Man's Got Moves - and a Tough Realization

I was still shaking my head about having handed my neighbor the 50 pesos when I made my way to the house in the morning, moving very slowly as I happily got caught being in the back of a herd of cows. This man takes his cows out in the mornings, and back in at night. Often, they are running (well, more like ambling) loose around the field, and most of the time we can hear their bells in the distance, somewhere. They may have eaten a small row of another neighbor's's banana tree. Another neighbor I need to write about. So the man rides his horse right behind them and his dogs run near the many paws. The first time I saw them my mouth dropped when I realized that the loudest mooing sound came from the man, not the cows! He sits on the back of all of them, mooing. Loudly. It is a weird thing and I had a couple of non-shareable thoughts about that. Anyhoo.

Eventually, I made it to the first river bed, the one with many big rocks that make my car go clunk clunk clunk every time except that morning... nothing. It was as though I was crossing the softest sandy beach. Not a stone, not a bump, nothing.

Same for the two other crossings.

He made it happen. The day after he had me and others sign the petition, the-man-who-took-my-2000-pesos had somehow managed to get all three river crossings in tip top shape. Impressive.

Makes me wonder what else he can get done.

Which is exactly what Alberto and I discuss the next morning, as I walk across the field to ask him for a water refill for our tenaco (I think this is our third refill and I appreciate how he has kept his word about keeping us supplied while we build)

Once again, I am told how uncohesive our colonia is and how much  more we could get done together. How someone must take the lead. And once again I know I am not the one to do this. Not because I can't but because... well, I can't.

The more I navigate this project and this life, the more I become aware of how far I am culturally. In some ways, it makes me sad because I feel as though in the end, I don't really truly belong to any culture. Not French, not American, not Mexican. Each one of these has gaps that I will never bridge and this one is the biggest one. I may live amongst Mexican people but I will never be one of them. This realization became clear to me this week, as well as the ways that trying to shrink the gap is changing me, gradually.

Meanwhile, we had three smooth river beds and that's pretty dang cool.