Making Friends in Mexico

I went over to San Miguel de Allende a few weeks ago to hang out with an old friend and colleague of mine from Bay Area days. She and her husband moved to Mexico several years ago, bought a piece of land about ten minutes from town (within a few minutes' walk of the pilgrimage village, Atotonilco), and turned the two existing structures on the property into a home and a studio/workshop. Susan is the author of six nonfiction books and Mayer, her husband, buys, sells, and collects Mexican folk art. Their spacious, luminous home and garden, recently featured in a Phoenix home magazine, are studded with folk art. They share their home with the 21-year-old son of a Mexican couple who they befriended years ago, and his new wife, who is studying English in town.

We talked a lot about our lives. Susan, for as long as I have known her, has been the Queen of Organizing. True to form, she has been busy organizing since she arrived in San Miguel. She founded the San Miguel Author's Sala (www.sanmiguelauthors.com), a brainstorming group, and a women's meditation group that meets at her home. She was afraid when she left Berkeley, she told me, that she was leaving the garden that had nurtured and sustained her for 30 years--but in fact has found even richer soil here. She does not speak much Spanish, though Mayer gets by better.

I told Susan that some gringos in Guanajuato feel superior to those in San Miguel, taking pride in feeling we are more embedded in the culture, speaking Spanish, and living among Mexicans rather than in gated communities. The speaking-Spanish part I think is part fantasy; from what I can tell, many Guanajuato gringos don't speak much Spanish.

"We hate the gated communities too!" Susan said. "We would love them to go away!" She is concerned about San Miguel's growth, that the City Council isn't putting the brakes on development. She and Mayer have been involved in a project to clean up the Laja River that empties into San Miguel. Through fund-raising, the joint Mexican and gringo volunteer group have built a gray water treatment center, and are now raising money for the second stage, a sewage treatment center. There are over 50 charities that gringos get involved in in San Miguel, including teaching English, providing hot lunches to children in nearby villages, and reducing graffiti.

All three of my Spanish teachers love San Miguel, and they don't see much difference between the expats here and the ones there. "You're all gringos, wherever you live," one of my teachers said. "I love San Miguel," she went on. "Gringos bring money, they employ people, they help the economy. I think they're great!"

The afternoon I was there, we went to a potluck at a neighbor's home. I chatted with a Brazilian guy, who was a meeting planner married to a Mexican, and with his mom, a Trinidad-born ceramic artist, visiting from Rio. And talked to a young couple--he an engineer, recent grad of the Tech of Monterrey School of Management, she an art gallery owner in San Miguel. I enjoyed mixing in a cultural salad of professionals who were ambitious, liked to talk about work, and enjoyed international travel. I made several good contacts and enjoyed networking, which I don't do much in Guanajuato. While it's easy to meet artists and musicians in Guanajuato, I don't meet many independent consultants or entrepreneurs, because Guanajuato is not a business community; its industries are the university and government. I miss connecting with other consultants, as well as women in my age group.

I ask my teachers, "Where are the Mexican women my age in Guanajuato? I don't meet them very often."

"Most of them are at home takng care of their grandchildren, or cooking," they say.

I'm ambivalent about how involved I want be with other gringos in Guanajuato. I know I'm not alone. I often hear a gringo saying, "I don't associate much with the gringo community!" --said with an air of pride, as though not relating to gringos is a superior lifestyle than relating to them. I smile ruefully when I hear this tone, recognizing it in myself; I have that same sense of misplaced pride. Yes, I do see it as misplaced. As visitors to Mexico, I think we expats go out of our way to try to accept rather than judge the different ways people live and the different values here. I see less tolerance for those differences among our own tribe. Maybe we're afraid we will be judged by other expats' behaviors?

Susan and Mayer are welcomed in their community and invited by locals to activities in their neighborhood. They go to quinceaños, baptisms, and other family celebrations. But they don't pretend to have close, intimate friendships with local people in the same way they do with fellow Americans. I wonder if the San Miguel gringos aren't more honest in admitting they aren't likely to penetrate Mexican culture that deeply.

