February 14, 2014 · 7:04 pm

Making Cross-Cultural Friends–or Not

friends

After moving to a completely unknown region of the world, I set about making myself some friends.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know to bring along my skein of yarn for tatting when my husband and I visited, so I was never invited to sit on a bucket under the shade tree with the ladies of the house. Additionally, the fact that the women’s husbands liked to talk with me about stories of their glory days in the U.S. when they were young… didn’t endear me to the ladies at all. I represented a part of their lives that they hadn’t share with their husbands and they closed rank against me.

So since incidental friendships weren’t about to bloom anytime soon under these conditions, I had to see about cultivating some.

First, I tried among my husband’s family in México. He had two sisters here and a sister-in-law. It didn’t go as well at all. Everyone was too busy to make time for this ‘gringa’ who didn’t even know how to make tortillas. Some even expressed the opinion that I should go back to U.S. so my husband could find a nice Mexican girl. It wasn’t until my mother-in-law died that I was even considered part of the family (See La Novena) and invited to participate in the prayers. So, moving on…

I thought I’d try to find friends through religion. Being a non-Catholic in a Catholic nation was isolating, (See Parenting Challenges–when someone dies) however there were some Christian congregations scattered throughout the area. However, at the first place I went, I apparently was too foreign for words, literally. The brothers and sisters in the congregation would talk with my Catholic husband, but not with me. So then, I went to another congregation, but although more women spoke with me, they all seemed to want something other than friendship. For instance, I was enlisted to call a U.S. lawyer for a woman with an open disability claim. Then another woman had me fill out a social security claim for her husband who had died in the U.S. A third wanted me to register her children under their father’s U.S. residency status. None of these Christian ladies thought to pay me for these secular services and pretty soon I stopped going to Sunday meetings. It was just too time consuming.

So I tried to make friends with other teachers. Miss L, was a Spanish teacher, and we shared the responsibility of teaching first grade one year. (See Learning and Teaching Year 2) She invited me to her home and to her church, where her husband was the pastor, and things were going along smoothly for a time. But then she began tricking me into compromises. For instance, after I explicitly told her that I did not have any more time for individual classes, she had a friend of hers call her house when I was there so that I felt pressured into agreeing to give English lessons to her daughter. The daughter only managed to schedule in 3 classes, so not worth my while at all for all the rearranging I had to do. Then she wanted me to let my son help her on Wednesdays in a little plastic bag store she opened and I agreed. However, when her husband’s nephew came to town, she suddenly no longer needed my son’s help, although he was her best worker, and gave the job to the nephew. (Hurt feelings all around on this one.) Then there was the niece that just had to have English classes, and Miss L brought her brother to the house to petition me. Again, the classes didn’t even last a semester. I also helped her in the PAN campaign during the last election year (See Politicking) but never received the promised phone card or really any other benefits for all that work.

Eventually, I decided that I put up with enough of this exploitation and no longer answered her phone calls.

Then I took up with Miss R, another English teacher. She was going through a difficult life stage at the time and my husband and I helped her move and sell some of her things at the tianguis (See Failing at your own business-Tianguis. I even helped her prepare for the Trinity English Exam, which she needed to qualify to continue teaching English. I would drop by once or twice a month for a chat and was well on my way to considering her a friend.

But when I asked her for information about getting my teaching papers approved (See Getting Legal-working papers) she responded by asking why the chingada I was bothering her with these questions and to resuelva (resolve) my own problems. Excuse me?

After a tearful morning, I moved on.

Cross-cultural friendship is tricky business and it is apparent that I have quite a bit to learn yet before I can truly say I have Mexican friends. We seem to be truly different breeds of beings.

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February 7, 2014 · 3:22 pm

Animal Doctoring

Having as many animals as we do guarantees that some will fall sick on occasion, no matter how attentive we try to be.

For instance, there was that horrible week when the hens would get the hiccups then fall over dead, and we had no idea what to do.  It did eventually run its course, but we lost 5 chickens.

Then there was the sad event when our new puppy somehow managed to get on the other side of the wall and was accidentally stepped on by Beauty.  Sometimes the only thing to do is to sit by an animal’s side.

But in other instances, the illness or injury is completely treatable, if you know how.  My husband often calls me to “traer el libro” (bring the book) for me to do some on the spot research on a new symptom of one or more of our animals.

Our library is small and consists of Barnyard in your Backyard and Keeping Livestock Healthy, but for the most part, that’s enough.

barnyardlivestock

When our rabbits kept getting sore hocks, we changed the entire way we kept rabbits, from caged to free range, well, within our yard range anyway based on a section of the Barnyard book.  When the chickens looked droopy, my husband cut a hole in the wall so that they could forage in the goat and horse poop while those animals were grazing, and sure enough, the extra vitamins did a world of good, all based on the Healthy Livestock book.  When one of our nanny goats developed mastitis, we checked the books to see what we could do and did what we could to ease her agony until the infection cleared up.

