This is part one of a two part series on a hurricane that approached a small town in Oaxaca, Mexico, two weeks ago. Part two may be published at a later date.

The day before the hurricane, we woke up without electricity, cell service, and internet, just like we had slept the day before. The weather seemed torrential, like there was a great fury the sky intended to unleash, and it finally found its moment. The day would be filled with occurrences, big and small, that all felt important as I pondered how very far away from home I am in distance and context.

The carreta (coffeemaker) that the posada (furnished rooms for rent) manager gave us wouldn’t work. The electric hot plates wouldn’t work either. All the frozen liquid in the mini fridge had melted and was on the floor. I went to get a cup of coffee from the panaderia (bakery). 

Brisellea was working, and I had my coffee and a day-old pastry, since due to the weather, the pastry delivery was not coming. With a lull in the patrons of the bakery for a moment, I chatted with Brisellea a little more than usual. I’m sure we would’ve had a much more robust conversation had other patrons not come in. I like to sit on the sidewalk outside with my coffee and since it was wet, Brisellea offered me her stool. 

I wouldn’t call it a morning rush, as it isn’t always like that, but slowly people came in looking for coffee, pastries, and electricity, as likely the electricity was out where they were staying too. It was out all across the town. There was somehow a sense of beautiful town familiarity there at the panaderia this morning, accentuated by the circumstances and a slight sense of panic in the air that also somehow also felt okay to be with.

We met a variety of people that day, including an unhoused man from Chiapas named Miguel. Miguel is unlike the unhoused I’ve experienced in the US. While his clothing and confident request to a stranger for a cup of coffee made it clear he does not have a building for a home, he struck me as a man living off of the earth rather than someone struggling with mental instability and addiction, like I’m used to seeing in the unhoused in the US. He had a commanding presence as he told a young Chilango (person from Mexico City) to get him a cup of coffee, which the man couldn’t help but respond to with anything other than “si senor.” Immediately, I liked Miguel.

It was also undeniable that our differences would cause us to not fully understand each other, not just due to our differing languages but due to the conflicting natures of the contexts of our lives. But that still did not stop me from seeing him as my elder when I asked him “senor, quieres un pancito?” (Sir, would you like a pastry?), and from having a chat with him. He held a machete and had a trash bag tied to himself, with a piece of it made into a hat. It was quite clever. Miguel to me seemed rugged and real. I saw him this morning in the town for what seemed to be the first time. And I would lay the reasoning for that in the context of the beautiful place we’re in. But also the hurricane. 

It struck me as strange and yet heartwarming how this felt like any other morning though it was not. The additional conversations were definitely due to the unity people were experiencing. This unity came from the fact that rich or poor, Mexican or not, housed or unhoused—there is a hurricane coming. Many people, no matter socioeconomic level, had no electricity. Some circumstances are better than others when a hurricane approaches where you’re living. But at the same time, there is no way to buy yourself out of a hurricane. You might as well band together.

Carlos and I decided to go to nearby larger town Pochutla to get supplies and waited on the main street in which camionettas (collective pickup trucks, sort of like a local bus) pass. People with suitcases were in the street, anxiously looking for taxis, presumably to go anywhere but here, and you could tell there was an exodus of visiting Mexicans and foreigners trying to get out of the town as fast as possible. The locals remained steadfast and calm. These are their homes. Why would they leave? To what end would that be?

While waiting for the camionetta, we met a British man who was trying to make it to Puerto Escondido. We advised him against that as it was the heart of the storm. Disoriented and unsure of what to do now that his plans could not transpire, he had all his stuff with him and was ready to go, so we offered to take him to Pochutla with us where he could decide what to do next more easily. It was in that way that we adopted Sam for about an hour. For a westerner, he was very adaptable.

We chatted in the camionetta and Sam revealed how he left his job and was traveling, though he didn’t know why. He stated that he had felt his life was fine, and he wasn’t sure why he felt the need to leave, but he did. I told him I did something very similar 11 years ago, when I left a job on a Friday, had a going away party on a Saturday, moved out on a Sunday, and was on a plane to Spain for my first backpacking trip on Monday. Everything changed after that and it’s not unlikely that my life here, now, is in part due to that trip. To feel the urge to travel means to feel the urge to broaden your horizons. One should follow that urge if they have it. Not everyone gets it.

