January Newsletter - Katie in Mexico

07-08 Mexico - Sarah, Jenn and Katie at the hostel
Originally uploaded by YAGM

“Living simply” or simply living it up?
Cuernavaca, Mexico Newsletter
January 2008
By Katie

‘Tis the season of vacations and visitors. With a different trip or excursion on the calendar almost every two weeks over the course of the next two months, the idea of “living simply” is starting to blur.

The majority of my time in Mexico has been, and will be, defined as “living simply” which is our call to live on a meager stipend and try to understand the hardships of our communities struggling to survive on a daily basis. I was already born into a wonderful life by virtue of being a white, American with access to education, health care, equality, freedom, and job opportunities. That is a painful, daily realization when I walk into La Estación and have the ability to walk out of it. I realize it every time I see my students with toothless grins because at the age of five their teeth have rotted and fallen out. I realize it every time my students ask me for more and more and more food when we serve lunch at Casa Tatic and I always wonder if they ever get anything else to eat during the day.

For me, this notion of “living simply” is a call to try to make the most of what I have already. It means wearing the same week’s worth of shirts over and over again, pretending that my one black shirt and the only pair of non-saggy jeans might pass as a “going out” ensemble, or breaking out Marce’s sewing machine to make my own clothes when wardrobe boredom hits. It means buying the cheapest thing on the menu when meeting up with friends downtown (which is already a luxurious opportunity that many of my work communities cannot enjoy). It means walking to and from work as my daily, affordable exercise instead of using the precious $4.50 pesos (about 45 cents) for a bus ride (let’s not even dream of a gym membership). It means coming home and spending most of my free time with Marce instead of going out with friends like I would have done in Madison. It is giving thanks for all the blessings of an education, health, and opportunities that I have had in my life so far and those that I will have when I return.

Then January and the onslaught of vacations and visitors began…

Ryan, my boyfriend from Madison, came to visit for a couple weeks. We went to a beach and then spent time in Mexico City and Cuernavaca. I tried to show him a glimpse of my reality during this year, but it is so difficult to experience daily life in a one-time visit to my work sites. Just as I cannot fully understand life in La Estación because I do not live there, I had a hard time trying to show him the reality of my life because he does not live here nor was he going to stay for very long. It was still an incredible vacation and we had a wonderful time catching up, snorkeling, going on a river-rafting excursion near the beach, surfing, going to see pyramids and ruins near Mexico City, eating out, wandering Cuernavaca and Tepoztlan, and picking up souvenirs along the way. It was not “living simply” by a long shot. It was “living it up” in Mexico for a couple weeks and now we’ll have memories to last a lifetime.
Just recently, I went to Michoacán (another state in Mexico) to see the monarch butterfly sanctuaries. Five generations of monarchs migrate from central Mexico to southern Canada every year and scientists are still somewhat baffled by how they do it, hence why it is one of the “Wonders of the World.” Sarah, Jenn and I took a weekend getaway to get to the little village of Angangeo. It is a sleepy and rustic mountain town and I felt like us three güeras were more of a sight to see for the locals than the butterflies. Apparently, this little town does not see much action besides the coming and going of tourists. We went to two different sanctuaries, both located up higher in the mountains after stretches of long, bumpy dirt roads. The cold, thin air in the pine forests up at 11,000 feet made it seem like we had left Mexico entirely. At first I did not recognize what I was seeing when we arrived at the colonies. The branches of the pine trees sagged down almost to a vertical hang and were covered with dry clumps. I asked the guide if it was the shells of cocoons and he looked me with a confused expression and told me, “son las mariposas” (“they are the butterflies”). Wow – I had no idea the magnitude of the colonies and the millions of delicate monarch butterflies that rest on the pine branches, clustering into heavy groups of thousands. And when the sun started to peek out from the clouds, the monarchs came alive and started flying around us as if we were in a gentle snowstorm of orange and black flakes. It was truly amazing and a moment of wonder of this awe-inspiring earth that we share. Unfortunately, logging in Mexico is threatening these colonies even though the sanctuaries and forests are protected. Similarly, the migrations patterns are in danger because the monarchs feed on the milkweed that we are spraying and killing in our parts of the United States. Without their food, where are they going to go? Without a home, is this marvel going to continue to exist? But this is a tangent for another time.

During the workweek, I am a volunteer. I come home from work sweaty, exhausted, with a raspy throat from “joyful shouting” (as Heidi so aptly described our little-kid singing), and covered in dirt and food stains from the kids’ hands and hugs. I often shelf the tiredness and indulge Marce in a little plática (chatting, one of her favorite pastimes) over a cup of tea and some yogurt and fruit. Often, I try to get some work done too by making materials for my work sites and keeping up with other necessary tasks.

During the weekends, I either pass the time as normal with a Saturday soccer game in Tepoztlan and a lazy Sunday of making bread and going for a long walk OR I am off gallivanting around Mexico with other volunteers, friends, or family. I easily spend my entire stipend in a weekend getaway and realize once again that I am not “living simply” when I have to go to the ATM to restock.

The next months of every-other week excursions are going to fly by and I am sure that I will walk away from them with some of the best memories of this year… but this is not my typical reality and I have a hard time trying to navigate the fine line between “living simply” and “living it up.” I am finding that the two do not combine. I feel guilty, I feel outside of my Mexican self, and I feel wasteful. I will enjoy the excursions greatly while I am here living it up and I have no hesitation in saying that I am going to enjoy every moment, but I will also relish the return to normalcy and “living simply” come the end of March.