Mozzies, Hairchops and Originalidad...
Trip Start
Feb 15, 2005
1
7
14
Trip End
Apr 02, 2006
Merida, Venezuela
Monday, May 9, 2005
I HATE MOSQUITOS.
I suppose it serves me right though. As before I left the states, my naturopathic doctor advised me NOT to eat bananas if I want to keep the mozzies away. And well, Ive been averaging about 3 bananas a day! I cant help it! They have about 10 types to choose from and they all have a distinct taste and there are Fruterias on every corner! I swear the all the bananas in Merida know me by name... or perhaps know me by sight - as I am the only blondy frosted curly-haired Gringa wearing Prana pants and Reef sandals around town. Okay, so maybe I should cut down the luscious yellow fruit a little bit. Mangos and Guayavas - watch out!
Yesterday was el Dia de las Madres... so Happy Mothers Day to all you amazing and beautiful moms out there... Ann Gotfredson, Caroline Tawake, Carrie Herren, Cassandra Wang, Chantelle Cave, Dana Sulenski, Elizabeth Grimm, Kim Gaffrey, Jane Carlson, Janette Grimm, Jen Lakin, Jill Cadieux, Julia Kotlyar-Hughes (first Mothers day!), Kathleen Sullivan, Laurie Nelson, Leigh Sherman, Marcie Madueño, Marilyn Colby, Marilyn Souchek (yep you count!), Patsy Crayton, Rosemary Cave, Samantha Rigley (yay!), Giulia Grimm, Tori Foley (first Mothers day!), Terry Sundeen, Prudy Wood, and of course my mama, my mamas mama, my nana, my Grammie and all you soon-to-be mamas or moms that don't know you are mommies! Hee. Hope you day was FILLED with love and that amazing feeling of honor and beauty that all of you so deserve! YOU ARE what keeps the energy in this world flowing. Like our precious Mother Earth, each of you embrace life on this planet and form the foundation from which we can walk with strength and nurture and love. A toast to you with a glass of Sangria!
Ahhh yes, Sangria. My new favorite drink. It scores as an incredibly close second to Vino de Mora... However, its got plenty more added sugar which gives that lovely "oh-crap-I-think-my-head-is-going-to-explode" effect right before going to bed. No, in all honesty, I haven't been going out much at all. Last Friday was my only night out this month and it turned out to be quite challenging in itself. It is somewhat difficult to understand any conversation while in a bar full of people that speak a different language, music blaring, glasses clinking, feet stomping, movement and sound EVERYWHERE!!! Whoah, get me out of this chaos please! Even though I was with a group of five friends, they were all cracking their own jokes and then trying to include me after they finished laughing... I found that I introverted and looked for distraction (be it going to the bathroom, acting like I was enthralled with something in the corner of the bar,... anything!) in attempt to liberate myself from this immediate madness inside my brain. In due time I suppose I will be able to take in more and more stimulation in the same moment. As for now, I enjoy quietude.
This last month in Merida has been mostly dedicated to my studies... its quite strange, I have unknowingly created a student life here for myself. I lay down laws as to how much I am going to study each day and what material I want to cover. I even cancel out events or activities in order to adhere to my schedule. Most people (in particular those who never want to see hear the word "homework" again) would consider me a stupid lunatic for willingly submitting myself to hours of studying, memorizing and reading when I could be mountain biking, rock climbing or canyoning! However, its kinda hard to do these things when the person with whom you are mountain biking is telling you that there is a big sheep in the middle of the trail and you cant understand him because you don't speak Spanish! SHMACK! So, by default, my number one goal here is: To Learn Spanish!
And always such a fun little challenge this goal proves to be... Especially when I am sitting on the porch of a farmhouse in the outskirts of Merida with a family of 10 at dusk. Everyone (except for me) has been drinking alcohol since 11am and all seem to want to speak to me all at the same time! I can hardly understand the drunk slurred English let alone a 70 year old dude with 4 teeth that smells like a barrel of whiskey trying to tell me jokes in Spanish one inch away from my ear... or when I take David to see Robot at the movie theater and can understand the film only because the cartoons are self explanatory and the music is in English... or when I go to get my $2 haircut and I try to explain to the woman how I want it ... "Si, por favor, mas corto aqui... y dejalo mas largo aquí... y mira a esta foto!" I show her a picture of my hair when I first arrived to Merida. However, the picture is taken when my hair was dry and she tries to simulate the cut as my hair is wet and any curly haired girl knows that when dry, the curls get twice as short. But who can blame her? I asked for my hair to be cut like it was in the picture... "Parece como antes, no?" she says. (looks like before, doesnt it?) Um sure. She charges me $2 and what more can I say? Well worth it, cuz she left about $2 worth of hair on my head! But not to worry... I laughed my way down the street and into the house only to encounter a stunned and quite sympathetic face of mi mama. "Lo crecera" she says. "It will grow back."
Each day continues to be full of fun new surprises... and sometimes its nothing grandiose or extravagant. Most of the time, really, its those little experiences and encounters that make reflection so entertaining.... Like when Im doing my "homework" while listening to Spanish MTV then out of the blue, some old school random English song from the 80s comes on and I end up unconsciously tapping my pencil, bobbing my head and singing EVERY word to Footloose or Kylie Minogues Loco Motion...
"Okay, so I use the subjunctive form here... Espero que tengas un buen --- C-mon, baby do the loco motion with me! You gotta swing your hips now! C-mon baby!"
