Crossing the Bridge

There are many bridges in Mexico. They are loved by all, fully taken advantage of, and extremely useful. These bridges also require no engineers (of which there seem to be an unhealthy glut in these parts). This weekend was one such bridge, or ‘puente’ to use its correct name. The regular weekend rolls into a bank holiday Monday like terra firma onto a suspension bridge, thus giving a long weekend open to an extra day of lazing, travelling, eating, gardening or housework. We chose the travelling option, and bussed it across the teensy-tiny distance to the next state along, Tabasco to get saucy (harhar) in Villahermosa, bridging the gap between ourselves and Alex, assistant extraordinaire over in his very own ‘green hell’ (lush vegetation, scorching heat). Alas, time was not something we had in bountiful supply (24-hours bus to bus), but there was an abundance of all manner of other virtues: conviviality, what with the trilingual conversations with Alex’s French housemates and Mexican friends; generosity, as our ‘guide’ took us an hour out of town to visit a chocolate hacienda and didn’t ask for a penny; and innocence, as we whiled away a gleeful half hour on a bicycle caddy thingamabob in the park, winning races against a group of children, only be told to ‘be quiet old woman’ when I gloated about the fact in good humour. Not so virtuous was the chocolate hacienda, where we learnt about the laborious chocolate-making process, from bean to bar, when all we really wanted to know was buy some of the sugary stuff. I wasn’t so childish and gleeful when confronted with the central park’s resident crocodiles, wandering around the waterside nonplussed. I would like to suggest an addendum to the song I learnt at primary school: never smile at OR use flash photography on a crocodile.

Scaramouche, Scaramouche

If Queen had asked me this question (will you do the fandango?) I would have said ‘gladly – but you’ll have to teach me the steps first’. And thus my first ever fandango was a seated affair for me – a lot of watching and learning.

Fandango: a fiesta involving dancing, jaranas (small Mexican guitars) and the early hours of the morning. The steps to the fandango dance revolve around the rhythm ‘café con pan’, one step, one step, two steps. But all this at a rate faster than light and in a whirl of colour, skirts, heels and percussion instruments. It’s what simpler people would most likely call ‘Mexican tap dancing’. As much as I was shuffling around in my seat and resisting the cry of my itchy, tappet feet, I couldn’t bring myself to get up and dance. You see, you have to get up on the stage, in the middle of a sea of musicians and other dancers and wait your turn to tap away. When it comes to your turn you get up on the stage, usually in mixed-sex pairs, and gently push the previous pair off. Small children, old women, beautiful young girls and pert-buttocked young men all joined in, as I watched on, increasingly eager to learn how to dance the dance and pluck the strings. The sound of the jarana has an incredible ability to fill the box, create a wall of sound which falls more abruptly than the iron curtain when it stops, and the music and the dancing together create a heady atmosphere of rhythmic psychedelia. Drinking and smoking was banned, as it was a family event, a celebration of Veracruz traditional revelries. I’ll leave it to you to ponder what’s next of my list of things to do before the next time a 70s rock group ask me a loaded question.

For Fawkes' Sake

After experiencing a celebrated Mexican traditional festival, it seemed only fair that we introduced our hosts to something truly British. The 5^th November provided us with this opportunity, as Guy Fawkes Night came around, with more of a crackle than a bang. This was Guy’s baby – quite literally, as he carried around his Guy all day as if it was his own flesh and blood. We had spent part of the night before surreally stuffing discarded children’s clothes with old banana leaves, and blowing up balloon heads, until we had two ‘Guys’ vaguely resembling Matt Lucas. The kids lapped up Guy’s presentation, to them the idea of November being cold enough to warm your bum cheeks over a blazing bonfire and eat jacket potatoes stuffed with baked beans (strange British cuisine) being utterly foreign and intriguing. We then started off what I feel is going to be an annual Escuela Secundaria Tecnica #116 tradition, by ritually burning our Guy in a small bonfire, which our students made up in the yard – what some of them lack in natural linguistic flair they more than make up for in more practical aspects, something which I will forever be lacking in. The Mexican calendar does allow for a similar tradition, on the 31^st December they burn ‘un viejo’ (an old man) symbolising the old year, thus they burn away the bad of the past 12 months in order for the new, successful year to rise, like a 365-winged phoenix, out of the ashes.

We didn’t have fireworks, and we sweated by the heat of the fire in the afternoon sun, but we nonetheless gave old Guy Fawkes the burning he deserved.

Día de Muertos

Day of the Dead. Or rather 2 days of the dead. Actually, it was five workless days in honour of day of the dead. And after a couple of them I felt like I was the living dead. There’s some Mexican traditions which really need explaining, and others which also really need to be seen to be understood. I believe this is one of them.

