life situations. Once you actually spend some time living in another language, however, you begin to recognize just how deep that chasm is. There seem to be a number of reasons for the disparity, many of which I’ve encountered in the last week or two.
The first reason I find myself struggling is simply that I never learned the necessary words. Yesterday, I was driving home from the grocery store, and my check engine light came on. This seems to be a poorly named light, because all it really tells you is that you might want to swing by the bank on your way to the mechanic. Whatever is wrong with the engine, transmission, or exhaust system is bound to be costly! And you’ve still got to figure out what the problem is.
I came home and asked Zee to call her mechanic and tell him she was sending someone over. Luckily for me, Zee has a mechanic (and has had the same mechanic for 25 years!) who makes his living repairing all the work trucks (which are all Rams as well) for the University here. But regardless of how familiar he is with the inner workings of my Green Monster, I still had to explain the things I’ve noticed about the truck over the last few weeks. Standing in the yard of Miguel Angel’s shop, I realized that not only did I not know any of the words for the various hunks of metal underneath the hood of my truck, but I also didn’t know how to translate the things we say to describe their functioning (or lack thereof) in English.
While idling, my truck has been running roughly. Kevan suggested that this might have to do with the timing between the transmission and the engine. How, I wondered, was I going to explain this in Spanish. To me, describing a truck as running roughly while idling is loaded with colloquialisms. Can you translate those words directly to Spanish? Or are there a different set of colloquialisms in Spanish? Or do I just not know enough about mechanics to figure out what works and what doesn’t?
Miguel Angel is truly an angel. He was as patient as patient can be, and with a great deal of pantomiming and lots of laughter at the ridiculousness of it all, we seemed to manage to communicate. He kept the truck for four days. At the end of those four days, I was happy to discover that the pantomiming had been successful, and the truck seems to be happy again. We’ll see how it goes!
Yes, that pun was intended…
Sometimes, the language barrier is less about knowing the words then it is about being prepared for a situation. A few weeks ago, the kitchen sink developed a leak. Luckily, it developed it on Wednesday, the day that Zee’s handyman comes to fix, fuss, and garden. When he arrived, I asked if he could pop by to help me with a problem when he was done. He readily agreed and went off to do his work.
In the meantime, I realized that I had no idea how to say the word “leak” in Spanish. So, I popped into the office and looked it up in the handy dictionary. Armed with my new, handy word, I waited for Tonio to arrive.
Two hours later, he came to the door. I led him to the kitchen sink, proudly proclaiming that I had a leak in the sink. He bent down, looked under the sink, and said, “No you don’t.”
Just an aside here. Tonio is quite convinced I’m a total, complete, utter, incompetent idiot. Some days, I’m not sure he is wrong, but I know a leak in the kitchen pipes when I see one! I wanted to insist. I knew all the words individually, but together? For some reason, this situation just struck me dumb. Trying to wrap my brain around the conversation that needed to happen proved impossible. After a few false starts, with Tonio looking more and more disgusted at each one, I finally gave up and told him I’d let him know if the mysterious leak reappeared.
“Si, senorita” he responded, with a barely concealed roll of they eyes. He walked out, leaving me to ponder the workings of the sink pipes in English solitude.
Still, sometimes the language barrier, or the assumption of one, comes in handy. When Kim was here visiting, we drove to Taxco for a weekend away. The route is relatively straightforward, though at a couple of points the highway signage leaves a great deal to be desired, even by Mexican standards! At one point along the route, we reached a toll plaza. A line of booths stood in front of us. In the four left lanes, the booths were marked as closed with big red x’s glowing above each lane. Off to the side, the two right lanes had big inviting green arrows glowing above. No signs were in evidence. I did what seemed to me the obvious thing and pulled into one of the lanes marked as open.
As a rule, I make conversation with the toll booth man by asking him if I’m heading in the right direction. It gives us both something to do while one of us fumbles for change. So, as I handed him my bills, I smiled and said, “Is this the road to Taxco?”
“Taxco? You want to go to Taxco? But you need to be over there!” He pointed at the four booths marked as closed. I watched a car sail through. Oh dear…
Apparently, the red x’s, which everywhere else in Mexico indicate a closed toll booth, here indicated that there was no need to stop and pay a toll and you should feel free to keep driving right on through on your way to Taxco.
Sighing, I asked the man at the Tollbooth how to get back on the highway from the exit I was apparently pulling off at.
He sighed. He explained that this was quite impossible. There was no way back on the highway, he insisted.
Now, this struck me as problematic and illogical. Surely, if you can get off the highway, eventually you can get back on…. I decided it was time to “not understand”
I smiled sweetly, nodded, and said, “Oh, o.k., and am I going to go right or left after that?”
He looked puzzled. He insisted again that there was no way out of the exit and back onto the highway.
I nodded eagerly and said, “Yes, yes, but then do I go right or left?” I was determined not to understand.
By this time, a crowd had gathered. The army man with the submachine gun who guards the toll plaza sauntered over. The vendors who sell everything from a windshield wash to fresh baked bread to the cars stopped at the toll plazas gathered. The men all looked at each other, they looked at me. They decided that the easiest thing to do was to get the 8 cars and 5 tractor trailers lined up behind me in the lane to back up enough that I could get back on the highway. It was either that or make the gringa understand Spanish, and given the choice, well… It was no competition.
So the vendors fanned out waving madly for all the cars and trucks to back up. The army man conducted it all with his machine gun. High pitched beeps filled the air as the big rigs started moving slowly out of the way. The cars sandwiched between had no choice but to follow along. Soon enough, I had crossed back to the highway and Kim and I were on our merry way to Taxco, leaving the confusion of the drivers trying to get back into line at the tollbooth behind. Sometimes, language barriers can be most effective!
This all seemed quite funny until a couple of days ago (and yes, now I really mean a couple of days ago…). I was talking to some Mexicans the other day and, of course, we were speaking Spanish. Then some Americans joined us and we were switching back and forth between Spanish and English. After a few minutes of this, one of the Americans turned to me and, to offer a compliment, said, “Wow, your English isn’t too bad. Where did you learn to speak it?”
All I could think was, “Oh my god, I’ve been here long enough that I make only marginal sense in any given language at a time!” My new biggest fear is that I will return home to face the same language barriers, but in English! So please, when you next see me in the US, be kind and patient with my fumbling for words and badly constructed phrases. And rest assured, I don't make any more sense in Spanish!
Saturday, July 08, 2006
BACK AMONG THE LIVING - July 8th, 2006
After only five more trips back to the office, a mere nine phone calls later, just 38 days after my first visit to TELMEX, and ten days after the phone line was installed, I finally got internet access at home! I'll spare you the details. By now, you can imagine what was required.
The addition of high speed internet in the house has totally transformed my life. I'd like to say that it has allowed me to buckle down and be more productive. Unfortunately... Well... Uhm.... Maybe we'd better just stick with it totally transforming my life. So far, the things I'm really enjoying about it are:
1. Skype!!! (I'm not posting the number here for obvious reasons, but if you want to call me on the cheap, email me and I'll let you know how to find me...)
