Travel Safely in … Mexico City?

My closest brush with crime in Mexico City was one day when I was coming out of the subway, and I saw a guy who was very well dressed in the trendiest clothes listening to his iPod, wearing sunglasses that were probably worth more than the suit I was wearing and the laptop I was carrying put together.  Within about 5 seconds someone had approached him from the front, and someone else from behind, and stripped him of every last item of value he was carrying.

 

I had been carrying a briefcase and wearing a suit, but I guess these thieves know what they’re doing; although I was dressed for a business-type job, they could tell I really didn’t have items that would be worth anything to them.

 

For a place that has a reputation for being unsafe, I’d say it’s pretty impressive that during 2 years, this was my closest brush was crime – especially considering I lived in some not-so-nice neighbourhoods.

 

While I definitely been lucky, and had some excellent “guides” (my wife, friends, etc.), I think it’s also safe to say that a good way to avoid robbery in Mexico City is not to carry things worth steeling.  Dress in regular clothes and leave the valuables at home.

 

With that rule of thumb in mind, I think that it’s also safe to say that it’s no more dangerous to be in Mexico City than in just about any other large city.  People get nervous simply because of the city’s size; there are definitely places best avoided, and a common sense is needed, I would say this is even more true in cities like Detroit.  According to Wikipedia, Mexico City isn’t as safe as “highly developed western European cities such as Frankfurt or Barcelona but is safer then cities such as Moscow or Washington DC.”

 

Lonely Planet listed Mexico City as one of its “Top 8 places to (safely) visit in Mexico now,” saying:

 

“There really is no more fascinating city in the world than Mexico’s misunderstood capital. With a population of over 21 million (and a crime rate about a third of Washington, DC’s), Mexico City had a serious scrub-up for its bi-centennial, and now some places like mariachi-filled Plaza Garibaldi are considered (like Times Square in New York) safe enough to be a ‘Disney version’ of its former gritty self.”

 

Mexico City has many beautiful places to visit, and my advice to travellers is definitely worth going; travellers need to use common sense (as anywhere else) but can go there with confidence that they will be fairly safe.

Does Your Phone Have This Feature?

A while back, my son picked up the cordless phone, and came to show my wife and me one of the buttons on the phone.

“This button says ‘The Virgin Mary,’” he explained, pointing to one of the functions. “You can press it, and then you can talk to her.”

I figured that the feature was more likely in Mexico than in Canada.

Local History Expert – A Homeless Man in Halifax

Although in some sense they may be less reliable in accuracy sometimes, local, home-grown, self-made history experts are far more interesting than than the official ones.

I had a chance to experience such an expert in Halifax.  While my brother and I, along with our families, were walking down the street in Halifax past the historic church building known as the “Little Dutch Church” (pictured) and chatting about why this Anglican Church had been built for Lutheran German immigrants, a homeless man walking by overheard us, and took it upon himself to jump in the conversation and share what he knew.

Yes, the church was Anglican, he confirmed, even though the parish members were German immigrants.  The round church building just a block or two away (St. George’s) was also Anglican.  He knew about their history; he had slept in both churches in the past.  The one we were looking at – the “Little Dutch Church” – had been the scene of some archaeological controversy as well; some excavation under the building had unearthed some bones, which were recorded by archaeologists and then re-buried (see picture.)

These stories were told with the enthusiasm and eagerness of someone who simply wanted to share what he knew, and had no agenda, purpose, format or guideline in doing so.

We never learned the significance of the bones since at that point we reached the soup kitchen where the man was headed.

The Great Canadian … Gut!

2 or 3 months after moving to Canada, my wife and I discovered a problem; our pants were getting too tight! We found a scale, weighed ourselves and discovered that we had each gained about 10-15 pounds!

 

While weight comes and goes depending on different factors in lifestyle, there was no question about it; we had both gained considerably more weight during 3 months in Canada than we had at any point during our 5 years together in Mexico!

 

We have a few theories, some of which can be discarded, and others more plausible. 

 

The discarded theories include:

• Relatively recent childbirth: It’s a fact that most women gain weight during and after birth.  But there are two problems; this doesn’t offer me any excuse, and my wife had actually lost all of this extra weight before we moved to Canada, and she was down to her normal weight!  So this one’s out the window.

