Teacher on Two Wheels

Taken from my journal on Friday 12/7/07

Above:  Camp spot in the orange grove where the events below took place

I had just finished putting clothes on after taking a shower in the middle of an orange grove when I heard the faint rustling of leaves. A teenage boy holding a machete in one hand and a bundle of rope in the other stepped into view three or four trees away. Startled, he stopped as he saw me.

This sort of thing had happened before. I learned that I need to speak first and do some explaining or else a long, awkward staring episode ensues.

“Hello, I’m an English teacher on a long bicycle trip and I’m very tired. Would it be OK if I camped here for tonight? Just one night. I’ll leave very early tomorrow morning,” I said in broken Spanish.

It took a second for the boy to draw meaning from the tangle of mispronounced words I hurled at him, but once he did, he smiled. His wide brown eyes that had looked like the last sips of black coffee in white mugs a moment earlier hid behind the squinting his smile forced on his face. His teeth were crooked but white, like fresh tombstones after an earthquake.

“No problem. Do you have a tent?” He asked in Spanish.

“Yeah.”

“OK. “  Pause.  “I like your bike. Where did you cycle from?”

I told him.

“No! Impossible!”

“Yes! Possible!”

He then asked me the usual round of questions: How long have you been riding? Where are you going? How far do you ride each day? How much does your bike cost? Don’t you have a job? What does your wife think about this? Do you have any children?  Why don’t you have any children? Aren’t you scared of snakes and spiders? Do you ride on the highways?  Do you sleep? (I don’t quite understand why many people ask this last question, but they do.)

After 10 or 15 minutes the boy either ran out of questions or got sick of listening to my butchered Spanish sentences. He bid me good night and disappeared back into the orange grove.

***** 

Later that night, as sleep courted me to the hum of a cricket symphony, I heard a voice ring out through the darkness.

“Hey! Hello! Hey! Hey you! You have clothes in there?”

I heard the footsteps of many people approaching. The door to my rain fly was open, but because of the darkness I couldn’t make out the details of any of the five figures that appeared before me.

Oh no, this is the part where I get kidnapped. I knew this would happen. I should have listened to all those people in the states who warned about Mexico, I thought.

Not sure if the people wanted to steal my clothes or check to see if I was naked, I gave an awkward answer.

“Umm, maybe.”

“We want to talk to you. Want to say hello.”

One of the figures crouched down a few feet from the head of the tent as the others stood in a semi-circle behind him.

“I lived in Oklahoma for eight years. I was a bricklayer. Loved it there, man. You know Oklahoma?”

Still not sure whether or not I was about to get kidnapped, for some reason I breathed a small sigh of relief when the man said he lived in Oklahoma.  I started asking him questions about his time in the states. The man had a habit of repeating part of my question and adding the phrase “I love it!” or “I love this guy!” after nearly everything he said.

“So what part of Oklahoma did you live in?” I asked.

“What part of Oklahoma, I love it. Tulsa,” he said with a laugh.

After a few minutes, I started to think I wouldn’t be kidnapped after all. It seemed like a few guys from the village just wanted to meet the crazy foreigner in a tent and asked the one guy in town who spoke English to come and do the talking.

“Why did you come back to Mexico if you were making good money as a bricklayer?” I asked after a pause in the conversation.

“Why come back, I love this guy. Of course I didn’t choose to come back. I was sent back. I went to prison for two years and then they sent me back.”

Long pause.

Oh no, I really am about to get kidnapped, I thought.

“Oh. Uh, well that sucks,” I said, not knowing what to say.

“Yeah it sucks, I love it. [When this sentence popped up in conversation, it didn't sound as strange as it looks in print!]  It’s OK though. I’m going to try to get back in a few months. I’ll cross through Arizona again. I know a group going and I think I will be able to go with them.”

“I can’t imagine crossing through Arizona.”

“It’s very hard. We spent four days in the desert and my feet was so bloody at the end. But I made it. I can do it again, I know. I need to go back—my daughter lives in Tulsa and my…what’s the words you say for…uh…mother of the baby…baby’s mother? No. What is it, what is it, I love it. Ah! Baby’s momma! My baby’s momma lives there, too.”

The man invited me to go on a tour of the village. When I emerged from the tent, he told me I was a giant and then asked if I had a flashlight.

“Yeah, I have one.”

“Good. We don’t use one, but you will need one–you’re a gringo.”

***** 

We made our way up the steep trail that led out of the orange grove and started walking along the shoulder of the highway. Illuminated by the headlights of the passing cars, I could see that I was surrounded by five teenagers.  All that fear of getting kidnapped earlier was inspired by five scrawny boys.  One of them was the boy I met earlier. The others sported varying styles of adolescent facial hair, the kind that’s patchy, hard to make out, and worn simply to show the people around you that you’re no longer the little kid you used to be.

The teenager I had been talking to told me his name was George. He was only 16. His daughter, Isabella, was born when he had just turned 15. He wouldn’t tell me what he went to prison for, only that he was sent to a prison instead of a juvenile detention facility and that he just got out a few months ago. He was deported once he was released.

For an hour we walked up and down the dirt streets of the village where the boys lived. Under street lamps glowing through frenzies of encircling moths and flies like suns lighting up miniature winged comets and planets in solar systems that disappear at dawn, we talked and sat on the curb. At one point, George asked if anyone wanted an orange and then went up to the nearest tree, one that happened to be right in front of someone else’s house, and picked 10 oranges for us to eat.

I laughed. “Will they care if you eat their oranges?” I asked.

“I love this guy. No, of course not. I saved these oranges from rotting on the ground. We have too many oranges in this village.”

All the boys worked eight or nine hours a day in the orange fields. They all stopped attending school at age 12 or 13. When I asked George if he would ask them if they too had dreams of one day going to the U.S., he almost answered for them before stopping himself.

“Of course, they—well let me ask.” Once he asked, each of the boys answered with the same answer: Maybe.

“They’re kind of scared,” George said. “They don’t know anything other than oranges. If they go to the U.S., they’ll like it. They’ll like the white girls and the good jobs. They’ll see.”

When we had seen all there was to see in the village, checked out the place where George wished there was a discothèque, thrown pebbles at the stray dogs that approached us looking for food, and run out of things to talk about, I told everyone I was getting tired. George wished me luck on my trip and asked one of the boys to walk me back to my tent so I’d make it there safely. When I insisted I’d be OK, that I had a flashlight to help my gringo eyes and that I knew my way, George laughed and repeated his mantra.

“I love this guy.”