Yesa: ¡Al Exterior!

At home in the world, or at least getting there...

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Day 19: News from the Middle of Nowhere

6:36 pm

Hello, everyone! Didn´t expect to hear from me so soon, hmm? Let me tell you, the very last thing that I ever expected to find here in Cieneguilla, Guanajuato, México, was... an INTERNET CAFÉ. If you can call this that. A few really old computers in a cement and cinderblock room with bars on the glassless windows. And mariachi music blaring in huge speakers at the door. Ah, México. Anyway, of course I had to find this "internet café" when it´s almost time for me to head back to civilization, hehe.

Anyway, I´ll just give a quick lowdown on my life here; I´ve been staying at the house of a very sweet old lady named Doña Chabel (which is short for Isabel). She lives with her husband, Don Primi (which is short for PRIMITIVO. What an odd name, right?) and two of her six children. The two children are 32-year-old Esperanza (whom they call Pera) and 26-year-old Maria de Lurdes (whom they call Lulu). I´m staying in Lulu´s room, and I really like her. She has a lot of patience with my Spanish and she is a very good listener. Also living there is Pera´s 3-year-old daughter, Ana Karen, who is absolutely adorable. She really likes me, too, though it didn´t seem that way at first. On the first day that I arrived, she made a point of ignoring me the entire afternoon, but the funny thing was that she made a point of ignoring me in whatever room I happened to be in. So she was following me around and ignoring me at the same time. I gave her the puzzle of the macaw, which she seemed uninterested in until she suddenly came and asked me to teach her how to play, and I think we´ve done it about 20 times since then. I am teaching her English and she is teaching me Spanish. It all works out.

I really like this town of Cieneguilla. It´s not quite as primitive as I thought it was going to be, though it´s still a long way from anything I´m used to. When I told Doña Chabel that I was going to use the Internet, I had to spend about 10 minutes explaining what the Internet was. I´ll spare you yet another description of the weird bathroom. Also, my Spanish is enough to get me by, though it´s not always enough to say what I want to. But the important thing is that I´m learning. I´m learning a lot about life here.

There are so few foreign visitors to this town that everyone in the town can still count them and name them all, or at least where they were from and what they were doing here. I´ve heard all about the Japanese lady who loved cats, the American teacher who meant to stay a week and left after one day, and the other two Global Justice interns that came to Cieneguilla last year. There are three of us this year. Simone and Erica live "across town" (well, as far across as can be) with a lady named Doña Vicki. I kind of like being at Doña Chabel's house by myself, though. And it seems that the family enjoys the sort of cosmopolitan status that they get by hosting me. However, at the same time, they seem slightly uncomfortable with me. Maybe uncomfortable isn´t quite the right word. They are at the very least amused by my tallness (Doña Chabel comes up to my shoulder and I nearly decapitate myself with the clothesline outside my door every morning), my blondeness, my güera-ness (lots and lots of stares), my awkwardness (they constantly insist on serving me, which I hate), my clumsiness (the one time they let me do the dishes, I broke a cup), my weird accent (I have to say most things two times), my impronouncable name (which has now deteriorated into various forms of "Yazzi," "Yassat," and, get this, "Zsa Zsa"), my stories about America (which they call "the Other Side"), my contact lenses, my chancla flip-flops, and my weird habits (I think this is part of the reason that little Anita Karen likes me so much; I´m like a big blonde slapstick clown).

I have had so many adventures so far, but since I´m paying for this Internet by the hour, I´ll have to fill you in on everything and all the details after I get back to San Miguel de Allende. I´ll give the highlights, though, for all of you inquiring minds...

One of the funniest stories (well, it´s funny now, but it wasn´t then) is the story where something got into my pants... (Don´t worry, Mom, hehe)

My second morning here, I think, I woke up and put on my jeans. It had rained the night before, and so a lot of the little critters from outside decided that they were going to move into the cinderblock house with us. On this particular rainy morning, a shiny little scorpion had set up shop in my pant leg. And this particular shiny little scorpion was very unhappy when my leg suddenly invaded his new home. So he stung me once, very hard. I saw pure white for a split second as pain shot up and down my leg and I yelled something, though I can´t remember if it was in English or Spanish or that odd half-language of pure emotion that everyone in the world understands. Anyway, Lulu was at my side in half a second flat, and I was ripping off my pants as he stung me again. By the time Lulu and I had disentangled my leg from my pants, he had stung me again. So I had one big sting and two small stings. The scorpion was dully smashed for his sins, and meanwhile I was sure that I was going to die of scorpion poisoning out here in the Mexican countryside. Luckily, it seems, God was taking care of me, because the type of scorpion that stung me is the kind that hurt but don´t kill. There are others that a sting will close your throat in minutes. Doña Chabel gave me a close Hispanic cousin of Vick´s Vapor Rub to put on the stings (?) and yes, it hurt, but I didn´t die. Throughout the day, as the poison made it´s way through my bloodstream, I would get hot flashes in random places on my arms or belly that would sting and then itch really bad. But, again, the important thing is that I didn´t die.

I have really been enjoying the local culture here in Cieneguilla. It just makes it that much more special to know that there aren´t very many outsiders who get to experience these things. There will definitely be more details about this later, but so far I´ve seen a middle school graduation and a kindergarten graduation, hours and hours of carrizo reed stripping and basket making, and lots of tortilla making (since you told me to watch, Ro, hehe). Also, we have made friends with the local know-it-all, a Maestro León, who is kind of like the local shaman, since things like shamans don´t exist here anymore. He knows everything, people say, because he asks lots of questions and he listens very closely. Maybe we should all try being more like him. He knows a lot about the dying Otomi culture in this area, that most people don´t remember a lot about. We went to a temascal (an Otomi sweat lodge ritual) at his house (definitely more about that later) and he took the three of us all around the valley, telling us about local communities and religious rites. The most interesting thing, in my opinion, is the religious life of this community. Yes, they are Catholic, but their particular brand of Catholicism is highly adapted to their environment and to the Otomi beliefs of their ancestors. God is everywhere here, not just in church, and there is an odd and very rigid system of how the Jesus and saint statues in the church are cared for. The statues take field trips through the valley occaisionally (kind of like the whole Penguino thing, if you think about it) and I was lucky enough to be here on the night of one of the field trips, which was last night. The system of how they are cared for, which is called¨"majordomía," as in "majordomo," decides who their chaperones will be on these field trips.

(Sorry, here´s a sidenote: a goat just wandered in and out the front door of this internet café. I love this place.)

I´ll definitely talk more about the religious life of this area later. There is still so much to do and to experience, and I only have a day and a half left! But I´d better go now, my time is running out. I´ll talk to you guys on Tuesday!

Lots and lots of love from "The Other Other Side!"

2 Comments:

At 12:38 PM, Blogger Kris said...

I've many a time considered you to be my own personal big blonde slapstick clown. . .but in a very weet way :)

 
At 7:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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