by Janet Blaser
Overcoming nuanced language barriers that limit understanding
Overcoming subtle, unspoken, nonverbal signals
Assuming, out of arrogance, that because we come from the U.S.A. or Canada we know better
Keeping to ourselves, staying safe in the “Expat Enclave”
Dealing with bureaucracies that grind slowly, make no sense
Unknowingly assuming an attitude of entitlement, especially in restaurants and shops
Expecting that we don’t need to wait in line like everyone else
Expecting that people will keep appointments and be on time
Disinfecting everything we eat, especially fresh fruit and vegetables, without exception
Not eating on the street
Using receptacles for toilet paper
Using bottled water for drinking, without exception
The everyday inconveniences we don’t encounter in the U.S.A.
We have an ongoing debate where I live among those of us who have relocated to Mexico: Are we expats or immigrants? The definition of “immigrant” is one that brings us on par with our Mexican sisters and brothers who seek a better and permanent life in another country.
Some say the word “expat” has the connotation of being “apart from” and “better than.” I’ve read that “expat” is often interpreted as one who has no interest in learning about the country or culture where they live and see their place as being temporary. Expats are often snowbirds who come for the winter to escape the harsh climates of El Norte.
An immigrant, on the other hand, fully embraces where they live and intends to live in their new country indefinitely. These are subtle differences yet very meaningful. The term “immigrant” integrates me into my Mexican life. I come from a family of immigrants who left Eastern Europe for America in the early 1900s, wanting to escape oppression, discrimination and limited opportunity.
At the end of 2016, after the last presidential election in the U.S., I bought a condominium in downtown Durham, North Carolina, after living exclusively in Oaxaca for many years. This gives me a legal base from which to vote and advocate for change. While I’m only there for short visits, I feel this keeps me engaged in the effort to support the social and political values that are important to me. This gives me comfort and I try to stay hopeful.
The difference that living in Mexico has made in the quality of my life is enormous. Since I first visited Oaxaca in 2005, I began to independently study the textile culture of the state out of interest and curiosity. I visited and became friends with many artisans. Over time, I developed knowledge about Oaxaca, and by extension Mexico’s, weaving and natural dye techniques. This practice added to the knowledge I’d already gleaned about indigenous textile-making from travels in China, Malaysia, Europe and Central America. I decided it was time to go deep and not wide. I took it upon myself to visit regions in Mexico where the textile culture was strong and thriving, often to mountain and coastal villages hours away from Oaxaca City where people speak native languages other than Spanish. Sometimes I went on my own and sometimes I went with guides.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” This is a sticker on my sewing stand. Fear is natural. Will I be safe? This question has often kept me from experimentation and discovery. I’ve had to put this aside as I explored new places in Mexico. I’m aware and cautious; I weigh the consequences. I advise others how to navigate their journeys. With each step into unknown territory, my fear dissipates and it becomes easier to embark on something new.
Since 2007, after I began to offer weaving and natural dye workshops in Teotitlán del Valle taught by my host family, I expanded offerings to include photography, filmmaking, creative writing, textile-making and mixed media arts workshops. Then people asked to come with me on discovery trips I was making in Mexico, so I began offering longer, multi-day textile study expeditions. For Oaxaca visitors with only a limited amount of time, I created one-day natural dye and textile study expeditions.
By the time I retired in 2011, I had my transition plan in place. Today, I continue to seek out new locations to study, explore and navigate, doing my part to identify and give artisans the recognition and income they deserve.
This Mexico life has given me the gift of unlimited freedom to create and to manifest my dreams. I’ve learned key life skills by living in an indigenous community, among an ancient people who know more than I do about family and relationships. I am happy, content and satisfied to call Oaxaca, Mexico home.
Norma Schafer has offered arts education travel workshops and study expeditions in Mexico since 2006, based on her curiosity and love for Mexico and respect for indigenous people. Her Oaxaca Cultural Navigator programs include travel throughout Mexico; topics include art history, weaving, natural dyeing, creative writing, photography, mixed media art and general study tours.
Norma retired from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after a 30-year career there and at several other colleges. She currently works with organizations developing customized programs for alumni, donors and friends that can also be fundraising opportunities. Norma is a contributing writer to the travel guide, “Textile Fiestas of Mexico,” and has been featured in The New York Times and Mexico News Daily. She’s also a published photographer and writer, and blogs at http://oaxacaculture.com. Contact her at [email protected] and: Instagram: @oaxacaculturemexico, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/normalee.schafer and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/normahawthorne.
16. “In Search of Connection”
Jan I. Davis
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato
I think I pissed off the first expat I ever met. He was an ex-Peace Corp volunteer in Ecuador who had written a few books. I tagged along with a fellow student who wanted to interview him about his decision to live abroad. He served us tepid cups of chamomile tea and grumbled answers to our questions. When I tripped and broke the frayed cord of his space heater, he scowled. The expats I met after that were mostly barflies.
But that was the late ‘70s and I was young, and because of these encounters I couldn’t see myself as an expat. Yet I’ve wanted to live in another country since I was a child. I had a few opportunities, but they weren’t meant to be until I found myself in my 50s, divorced and with no children or extended family.