In addition to our resource books, there are local folklore methods concerning the care of animals. Fortunately, my husband is not one of those men afraid to ask for directions, when it comes to the welfare of his animals that is.  Some of the information he gets seems to be a bit hokey at times, so we cross reference with our books.  If the treatment appears to have some sort of valid basis and not entirely dependent on the warts of a frog during the lunar eclipse, he often gives it a try.

My husband has treated swollen eyes with a spit of salt water.  The first patient was Duchess, the goat, who was accidentally hit by a slingshot stone. (Apparently, there was a passing squirrel my son was aiming at.)  A spit of water and the swelling was completely gone within the hour.  The second patient, Shadow the yeguita (female colt) also was struck by a misdirected stone thrown to scare her back from jumping a fence that was much too high for her young legs.  Again, the spit of salt water, my husband actually spits into the eye, and the swelling went down.

The most recent examples of this folklore animal medicine can be illustrated with the unfortunate injuries sustained by our horses, Beauty and Shadow.

beauty's leg

Beauty came up lame one day and what appeared to be a superficial cut above her front hoof became a gaping hole overnight.  My husband thinks that she opened it with her own hoof while dancing. Yes, she actually dances continuously in her stall at night.  As it was on the bend of her foot, it could not be sewn up. He was, at first, dismayed and unsure how to help in the healing since she opened it anew every time she went out to graze.  He asked around.  One person told him to echar aqua de la mata de toro (bull’s weed water).  Another told him to cover the wound with hoja de sábila (aloe leaves).

mata de toro

mata de toro

Now, I had never heard of mata de toro (bull’s weed), so I couldn’t be too sure of its effectiveness. However, aloe is a herb that I know to have soothing qualities for burns and endorsed its use.  Beauty’s treatment ended up being a periodic dash of Azul (Blue) for infection, a daily wash with boiled mata de toro (bull’s weed) and an overnight bandage of sábila (aloe).  The Azul we purchased at a local vet place, but the other two herbs grew wild in La Yacata, and it was just a matter of harvesting. Her wound is slowly healing, and we hope she will be back up to her regular dance routine soon.

shadow

Little Shadow

Shadow also recently sustained an injury.  One day, she wandered a bit from where her mother was grazing and tried to leap a barbed wire fence.  She’s only 6 months old, so she really didn’t know any better.  A good section of her skin on her underbelly was ripped open, the fur hanging off in one big sheet.  Poor thing.  My husband called in a more experienced horse keeper for advice.  He brought a needle and thread to sew her up.  Of course, she wasn’t too keen on this procedure, so she had to be lightly sedated.  Even under anesthesia, she kicked out several times and had to be held down to get the stitches in.   This was quite a group project.  In attendance in the operating theater, a.k.a. Shadow’s stall, was the tailor, my husband and his father for front and back leg holding, my son, for head holding and nerve soothing, and my sister-in-law, the light holder.  I stood outside the stall and ran for things like clean water to wash with, alcohol to sterilize the needle, rags for blotting, etc.  Beauty, the anxious mother, was behind me looking on and expressed her emotions noisily every few minutes. It was over in about 30 minutes and took another 30 minutes or so for Shadow to recover from the sedative.

aloe

Warming aloe vera to make a poultice

In the morning, my husband made a dressing from hoja de sábila and fashioned a bandage out of a costal (feed bag).  He heated the aloe leaves on the comal (tortilla pan) so that the juices would run well.  Then he cut the sharp edges off the leaves and sliced them down the middle.  The inner sides he placed up so as to be the part that touches the wound and tied on the bandage.  We also have been using periodic treatment with the Azul, which is an animal antiseptic, although it is more purple than blue and a round of penicillin and tetanus shots just to be on the safe side.  We are all hoping for a quick recovery for our little lady.

bandage

Attaching the bandage with the aloe vera poultice

I won’t say that we know everything about healing animals and we may yet discover that what we do on these occasions is not the best way to treat injuries, but we do what we can with what we have and have found that the natural remedies offered in our area often outdistance any man-made chemical when it comes to effectiveness.

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A complete Herbal Starter Kit by Herbal Academy

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January 30, 2014 · 7:57 pm

Getting Legal–Working Papers: The Paper Chase

long list of paper

So in order to become an English teacher here, I would need a whole handful of documentation.  After my initial flying off the handle phase, I checked the list again. (See Getting Legal–Working Papers)

Well, the application for reconsideration was taken care of.  SEP had kindly sent that with the list of requirements.

The second requirement was my birth certificate, with an apostille and translated by an authorized person. This I had. My mom had done this for me from PA when I began my naturalization process.

The third requirement was the payment to the state. According to SEGOB, I didn’t need to make this payment since I was a permanent resident now, but I would check on it again once I had all the papers together.

Fourth, the payment for SEP to reexamine my documents–that could wait too as I didn’t have all the documents yet.

