Why I Am An Expat In Oaxaca Mexico
As for me, the best kind of traveling for Pico Iyer, the travel writer, is when he is searching for something he never finds. “The physical aspect of travel is for me,” he says “the least interesting…what really draws me is the prospect of stepping out of the daylight of everything I know, into the shadows of what I don’t know and may never will. We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary, and into the presence of whatever lies just outside our apprehension…” he goes on to say. “I fall through the gratings of the conscious mind and into a place that observes a different kind of logic.”
Being a wanderer, says Alain de Botton in “The Art of Travel”, crossing different lands among people who speak languages strange to one’s ear…meditating dreamily to the rhythm of train wheels, allowing the sounds of the world to be one’s mantra, enables one to grow…to transcend one’s known life. The silence of being alone (much like being on retreat in a monastery) without the ease of familiarity allows one to stand outside oneself… large sublime views and new smells revealing new thoughts and emotions…thrilling or disappointing aspects of oneself…here-to-for hidden from one’s awareness.
If we find poetry in tattered old men weaving home on bicycles, a grateful charm in smiling young country girls… and a shared intimacy in the look of recognition in the eyes of kindred travelers we have found “an alternative to the ease, habits and confinement of the ordinary rooted world.”
Introspective reflections revealed by new places and people much different than us may reveal hidden thrilling or disappointing aspects of ourselves. Thrilled by finally learning the geopolitics of another people and learning that there are many valid ways of living in the world other than ours. Disappointed at discovering we have limits to our tolerance for what we judge as inefficient or unsanitary. So as another travel writer says “it is not necessarily [only] at home that we encounter our true selves. “The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we [think] we are in ordinary life…who may not be who we essentially are,” says the author.
I love to travel alone. Traveling companions can keep us tethered to our predefined idea of ourselves. They may expect certain reactions from us that obligates us…underneath our awareness…forces us to accommodate in a way that feels unnatural. Or in our companion’s desire to have their own experiences, they may not have the patience to reciprocate and share. In traveling alone we are free to connect with what and whom comes our way. We are more approachable.
Robert Young Pelton nailed it for me though when he said in his “World’s Most Dangerous Places” “living is (partly) about adventure and adventure is about elegantly surfing the tenuous space between lobotomized serenity and splattered-bug terror and still being in enough pieces to share the lessons learned with your grandkids. Adventure is about using your brain, body and intellect to weave a few bright colors in the world’s dull, gray fabric…”
The purpose of his book, he says, “is to get your head screwed on straight, your sphincter unpuckered and your nose pointed in the right direction.”
I retired in 2002, rented out the house long term and “went on the road.” I traveled for the next four years but then got sick of piling on and off buses, trains, planes, taxis, boats and all other manner of transportation…and packing and unpacking.
I returned to the states and for 4 months went from the computer to the TV and back again. One day, I thought, I could just die in this chair. Go for a walk? Where? Around the neighborhood block? Have to get in your car…and then go where? A coffee shop? I was bored to death. Not that there are not a jillion activities I could have participated in. But why? I felt I had done all I wanted to do there. Bored by a country I had spent 60 years in and bored by a town I spent 40 years in. I am not attached to the place and the culture….although I do miss incredibly sweet raspberries and strawberries in the spring and cherries and peaches in the fall…picked by migrants from here and sold cheaply in the US due to their cheap labor.
One son is in Hong Kong, one in Thailand and one in Las Vegas. No grandchildren. My grandparents immigrated from Poland and Ireland but died before or just after I was born…no extended family to speak of and the ones I have are all ranchers in Montana…a physical and intellectual world away.
My friends and former co-workers are scattered from “hell to breakfast” as we say. Generally speaking, with only one or two weeks of vacation a year, Americans don’t frequently travel outside the country. So, “Oh,” you say, “in Thailand…” And then the veil comes down over the eyes and that is the end of that!
Many of my friends that I have now, I met on the road and keep in frequent contact through skype, email and Facebook. I have learned that “community” doesn’t have to be a physical place. It can be virtual. Guess I have, as Pico Iyer puts it…a “global soul.”
