San Francisco: painting walls and baking cookies

The past week I've been staying with some friends of my parents in a small town called San Fancisco near Tecamac, about half an hour from the capital. Past Sunday I took the liberty to suddenly pack my bags, say thanks to my patient hosts in Mexico City and continue to my next destination. A rare privilige of arbitrary displacement I've been enjoying very much so far. Getting there involved yet again an interesting occurence. Once I found the bus towards San Francisco in one of Mexico City's many shady neighbourhoods, I was told it woud take around 25 minutes to get there. Stupidly enough, I trusted the busdriver and his sidekick - the fee collector - to warn me in time when we got there. A mistake I've made on several occasions on this trip is to think that by my foreign appearance people would automatically help me out on finding the way. On a certain moment, long after those 25 minutes had passed, the bus stops and a number people get off. I thought a bus with fixed destinations would of course stop everywhere where its designated to stop in order to let people off or to pick people up. But, because asking never hurts, I informed to the bus driver after my stop, to which he jokingly responds: "Oh, we already passed that one." "What? How? What do you mean?", confused. "Well yeah, nobody stood up so I thought no one was gonna get off at that stop." What the fuck? Do I have to smell when we get to San Francisco? It was fucking dark and obviously I wasn't from around there. Apparently, now I learned, people don't just get up before the bus even comes to a stop because they're impatient Mexicans. If you don't get up, the bus doens't stop and you can go fuck yourself. There you go, another example of Mexican logic. However, that was just a minor incident worth blowing up. Eventually I met up with those friends who I hadn't seen in seven years and all was good.

The friends are Alfredo and Leti, a couple who lived with their two daugthers for a year and 15 days in Antwerp, Belgium. Back then I was rather young and didn't much care for their presence. Even worse, I had cultivated a ridiculous antipathy towards Carmen, the younger of the two sisters, for the sole reason of her voice. In those days she had quite a high-pitched, almost lamentable - and to me irritating - little girls' voice. At that age, I was kind of a cumbersome, tiny bastard capable of hating people for no apparent reason (Nowadays, I try to substantiate any dislike towards certain people). That period of my life still ashames me till this day. Much interaction with those people was not really interesting to me. So after a while they left back for Mexico, disappearing from my memory. In the course of the years after their departure my parents and I went to visit them twice, on occasions we traveled to Mexico. By then I had grown a little bit more mature and put aside my indifference. I met Alfredo's older brother Victor, who lost most of his sight as a result of falling on his head while working as a mason, and his younger brother Manuel AKA 'Manolo', who lost his parents on a critical moment of his young manhood. Of both, Victor inspired me the most and would leave a permament impresion that made me never forget that family again. Seven years after the last time my parents and I visited them, I decided to return. What first started as a few-day visit, resulted in an intense week of working wherein I slowly started feeling like a member of the family. As of now, I'm still staying at their place and to my surprise, they don't want me to leave yet.

On Monday my first day as temporary aid started with Victor asking me after breakfast whether I wanted to learn how to paint walls with a plaster applicator (a mechanical device made out of stainless steel that litteraly 'sprays' plaster by means of a thing that spins, or something. Hell, I'm not a construction worker). From that moment on I helped everywhere where two extra hands were needed. That marked an interesting change to the classic tourist activities I've been doing for the past two months.

While working on the paint job I remembered how Victor is an illuminary example of perseverance, willpower, patience. He told me how he considered suicide at the beginning of his life in the dark while having two kids of nine and ten. At the school for visual impaired people he learned how to bake pastry, knot belts, read Braille, etc. Slowly he recovered and turned into a much stronger person than most of us with healthy eyes. After a while he even thought classes in that same school, although just recently he was thanked for his loyal service because he was starting to become an 'oldie', i.e. costing too much as a professional who normally deserves a higher salary. Now he only has his bakery and a tiny banking bussines for loans that keep his family feeded, clothed and educated. Besides that, now and then friends of friends of friends come to him asking his construction worker expertise for small-time jobs. But one thing more than everything has pulled the man throughout his unfortunately altered life: humour. For some reason he finds relief in mocking at his disability, while the rest of the family joins in with the laughter. For example, at his workshop Victor asks for his white cane to which Tisho, a family friend, yells at him: "It's there man! Fuck, can't you see? What are you, blind?" In the beginning I felt pretty akward, but rapidly I got used to how his family members treat him and even started joking at him myself. It gets to the point where I sometimes forget he's visually disabled. You can talk to him, even walk with him through the streets of The City of Madness, without noticing he's partially blind. Somewhere it's ironic, and in a way completely logical, that a man with an essential sense disabled can teach more to, let's say, a 'fully working' person than the other way around. Not only I am learning lessons in overcoming hardship, he has even tought me to make an excellent pizza Hawaii. Over the course of the first week I met more friends of his, most of them also visually impaired, each with a silencing incredible life story. One worth mentioning is Jesus, or 'Chucho' as they call him, who at the age 25 in a heavily concious-altered state of mind (shitfaced and high on whatever he could lay his hands on) jumped intentionally in front of an approaching truck, slinging him several meters away, landing on his head and consequently losing complete sight. Now, about thirty years after that rather idiotic act, each Tuesday he uses Victor's industrial oven to bake 10 panqués (pound cake) which he sells in the course of a week. With that money he tries to make ends meet. Even he, whose attempt to recovery was less progressive than Victor's, is laughed at. Completely devastated from his story, I bought a whole pound cake to help him with his business. I don't know if that really helped him, but it made me feel better anyway.