 

• I started a second blog: More blogs means more sitting time. But this is no excuse for my wife.  Also, I cancelled this blog, and we found no difference for the two weeks when we were in Halifax, and I wrote no blogs whatsoever.

 

• Canadians eat more fat and more carbs: True, Canadians seem to know no limits to these two nutrients; even “healthy” Canadians seem to think that eating fried steak with fried eggs and mayonnaise is a good low-carb diet. But Mexicans are at least as bad.  In fact typical Mexican food is probably worse.  Mexicans eat lots of bread loaded with sugar every day, plus tacos and tortas and tamales with grease dripping of them. See ().

 

We came to these more acceptable conclusions:

 

• Canada is built for cars: In Mexico, if you don’t have a car, you end up walking a lot more and getting more exercise. I would say 3/4 of the country’s communities are designed to be walked in. In Canada, most people have a car; if you don’t have one, you simply don’t go anywhere.  Most communities are not designed to be walked in, and don’t have anywhere to walk to. (There are, of course, major exceptions.)  We live in a small village that takes 5 minutes to walk across, which hardly offers any exercise. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a car made available to us when we need it.  (We are really thankful for this!  But we’re also sure the guts are somehow related …) We started daily bike rides, but it’s one thing to have daily bike rides as an optional form of entertainment, and a completely different thing to have a couple of hours of biking or walking as a normal, non-optional part of your daily routine (= our life in Mexico.)

 

• It’s easier to eat healthily in Mexico: While the typical Mexican diet is at least as bad as the Canadian one, it’s easier to be healthy in Mexico if you want to.  Fresh fruit and vegetables are cheap, as is freshly caught fish.  Someone pointed out how much oatmeal we eat for breakfast; in Mexico, we ate twice much oatmeal for breakfast, but we also ate twice as many fruit and vegetables, and we almost never ate desert or sweet things, since it’s so easy by cheap and good alternatives (fresh fruit.)  Red meat was a once a week meal, rather than the 2 or 3 times a day many Canadians seem to like. 

 

The difficult thing is that it’s really hard to eat differently in Canada; fruit and vegetables are expensive, often imported from the other side of the world, and rarely of good quality.  The fall is an exception here, since there is a good deal of local fruit available; yet if you are eating the fresh blueberries with Canadians, they like to mix them into ice cream!  Fish is outrageously expensive (compared to Mexico.)

 

I guess the bottom line is, even though most people in Mexico aren’t interested, it’s much easier to be active and eat healthy on a low budget than in Canada.  We’re hoping the guts will disappear when we get back to Mexico, and for our next time around in Canada, I think we’ll have to do more careful planning for exercise and healthy eating.

Made in Canada from Imported Ingredients

A while back, my wife and I bought a bag of peanuts in their shells.  Nothing terribly exciting interesting.  However, out of habit, I like to read the list of ingredients even on the simplest products.  The bag reads:

Ingredient

Peanuts.

May contain tree nuts.

So far, so good. Then, out of sheer boredom, and something to do as I peeled and munched on peanuts, I read the other side of the bag.  This is how the first two lines read:

MADE IN CANADA FROM

IMPORTED INGREDIENTS

 

I understand one part of this: the one ingredient (peanuts) is imported.

What I don’t understand is exactly which part of it was “made in Canada.”  Perhaps if it said “packaged in Canada” I could understand what they mean.  But “made in Canada??”

 

I didn’t think we as Canadians cared enough about whether a product was domestic or not to make this kind of absurdity necessary.  Then again, I could be wrong.

 

I guess I could call that toll-free number to find out exactly how a peanut can be made in Canada from imported ingredients.

On Prohibitions and Obligations

If we divide morals into two categories – things we shouldn’t do, and things that we are obligated to do – in general I would say Canadian culture has more focus on the first, and Mexican culture more on the second.  Of course, this is a very broad generalization, but I would say there is a definite tendency.

 

In Canada, when people speak of morals we generally formulate the idea in prohibitions; I remember my teenaged years that the measure of a moral life was often that of what we didn’t do; we weren’t supposed to listen to music that might have a negative influence on our lives, do drugs, etc.  Even in adult life, we tend to look at doing good in these terms; men shouldn’t cheat on their wives, people shouldn’t steal or commit fraud, etc.