In Barry's and my case, it's early days yet. We haven't been here that long, and we're in and out of the country. But so far, I haven't found it that easy to form friendships with Mexicans. My best friends are my teachers, who are half my age, and whom I pay. My paid friendships! I have to laugh. I don't feel badly about it, but it is true.

Mexico, Captured

I believe visual tableaus exist in every culture that capture the essence of that culture. Here is one scene I witness regularly that, in my mind, expresses the character of Mexico.

When I go to the MEGA supermarket, I walk through one of Guanajuato's darker, mustier tunnels. It's not my favorite landscape scenery, but it allows me to get to MEGA in about ten minutes, rather than the half-hour it would take heading the roundabout way, above ground, or (heaven forbid) taking a taxi.

On the other side of the tunnel, I approach a long, imposing, curving wall... a moat that separates the world outside from the castle grounds. I proceed along the wall to the parking lot, then cross it to reach the moving ramp down that will bring me to the door of MEGA.

And there, on the ramp going down, or on its neighbor ramp going up, is where I observe the scene that is a freeze-frame of Mexico.

Whoever I see, whether it's other customers or the young employees who MEGA generally hires, they are always standing still. They may be laughing, shrieking, chatting, hanging off the sides of the ramp, or playing with their shopping cart, but they are never moving forward toward the goal, not one inch. They do not keep to the right to allow others to pass. They do not position their shopping cart over to one side. They wedge themselves right in the middle of the ramp and stay right there, surrounded by their plastic bags, shopping carts, children, and friends. Even going downhill with a shopping cart that would wheel itself, they stand statue-like. If I indicate that I'd like to pass, they look surprised, as though it would never occur to them that someone might actually want to WALK on a moving walkway, whether to move their feet or to reach the destination faster.

This, to me, is Mexico.

Why Am I in Mexico?

I was at a branch of the University of Guanajuato for an appointment when I found out, without prior notice, that the person I needed to see was at the Holiday Inn. Few taxis come to this more remote university branch, but a professor who I had been chatting with offered me a lift. I climbed into his shiny black car. As we sped off, he told me he taught economics at three different universities in the area, and did a lot of driving.

"Do you like Mexico?" he asked.

"I must," I said, smiling, "or I wouldn't have bought a house here."

"I don't," he said. "I lived in Spain for four years and France for three years, and I liked Europe much better."

"Why?'"

"There's so much more culture. People read a lot more." He didn't say they were more sophisticated, but that was the implication.

Soon we arrived at the Holiday Inn, and that was the end of the conversation. But it left me to ponder. He's right. Europe is literate and worldly; Mexico isn't. There are huge gaps for me, as well, between my own values and those of many Mexicans. So why did I buy a house here with the idea of starting a new life? What brings me here?

1. I wanted something radically different from the life I'd had in the USA. There wasn't much wrong with my life there, except that I was bored from time to time, and I didn't feel challenged enough. But basically I had a comfortable and reasonably interesting life. So unlike some people I know here, I didn't embark on a life in Mexico because of anger or cynicism about the USA (although I do have those feelings sometimes). I'm not blaming the States for my reason to look elsewhere. There are a lot of things I don't like about the USA, but there are many I do (the wilderness, for one).

2. I wanted to be accessible. I didn't want to move to Tunisia or Sri Lanka or somewhere so far away that people I love could rarely visit me or vice versa. Here, I'm actually more accessible to my family and friends than I am in beautiful but remote Eureka, my other home.

3. Much as I enjoy being in Europe, I am more attracted to being in a transitional economy like Mexico's than, say, France, England, Spain, the Netherlands, or the many other European nations that, like the USA and Canada, are the "Monopoly" nations. They aren't the countries standing outside, banging on the door, wanting and hoping to play. I'm more interested in being a place that hasn't figured it out yet.

