A Birthday in Oaxaca
Richard, Lulu, Carlos and Lumina
I’m counting my blessings that couchsurfing has given me this morning. I had the best birthday ever yesterday!
A lovely couple (she from Uh Merca and he from Britain) has been staying with me for the last couple of weeks because their landlady refused to pro-rate their last month of rent. Did my heart good because she (the landlady) was a conniving one!
Lumina went out and bought delicious heirloom tomatoes, hand made corn tortillas and flowers. Then a former couchsurfer from Guadalajara (says he left “the machine” behind) showed up with flowers and chapulines (fried grasshoppers). When Carlos, from Guadalajara, came, he left his bicycle and said he was going to the ATM…a five minute walk away. Came back more than an hour later. He had gone to one market about 6 blocks up the hill for flowers and it was closed. So he walked all the way to the big market on the other side of the zocalo (8 blocks) and back just to get flowers. And I’m not even a young chica! An example of the heart that resides in a Mexican. It’s why I’m here and why I stay.
Then a Chilanga (what they call you if U R from Mexico City) couchsurfer showed up with a gift of four lovely Mexican coffee cups. She works for the health department driving into remote mountain villages to take information and meds to the little clinics. Diabetes is endemic here and she says they are trying to get people to change their diet and behavior instead of just giving them pills. Good luck with that, I thought.
In Mexico, when you have a birthday, you stay at home, people just show up and everyone eats food you have prepared. I had made Pork Ribs with Green Sauce and rice and we drank lots of mescal. No face pushed in the cake thank goodness. Lumina had purchased some Mexican pastries she stuck a candle in.
They have been my friends for the year they spent in Oaxaca…he a writer and she a yoga instructor. Having met in S. America a couple years ago, they are going to be married in Ohio in July and then live in England.
I dropped Lumina and Richard off this morning at the bus station with a lump in my throat.
Tags: Festivals & Ceremonies, Mexico, Oaxaca
Zoe
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