Things We Don't Tell Our Mothers Until After The Fact

So when I found Jovanna in the airport an August 16, the first thing we did was catch up on our lives. The second thing we did was make a pact not to tell our mothers any of the weird things that happened to us until after we were back in our respective countries and our mothers could stop thinking that a drug cartel was going to mail them our heads in a box. Now that's I'm safely back in Germany with my head firmly attached to my neck, here's a list of all the things we didn't tell our mothers.

1) The protests

The center of Mexico City was rocked by absolutely massive protests while we were there...and we lived two blocks away from the heart of it all. The area all around our hostel turned into a massive tent city, and the protests got so crazy that the subway station was constantly being shut down and the cops were everywhere. Everywhere. One time, we came out of our hostel to find six buses full of cops in riot gear lined up along our street. With their automatic weapons hanging from their necks, because, you know, anywhere else and they'd be too far to reach.

 

2) Crime

While we felt very safe in Mexico City, we still bought dummy wallets just to be careful because there was a lot of petty crime that we heard about/was experienced by our friends. One of our friends from the hostel was out on the streets one day when someone, he didn't see who, tried to slash his pocket with a knife. Unfotunately, his hand got in the way. So instead of cutting his pocket, they just cut him. Three guys we knew were robbed by police officers. Apparently, a much-loved tactic by the D.F police is to find foreigners drinking on the street, approach them, and tell them they're going to be arrested unless they pay up. Newsflash for everyone going to D.F., the worst the cops can do to you is take your drink away--they cannot, regardless of what they tell you, take you to the station. But if you're foreign and your Spanish sucks, they'll absolutely take advantage of you and take everything in your wallet. One guy we knew paid 300 pesos ($23, €17). Another guy lost 700 pesos ($54, 40€). Another friend had 20 pesos in his wallet, so the cops asked him if he had a bank card. Drunken idiot he was, he said yes, and lost a full 1000 pesos ($77, €58) to the cops. 

The worst thing that happened to us was Jovanna was out buying tacos and put her wallet in the pocket of her hoodie. As she was walking back to the hostel, she felt someone's hand reaching into her hoodie pocket...so she smacked it and kept walking. Then got back to the hostel and said "So...I think someone just tried to rob me?" "What did you do?" "Hit him?" "Yeah, that's fair."

3) Getting into a stranger's car

The back story is that we had met this guy briefly and were scheduled to interview him later on. The night before our interview, he called us up and said "I'm in my car across the street from the hostel. Get in the car. Bring your laptop." We were like "...Yeah, alright." 

No, he did not rape us and chop off our heads. Actually, he just wanted to give us a USB full of traditional music he thought might be useful for our project. We figured he'd be fine since he seemed very nice, but decided not to tell our mothers that this happened.

4) That time I almost got us trapped in a riot

Remember the teacher's protest from Number 1? Jovanna and I, after a month of working in and around Mexico City, were off to Puebla to follow a lead, hopefully get an interview or two, and see a bit more of the country. This, however, required first getting to the bus station, which in turn required walking through the teacher's protest to get to the subway. Not that this was a big deal, seeing as we did it every day, and the worst thing that happened to us was we getting smacked in the head by the low-hanging tarps. 

As we walked through the protest, we noticed that a lot of people were packing up and leaving and figured it was because the law they had been protesting had just been signed by the president. Police in helicopters were swooping around overhead overseeing everything, and several former protesters cheered and waved at them. To greet the crowd below, one of the copters swooped in really low and hovered right above us, sending one rain-soaked tarp flying and giving me a bath. That's when I heard the music--a drum corps! That's cool! Plus, lots of former protesters were waving sticks to the beat of the music and chattering away gaily. I wanted to stick around and watch the musicians, but Jovanna, being a total bitch, was like "we need to get the fuck out of here NOW so get moving." Reluctantly, I started strolling. Jovanna was not pleased and was all "Tina. MOVE. NOW."