In true ‘intercambio’ (exchange) style, this weekend it was Guanajuato-based Sarah’s turn to come to Veracruz, after my visit the previous weekend. The ‘puente’ (bank holiday) allowed for more wiggle room concerning travel times and extended weekend getaways. A true baptism of fire awaited her when she arrived, physically and emotionally exhausted after a 2-day journey, thrown straight into a party on a ranch. It was in actual fact a sixth-form reunion, 12 years after leaving school, but even so, the three Brits who arrived with their dodgy dancing and wobbly accents to encroach on their drunken nostalgia trip were embraced with arms as open as a Mexican heart. A sleep and a groaning plate of chilaquiles later, we were headed in the pick-up to the beach. Cue likening to road-trip and general ‘driving to a destination’ banter and musical interludes. Then lots of splashing, ridiculous amounts of photo-taking (not on my camera for once) and grilled fish after sunset. I am also pleased to announce that, for the first time in my life I weed in the sea. Three times. I was like a nun who, void of her chastity after years of celibacy, just can’t get enough of the waves of pleasure she now finds herself permitted to. But these were warm (then slightly warmer) waves of water.

The next day was a mix of soft, cushiony, womanly domesticity, and grimy masculinity. I learnt how to wrap tamales, another indispensable skill for a Mexican woman of the house, and how to make papaya sweets, and with corn mix still squished under my fingernails I hopped on to the back of a quadbike to take a spin round Cosolea, through dirt, over potholes and almost to a point of no return when no one could figure out how to get the thing started again. It definitely wasn’t a good idea to wear a white shirt for this activity.

Over the course of the 2 days, the 1^st and the 2^nd November, we visited three cemeteries to get an idea of how different communities here celebrate the day(s). On the 1^st (officially All Saints Day), the people of Zaragoza and Oteapan (which used to be one community not so long ago) hold vigil all night in their candlelit cemeteries. Far from being a sombre, teary eery sight, it was at the same time magical and lively. I wish I could repeat the experience of walking into the cemetery, hundreds of people jostling around me on the narrow pathway leading up to the graves, salsa and reggaeton coming from different directions, with rolling mounds of tombs and earth dipped in candlelight slapping my sight for its ignorance of its existence hitherto. I was snapped out of my mesmerisation by the cries of ‘teacher’ from all of our students who were present at some grave or another. Oteapan’s cemetery was more imposing as it rises up from the entrance, but as less familiar territory, and therefore even less familiar dead people, we spent less time. I also realised there was no way I could ever get back the sensation I had when I saw Zaragoza’s display of mourning by darkness. Cosolea’s cemetery came alive on the 2^nd, under the scorching November sun (there’s two words I never thought I’d write together), so we only stayed long enough to see the flowers, sit in the shade by the (deceased) man of the family and other relatives, and have a cooling drink...sat on a gravestone...shedding peanut shells over the ‘rest in peace’ engraving. I was, however, granted permission to call them ‘my’ muertos.

The other side of the celebration of the dead is the altar. A multicolour splash of three-tiered paper decorations, food offerings and items related to the dead loved one being offered, we had one at school and one at home. There is a set way to construct an altar, revolving around papel picada (cut--out tissue paper with skeleton designs), calaveras (marzipan skulls) and flowers. The flowers are reputed to smell of the dead, and are only ever brought out at this time of year. I couldn’t help but tell everyone about the time my Dad, the old romantic, proudly gave my Mum a bunch of these flowers as an unprompted display of his love for her. It’s amazing he’s still around to bear the shame. Helping build the huge altar in the school was an all-hands on deck experience, with all the kids taking it seriously and helping out, they knew exactly what they were doing and had all brought offerings of food and drink -- traditionally the deceased person’s favourite snack of tipple -- to adorn it.

The relationship with death here is, in my opinion, healthy, happy and a hell ufa lotta fun. It’s not trivialised, it’s brought to the fore, and celebrated as life is. It is made more poignant when there has been a recent death in the family, but the medley of colours, light, morbidity and joyfulness makes it a celebration which I think warranted five days off work.

P.s. Beach photos copyright Sarah

Coach Trip: as colourful as Brendan's, channel 4's new offering

Many roads lead to Guanajuato: the prospect of the most beautiful colonial town in all of Mexico, the presence of Sarah (company and hospitality all in one delightful package) and what I thought was the country’s biggest beer festival. Most of these turned out to be accurate preconceptions.