Um. Tiff, are you going crazy? Ha. Yes, the little experiences... or how bout when I go to the big amusement pool park with five little 8-year old boys and spend the whole day tossing them up in the air, playing chicken and then racing go carts with them after. And they get so excited to be able to practice their newly learned English with the Gringa de Los Estados Unidos. "Hime Sooo-rry." "Gooot Moorneeen" "Bai, Bai, Teeefany!" Too cute.
While there are the little experiences that continuously surprise me, there are also those to which I have grown accustomed. I realized this when my the parents of my friend, Louisa, came to visit Merida. Coming from Scotland, they were shocked by many things, often daily occurrences or customs of the people in the city... things that I no longer noticed... things that I realized have actually become a part of my own reality and not just the reality of some foreign culture. I have gotten used to the town - the 10,000 zapaterrias (shoe fixer upper stores)... the 2 foot wide sidewalks and the people who don't move in order to let you pass... the cars from 1930 that have been revamped 400 times and literally have clocked in 250,000 miles -(that's a lot of drivin in a town that's 5 miles long!)... the unemployed dudes that sit on the park benches and bitterly mumble about the government and the church...the graffiti on every bare wall... $2 manicures and $1 movies... waiting 3 hours to exchange money only to find out the jefe that will do it for you is gone until Friday...walking down the sidewalk and frequently encountering the abrupt intrusion of urine molecules filling my ever-so-sensitive mountain air nostrils... the fact that I cant walk down by the river or through narrow pathways at night nor can I cross the street slowly at anytime without being ptacked by a rickety old aqua blue taxi with 3 wheels. I have gotten used to the bugs (okay maybe not the mozzies just yet)... but the spiders on my nightstand, ants in my bathroom, little black biting bugs on the trails. Hell, Ive even made the best of friends with the little cockroaches that crawl under my bed in order to play with the little mouse that makes his way from behind the stove in the kitchen all the way into my room. I have gotten used to boiling my water before I drink it... washing my dishes AND drying them by hand... using as little water, gas and electricity as possible (or rather, using ONLY what I NEED and no more), which in most cases seems to amount to very little. For, with every occurrence that has taken place in the last 3 months, I have come to the realization that in this precious life, I DON'T NEED MUCH.
As a society, we are always seeking more of this, more of that... when in my opinion, the only thing we all really want is LOVE, simple love. Martin Prechtel, author of an amazingly beautiful book called Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, wrote, "Permanent multiple copies of any unique thing weakens the soul of the original instead of strengthening it. This insults the Gods."
In our desperate attempt to have more more more in our overly-consumptive state, we lose our sense of Originality... be it food, houses, roads, technology... in our selfish and egotistical search for power and fortune, we lose the meaning behind creativity and passion. We build apartments and condos, millions of them, that all have the same lovely box shape and mundane exterior. We have lost the days of using the long hot midday hours to create our own bricks made of red dirt, of tying together bamboo to make a roof. We trade out the long genuinely heartfelt hours of carving our own front doors with symbolic designs for a slab of plastic with hinges. We trade out constructing our own furniture made of our favorite smelling wood for a sheet of plywood and six boring chairs to match. We have franchise upon franchise of stores selling the same crap, different brand. None better than the other. Ralphs, Vons, Albertsons, Rite Aid, Longs, Kmart, WalMart, Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Seattles Best, McDonalds, Carls Jr, Jack in the Box, Burger King, Wendys... supersize, double double... need 2 packets of Ketchup? Here, have 8. Need 2 napkins? Here have 10. More! More! More!
We trade out small historical family businesses for big machinery and fast production. We exchange genuine, soulful, wholesome nutrient-dense food for chemically induced, genetically modified, toxic rapid production and cheap consumption. And as a result, we exchange a healthy body, mind and spirit for a chaotic, high-speed, programmed robot. Where has originality gone? We are lost on our own vortex of duplication and consumption. We are all striving to be like some previously determined figure of somebody elses imagination. Character and style are replaced by "image" and "expectation". Lost are tradition, history, simplicity and the expansive room for creativity.
We give up moments to talk with our children, our parents, and our grandparents in order to surf the internet or work overtime for more money. We give up the enjoyment of taking a nature hike, watching the sunset, admiring a sky full of stars, in order to watch a television program that takes us away from the reality of our own lives.
Originality. Where did it go? Dear God, please allow us to close our eyes and let the feeling of freedom take flight. Let the voice inside our own hearts create an original journey through the unknown. Why do we have to know EVERYTHING? What happened to the excitement in mystery and uncertainty? Why is it NOT okay to have fear, and to show that we are scared? What if we don't know when? Where? How? If? Why? Why must we pretend in order to accept ourselves? Where have we gone and where are we going? Our uniqueness is our fuel behind our freedom. And with every duplication, with every attempt to be like our neighbor, with every strive to have more and more... we weaken our ability to walk, talk, ,dance, laugh and play to the sound of our own music, the soul of our originality...
Friends, I do not write in order to preach so please excuse me if this travelogue reaches you in that manner. I only write because I am inspired to do so. For, each day brings a new outlook to my heart and from this river of freshness and beauty, these words flow. So thank you for listening, or reading, rather... or perhaps you got tired of the poetic fluff and haven't reached this point at all. Either way, its all good. Like my friend, Eric recently said in an email, "Well, I originally hadn't planned on writing so much, just a little
note to let you know what was going on, but as I typed and typed I found that I
felt better and better. Kind of therapeutic." Ditto.
So I suppose I should rethink my original motivation for this travelogue... for, it is now 7am in the morning and this could be one of my most fluid travelogues yet. In retrospect, perhaps I may have to eat my own words and dedicate this travelogue, in full honor.....to that little damn Mosquito.
Bendiciones para siempre,
Tiffany
