can’t wait to find out what’s ahead. Then I hear my name, as Miguel dedicates a song to
“Señora Rita, la escritora de los estados unidos.”
After four days with my new friends, I decide to act on the resolution I made in the anthropology museum. I am going to leave the group and try to find a Zapotec village where I can settle in long enough to connect with the people and get a feel of their way of life.
I know nothing about the communities in this area. I haven’t read a single book about Zapotec culture; nor have I studied any Zapotec language. If I were a scholar, I’d have spent a year learning all I could about the people I am about to visit. Instead, I know only that Oaxaca is surrounded by Zapotec villages, and that I have spent the last four years studying anthropology and yearning to live in other cultures. I’m really not interested in “studying” anybody. I just want to slip into another way of life, not as a tourist, not as an academic, but, as much as possible, as a part of the community.
I look at a map and blindly choose a village about forty miles north of Oaxaca. There is a road that goes to the village, but no one can tell me when or where to get a bus, so I start out walking. If a bus comes along, I’ll stop it. If there isn’t one, I’ll hitch. I have never hitchhiked before, but this seems like a good time to start.
The sun is blistering hot; the road is hilly; and the fields on both sides, as far as I can see, are brown and withered. I’m wearing sneakers, a baseball cap, and jeans; and I’m carrying a small backpack and a bottle of water.
After only fifteen minutes, I’m dripping in sweat. Not a single car has passed. Finally, after about forty-five minutes, a car approaches. Relief, I think. I stick out my arm with my thumb up, a move I’ve seen millions of times from the inside of my car. It’s not an easy gesture. Feels a lot like begging. The car whizzes by me. Then two more pass. Then two trucks.
Now I feel even more self-conscious. Who would’ve thought five drivers could ignore a forty-seven-year-old woman trudging along in the hot sun? I wonder what they’re thinking as they speed by. Aren’t they even a little bit curious?
A part of me wants to go back to Oaxaca and join my friends; it’s so much easier being part of a group. But I have dreamed for years of living in another culture where I am the only outsider. I want to know what I will do and how I will go about connecting with the people. I have read dozens of ethnographies over the last four years, vicariously living in the shoes of the anthropologists, sharing their experiences. Now I want to do it on my own.
So I keep sticking out my arm, thumb up. Two more cars go by. After a while, I’m not embarrassed any more; I’m just hot and desperate.
I’ve been walking for more than an hour when a white rusted pickup stops. I tell the driver the name of the village where I’m going, and he motions for me to get in the back with three turkeys in a cage and about ten cases of beer and Coca-Cola. I toss my backpack in, but I can’t get my body in; the truck is too high. I can’t even get my foot into a position where I can swing the other foot over the back. The driver waits. Finally he motions me into the front seat.
We talk in Spanish amid rumbles and rattles and a muffler with a hole in it. Where am I from, where am I going, and why?
“I’m writing a book about life in Mexico for American children,” I lie. “I’d like to include a chapter about a Zapotec village. I’m hoping that I can stay in the village for a month.”
The driver is intrigued when he hears that I want to live in this village. He tells me that I have to talk to the
alcalde,
the mayor. After about an hour, we rattle into a village, the center of which has two stores in what used to be living rooms. The driver stops the truck in front of a group of men and talks to them. It is twelve noon. Five men, beer bottles in hand, greet
“Señora Rita, la escritora de los estados unidos.”
After four days with my new friends, I decide to act on the resolution I made in the anthropology museum. I am going to leave the group and try to find a Zapotec village where I can settle in long enough to connect with the people and get a feel of their way of life.
I know nothing about the communities in this area. I haven’t read a single book about Zapotec culture; nor have I studied any Zapotec language. If I were a scholar, I’d have spent a year learning all I could about the people I am about to visit. Instead, I know only that Oaxaca is surrounded by Zapotec villages, and that I have spent the last four years studying anthropology and yearning to live in other cultures. I’m really not interested in “studying” anybody. I just want to slip into another way of life, not as a tourist, not as an academic, but, as much as possible, as a part of the community.
I look at a map and blindly choose a village about forty miles north of Oaxaca. There is a road that goes to the village, but no one can tell me when or where to get a bus, so I start out walking. If a bus comes along, I’ll stop it. If there isn’t one, I’ll hitch. I have never hitchhiked before, but this seems like a good time to start.
The sun is blistering hot; the road is hilly; and the fields on both sides, as far as I can see, are brown and withered. I’m wearing sneakers, a baseball cap, and jeans; and I’m carrying a small backpack and a bottle of water.
After only fifteen minutes, I’m dripping in sweat. Not a single car has passed. Finally, after about forty-five minutes, a car approaches. Relief, I think. I stick out my arm with my thumb up, a move I’ve seen millions of times from the inside of my car. It’s not an easy gesture. Feels a lot like begging. The car whizzes by me. Then two more pass. Then two trucks.
Now I feel even more self-conscious. Who would’ve thought five drivers could ignore a forty-seven-year-old woman trudging along in the hot sun? I wonder what they’re thinking as they speed by. Aren’t they even a little bit curious?
A part of me wants to go back to Oaxaca and join my friends; it’s so much easier being part of a group. But I have dreamed for years of living in another culture where I am the only outsider. I want to know what I will do and how I will go about connecting with the people. I have read dozens of ethnographies over the last four years, vicariously living in the shoes of the anthropologists, sharing their experiences. Now I want to do it on my own.
So I keep sticking out my arm, thumb up. Two more cars go by. After a while, I’m not embarrassed any more; I’m just hot and desperate.
I’ve been walking for more than an hour when a white rusted pickup stops. I tell the driver the name of the village where I’m going, and he motions for me to get in the back with three turkeys in a cage and about ten cases of beer and Coca-Cola. I toss my backpack in, but I can’t get my body in; the truck is too high. I can’t even get my foot into a position where I can swing the other foot over the back. The driver waits. Finally he motions me into the front seat.
We talk in Spanish amid rumbles and rattles and a muffler with a hole in it. Where am I from, where am I going, and why?
“I’m writing a book about life in Mexico for American children,” I lie. “I’d like to include a chapter about a Zapotec village. I’m hoping that I can stay in the village for a month.”
The driver is intrigued when he hears that I want to live in this village. He tells me that I have to talk to the
alcalde,
the mayor. After about an hour, we rattle into a village, the center of which has two stores in what used to be living rooms. The driver stops the truck in front of a group of men and talks to them. It is twelve noon. Five men, beer bottles in hand, greet
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