 

Even people who have “liberated” themselves from morals usually see life from the same point of view; the basic question is “How much can I get away for my own sake?”  On the “moral” side people will tend towards saying “nothing” – we have to follow the prohibition.  On the “non-moral” side people tend to towards the idea that you can get away with what ever you like for your own sake.

 

The downside of this angle is that the focus tends to be on a prohibition and how far someone can bend that prohibition to their own convenience – in the end the debates concerning these prohibitions tend to be self-centered.  Of course, the good side is that there definitely are actions which are bad for us, or are unfair to others to whom we have responsibility, etc. and so they really are best avoided.

 

In Mexico, there seems to be less of a concern for prohibitions and a higher concern for obligations.  From my experience Mexicans will see their morals in light of what they should do for other people; I should call my mother, because she’ll feel good, I should give things to other people who need them, I should let people stay in my house, even if I don’t know them, etc.  Of course, a Mexican could reject this kind of morals as much as Canadians could reject prohibitions. The difference isn’t in how moral people are, but how those who see themselves as leading a moral life define those morals.

 

I’ve found along with this tendency in Mexico, people either take the prohibitions for granted, or simply ignore them altogether.  There is less debate or tension about how far prohibitions can be taken.  Of course, the second situation (ignoring the prohibitions all together) leads to some problems; i.e. a man helps his neighbours with work and gives to the poor, but cheats on his wife.  He’s active in moral obligations, but not terribly concerned with prohibitions.

 

Again, these are very broad generalizations.  Both Canada and Mexico include both views, but it’s a question of tendency.  It makes a difference in how we view the other culture; at a first glance Mexican culture may seem very immoral to a Canadian concerned with morals because of the apparent lack of inhibitions.  On the other hand, Canada may look very immoral to Mexican eyes – it may look self-centred, cold or even greedy. Understanding how another culture defines a moral life is important.

Wearing Religion on Your Sleeves

Recently, in a Q & A post for a very popular expat blog, a soon-to-be expat in Latin America was worried about finding a girlfriend in a very religious country; the soon-to-be expat was atheist.  The blogger reassured the concerned would-be expat that Latin Americans, although with very deep-rooted religious beliefs, don’t usually “wear their religion on their sleeves.”

 

I both agree and disagree.

 

In the normal meaning of this expression, meaning that someone talks about their religion to the extent that it might be uncomfortable for other people, I agree.  Most religious Latin Americans I know (even some that I would call “very religious”) would not usually discuss their faith or try to push it on other people.  They simply don’t seem to find that necessary.  In this way, they’re very discrete and not at all obtrusive in their beliefs (again, generally speaking.)  For this concerned expat, this would probably be enough; any girlfriend he found would probably not be pushy, even in this kind of relationship.

 

Yet, in another sense of the idea, I would disagree.  If we consider the “concrete” (although definitely not usual) meaning of “wearing your religion on your sleeves,” I would say Latin Americans do; i.e. they actually wear their religion on their sleeves – or at least on their arms.  Bracelets similar to the one in the picture are fairly common, in my experience.  Mexicans who wear the Virgin of Guadelupe or Saint bracelets may not talk about them, or even expect or hope that other people will notice; I suspect (although I can’t confirm) that they wear them to remind themselves of something or perhaps to use them for prayer more so than to show other people something.  While they wear their religion on their sleeves in the concrete sense, they don’t “wear their religion on their sleeves” in the sense that they are pushy and obsessed or are going to try to convert you or even talk to you about God.

 

I suspect many North Americans who wear “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets or the coloured bead bracelets would do so for a similar reason – primarily, even if not solely, to remind themselves of something. Yet, in English-speaking North America, we have a stigma that people who use these things will be obsessive about their faith.  Although this is definitely not true all the time, it is true more often here (Canada or the U.S.) than in Latin America.

 

For Latin Americans, the same is true of household altars, icons, statues, rosaries, etc.  You might see all of these things in someone’s home, car or bus (bus drivers take a lot of liberty in personalizing their vehicles,) but they probably won’t seem in any other way preoccupied or focused on the related themes.  In the worst cases, any of them could be “trends” or just the thing to do in your family or community; in the best cases, I suspect that these people use these items to remind themselves of their faith, to pray, etc. but are content to leave it that. They’re instruments of personal devotion, not of outreach or conversion.

 

I suspect that for this concerned would-be expat this would also be OK.