it’s a beautiful morning, 9:15am and I’m working on translating my teaching/education resume into spanish. my roommate and oaxaca bff kristine, who i met in the TESOL training is about to apply for some jobs as an english teacher. we bonded because we are from punk, radical feminist communities in our home cities known for just that (portland and ashville) and because we hated the TESOL course and found it to be a dehumanizing and torturous experience. However, three days after the training, I found myself a job in a little colonia (suburb) called Santa Lucia Del Camino, working with mostly shy, insecure teenager girls whose families wanted them to learn English. The colonia we live in, Yayalag, is a small, middle class nieghborhood, sitting in the middle of some much fancier neighborhoods, colonia reforma and xochilimo. we are the only extranjeras around here. men on the street hang around, working on the same construction projects, just standing around, women and their families too. they stare. “Buenos Tardes!” I joyfully yell with a smile, waving to them. Their silence and stares melt into big smiles and they say “Buenas Tardes a Usted!” or “Buenas Tardes güera“
Northern Oaxaca reminds me of a working class Southern California neighborhood. Although here what we would think of as a working/middle class neighborhood is a rich neighborhood and a poor neighborhood here would not exist in California. Or maybe it would- like slab city. Anyways, it’s warm and there’s a coffee shop down the street that reminds me of one that would be in California. Then I go to the market where the guy cannot understand anything I say. But he knew about us, he heard about us from our landlord. That there were güeras moving in.
I cover up my tattoos, even though it’s hot. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into. When I show them, people look at me differently. I don’t like that. It’s not that I regret my tattoos, because I don’t - just when I got them I had no idea the path in life I would take, that I would spend so much time in Latin America, where it is more conversative. Anyways- the other day at the laundry mat, dropping off my clothes, I got to talking with the owner. She was really sassy and didn’t know how to take her at first. She asked me where I was from, what was I doing. I told her I am an English teacher. Her fourteen year old daugther was helping her. She asked me if I would do an intercambio with her daughter. I said no, but gave her some resources. Demasiado lejos, she said, too far away. The colonia is only a 15 minute bus ride to downtown, where all the language exchanges are. I still go downtown everyday. The buses are crazy and don’t run very late, but taxis to the colonia are cheap. I told her I would tutor her daughter for the peso equivilant of about $4 per hour, which is a steal for private lessons in english here. The daughter was excited. The mother explained how talented her daughter was, and already she was taking tennis and guitar. The next day I came back and the woman said she had talked to a lot of mothers. That maybe I could do a group at the restaurant across the street… and that maybe all the waitstaff would want lessons from me too.
So I’m making this resume in Spanish to give to this woman. All the message boards about ESL say Oaxaca is not a great place to live and make money because there are so many foriengers here… an therefore no English teaching jobs. This has already proved to be wrong. There are many foriengers, but most of them are retired and aren’t there to work or even interact with locals. They are there to hang out with one another. Living in Northern Oaxaca, people have money but they don’t want to go downtown to schools. We will see what happens with that.
I don’t know how I feel about living in Mexico as a United States citizen. Sometimes late at night I feel lonely and paniked. I don’t really know why I’ve chosen this nomadic life. I question my own mental sanity, because so many things make me anxious and depressed. I know one thing that doesn’t, and that’s the abilitiy to move freely, to travel. A great privilege that I have, but one that I must learn to financially support. I am not passionate about teaching English, and I used to find it offensive, but now I see it as I have something, a knowledge of something that people want. And I can help people with that. Whether or not I agree with the politics behind it is irrelevant. So everyday I need to focus on my compassion. Cultural sensitivity. Living and working as a white American woman in Mexico.
