San Miguel

6.7.07

My lesson for yesterday included going into town to have dinner and further chat with Alejandra, then joining her husband in a café. He is a doctor with the Public Health department and we have a long discussion about the role of depression in ill health. Guanajuato is suffering an increase in suicide caused by lack of work, the changing roles of men and women, the increasing desire for things and inability to pay for them. We discuss the difference in health beliefs and I am impressed by the quick response this city makes to a crisis by gathering resources together to get to the root of a problem. They do studies and hire psychologists. Back at the house, I face the talking parrot, the church bells, my laughing neighbors and stuffy air as I try to manage some sleep. Awoken by the hourly church bell at 4am I take an anti-histamine and try for sleep again. Finally I slumber.

A morning jog/run through this part of town raises eyebrows as I swish by women cleaning the streets with hay switches, the children in their uniforms and the many workers awaiting city buses. Maria, la alma de casa arrives at 9 to cook a breakfast of the saltiest pork chop I’ve ever had and I get to know the med student a little better. We are both a bit frustrated by the lack of activity here in PACEMED GTO as it’s a new program and I opt to head to their headquarters today to get more exposure to their school. Alejandra and I take 4 hours to work on translating this Motivational Interviewing style of medical visits. She’s very helpful and I enjoy getting sidetracked by life issues, a friend is made. David helps us take photos of me in “action” pretending to do my thing with Alejandra, una paciente tipica. I note that the beautiful house we’re staying in is for sale and dream.

The bus ride to San Miguel feels like a little piece of Americana as a Hollywood film, dubbed in Spanish, bleats from the TV screens. Nicer than Greyhound, with spacious seats and a free snack, the cost is only $8 for the 1 ½ hour ride. I watch rain on one side of the road and sun on the other as we wend along the rural highway.

I am greeted at the bus station by a terse Tony who takes me to the guest house where I drop my things and then off to the PACEMED offices, hidden like so many businesses here behind a coffee shop and courtyard. I meet some of the staff, get to make a free landline call home, although the connection isn’t very good, and then am swept off again for a tour of this lovely city. Like GTO it’s all cobble stone streets and multi-colored houses but much flatter. Tony’s not much of a talker but prefers to speak English as he spent years in Florida so I indulge his need and take in the lovely wooden doors, iron lampposts and flower pot holders. There is preparation for yet another celebration in the jardin where I run into a woman I had met last year at the boarding house I stayed in GTO. A nurse, she’s back indulging her wanderlust and working on her Spanish again. We share dinner, another salad lover, and ponderings over life and then wander the night, which seems to change the air from whippety to soft. Fireworks pop here and there and it’s lovely to just sit in the night air again and watch people, something we don’t get much in LA. We take in a late glass of wine and join some other students beginning their rotations and it feels like college again. Finally I head back, flummoxed again by either the phone system, or my calling cards which puts me through to someone in Germany it sounds like rather than home. I realize how used to instant communications one can get, as soon as they don’t work.

Back at the Casa Aurellana I am confounded in the dark as people always turn off lights here and finally make it to my single bed. Sleep comes hard again as bells ring, traffic barrels under my window and the still air cloisters my body. I stuff tissue paper in my ears (vowing to remember not to flush it when using the toilet, another convenience taken for granted) and pop another Simply Sleep in the hopes of some relief.

6.8.07

5:30 am and, again, I toss and turn, finally give up on this endeavor and write instead. I’ll meet with the PACEMED people in the morning and hope for an afternoon nap which seems to come easier these days. Dogs are now barking, joining the roosters and odd truck here and there and I flash back to Madrid, a similar room with French doors, and Paris, places where I felt the earth under my feet as I looked for something. I think of my sister who seems never settled for long on any continent and wonder how different, yet alike, we are in some ways. I have stayed put for 15 years in one place and built a family and home. She has wandered the continents. Yet we share this common past of having doors opened to the world every year. I am lucky to have the best of both worlds and hope she is finding her place here as well.