2. ITunes, which has brought Jon Stewart and real news back into my life!
3. Live streaming on MLB.com, which has no blackouts if you are accessing it from Mexico!!!
I'm also working my way slowly but surely through all those emails I haven't been replying to. If you are on the list of people I ought to have responded to in the last few weeks, I'll be getting to it soon! Promise!
All this has raised just one concern. Now that my house has the complete set of utilities, what on earth am I going to talk about here? TELMEX has provided so much material, though I hope they don't provide anymore... Probably almost as much as you do!
The only utility drama I have left is the water. For those of you who've never had to deal with water issues in Mexico, let me explain why this is an area of potential ongoing drama. Like many houses here, mine has no well or water line coming into it. I have a cistern underneath the house that holds a reasonable amount of water. There is a pump attached to it which moves water from underneath the house to a smaller tank on top of the house. Water for the house is supplied through this tank. When the tank on the roof empties, a float turns the pump on and water is pumped up to refill the tank.
It seems as if the tank on the roof always runs out of water when I am about halfway through a shower. The pump comes on, and I stand shivering, soap running into my eyes, waiting for the tank to fill enough to allow me to finish my shower. This system isn’t so bad when everything works. Every now and again, I hit a glitch. Sometimes the pump stops working. It pumps and pumps, but can’t get any water up to the roof. Sometimes the float malfunctions. In this case, either the pump doesn’t come on, or it doesn’t shut off (sending buckets of water pouring off the roof and me scurrying for the switch…). By far the most common problem, however, is that the cistern is empty.
To get it filled up, I have to call the landlady so she can arrange for the water people to come to the house. Unfortunately, her phone is out of service as often as it is in service, but once I get her on the phone and explain the problem, the situation is quickly resolved. Sometimes startlingly so!
Where does this water come from, you ask? Well, in my case, it comes from right next door. The people who live down the road from me are in the business of selling water. Basically, they moved into the neighborhood, bought a house, and drilled a well. Every day, they fill a big truck up with water and go out and fill up people’s cisterns. In so doing, they drain the water table, leaving everyone in the neighborhood to either buy their water or dig a deeper well. Eventually, the water guys need to deepen their well, too. The result is sort of like a cold war era arms race with all the accompanying social tensions.
I’ve learned all this over the course of the last few weeks since my first call for water! The first time I ran out of water, I called the landlady. The first dozen times I called, I got the voice of the TELMEX lady operator, who informed me that the phone was out of service, but please I shouldn’t call anyone because TELMEX was aware of the problem. (I now know that this is just part of the drill… Her phone is always out of service the first few times I call… Which, come to think of it, is probably why I don’t need to call anyone and inform them of the problem.) Just as I was heading to bed, after about three hours of trying to get through, I finally reached the landlady. I explained the problem, and she said that she would call the water people and I should expect them the next afternoon or the morning after that.
Happy to have the issue mostly resolved, I crawled into bed. It was still early, just 9:30 or so, but I had to be up and out in the field first thing the next morning. As I was drifting off to sleep about a half hour later, Kim knocked on my door. I got up.
“Yeah, is everything o.k.?”
Kim said, “Well, uhm, I think there is somebody in the driveway. They’ve been there quite some time…”
I went with Kim into the guest room and looked out the window. It was a water truck!
“At ten o’clock at night?”
I threw on a sweater and shoes and went out front. “Can I help you?”
There were two guys standing in front of the truck. They explained that my landlady called and they were here to put water in my cistern.
We had to shout everything over a barking dog. One of the dogs (Tofi) who runs with our street’s pack used to live in my house. Once upon a time, my house was rented by three astronomy students who were here working on their doctorates at Mexico’s National Observatory (which is a twenty minute walk from my house). They adopted Tofi and she lived here with them for quite some time. When they graduated and went on their respective ways, Zee took Tofi. While Tofi lives with Zee, she seems quite convinced that taking care of my house and keeping it safe and ready for the return of her beloved boys is part of her mission in life. If anybody comes near me or my house when Tofi is around, she goes nuts. On this particular evening, Tofi positioned herself between me and the water men and barked fiercely for the entire 30 minutes that they were here.
All this excitement brought the rest of the grownup dogs out of their beds to see what the fuss was about. Amber and Rambo, a pair of German Shepard sized dogs, ambled up, likely convinced that Tofi was getting more than her fair share of love or treats of something. Amber, always jealous, worked her way in next to me and Tofi. Rambo wandered around, sniffing everything and everyone. Alpha, a big, black, strong dog, emerged and hung around, lurking out in the shadows, keeping a wary eye on the proceedings.
Very few people here like or trust dogs, and the water guys were definitely not happy about my entourage. One of them hung back, his back pressed tightly to the hood of the truck, eyes wide, looking terrified as the dogs sniffed around. The other guy started to fill the tank and then, to kill time, tried to flirt with Kim and I over Tofi’s barking.
Kim asked me to ask him if he knew what the fireworks were for.
(We have fireworks here every night, always for some fiesta or other. And they shoot off firecrackers at the end of the mass. In an area of Mexico famous for its number of churches, there are always fireworks or firecrackers of some sort.)
The water guy rolled his eyes, and said, “Oh, some fiesta or other. The people here have lots. First they pray, and then they get really drunk and shoot off fireworks. You understand what I’m saying? First, they pray… (this is accompanied by a very amusing pantomime of piety) and then they drink… (pantomime of drinking and a bit of staggering to emphasize how much…)”
Kim and I giggle at his acting out the scenario, knowing it is quite true. In spite of Tofi’s barking, he is emboldened by our amused reactions. His eyes light up. “Then they dance! Do you girls like to drink and dance? I like to dance!” He leers suggestively while attempting a salsa step or two.
Tofi gets nervous at this last bit, she doesn’t like salsa apparently, she decides to buckle down and bark like she means it, throwing in a few growls for the hell of it.
“Dance?” I respond. “No, we don’t like to dance. Neither of us ever, ever dance.”
I bend down and tell Tofi what a good dog she is. She isn’t the slightest bit distracted by my pats and reassurances. She is a dog on a mission!
The water man recognizes he is loosing. “That dog, she sure does want to protect you!” he says, laughing nervously. “He,” pointing somewhat unsteadily at his colleague, “is really afraid of dogs.”
“Well,” I answer unmercifully, “she won’t bother you while I’m here. But yes, she takes her job of protecting me and the house very seriously. She is quite fierce about it.”
This didn’t sit well with either of them. They hurried to finish and packed up the hoses. They waved nervously, edged around the dogs, and took off. While they were totally nice, I was very happy to have Tofi there! It was late, and, at that time, I didn’t know they lived in the neighborhood. Never hurts to have a ferocious dog around…
Now I just have to hope they agree to come back next time!
After only five more trips back to the office, a mere nine phone calls later, just 38 days after my first visit to TELMEX, and ten days after the phone line was installed, I finally got internet access at home! I'll spare you the details. By now, you can imagine what was required.
The addition of high speed internet in the house has totally transformed my life. I'd like to say that it has allowed me to buckle down and be more productive. Unfortunately... Well... Uhm.... Maybe we'd better just stick with it totally transforming my life. So far, the things I'm really enjoying about it are:
1. Skype!!! (I'm not posting the number here for obvious reasons, but if you want to call me on the cheap, email me and I'll let you know how to find me...)
