Grasping Strange Tongues
Veracruz, Mexico
The humidity condensed on my skin in droplets of sweat as I stepped out of the plane in Veracruz, Mexico, late on a Thursday night. I took a taxi to the bus station and, using my quick study of phrasebook Spanish, asked the girl at the ticket counter when the next bus to San Andreas Tuxtla was leaving. My friend Dan was teaching English in a small private school there and I was in transit. She pointed at the kiosk: 6 AM.
After changing dollars for pesos at a rough looking, dimly lit hotel reminiscent of the red light pay-by-the-hour varieties I have seen but never experienced, I mulled around in front of the station. Uselessly I tried sleeping, slouching half-lying positions resting on anything offering makeshift support: my pack, concrete planters, benches and the ground. Every time I nodded into cautious slumber, I was being tapped by a security guard to sit up, waving his finger at me like I was a child, back and forth like an upside down pendulum. If there was a “No Loitering” sign I couldn’t translate it anyway. I found myself wondering what could they really do anyway, with no firearms or stun guns, maybe a billyclub.
At 5 AM I again checked at the ticket counter to verify when the next bus was heading to San Andreas Tuxtla. I did not want to miss it. Even a bus seat sounded comfortable after seven hours on the sidewalk. She pointed to the bus on the curb loading people. I looked at her and asked again, “San Andreas Tuxtla?” the rising pitch at the end of “Tuxtla” gives away an almost desperation to get on it. She nods and looks past me to the next person in line. It turned out buses have been passing through all night. It wasn’t on the kiosk because it was not the stop, just a stop on the way to other places. Stepping on to the retro fitted orange school bus, now painted a drab olive green, I settled in for the ride, scrunching my knees against the back of the seat in front of me. I watched the sun come up over the fields framed through the bus window like a film of rolling landscape.
Without counting the two and a half weeks of walking through the jungle along black rubber pipes and 20,000 gallon portable fuel tanks in Okinawa for Reserve duty, this was my first trip outside the U.S. I was again waiting tables and started substitute teaching at the suggestion of my friend Dan and his father. I was post-university, recently widowed from a short term relationship and…looking. Not for anything specific. Just looking. I was in a slump.
When Dan suggested I meet him for a few weeks around Easter, my first reaction paralleled the excitement one experiences in the inevitable moment before their first real sexual experience. Unfortunately, the same disappointment also ensued, the moment of elevation deterred by a quick look at my bank account and the evidence glaring back at me – a lack of funding for even a short trip. I was substituting for a sixth grade class at Dan’s father’s school. Standing outside the classroom, Dan’s father came over and asked if I was going to see Dan in Mexico. I responded with a sad, matter-of-fact look explaining money for such a trip was not part of my present repertoire of financial obligations.
Like all great teachers, he could see something I had yet to realize. He explained this was a trip I needed to take. Later in the week he handed me a check and said to pay him back when possible. I needed to go. The next day I stopped by the travel agent and bought a ticket. I do not think he is aware of the impact he has made.
The bus rolled in to the San Andreas Tuxtla station at 8 AM. The bus station was set at the top of a hill. Walking out of the terminal, gravity immediately draws you toward the center of town. It should have been easy to find Dan’s place as it was almost straight down the same road, but with a lack of sleep afforded me outside the Veracruz bus station and completely unfamiliar surroundings, I was in a haze. I walked the streets asking everyone who passed me if they knew Dan. The fourth or fifth person I made eye contact with and mouthed the name of the local gringo teacher pointed me to the next corner as though they were all waiting until I was close enough that a finger pointing to the nearest house would be all the direction necessary. I looked and asked, “Señor Neely?” reaffirming we were both talking about the same thing. The man, finger still pointing, nodded, and then continued on his way. In a foreign place one asks an enormous amount of questions repeatedly.
I knocked at the door, “Dan? Dan?” as if I might still not have the right place. He opened the door grinning, “Hola! You made it.” I sensed doubt and surprise in his voice, as though I could have ended up somewhere other than here.
Everyone seemed to know him. I have never experienced such generosity from strangers. The same night I arrived, one of Dan’s friends, Fabiola, invited us to dinner. We sat on the balcony eating tostadas and talking, easy conversation, the type that makes one comfortable, like sitting in the sun in a plastic lounge chair relaxing.
