My First Day in Tijuana

            by Dane Silva

 

            I found out my Youth Group was taking a trip to Tijuana, Mexico a few weeks before spring break in my sophomore year of high school. I was so excited that I would finally be leaving the country. I had never traveled outside California my whole life; this was my first chance to explore the rest of the world.

            “We are going to Mexico this summer to do a service project,” my Pastor announced to our youth group as we began to talk about upcoming events.

            “For what?” my friend Phil asked with a little confusion in his voice.

            “To build houses for underprivileged families. Its a great opportunity to gain understanding of the poverty in our world.”

            As I stared at the growing patch of skin on Pastor’s head I couldn’t help but think about all the rumors of Tijuana. Dirty streets, hookers on corners, underage drinking, and all sorts of petty crime were the only thoughts in my mind. I really didn’t know what to expect.

             Months later it was finally the night before the trip. I was packing my bags. I filled them with a weeks worth of socks, shirts, underwear, pants, and my favorite green zip-up sweater. My mom made me stack all my clothes in neat organized piles upon my bed. She always had to examine my clothes before I went on a trip.

            “Do you have all the items on the list: Sunscreen, hat, towel. Do you have a towel? You also need a hat. Mexico is going to be hot you know,” my mom said a little angry at the fact that it was 1 a.m. 

             I raced down two flights of stairs to my laundry room to fetch a towel. I came back with a giant beach towel covered in sand castles and tiny drinks with umbrellas in them.

            “Its time to go to bed,” my mom said as she flicked the light off. That night lasted forever. I laid awake for about an hour, flipping my pillow over every time my face began to sweat.

            When I woke up the next day, I took a steaming hot shower to shake the sleep from my eyes. Later, after a much needed bowl of Cheerios, I packed my family’s Volvo with my duffle bag and backpack and headed straight for my church. Everyone was already there, waiting on the stairs in front of Saint Paul’s Lutheran in Oakland. Experiencing a sense of disconnection from the rest of the group I sat on the grass. I was the only one who hadn’t been out of the country. As soon as I sat down my pants soaked with freezing cold water. The grass was still moist from the morning dew. One by one we packed suitcases, duffle bags, sleeping mats, and pillows into the van. It was like playing Tetris but with articles of luggage. After a quick Kodak moment we climbed into the fifteen-passenger van and began our journey south of the border. I sat in the very back row next to my only real friend from my youth group, Phil. He and I had been best friends ever since he invited me to see his pet gecko Speedy in the fourth grade. Phil had always been my companion on all our youth group adventures. His broad shoulders dug into my neck and we became acclimated to the stuffiness of the back seat. 

            I stared out the window while the rest of our group slowly fell asleep. I observed a license plate from Hawaii, a very unusual one with a rainbow on it. This is how I exhausted most of my time on that drive, staring endlessly out the window at herds of cows and vast fields of nothingness. I even counted the black spots on a milk cow as the van zoomed by. I saw seven. Damn I was bored. I became so jaded I began to stare at my reflection in the rear view mirror of the van.   

            I awoke in parking lot, a puddle of drool on my blue shirt and yellow crust in the corners of my eyes. The van had stopped a few miles out side of L.A. somewhere near the Grape Vine. My stomach let out a prolonged bellow telling me it was time for lunch. We climbed out of the van grabbed our money and headed for the red and gold doors of In-and-out Burger. When I entered the restaurant an arousing smell of freshly cut potatoes entered my nostrils. Their French fries had always been my favorite. Crisp to perfection, they only need a little salt and ketchup to satisfy my hunger.

            “I heard that there’s a Bible reference on the bottom of every cup,” said Phil. Everybody raised there cups above their heads and began to search. To my surprise it was there, John: 3:16, on the bottom lip of the cup.

            “Wow, that’s creepy. Christians are everywhere,” I thought to myself. “I will have the number two with a vanilla milkshake instead of a soda,” I ordered with a wide smile upon my face, almost too big. I took my time drinking my milkshake. The ice cream was stubborn, it wouldn’t come of the straw though so I pulled the top off and began to eat it with an extra long spoon. My burger was perfect, fresh onions, ideal tomatoes, toasted bun, mustard, mayo, lettuce, and a small dish of ketchup I used to dip my burger into. You know the food is great when you leave a restaurant with at least three distinguishable stains on your shirt. This was bliss.

            It was time for the final leg of the drive.