At the other extreme, I can't see myself moving to a mountain village for the rest of my life, either. Mexico satisfies my need to maintain a foothold in the world I've always known, yet experience challenges I would never face in the USA. It's a strange mix, Mexico--a modern nation, and a medieval one. Cell phones and high-speed internet and text messaging co-exist with shovels and horses. This tension excites me.

4. I want to work, and I want to work in the areas where I've developed expertise, i.e., training, facilitation and consulting...putting my professional skills to use in Spanish and in a new and different culture. Living here in what is known as the "Bajio," central Mexico, whose cities of Leon, Queretaro, Irapuato, and Silao are home to many international firms, is the perfect incubator for me. Some expats I know move to a foreign country and keep on with the livelihood they already had--writing, editing, consulting and other jobs that can be done remotely and in English. Other expats get involved in the tourist economy by starting B&B's, bars, restaurants, and so on. All well and good. But I want to be involved not with tourists but with Mexicans themselves. Who are these people, and what drives them? Are they going to develop and move forward? Using business as my vehicle, I'm not only finding out, I'm part of that question and that story.

New Place, New Self

"I'm a different person here," my friend J said last night. "I say outrageous things in Spanish that I wouldn't say in English. I'm introverted in my English-language self, but in Spanish I let it out."

I know what she means! It's so delicious to discover you aren't always trapped in that old familiar self, that a different place can make you different. I was in a meditation retreat last month with someone who said ruefully, " I thought if I changed my environment, I'd change myself." She laughed, mocking herself for such a silly thought. I wanted to say, "But it's true! Or it can be at true! It's not a silly thought!" I didn't say anything because it was a retreat where only the teacher responded.

I know, though, that it's also true that "wherever you go, there you are," at least in my case. I carry daily rituals with me and whether I'm in Eureka or England, Mexico or Mauricious, I like: coffee early in the morning, a pattern of early to bed early to rise, black felt tip pens (never ballpoint), lined journals. And sadly, I adhere to these rituals more now than I used to. I sometimes feel trapped by them. I feel sympathy for sufferers of OCD who HAVE to have a particular towel or object when they travel, or they can't relax.

Still I cling to the idea that we can be changed, that different landscapes, colors, elevations, sounds--natural or human made--have the power to evoke different selves.

I heard Isabel Allende say in an interview that she cooks and makes love in Spanish, she writes in English. When I speak Spanish, I feel the clackety clack of the sounds rising up in me, I hear the rhythm of the sounds, and I feel different, less linear. Is it any wonder that tango and salsa and rumba came from Spanish-speaking countries? And at the same time, speaking in Spanish reminds me how much I love English, with its lumplike syllables. English, my homeland. I can get tears in my eyes over English, I feel such appreciation for its richness.

Colorful cubist Guanajuato with its deep pinks and reds brings out different inner striations in me than flat, brown, watery Eureka. In Guanajuato I walk the crooked stairs and steps and alleys; in Eureka, I bicycle the farmlands and kayak the estuaries. One isn't bad and one isn't good. They each enrich and enlarge me.

Customer Service, Part Two

I have now completed all four of the customer-service sessions I led for the fancy hotel. I definitely have to institute a ground rule: "no side conversations." I always do this in trainings in the States but forgot to here, and a few of the younger staff (boys who look like they're about 20) were whispering and cutting up a little. Not an inordinate amount, and they really are cute, but it does distract from the class. Plus it makes it much harder for me to understand Spanish when there's background noise.

I'm also going to tell everyone next time they don't have to ask my permission to go to the bathroom!

We made a list of complaints that cause stress, and role played them:
--Air conditioning doesn't work.
--Not hot water.
--Wine is acidic.
--Meal wasn't what was expected.
--Maintenance problems at night.
--We roared when a participant, a cleaning woman, told us that a customer complained that the bed, which had wheels normally held inside a container, got out of the structure and rolled all the way to the door.