2. ITunes, which has brought Jon Stewart and real news back into my life!
3. Live streaming on MLB.com, which has no blackouts if you are accessing it from Mexico!!!
I'm also working my way slowly but surely through all those emails I haven't been replying to. If you are on the list of people I ought to have responded to in the last few weeks, I'll be getting to it soon! Promise!
All this has raised just one concern. Now that my house has the complete set of utilities, what on earth am I going to talk about here? TELMEX has provided so much material, though I hope they don't provide anymore... Probably almost as much as you do!
The only utility drama I have left is the water. For those of you who've never had to deal with water issues in Mexico, let me explain why this is an area of potential ongoing drama. Like many houses here, mine has no well or water line coming into it. I have a cistern underneath the house that holds a reasonable amount of water. There is a pump attached to it which moves water from underneath the house to a smaller tank on top of the house. Water for the house is supplied through this tank. When the tank on the roof empties, a float turns the pump on and water is pumped up to refill the tank.
It seems as if the tank on the roof always runs out of water when I am about halfway through a shower. The pump comes on, and I stand shivering, soap running into my eyes, waiting for the tank to fill enough to allow me to finish my shower. This system isn’t so bad when everything works. Every now and again, I hit a glitch. Sometimes the pump stops working. It pumps and pumps, but can’t get any water up to the roof. Sometimes the float malfunctions. In this case, either the pump doesn’t come on, or it doesn’t shut off (sending buckets of water pouring off the roof and me scurrying for the switch…). By far the most common problem, however, is that the cistern is empty.
To get it filled up, I have to call the landlady so she can arrange for the water people to come to the house. Unfortunately, her phone is out of service as often as it is in service, but once I get her on the phone and explain the problem, the situation is quickly resolved. Sometimes startlingly so!
Where does this water come from, you ask? Well, in my case, it comes from right next door. The people who live down the road from me are in the business of selling water. Basically, they moved into the neighborhood, bought a house, and drilled a well. Every day, they fill a big truck up with water and go out and fill up people’s cisterns. In so doing, they drain the water table, leaving everyone in the neighborhood to either buy their water or dig a deeper well. Eventually, the water guys need to deepen their well, too. The result is sort of like a cold war era arms race with all the accompanying social tensions.
I’ve learned all this over the course of the last few weeks since my first call for water! The first time I ran out of water, I called the landlady. The first dozen times I called, I got the voice of the TELMEX lady operator, who informed me that the phone was out of service, but please I shouldn’t call anyone because TELMEX was aware of the problem. (I now know that this is just part of the drill… Her phone is always out of service the first few times I call… Which, come to think of it, is probably why I don’t need to call anyone and inform them of the problem.) Just as I was heading to bed, after about three hours of trying to get through, I finally reached the landlady. I explained the problem, and she said that she would call the water people and I should expect them the next afternoon or the morning after that.
Happy to have the issue mostly resolved, I crawled into bed. It was still early, just 9:30 or so, but I had to be up and out in the field first thing the next morning. As I was drifting off to sleep about a half hour later, Kim knocked on my door. I got up.
“Yeah, is everything o.k.?”
Kim said, “Well, uhm, I think there is somebody in the driveway. They’ve been there quite some time…”
I went with Kim into the guest room and looked out the window. It was a water truck!
“At ten o’clock at night?”
I threw on a sweater and shoes and went out front. “Can I help you?”
There were two guys standing in front of the truck. They explained that my landlady called and they were here to put water in my cistern.
We had to shout everything over a barking dog. One of the dogs (Tofi) who runs with our street’s pack used to live in my house. Once upon a time, my house was rented by three astronomy students who were here working on their doctorates at Mexico’s National Observatory (which is a twenty minute walk from my house). They adopted Tofi and she lived here with them for quite some time. When they graduated and went on their respective ways, Zee took Tofi. While Tofi lives with Zee, she seems quite convinced that taking care of my house and keeping it safe and ready for the return of her beloved boys is part of her mission in life. If anybody comes near me or my house when Tofi is around, she goes nuts. On this particular evening, Tofi positioned herself between me and the water men and barked fiercely for the entire 30 minutes that they were here.
All this excitement brought the rest of the grownup dogs out of their beds to see what the fuss was about. Amber and Rambo, a pair of German Shepard sized dogs, ambled up, likely convinced that Tofi was getting more than her fair share of love or treats of something. Amber, always jealous, worked her way in next to me and Tofi. Rambo wandered around, sniffing everything and everyone. Alpha, a big, black, strong dog, emerged and hung around, lurking out in the shadows, keeping a wary eye on the proceedings.
Very few people here like or trust dogs, and the water guys were definitely not happy about my entourage. One of them hung back, his back pressed tightly to the hood of the truck, eyes wide, looking terrified as the dogs sniffed around. The other guy started to fill the tank and then, to kill time, tried to flirt with Kim and I over Tofi’s barking.
Kim asked me to ask him if he knew what the fireworks were for.
(We have fireworks here every night, always for some fiesta or other. And they shoot off firecrackers at the end of the mass. In an area of Mexico famous for its number of churches, there are always fireworks or firecrackers of some sort.)
The water guy rolled his eyes, and said, “Oh, some fiesta or other. The people here have lots. First they pray, and then they get really drunk and shoot off fireworks. You understand what I’m saying? First, they pray… (this is accompanied by a very amusing pantomime of piety) and then they drink… (pantomime of drinking and a bit of staggering to emphasize how much…)”
Kim and I giggle at his acting out the scenario, knowing it is quite true. In spite of Tofi’s barking, he is emboldened by our amused reactions. His eyes light up. “Then they dance! Do you girls like to drink and dance? I like to dance!” He leers suggestively while attempting a salsa step or two.
Tofi gets nervous at this last bit, she doesn’t like salsa apparently, she decides to buckle down and bark like she means it, throwing in a few growls for the hell of it.
“Dance?” I respond. “No, we don’t like to dance. Neither of us ever, ever dance.”
I bend down and tell Tofi what a good dog she is. She isn’t the slightest bit distracted by my pats and reassurances. She is a dog on a mission!
The water man recognizes he is loosing. “That dog, she sure does want to protect you!” he says, laughing nervously. “He,” pointing somewhat unsteadily at his colleague, “is really afraid of dogs.”
“Well,” I answer unmercifully, “she won’t bother you while I’m here. But yes, she takes her job of protecting me and the house very seriously. She is quite fierce about it.”
This didn’t sit well with either of them. They hurried to finish and packed up the hoses. They waved nervously, edged around the dogs, and took off. While they were totally nice, I was very happy to have Tofi there! It was late, and, at that time, I didn’t know they lived in the neighborhood. Never hurts to have a ferocious dog around…
Now I just have to hope they agree to come back next time!
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Prostituting Myself for a Phone Line - June 28th, 2006
As you read the title of this blog, some of you may have found yourself thinking, “Well, gosh, Elizabeth! That seems kind of extreme! Surely phone lines aren’t that hard to come by!” But they are. As are TELMEX installation/repair men.