In Pochutla we were surprised to find there was still no internet connection, and no cell service. For being a larger town, it astounded me how disaffected people were by the impending hurricane. Yes, it was not supposed to hit Pochutla directly, and yes the rain was coming down hard and people seemed to be preparing for what that could mean to them, but the people were wearing shorts and flip flops, the water sliding in and out as they walked. People were out with their kids, motorcycle shops were open, air conditioned, and selling. In the US, if all data, wifi, cell phone towers were down, I can just imagine there would be a mass panic. There was electricity. 

In the street we ran into Lula, a bit of a modern nomad, a Mexican from Durango we had met before in the town, a bit of a long term resident. In her shorts and crop top, she told us she was heading to San Jose Del Pacifico to avoid the hurricane. While wet, likely San Jose Del Pacifico would not be that affected by the hurricane. She had just bought a bunch of winter clothing, all in her hand in a plastic bag, as San Jose Del Pacifico is a totally different climate. “Fresco,” (fresh) as the locals would call it. 

We asked Lula if she would take Sam with her and she was more than happy to, being the nice person she is. Sam seemed nervous but happy to have a clear path forward, with kind people taking care of him the whole way. I honestly enjoyed the swiftness with which Sam was swept up in this journey to safety. It made me feel like Sam was likely a good person to just have everything happen for him with such ease. 

As we bid farewell to our new friend, I gave Sam my mom’s phone number to give her assurance that we’re okay once he arrived in San Jose Del Pacifico, in case we didn’t find any working internet in Pochutla. As our group reverted back to myself and Carlos, we joked at how lucky Sam was to find us. In reality, it wasn’t luck. It was divine.

Sam had such common western anxiety towards the storm and I understand that as I had some too. Maybe when you live in a place like this, weather and how it may suddenly change may not be out of the ordinary for you, but in the west, where we’ve built our castles on mass graveyards of people and plants, when the earth actually inconveniences us, we are upset and confused. How could it do that to us? The longer I live in Mexico, the more I am bemused by my own western mindset, as if the weather should be doing anything in particular each day.

I am a bit anxious, sitting in this cafe in Pochutla charging my phone as I write, because despite all this activity, the beautiful points of the day like with Miguel and Brisellea, trusting Carlos and allowing this to be a moment in our relationship in which he exclusively is responsible for me—despite all of this I am still a person brought up in California who is unfamiliar with this all.

I haven’t fully been able to feel my feelings all day, maybe due to the activities of the day and the fact that this is a situation that is best dealt with calmly, but also because around me, at the cafe I am sitting at writing this, there are a few Mexican families with children and infants who seem fine—the adults and the babies alike. It’s not the kind of fine in which you’re trying to contain yourself like I’m feeling, but the kind of fine of kids wearing ribbons in their hair and politely waiting for the hot chocolate that daddy ordered. I am keeping the feeling that I am witnessing something absolutely bizarre to myself as I know it is only me that feels it.

This is a very strange waiting place. In some ways I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe. I’m so far away from every place I’ve ever considered home.

I am far away in both context and distance. In fact, I am completely out of context, actually. It does feel like another planet. I think that’s the point. 

This is why I have repeatedly exposed myself to situations like this, and indeed a life like this, because it is not another planet. 

I’ve wanted to know throughout my life that I was living in the same world as everyone else, even if uncomfortable for me. I’ve wanted to know throughout my life that I was living in the same world as everyone else, even if from a western perspective, I wasn’t. 

The strange waiting place I’m referring to is the cafe. I actually really like this cafe and would’ve enjoyed it more had circumstances been different. After Sam went with Lula, Carlos found a cafe to leave me in to charge our devices, including a headlamp, and I have been here reflecting and writing. I had an omelet and an Oaxacan hot chocolate while my husband went out to find supplies and brought them back. Ahead of me on the table is a machete wrapped in cardboard and two PVC ponchos, one for me and one for Miguel. I consider him one of my own now. That is, a member of my community. 