No roots to speak of…in a physical sense. I HAVE learned, however, after witnessing incredible poverty and injustice in the world, to value much more all those things (my roots) we as Americans take for granted…but they are internalized and remain with me wherever I live…independence, self-sufficiency, efficiency, innovation, freedom of thought and speech, an appreciation for the rule of law and government with relative separation of powers and relative lack of collusion and corruption. I said “relative.”
So…long story short…what I realized I wanted now, was a daily life that was interesting and full of small enjoyments. And to search for an understanding of a culture I will never find. So I moved to Oaxaca. I chose Oaxaca because it is in the mountains which I love and the weather is temperate year round. I also chose Oaxaca because I had worked with many farmworkers in Oregon who were from here and I found the people to be real.
Music everywhere. Rockets, fireworks going off. Church bells to wake you up in the morning. Processions, Fiestas. Protest marches, daily walks around the Centro…(I have arthritis so I need to walk) always discovering new little cafes and other places of business. And am trying to understand that when my Mexican friend says “I will see you manana he may mean tomorrow, next week or next month or never! Ha!)
I am learning to cook “Oaxacan” so going to a different little market for specialty items…mole and rare chilis at the Merced, Friday market tienges in Llano Park for meat and vegetables is a joy. A hundred small vendors selling everything you can imagine…and great chivo (BBQ goat) with consumme or tacos with hand-made tortillas. I love to feed my friends and couchsurfers and watch them delight over estofado or mole.
Five blocks to the tree-filled Zocalo (plaza) where I can sit for hours in one of the little sidewalk cafes surrounding it over coffee or beer with friends who wonder by…both local and expat. There are 16 different indigenous groups from small mountain villages that are easily accessible whether 1 hour or 7 hours away. Or I just sit on my veranda overlooking a lovely park to read. Or the news junkie that I am, peruse the internet for the latest via my WiFi…amid wafts of dance music coming from the nearby cultural center. Or visit with a friend over Pechuga Mescal. On Saturday and Sunday mornings I watch people practicing Tai Chi in the park below. Or video-skype one of my sons.
And then there is learning and practicing the language…a challenge to keep the brain from totally disintegrating.
Of course my social security and pension goes farther here. But it’s not the reason I am here. Friends in the U.S. say” but why do you want to live in Mexico? It is so poor!” You don’t know poor until you’ve gone to India or black Africa. Or they worry that I will get kidnapped or shot. The narcos leave the tourists alone…they only kill each other or people who get in the way. And that is mainly in the border areas. I feel very safe here.
I don’t know how long I will be here. Much of it depends on my health. A debilitating or chronic condition would require me to go back to the states in order to be covered by medicare. But for now, I enjoy the daily small things. I still do travel periodically…mostly to Asia. In fact I just returned from 8 months away….6 of it in Thailand and Hong Kong. But I live in a culture I will probably never understand. It’s rewarding and enlivening to push my boundaries and try.
Tags: Expat, Mexico, Oaxaca
Zoe
Hi Zoe,
Nice article. I left a request for info on you couchsurfing site. Thanks Jim
Thanks, Mike. And I am sure the reverse is true too. 🙂
Howdy from Montana – Thank you for the contact thru classmates and more importantly for sharing your life experiences and perceptions. I have added your blog to my favs since there is no way I can read everything in one sitting and the good Lord knows that there is much more here than I ever knew about you from high school and college. Ciao for now – Mike
You’ve expressed what I’ve always felt about travel and about living in other countries and cultures. My best advice to people who ask me about how I manage to travel as I do is, “Don’t be afraid.”
Oh my gosh, Nancy, I was just thinking of you yesterday and had every intention of emailing you! Yes, this could apply to any expat! I’m flying up to Oregon in a week or so to get a car. I really miss going to the mountain villages for a change of scenery. Come visit me!
Zoe,
Hi from Bangkok. Great entry. You’ve summed up the reactions from others about our ex-pat lives so well. It’s my Mom that’s saying, “They’re so poor”. We thought of her yesterday wandering around the Gourmet Market at Siam Paragon this weekend.!
Enjoy the stimulating lives we lead!
Nancy
Thanks!
wow!!!
well done…
an expression from the heart….
move over Pico Iyer……