Last winter, Zee’s phone went out. She visited the office on a weekly basis, complaining of no service. Finally after TWO MONTHS, a repairman showed up and started to work on a problem that took him two more weeks to resolve (the connection to the main pole was no longer connected….). She has been telling me for the last four weeks, “I know they said they’d call you in 30 days, but you realize they won’t, right? You are going to have to go in and complain weekly until someone shows up…”
I knew in my heart this was true. I didn’t want to believe it. I don’t have the wherewithal for another seven hours in the TELMEX office. As the thirty day mark approached, a day in the presence of Mr. Bureaucracy was looming. And then a miracle occurred…
Yes, another miracle!
I got in from the field yesterday, hot, tired, and dusty after a day of ethnographic research and student supervision in the village of La Soledad Morelos. After a mango smoothie, I went straight for the shower to clean up. Just after I hopped out of the shower, I heard Kim shout, “Elizabeth, come quick! There is a TELMEX man outside looking at the pole in the street!!!”
I threw on a tank top and skirt, dashed to my lab where I grabbed my installation paperwork, and ran outside.
The TELMEX man was already in his truck, but when he looked up and saw a gringa in a flimsy, low cut tank top running towards him with a look of desperation on her face, he stopped. He leaned out of the truck, leered at me, waiting for me to proposition him.
“Hola, señor! Esta aqui para instalar mi línea de teléphono?” I bat my eyelashes madly, hoping that my bad Spanish is endearingly or adorably so.
Apparently, it works. Or the tank top does. He fixes his gaze firmly on my chest and says, “Well, now, that depends, who are you?”
I give him my name and whip out the work order. “I have my paperwork,” I explain, eyes fluttering and chest heaving.
He pauses, savoring the moment. “Well,” he finally answers, “I am actually here to install a telephone in your neighbor’s house…” He gestures towards Renee’s house. Renee has shown me every kindness and watches out for my house when he is working in his yard late at night. In spite of this kindness, I find myself thinking of ways to sabotage Renee’s TELMEX visit.
Luckily, there is no need. While evil, no good thoughts were running through my head, the TELMEX man, who’s name I later find out is Pedro, starts going through the work orders on his clipboard. He finally finds one that matches mine about half way through the pile of 75+ orders. He looks at it, he looks at me, he looks at my breasts, he looks back at the work order. He sighs. “I suppose I could come do your installation when I finish with your neighbor.”
If I were the sort of woman who jumps up and down and claps her hands to show extreme happiness, I would have. I couldn’t swear at this moment that I didn’t. I was awfully happy. I probably wouldn’t have thanked Pedro more effusively if he had just pulled me out of a pit of rattlesnakes.
I retreated to the house so Pedro could get on with his job. Kim and I pulled chairs up near the door so we could make sure he didn’t drive off. I think he probably thought our motivations were not based on my desire to have a telephone line installed and to not have that installation involve another trip to TELMEX. It didn’t matter. As long as he came back and didn’t leave until I had a phone, I didn’t care what he thought. After about 20 minutes with Renee, Pedro drives back to my driveway. There are dogs everywhere. I currently have seven living around my house and a couple more who visit regularly. He looks around him at the seven dogs and asks me nervously if it is safe to get out of the truck.
I look at the three Marias (three beautiful black lab puppies who are only a couple months old and who have only JUST learned to sit and not bite. Sometimes….), throw caution to the wind, and say, “Oh yeah, they are really, really friendly…” He gets out of the truck. The three Marias go crazy. The older dogs stand around, contemplating barking. I rush in to drag the puppies off Pedro, Kim rushes out to help me. The problem with the Three Marias is that they outnumber any one person, three dogs to only a pair of hands.
Pedro smoothes his hair. I’m afraid he is going to leave, but the puppy love is totally worth two gringas kneeling at his feet, even if they do have armfuls of hysterical black lab. Looking down at us, Pedro sees opportunity. He gets down on his hands and knees and eagerly starts petting and tickling the puppies, getting a few tickles in at the expense of Kim and I, as well.
Inwardly, I roll my eyes. But I don’t have a phone line, yet!
Escaping the puppies (and Pedro’s “accidentally” roaming hands), we return to the house. Pedro makes himself comfortable in the kitchen where Kim offers him a soda. We exchange pleasantries. Pedro decides to teach us some Spanish. “Do you know what niña bonita means?” he asks us.
I try not to groan. I nod. Kim, poor innocent, says no.
Pedro leaps on this. “Ah!” he says, “It means beautiful girl! You are both such beautiful girls…”
This goes on for quite some time. I keep trying to steer the conversation in the direction of telephone lines. Pedro will not be dissuaded. This beautiful opportunity is not going to be derailed by work!
It takes a full forty minutes of flirting before Pedro gets to work. After spending another twenty minutes installing the phone line, Pedro returns for another thirty minutes of flirtation. He gives me a one on one lesson on how to plug my phone into the outlet (seriously…). Finally, he can think of no reason to stay any longer. He presses his cell phone number on me. “This is my number. My personal, private, direct number. I always have it on me! Please call me! I can come and set up your internet when you get it! If your phone breaks, I will come and fix it! We can have dinner, and I can give you little classes of Spanish!” I smile and nod noncommittally, herding Pedro towards the door.
He doesn’t want to leave, but his play has been made. He backs up reluctantly, moving towards his truck, shouting pleasantries and compliments at Kim and I until the last possible moment. Finally, with a sad and lingering backward glance at my cleavage, Pedro drives off in a cloud of dust.
As he leaves, Zee pulls up. She gets out of her car, curious as to what all the commotion has been about. I walk over and hand her Pedro’s cell phone number.
“The TELMEX man was here. Next time your phone breaks, just call this number… His name is Pedro.”
As you read the title of this blog, some of you may have found yourself thinking, “Well, gosh, Elizabeth! That seems kind of extreme! Surely phone lines aren’t that hard to come by!” But they are. As are TELMEX installation/repair men.
Last winter, Zee’s phone went out. She visited the office on a weekly basis, complaining of no service. Finally after TWO MONTHS, a repairman showed up and started to work on a problem that took him two more weeks to resolve (the connection to the main pole was no longer connected….). She has been telling me for the last four weeks, “I know they said they’d call you in 30 days, but you realize they won’t, right? You are going to have to go in and complain weekly until someone shows up…”
I knew in my heart this was true. I didn’t want to believe it. I don’t have the wherewithal for another seven hours in the TELMEX office. As the thirty day mark approached, a day in the presence of Mr. Bureaucracy was looming. And then a miracle occurred…
Yes, another miracle!
I got in from the field yesterday, hot, tired, and dusty after a day of ethnographic research and student supervision in the village of La Soledad Morelos. After a mango smoothie, I went straight for the shower to clean up. Just after I hopped out of the shower, I heard Kim shout, “Elizabeth, come quick! There is a TELMEX man outside looking at the pole in the street!!!”
I threw on a tank top and skirt, dashed to my lab where I grabbed my installation paperwork, and ran outside.
The TELMEX man was already in his truck, but when he looked up and saw a gringa in a flimsy, low cut tank top running towards him with a look of desperation on her face, he stopped. He leaned out of the truck, leered at me, waiting for me to proposition him.
“Hola, señor! Esta aqui para instalar mi línea de teléphono?” I bat my eyelashes madly, hoping that my bad Spanish is endearingly or adorably so.