I suggested to the participantes to offer sympathy not just solutions, especially when customers were annoyed or angry. Often, I said, people don't just want the situation fixed, they want a sense that the person who is serving them genuinely cares and is willing to listen. This is my theory. But whether in Mexico or the States, I have a hard time getting employees who are hired to offer solutions to get out of the "fix-it" mode and into offering sympathy as well, not just a rote, "I'll correct it."

We discussed the best way to let a client know you'll get back to them with a solution. I said, with business guests and/or clients from linear cultures (like the U.S. and Germany), Mexican vagueness can be frustrating. Giving some kind of precise timeframe would reassure the client. In my case, at a furniture shop recently, I asked when the manager, who I needed to talk to, would be back. I got the usual: "Ahorita" (means, "soon." But "soon" could be ten minutes or a couple of hours). You also hear "un ratito" (a little while. But again, you never know how long "a little while" means). Precision does not exist here!

I asked the participants if there were any cultural groups who predictably got annoyed--expecting it to be Americans. Wrong! They said Americans and Canadians were pretty forgiving; it was the Mexicans and Italians who got more irritated.

The action statements that several of them came up with delighted me: "I will not promise what I can't deliver," "I will offer solutions, not excuses," "I will communicate specific, concrete responses to guests," "I will not chatter with my coworkers in front of guests." I don't hear commitments like these very often here.

Customer-Service Training, in Mexico

Yikes! I did it! I just led my first real training in Mexico. I say "real," because although I've taught 4 sessions of a masters-level university class, it didn't feel fully "mine," because I was sub-ing for a professor. In this case, I contracted with my first autonomous client in Mexico. I'm halfway through giving a customer-service training to a staff of 16 reception people, waiters, and cleaners in a small, luxury hotel in Guanajuato.

From my discussions with the General Manager I knew the clientele were Mexican, U.S., Canadian, some European (mostly German), and Japanese.

I told the participants at the beginning, how pleased I was to have the opportunity to work with them, because I deeply believed that focusing on their abilities in customer service would help them gain more success, reach a higher level, and earn a higher salary. I do believe that. Excellent customer service is still so rare in Mexico that those who do give it, immediately stand out.

We started with self-introductions. I asked each person to please stand and introduce themselves and tell us their role in the hotel. One by one, I gave them feedback. In most cases, I asked them to do it again, slowing down especially when saying their name. Latin names consist of several names (First name, father's last name, mother's last name) and I'm sure are easy to understand if you are from the culture, but can become a blur to the outsider. I asked some to also speak up because their voices were so soft.

The manager had told me he wanted them to be more approachable and warmer with hotel guests, and not to answer with just a "yes" or "no." Some, he said, felt intimidated by the well-off status of the guests (the higher-cost rooms are $300 U.S. a night). So I focused on warmth: showing warmth with your body language, taking initiative and approaching clients. I told them of my experience once in the States, of chatting with a colleague at a conference and hearing her describe her different houses. She had a house in California, a house in the Sierras, a third in Hawaii. With each house, I suddenly realized my body was crowding into itself; I was slowly but unmistakably withdrawing from her. Smiling, of course, nodding, but withdrawing. How could I have a conversation with someone who had three houses? How could I even be in the same room?

I was making the point that feeling small is a universal experience that everyone goes through somewhere, sometime, but the main point about customer service is thinking about the other person and their needs, not yourself.

I hope I didn't come across condescending. I do think "feeling small" is universal; on the other hand the gap between the employees' standard of living, and those of the hotel guests, is much wider than the gap I felt with my colleague.

When we were discussing body language, I learned that the Mexican custom in hotels and restaurants is for employees to keep their hands behind their backs. I was told this after suggesting in a role-play to practice opening the arms and revealing hands.

After the session I discussed this with the General Manager. He gave me full permission to share my expertise and not feel bound by hotel custom. But we agreed, a habit like how you hold the body didn't begin with employment at the hotel; caution, passivity--stances that apply everywhere in life, but start in the body--are learned in the home and family, years before adulthood.