After we had finally done spray-painting the walls and cleaned up, the whole family joined together for coffee and pastry, a ritual performed every day at night when everyone's done working or fulfilling obligations. Sadly enough, in a country where excellent coffee is grown in states like Veracruz and Chiapas, the majority drinks Nescafé instant soluble coffee. In this case, I try to put aside my elitism and enjoy the warmth of sitting together, talking, laughing, drinking. The next days I alternatingly helped remodelling the house and baked cookies in Victor's workshop. During the working hours I've been receiving instens lessons in paronomasia (double entendre, form of word play), better known as 'albur', a type of humour extremely popular in Mexico. Usually, the double meaning carries a sexual undertone and is often difficult to understand if not pointed out, especially for foreigners who don't dominate Mexican idioms and figure of speech. A simple example: Person A asks person B "Tu papa ya es grande?" (Is your father old?), to which B can answer 'yes' or 'no'. But what A is really asking is "Tu papaya es grande?" (Is your papaya big?), which in this context means whether B's vagina is big, seen that the tropical fruit is used as a synonym for women's genitals. Simply by shifting the accent from one syllable to another you can completely change the meaning of a sentence as in the example. That seems like ridiculous, immature humour but it's huge in Mexico. There are even albus contests wherein contestants try to insult eachother the most with subtle double entendres, kind of like rap contests. It's not easy, but I'm starting to recognize when the others are pulling my leg.

To end the workweek I joined the family to a typical rural wedding. They told me it was fun because of the fact it was held in a small village. So I put on my best clothes (checkered shirt, completely ripped skinnies and some borrowed shoes), jumped in the Volkswagen Combi with the others and head off to the party. At first when they invited me I was confused that we wouldn't be attending ceremony, instead only going to the party to eat and drink. I thought they were joking, but that's exactly what we did. We arrived, looked for a free table and waited to be served. The food was carnitas, an ensemble of various meat accompanied with rice, mole poblano (kind of a heavy sauce), corn tortillas and some kind of soup. Still feeling akward of the whole set-up, Tisho the family friend assured me: "Don't be afraid, man. Here you can eat as much as you want. No stress." And so it happened. Throughout the whole evening we sat down at the table eating, drinking and watching people dance. The last was kind of boring since my company weren't keen dancers. Partly out of conformity, partly out of embarrasement I joined them in their sitting marathon. Although, there was one occasion in which almost everyone stood up to perform a custom typical for Mexican Weddings: la Vibora de la Mar (the Sea Snake). Originally a children's game, a very popular variation has become an indispensable standard in weddings. When la Vibora de la Mar is announced, men and women are separated to form long "snakes". On this particular wedding first the kids lined up. Both bride and groom stand on chairs while the latter holds the train of the bride's gown. These two are surrounded by chosen ones, usually close friends, with the purpose of preventing the married ones of falling down. Because, and this is quite funny, the "snakes" formed by both sexes have push them until they fall off to the increasing tempo of the song. Analogous with the sexes, the women have to push the bride over while the men try to tip the groom. The meaning of the whole game is quite unclear to me. I was told that it represents the couple may never be seperated regardless of all problems. If one of those human snakes succeeds in pushing over one of both married ones it supposedly means they will separate. As I see it, it's just an excellent excuse to involve the whole gang of guests and enjoy a fine piece of violent slapstick humour. Obviously, I participated. The men's snake was pretty rough (= could be an albur), resulting in the fall of the groom. After that happened, he is lifted up by friends who lead him through the hall to the tunes of Chopin's 'Funeral March', representing the end of his carefree life of fun, drinking and zero responsibilities. When that ritual was over everyone returned to their tables, and we ordered a bottle of cheap tequila rip-off worth 39 pesos (= 2.30 EUR). Since their was no more beer or any other lighter alcoholic beverage, I threw myself on the Rancho Escondido resulting in a terrible hang-over the next day, one like I hadn't experienced since very long. Apparently, I got kind of wild on the way home shoutingly requesting music and spilling the cheap liquor all over my clothes. When they finally played music I fell asleep on the Victor's shoulder (he's a large person = excellent cushion). When I woke up the next day with all my clothes and shoes on I realized I wasn't that sober than I thought I was. That was a fun wedding.