Apparently, it works. Or the tank top does. He fixes his gaze firmly on my chest and says, “Well, now, that depends, who are you?”
I give him my name and whip out the work order. “I have my paperwork,” I explain, eyes fluttering and chest heaving.
He pauses, savoring the moment. “Well,” he finally answers, “I am actually here to install a telephone in your neighbor’s house…” He gestures towards Renee’s house. Renee has shown me every kindness and watches out for my house when he is working in his yard late at night. In spite of this kindness, I find myself thinking of ways to sabotage Renee’s TELMEX visit.
Luckily, there is no need. While evil, no good thoughts were running through my head, the TELMEX man, who’s name I later find out is Pedro, starts going through the work orders on his clipboard. He finally finds one that matches mine about half way through the pile of 75+ orders. He looks at it, he looks at me, he looks at my breasts, he looks back at the work order. He sighs. “I suppose I could come do your installation when I finish with your neighbor.”
If I were the sort of woman who jumps up and down and claps her hands to show extreme happiness, I would have. I couldn’t swear at this moment that I didn’t. I was awfully happy. I probably wouldn’t have thanked Pedro more effusively if he had just pulled me out of a pit of rattlesnakes.
I retreated to the house so Pedro could get on with his job. Kim and I pulled chairs up near the door so we could make sure he didn’t drive off. I think he probably thought our motivations were not based on my desire to have a telephone line installed and to not have that installation involve another trip to TELMEX. It didn’t matter. As long as he came back and didn’t leave until I had a phone, I didn’t care what he thought. After about 20 minutes with Renee, Pedro drives back to my driveway. There are dogs everywhere. I currently have seven living around my house and a couple more who visit regularly. He looks around him at the seven dogs and asks me nervously if it is safe to get out of the truck.
I look at the three Marias (three beautiful black lab puppies who are only a couple months old and who have only JUST learned to sit and not bite. Sometimes….), throw caution to the wind, and say, “Oh yeah, they are really, really friendly…” He gets out of the truck. The three Marias go crazy. The older dogs stand around, contemplating barking. I rush in to drag the puppies off Pedro, Kim rushes out to help me. The problem with the Three Marias is that they outnumber any one person, three dogs to only a pair of hands.
Pedro smoothes his hair. I’m afraid he is going to leave, but the puppy love is totally worth two gringas kneeling at his feet, even if they do have armfuls of hysterical black lab. Looking down at us, Pedro sees opportunity. He gets down on his hands and knees and eagerly starts petting and tickling the puppies, getting a few tickles in at the expense of Kim and I, as well.
Inwardly, I roll my eyes. But I don’t have a phone line, yet!
Escaping the puppies (and Pedro’s “accidentally” roaming hands), we return to the house. Pedro makes himself comfortable in the kitchen where Kim offers him a soda. We exchange pleasantries. Pedro decides to teach us some Spanish. “Do you know what niña bonita means?” he asks us.
I try not to groan. I nod. Kim, poor innocent, says no.
Pedro leaps on this. “Ah!” he says, “It means beautiful girl! You are both such beautiful girls…”
This goes on for quite some time. I keep trying to steer the conversation in the direction of telephone lines. Pedro will not be dissuaded. This beautiful opportunity is not going to be derailed by work!
It takes a full forty minutes of flirting before Pedro gets to work. After spending another twenty minutes installing the phone line, Pedro returns for another thirty minutes of flirtation. He gives me a one on one lesson on how to plug my phone into the outlet (seriously…). Finally, he can think of no reason to stay any longer. He presses his cell phone number on me. “This is my number. My personal, private, direct number. I always have it on me! Please call me! I can come and set up your internet when you get it! If your phone breaks, I will come and fix it! We can have dinner, and I can give you little classes of Spanish!” I smile and nod noncommittally, herding Pedro towards the door.
He doesn’t want to leave, but his play has been made. He backs up reluctantly, moving towards his truck, shouting pleasantries and compliments at Kim and I until the last possible moment. Finally, with a sad and lingering backward glance at my cleavage, Pedro drives off in a cloud of dust.
As he leaves, Zee pulls up. She gets out of her car, curious as to what all the commotion has been about. I walk over and hand her Pedro’s cell phone number.
“The TELMEX man was here. Next time your phone breaks, just call this number… His name is Pedro.”
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
“See You Sunday!” June 12th, 2006
Not much in life (at least as far as I’m concerned) justifies getting up at dawn. Late last week, however, I did it anyway. I thought there was one good reason to be up at a truly ungodly hour, but there turned out to be two! The unexpected bonus was the view out my bedroom window, which I include below.
The picture doesn’t really capture the utter beauty of the sunrise, but I hope it gives those of you who haven’t yet bought your plane tickets an incentive to start planning your trip!
The real reason for dragging my butt out of bed that day was that Kim and I were heading to the Pacific coast of Oaxaca for a long weekend. The university at which my students are all enrolled had their graduation ceremony this past Friday. Those not graduating got a day off, and as a result, so did I! I asked Kim what she wanted to do, since we had some extra time, and she said, “Let’s go to the beach!” I explained that all the decent beaches were quite far and spending 18-22 hours in a bus for a mere long weekend might not make for a very pleasant expedition. But Kim was determined and decided that we would fly to Puerto Escondido.
This decision, incidentally, was made at about six pm the night before we left. Time for ticket purchases was tight. We slogged through the mud over to the internet place to check ticket availability. Since it is the low season for the beaches, we had no problem. There were plenty of tickets available, but because of the rather last minute nature of the purchase, we had to call rather than book online.
This is where our problems began…
Kim doesn’t speak Spanish, so I had to do the calling, even though she was doing the paying. As a result, everything had to be translated back and forth, which probably didn’t add to the success of the endeavor. In spite of the complicated nature of the communication and the operator’s unwillingness to be amused by these complications, we got everything worked out. Dates, times, seats, etc were chosen, names, addresses, and phone numbers were given, all that was left to do was pay!
So I said to the gentlemen who was unenthusiastically assisting us, “We’ll be using a Visa card…”
“Visa?” He asks.
“Yep.” I say cheerfully.
“Oh, we don’t accept anything but American Express unless you are Mexican. If you are Mexican, we will accept a Visa or Mastercard, but for foreigners, we only accept American Express.”
“HUH?” I say, and turning to Kim, “Do you have an American Express card?”
“A what?” she says, confused.
“They only take American Express,” I mutter, my hand over the phone.
“I don’t! I mean, who ONLY accepts American Express?” she says.
I relay the bad news to the man on the phone, still puzzling over why Mexicana airlines (a not inconsequential international carrier) will only accept American Express from foreigners.
He says, “Well, that is o.k. You can come to the airport by 11 tomorrow morning and pay in cash. But you must pay in cash. I have made a reservation in your name, so give that to them along with the full amount of the ticket in cash, and you can still take this flight.”
I thank him for his “help” (however reluctant), hang up, and relay the information to Kim. We decide we will get up bright and early to catch a bus to Mexico City to deal with this in the morning. After all, the beach beckons…
We pack, head off to bed, and I remember that I haven’t called my usual taxi driver and now it is too late. “Not a big deal,” I decide, “I can just hail one out in the main street tomorrow.” Happily, I drift off to sleep, unaware of the drama in store!
