Life in the "Village"

The morning show off the balcony: a school of dolphins or porpoises fishing within a large circle just off shore. Eventually a small boat carrying three fishermen takes their cue and approaches, pelican entourage in tow. The dolphins give them space but don’t abandon their site. The fishermen are encased in large plastic aprons. Two toss and retrieve large nets. The third pulls their catch from a returned net, placing “keepers” in a sizable covered box, while the others continue with a different set of nets. The discarded fish are heaved overboard to the satisfaction of their pelican camp followers. All energetically engaged in obtaining the resources that they need for the day.

Two of the young men who work in the lobby – one who works the desk, the other who provides back up and security functions -- are terrific fellows and we are fond of them. My assumptions were that they were young, single guys as they might be in Canada, but no, both have families: Esmile, about thirty years old has three children; Juan Carlo, who just turned 24, has two. They will go further up the river than on their last excursion, have a swim and eat lunch at one of the small restaurants up there. All three enjoy the occasions of these voyages, getting away from the usual round of work and having a time with some guys.

Our condo building shares some features of a small village. For example, if you want some information or need something done, you ask one of the women how to proceed. If she doesn’t have the answers handy, she will usually know who does and will put you in contact with that person. It reminds me of the way that the communities around Calabogie, Ontario functioned in my grandmother’s day. She had two telephone lines, one at each end of the house. They were fastened to the wall, had a one-ear receiving end, and were operated by cranking in a designated code: one long and two shorts for Mrs Stewart on the Calabogie line. This code would ring in every home on the line but all would recognize it as a call for Mrs Stewart. Of course anyone could pick up their phone, and I’m sure sometimes did, and listen in to the call. Because my grandparents’ home was situated more or less between Calabogie and Hopetown, they had a line for each community. Mrs Stewart might need to know what Mrs Hendrich wanted her to bring to the Clyde Forks bean supper, but having no access to the Hopetown line other than going through an expensive long distance modality, she would call Gramma, who would run around to the other phone just off the parlour, call Mrs Hendrich for the information, and run back to inform Mrs Stewart. Their home was a hub for local communication.

There are particular women here who serve a similar function. They have lived for some time in Puerto Vallarta and particularly here in this building. Their Spanish is good and they are invariably willing to spend time advising and assisting neophytes like ourselves in topics varying from home decor, good restaurants, and, something currently of interest to us, finding tenants for our unit when we are not in residence. We had only to mention this interest to one of the women, Margaret, to be given within the day two possible candidates. Quickly the word gets about that our place will be available during two of the most sought after months: December and January next. (This is because as I mentioned in my last post, I will be travelling then.)

A second site of communal communication is on the roof at the swimming pool – akin to the water well of earlier places. Each morning that we go up for a swim we see and often chat with whoever is sharing the pool with us. Some are owners of units but many are people who come regularly as tenants but who sometimes have difficulty finding a spot for the period that they desire. Three women who come each January from Oregon told me that the unit that they rent is for sale. If sold they fear that their regular berth here will no longer be available. They came to view our place and took my email address to contact us if that happens. Three days ago I spoke to a youngish woman who had been doing strong lengths for some time. As we both rested at one end of the pool, I commented on the seriousness of her swim. She told me that she had had an accident some months back from which she was recovering and that the swimming greatly helped her. One thing led to another. She was visiting her parents who were renting in the building for the first time and the question of availability for a longer period next year came up. I told her about our place.

That is how we came to meet Bill and Marjorie of White Rock, BC. About an hour after I had spoken to Kathy, her daughter, at the pool, Marjorie came to the door, wanting to see and talk about our place. She is a lady about our age, born and brought up, as she said, in Edinburgh. Her brogue testifies to this fact. Marjorie had a look about and a brief chat and returned about an hour later with her husband Bill for a further look-see. They would let us know. The following morning Marjorie came by once again to say that they would like to rent our place and asking for a time when she and Bill could come to discuss it with us. We set a time and that is how we have obtained a very pleasant connection with a couple mutually pleased with the arrangement. So that is how things are managed around here.

Last night I went to an art auction held to raise money for the local library – bibliotecha -- as we say here. All of the works were donated by local artists. Only about thirty of them were auctioned; the others, perhaps about a hundred, were given a list price and could simply be purchased. The library doesn’t receive any government funding and this yearly sale is its most important sustaining event. I had volunteered to help. We arrived an hour early to a building a-buzz with people and activity. On the lawn outside were rows of chairs. Inside artwork was set up on partitions erected throughout the library’s main hall. The works were quite diverse in size, style, modality, and accomplishment. The sale portion of the event was to start at 6 PM so we had plenty of time to acquaint ourselves with the works. Inevitably we were drawn to particular pieces. We focussed on three that we felt we could afford and as soon as the sale opened, advanced to the cashier with our selections. Very exciting.

