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May 23, 2007
México
Over thirty years ago, my father fell in love with a land where the people laughed in the sun as they themselves radiated warmth and sunshine—a land where the people lived and walked and breathed the days easy and content. He lived in a place where women with café colored skins and men with mustaches turned upright into smiles danced by day and sang by night to Celito Lindo and the calls of birds flying freely through the open air.
Thirty years ago, my father was living in México. Thirty years ago, my father was a student in Guadalajara. He passed many years in this country; he became fond of its people, their ideas, the way of life and he returned to the United States with many wonderful memories to share.
Those memories have been shared with me ever since I was very little.
I remember listening to my father who told me of the friendships he made, the things he studied, and the places he visited. He told me how at first, it was difficult to adjust to a different culture, but gradually, things worked out just fine. And after hearing his stories, I knew that I too, wanted to study and live in another country.
Thirty years after my father, it became my turn to study-abroad.
I decided to study in México because it’s a country rich in culture as it is in tastes and sounds, a pais with beautiful people on the inside and outside, a tierra of treasured destinations. And I chose México because of the special relationship that my family has with the country, because the people treated my father so well when he lived here.
And so I arrived in Mérida during the early afternoon of January 1st.
When you first arrive in a city, you see buildings, streets, signs that make no sense. Everything’s unknown, virgin.
“Someday,” I reassured myself, “you’ll have lived in this city. You’ll know these streets by heart. You’ll have lived in these buildings and lived stories with these people…”
It’s true. Once you’ve lived in this city, crossed this street or that 10, 20, 1000 times—10, 20, 10, 20, 1000 times—Buenavista, Paseo Montejo, Colon—it all belongs to you, because you’ve lived here.
When I first arrived, I hoped that it would happen, but to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t quite know what to expect on January 1st.
Over time, “Colon”, which sounded like “Centro” was added to the long list of once bizarre sounding names tucked into my brain. Colon slowly slipped in next to Circuito, Kanasin, Garcia-Gineres, Chapur, Chedraui, Campestre, Colonial…
And slowly, with practice, it all became normal and familiar.
But more about my expectations: When I arrived here in the early morning of January 1st, I came in the best way a foreign exchange student should enter into a new country: with little idea what to expect or what to anticipate for the semester.
I did come, however, with the intention of passing my experience “like a Yucatecan”—trying new foods, listening to music, celebrating the holidays, the cultural aspects, etc. And obviously, I came with the intention to speak as much Spanish as possible. And I didn’t know if it was possible.
Five months later, I was able to realize all of my goals and surpass them much further.
Five months later, I write to you the story of a take-off; no, it’s not the story of a plane or an incident that happened in an airport. It’s the story of me and the great discoveries that I’ve made on a five month adventure here in Mérida. These five months have been the best five months of my life, socially and academically, emotionally and spiritually; it’s hard to believe that it has all come to an end. In five months, a lot has changed.
When you arrive in México, you first arrive as a tourist. You take photos on every corner. You speak English, or maybe even Spanglish. You talk of movies like “Tu Mama También” and of singers like Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez. You think you know all there is to know about Latino culture and Latino history. “After all,” you tell yourself, “the Alamo is in the United States.”
And everything seems to be okay, for the time being at least. “They’ll like you because you’re a foreigner. They love foreigners; it’s just strangers they hate.” That’s what you read in the little book you bought at a coffee shop in New Jersey before coming. They love foreigners. They love foreigners. You say the words over and over again. But you don’t understand the second part.
As time continues, you begin to meet people, you begin to see how they think and think as they see. You learn what they feel. And you gladly welcome it all in because you’re willing to open up to a new culture and to new people. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” That’s what you read from the same little book, the one that has now found a permanent spot in your bookbag. It’s true. You might as well have stayed home—home in Michigan—if you’re unwilling to make the most of your time.
And, to make things even mejor, you are living with a family while you’re here. What better opportunity could you have to learn more directly about Mexican people?
With each day that you spend away from home, everything becomes more normal; you start to immerse yourself in the culture instead of remaining a tourist. No longer are you a stranger in a far away land…
*No more were the billboards announcing the next Starbucks or McDonalds, no more donut stops or kosher butchers or cold bottles of water. My world turned into fruit flavored sodas, tamarindo, apple, piña; Pato Pascual with Donald Duck on the bottle, or Lúlú, Betty Boop soda, or the one we hear on the radio, the happy song for Jarritos soda.
In time, everything turned into another language. Toc, says the light switch in this country, at home it says click. Honk say the cars at home, here they say tán tán tán. I heard the scrip-scrape-scrip of high heels across saltillo floor tiles. The angry lion growl of the corrugated curtains when the shopkeepers roll them open each morning and the lazy lion roar at night when they pull them shut. The pic, pic, pic of somebody’s far away hammer. Church bells over and over, all day, even when it’s not o’clock. Roosters. The hollow echo of a dog barking. Bells from skinny horses pulling tourists in a carriage, clip-clop on cobblestones and big chunks of horse caquita tumbling out of them like shredded wheat.
