Medicine & Poison

It's 10 pm on a Thursday and a mexican woman i don't know is giving me an injection in my butt.  I am lying face down on her sofa.  "This will hurt for only for a while", she says knowingly.  It didn't hurt much at first, but then it really starts to hurt in about 20 seconds.  But I've had worse pain than that.  I just breathe and try to relax.   "Women were born for pain," she says, again somewhat knowingly.  "It starts with getting our ears pierced, (which in Mexico, they do very early on, as babies,) and then continues with the hits that life is full of."  

Why am I lying on a stranger's sofa getting an injection in my butt?  I have been sick, it seems ever since I returned to Mexico.  One bad cold, bad cough,the normal flu, another cold, then carbon monoxide poisoning from the gas boiler in my small apartment, and another cold that has returned.  I NEVER get sick normally.  It could be stress and lack of good veggies, but my friend Omar tells me I simlply MUST go get an injection.  Here in Mexico, shots in the ass are a normal part of staying healthy.  I am skeptical.  What's in this shot?  Usually penicillin they tell me.   The "doctor", who is no doctor, has a house above the pharmacy.  Omar wants me to feel better.  I tell him, it's a virus, and antibiotics don't work on viruses.  But he insists that this will help me.  He is adamant.  He is taking it as a national insult that I don't trust in Mexico.  I am intrigued. The lady posing as a doctor speaks about me in the third person.  Omar tells her "She speak Spanish fluently".  She continues to talk like I am not present. This happens frequently wherever I go.  Once in a while I interrupt and ask her a question she can't answer, like, what drug exactly is she going to give me. She realizes I can speak Spanish like a Mexican and talks to me directly. "Oh, these are not drugs!" she exclaims, like I had just insulted her.  But she couldn't really tell me what they were.  They're not herbs, not drugs, not chemicals?  Come on now.  I studied latin and know what an antiobiotic's name sound like.  I simply have a hard time believing in blind Mexican faith like Omar does. "But you have a bacterial infection!" she states with impunity.  "You have a fungus on the tongue, just look at those little granitas!"  I feel like I'm in a time share presentation.  "She has a fever too," Omar pipes in. "Well, that means there is an infection!"  She exclaims.  Yeah, a VIRAL infection that CANNOT be cured with antibiotics, I'm thinking.  "You are just afraid", she states boldly.

"I'm not afraid", I respond defensively.  I'm just skeptical.  "Soy sceptica es todo". She didn't know what that word meant.  I am sure I am using it correctly.  "it's just that I am not sure they are going to work."  They are after all, NOT cheap, about 26 bucks for one injection.  The hard sell is wearing me down.  I stop trying to figure out what it is and just  go upstairs.  After I get my shot, Omar gets his and he is a bit of a baby about the pain.  That's when she tell me about women and pain.  "Men are less strong in matters like this." continues the so-called medical sage. Meanwhile, she is trying to upsell us on a full package of shots over the course of one or two years that will really benefit us and we will never be sick again.  Sure, and a good way to ensure monthly income so she can pay for all the alcohol in her fully stocked bar, I think to myself as my eyes scan slowly over all the specialty tequilas and other strong stuff in her house.  She also tells me that I shouldn't bathe for 3 days because if the skin is cleansed, the injection will come out through the skin and it won't work as well.  Hmm.  wish I had had a bath before I went for my shot.  I don't believe any of this.  Also, we shouldn't drink anything cold or frozen, and avoid drafts, and don't eat pork.  Okay.  Mexicans have a thing about drinking anything cold when you're sick.  No chills, no wind, no cold.  I mean, part of it makes sense. but it's so damn hot in this part of the country, it makes me grumpy.  I plan to drink all the cold drinks I want. And pork is the national meat here.  We'll see how I feel tomorrow. 

Tomorrow:  Well, I have had no miraculous recovery, but I do need a bath and soon.  I've been cleaning fan blades and all the surfaces of the huge wooden table and chairs that are taking up space in this house I'm renting. I don't think anyone has looked under them for a decade; probably because they're so damned heavy they could rupture a hernia.  Maddie got fleas yesterday and that put a wrench in an otherwise sleepy day of rest. Flea powders, sprays, etc. are lined up on my counter. When they say you shouldn't inhale it or touch it with your hands and to keep away from children and pets, it makes me wonder why I am thinking of putting on my dogs skin. One more war to wage.  Early this morning my friend Julie texts me to say there's a flu epidemic in Mexico City that's killing off people. Coincindently this is where I had planned to visit, tomorrow, in fact for a week.  I told her to stop watching the news.  Good thing I had that miraculous injection.  

Later that week:

I postponed the trip to the Capital and I think I have won the flea war; nothing like a good vacuum cleaner as a weapon.  I broke down and got a mini shop vac and have been sucking up a storm after reading everything about them on the internet. Scary. The place is in shock.  I think a good title for a book I must write will be:  Cleaning up Mexico, one apartment at a time. Forget the war on drugs, Sandrina has her vacuum and she knows where you live.  By the way, the location of the shot in my ass promptly turned dark purple, had a raised hard and painful bump for 6 weeks and I did not feel better any quicker.  But Omar swears it cured him.