It's so complicated! Maybe coming across more openly and confidently WOULD be seen as rude or inappropriate in Mexico. On the other hand, many of the clients are not Mexican and don't necessarily admire deference. My hope is that at the least, the participants will see more options and feel more open to trying different approaches. I'll have another session tomorrow; more will be revealed to all of us, I'm sure.

Nighttime in Guanajuato

In the U.S., I never liked the night as much as the day. I'm an early riser, not a night owl, so my juice fades. I have never found much to do in the evening. I couldn't hike. Reading made me sleepy. I don't dance much, don't go to bars. I felt limited. I remember writing a theme in the weight-loss newsletter I used to publish, called "The Dark Night of the Eater," because nighttime snacking is so common among overeaters. One year, when I lived in Washington State, after the solstice passed, I checked the newspaper everyday faithfully for sunset times and would record the time in my journal, noting how much more light accumulated, slowly, a minute or two a day. It gave me hope. I sound like I have SAD, but I don't think I do.

I still feel more limited by night, but I'm affected less because I live in Guanajuato, a more southerly places. Here it is, 7:09 p.m., it's cooled off, yet it's still light. I love the soft air, as I sit on our 'front' terrace, facing the street. It's nighttime by the clock but not by the amount of light. In Guanajuato, the streets belong to the people. I can leave the house, go out awandering at 11:00 pm or midnight, and be surrounded by people and activities, whereas in Eureka if I went out past 9:00 in our neighborhood, though I wouldn't feel physically unsafe, I'd feel a little empty, a little sad, because no one's around. Being alone in the wilderness feels fine; being alone in urban environments feels 'off,' because I expect peoople. People are what make a town, a town.

Visiting San Blas, a coastal town north of Puerto Vallarta, a few years ago before Barry and I bought our house in Guanajuato, we met a German couple and had dinner with them. I remember so well what the guy said: 'In Germany, 'nice' people don't go out after dark. The only people out at night are the Turks.'"

In Guanajuato, nice people do go out after dark. The streets almost swim with people at night. I love living in a place where nighttime hasn't been abandoned. On the other hand, sometimes I walk around at night, like I did last night after the symphony, and I was so aware of how young everyone seems. All the chicas who could barely walk or even stand up with their boyfriends hanging onto them. The only 'older' folks looked like tourists. I wanted more middle-aged people out and about, like my neighbor R, in her 60s; she watches TV at night. Or another neighbor, N, same age: I never see her out at night.

Meanwhile I notice as darkness descends that the more powerful streetlights on Tecolote--the ones that, as one friend who lives up the street put it, "they make the street look like Costco!," are no longer in use. I don't know if the city just undid a switch somewhere, or, more likely, some part stopped working and they haven't gotten around to fixing it, but it's a blessing.

Oh yes. It's cooler at night. I like that, too.







Eureka, CA, USA

Showing Up

I'm back in Guanajuato after seven weeks in California (doing training for clients there) and in England, visiting my in-law family, and hiking in beautful mountainous Wales and coastal Pembrokeshire. I have not posted in ages and ages because I am beset by house travails that have discouraged my writing spirit.

Yesterday, meditating, when I felt so disheartened by the house scene, I thought, "Well, I just show up." In periods of lowness, as I'm in right now, I show up. I meditate. I go to la prepa (the local high school, where, last spring, I signed up to swim) to re-enroll. (I was unsuccessful--the pool is closed til August), but I did go, and that's what counts. I join the gym. I do Pilates. I go to the "Lucha Contra Cancer"-- "Fight Against Cancer") center about scheduling the talk that the coordinator wants me to give on goal-setting. She wasn't there, but I was told when she would be, so once again, I didn't have success, but at least I went. I buy spinach. I clean up. I go through all the motions, even if I have to force myself to, and after awhile, lo, I feel better.