by You Jin
As soon as we arrived in Mérida and left our luggage at the hotel, we went in search of the restaurant address we had been given. What was strange was that, though we asked everywhere, no one knew where the restaurant was.
We kept asking and searching, and finally we found it in a bustling narrow alley. What shocked us was that it was not a restaurant at all, but only a small roadside stall.
The aluminium basin in the stall was filled with slices of meat. In front of the stall was a long wooden bench, full of customers waiting to eat. There were two stall-keepers, one tall and one short, busy putting meat in between two slices of bread and handing them out to customers. Unwilling to stand and wait, Risheng and I went to a nearby coffee shop for half an hour. When we returned, most of the crowd at the stall had dispersed, and what had once been a mountain of meat was now reduced to a few pieces.
I waved two fingers at the shorter stall-keeper to show that we wanted two sandwiches. I had not imagined that he would address me in perfect English.
“Hey, where are you guys from?”
When he handed us our roasted meat and bread, the short fellow sat by us on the bench, then started to offer us a friendly introduction to the sights in Mérida—the city square, the cathedral, Pasede Monteiro, the archaeology museum, and so forth. As he spoke, he saw that our response was not very enthusiastic. He scratched his head, thought for a while, then said, “Hey, not too far from here, there is a Mayan market. Do you want to go and see? I can show you the way.”
A Mayan market? My interest was immediately piqued. When we had finished eating and paid for our food, we followed him and boarded a bus.
High Prices, Low Pay
Ferdy had curly, dark brown hair and wore a beige short-sleeved shirt. Everything about him seemed round—round nose, round chin, round shoulders, round belly; even all his fingers looked round. When he stood talking, hands by his sides, I thought he looked like an adorable fat penguin.
He was a brilliant conversationalist. In the bus, he painted a condensed verbal picture of his life for our viewing. His father was Hispanic, and his mother and wife were Mayan. When he was small, his father died in a fire, so he and his six siblings were all brought up by their mother. After such a long struggle, he knew what the phrase more mouths means a harder life meant, so he and his wife decided to “stop at two”.
“I’ve done just about anything to make a living.” Ferdy smiled cheerfully. “Shining shoes, washing dishes, sweeping floors, clearing rubbish. As long as it paid, I did it.”
“That stall just now—did you and your friend own it?”
“No!” he said, amused. “That tall guy is my older brother. He’s working the stall for someone, and I had a little free time so I went to help. He opens the stall at seven every morning and works until one in the afternoon. He works for six hours every day, and his pay is only ten thousand five hundred pesos (about seven dollars and fifty cents in Singapore currency). It’s really not enough to raise a family, so every afternoon he works as a cleaner.”
“What about you, Ferdy? What do you do?”
“I’m a freelancer, doing all sorts of odd jobs, and I’m a part-time tour guide.”
I had heard of “freelance performers” and “freelance writers”, but I’d never heard of “freelancer, doing all sorts of odd jobs”.
“A freelancer doing odd jobs can earn a lot!” Ferdy continued proudly. “There are many wealthy families in Mexico, and they often host banquets, dances, and birthday or wedding celebrations, and I often wash dishes for those events. The celebrations usually start at five in the afternoon, and whilst they are busy eating, drinking, and merry making, I spend the whole night washing and scrubbing. I often work a full twelve hours before I go to bed. Although it’s very tiring, it’s hard to get to sleep because there are always countless dishes dancing before my eyes.”
As a freelance odd-job man, he could earn about sixty thousand pesos per job (thirty Singapore dollars). That was about four times what regular labourers earned.
Being a clever fellow, Ferdy made good use of the time he was not doing odd jobs, immersing himself in his study of English. Now, he was finally able to be a part-time tour guide. Every time he helped at his brother’s stall and met some tourists, he would “volunteer his services”.
“Prices are high in Mexico, but wages are low. Nearly everyone has to hold down two jobs just to make ends meet.”
Saying this, Ferdy stood up and alighted from the bus.
Conservative Superstition, Contented Lives
The Mayan market was not far from the bus stop. It was a huge market, and there were many Mayan people about. Whether old or young, they all wore traditional ponchos with colourfully embroidered sleeves and collars as they bought and sold items in the market. Those varied, complicated garments, and those bright, beautiful colours were really dazzling. Ferdy pointed to an older Mayan woman and said, “Watch. Every woman who wears a long shawl around her shoulders can speak Mayan.”
I observed carefully. The women in shawls were all older women. The shawls were single coloured—green, blue, red, brown, orange, yellow or white. The colours of the shawls did not match the colour of their clothes, and that made the shawls seem rather shocking to the eye.
With Spanish having prevailed in Mexico, did that mean the Mayan language was dying out? When I asked Ferdy, he said, “Some of the more traditional families still hold tightly to the Mayan culture, and so they still speak Mayan at home. Mayans who have grown up in such households naturally serve as guardians of Mayan culture. Of course, there are many pragmatic families who have let go of Mayan culture completely and left behind a generation of Mayans that don’t understand the Mayan language.”
“Do your children speak Mayan?”
“Yes!” he said proudly. “And they not only speak it, they also write it.”