My Birthday & Other Stuff

In this little domicile, on Calle Aquiles Serdan, Col. Emiliano Zapata, the door opens directly onto the street.  At dusk I hear the sounds of kids playing out there, running and running past the door.  I like to catch pieces of their spanish; they speak more clearly and loudly than most people I talk to.  I guess if I was trying to sleep or concentrate, all this noise might be annoying but I

am  just putting groceries and stuff  in the tiny kitchen, trying to find room in the mini fridge.  Even the dog constantly barking next door, has become something got used to.   That and the constant sound of someone's music playing in the background and noisy vehicles rumbling by over the cobblestones.  It just seems to be part of the ambience. But my favourite sound is the man who sells bread:  "Pan y boliiiiiillooooos"  -  "Bread and Bunnnnnsssss" he sings in his beautiful tenor voice.  He carries a super big and shallow basket on his head along with a little foldable wooden stand like the waiters have and when someone wants his bread, he flips open the stand, places the big basket on it like a huge serving tray and voila.  I can hear every transaction taking place on the street. There is really very little privacy  here. The windows are usually always covered by my collection of sarongs, but when it gets really hot, I draw them open to let in the breeze ( and the dust and the insects).  And yes, cockroaches do fly.  I nailed one with the egg lifter the other day, but it's too much trouble cleaning the egg lifter, so last night I shooed the second on out the door and onto the street before my dog got ahold of it.

I found a beautiful green baby bird yesterday.  It was sitting on the sidewalk near my door, sleeping with its little head tucked into its wing.  Very tiny and too young to fly and had one bad leg.  I know I should know better but I just couldn't leave the thing to get eaten by a cat.  It was a lovely green and yellow, it's feathers hadn't reached their full potential of colour yet.  I found a little plastic bag and used it to hold him and try to feed him some water.  He hopped around fine and looked okay, but just kept wanting to sleep.  I placed him in an open shoe box after he started to look poorly, his head was pulled back and he was struggling to stand up.  I said a little prayer for him and told him how beautiful he was and then he just stopped moving.  So perfect in his stillness.  

There are lots of parrots wild here and many in cages as pets.  Also I see lots of canaries, (surprisingly not all yellow either) for sale in cages at one of the vets, probably not expensive, and they sound so lovely.  But I don't think I could keep a bird in a cage.  It's just sad.  Or maybe I could be convinced if I knew it had been born in captivity and couldn't survive without being taken care of. . . . I could sleep at night knowing that it needed me.  When I get a place with an outside, I dream of having birds singing there.

The other day my dancing buddy Omar took me to a section of town where it seems all real people live, it's a neighbourhood called Pitillal, named after the river that runs near it, and instead of a neighbourhood, it's more like a little city within a city.  Everything is much cheaper and there is everything there; services, shops, church, etc.  There was a fair going on for the last eight days in the Plaza and we walked through the markets, eating food and me going crazy for comfortable flip flops (finally!) inexpensive underwear and cool knock off  sunglasses each for less then 6 dollars.  A man selling sweet bread tried to rob me of 50 pesos, thankfully Omar made a point of counting back my change.  He also made a point of bartering with every vendor.  At the sunglass stand, he was having a challenge convincing the seller to go down from 75 to 65 pesos.  "Okay, I'll make you a bet", he said to the vendor.  H took out a coin. "If it's heads we pay 75 and if its tails we pay 65! Whaddya say?"  The vendor, bored I'm sure and perhaps wanting something fun to do and after all, being Mexican and never refusing a bet, said okay.  We won!   At midnight they would light the big pyrotechnic castle we saw them working on in the street, all made of wood and fireworks.  It would be spectacular, but we couldn't stay that long to see it burn.

A few days earlier on my birthday, I was treated to a lovely dinner under a huge palapa called Muaritius in old town.  There was only one other table occupied.  The waiter did everything to serve us impeccably and before I could finish my appetizer, two singers with guitars showed up and sang me Las Mananitas, plus two or three other very lovely Mexican ballads.  I had to choke back tears, because truly, the words to these songs can hardly be translated, but they are so full of heart.  Dinner was an exquisite meal of steak and prawns.  And when my surprise birthday cake arrived, the most perfect chocolate cake in the world, the staff all came and sang Las Mananitas again.  I love this.  Then the tradition is to have you take a big bite out of the cake, with only your mouth. "Que le muerda, que le muerda!" " Bite it, bite it!" they all shout, and you do it, and hopefully nobody shoves the cake into your face.  I cut a piece for the whole staff; they were all so nice.

So, a big birthday.  I spent the afternoon having my hair done; my mom's present to me.  I got many emails and a couple of phone calls and in general it was perfect.  After the lovely dinner, I grabbed the leftovers and went salsa dancing.