            “Only four and a half hours to go,” Pastor Craig announced. Everybody was ready to get going.  As we pulled out of the parking lot everybody prepared their iPods and C.D players. I searched my backpack, digging through the depths of my toiletries for something to occupy my mind. I couldn’t find what I was searching for. I grasped onto what I thought was my iPod, but when I pulled it out it was only my old Game Boy. It was an original too, tall and grey with only two dull pink buttons, labeled A and B. I must have been drained to mistake a sleek skinny iPod for a bulky Game Boy. I was hoping for the smooth sounds of Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder but instead I found the 2-d images of Mario and the rainbow colored blocks of Tetris. This wasn’t quite what I wanted but I made do.

            Our van approached the border maybe an hour before sunset. There was no real checkpoint; we just drove on through underneath a sun-stained sign the proclaimed “Welcome to Mexico” in bright red, green, and white letters. Everywhere were crowds of people, on corners smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and vendors selling deliciously colored treats. The buildings looked like ancient ruins, covered in ugly graffiti and holes in walls that were patched with multiple pieces of plywood or covered with a sheet of plastic. My first images of Tijuana were almost as bad as I imagined.

             We were now trudging down a dirt road passing all sorts of suspicous looking characters, the ones you see in movies, which wear long black overcoats and sunglasses in the shadow of the night. Once again I found myself staring out the window. I began to notice all the peculiar discrepancies between America and Mexico. For one the police roamed the streets in tightly packed clusters, caring heavy machine guns, high-stepping it down the road in camouflage. It was weird. A swift sense of exhaustion came over me. I tried to lift my eyelids open but I couldn’t, they had become glued shut, I fell asleep to the comfortable resonance of Mexican polka.  

            By the time we reach the compound it is dark out. Only a faint orange sun and a few fast food rappers were left of our day of travel. The building itself was not how I expected. It resembled a Small church, painted sky blue, with vibrant banana yellow letters across the front. I don’t exactly remember what it said, something in Spanish probably. Inside was a kitchen, a dinning area that included a T.V, and four bunking rooms. Upon the door of each dorm were frilly pink flowers and crosses that looked a though they were carved rudely with a butter knife. I had a sense as if I entered a cult, but thankfully I didn’t drink the “special” Kool-Aid.

             Drained from the day I climbed onto my foam mattress, closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I spent maybe an hour sleeping until I awoke with what I thought was sweat on my face. I was wrong; my face was covered in dry blood. Dry air can give me bloody noses. I rinsed the crusty blood from beneath my nose, stuffed two tissues in each nostril, and went back to bed. As I attempted to return to the happiness of my dreams I failed. One of our adult leaders, who I only knew as Greg, had begun snoring so loud that everybody else was now wide-awake. Nobody was able to sleep with the endless sounds of sea lion mating calls coming from the bed next them. This was quite possibly the most awful, dreadful, dire, unpleasant noise I have every heard come from any human being.

            I awoke the next morning with the sleep still in my eyes. The sun was all ready in the center of the sky as I walked to the showers. Salty drops of sweat dripped off my forehead and landed gracefully onto my bottom lip. I told myself a nice shower would cool me off; it would keep me out of the sun. 

            Once again we were packed like sardines in a now mud covered van. Our hosts said the work site was very close. Wrong. The roads were covered in so many potholes it resembled a battlefield from Vietnam. These ditches made it impossible for the van to travel over 20 miles an hour without a chance of tipping over. I gazed out the window only to discover more things I didn’t enjoy about Tijuana. Wrecked cars, heaps of burning garbage, and shopping carts filled with objects that you could only find at flea market lined the edges of the road. Eventually the van made it to the work site. The site itself was only a slab of concrete, on top of which a shaggy dog laid that when closely examined was covered in the most species of vermin I have ever seen. That poor dog was covered in fleas, ants, and ticks that were sucking the dog dry. This bleak slab of concrete was the reason we came. Hammers, nails, and wood awaited our arrival.

            How could I build a house? When I was six, my dad and I built a small go-cart that I would race down my block. This new project wasn’t quite a go-cart, but I was ready. Instead of being disoriented with a hammer, I was a natural. I could smash the head of any unsuspecting nail deep into any two by four with two quick throws. Anxious with my newfound ability I set off immediately; one wall went up, then two more, then finally the fourth that was built to support a small door and window that resembled a porthole of a sailboat. The house was no bigger than a small shack, there was only enough room for a children’s sized bed and a desk if you didn’t want standing room.