I felt alone, and the U.S. is not an easy place to feel alone. Here’s what I mean. One day after my then-husband had just moved from Morocco to the U.S., we walked to a neighborhood café. He asked, “Where is everyone?” I understood what he meant. The streets were completely empty of people. My neighbors were in their homes, in their offices, in their cars, and now more than ever, on their electronic devices. I’ve always felt life in the U.S. was centered around work, making money, getting ahead, shopping and being productive. It wasn’t a life I related to, nor wanted to relate to. And my travels overseas showed me that life could be different.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t a simple decision to leave the U.S. I was worried that I was thinking “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” and I was afraid of leaving the comfort of my home, my nest, in Portland, Oregon. But it was time. A comment made by a good friend helped me gain clarity about my decision.
“You go to San Miguel de Allende to disconnect,” she said at a dinner gathering.
“No,” I mused. “I go to connect.”
I realized then that I just felt happier, more myself, in a country where the people—and the climate—were warmer. And my curious and empathetic nature yearned for relationships with people unlike me.
I spent many hours as a child reading the obituaries. Not all of them, just those of people with foreign-sounding names, marveling that someone born in Portugal or Armenia had left their countries to live in California’s San Joaquin Valley. I remember my disappointment when I learned that my last name, Davis, was the seventh most common sur
name in the U.S. But I was delighted that my Scottish ancestors had their own tartans: Innes and Ayers.
I don’t know if I can attribute this odd pastime to my inquiring nature, or to my parents’ tendencies to point out people who weren’t like us: WASPS. My mom refused to go to Kmart because that’s where Mexicans shopped. My parents would remark that our neighbors, the Echeverrias, were Basques, and the Asadoorians were Armenians. It didn’t matter that they were born in the U.S., they were foreign. I was too young to understand some of the comments were racist, but I did register that many of their remarks were unfair.
In the early ‘70s, when I saw the yellow school bus full of Mexicans and Blacks arrive for the first time at my elementary school, my heart ached because I thought they must feel angry or scared or embarrassed. So naturally, I made an effort to be friends, developed a crush on Jesse, and invited Teresita over for peanut butter and crackers. When Josie invited Shanna and me to attend her birthday party, my dad told us to “lock the doors” when we crossed the tracks.
I relished school. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Tomajan, showed us slides of her native Armenia, and Mrs. Nance taught us to play bingo in Spanish. While my mom taught piano in our living room, I’d spend the afternoons in my bedroom, spinning the globe to see what country landed on my index finger. Or I’d type stories on my dad’s Olivetti typewriter about kids in other countries. I sent letters to postmasters in Scotland and Canada and asked for pen pals.
I had a happy childhood until my mom found Jesus, and a different man. She was the organist at the church and he was the choir director. I don’t remember any Brady Bunch-style talks with my parents about the divorce and about how “everything was going to be OK.” I do remember my dad’s barely furnished apartment across town, and my brother graduating early so he could leave the house and bolt to the coast.
Within six months the new husband moved in, and my mom told me, “We won’t be happy with you living with us” and said I should get an apartment with my friend Stacy, whose parents had also just divorced. I was 15 years old. Later on, I realized my mom was very depressed at that time, but her emotional outbursts created in me a lifelong battle with low self-esteem and a deep yearning for connection.
I didn’t move in with Stacy; instead, an American Field Service (AFS) summer abroad scholarship landed me in Seville, Spain after my senior year in high school. I was too unworldly to understand the significance of my host family being pro-Franco (the dictator had died the year before) and felt slightly intimidated by their wealth and sophistication. My host mother was an elegant woman who gathered her reddish hair with an ornate tortoiseshell clip. She’d smile as she indicated which plate to use for each dish during the daily two-hour lunch. My host father was aloof and would smoke a cigar in the salon and take a quick snooze before returning to work. I’d tiptoe past him to my room, while the three eldest daughters would get ready for their beaus to take them to the swim club. I spent most days exploring the city alone.
While I didn’t bond with my host family, I connected with Seville—the language, the kissing-on-both-cheeks greetings, the Islamic architecture, the tortilla Española and jamón serrano, even the men’s catcalls. And, I made a friend that summer: Barbara, a British woman in her 40s who lived upstairs. As I was alienated from my mother, she was estranged from her daughter. Barbara taught me how to drive a stick shift, and also took me shopping, to discotheques, and to my first flamenco show, performed by drag queens. I’ve never forgotten her.
I had always excelled in school, but after my parent’s divorce I felt unmoored and didn’t want to go to college. Yet with a hefty dose of financial aid and my dad’s practical insistence I went to a small college in Portland. While I felt out of place among the children of Rockefellers, Weyerhaeusers and Saudi royalty, the liberal arts education rocked my world. My dad is a staunch Republican, and if he’d known where I’d focus my interests during those four years, he might have thought twice about paying for my education. I favored classes that focused on anything alternative to my status quo, such as Labor Literature, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Politics in Latin America. In my dorm room hung posters with slogans like “It Will Be A Great Day When Our Schools Get All The Money They Need & The Air Force Has To Hold A Bake Sale To Buy A Bomber.” I wrote a letter to Pinochet in Chile protesting the disappearances and torture of thousands of citizens, joined Amnesty International and draped “Stop U.S. Intervention In El Salvador!” banners over freeway overpasses in Portland.
