One step at a time

Ever since I can remember, I have seen steps as kind of a wasted resource. I tend to only use every second or third one, is what I mean. And when I am busy, I really move fast up steps. This is what happened last Thursday morning at FVP: arrived at office, ran up the steps, slipped, dived heroically to save defenseless laptop, and landed on one of my fingers.

My friends and family would express surprise that it has taken this long for me to break something running up steps, so I will begin by agreeing that this might be a case of karmic backlash.

Strangely, my hand didn’t hurt that much. I brushed myself off, opened up my computer and started to check my e-mail. When I looked down at my hand, it looked like one of those signposts where three signs are pointing right and one pointing to an awkward fork in the road. Yikes. This was not a good sign. One of my coworkers offered to take me over to the hospital.

The receptionist in the emergency room distinguished herself with her sincerity and command of linguistic nuance. When asked how long the wait might be, she smiled and said, “Va a tardar un pooooco” – it’s going to take liiiiittle while. This phrase simultaneously meant 1) officially, I can tell you how long it will take, but 2) you may be here for an eternity. In a second bout of sincerity, she revealed to us that the hospital’s x-ray machine was actually broken. So we politely stepped out to reconsider the options. An illuminated sign reminded me that the phrase in Spanish for “emergency room” – sala de urgencias – translates literally to “urgency room”. This had always struck me as a little funny, in a non-participatory way.

It didn’t take long for my coworker to convince me to go to a private hospital down the road. I would probably leave the hospital with a case of privilege-induced guilt, but they would take care of me, and quick. So we went in, I paid my entrance fee, and within fifteen minutes I was spreading my fingers out under an x-ray machine. Soon after the doctor had a film of my skeletal hand up on the illuminated board, my own version of the day of the dead. The doctor confirmed that I had broken the ring finger on my left hand
(the third metatarsal?) and told me that I needed a cast.

He told me that it was not his specialty to fix broken bones, so please wait for the traumatólogo.

The traumatologist? I love how Spanish makes a word out of everything. While I waited, I remembered the Nuevo Laredo neighborhood called Doctores, where all the streets are named after medical specialists. I kid you not. Calle de Endocrinólogo, Oftalmólogo, Reumatólogo, etc . Can you imagine the exchanges? (“Oh, no way, Pedro, you grew up there? My cousin used to live on Gynecologist Street!”)

The trauma doctor was a friendly guy who – as you might expect – cracked morbid jokes about every 30 seconds in both Spanish and English. He was born in the United States, he said, but he grew up in Nuevo Laredo. His mother had traveled across the border to Texas to give birth to him and all but one of his siblings. Five years ago, and already in his late forties, he moved his family over to the Texas of the border. He lived there, and commuted to work in Mexico –the opposite of the typical trajectory.

My new mummy hand holding a tuna, nopal cactus fruit

So here I am, mostly fine but with a cast halfway up my arm. I get a lot of attention from strangers – having a cast is a good icebreaker (only figuratively). And interpretations from friends are starting to come in; one friend commented that a broken left ring finger is a sure sign that I’m not supposed to marry anyone in Mexico.

It’s kind of tough to wash dishes, unscrew caps, and type. I’ve never been that fond of doing dishes or unscrewing caps, but I do need to be able to type. So I trained my computer in voice recognition, reading in my best newscaster voice excerpts from The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell and a children’s book. The voice recognition is mostly accurate, amazingly. When I accidentally start speaking Spanish with the headphones on, it starts kicking out text that sounds like either avant garde poetry or the English on the back of a pirated Japanese t-shirt:

You also anonymous and being on a stool be no Cassandra be on a mano that dominate cold and hot idea it has come into

That’s the computer’s translation of me saying in Spanish, “I’m just a silly gringo who broke his hand running up the steps.”

Next post: The one-armed fishermen

To help support my work in Nuevo Laredo, you can chip in here:

http://brendan.chipin.com/kiva-fellowship-mexico

To see all currently fundraising loans from FVP on Kiva.org, please click here.