In the morning, after some time with the sunrise, I head up to the main street a couple of blocks from my house to hail a cab. I figure it won’t be too much trouble. It is, after all, a major thoroughfare, and it is rush hour, too! I stand there for quite some time, finally flagging a taxi down. I tell him that I am going to the bus station in Puebla. He doesn’t want to go there, he only wants to do the run in between Tonancintla and Cholula. He takes off. I continue to wait. Finally, after much failed hailing, a second taxi driver pulls over. I explain where I going. He says, “O.K., but I have one more run to make and then I will come get you.”
I say, “My bus is at 8:30, are you sure you can do both.” [Yeah, I know, dumb me, but I’d only had one cup of coffee and it was still early! I thought there would be time.]
He insists there will be no problem. I take his phone number just in case. He swears on his mother’s grave that he will be at my house no later then 8:00 am.
Satisfied, though the tiniest bit nervous, I head back to the house for another cup of coffee and a bit more time contemplating the fading sunrise and still amazing sky. Kim and I kick back in front of the house, feet up on our luggage, and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
At 8:15, I call him.
“I’m coming!!! I’m coming!!!” he shouts without preamble before hanging up on me.
We give him five more minutes and then grab our luggage and head to the main road. Luckily, there is also a 9 am bus that should, barring traffic, get us to Mexico City in time. Hopefully, we can find a taxi quickly. As we round the corner on the side street that leads to the main road, we see a taxi careening towards us. He comes screeching to a halt (as much as one can screech on a dirt road), leaps out of the still-running car, grabs our bags, throws them in the trunk, and leaps back into the driver’s seat yelling, “GET IN!!! GET IN!!! HURRY!!!!!!”
Kim and I climb into the back seat, and I remind him that he was supposed to pick us up at eight and that our bus leaves Puebla in only ten minutes.
“I can make it, I can make it!” He shouts.
(More careening. I’m wishing that I was the sort of person who could find comfort in prayer…)
The taxi’s dashboard is stuffed with good luck charms, pyramids piled on stuffed animals piled on pyramids. I’m afraid they are there because he has repeatedly found himself lacking in good luck while driving. I imagine a scenario where he adds a good luck charm to the dashboard after every accident. I try not to count them while I fumble for my seatbelt.
“So where are you going?” he shouts back.
Once again, I explain that we are going to the bus station in Puebla on 4 Poniente. “The station with the buses to the airport in Mexico City. We have a flight from there. That is why we needed to be on the 8:30 bus.” I explain, hoping to simultaneously clarify and chastise.
“The airport?” he yells. “But the airport is right here in Huehotzingo! Are you going to the airport or the bus!?!?!? Would you just tell me where you want to go?!?!”
I suspect he is deliberately misunderstanding me to dodge the whole “late” issue. We argue back and forth for a bit until I say, “Oh, just take us to the bus station.”
Kim and I lapse into disapproving silence, possibly induced by the exhaust fumes seeping into the back seat of the taxi.
In spite of the fact that it is now past 8:30 and we have no hope of catching the bus, our driver continues at breakneck speed, running every red light he encounters with his horn blaring to warn off the traffic with the legal right of way. During one such incident, as he flies through the intersection, causing cars all around us to come screeching to a halt (yes really, more screeching!), he reaches into his glove compartment and, in a moment of breathtaking optimism, tosses his business card over his right shoulder at us.
“When are you coming back?” he asks as the card flutters into my lap.
“Uh, Sunday sometime.” I respond reluctantly. “But I don’t know when!”
“Well,” he announces, “You just call me! Call me anytime you need a cab, and I will be there to pick you up and take you where you need to go! Any time you want! I am very reliable.”
This last bit is relayed as we come to a halt in front of the bus station, a mere 30 minutes late. Just in the nick of time for the 9 am bus.
I run in to the bus station to buy tickets, leaving him to cheerfully cheat Kim out of 20 pesos in change.
We get on the bus. Sighing happily, I assume that we have had our “story” for the day. We spend the ride discussing the awful things we might do to his business card.
We arrive at the Mexico City airport shortly after 10:30 (no traffic!!!), and head straight for the Mexicana ticket desk. We approach the man. I say, “We have a reservation for today to Puerto Escondido.”
He searches in the computer, shakes his head, and says, “No reservation here, but I have seats. But they [pointing to two women at the next counter] may have cheaper ones. He shouts across the baggage scale to the woman next to him, who is on the phone, “Do you have seats to Puerto Escondido? They want to go to Puerto Escondido today.” She nods, points to the woman next to her who is doing nothing but her nails, covers the mouthpiece of the phone, and hisses what I assume is “Puerto Escondido” at her. We move down two spots, and the woman pleasantly takes all our information. She, too, is unable to find the mysterious reservation, but whatever, she has seats!
She quotes us a price that, amazingly, is $50 less per person! We are so pleased the reservations aren’t in evidence! Even more amazing, she doesn’t blink when we hand her a Visa card attached to Kim’s US address (let alone demand an American Express!)! She processes everything and hands us the paperwork. It is then that I think, “Huh, she never asked us for our return date.” I look at the ticket. Not only is it a one way ticket, but it is a one way ticket to Puerto Vallarta!
I relay the information to Kim. She suggests that this might be a sign that we are meant to go to Puerto Vallarta and not come back. I think maybe not. I think maybe it is just more tramite and am having flashbacks to my day at TELMEX.
I explain to the woman at the ticket desk that we have no interest in visiting Puerto Vallarta, but wouldn’t mind purchasing two round trip tickets to Puerto Escondido returning Sunday. We go through the entire process again. She is surprisingly pleasant about the whole fiasco.
Believe it or not, we did indeed make it to Puerto Escondido exactly when we had intended! We hadn’t quite counted on the pouring rain that greeted us, but enjoyed ourselves immensely in spite of the rather damp beach weather. We checked in to a lovely hotel and chose a very orange room with a deck looking out over the Pacific ocean. We settled in to the porch and spent the afternoon reading, watching the storm over the ocean, and knitting.
The next morning we got up and found that it was still raining. Desperate for coffee, we ran next door to a likely looking restaurant called El Jardin. It turned out to be a superb restaurant with an excellent menu and an espresso machine. The restaurant is owned by a slightly crazy Italian man who provides the entertainment for free. That first morning, we took our seats, and he came dashing up to the table, shouting in English with a thick Italian accent, “What are we going to fix for you today, ladies!”
He withholds the menus. This is not a choice to be made with quiet, solitary reading. No, rather, it requires careful, detailed negotiation. We negotiate my waffles for quite some time. He runs through a long list of all the things that he can put on them, repeatedly informing me that they will be the best waffles I have ever tasted, but they can’t be rushed! It will take some time, but I will remember the waffles for ever. We finally settle on waffles with fresh fruit (though he is distraught when he finds out that I don’t care for papaya, moaning, “And I thought you were perfect!”). I add a cappuccino to my order.
“Ah, a cappuccino!” he exclaims, throwing his hands even wider. “I myself, with my own two hands, will make your cappuccino, and it will be the best cappuccino you have ever had in your life!”
