jetaway

"What I'll remember most is the mother's face, so aged but beautiful it was," Chencho says when they get back in the van to return to the city. The mother, Angela, lives in the small village of Teotitlan del Valle, just thirty minutes outside of the city of Oaxaca. She's lived there her whole life. She grew up speaking not Spanish but Zapotec. Only in the last four years has she begun to understand and speak the national language with her grown children and her growing grandchildren. Angela is not even close to five feet tall. She is round in the middle with muscular legs and arms from her years of labor on the land. Her skin is the deep color of cafe, dotted with freckles. In her skin are the lines of her time in Teotitlan. These are lines that tell stories. She cannot be old, but must be in her forties. But her forty years are wiser, softer, and less rushed than forty years in a city. Angela sits on the small chair, small enough for an infant, and cleans the lam

They always tell you not to drink the water here. They say don't eat the fruits or the vegetables. When you brush your teeth, you better have bottled water nearby so you don't accidentally put your brush under the tap. Close your mouth in the shower. No ice in beverages. Some people go as far as to say you shouldn't eat the salsa. No salsa in Mexico? But, if Moctezuma is really out to get his revenge, he will find you even if you follow all of those rules, as I followed all those rules these last five days. For me, it't now a diet of rice and bananas and te de manzanilla (chamomile). For now it's sipping a banana-colored chalky medicine every four hours followed by two more days of antibiotics just to make sure Moctezuma is really gone from my bowels. The doctor reassured me that it wasn't anything I did wrong; after all, I didn't eat the street food. He said, "This is the rainy season and with it come the bugs. Lots of people get this problem right no