All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [97]
As my house takes shape, so does the community around me. At times, I worry that as enchanted as I am with the town, I might not fit in with its people. Friends in San Francisco have questioned why someone who travels to remote parts of the world would buy a house in such a gringo-infested town. Indeed, I run across retirees who’ve built dream houses that, aside from the cost, might as well be in suburban Texas; some scarcely bother to learn enough Spanish to say “Gracias.” I see women in heavy jewelry whose puppet faces display their penchant for cheap plastic surgery. There are “healers” who seem to have attained their degrees by dint of crossing the border, throwing on a shawl, and listening to a few Eckhart Tolle tapes. But there are people in every town who are not your crowd, and there are few enough of them in San Miguel that they’re easy to avoid.
There are also people like me here, who want to mingle in another culture, learn to speak another language, soak up the colors and sun, and work on creative projects and who recognize that it isn’t easy for a single woman in her forties to plop herself down in any town in Italy or Mexico, that she would be too much of an outsider, and too alone, without a community of others who have ventured here before her. There’s a balance between what’s foreign and familiar, what’s daring and safe.
The more time I spend in San Miguel, the more depth I find in the people I encounter. The cafés are full of artists and photographers, and many of them are serious about their work, some world class. Just as the plain faces of the houses in San Miguel hide magnificent courtyards and whimsical houses, you never know what kinds of talents you’ll find in the people you pass on the streets. The town is a playground for architects, whose clients let them run wild with their creative visions. The theme of self-invention that I first came here to explore for my article is repeated everywhere, as I meet more and more people—women, in particular—who have moved here after one phase of their lives has ended, whether because they have divorced, their children have grown, their jobs are over, or they simply want a change, to take a leap into something new, something truer to who they want to be in the latter part of their lives; most are much happier as a result. Many expatriates create programs for the community—midwifery schools, collective child care centers for young Mexican working women, kitchens in the camp to feed schoolchildren, dance classes to build young girls’ confidence, rescue groups for the town’s innumerable little stray mutts. One friend who started a writers’ conference here asks me to teach. Others immerse themselves in Mexican folk art, history, or indigenous communities. The town isn’t divided into gringos and Mexicans, as I originally feared, or young and old; I find myself collecting an international group of friends of all ages.
I feel certain I’m in the right community when one evening, out walking with Finn, I notice a sign up for African dance. I take a class with the Senegalese teacher, Lamine, a giraffe of a man with dreadlocks, and am amazed to find a world-class dancer in San Miguel who has taught with some of the best companies in New York. At the end of the class, he tells me, in his simple African way, touching his heart, flashing a brilliant smile, that I am a good person. “African dance is your medicine,” he says, and he’s right;