Sweets sweeter, colors brighter, the bitter more bitter. A cage of parrots all the rainbow colors of the fruit-flavored sodas. Pushing a window out to open instead of pulling it up. A cold slash of door latch in your hand instead of the dull round doorknob. Tin sugar spoon and how surprised the hand feels because it’s so light. Children walking to school in the morning with their hair still wet from the morning bath.
Mopping with a stick and a purple rag called la jerga instead of a mop. The fat lip of a soda pop bottle when you tilt your head back and drink. Birthday cakes walking out of a bakery without a box, just like that, on a wooden plate. And the metal tongs and tray when you buy Mexican pan dulce, help yourself. Cornflakes served with hot! milk. A balloon painted with wavy pink stripes wearing a paper hat. A milk gelatin with a fly like a little black raisin rubbing its hands. Light and heavy, loud and soft, thud and ting and ping.
Churches the color of flan. Vendors selling slices of jícama with chile, lime juice, and salt. Balloon vendors. The vendor of flags. The corn-on-the-cob vendor. The pork rind vendor. The fried-banana-vendor. The hot cake vendor. The strawberries and cream vendor. The vendor of rainbow pirulis, of apple bars, of elote bathed in margarine. The ice cream vendor—and a very good ice cream at only two pesos. The coffee man with a coffeemaker on his back and a paper-cup dispenser, the cream and sugar boy scuttling alongside him.
Little girls in Sunday dresses like lace bells, like umbrellas, like parachutes, the more lace and froufrou the better. Houses painted purple, electric blue, tiger orange, aquamarine, a yellow like a taxicab, hibiscus red and a yellow-and-green fence. Above doorways, faded wreaths from an anniversary or a death till the wind and rain erase them. A woman in an apron scrubbing the sidewalk in front of her house with a pink plastic broom and a bright green bucket filled with suds. A workman carrying a long metal pipe on his shoulder, whistling ffttt-fffttt to warn people— watch out! —the pipe longer than he is tall, almost putting out someone’s eye, ya mero —but he doesn’t, does he? Ya mero, pero no. Almost, but not quite. Sí, pero no. Yes, but no.
Fireworks displays, piñata makers, palm weavers. Pens, --Five different styles, they cost us a lot! A restaurant called—The King of the Taco. The napkins, little triangles of hard paper with the name printed on one side. Breakfast: a basket of pan dulce, hotcakes with jirabe; or huevos con pollo; frijoles with fresh cilantro; mollletes or scrambled eggs with chorizo; eggs a la mexicana with tomato, onion and chile; or huevos rancheros. Lunch: vegetable soup or sopa de lima; fresh-baked crusty French; carrots with lime juice; carne asada; panuchos, salbutes, cristianos, and papazchutlzes; tortillas and tostadas. And when we eat outdoors, Mexican dogs under Mexican tables — the dogs so friendly it’s you that start to beg for more.
The smell of diesel exhaust, the smell of somebody roasting coffee, the smell of hot corn tortillas along with the pat-pat of the women’s hands making them, the sting of roasting chiles in your throat and in your eyes. Sometimes a smell in the morning, very cool and clean that makes you sad. And a night smell when the stars open white and soft like fresh bolillo bread.
And as you start to immerse yourself more into the culture, you start to realize what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s easy to do and what’s more difficult. You learn to differentiate between accents, how much money to tip, and how to call a cab. And you learn that riding the bus is annoying. Bus drivers sleeping, smoking, drinking behind the wheel. Sometimes stopping for a siesta or to go to the bathroom. Or maybe he’s even ordering his wife a present or buying movie tickets for a girlfriend. You become pressured, angry—you might even go through culture shock — and you start to realize what hassles you.
Later, much later, all your hassles become adventures. These aggravating incidents, the worst experiences and events of your trip are the ones you talk about the most to others.
It’s only after the 150th time of putting toilet paper in the toilet that you really learn what makes Mexicans mad. It’s only after your host mother practically watches you in the bathroom that you realize you’re not living in your own environment and that things are different.
As the days pass, you set up a routine for yourself: you go to school by morning, come home for lunch and then your siesta and then you study, read, and write. God bless the hour of the nap!
During siesta time, the house finally becomes quiet, all the apartments are still, front and back, up and down, even in the courtyard. The world is napping. As soon as my señora has cleared off the lunch dishes, she too retreats to her bedroom. Bedroom doors shut, key click-clicking twice behind her. Everybody knows better than to knock.
“Then there were no people, nor animals, nor trees. There was only the deaf silence of the waters.”