Kim decides to forgo the negotiations and have what I’m having. He promises to make her cappuccino, too. He whips around and relays the information, with much drama and detail, to the long suffering waitress, then dashes towards the cappuccino machine. Unfortunately for me, en route, he spies a couple looking over menus. He pauses for a moment, stunned and, I suspect, horrified that they could choose their food this way, then races over and rips the menus out of their startled hands. New negotiations ensue.
I turn to Kim. “I’m thinking the coffee is going to be a while…”
She laughs and nods. We wait.
Finally, he returns with a single cappuccino. He sets it in front of me with a flourish, insisting I will be amazed, and then dashes off to newly arrived customers daring to look at a menu.
Kim and I look at the coffee, we look at each other, sizing one another up. Who is more desperate for the coffee? Who is likely to win the fight? Will there be blood? The waitress, seeing the impending fight to the death, approaches quickly. “Uhm, did you order two coffees?”
We nod.
She takes a deep breath, “I’ll take care of it…”
She walks across the restaurant and stands just out of reach of his madly flailing arms, waiting for him to draw breath. When the inevitable pause comes, she darts in and reminds him of the other coffee.
“Oh yes!” he exclaims, and he dashes back to the coffee maker, leaving his latest customers in mid-order.
Eventually, we get and finish our coffee and waffles, leave an extra big tip for the waitress, and head out. We pass the day pleasantly enough, sneaking in a bit of exploring when the rain lets up for about an hour. At dinner time, it is pouring again, and so we head back to the same restaurant.
We sit, he arrives, we go through our negotiations. He approves of our choices. He says affectionately, “Ah, you girls, I can trust you! You do not order boring food! No, you order lovely, good food!” He hands the menus back to us, as if passing off a sacred trust. As he does, he pauses. He looks at me. He says, “But sweetheart, tell me one thing!”
“Yes?” I ask nervously.
“Today, it rains all day! Very romantic, but not so good for the beach.”
“Well, yes,” I agree.
“Then how, where,” he asks, throwing his arms even wider, “DID YOU GET A SUNBURN!?!?!?”
Before we can answer that we too have been wondering just the same thing, he dashes off to intercept another order across the restaurant. People, apparently, who he does not trust with the menu.
Not much in life (at least as far as I’m concerned) justifies getting up at dawn. Late last week, however, I did it anyway. I thought there was one good reason to be up at a truly ungodly hour, but there turned out to be two! The unexpected bonus was the view out my bedroom window, which I include below.
The picture doesn’t really capture the utter beauty of the sunrise, but I hope it gives those of you who haven’t yet bought your plane tickets an incentive to start planning your trip!
The real reason for dragging my butt out of bed that day was that Kim and I were heading to the Pacific coast of Oaxaca for a long weekend. The university at which my students are all enrolled had their graduation ceremony this past Friday. Those not graduating got a day off, and as a result, so did I! I asked Kim what she wanted to do, since we had some extra time, and she said, “Let’s go to the beach!” I explained that all the decent beaches were quite far and spending 18-22 hours in a bus for a mere long weekend might not make for a very pleasant expedition. But Kim was determined and decided that we would fly to Puerto Escondido.
This decision, incidentally, was made at about six pm the night before we left. Time for ticket purchases was tight. We slogged through the mud over to the internet place to check ticket availability. Since it is the low season for the beaches, we had no problem. There were plenty of tickets available, but because of the rather last minute nature of the purchase, we had to call rather than book online.
This is where our problems began…
Kim doesn’t speak Spanish, so I had to do the calling, even though she was doing the paying. As a result, everything had to be translated back and forth, which probably didn’t add to the success of the endeavor. In spite of the complicated nature of the communication and the operator’s unwillingness to be amused by these complications, we got everything worked out. Dates, times, seats, etc were chosen, names, addresses, and phone numbers were given, all that was left to do was pay!
So I said to the gentlemen who was unenthusiastically assisting us, “We’ll be using a Visa card…”
“Visa?” He asks.
“Yep.” I say cheerfully.
“Oh, we don’t accept anything but American Express unless you are Mexican. If you are Mexican, we will accept a Visa or Mastercard, but for foreigners, we only accept American Express.”
“HUH?” I say, and turning to Kim, “Do you have an American Express card?”
“A what?” she says, confused.
“They only take American Express,” I mutter, my hand over the phone.
“I don’t! I mean, who ONLY accepts American Express?” she says.
I relay the bad news to the man on the phone, still puzzling over why Mexicana airlines (a not inconsequential international carrier) will only accept American Express from foreigners.
He says, “Well, that is o.k. You can come to the airport by 11 tomorrow morning and pay in cash. But you must pay in cash. I have made a reservation in your name, so give that to them along with the full amount of the ticket in cash, and you can still take this flight.”
I thank him for his “help” (however reluctant), hang up, and relay the information to Kim. We decide we will get up bright and early to catch a bus to Mexico City to deal with this in the morning. After all, the beach beckons…
We pack, head off to bed, and I remember that I haven’t called my usual taxi driver and now it is too late. “Not a big deal,” I decide, “I can just hail one out in the main street tomorrow.” Happily, I drift off to sleep, unaware of the drama in store!
In the morning, after some time with the sunrise, I head up to the main street a couple of blocks from my house to hail a cab. I figure it won’t be too much trouble. It is, after all, a major thoroughfare, and it is rush hour, too! I stand there for quite some time, finally flagging a taxi down. I tell him that I am going to the bus station in Puebla. He doesn’t want to go there, he only wants to do the run in between Tonancintla and Cholula. He takes off. I continue to wait. Finally, after much failed hailing, a second taxi driver pulls over. I explain where I going. He says, “O.K., but I have one more run to make and then I will come get you.”
I say, “My bus is at 8:30, are you sure you can do both.” [Yeah, I know, dumb me, but I’d only had one cup of coffee and it was still early! I thought there would be time.]
He insists there will be no problem. I take his phone number just in case. He swears on his mother’s grave that he will be at my house no later then 8:00 am.
Satisfied, though the tiniest bit nervous, I head back to the house for another cup of coffee and a bit more time contemplating the fading sunrise and still amazing sky. Kim and I kick back in front of the house, feet up on our luggage, and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
At 8:15, I call him.
“I’m coming!!! I’m coming!!!” he shouts without preamble before hanging up on me.
We give him five more minutes and then grab our luggage and head to the main road. Luckily, there is also a 9 am bus that should, barring traffic, get us to Mexico City in time. Hopefully, we can find a taxi quickly. As we round the corner on the side street that leads to the main road, we see a taxi careening towards us. He comes screeching to a halt (as much as one can screech on a dirt road), leaps out of the still-running car, grabs our bags, throws them in the trunk, and leaps back into the driver’s seat yelling, “GET IN!!! GET IN!!! HURRY!!!!!!”
Kim and I climb into the back seat, and I remind him that he was supposed to pick us up at eight and that our bus leaves Puebla in only ten minutes.
“I can make it, I can make it!” He shouts.
(More careening. I’m wishing that I was the sort of person who could find comfort in prayer…)
The taxi’s dashboard is stuffed with good luck charms, pyramids piled on stuffed animals piled on pyramids. I’m afraid they are there because he has repeatedly found himself lacking in good luck while driving. I imagine a scenario where he adds a good luck charm to the dashboard after every accident. I try not to count them while I fumble for my seatbelt.
