Going Fresa -- November 16

Just before the end of the year, I have managed to hand over myself to the big corporate world. And I'm not kidding either. Yup, I know it's crazy, the world stands upside down: the best golfer is black, the best rapper is white, and David has become a tie-wearing strawberry. What's next?  So how could this have happened? Was it a setup? Can we explain it by one of the great conspiracy theories? Or was it plain, dumb luck? Well, as you might have known (and if not, I don't know where you've been all this time) I have been wanting to travel the world by teaching English. On my first stop in Hungary, it even seemed like it would be as romantic and adventurous as it sounds. In no time I found a school where I could teach without any paperwork whatsoever, a really friendly, relaxed, familiar atmosphere, and lots of private students on the side, which let me make more than just a decent living, but most of all the freedom to be my own boss and regulate my own schedule. Naturally I ended up filling up every single day of the week with work, and if someone asked for extra lessons I would still fit them in somehow. That was then. Now I am in Mexico, the second place I set out to conquer. Unlike in Hungary, I was gonna be a stranger in a strange land, so I armed myself with the best English teaching certificate I could find, the Cambridge CELTA, and set out to start my conquest in beautiful Oaxaca. The lack of opportunities, however, soon drove me to Mexico City, this crazy, frantic, fast paced, loud, violent, dirt infested, money hungry capital of Mexico. Talking about opportunities, it wasn't like there weren't any schools in Oaxaca. Some were actually willing to pay quite decent money. It's just that none of them could, would, or knew how to deal with the legal aspect of my stay. Bureaucracy in Latin America is seen as an art form, and it takes more than just the patience of a tortoise and the endurance of a cockroach to get what you want. In most cases you need to know the right person at the right desk, or at least have a lawyer who knows the tricks of the trade (which usually leads to bribing someone, but this way you can at least expect a result for it). Since I had none of these at my disposition, I went back to International House, the school where I'd gotten my CELTA to begin with. On the last day of the course in Playa del Carmen we were given a pep-speech of gargantuan proportions about how highly employable we were. It felt good seeing large sums of money on the board, and hearing statements like: "...if you show up with your CELTA, they might actually fire someone just to get you hired!" --Yeah, Right, I thought... Surprisingly, though, these tall promises were no exaggerations. Except that they didn't have to fire anyone, since two teachers were about to leave anyway. So now I am a part of International House, who was quite eager to take me under its wing. They gave me a one-year contract, with classes for 20-25 hours a week. They are offering Spanish courses, as well as other workshops for teachers to improve their teaching skills, all as part of the benefits package. They have apartments for rent in the better parts of town, which don't require deposits or local references, like every other landlord I've talked to. But best of all, their legal staff takes care of all my paperwork. I should have my work permit before January. What awesome service! Yet, I felt a bit uneasy about it. For one whole year (2006) I will live, speak and breathe International House. Should I decide to leave before, I will have to carry the legal fees of... some outrageous amount, impossible to pay, not worth thinking about. Do you know the song MOTHER by PINK FLOYD? I still can't get over thinking about these lines: Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true. Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you. Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing. She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing. Momma's will keep Baby cozy and warm. Ooo Babe, Of course Momma's gonna help build the wall. Work itself is okay. Until I get my own classes in January, I will substitute for other teachers who... well, who aren't here for whatever reason. Most of our teaching doesn't take place at the school, but at the companies' offices. Our clients are all the big ones. Right now I'm teaching employees of Johnson & Johnson, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and some drug company, but others on the list are Disney, Coca Cola, Pemex and all the like. The dress code is dressy (shirt & tie) but it seems to reach out on the general lifestyle as well. Mexico City has no middle-class. There are huge strips of working class neighborhoods, kinda like Iztapalapa, where I'm living until I can move into the school's apartments in January, and there are upscale neighborhoods like Condesa and Polanco. There is not much in between, which means class is a much greater dividing factor than race. Talking about "working class" the emphasis is not so much on the work, but rather the class. People around here are seemingly proud to display a culture of rough-tough proletariat. Most businesses in my area are body-shops, tires, or other car related ones. The streets are lined with ancient gas-guzzlers from the US, that obviously haven't been driven for the past decades, yet at night you can see the craziest pimped out low-riders with neon-lights on the bottom, and extreme boxes pumping the bass in the back. On every street corner there are a multitude of tents selling the greasiest tacos and tortas (huge sandwiches), yet when I mention that I'd like to have a kitchen I get the weirdest looks. "Why?" they ask me, "Did you bring your wife too?" The western part of the city, especially the area where I teach is generally looked down on as "fresa". Fresa, meaning strawberry, is an expression denoting all those who don't belong to the upper 10,000 but are aspiring hard, at least in their appearance. The concept of fresa I got to know in the (Mexican) World Trade Center, where I went to see a movie and eat some sushi afterwards. It's crazy!!! Suits and ties are merely a start. As much as I'm not a fan of the low-rider culture, I can understand what the prols mean. These fresa people live what they wear. It all has to match: Not only with their shoes and their jobs, but with their cars, their hair, their watches, their cocktails, the outrageously expensive clubs they visit afterwards, and their opinions they have about what Hugo Chaves said about Vincente Fox. (This latter aspect is something I have no clue about. I only know that in Iztapalapa they said Chaves was right, even though he was Venezuelan, while among the freasas he was completely discredited.) What about the alternatives, though? What else is there? You might have heard about Coyoacan, a lovely, friendly, quieter part of town near the university. Its parks and squares, coffee shops and bakeries, and a generally relaxed atmosphere make it a perfect hangout for students and artists, hippies, revolutionaries and intellectuals. A middle class after all? Hardly. The place is not cheaper than the gated communities of Condesa or Polanco, except there are no guards with sub machine-guns "protecting" you. Plus there is no metro-station nearby, which makes it an exclusive neighborhood for exclusive car owners. So there I am... Even though I find the prols of Iztapalapa less judgmental and tend to sympathize with them, the world waiting for me is the other side of town. The school's apartment is near Chapultepec park, closer to the different company headquarters, surrounded by people who act like they're all that... Still, I will do all I can NOT to become a fresa myself. In any case, I will pull it all the way through, like I would anyhow. But only my way! 2006, I am ready for you!