–Popul Voh, a surviving Mayan text
From my room on the second floor, I can hear the señor’s snoring and coughing and señora’s nervous shuffling about in her chanclas with the squashed heals. They used to be his slippers…
After a restful afternoon and then your studying, night-time calls you for exploring, the chance to venture out into the city— party, try new foods, engage in local customs, meet new people— until your stomach becomes full, your heart content, and your eyelids slowly descend until daybreak.
These are the ways in which you’re turned into a local and you learn what’s good and where to go— the café with wireless internet, the ice cream place with flavors so sweet and prices so cheap, the chili bar, the salsa disco— these are the places in which your Spanish improves the most.
With each new experience, you also learn a lot about your past and the world in which you came from. You learn a lot about the United States— its peoples, its customs, and its role in the world.
“Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”
–Porfirio Diaz, Mexican President 1830-1915
You begin to recognize just how provincial the United States is. And that the grass is no much more greener on the other side. It’s just different grass, that’s all. But most certainly not any greener and most likely not even as natural. You learn not to talk about the United States that much— what’s the purpose? Nobody really gives a damn and rightly so.
And you also learn a lot about your studies and about school. You go to your school every day and you attend all of your classes. But as the days continue on, you realize that there’s so more to learning than what’s confined to a classroom and textbooks. There’s more important things in this world than facts concerning the American Revolution or character flaws inherent in Victorian literature, Texas Instrument calculators and beakers full of chemicals.
You adopt the idea that you “learn by living” and you like the way it sounds. There’s something that feels quite right about your new mantra.
But at the same time, you learn the value of your education in the United States. You learn that there is nothing like an education in an American university and there’s most definitely nothing like a University of Michigan education.
There’s nothing like a University of Michigan education.
You find comfort in recognizing this value and you take pride after realizing that you’re living in a land where the gente millions of miles away from Ann Arbor still ‘Hail to the Victors’ …And you take pictures with everyone you see supporting your school.
Never did I expect to see people Hail to the Victors in Yucatán, México. I am so proud to be a Wolverine.
And while you make all of these reflections and live your life in the culture, you make lots of friends— both extranjeros and Mexicans.
You travel together, have long conversations, practice your Spanish, and feel welcomed and challenged. You learn to respect not only the diversity and passions of the Mexican students, but those of the American students as well. Chats by a fireside, on a bus ride, in a hotel, and on the trek to the biblioteca become some of your fondest memories. You are fortunate to meet some really great people.
And I don’t know how it is with anyone else but for me these things, that song, that time, that place, that conversation, are all bound together in a country that I’ve come to love, a country that I’ll be crying for, a country that really, perhaps might not even exist. A pais that was fabricated, invented, conjured up like the tourists that pass through its lands. Something that quite possibly never existed. Something that we all invented. Like the emigrants of the tierra caught up here and there and somewhere in between the two.
And before it all fades away into memories and infinity, I sit here trying to capture some of it all down…
So that’s where you find me now, as I write to you my story. While we might say that it is ending, I would like to think in the possibility of it just beginning. I’ll leave as I left five months ago— with little expectations, little anticipations, but large intentions— and I’ll bring with me a lot more— many wonderful memories of women with café colored skins and men with mustaches turned upright into smiles that dance by day and sang by night to Celito Lindo and the calls of birds flying freely through the open air.
Never before have I been treated as well as I have by the buena gente of Mérida and of México. Never before have I felt so humbled, so welcomed, and so fortunate to live amongst a group of people. Never before and most likely never again…
The people of México are good people.
And while they might not share in the same economic prosperity that you or I might in the United States— while they might not walk around with IPODs or cell phones—they carry with them the consciousness of something far more valuable, something often hard to come by; that being the beauty and importance of human relations. They carry with them respect for one another and today I carry with me that same respect.
“Entre los individuos como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.”
-Benito Juarez, Mexican President (1806-1872)
The people of México have taught me what is most important in life—what “bare necessities” we often overlook in a country marked by materialism, prisa, broken families and broken homes. They taught me that it’s okay to say hello to complete strangers, to kiss and shake hands with people, and to enter into a home without forewarning. And, as my book first told me (and later I discovered) they taught me about myself. “The real meaning of travel, like that of a conversation by the fireside, is the discovery of one’s self through contact with other people.”
The people of México- the women that slave making tortillas and the men that chop trees with nothing but steak knives- unlocked the chains of self-discovery that were too rusty or too time consuming to unlock at home.
They taught me that the voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having and learning to use those new eyes, the new heart, and the new brain. And I thank the Mexican people for giving me these gifts.
I’ll leave with those gifts and with many wonderful recuerdos of amigos and familia, of Chichén Itzá, and geckoes on the wall, of Eugenia and hamacas, flan and the Mercado—of days passed easy and content and plenty full to fill my baggage.
I’ll leave México where I started.
Tomorrow I’ll begin with a take-off.
* selection appearing in Sandra Cisneros' full length novel, Caramelo.
Posted by jlsumich at May 23, 2007 01:32 PM