The items displayed in the Mayan market included many things—meat, gourds, vegetables, spices, clothing, shoes, daily necessities, handicrafts, and all sorts of knick-knacks. The most interesting thing to see was the Mayan women who sold chickens. They tied the chickens’ legs with strings, then dangled them upside down on their arms, standing still as they waited for buyers. Strangely, the chickens hung silently in mid-air, not squawking at all. Some Mayan people were doing “one chicken business”: when they set the chicken solemnly on the ground, they guarded it like it was a piece of gold. I thought of the Chinese idiom about how “one golden chicken is enough” and could not help but laugh.
Mexico had a rich agricultural industry, growing all sorts of fruit, such as mangoes, watermelons, bananas and papayas. The whole market was filled with the light fragrance of fresh fruit. Maybe the soil here was especially fertile, because these fruits were too plump for words.
Corn tortillas are a favourite food in Mexico. It is not only a staple food, but a food obsession. Three Mayan women sat shoulder to shoulder selling roasted tortillas. I got out my camera, aimed, and snapped their picture. I did not expect that before the shutter had snapped, the three women in front of me would each have a peculiar reaction. The one in the middle, a beautiful young woman who wore a cloth flower in her hair, hid her head in her elbow like an ostrich. The one on the right, a middle-aged woman in a plain outfit, quickly ducked her head and covered her face with her clothing. The one on the left, whose whole face was covered with wrinkles, quickly turned her face away. When the flash had gone off and the picture had been snapped, the old Mayan woman stood up in a huff and, pointing at my camera, started to scold fiercely. Startled, I did not know what to say, so I turned helplessly to Ferdy. He quickly stepped towards her, smiling and speaking soothingly, but this still could not quieten the women’s rage. Three pairs of eyes were all aflame, as if they would burn right through me.
As I stepped away awkwardly, Ferdy explained, “Many Mayan people are superstitious and conservative. They believe that the spirit can be captured by the camera, so they both hate and fear taking photos. If you are unlucky enoug
h to meet one who is bold or aggressive, they might even take your camera and smash it.”
On that day, I took many photos in the Mayan market, but all were candid shots, without letting the subject know I’d taken it. Later, when I had the film developed and was admiring the pictures one by one, I could once again feel my heart racing.
Walking through the Mayan market had shown me the side of Mayan people that still held onto their superstitions, and it also gave me a glimpse of their contentment.
Rodrigo and the Mayan Village
The morning sun was a warm brush, gently painting over the lush green grass with a layer of sparkling colours. Whilst I sat on a stone seat in the city square, flipping through some travel material and reading the interesting articles, Rodrigo arrived.
His raven black hair was like a wild field of grass, covering a long face. His thick lips were topped by a thick drooping moustache, and a scraggly beard covered his long chin. A distinct scar ran along his forehead and cheek. He wore a light green shirt, several of the buttons open, showing a bony chest.
Seeing a person like this walk over and plop down on the seat next to me, I thought, Run! The faster the better. The thoughts were churning in my mind when he suddenly spoke up in excellent English. “I’m a part-time tour guide. Is there anything I can help you with?”
After chatting for a while, we made arrangements for him to bring me to Kanasin, a Mayan village about two kilometres from Mérida. Rodrigo had an unusual history. When he used his clearly articulated English to narrate his story eloquently to me, I felt like I was listening to a touching story broadcast by a radio station.
“My family was very poor. When I was ten, my parents sent me to an American family’s home to do odd jobs. After I had worked for two years, my employer was due to be transferred back to the US, and they asked if I wanted to go with them. Of course I did, but I was afraid my parents would object, so I decided to run away. When my employers drove to the US border, they covered me in a huge woollen blanket, and we managed to pass through without any problems. My employer had a big ranch in Texas, and I stayed there to help them take care of the livestock. They were very, very good to me. They not only gave me food and shelter, they even paid me wages every month. When I had lived in the US for six years, I was caught for being an illegal immigrant and sent back to Mexico. By this time, I was eighteen.”
Now forty years old, Rodrigo missed “the easy life” of those six years, always longing for those days. But, I thought, what he really missed was not the comforts, but the human warmth that is so rare!
“When I left Mexico, I had nothing. When I came back, I had saved up a little. I applied for a bit of land from the government, planning to build a house…”
“How much does a plot of land cost?”
“It was given by the government. We only need to pay eighty pesos for the processing fee.”
Eighty pesos was four Singapore cents. Thinking I had misheard, I asked him again.
“That’s right. Eighty pesos.” He smiled contentedly. “I used all my savings to buy building materials. Every brick of that house, every tile, was laid by my own hands.”
“Are you married?”
“I have five children, all boys!” He grinned. “I hope I can have two more, daughters this time. We Mayans like to have lots of children.”
“Yes, children and grandchildren are a blessing,” I said. Then I couldn’t keep from asking, “Do you make enough as a tour guide to raise a family?”
“Of course not!” he replied, laughing bitterly. “Even though I can speak fluent English, I can’t read or write, so I can’t enter the official tourism board. I can only guide tourists that I manage to find myself. What I do better than the tourism board is that no matter where the traveller wants to go or what he wants to see, I can make him happy. Sometimes if my luck is good, I can find tourists every day. But other times, I will go for days without any business.”
