Lost in Translation - Part 2

Life is colorful, but very frugal in the village of Ek Balam.  I was invited here recently by my closest peeps to go on a Christian mission to this Mayan village where she works as a missionary.  

I’m not Christian.  Rather, I consider myself “spiritual".  I don’t belong to any one church, but am open to all, and have attended many Catholic and Christian churches for long periods of time, and have even explored Buddhism.  I definitely believe in one God, my God, the one who dwells inside of me but I don’t believe you have to go to church to have a relationship with Him.  So when I learned that I would have to sign a waiver before going, I was feeling a bit uncomfortable, knowing that my chief duty was photographer and second duty translator and not knowing what I might encounter in between.  One of the agreements in the waiver was:

“I commit to be a witness of the love of Jesus to the people we meet all throughout the trip.  I will do what is asked of me, even if it is uncomfortable”.

I’m not a rules girl, and when I read another one of the rules “I will not go off on my own at anytime during the mission trip” I knew I wouldn’t be able to sign it!  I’m a wanderer and don’t follow rules.  I decided to toss out the waiver and just go with an open heart and a positive attitude and go with the flow.

I knew there was a possibility that I would have to translate prayers for the villagers from English into Spanish, which made me a little bit uncomfortable as I have never prayed in groups nor in Spanish before.  I also knew that this princess might have to get dirty and pound some nails (er pour concrete?) to finish the school cafeteria so that the children can have better nutrition. I ended up doing all of this and more, even giving a mini massage course to a Mayan lady.

To be honest, I was most excited about the delicious food that the Mayans would prepare for us ~ these Mayan ladies are real pioneers who literally keep the home fires constantly burning.  I connected a lot with these ladies as it was similar to how I grew up on the farm ~ they live off the land and they make everything from scratch - they boil the harvested corn cobs with “Cal”, a toxic white substance used in construction, to make it softer, then they wash it and set it out to dry and then grind it to make tortillas.  Most of the villagers do not eat meat because of the poverty and mostly eat tortillas, beans and rice as their main staples.  I must have ate about 12 tortillas a day, we just don’t get these in the city!  I also got to take home a few coconuts from the tree on their property.  They also prepared an amazing hot cocoa with cinnamon for cold nights after dinner, which I learned they also toast the cocoa beans, then grind them and mix them into a paste with cinnamon, flatten it into a tablet the size of your palm and then heat milk and dissolve the tablet into the milk.

Homemade cocoa and cinnamon tablets and
dried squash shell is used to keep tortillas warm on the table 

Pumpkin with honey baked and served in the hard shell of the pumpkin

What I ended up experiencing was nothing scary or uncomfortable at all ~ just ordinary people, who wanted to go to the Mayan’s straw huts and just simply “love them up”, ask about their lives, what struggles they are faced with daily ~ not having enough food or medicine to provide for their families, dealing with severe illnesses and handicapped children, then offer up a warm hug and a prayer for them, and it turned out to be a lot of fun just sharing the love!  One thing I learned is that a smile and a hug in any language, be it Mayan, Spanish or English, all means the same!

The highlight of my trip was this one house visit I did with a Christian couple to the home of a woman who had fallen 2 years ago and hurt her knee and has not been able to walk since.  She has gained weight as a result of this and lives in constant pain and spends most of her days in a hammock resting while her family harvests beans to feed her family.  It’s amazing how much body language can speak because as I was introducing us and asking her how she was feeling, I was sure that she was understanding me and responding in Spanish, but her son assured us she does not understand or speak Spanish, only Mayan, so he was translating for us, then I translated to the Christian couple in English.  We got a bit lost in translation when the son told me that his mom goes out walking with the “burro” out back.  Burro means donkey, so I was explaining to them that she goes walking with a donkey every day and they were wondering, where is the donkey, what’s his name?  He pointed to the backyard.  They thought this was a bit odd, but me living in Mexico for a long time, and knowing many people have donkeys as pets, didn’t think much of it, until we figured out that a “burro” can also mean a medical walker!  We had quite a chuckle about this over dinner, how they were so surprised that she goes walking with a donkey everyday, thinking how would this work, did the donkey hold her up, when it was obvious she could barely move from her hammock.  While we prayed for her, I grabbed her leg and started massaging it and giving her some Reiki healing and the Christian couple thought that it was so odd (they didn’t know I was a massage therapist), later at dinner they said it would never occur to them to just pick up someone’s foot and start massaging it!  I guess that’s one of the occupational hazards, when I know someone is hurting, I just wanna help them!

Then we noticed that she had a small tray under her hammock with ashes and they told us that in cold months such as these they make a little fire to keep her warm at night.  This takes on a new meaning for “hot buns”.  The Mayans never sleep in beds, since birth they have been accustomed to this, even sleeping with their husband or wife in the same hammock.  I find it a challenge to even share a bed with someone, let alone a hammock!

Making these colorful hammocks is actually easier than knitting!

How Mayans have fun in the village:
working in a team to get one person to the top of a greased pole to retrieve a flag for a prize

I think the Mayans are starting to grow on me, as much as I don’t do hammocks (only for naps on the beach after eating myself into a Mexicoma) and I love hot showers, I got more accomplished in 30 hours in this tiny village than I have accomplished at home in one week!

Plan B = Burrito Day

There are a lot of beautiful things about Mexico.  Being late isn't one of them.  Being stood up isn't one of them.  It's just a small sacrifice for living in paradise...

I was having a discussion with my neighbor the other day and he's been here long enough to know better but I suspect he hasn't completely adjusted or fully understood the complexity of the Mexican disappearing act.  We got talking about how they don't answer their phones or text messages and he says perplexed, "When you send a text that says 'Hey, how are you doing, how was your day?', there should be an answer, shouldn't there?!"  The little wrinkle above his brow was furrowing.  He continued on, "And if you make plans with them, you need a Plan B all the time, which is so low."

So I ask him, "Why do you continue to date Mexicans when the experience can be so devastatingly painful and leave you feeling rejected all the time?"

He replies, “Because I’m in Mexico....and....um, there are a lot of them?!”  Hmmm....good, logical answer, but that would not be my reason.  I date them because they are the most passionate, loving and incredibly attentive individuals on the planet ~ the Mexican culture is a passionate one - definitely. They love hard, fight hard, work hard.  

Then he continues on, "When I meet up with a Mexican, now I set up a Plan B at my favourite routine places, and the last time I had a date they didn't show up but it was Burrito Day so I didn't mind!" 

Then I realized, no one had told him about the end of love in the City of Broken Hearts, or rather the lack of even the start of love here...or as my good friend expressed how her relationship unfolded here in Mexico: "I didn't fall in love, I fell into depression...when I have more fun with a guy in a wheelchair, you know there's a problem!"  It's sad to say this but nowadays we live in a disposable world even talking about interpersonal relationships.

There are many things I will never understand about Mexicans...why they blare the A/C in taxis and buses when it's rainy season and cold, why there are no sidewalks, why it takes them a year to pave the street over and over outside my apartment, why they don't answer their phones, why they can never be on time, why there are only 3 electrical plug-ins in my whole apartment and why they are not in a well-designed place, why they allow construction to go until 11pm at night and sometimes will start jackhammering at 2:30am, why they have roosters in the city, why they don't use their turning signals while driving, why they don't have seatbelts in the cars, why they don't have toilet seats, and then I wonder, could it be possible that they too are in Mexicomas?