Fabiola lived with her mother, father and brother. Her son slept in her room. Three generations under a single roof seems unnatural coming from the US, where most people struggle to make it out at eighteen, either to college or on their own. This place, in its simplicity, is practical. One realizes what is important is family and maintaining the relationships that make life interesting and pleasing, even in the most commonplace situations. Hospitality is better than the finest hotel. It is genuine here.
As we walked back to Dan’s place, a parade was making its way through the streets. Small floats pulled by men were carrying children wearing orange-gold dresses and flowers, throwing candy to the onlookers. It seemed the entire town was watching, part of a community in which people were expected to and felt the weight of the responsibility of being a member. Dan said they had had many of these since he arrived here a few months ago. I held my camera at arms length above my head and pointed it into the parade taking a candid photo of what was in front of the lens, not knowing what the picture was actually of until I had the film developed.
The next day, Dan and I made our way to a waterfall a short taxi ride away. The rumor is The Medicine Man was filmed there, but I have never watched the movie and could not make the comparison. We stood on a plateau overlooking the pool into which the waterfall tumbles, foaming white into the air. Along the bank, white plastic tables and chairs were scattered around and a concession stand at the base of the trail encroached into the path of those who were coming and going. Hiking down the short trail carved into the canyon side as we made our way to the river.
We walked across the rocks and small boulders like giants, and felt the splash and mist of water across our faces. Walking up a trail to the side of the falls, we emerged into a field cut from the jungle. The jungle seemed distant, like looking backwards through binoculars. Primitive irrigation took the form of rubber hoses placed in the river, draining water off to the long, wide tobacco field. San Andreas Tuxtla is known as the cigar capital of the region. While I can appreciate a good cigar, watching smoke rings puffed out of my mouth then rising slowly through the air, it leaves me wanting to know what the area would look like in its natural state. In the same way I try to picture the Colorado River and Salt River basins in my home state of Arizona, if they had never been dammed and allowed to take their natural progression through rock, dirt and sand. Because I have never seen those areas in their natural state, little comes to mind.
The next day we were leaving San Andreas Tuxtla, heading to Chiapas in southern Mexico, as well as Guatemala and Belize in the three weeks Dan has off from work. There were no definitive plans, leaving the schedule open to whatever seemed right at the time, but first Dan had to teach his last class before the break. While he was working, I wandered the streets and settled in to a café on the bottom floor of a hotel just off the main plaza. Set on a corner, offering a view down streets and across the plaza, the café conjures a tourist’s memory of what old Mexico may have resembled. With overpriced coffee, it is a place I would not consider going to in the States. I am wary of any establishment in which a member of the staff wears a tuxedo. However, I liked being next to the street so if something were to happen I would be part of it or could run quickly away.
As I was sipping my coffee, a man came up and sat at my table. He wore pressed slacks, a tweed jacket and a fedora, looking the way men were portrayed in movies of the 1930s and 1940s. He elicited images of a professor, with cerebral looking glasses placed halfway on the bridge of his nose, where he could as easily look over the frames. He asked if I spoke Spanish and ignored the response I gave in Spanish of “very little.” We spent an hour and a half talking back and forth in basic broken Spanish and English. He moved to the seat next to me and turned my journal toward him. Flipping to a blank page and he drew maps I would soon recognize as Mexico, Italy and the Pacific Ocean. He would rip out a page, re-draw the maps with arrows pointing almost every direction, and in Spanish tell me a story I thought I was starting to understand and would quickly realize I had no clue.
It was not until he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, a huge leather beast of a bi-fold, and turned to a picture placing it in front of me that I finally understood. The photograph was of Andre, an Italian I met the day before at Fabiola’s house, who lived in town but a few times a year went back to Italy to keep his visa valid. He left earlier that day for Italy and in this man’s eyes I could see the shimmer of water that can easily turn into a tear. Andre was his friend and he missed him. We shook hands, smiling at each other, a sense of satisfaction from a shared experience, an understanding words could only attempt to explain.
After writing a few notes about what happened, I walked across the street and met Dan outside the building his school was housed in. We headed up to a balcony of a cantina overlooking the Parque Central, had a few beers and watched the people at the park. Vendors were selling snacks and drinks, people walked in counter-clockwise circles, talking and laughing – the Latin version of hanging out. I told Dan about my encounter and participating in a lengthy conversation in which my inadequate Spanish left me with only yes, no and very little. He laughed, perhaps remembering this was his situation a short time ago.