Perhaps the best part of college were the two semesters I spent in Ecuador and Costa Rica. I designed two independent studies that put me on buses far into the Andes, ranches on the coast, in the company of warm and generous locals. I remember calling my dad from a phone booth in Liberia, a town in northern Costa Rica where I lived with a family. A sweetie, a bike and a healthy diet of rice and beans made me one happy camper. I told my dad I wanted to stay longer. He said, “I understand, but if you don’t come home now and finish your last semester in college, you never will.” He was right. I went back.
Fast forward 10 years, through random jobs and enjoying my 20s. Then I settled down. I married a lovely man and got a Masters in Library and Information Studies at UC Berkeley. Working in academic and corporate libraries stifled my entrepreneurial spirit, so I started my own research company. Because we were both self-employed, I had hopes we would move somewhere in the Caribbean. I subscribed to “International Living” magazine and looked into work options. But that dream, along with plans of having a child and a happy marriage, ended after 14 years. It took me many years to understand how discounted I felt by his change of heart over having a baby. It was lonely and often gut-wrenching to go to one baby shower after another, listen to endless book club discussions over choices of schools and have to answer the question “When are you having a baby?”
Towards the end of my marriage, I received a grant to teach in Argentina for three weeks. I was excited to see if I actually could work from anywhere. In Buenos Aires I made a good friend, Roxana, who invited me to visit as often as I’d like, and I did.
After my divorce, when Roxana wrote, “Come on down,” I thought it was the perfect chance to move overseas. I packed my bags. But the time and place weren’t right. Excited when I arrived, it didn’t take long for the pain from my recent divorce to surface. I was depressed, felt very alone and didn’t have the energy to deal with a bustling city of 13 million people. Plus, Roxana preferred staying home over going out, and when I asked her to introduce me to some men, she said all her male friends were gay. Deflated, I returned home.
Back in Portland, one rainy November evening I made the unusual decision to take an American Photographer mentor workshop in Morocco. Unusual because I wasn’t into group travel, especially with tourists with big cameras around their necks. But the street life in Marrakech’s streets, the colors, smells and smiles (and the handsome men), had charmed me into going back many times. I found an internet shop in a hotel, where I spent several hours a day working on my research projects. I liked this particular shop because it was lively with tourists and locals, and its manager, Abdel, was friendly and funny. He would often place a glass of mint tea over my shoulder while I was working, and we’d chat while I was waiting for web pages to load. Little did I know at the time that we would end up marrying two years later.
It was difficult to date Abdel in Marrakech because he was an observant Muslim and it was inappropriate for him to visit me at my bed and breakfast. We decided it was easier and more economical if I moved in with his mother (and nine other family members, but that’s a novel in itself). So, at the age of 44, I found myself with something I’d always wanted—a large, extended family who embraced me. I wanted so badly to fit in. I bathed at the communal bath down the street, learned to make balls of hot couscous with my hand, and endured excruciatingly long visits with his friends and siblings. Living “like a Moroccan” with his mother wasn’t easy, and I coul
dn’t afford to have a home in Marrakech without selling my house in Portland, which I wasn’t ready to do.
So, Abdel came to the States. As it was challenging for me to live in Marrakech, it was hard for him to live in the U.S. Inter-cultural marriages can be challenging, as ours was. We divorced after six years, and it was heartbreaking because we so wanted it to work. We remain good friends, and Abdel always reminds me if I ever find myself alone and in need of a family to take care of me, there’s one waiting in Marrakech. I believe him.
One day I received a phone call from my brother. “Let’s go to San Miguel de Allende and write a book about a brother and sister thinking about buying a house there.” This was a strange request from a brother I’d never traveled with, and while we get along, we weren’t exactly close. But we were both curious about the expat community in San Miguel, so I said, “Why not?”
We never wrote the book, but we did both fall in love with this colonial city in Central Mexico. He bought a lot and built a small house, and I returned many times over the following five years to house- and pet-sit. With each visit I’d stay a week longer, then two weeks, then three, to test if I was ready to leave the U.S. I never was.
Back in the States, friends and colleagues would comment on how happy and relaxed I was. But within a month I’d be irritable again. The rain, the isolation, the traffic. Don’t get me wrong—I loved Portland, my friends, my house and my neighbors. But it was a solitary life, and I wanted the contentment I felt when I was in Mexico. When I was housesitting in San Miguel, my life was reduced to what I had in my suitcase. No fussing over stuff, and since I didn’t have a car, no fretting over traffic. My daily routine changed. Buying groceries was easy because fruit and vegetable stands and colorful markets were easily reached on foot. I “worked smarter” to get work done in fewer hours so I could get together with the interesting people I was meeting. Life seemed so much easier.