Borderlands

This is my first blog entry. Many Kiva Fellow arrival tales involve foreign airports, sweaty travels across long stretches of rural countryside, and the onset of intercontinental jetlag. In contrast, I am probably the first fellow who arrived at his placement by Greyhound bus.

I write you from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the border from Laredo, Texas. On one of the local radio stations (local to Texas? local to Mexico? Hard to tell, since radio waves don’t obey borders) they refer to them as “Los Dos Laredos” – the two Laredos. If you just looked at the people, it would be hard to guess where one place starts and the other begins. As I walked through downtown Laredo, Texas I rarely heard English, the majority of the stores announce sales in Spanish only, and nearly everyone looks Mexican. The chile selection in the supermarket is overwhelming, and the only sign of the Texas that I had imagined was a lanky aging cowboy in line at the supermarket. His belt buckle was studded with shiny Texas stars, matching his sunglass holster and his cellphone clip. At least one of my simplistic stereotypes of the Lone Star state was satisfied.

You can’t mistake the border between the two towns. To English speakers it is the Rio Grande (“Big River”), to Spanish speakers the Rio Bravo (“Rough River”, “Angry River” (?)). Putting aside the philosophical questions raised by this difference in names, it should be noted that the river looks neither big nor angry. It seems too small, in fact, to be the demarcation of this, one of the most storied and frequently traversed borders on the planet. Maybe it used to be bigger and angrier before they installed the dams upriver.

Drawn neatly on a map, borders always seem like such an objective but imaginary line, as if you could step across them the way that you could step across a line drawn by a playmate in a childhood game. At this border the asymmetry is clear. Those who enter the U.S. are scrutinized (residents and non-residents both) while walking into Mexico is effortless, not even requiring the flash of a passport. I considered declaring my recently purchased groceries just to right the balance a bit.

Rio Grande/Rio Bravo looking over toward Texas

Once I stepped into Mexico the environment changed, reminding me of the Latin America I knew from previous travels. The informal businesses (let’s call them entrepreneurs) started at mid-bridge with a squeegee man about a boot’s length over the border, squeezing out his living (sorry :) washing cars heading to the U.S. On the other side of the bridge the streets had a Sunday bustle rarely found in any small American city I’ve ever visited (Correction: any affluent section of an American city). In the crowded town square near the bridge, walking merchants were ready to satisfy your every need, whether it happens be a pack of razors, 3D soccer cards, or a yummy mouth-staining shaved ice. (were any of these Kiva borrowers?) Unless, that is, your immediate need was a map of the city, which took me an hour to find.

A clown entertained children in the middle of the plaza, his bullhorn competing with a group of parents asking for donations for a seven year old girl’s eye operation. Cars strapped with sound equipment announced the latest sales, mingling with a 20 mph chorus of reggaeton. I had forgotten how high the volume is turned up in Latin American cities.

The first night, Sunday, I spent at a budget hotel, where big groups of young Mexican men spilled out of their shared rooms into the parking lot as they relaxed on their day off. (Apparently migration to the border area from poorer southern states is common.) The next day I looked for an apartment, and I found a little place with a fig tree in the back yard, about a 15 minute bus ride from the office of the Kiva field partner. The old ladies across the street already have started to churn the rumor mill about what I am doing here. When I step out my door the blast of dry heat reminds me of that I’m at the edge of a desert extending south. If I walk a block north I suddenly get American cell phone coverage, reminding me how close I am to the U.S. Although this place feels very Mexican, it is also clear that I am living in a place between places, and it is going to be interesting to see how this impacts people here in Nuevo Laredo.

I just started work at the microfinance organization where I will be working for the summer — the Fundacion para la Vivienda Progresiva, or Progressive Housing Foundation. The first day is still sinking in, so I will blog about that later. Stay tuned — it will be a fascinating summer!

To see all currently fundraising loans from FVP on Kiva.org, please click here.

PS If you’d like to help me help this cause, you can chip in at:

http://brendan.chipin.com/kiva-fellowship-mexico