May 14, 2008

I’m taking the day off from work today to buy new pants. I have discovered that even though Mexico is the second most obese country in the world there is nowhere for all the fat people to buy clothes. Even I don’t fit into the sizes at all the normal stores. So on Wednesdays there is a little market that is only open from 10-2 or something like that (stores here don’t have actual set hours) and I am in desperate need of new work clothes. So, Sara my host mum is going to take me there shortly.

This weekend I decided to stay in Guzmán and just chill out. I slept in on Saturday then spent a couple painful hours doing my laundry by hand. It was Mother’s Day here on Saturday. It is probably one of the biggest holidays in Mexico. On Friday night all the kids pile into cars and go around to all their houses serenading their mums at their windows. All the flower shops were still open at 2am when I went home. We found out that you could hire a mariachi band for 1000 pesos for 9 songs or 1500 for an hour. It was pretty crazy. There wasn’t much to do on Saturday because most places were closed aside from restaurants and gift shops. I went on a big long walk around town in search of an open internet café and finally found one far far away. It was so hot out that afternoon I took fair advantage of the Mexican tradition of the siesta. I find myself doing that most afternoons. My body still hasn’t adjusted to the heat here. On Sunday Gemma, Alex, Mieke and I went for a picnic at Las Peñas (a famous rock formation in the ecological park that looks like two faces). It was really lovely minus the part where the boys from the centre came by on a field trip of sorts and saw us dinking beer. They have been giving me a hard time about that ever since. I felt pretty bad that they saw me drinking seeing as they are all recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.

That evening there was a parade in the town center with fire works, dancers, floats and even a marching band! It was quite the affair. Every Sunday there is a bit of a carnival in the town center to get everyone out having a good time. It’s so cool. Saskatoon totally needs to look into this idea. There are rides and stuff for the kids and all sorts of vendors set up. They have a stage too with bands playing all night. One group that night was absolutely horrendous. They totally shattered my belief that all Mexicans have rhythm. This was probably the worst band I have ever seen and there were soooo many Mexicans in the crowd just loving it; I mean like hundreds of people dancing and cheering… it blew my mind.

Monday I was back to work if you can call playing football/soccer all day and watching movies ‘work’. Yesterday was Uriel’s birthday and I found out that he is only 16. This kid is at least 6’2”, has the ability to grow a full beard and is so strong. I thought he was for sure 18. I’ve discovered that I totally suck at guessing the ages of Mexican kids. Little Cristian who I thought was about 7 is actually 12. Luis who I thought was 10 is really 13. These boys are way smaller than Canadian kids would be at their age.

I made my most hilarious Spanish language mistake on Monday. The boys were asking me about the scar on my leg from the surgery I had to remove the extra bone or whatever it was. Anyway, I confused the word ‘huevo’ which literally means egg but in Mexican slang it also means testicle, and the word ‘hueso’ which means bone. So I told the boys that I had an extra testicle in my leg that the doctors had to remove. I caught my mistake right away and corrected myself but the boys got a quite kick out of it.

For Uriel’s birthday yesterday his sister came to visit him and I saw him sincerely happy for the first time since I started working there. He loves to sing and was singing and smiling all day long. It was really great to see. I guess in Mexico there is a tradition that when it is your birthday you have to take the first bite of the cake without using your hands and as you bend down to take a bite you inevitably get your face smashed into the cake. I was wishing I had my camera with me; it was so funny. We all ate cake and Uriel got a few presents and got to talk to some relatives by phone. It was a really great day considering it was Tuesday the 13th which is the Mexican equivalent to Friday the 13th. My roommate Gemma from England did not have such a good day. She works at the public hospital in town and witnessed the death of two babies and a mother that day. One baby was stillborn but the mother was okay. The other woman was in labour for 24 hours before she haemorrhaged and bled out. The hospital only had one litre of blood they could give her and she had lost about three. Gemma told me that the doctors told her it was totally normal for women to die in childbirth and for the babies to not make it either. One of the medical students told her while holding the dead baby that she’ll get used to it. It was a really hard day for Gemma; she never wants to hold a dead baby and think it’s okay.

Apparently the pre-op room doubles as the ICU at this hospital. So, the same room where people are waiting to have surgery is where the dead baby was left on a table totally uncovered for over an hour and where the nearly dead mother was put to die. I have heard so many horrible stories about Mexican healthcare I am being really careful to not get hurt in anyway.