Unfortunately, for some reason unknown to us our cards would not agree to be processed by the available machines. What to do? The cashier said that we could return the next day with cash to pay for them, but not to be put off, I left and took the bus back to our condo to scoop up my little envelope of pesos, hidden not too convincingly in my bureau. I wasn’t sure that there would be enough to cover our purchases and by then the banks were closed, so I formulated a back-up plan. Sure enough, I was about 300 pesos short. I took what was there and headed down the hall to see our neighbour Marion, another denizen of White Rock. I interrupted her in mid-Skype call with a friend, and demanded the loan of 300 pesos to complete our purchases. But of course! She grabbed 400 for me from her “secret” store and off I went on the bus. By the time I arrived the sale portion of the event had been completed and the thirty pieces to be auctioned were being brought out one at a time to the front of the building for the consideration of a large crowd. It was night by then and the lights, the lawn, the lovely trees, the building itself, and the people made a scene of real beauty. After paying for our now wrapped artworks, we headed home by taxi – a rare extravagance, though in Canadian dollars only about $6 or $7. It was all fun.

On the day last week that I found Alan Patton’s book at the library, I also picked up another book that I had read decades ago: The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The action of the novel takes place in just a few days during the last year or so of Stalin’s reign, so probably in 1953 or 1954. Most occurs at a special prison, part of the infamous GULAG of prisons dotting the USSR at the time, undoubtedly with comparable places today. This particular prison, unknown to locals, was in a building on the outskirts of Moscow. Its approximately 280 inmates had been brought together because of their scientific credentials to work on projects of interest to the Boss of Bosses. Most had spent years already in far less appealing circumstances (though this is relative), arrested and given ten to twenty-five years of prison plus five years of exile on completion, for the heinous crime of “allowing” themselves to be captured by the Germans. They had "clearly" returned to Russia after the war in order to undermine the state for the benefit of their Western masters. Solzhenitsyn is a powerful writer, giving voice to the inner lives of these men as well as to their interactions with one another and with their guards, civilian co-workers, and the powerful leaders of the institute, who despite their positions stand in chronic terror of their own supreme leader. Solzhenitsyn pulls it off with masterful vignettes, great dialogue, a searing sarcasm, and humour. The title is a reference to Dante’s “first circle” the best place in hell that he posited for the great philosophers of the ancient days, unwilling to condemn these men to the fire and brimstone of the orthodox Christian hell for all not sanctified in Christ.

Reading is the best! It costs so little and yet takes you so far. Adios for now.

Lots About Decor

I have felt singularly lazy about writing for the last several weeks. Last year I would have gone on and on, eulogizing Puerto Vallarta in all its many dimensions. Now we simply live here. We enjoy every day and are grateful our good fortune. We have been doing some “decorating” of our unit. We bought a large, antique mirror at a place nearby that specializes in “objet” from older houses; it’s now up over our bed, replacing the ferocious set of masks that used to lurk there. Today we are going to a local paint shop to pick out a colour in some shade of yellow with which to paint the walls and ceiling of our living/dining/kitchen area. Two of the maintenance fellows here have given us a very reasonable quote to do the painting in their off hours. We purchased a new and colourful bedspread from one of the vendors on the malecon a few days ago. I had him come upstairs with me while I tried in on our bed. It looks fabulous and works with the colour on the walls. Today I plan to go out to the fancy-dancy mall by the marina to see what they have in the way of large cushions in solid colours to go with it. Who knew I could be so house-wifely?

Besides all of this action we have been somewhat sociable. A number of the people here are Canadians, mostly from the west, and we’ve been getting to know them. There are folks from Calgary and a bunch from Kamloops, Nelson, and White Rock, BC. Everyone is very friendly and helpful about details of living here. Most of the people on our floor have owned units for many years and spend a big part of the year here. Most are about our age. It’s like living in a village with a bunch of active and interesting friends.

We are planning another of our long trips for this coming winter – something we do every five years: 2000 – South East Asia – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; 2005 – Paris, St Petersburg, Moscow, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and China; 2010-11 – Italy and Egypt. This year we plan to be away from mid-December to the end of January, though we will go immediately to Puerto Vallarta on our way back to spend February and March here. We are going to Istanbul for about a week, on to Delhi, then Calcutta to join a Gap Adventures rail tour for two weeks – up to Darjeeling of tea plantation fame, then along the Ganges, staying at Varanasi and Lucknow, and back to Delhi; we will fly then to Hanoi, after a few days hooking up with another Gap tour in Vietnam – Halong Bay, Hue, and on to Ho Chi Minh City; a few days in Hong Kong and then a flight to LA, and on to Puerto Vallarta. It’s really fun organizing these trips. So far we have our flight to Istanbul booked, as well as the two Gap tours and some extra hotel nights in Calcutta. Because much of the other itinerary occurs in January, the flights and hotel accommodations are not yet available on line. If any of you are interested in any parts of our trip, consider yourself invited to come along.

