!...Muy Complicado!

Contrary to my two recent trips to Mexico, where I visited a colony of families living in a landfill [see my last post for details], this weekend was a happy, fun experience: I was able to attend a highly religious (and extremely complicated!) Mexican wedding.

The groom was a cousin of a good friend of mine, so she enabled me to crash/understand the wedding, as I am neither Mexican or Catholic. Before the wedding, my friend took me around Hermosillo, her father's home town, where we dined on exquisite tacos from a vendor's cart, saw the university where her father lived, and generally spent time with her family. As this is a health blog, I could tell you such vendors would be ostracized in the U.S. due to his "unsanitary" food preparation conditions, but since I am biased, I'm not going to discuss that aspect of the trip. (The five tacos I had were delicious, by the way. My friends and family pray I won't contract some rare disease, to which I say "pish-posh!").

The health risk I am going to talk about doesn't necessarily apply to Mexico itself, but does apply to weddings: stress.

Research detailing the effects of stress on our bodies has been "emerging" for years, and it seems to me that everyone who has survived through middle school acne knows what effects stress can have. But, just in case, here are some resources: some are flashy and some are practical.

Also, here's a basic run-down of the symptoms, compiled nicely by HelpGuide.org:

Weddings, which require balancing dreams and expectations to throw a realistic party, are probably -the- most stressful situations in our young lives, and more often than not, brides tend to flip out. Families the world over know this; in Mexico, there is generally an outpouring of family support, such that the family is extremely involved in planning and funding the wedding (depending on the family; this was certainly the case with my friend, and she claims the rest of Mexico regards weddings similarly). America also knows this; in addition to having families support the bride, we made a satirical show about it, called Bridezilla, which follows real brides as they terrorize their poor wedding attendants (note, the video contains quite a bit of censored swearing; you have been warned):


But in Mexico, more so than America, the cuture of the family really shows and pulls through. There are so many traditions in religious Mexican ceremonies that simply -must- be followed, and so many family members that want attention from the bride and groom, that I can't even imagine the stress that a couple must feel in a Mexican, Catholic ceremony. It seems as if they have very little freedom to control what is going on around them, which would drive me nuts.

I admired the bride in this wedding for keeping her cool through all of it. I would have had a nervous breakdown during the ceremony if a random girl decided to crash my wedding and write about it. :)

The horror, the horror...

I had my first taste of Mexico on Saturday.
As a disclaimer, this is not a 'happy' story about me scoring a great deal on an embroidered pillow or getting drunk for the first time on Mexican-brewed tequilla. This is a gritty, gruesome story about what humans can do to each other in this dog-eat-dog (literally, I have photos) world. This is a story about families trying to survive in a landfill.

^{here, desperation:
poverty stains their fingers
and infants cry out}

As I've stated before, my experience with the border is highly limited to what I've read about trade policies and friends' triumphant "I went clubbing" stories. I never had to face the fact that there exists, two hours south of where I've spent the last four years of my life in university-driven luxury, a third world country.

^{nipples in the dirt
with its distended belly
Lord, is that a dog?}

I thought I could handle it. I thought I'd go down and snap some pictures, and get my story. The objective journalist, right? No. I have to confess, I am shaking as I'm typing this, and not because I'm cold on the outside. There are so many words I have yet to write about this story, and yet I feel that if I did start writing, I'd never stop, and the horror of it would get so big and out of hand that I woudn't be able to contain it. To be able to deal with this, I've put restrictions on what I can write here. Five-seven-five, self-contained syllables that create vignettes. At the moment, poetry is the best way for me to handle this issue, because I can think so much clearer in it.

^{turbuculosis
made me ignore your baby
am I so selfish?}

On that note, this is supposed be a health blog, so even though the story hasn't broken (but whom has it broken? whom will it break?), I can tell you a little bit of the health conditions I saw. I am not a doctor, but I saw dehydration written deep in the wrinkles of more than half of the population. There was a five month old baby with open sores on his head and face, as well as a crust of mucas across his eyes that screamed infection. There were coughs and hacks and rarely a smile between them. Several people have been maimed in work accidents.

^{they are scared to drink
el agua de mosquitos
but life must go on}

My sources (confidental until the story breaks) tell me that most of the people they've interacted with have TB, most likely from the crowded living spaces (at least three to a single room shack smaller than the average table). Sources also told me that the community tends to drink a lot of Coke and Pepsi instead of water, which has a huge advertizing base in Nogalas (as far as I could see from the murals everywhere). I'm going to assume that the lack of the ability to store clean water contributes to a lot of health problems, not to mention the decomposing animals and other organic material found in the dump. These people build their houses out of material found in the offal of Nogalas, and contrary to popular opinion, they don't pick thorugh the trash for food, but for building materials and recyclables; anything they can sell.

What makes this even worse is that these people pay $1000 for the privilege to own a lot there, and at $60 per week, most can't even afford that.

^{down in Nogalas
I had my first taste of pain
and it is bitter}