As it turns out, the reason the protests were clearing out is because the cops had been authorized to use deadly force to get rid of the people. The crowds were not cheering at the helicopters, they were jeering and throwing things. The copter did not come down low to greet the crowd, it came down to intimidate them. The drum corps was not a drum corps, it was riot cops in formation slapping their shields with their batons and moving in on the square a couple yards from where we were. And the people around us were not chattering gaily, they were flipping shit and arming themselves with stakes and bats because word had gotten around that there were fire hoses, tear gas and rubber bullets on the way.

All of which, in my complete obliviousness, I missed. All of which I discovered two hours later when Jovanna was like "So...please explain to me why you strolled through the pre-riot like you were on a picnic?" And I was like "...What pre-riot?"

5) Questionable adventure times

So one of the really cool things Jovanna and I did during this trip was take a short side-trip to the beach so we could transcribe interviews somewhere that wasn't D.F. While on the beach on our first day, we were approached by a random guy and offered a tour to go swimming with florescent plankton. We agreed because fuck yeah florescent plankton, that's why. It was only later that night, when he picked us up at the gas station and herded us into the back of his shady pick-up truck, in which we then drove along winding roads in the pitch black for 45 minutes, that it occurred to me that perhaps what we were doing was really stupid. Because we had no idea where we were, or where we were going. Also, this was an unofficial tour, not one that went through the hostel or anything. It occurred to me, as I was contemplating my death, that perhaps we had grown a bit too comfortable in Mexico.

Long story short, no, the guy was not a murderer, he was actually really nice. And the florescent plankton were SO COOL. We jumped in the lagoon and the water lit up!

6) The blockade

Our long, thirteen hour bus trip back to Mexico City turned into a long, eighteen hour bus trip back to Mexico City because some oil workers and farmers got pissed off about something so they blockaded the road. For nearly five hours. Because apparently, that's what you do in Mexico when you're mad. I woke up right when we got stuck on the road, only to discover there was a cockroach infestation under my seat and by my wall. So I flipped shit. Conversation went as follows:

Jovanna: Oh my God, Tina, there's a blockade. They don't know how long it'll last. Last week it was eighteen hours. We might have to turn around. We're stuck here indefinitely.

Tina: FUCK THE BLOCKADE, THERE ARE COCKROACHES. UNDER. MY. SEAT.

Jovanna: ...I hate you right now.

So I made Jovanna sacrifice having two seats to stretch out across so that I could take refuge in the area of the bus that was not infested with cockroaches. I was so relieved to be away from the cockroaches that I couldn't have cared about the blockade if you'd paid me.

and finally...

7) Busing an hour out of the city to interview a total stranger, missing the last bus back, getting stranded, sleeping in her house, and not having our phones to tell people where we were.

Mom, remember when you texted me and Al in a panic because you hadn't heard from me in nearly two days? Yeah, that's what happened.

So the story is that we had an interview set up with this lady who lived in Texcoco, an hour outside of D.F. Due to the rain and the ridiculous crowding on the subways, we were over an hour late to our interview. The poor lady waited for us the entire time. When we finally arrived, she herded us into a cab and off to her house we went.

It was right about then that I realized I didn't have my cell phone. Oops.

The interview went really late, and when we missed the last bus back to Mexico City, she offered to let us crash in the spare bedroom. We weren't entirely sure, but there was also the fact that we didn't have enough money to go to a hotel or take a taxi back to D.F. Anyway, she and her family were AMAZING, they were so lovely and warm and they fed us and told us stories and dressed me up in traditional Nahua clothing and it was awesome:

 

Figuring that my mom would probably be freaking out, I figured I'd Facebook her real quick and be done. However, the house were we staying at didn't have indoor plumbing, let along internet, so after dodging the rain to use the toilet in the concrete bunker, I borrowed Jovanna's phone to text my mom. Then I thought: will my mom freak out more if she doesn't hear from me, or if I tell her I'm alive but sleeping in a total stranger's house? I went with Door Number 1, and I think I made the better decision.

(Sorry Mom!) 

While Jovanna and I had an awesome night, we do acknowledge that what we did may or may not have been a little dumb. The End