“When you don’t have any business, how do you make ends meet?”
“I make hammocks!”
“Hammocks?”
“Yes. It is summer year round in Mexico, and the weather is always hot. Many people like to sleep in hammocks at home, liking them both for their convenience and coolness.”
“How much do you sell each hammock for?”
“It’s different prices for different quality. Machine-made hammocks cost twenty thousand pesos (about ten Singapore dollars). I make mine by hand, so they cost about a hundred and fifty thousand pesos (about seventy-five Singapore dollars).”
“That’s a big difference!” I said, unable to contain my surprise.
“Of course!” Rodrigo exclaimed. “Do you know that weaving one hammock can take fifteen days to make, working four or five hours a day. These hammocks will last a lifetime.”
As we chatted, the bus stopped. Looking out the window, I saw that we had already arrived in Kanasín.
Spiritual Wealth, Material Poverty
About thirty thousand Mayan people lived in Kanasín. Most of the houses in the village were single storey. The building materials were all different, and the houses presented a variety of patterns and styles. There were stone houses, brick houses, wooden houses, thatched houses, and many other types. Some of the Mayan houses were shockingly simple and crude. Some used flimsy planks topped with a scattering of palm leaves, making a cosy nest. Inside, the houses had damp mud floors, uneven and full of holes, with no furniture, but a few hammocks. Mothers and children were lounging lazily in the hammocks. Dots of sunlight shone sparsely through the palm leaves into the house, causing shadows to dance on the few scrawny faces inside. If it rained, droplets large and small would drip through the roof, turning everyone who was sleeping inside into “a chicken in soup”.
The woman in this house told Rodrigo in Mayan that her husband was a painter, and that he went out early and came back late. This crude house was rented for forty thousand pesos a month (about twenty Singapore dollars). She was still young, but she already had four children.
This was a typical Mayan family in Kanasín. The man of the house worked long hours of manual labour to support his wife and many children, which traditional wisdom said was a great blessing. The illiterate wife stayed home to look after the hungry kids.
Like all traditional, conservative little villages, Kanasín was filled with a warm, serene atmosphere. The doors of the houses were wide open, and the villagers sat in twos or threes at their doors chatting. The children played games together happily. The married women boldly exposed their breasts as they nursed their children. The old women were busy with their mending. Boys chopped firewood whilst girls drew water from the well. There was a strong smell of tortillas wafting from each house we passed.
Time seemed to be forgotten here. The Mayans lived a traditional leisurely lifestyle, without strife. Even though the houses in the village were crude, these Mayans who endured material poverty lived in a spiritually rich world. Rodrigo told me that there were many Mayan tribes on the Yucatán Peninsula that were just like this village.
After the Spanish people had come to Mexico in the sixteenth century and colonised it, Spanish had become Mexico’s official language. Following Mexican independence, Spanish remained the national language. Many different indigenous languages had been lost, regarded as languages without “economic value”. But it is worth considering that after hundreds of years of change, the completely “frozen”, “abandoned” Mayan language is still used in the villages where Mayans gather today. Even if it is of no practical value in today’s pragmatic society, many Mayan people continue to hold onto it. There is one simple motive for doing this: the Mayan language is the root of the Mayan people.
On that day, feeling very moved, I left Kanasín with Rodrigo and went back to downtown Mérida. The neon lights sparkled in the night, like demons’ eyes filled with temptation. Cars moved in an endless stream, and pedestrians passed in a constant flow. Ah, this was a world full of bustle and noise, and also full o
f strife and chaos.
Immersed in such a world, I thought back to what I had just seen in Kanasín, that Mayan village, standing aloof from the world, strangely unreal.
The Mayans, who, for a time, had exuded glory and were prosperous in every part of Mexico, are now tucked away quietly in a corner, indifferent to their resplendent past.
A good or bad reputation remains after thousands of years. The glory and failure in one’s life lasts only a hundred years.
I ruminated quietly over these two meaningful lines, a wave of conflicting emotions flooding over me.
Touring the Amazon Rainforest
WHEN WE DECIDED to visit the primal Amazon rainforest for a few days, I went through all the worst case scenarios in my mind. In my calm, tranquil life, I had nothing to fear, but life was somewhat dull and colourless. Touring the rainforest would certainly add some brilliant colour to my world. Armed with this mentality, Risheng and I set out with Quillis-Sacha, an indigenous guide from the small town of Equitos in Bolivia, to ride a clipper down the world renowned Amazon River, and enter the remote Amazon rainforest.
In Lima, the capital of Peru, when we arranged our itinerary, we told the local tour operator we wanted an indigenous guide who could speak English to bring us into the rainforest—this was our most important requirement. The tour agent slapped Risheng’s shoulder and said casually, “Don’t worry. Quillis-Sacha speaks English fluently. You’ll be very satisfied. We’ve given him the nickname Monkey, because he grew up in the primeval jungle. Not only are his actions a little like a monkey’s, but his reactions are equally quick and superb.”