A random picture and a rumination on being Russian in Oaxaca

México, originally uploaded by kitty424.

A long and convoluted story: Judy's friend Francie turned out to be a goldmine. I'm so glad I called her when I did.

Judy Baumann was one of the first people my parents and I met when we arrived in Lexington back in 1991. As one of the most active members of the community, I'm pretty sure she must have been at the airport to greet us late that night in May. It's so bizarre to me now to think that when we arrived, some 20 people from the Lexington Jewish community came to greet us, dazed after some 48 hours of flight delays and layovers and shocked and terrified to be in a new unknown place where we were going to make a home.

Maybe a month after our arrival, Judy took us on a trip to County Market, a grocery store just down Richmond Road from the Heritage Place apartments that the "kind Jews" - as we soon started to call them - had rented for us and furnished with donated items. If I recall correctly, Judy used to be a nutritionist, and I remember being quite annoyed at her tour of County Market. Mostly I remember how she talked slowly and loudly to my mom, and I was embarrassed that people would overhear her explanations about grades of milk or types of individually wrapped cheese and think that we were dikiye (wild, uncivilized).

Strangely being here in Oaxaca has made me think often about that time. Here, I feel strangely Russian. It must be because I'm constantly meeting new people and answering questions about where I'm from. One of the basic questions you learn to ask and answer is 'de donde eres?' and subsequently 'donde naciste?'  Answering this question has always been complex.  I was born in the Ukraine, moved to Kentucky at the age of 11, moved away to Boston at 18.  My parents no longer live in Kentucky.  I no longer live in Boston.  So there.  

I'm close to the age now that my parents were when they brought me to the US. And because of that, beceause I'm struggling with language, trying to make myself understood, missing most of the jokes, I often think about how my mother must have felt in those early months in a new country. Of course, unlike her, I've come to visit, not to live. Whenever I stumble, chances are the person I'm speaking with speaks much better English than I speak Spanish, and can help me fill in the blank. And anyway, Spanish is so much closer to English than Russian is. But I keep wanting to draw parallels maybe because I need to remind myself that my struggles are insignificant in comparison.

My parents had kept in touch with Judy. Ever the networker, Judy gave me the contact information of her friend who spends summers in Oaxaca.

Francie - who like Judy is chatty and full of life - introduced me to her nephew (by former marriage) Edgardo. When he took me around town, we ran into many of his friends. He would introduce me by saying that I was born in Russia (close enough, anyway...), quickly gloss over the part about how I currently live in the states, and go on to say that soon I'm moving to France after I return from Mexico.

Being Russian in Mexico has much more caché than being a 'gringa'. A Mexican couple started talking to me in a bus ticketing agency in Guanajuato. Strangely, their first question was, 'are you French?'

no.

German?

no.

"Sorry, I'm from the States," I muttered apologetically.

To which they told me that I didn't look like a Gringa. So then I found myself using Edgardo's words to explain that actually I was born in Russia, but will be moving to France soon.

"So, you're European!"

At that point, they gave me the contact information of their 25yo daughter in Paris, and - inexplicably, and mostly because I didn't catch on quickly enough - paid for the difference between the Premium and the Super Deluxe bus so that I could ride into Mexico City in style. (NB: The superdeluxe bus differed in two ways. [uno] It had 3 seats per row instead of 4. [dos] It also made an extra stop in Irapuato, thus tacking an extra luxurious hour onto the journey)

I almost get it. The relationship of Mexico to the United States is tense, complex, resentful. I've heard plenty of angry 'your president...' comments about a guy neither I nor the popular majority of my country elected. And while most people are above taking their frustrations out on a 20-something tourist, they seem almost relieved when I give them another category to put me into. It's not that Mexicans really care that I'm Russian - the days of Marxism and Leninism, and naming your hijos Ivan and your hijas Tatyana are past - but it's that in order to like me, they all want me to be something other than a gringa.