“So where are you going?” he shouts back.
Once again, I explain that we are going to the bus station in Puebla on 4 Poniente. “The station with the buses to the airport in Mexico City. We have a flight from there. That is why we needed to be on the 8:30 bus.” I explain, hoping to simultaneously clarify and chastise.
“The airport?” he yells. “But the airport is right here in Huehotzingo! Are you going to the airport or the bus!?!?!? Would you just tell me where you want to go?!?!”
I suspect he is deliberately misunderstanding me to dodge the whole “late” issue. We argue back and forth for a bit until I say, “Oh, just take us to the bus station.”
Kim and I lapse into disapproving silence, possibly induced by the exhaust fumes seeping into the back seat of the taxi.
In spite of the fact that it is now past 8:30 and we have no hope of catching the bus, our driver continues at breakneck speed, running every red light he encounters with his horn blaring to warn off the traffic with the legal right of way. During one such incident, as he flies through the intersection, causing cars all around us to come screeching to a halt (yes really, more screeching!), he reaches into his glove compartment and, in a moment of breathtaking optimism, tosses his business card over his right shoulder at us.
“When are you coming back?” he asks as the card flutters into my lap.
“Uh, Sunday sometime.” I respond reluctantly. “But I don’t know when!”
“Well,” he announces, “You just call me! Call me anytime you need a cab, and I will be there to pick you up and take you where you need to go! Any time you want! I am very reliable.”
This last bit is relayed as we come to a halt in front of the bus station, a mere 30 minutes late. Just in the nick of time for the 9 am bus.
I run in to the bus station to buy tickets, leaving him to cheerfully cheat Kim out of 20 pesos in change.
We get on the bus. Sighing happily, I assume that we have had our “story” for the day. We spend the ride discussing the awful things we might do to his business card.
We arrive at the Mexico City airport shortly after 10:30 (no traffic!!!), and head straight for the Mexicana ticket desk. We approach the man. I say, “We have a reservation for today to Puerto Escondido.”
He searches in the computer, shakes his head, and says, “No reservation here, but I have seats. But they [pointing to two women at the next counter] may have cheaper ones. He shouts across the baggage scale to the woman next to him, who is on the phone, “Do you have seats to Puerto Escondido? They want to go to Puerto Escondido today.” She nods, points to the woman next to her who is doing nothing but her nails, covers the mouthpiece of the phone, and hisses what I assume is “Puerto Escondido” at her. We move down two spots, and the woman pleasantly takes all our information. She, too, is unable to find the mysterious reservation, but whatever, she has seats!
She quotes us a price that, amazingly, is $50 less per person! We are so pleased the reservations aren’t in evidence! Even more amazing, she doesn’t blink when we hand her a Visa card attached to Kim’s US address (let alone demand an American Express!)! She processes everything and hands us the paperwork. It is then that I think, “Huh, she never asked us for our return date.” I look at the ticket. Not only is it a one way ticket, but it is a one way ticket to Puerto Vallarta!
I relay the information to Kim. She suggests that this might be a sign that we are meant to go to Puerto Vallarta and not come back. I think maybe not. I think maybe it is just more tramite and am having flashbacks to my day at TELMEX.
I explain to the woman at the ticket desk that we have no interest in visiting Puerto Vallarta, but wouldn’t mind purchasing two round trip tickets to Puerto Escondido returning Sunday. We go through the entire process again. She is surprisingly pleasant about the whole fiasco.
Believe it or not, we did indeed make it to Puerto Escondido exactly when we had intended! We hadn’t quite counted on the pouring rain that greeted us, but enjoyed ourselves immensely in spite of the rather damp beach weather. We checked in to a lovely hotel and chose a very orange room with a deck looking out over the Pacific ocean. We settled in to the porch and spent the afternoon reading, watching the storm over the ocean, and knitting.
The next morning we got up and found that it was still raining. Desperate for coffee, we ran next door to a likely looking restaurant called El Jardin. It turned out to be a superb restaurant with an excellent menu and an espresso machine. The restaurant is owned by a slightly crazy Italian man who provides the entertainment for free. That first morning, we took our seats, and he came dashing up to the table, shouting in English with a thick Italian accent, “What are we going to fix for you today, ladies!”
He withholds the menus. This is not a choice to be made with quiet, solitary reading. No, rather, it requires careful, detailed negotiation. We negotiate my waffles for quite some time. He runs through a long list of all the things that he can put on them, repeatedly informing me that they will be the best waffles I have ever tasted, but they can’t be rushed! It will take some time, but I will remember the waffles for ever. We finally settle on waffles with fresh fruit (though he is distraught when he finds out that I don’t care for papaya, moaning, “And I thought you were perfect!”). I add a cappuccino to my order.
“Ah, a cappuccino!” he exclaims, throwing his hands even wider. “I myself, with my own two hands, will make your cappuccino, and it will be the best cappuccino you have ever had in your life!”
Kim decides to forgo the negotiations and have what I’m having. He promises to make her cappuccino, too. He whips around and relays the information, with much drama and detail, to the long suffering waitress, then dashes towards the cappuccino machine. Unfortunately for me, en route, he spies a couple looking over menus. He pauses for a moment, stunned and, I suspect, horrified that they could choose their food this way, then races over and rips the menus out of their startled hands. New negotiations ensue.
I turn to Kim. “I’m thinking the coffee is going to be a while…”
She laughs and nods. We wait.
Finally, he returns with a single cappuccino. He sets it in front of me with a flourish, insisting I will be amazed, and then dashes off to newly arrived customers daring to look at a menu.
Kim and I look at the coffee, we look at each other, sizing one another up. Who is more desperate for the coffee? Who is likely to win the fight? Will there be blood? The waitress, seeing the impending fight to the death, approaches quickly. “Uhm, did you order two coffees?”
We nod.
She takes a deep breath, “I’ll take care of it…”
She walks across the restaurant and stands just out of reach of his madly flailing arms, waiting for him to draw breath. When the inevitable pause comes, she darts in and reminds him of the other coffee.
“Oh yes!” he exclaims, and he dashes back to the coffee maker, leaving his latest customers in mid-order.
Eventually, we get and finish our coffee and waffles, leave an extra big tip for the waitress, and head out. We pass the day pleasantly enough, sneaking in a bit of exploring when the rain lets up for about an hour. At dinner time, it is pouring again, and so we head back to the same restaurant.
We sit, he arrives, we go through our negotiations. He approves of our choices. He says affectionately, “Ah, you girls, I can trust you! You do not order boring food! No, you order lovely, good food!” He hands the menus back to us, as if passing off a sacred trust. As he does, he pauses. He looks at me. He says, “But sweetheart, tell me one thing!”
“Yes?” I ask nervously.
“Today, it rains all day! Very romantic, but not so good for the beach.”
“Well, yes,” I agree.
“Then how, where,” he asks, throwing his arms even wider, “DID YOU GET A SUNBURN!?!?!?”
Before we can answer that we too have been wondering just the same thing, he dashes off to intercept another order across the restaurant. People, apparently, who he does not trust with the menu.
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