Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Baffled by Basura!
In Mexico City, nearly every time I so much as lose a hair in the shower I start thinking What am I going to do with this? Will I need to add it to my trash? Please let it just go down the drain. You see, in Mexico City garbage is a major problem. There is a garbage truck who speeds through the neighborhoods daily, blowing a very inconspicuous little whistle to signal that it is your chance to run with your bags down many flights of stairs and meet the truck being commandeered by understandably grumpy men standing calf-deep in a mysterious roux of orange peels, diapers and god-knows-what else. The problem is that the garbage truck arrives during working hours-- one reason why everyone who can afford it has a maid who meets the truck daily and disposes of the household garbage. So I don't have a maid (yet) and I am left to deal with the garbage by myself. In the process I have turned into a stealth guerilla, a basurista, if you will. Here's why.
It is illegal to dump garbage anywhere...not that this stops anyone from transforming any flower pot, ditch or stray bucket in the road into a trash receptacle. However, if one of the plentiful and very corrupt patrolling policia was to see me leaving my bag of trash curbside, I would most likely be fined and have to pay a bribe. Near my old apartment, a median in the road had been relegated to a trash pile. I felt less guilty about adding my trash bag to this consistent mountain of waste. I also felt that the rubbish pile gave the neighborhood vagrants a fun hobby of sifting through potato chip shrapnel and peelings for rare treasures (a discarded diamond earring? a gold tooth?). At my present home, my block is pristine and I am left to saunter out in cat burglar gear in the darkest predawn hours to dump my trash bag by the side of the road. By the time I return from work at the end of the day, the garbage is gone..either picked up by the men in the truck or kindly delivered to the truck by a good samaritan maid. It's not like I haven't tried to find a better solution to this problem. Once, I tried to bribe the doorman in the building next door to take it out for me. Either my Spanish was too bad or my offer wasn't sweet enough, because he promptly declined and gestured toward the street, giving me his blessing to leave the garbage on the curb.
This dilemma presents a stark contrast to my former experience living in Japan where trash was meticulously sorted and I was even given a rule book for what week I could throw out items like twine, batteries, or lone socks. Additionally, when I made mistakes such as trying to discard dryer lint in the same bag with an egg shell, my garbage was left in the parking lot with an admonishing note stapled to it. In fact, a friend just reminded me that in order to get rid of a suitcase, I hefted the thing to a busy Tokyo train station (only a one and half hour train ride away) parked myself in a phone booth where I pretended to make a call and then ran, leaving the suitcase behind. I am sure that Japanese authorities are still trying to find me to give it back.
Here in Mexico I resort to the same rogue behaviors for the opposite reasons. Here there are no real rules, just the ever present threat of the police. Do I hire domestic help just so I am not holding on to kleenex boxes, water bottles and plastic bags reasoning that they are too bulky to throw away sneakily? Or do I continue my secret dumping, guarding myself against the flashing lights of the passing patrol car and reproachful stares of the infrequent passerby?
In Mexico City, nearly every time I so much as lose a hair in the shower I start thinking What am I going to do with this? Will I need to add it to my trash? Please let it just go down the drain. You see, in Mexico City garbage is a major problem. There is a garbage truck who speeds through the neighborhoods daily, blowing a very inconspicuous little whistle to signal that it is your chance to run with your bags down many flights of stairs and meet the truck being commandeered by understandably grumpy men standing calf-deep in a mysterious roux of orange peels, diapers and god-knows-what else. The problem is that the garbage truck arrives during working hours-- one reason why everyone who can afford it has a maid who meets the truck daily and disposes of the household garbage. So I don't have a maid (yet) and I am left to deal with the garbage by myself. In the process I have turned into a stealth guerilla, a basurista, if you will. Here's why.
It is illegal to dump garbage anywhere...not that this stops anyone from transforming any flower pot, ditch or stray bucket in the road into a trash receptacle. However, if one of the plentiful and very corrupt patrolling policia was to see me leaving my bag of trash curbside, I would most likely be fined and have to pay a bribe. Near my old apartment, a median in the road had been relegated to a trash pile. I felt less guilty about adding my trash bag to this consistent mountain of waste. I also felt that the rubbish pile gave the neighborhood vagrants a fun hobby of sifting through potato chip shrapnel and peelings for rare treasures (a discarded diamond earring? a gold tooth?). At my present home, my block is pristine and I am left to saunter out in cat burglar gear in the darkest predawn hours to dump my trash bag by the side of the road. By the time I return from work at the end of the day, the garbage is gone..either picked up by the men in the truck or kindly delivered to the truck by a good samaritan maid. It's not like I haven't tried to find a better solution to this problem. Once, I tried to bribe the doorman in the building next door to take it out for me. Either my Spanish was too bad or my offer wasn't sweet enough, because he promptly declined and gestured toward the street, giving me his blessing to leave the garbage on the curb.
This dilemma presents a stark contrast to my former experience living in Japan where trash was meticulously sorted and I was even given a rule book for what week I could throw out items like twine, batteries, or lone socks. Additionally, when I made mistakes such as trying to discard dryer lint in the same bag with an egg shell, my garbage was left in the parking lot with an admonishing note stapled to it. In fact, a friend just reminded me that in order to get rid of a suitcase, I hefted the thing to a busy Tokyo train station (only a one and half hour train ride away) parked myself in a phone booth where I pretended to make a call and then ran, leaving the suitcase behind. I am sure that Japanese authorities are still trying to find me to give it back.
