Acceptance

For many years now I have fought an undeclared battle against things that I see in my Mexico that I dislike immensely. All these things can be summed up into two words: ignorance and indifference.

Garbage

It seems far too common place that so many people don't stop to think about what throwing a piece of paper, a can of Tecate or a disposable coffee cup from Starbuck will do to the city they live in. I go about my day and I see garbage strewn about and I grind my teeth telling myself "Mexicans are not dirty, we are just ignorant". I include myself in this collective "we" because I too am ignorant about so many things so I am no one to judge but I am someone to speak up and say "PUT THE GARBAGE IN IT'S PLACE!"

Public Transportation and Traffic in General

As a pedestrian: it has been too many times to count the following scenario: I am walking on the street and the light turns to red, allowing me, the pedestrian, the allotted time to cross said street.  Just as I am stepping off the curb (at times with a stroller in tow) and a car screeches around the corner, either braking to let me walk or speeding up as I freeze to see what the driver will do.

As a driver

The public transportation operators, in this case combi and bus drivers, cut me off, stop abruptly at an intersection without pulling over to the curb to pick someone up or drop someone off, or cut traffic off completely.

I am not going to be naïve and say these are just examples of ignorance because there is a large indifference factor; the thought “why should I care what someone else does or says, I am going to do what I want” or like my friend Alex says “que se haga la voluntad de dios pero en las mulas de mi comadre” which loosely translated into “whatever happens as long as it happens to someone else”.  I have accepted these daily happenstances as a part of my life but also as something that I can actively become a part of changing.  For example, I pick up garbage in public spaces, this is my home and I want it to look nice and it is the right thing to do. 

After all we all live in the same home and this indifference I seem to be experiencing so very often stems from the ignorance of this fact: we all are in this together, same planet, same garbage, same solution. We are the solution as much as we are the problem.  This I can accept with grace and contentedness to become a part of the solution. Or like the infamous Televisa campaign asks Mexican society collectively: ¿Y tu? ¿Tienes el valor o te vale?

Morning Rush

T he morning ritual of Monday through Friday is pretty much the same in Mexico as anywhere else I have been. With school age children to get ready in the morning, rushing and hurrying is diurnal process that just can't be avoided. Today, however, the morning scurry came to a screeching halt for one family. I don't know who they are, I don't know thier names. All I know is that this family also had a school age child who was hit on his or her way to school. I know this, because in my rush to be on time to my son's school, I saw a little body, still and covered by a blanket, laying in the middle of an overloaded street. To be accurate, after fighting to get my car into the turning lane, battling other drivers to get into the lane (because driving in Mexico is the definition of chaos), I saw a large truck stopped in the road. I was furious, "what the %$*! is this truck doing" I said. Then I saw a man, directing traffic, a mound of clothing on the road behind him and a group of women huddled together on the corner. It all happened so quickly, just as I turned the corner (since I couldn't go straight) I realized that the mound of clothing was a child, I could see his or her sneakers and gym uniform. "¡DIOS MIO!" I exclaimed. I couldn't help myself, I saw the women on the corner, I realized they were consoling each other, perhaps one of them was the child's mother. On the right hand side of this street corner, there is a large school. Children were in the road, at the school's enterance, yelling, crying, running, maybe trying to figure out who the child was but they were in shock. I caught myself looking at the clock, force of habit, checking to make sure we weren't late. I reviled myself for even thinking about tardiness: a child had just died as he or she hurried to school. "We can be late" I told my son, "that little boy or girl just died, we can be late..."