The city was a painter’s palette of warm and vibrant hues which played with glee in the sunlight, running from cobbled passages to airy squares. Spilling down the surrounding hills, the town’s colours are evidence of Mexico’s status as a nation of colours. The Spanish-style buildings are a world away from the concrete cubes of Cosoleacaque and Minatitlan. I shocked myself by staring with amusement at all the ‘gueros’ ambling past me. I realised it had been weeks since I had physically seen a blonde, blue-eyed European/North American in the flesh. I suddenly found myself snarling at them with disdain, as if they were trespassing on my Mexican territory. The idea of transposing yourself into a country without compromising any of your rigid cultural ideas, without fully immersing yourself into the grinding routine of a place, now seems to me amateurish and misguided. I hated to think that I also looked like a tourist. I suppose however long I stay here I always will be. But I hope that by working like a demon on my Spanish and adapting my socks off, I can play down by ‘extranjero’ status.

Sarah oozed company and hospitality. She showed me her ‘locals’, her favourite hangouts and showed me ruddy bloody good time. As a past tenant of the city she knew it like a sister, but we still managed to make some memories, in the restaurants and bars, and on the salsa dance floor. We were joined in our shimmying by Anna, Alannah and Christine: ‘El Bar’ (original name) played host a spectacular display of British Council gyrating, booty-shaking and general attempts at moving with the rhythm.

The only disappointment was in myself. I had led myself to believe that ‘Cervantino’ was a massive beerfest. My pea-sized, lager-lout, uneducated brain, failed to make the obvious connection between the festival name and the highly-regarded Spanish writer, Cervantes. If I had, I would have realised that asking where the giant beer ten was ten times a day would never reap any further response than ‘what giant beer tent?’ I also would have prepared myself for the intimidating amounts of culture I found myself confronted with. Plays, improvisation, dance shows, comedians, circus acts, musical performances lay in wait on almost every inch of the city, it was impossible to avoid. Even when we sat in a chillaxalicious square for a quiet beer. We were treated to a nine-peice mariachi show, and a punk-goth street performance of a story of ‘two absolutely insane lovers’. It didn’t end happily. I still got my beer, but I also felt a little more educated for having visited Guanajuato when I did.

30-hours on a coach well-spent.

I hablo mexicano

A change has come. Anglo-French Claire, the same Claire that arrived in Mexico with an unhealthy amount of trepidation and borderline fear of the Spanish language, has been replaced by a Claire who is confident with trills, subjunctive conjugations and, more importantly, Mexican vulgarities.

Having spent two months in France, I was rightly worried about being able to communicate once I got here, especially when I was thrust into the monolingual bosom of Cosoleacaque and the Zuñiga family. Although able to string together sentences, my neck and ears began to feel the strain of trying to follow rapid conversations, like a fast-forward, foreign tennis match, but now it’s roughly 30-love to me. I even find myself having quite dense discussions about life and love and philosophy. I dread to think about how many mistakes I make in every stuttery, Anglicism-speckled sentence, but I seem to be understood, and for basic conversation I’m rarely at a loss. I still have a long way to go: thinking about it now, I couldn’t give you the word for pavement, or flannel, but at least I know how to say ‘you’ve got big testicles’ (you’re a lazy bum). The most difficult arena for airing my Spanish seems to be in the classroom, when giving instructions to the kids, or chastising them. My stern warnings have slightly less gravity when I stumble over words, or have to ask the culprit how to go about telling them off in Spanish.

The one worry gnawing at me is that as a consequence my French is being pushed further back into my cerebral linguistic recesses ( ‘linguistic recesses’ rings slightly naughty...I’m sure I could make it into a euphemism for something). Skype and phone conversations to French friends and family go some way to helping alleviate the language loss, but I’m having to work to keep all three balls in the air: English, French and Spanish, so that by this time next year I can easily switch between all three and have almost equal mastery.

I’ll leave you with this thought: in Mexican Spanish, all of these words mean the same thing: la Tortuga, la cucaracha, la rana, la cuca, la conhca, and are used with unfathomable regularity; have a guess.

Matt the Chat touches down in Cosolea Town

This weekend we Cosoleacaqueños were treated to a spontaneous visit by Matt the Chat, who usually resides in Fortín de las Flores. This visit lasted all of 40hrs, but we managed to give him a pretty good idea of what our end of Veracruz state has to offer, including drinking beer hanging off the back of a pick-up truck, swinging in lazy chairs on the terrace on a Sunday, and the beautiful oil refinery of Minatitlan. Now we need to get ourselves up north and see what life on the other side is like. Considering that he is 4-5 hours away by bus, this is nothing for Mexico, but in British terms saying they were the same place would be like equating Surrey to Liverpool. It was lovely having you Matt; and look, you get your very own blog post!