Wednesday 28th October, 2009
OK, so it's not Panama. But a few weeks in Mexico will do in the meantime while our plans reconfigure themselves...(spoken like a true person in charge of her destiny..)
As part of my 'personal development', the office has kindly agreed to post me off to Mexico city for 2 weeks to support the National AIDS Authority here and put together some sort of plan to provide techincal support for NGOs providing prevention services there. (Thankfully, at no time did the fact that my Spanish is dire seem to present any obstacle to this otherwise fine intention...)
A friend has kindly agreed to put me up at his for the duration of my trip - a decision I suspect, that he will come to regret.
A small indication of why he should regret this generous offer betrayed me at the airport, as before even leaving home soil, and in my nervous apprehension of the trip, I tried to convince the lady at check-in that I was a terrorist.
Standard question: “Did you pack anything for anyone in your bags Ma’am?”
(Flashback to the two bottles of vintage wine stuffed in for Jose Antonio…)
“Yes, 2 bottles of wine.”
Pause.
Surprised look from the check-in lady.
“I see. But you know the person?”
“Oh, yes…”
Idiot..
Good job I’m on top form for Jose Antonio…he won’t be disappointed. Especially if he was expecting Mr Bean….
After an uneventful flight (unless you consider watching the film 'Up', having a weep, eating my bodyweight in air-packed food and making the guy next to me want to kill me 'eventful'...), we arrived in Washington for a two-hour stopover. (I say two hour, but by the time I'd got through customs, given my fingerprints, eyeballs, shoes AND socks, inside leg measurement and parents' full birth certificate, I had about 45 minutes left...)
True to US form, the sheer impulse to buy - even in Washington Dulles airport lounge - was overpowering (am I weak?) and I spent the entire 2 hours (45 minutes) walking up and down the concourse browsing Obama and anti-Obama memorabilia...(guess what's coming in your stocking this year family and friends.."Don't blame me – I voted McCain and Palin!"), oversized bags of unfathomable sweets with six degrees of separation to a peanut, bottles of soda or milk/ice cream derivatives and bags of crisps that are purpotedly 'good' for high cholestorol. Heaven.
I finally docked aboard my final leg, and promptly fell asleep for the whole four hour flight. (That concept note is just going to have to wait..)
As I arrived in Mexico and navigated my sleepy way through customs, I was stopped by some guards, just as I approached the final lap, who drew me aside in front of a red button and asked me to press it. (Nuclear war? Who did they think I was?) As I pressed it, it flashed a green light, and they smiled at me and said "Welcome to Mexico". I still haven't figured out whether this was Mexican Russian roulette, or just a gag. What if it had flashed red?
Anyway, still a bit confused by that, I ran thankfully into Jose Antonio who came to meet me in a dashing green jacket and swanky diplomats car (which he claimed was a bureaucrats car...I beg to differ..) He drove me back to his yet more swanky and totally unscathed apartment replete with black leather and chrome interior design of my dreams, and perfectly untouched whitewashed walls, in addition to glass bar full of tequila from through the ages. Heaven #2.
We paid a quick visit to the supermarket downstairs where I bought some 'tuna' (not the over-fished variety - but the prickly pear sort), watermelon, blueberries, hersheys chocolate milk that I would come to regret, (see below) and 'pán del muertos', the traditional bread/cake (though careful with treading that line - this is 'bread' to Mexicans....which makes me wonder what 'cake' looks like..) for the upcoming 'I see dead people' festival the following weekend. Indeed, Mexico has a self- avowed strange relationship to their dead, though possibly a more healthy one than our own since the dead are spirits to be remembered and celebrated every year for a long weekend, and deserving even of their own national holiday, and not a scary force of evil to be used to bribe sweets out of people under a pretext of Halloween.
This special festival, possibly the largest event on the somewhat bursting-at-the-waist Mexican calendar, is celebrated across the country, with special altars being dressed up in honour of the dead, boasting orange marigold petals, 'pán del muertos' and other preferred foods of the recently or anciently departed, candles, incense, cigarettes, sweets, beautiful imitation lace paper cut-outs with comical skeleton figures in comical positions (think Funny Bones and you're there..) and skull-shaped sugar sweets, often with the name of the dead imprinted on their forehead. Nice.
Oh, and sometimes, hanged puppet dolls. Just to add to the joviality.
After scoffing my basket of supermarket goods within seconds, I flirted with the flashy Apple Mac computer in my room (JL hadn't emailed - bad husband - you're going to be demoted...) before collapsing into the sofa bed and dreaming of the terrifying Spanish-filled days to come.