Student to Teacher

Mexico
September 2017

We ascend from the arid toward the sky. From the Oaxacan plazas and limestone walls, where sleek suits and woven textile skirts shuffle together in the dusty light, in the happenstance chatter, circling the sizzling comals (large round cooking surface) poised at the intersections of the colonial grid. Toward the lofty clouds feigning aggression, dodging the sunlight. Rays align below with ancient platforms peering over crowns of agave and stone cathedrals both stretching to pierce the heavens.

Squeezed into the covered rear cargo hold of pickup truck, dust twirling and vision tinted by the blue tarp tied with mismatched ropes, we sway to more than gravity. We stowaway together in certified transport - 25 pesos each - the people, the produce, the pollo stumbling in plastic sacks. Rusted clips and molded metallic bands frame the truck, folding like chocolate in the sun as we round another bend on tires struggling to retain their shape under the load. Women around me return from the market in dutiful serenity, though their round Zapotec eyes grow wider still, that this time the Toyota with suburban Atlanta sales markings might abandon road for the ravine. Light slips away from the picturesque clouds. Grey envelops us. It clings to the whisps of my forearms. We careen around sloped corners into heavier grey now dripping from the frame. We retract further under the tarp to avoid the intensifying rainfall though we’re cramped by cargo. The clouds curl under from their mountaintop lair. We look away from the valley falling below, a chilling embrace of ambiguous grey supplanting the discomfort of ascent as they zip their heavy coats.

Gravel grinds under the slick tires of the truck ascending further from my drop-off, the sound suffocated by the cloak of disorienting fog. Am I among the clouds? Or the chill of irresolvable solitude? I walk one hour along a gravel road away from the asphalt as the grey darkens further my accompanying doubts. Just as I can no longer see with my own eyes, a lost golden lamp amplifies the misty uncertainty as I realize all that don't know about this place I'll be for two months.

Only the tranquil traffic of footprints and horseback delivery traces a path from village to village through granitic pine forests amongst the agave. Occasional passing trucks connect with Tlacolula, a sandy slanted market city at the base of the mountains. There are no schedules, but morning is always best, they remind me. I speak some Spanish (or is it Castellano? or Mexicano?) but little beyond locating a bus or the toilet. To decipher regional foods or describe my journey exceeds my vocabulary. To discuss intracacies of the pueblo evades me. I'm a passive student in the Pueblos Mancomunados amidst the predictable isolating chill of October in the Sierra Norte mountains. I try to stand atop the mud. Though I'm here to give, my hope is to absorb conversation and ease into their rhythm - a steady warmth and receptivity that invited me to enter in the first place. My sheepish mannerisms grapple for a role in this rainy place.

So what can you do? A disorienting direct inquiry. I confide in my curious soul, that what I have collected might be more than frivolous antiquity, that maybe my overpriced university certification contributes something where physical labor mutes heady chatter. Transport Analysis. Renewable Energy. Even in Spanish, these have no translation here. Engineering? What’s that? Diagrams and documents don't bring fire for the stew, blankets to the bed, or a discernable path from the present to the future. I overflow, humbled with preoccupation in my relative devaluation, in spite of the village welcome.

A serene local guide leads me to stay in a bunk bed with a single timed lightbulb and gas water heating exceeding the comfort of my neighbors. I’m welcomed again by beautifully simple and sturdy wooden furniture long forgotten by phony plastic progress in the States. He insists when I pause, considering the relative luxury; it's not the season, so no one will use these tourist quarters. Immediately I retreat to cerebral exercises of equivalent exchange. Or beyond. No. It’s not financial. Nothing has interest rates here. As conversations continue with Abacuc, leader of the village men's council, I offer that I'm familiar with gardening, too. I've worked in construction and fruit packing, so I brandish my manual labor plumage. But no gringo need apply when able men with round bellies, stringy arms, and golden-toothed smiles multiply in a moment to lift a beam or transplant stones in old sneakers and athletic shorts. I must bring that which they don't have: Abacuc shows me some teaching materials collected in a cold concrete and glass classroom. The vision - his I presume - is that I will teach some English and join the kids during their meals to talk with them, learn from each other; me, a student of Mexico amidst the students of Mexico.

And immediately I again begin to transform my chameleon soul, replete with inadequacy and inhibition, this time toward a professional respectability I left somewhere else. I slick back my hair and look for a shirt with fewer sweat stains. Among the disorienting grey, I am Maestro de Inglés, learning more from those half my age than I can summon to offer.