Here in Mexico I resort to the same rogue behaviors for the opposite reasons. Here there are no real rules, just the ever present threat of the police. Do I hire domestic help just so I am not holding on to kleenex boxes, water bottles and plastic bags reasoning that they are too bulky to throw away sneakily? Or do I continue my secret dumping, guarding myself against the flashing lights of the passing patrol car and reproachful stares of the infrequent passerby?
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
And on the eighth day, God created high speed internet
my new departmento and its charming view
After spending several days waiting at my apartment for an unreliable operation called Cablevision--which promised me a handsome cable TV and high speed internet package, promptly charged me and never delivered services--I have signed on to Telmex high speed internet. Because I did the whole transaction over the phone in Spanish, I got serveral key details about my account wrong,making the initialization process daunting. Despite these small linguistic hurdles, I am now connected to the beautiful world wide web and will be able to post more of my daily adventures and missteps from the land of calamity and quesadillas, El D.F.!
3 things I love about the Latin world and working in close proximity with the Spanish language:
*that there are countless landmarks of Virgin Mary's; therefore many street directions I receive go like this "Walk 50 meters and turn left/right at the virgin."
*that I am referred to as "Mees" (short for maestra), "The mees" or "my mees" by students, fellow teachers, custodial staff, taxi drivers, baristas and fruit delivery people.
*that the word phlegm is a cognate, making decongestant shopping easy.
3 things I dis-love about Mexico
*that the Superama grocery store near my house belches out a steady stream of margarine smelling exhaust from their transfatty resplendent bakery department.
*that the only reasonable clothing options for purchase are made out of mysterious fibers (regurgitated cat hair?) that rips the second it strains slightly against the contours of the human form.
*that my washcloth is filthy, I mean grey and filthy, after simply washing my face...and no, I don't work in a coal mine.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Mucus: The Universal Conversation Starter
When I was twelve, my mom and I lived in Swansea, Wales for a gloomy, windy six months. On our way back from one of our Saturday trips to Cardiff, my mom and I were approached by an old red nosed, white haired rather classic Welsh septagenarian. My mom had been fighting a fierce cough for what seemed like months and her affliction was not helped by the living conditions in our moldy, slug infested Edwardian flat or nor by the constant tromping through freezing rain storms. The gentleman opened the conversation with my mom, who was surely holding tightly to a gargantuan wad of kleenex, with a one-word conversation starter I will never forget, "Catarrh?"
I had never heard of this word, let alone opening a conversation with it. From the context clues, I divined that he meant "Are you drowning in your own mucus?" My mom held back her laughter, affirmed that she was suffering from the cattarh and the older gentleman proceeded to start on a tedious tale of how he bought two mismatched shoes for six pounds on the High Street and on and on.
Fastforward to present day: I live in Mexico City. Almost every week I have some new fungus or unexplained illness. Living in the most polluted city in the world has not been kind on my lungs or sinuses and I have been battling the kind of lungy cough that makes me long for a vacation in an iron lung.
One early morning this week on the way to work, my cough was particularly bad, but I was excited to have my daily Spanish conversation with my taxi driver. It seems that taxi drivers are the only humans in this country who put up with my unconjugated baby talk and seem genuinely interested when I say things like "There are lots of traffics today."
I hailed my rattle trap, green VW Beetle cab, got in, started fiercely coughing and fumbling for Kleenex and clutching my throat to sputter directions to the driver. Before I could mutter a word through my coughing and snorting, I heard the word "Catarro?" and was offered a Halls cough drop. Apparently this rare word for a snotty cold is not only a surprisingly easy cognate but a one-word conversation starter to be used world wide! Try it!
When I was twelve, my mom and I lived in Swansea, Wales for a gloomy, windy six months. On our way back from one of our Saturday trips to Cardiff, my mom and I were approached by an old red nosed, white haired rather classic Welsh septagenarian. My mom had been fighting a fierce cough for what seemed like months and her affliction was not helped by the living conditions in our moldy, slug infested Edwardian flat or nor by the constant tromping through freezing rain storms. The gentleman opened the conversation with my mom, who was surely holding tightly to a gargantuan wad of kleenex, with a one-word conversation starter I will never forget, "Catarrh?"
I had never heard of this word, let alone opening a conversation with it. From the context clues, I divined that he meant "Are you drowning in your own mucus?" My mom held back her laughter, affirmed that she was suffering from the cattarh and the older gentleman proceeded to start on a tedious tale of how he bought two mismatched shoes for six pounds on the High Street and on and on.
Fastforward to present day: I live in Mexico City. Almost every week I have some new fungus or unexplained illness. Living in the most polluted city in the world has not been kind on my lungs or sinuses and I have been battling the kind of lungy cough that makes me long for a vacation in an iron lung.
One early morning this week on the way to work, my cough was particularly bad, but I was excited to have my daily Spanish conversation with my taxi driver. It seems that taxi drivers are the only humans in this country who put up with my unconjugated baby talk and seem genuinely interested when I say things like "There are lots of traffics today."
I hailed my rattle trap, green VW Beetle cab, got in, started fiercely coughing and fumbling for Kleenex and clutching my throat to sputter directions to the driver. Before I could mutter a word through my coughing and snorting, I heard the word "Catarro?" and was offered a Halls cough drop. Apparently this rare word for a snotty cold is not only a surprisingly easy cognate but a one-word conversation starter to be used world wide! Try it!
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