I’ve been reading a bunch of very good detective novels by Martin Cruz Smith, Scott Turow, and Minette Walters. In our local used book store I came across a well-written book by Le Ly Hayslip, entitled When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. Le Ly was born in a village close to Danang, Vietnem. She was about 11 when the war with the French had ended and that with the Americans was beginning to heat up. Danang is in about the centre of the country. Though it was officially in the “republican” south of the divided country, its proximity to the north ensured that their area was permeated with Viet Cong. Villagers were divided in their loyalties; punishments for real or imagined acts aiding “the enemy” were meted out by both sides. Ultimately the village was destroyed, along with many others, ending generations-old ways of being and of culture. Le Ly and her family’s story shows in microcosm the destructive effects of that war on the Vietnamese people. She herself and some of her family members found ways to survive and even to preserve values passed on from her father, the most formative influence in her young life. I’m very glad to have come across this story before our next visit to Vietnam. 

In December and early January our friend Karl from North Vancouver, whom we met last year along the malecon, was staying again in Puerto Vallarta. We saw him almost daily out walking and had several meals with him. He grew up in South Africa but left there when he was in his mid-twenties. He talked with me at some length about his gradual awareness of the destructive nature of the apartheid system. His father and essentially the community in which he grew up supported it. At the local library a couple of days ago I came upon a copy of Alan Patton’s Cry, the Beloved Country. I read it decades ago but remembered it as a beautiful and powerful work. I brought it home with me and have been reading it since. Patton wrote it in 1947 and it was published just months before the election of the Africaner government that established the laws governing apartheid. The book details the already growing destruction of the culture and values of the tribal system in South Africa through the economic development of the dominant white society.

And so life goes on here, one day at a time, like everywhere else. I have to say that I am very happy and enjoying what each day brings to me. All the best.

The World We Live in Now

It’s been a couple of weeks since I have written anything. Around that time I became aware that I had become quite overwhelmed with the material I had been reading about the Holocaust. People have asked me about that in the past – how I was handling the horrors of the things I was reading and writing about? Other than just after our visit to Auschwitz, I haven’t had any serious difficulties with it. For a few weeks before Christmas, however, I was reading some searing first-hand accounts of living and surviving in Auschwitz, written by Polish men who had managed to stay alive there. I also read Martin Amis’ brilliant but devastating novel The Zone of Interest, which is set in Auschwitz during the last couple of years of the war. These various pieces were a potent mix, substantially different from reading some of the other more academic texts that I had been studying.

I’ve had the experience of being overwhelmed in that manner before, though not for many years, and I recognized that I needed to take a step back and to simply live here and now in my present life, and not as I was beginning to feel, almost as though I was living in a parallel universe called Auschwitz. And so that is what I have been doing. I talked with my friend, Maureen, about what I had been feeling, and I deliberately stopped reading the vast array of Holocaust literature that I brought here. Instead I’ve been reading some mystery novels, supplied by the used book store around the corner from our place. I haven’t indulged in that kind of reading for some time and it’s been fun. I’m not certain when or in what way I will go on with the exploration that I had been making about that period of our collective history that we designate “The Holocaust”, but for sure it has become a deep part of my understanding and appreciation of what we humans are about.

In the past several days, like people everywhere, we have been following the horrific incidents in France. We get the New York Times several times a week and have Shaw cable and so are connected with CBC, CNN, BBC, and other news channels. This is the world we live in now. Extremists can and do strike anywhere. However, the proliferation of these events is stimulating dialogues among different religious groupings and nations that might have been unimaginable previously. Even though there are enormous divides, for example, in many European countries about the perils or benefits of Islamic immigration, I believe that the world is moving toward another stage of understanding with respect to what is politically and communally needed to undermine and discredit extremists. No individual country or people can now protect or insulate its people alone. Muslim political and religious leaders are taking harder lines publically against the outrages perpetrated in the name of Allah. We live in interesting times.

In the meantime for us, life goes on gloriously here in Puerto Vallarta. It’s a simple life, oriented around being able to walk outside without the constraints of winter, organizing some changes to our condo, getting groceries and deciding on meals at home or out somewhere on the malecon, some telephone sessions for me and internet, reading and relaxing. More and more we have a genuine feeling that we live here – it’s one third of the year and that is a substantial portion. We’re not just tourists anymore. At the same time, at the back of our minds is the fact that when we return to Toronto we will be engaged in finding a new place to live. We’ve decided to buy a condo and have been looking at what is currently available on mls.ca. That’s always fun. There are places available more or less in the area where we want to live and more or less in the neighbourhood of what we can afford, but we will have to wait until we get back at the end of March to go around to see places and to get a “feel” of what it would be like to live there. I like all of that so I look forward to it.

I hope all are well and doing better than I would be if I was spending the winter in the chilly northland.