Austerity

My friend Compassionate Nurse lent me some BBC series, the goodies like North & South and Cranford. She threw in an extra movie, which we watched, about bands of people who choose austere lifestyles, like Spartans or the Amish. I was thinking, who would do such a thing? And then I remembered I’d chosen to live with Miskitos and Mixtecs, who had less freedom to choose where they lived. In both places I slept on boards, slogged through horrible weather, and felt constantly hungry.

I think my worst moment was a night in a village called San Miguel. We’d walked for hours and then ridden in the back of a truck through a river and up a mountain to get there, hoping to find Reinaldo (not his real name), a man we’d met at a migrant worker’s camp in northern Mexico and who we thought had turned to Christ. He had offered to take us over the mountains to another town where we had friends, and we thought we were ready for this long day’s hike. We weren’t, so fortunately our trip took another turn. 

When we found Reinaldo’s house, we committed our first faux pas right away when we asked his wife where Reinaldo was. The terms for “he’s on his way” and “he’s not coming” are only a tone apart, and we missed that little detail and sat down to wait. (Later we found out he had slipped away when he saw us coming, not wanting to be seen in his village with foreign bringers of a false religion.) His wife, I’m sure, wondered what we were up to. We practiced all our Mixtec on her, but even Robert soon ran out of words, and she wasn’t offering any conversation, so we took a walk up the mountain path. We came to an altar of rocks with dead flowers and dried blood on it, and realized we’d found the town’s altar to Saint Mark, the rain god whose day of appeasement matched Saint Mark’s festival day, so shared the name. We knew this was no Catholic saint and wondered if we offended by being here.

Returning to our hostess’ wooden shack, we found her preparing supper, the usual beans, greens, salsa and tortillas, and since we were still hanging around, though for no reason she could see after her plain answer, she had no choice but to feed us. After that I committed the second (or was it third or fourth; we were racking them up) faux pas. I had to use the wilderness restroom, so out I went, and on my way back I found a cut bouquet of bright red flowers on the ground. I picked them up and brought them into the house. “What are these flowers?” I asked, proud I could say this much. She mumbled that she didn’t know. I thought she’d misunderstood my words, so I slowed down and enunciated more clearly. She glanced at me, then at her daughter, then looked away, mumbling even more quietly that she didn’t know. I insisted. They were flowers she’d cut herself. Finally Robert put me out of my misery, “Anne, they’re poppies. Put them down!” The daughter eventually picked them up and slipped out the door.

“Oh!” The light dawned. Glancing down, I could now see (observant person that I am) that there was a slit around the enormous bulb from which the white gum had been harvested: the base for heroin. I’d just asked this woman about a sale of illegal drugs. Now she probably really wanted us out of there, but it was dark, and she was stuck with us for the night. The bedroom was a second wooden shack with nothing but two beds, both made of sticks. She piled her kids in one bed with her and gave us the other. Rain leaked through the roof and wind reached through the slats of wood. We were at 7000 feet. We covered ourselves with our plastic rain jackets and slept in our boots. No, didn’t sleep. We shivered until first light when, after a breakfast of tortillas, beans, and salsa, we finally got that little detail of the tone pair figured out and realized we should be on our way. Down the mountain road we went to wait forlornly in the town square for a return truck. We did not feel welcome.

The river had swollen from the rain, and we took our chances fording it in the truck, but over we went, eager to get home. And from there it was supposed to be a plain hike, but I’d picked up a virile bunch of giardia bugs and could barely walk. I kept thinking what would have happened if I’d attempted the all day hike over the mountain with two men. Whew. When we got to a doctor a few days later, he was impressed with the virility of my giardia bugs—had seen nothing quite like it. Wondered how I’d managed. I wondered, too. But after I knocked them out with drugs, we went back. Austerity is a relative thing.