Number 5 was a copy of my CURP (federal identification number). I received this document when I was upgraded from tourist to imigrante familiar (immigrant).

Number 8 was the original and copy of my permanent resident card which I recently obtained after 7 long years of struggle. (See Getting Legal–Trip 5).

Number 9 was my University diploma translated and apostilled, which I had sent to SEP at the beginning of all this drama.

papers in the air

Numbers 6, 7, and 10 required a lot of mailing to and from the U.S. and countless hours of needless worry and stress.

Number 6 was the documento original y copia oficial que acredite las calificaciones finales de los grados a revalidar apostillado y traducido (the original and a legal copy of my high school transcripts translated and with an apostille).

Now that I understood this to be my high school transcripts, I could see about obtaining it. I had an unofficial copy, but it didn’t have an apostille. So I asked my brother to call the school I graduated from in 1991 to see if it would even be possible to get it. I was in luck. They didn’t have a copy of my diploma, but could send the transcripts and a letter stating that I attended from — to — and that I graduated in —. So once my brother had those documents in his hot little hands, he could then take them to the notary to be notarized, then send them to Harrisburg to get an apostille, a piece of cake, or so I thought.

However, it wasn’t quite that easy. The notary said that she would have to witness the signature from the school, so my mom had to make arrangements for the official school person and the notary to get together. Being as determined as I am, she managed to get the meeting set up and the signing took place. She then sent it on to Harrisburg and in under a week, had it back ready to send to me.

Number 7 was my high school diploma, which I still had wrapped in tissue paper, never having had the occasion to use it before. Unfortunately, it was with me in México. When my brother called the school said they didn’t keep diplomas so old (Geez, thanks!) and therefore couldn’t reissue it. So I packed a box of regional goodies and sent them along with the diploma in a DHL box to my brother in PA. I was not taking any chances with the postal service with this baby.

When my brother received it, he passed it along to my mom. She had it notarized and then sent it on to Harrisburg, but for some reason or other, it was sent back twice without an apostille. She finally got the apostille and after 2 months of waiting, dropped it in the mail.

However, she didn’t have it sent with a tracking number because the U.S. post office dude said she didn’t need one–even after I told her several times that things disappear in the mail here. One time, I received a care package that had just empty candy wrappers–apparently the customs guy had a sweet tooth. So after a month of anxious waiting, and checking at the post office box here in Moroleón, my diploma and high school transcripts arrived.

My husband went to pick it up, but when he got to the counter he realized he had left his wallet with his IFE identification at the house. The postal clerk wouldn’t give him the package without the ID, so he headed home. On the way, his moto ran out of gas. He walked to the nearest gas station, which never is as near as you would like, and begged the gas attendant to give him a little gas to get home, since he had left his wallet there. The gas attendant guy knew my husband, and gave him 20 pesos of gas. He rushed home, got his wallet and headed back to the post office, picked up the package, then paid the gas attendant and BAM, wouldn’t you know it, on the way back home, he got a flat tire. So pretty much, it took the entire day to pick up this package.

Then the 10th requirement was the plan y programa que ampare los estudios realizados en el extranjero original y 2 copias traducidas (my college transcripts and 2 copies translated into Spanish.) Again, I had this here in México and never had occasion to use it. So after a panicked search among my papers, I found it. I contacted a friend who still lived in NE and asked if she would do this great favor for me and have my transcripts notarized and apostillized and perhaps blessed.

When I went to the DHL office to send these bad boys (my high school diploma and my University transcripts) on their way, I discovered that I only had enough to pay for one box to the States. So the things for NE and the things for PA went to my brother in PA with a request that he send the NE things on through the U.S. mail.

When my friend in NE received the documents, she trooped to the capital to try and get an apostille. There they told her it would need to be notarized first. So she went to the University notary and there was told that the transcripts were too old (again thanks!) and would need to be reissued to be notarized. So I requested a new transcript via fax from México to be sent to her. Wouldn’t you know it, there was a financial hold on my account. After several emails back and forth, I was informed that I would need to pay my Perkins loan in full in order to receive new transcripts. At 19 cents interest per day for 7 years, the grand total would be close to $2000 usd or about $23,000 pesos. No Manches! Well, thank you for your time, but that just won’t be possible at the moment.

So I asked my friend to send the old transcripts (which were nonetheless still official) back to my brother in PA, so that he could send them back to me with the other documents. He thought my mom had already sent the other documents to México, so he sent a separate letter with the transcripts. I received them 2 weeks later with no other issues besides having failed in procuring the apostille for that particular document.

The next step is having my high school diploma, high school transcripts and University transcripts and the apostilles translated by a Perito Traductor. It can’t be just anyone, it has to be the person authorized by the state with this special seal. Unfortunately, the person who we went to in the past to have this little stamp put on, died. So I am now in the process of trying to locate some other person with this little stamp. Since the gathering of the papers has taken 3 months, I can’t even guess as to how long this second part will take.

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