First, I totally stole the post title from Jared Lazaro, someone I know of through Ori, but I plan to meet next time I’m in the US.

I woke up this morning at 4:00 am, on purpose. Well, I say woke up, from 10:30 last night until 4:00 this morning I dozed for an hour and a half to two hours at a time, convinced I would sleep through my alarm and I’d miss the day’s train at 6:00. The one I didn’t have a ticket for yet. With a severe lack of sleep (for me) over the past few days as I finished preparing for the trip, last night may have tipped me over the edge. Once on board my head would periodically droop followed by the involuntary head jerk that shocks you awake just long enough to start to fall back asleep again.

Once the train arrived in Creel, I escaped the platform crowd and touts and headed North. Only, I should have been headed South. I didn’t get very far before I realized I was wrong, but the mid-street reversal made me an obvious target for a tout. It took me about three seconds to decide I didn’t care, I was exhausted and didn’t really know where I was headed anyway. The first guy who came up to me wanted to show me to the place I had intended to check out first so it worked out well for both of us. Also, last night I decided my Lonely Planets took up too much room and one was out of date, so I bought the digital versions online. The only problem is that I don’t really want to pull out my laptop just anywhere, so double checking info can be an issue. I guess I’ll be taking pictures of the maps on my phone before I head out from now on. It’s somewhat less conspicuous.

Once I checked in, I signed up for a tour to see the area and meet some new people. After I grabbed lunch we headed to Cascada Cusárare where we hiked to the top and then followed a crazy twisting guard-rail-free series of stairs to the bottom. When my tour-mates showed up I was somewhat disappointed, I had been thinking that it would be other backpackers, but it was a family with grandparents, mother and son. But really, having expectations like that are especially dumb. One day I’ll learn. The mother and I headed down the stairs together, and we started talking. She told me about her son and I told her about my trip. By the time we made it up to the top, we had forged a bond as only physical stress can.

Her father referred to me as ‘guerra’ like it was my name. The last time, he did it to complain that I wasn’t buying anything. I have a difficult time really caring about the opinion of someone who can only be bothered to call me ‘white girl’, but his words did effect me. We had been driving around looking at Valle de las Ranas, Valle de los Hongos, San Ignacio Mission, and Lago Arareco, all of which have Tarahumara women and children selling handcrafts. First, I don’t have any space for souvenirs and second the smallest bill I had was 200 pesos and people in Mexico guard their change like they’ll never see any again. At the same time, they make beautiful baskets and weavings, two of my weaknesses and handcrafts is the major source of income for the families. We had just finished going on a tour of a Tarahumara home which is created out of a cave. Seeing a home for eight people where the livestock share space with everyone else, because how else do you protect them from the wolves and coyotes, was overwhelming for me. I took one photo because I don’t think I can sit here and force myself to write the words to show it to you that way. But I only took the one because being in someone’s home like that, on display for tourists made me a little ill. I knew it would feel awkward, but it really felt awful. I won’t be doing anything like that again. Back to my original point: how and how much do I want to contribute in situations like this? I don’t have a place for stuff and I need to break that habit anyway. To an extent, people choose their lives, and if they didn’t live in caves and expose their lives to tourists, then they would need to move and take wage labor jobs.

Really, this is more complex than I want and feel capable of going into here. I’m at a loss, and really it’s not mine to change anyway.

Tags: Awareness, Beginning, meeting people, Outside of my Comfort Zone, unnerving

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Comfort Zone Stretches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.