            After a mid-day siesta, Phil and I were on the roof putting on tarpaper, when two young Mexican boys climbed up the ladder and sat next to us. They were examining something with a magnifying glass. I peeked my head over their shoulders to discover what they were examining. I couldn’t exactly tell what they were doing, so I leaned in a little closer. My chin actually rested on one of their shoulders like a parrot on the shoulder of a pirate. They were torturing two yellow jackets, poking them with their fingers with no regard that they could get stung. These bees weren’t the ones in America, they were Africanized, and twice the size, and only had one treacherously purple stripe on their thoraxes. When they noticed that I was now watching in awe they began to rip their wings off. One wing after another they became terrestrial yellow jackets. The twitching insects rolled onto their backs confused with the fact that they no longer possessed the wings they needed to escape the tyranny of those two mischievous boys. I found myself urging to torment the unfortunate insects. Temptation came over me; my finger was no longer part of me as it began prodding the defenseless bugs. My finger was no more than one millimeter too close to the head a yellow jacket when it dug its microscopic teeth in the very tip of my right index finger. “Oooch,” I shrieked, so high-pitched that my voice gave sharp crack. My face ran red as I realized that I had been stung and the two boys were now rolling on their sides laughing hysterically. My injured hand reached for my tool belt, searching for what I desired. Once I got a grip on the cool steel handle of my hammer I swung it with the all my strength. I smashed the Africanized bee into a pile of green and yellow mush that oddly resembled half-eaten Jell-O. Next I hit the other, twice as hard as the first. Projectile bits and pieces of yellow insect soared in all directions. This time only a mustard colored streak was left on the tarpaper. A disturbed smile came over my face, I was satisfied.

            The workday was almost over.  Eventually I was the only one left still giving an effort to finish. I hit my last nail then took my time climbing down off the roof. On the far side of the house was a rickety ladder that I was supposed to use to get down. The ladder was only half the height of the house and seemed to be held together with duck tape. Grappling the side of the house as I came down, I slipped. My ass landed flat on the ground with a great clunk. Luckily nobody noticed. They were all preoccupied with food. I dusted the dirt off my backside then hobbled over to join the others.

            The family we were building the home for had prepared us a feast. It was a traditional Mexican meal, crispy taquitos with sour cream (literally sour cream), and a punch bowl filled with vats of horchata. I was in a rush, cramming as much food down my throat as fast as I could fit in my mouth. Every so often I would tip my glass and let the smooth vanilla flavored drink drench the half eaten food that rested on my tongue. I probably downed five glasses of that delicious rice drink in a matter of minutes.

            “Your not supposed to drink the horchata,” Phil told me with a look of disgust on his face.

            “Whaghgth,” I tried to say as particle of chicken and bits of rice began to spill out my mouth.

            “Don’t you know? The water here is filled with bacteria. It’s tainted,” Phil told me. I sat there dumbfounded, trying to figure out how I didn’t remember the stories of Montezuma’s revenge. Weeks before our trip to Tijuana I read a short article on preparing for life in Mexico. You weren’t supposed to ingest any form of water. That means no ice, no drinks in improperly washed glasses, and more importantly no horchata. It turned out there was a very sickening form of bacteria in the water in Tijuana. Some symptoms included nausea, vomiting, stomach weakness, and worst of all, diarrhea. Awww shit.

            I thought about that article over and over in my mind. “Could these things happen to me? There wasn’t much ice in those drinks. What’s the worst that could happen?” A few minutes after my initial thoughts of the devastation of Montezuma’s Revenge my stomach let out a long echoing gurgle. “Oh no. Where’s the bathroom.” I ran around the yard in front of our house like a chicken without a head, searching for anything to let out the contents of my stomach in. I couldn’t find what I needed so I just opened my mouth and let the vomit fly. Once I started yakking I couldn’t stop. My mouth was like faucet that couldn’t be turned off. It was horrible. All those delicious tastes mixed into one weren’t very pleasant. When I finally stopped, the tips of my shoes were covered in a pile of oatmeal-textured vomit. My day was over; I couldn’t bear the sharp pains that attacked the inner linings my stomach every time I moved. A thousand needles were stabbing me. The rest of the group finished the house as I rested. They painted the walls a horrid pinkish-brown that oddly resembled my vomit.

            The first day of work was finally over. I only had ten left. “I hope the rest of the week will be as good as today,” I thought sarcastically to myself as I hobbled through puddles of mud towards the van.  I stumbled through the open door into the van, climbing with all my strength to reach the back where I belonged. We pulled off from the worksite at mid sunset. My mind was still weary from my battle with Montezuma, but I had enough strength to gaze out the tinted black windows of our van. Two girls with red ribbons in their hair chased our van waving their tiny hands at the blankness of the pitch-black windows. Those two girls made all the dreadfulness of my first day in Tijuana worthwhile. No matter what happened, I helped someone. My eyes caught a wide smile as their ribbons flickered playfully in a subtle gust of wind.