Next Year or Manana—Both Mean “Wait and Hope”

Next Year or Manana—Both Mean “Wait and Hope”

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            Living several years in Montana, known as “Next Year Country” because of vagaries of climate and other erratic conditions, was good transitional training for relocating to Mexico, “Manana Country”.

            Consider mail delivery. Anyone in a small town on the north-central Montana plains will tell you that a letter from either coast takes four days to arrive. Overnight or express delivery also takes four days. That’s just the way it is. One learns to shrug and compensate.

            Last week, I received my first two pieces of Christmas mail. Was I ever excited! I checked the post marks and did the math: four days to leave Montana, two days to arrive at the border where the mail is transferred to the dusty saddlebags of the man holding the lead rope of a burro. The saddlebags are slung over the back of his true-footed pack animal, along with provisions for two months. Man and beast pick their way through cactus on dry desert trails and slog over treacherous mountain passes. When they reach the coastal city where I live, the mail is sorted for delivery by a man on a scooter. By the time an important letter is delivered, urgent mail is no longer urgent. Maybe that’s a bonus.

            Last week was a busy week. Lupe transferred to Los Cabos to work for the next month, possibly two. So I had to learn to do all the things that he had been doing for me. One of those chores concerns my internet company. For four months we have paid for wireless internet, a service we do not receive. Why not? A shrug, “No modems; come back next week”. This time we were told, “Come back February 26”. 

            So early on the 26^th, I will climb aboard the Sabalo Centro bus and ask the driver to let me off at Lola Beltran on Olas Altas. From there I will walk downhill about eight blocks to the Megacable office. I will probably be told, possibly in sign language, “Come back in April.” I’ll go through the motions. Likely I will trudge empty-handed up the hill to catch the bus home.

            The hardest thing for me to deal with is the water heater, which has only worked sporadically since I moved here in November. 

            I admit I don’t have a degree in plumbing. Mostly I avoid anything to do with electricity or natural gas. Necessity is the mother of learning. When I remodeled my house in Harlem a few short years ago, I learned to change a light fixture. I replaced several fixtures without killing myself. When I moved here, I had to re-learn to cook with gas. I quickly mastered lighting the burners and oven and have lived to tell it.

            But the water heater was in the final stages of a slow death. The pilot flame had to be re-lit every couple days. In the beginning, I waited for Lupe to be home to light the pilot so I could have hot water. He would take the key, a flashlight, and candle lighter and go around the corner to the water-heater room. In an hour or two I could shower.

Now I had to learn to do it myself. I unlocked the door and swung it wide for the gas fumes to disperse into the open air. Holding my nose, I reached in and twisted the control to “off”. It’s in Spanish, but no matter. Starting from way outside, I approached the room slowly, holding my arm rigidly extended, and triggered the candle lighter several times to make sure it didn’t shoot four-foot flames from escaped gas. Once I deemed it safe, I entered and turned the control to “pilot” and held down the red knob the requisite fifteen seconds or longer. Then I turned the control to “max”, which means what you think it should. With good luck the burner under the heater ignited. Sometimes I had to repeat the process four or five or six times before the burner caught flame. I got pretty good at it. I mastered my fear. Mostly.

Last night I spent half an hour repeating the routine. I am well-acquainted with the line going to the pilot. That line has a hole in it. No wonder it doesn’t work. The real wonder is that I have not blown myself into a crispy critter. I got my neighbor Frank to take a look. After a few more unsuccessful attempts to light the burner, we murmured R-I-P and locked the door on the carcass of the dead, leaky heater. Frank phoned our landlady. “She’ll order a new electric heater. She’ll arrange an electrician to install it.”

When? Manana? Or maybe next year?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 13, 2014

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Impatient in a Virtuous Country

 Impatient in a Virtuous Country

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            Patience is a virtue. I live where patience is exercised on a daily basis. Therefore I live among a virtuous people indeed. 

            I, however, have been found out. I stand revealed as one naked in my impatience, not virtuous at all. Previously I would have described myself as patient. More patient than most I might have said with a hint of a smirk. I might have felt a bit smugly righteous. 

            If “instant gratification” is the mantra of people in the United States, then “manana” is the mantra of the people of Mexico. 

            Mexico runs on a cash economy. Mention checks and I receive a raised brow with you-gotta-be-kidding look, a snicker or outright hee-haw laughter. I didn’t mean foreign checks. I wanted to open a bank account here and use local-bank checks. It isn’t done. First, I have to have resided here a year before I may open a bank account. Every bill to pay, every purchase is by cash although credit card use is becoming more prevalent for larger items. Otherwise, grab  your wallet and count the pesos. One thing sure, no overdrafts. And you always know exactly how much money you have. 

            Cash society equates with long lines. I go to the bank to buy pesos, take a number and wait in line. When paying bills, which one also does in person, one moves through roped lanes and eventually arrives at the counter to shell out the pesos. 

            One eventually develops a tolerance which becomes an “it-is-the-way-it-is” acceptance. Que, sera, sera.  

            Finally came the day I waited patiently in line and signed up for internet. That took “forever”, but fortunately, I had my interpreter friend with me, because nobody spoke Ingles. Imagine me doing that task by sign language. 

            My internet comes by way of Megacable, pronounced mega-caw-blay, emphasis on caw. I bought a television, telephone and wireless internet bundle for $399 pesos a month. Exchange rate that day was $12.40. Uh, huh.

            I swore that I would never buy television service, but I did. In fact, last night my friend and I sat together and watched the championship fights for Mexico. I had five pesos on the red trunks. Quite the rousing battle which ended in a tie. Re-match in January. Patience. 

            The Megacable lady told us hook-up could take from one to twelve days. I snorted because my neighbor Frank had been waiting twelve days for his service at that point. “And what time of day is best for you?” “Morning,” I answered. 

            Everyday Frank and I met outside our doors to commiserate. No service yet. On day nineteen for Frank, one week for me, at 4:30 in the afternoon, the Megacable truck pulled up and two young men knocked on Frank’s door. I grabbed my paperwork, tripped over my feet scrambling out my door. “Me too, Me too?” I poked my paperwork at them. One young man scanned my papers, pointed to Frank, then back to me. 

            At 6:30 they hooked me up to all the services, made sure the television worked and bounded out my door. Oh, by the way, they didn’t have the wireless modems with them; come back manana. Wireless or cable, what did I care, as long as I could use internet. Gleefully I sat turned on my computer and prepared to send my article off to the newspaper, deadline tomorrow. I could not get internet to work. Computer whiz I am not. I fiddled with this wire and that wire and this button and that clicker. Nothing. I checked my hook-ups and they seemed okay to me. 

            Fifteen minutes later Lupe walked in the door to be met by me, red-faced, sweating, teary and grinding my teeth. “Your television works perfectly,” I snarled, “but my internet does not work at all.” Instantly I felt ashamed. “I am so frustrated. Now I’ll have to go to a hotel or café in the morning to send my article and we’ll have to have the cable guys come back and . . . “

            “Calm down.” I hate it when someone says that to me. I told him the whole story. Lupe re-checked my cables and found a couple loose connections, sorted and straightened and tied my spaghetti mess of wires into order, and, magically, I had internet service. I thanked Lupe in a teensy-weensy voice.

            “I wish you could have seen yourself when I walked in the door,” he said.

            “Oh, I saw myself quite clearly, thank you,” I said, muttering a hundred “mea culpas” under my breath. I hate being exposed like that. 

            Ten days have passed and still no wireless. Maybe manana.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 19, 2013

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