Having decided to make a life in this town, it’s hard not to think not just of what it’ll be like to encounter circumstances like this when we have our own home and kids, but also how they will feel less threatening and less exciting as time goes on. The community itself and just the feeling of it will both help the feelings of anxiety, and teach me new ways of being, I am sure. But the normalcy—and this is the feeling I am getting from locals that I’ve been struggling to put into words—the normalcy, for better or worse, is confusing and inspiring to me at the same time. 

“Exciting” is another word I have yet to use to describe all this but is accurate despite how precarious I feel while using it.  It was Sam who called it exciting first, while we rode in the camionetta, despite the fact that he was the least prepared of us all. While he was with us, he reflected on how he could’ve left the town any day and chose today. I didn’t tell Sam that clearly, especially having met us and eventually Lula, he was exactly where he was meant to be. God smiled at Sam. Maybe he too wants to know he is living in the same world as everyone else, even if that’s not what we are told in the west, and that’s why he is here.

It is a bit exciting, isn’t it? I am worried, mostly about my inability to communicate with my parents, but to be honest, I am worried about this new situation. Yes, I can admit I am worried about being in a hurricane. And yet, as much as I am worried, there’s also a part of me that feels exhilarated. Real. Alive. 

The most likely thing is that everything is going to be okay. The people who live here are indigenous to this part of Mexico and have been here for generations. It didn’t even occur to me that they would be panicked, but it still shook me as to how unbothered they exactly were. But it makes sense. Some of them speak their own native languages among themselves and Spanish with outsiders. This is their home. Really, this is likely a normal occurrence for them, a fact of life, meaning they find it easy to live with, or at least, not that big of a problem. If they aren’t superhuman, that means I too can live through this without fear and one day have hot chocolate at a cafe with my kids while a hurricane approaches too. 

I have been pondering lately if we truly are as weak as we have become and believe we are in western society. Or is man, in mind, body, and spirit, intended to be a lot more strong and durable than the doom scrolling, data-driven beings we have become, more familiar with the Cloud than the clouds. I increasingly don’t think we are humans having a spiritual experience, I think we are spirits having a human experience, but we are so far away from our nature, that not only have we lost our abilities—we don’t even really believe they’re there anymore. 

Sam ended up making it to San Jose Del Pacifico with Lula. We also got wifi back in the town for me to know that. Lula is really nice, but it was Sam who reached out and said they made it safe and sound, and that he had texted my mom and told her the situation. I was really grateful, but so was Sam. He was really grateful for how easy we and ultimately Lula made it for him to get someplace safe. I told Sam that I’m not sure if he’s a spiritual person, but that someone was very much looking out for him today. Sam responded, “Well something happened today for sure, it all came together so smoothly I can’t explain it any other way.”

At the end of the day, Carlos and I bought all we needed, and went back to the town just as the rain was starting to lighten. We were thankful for our ride back being relatively dry—of the things we bought, we also bought a motorcycle, something we were planning on buying that day that also would come in handy for the storm. The lack of rain on the road while we rode our new bike was helpful. Carlos dropped me off at our place and went to check on friends who are sort of like father and son, Esteban and Lucio. I unpacked the groceries. The electricity was back. 

Carlos found Esteban and Lucio kicking back and relaxing. Esteban apparently laughed and said he’s already been through six hurricanes here. This was indeed a cakewalk for them too, even though they are not technically natives. 

The next day, I woke up at 6:30 which is my usual, but I don’t feel so bad about that here. In Islamic belief, we believe that God made night for sleeping and day for wake. To sleep early and wake up with the birds is what we believe is best and to some degree natural. A lot of indigenous communities also believe this. In a place like this, I don’t feel bad for waking up early but natural. 

I thought I’d take a walk and see how the town fared. Now people were saying the hurricane went in another direction but you never know with these things. It could come back. The streets were strewn with sand and dirt but overall there wasn’t any damage. The panaderia was open and Brisellea was wearing a nice red top and did a sophisticated style to her hair. 

I walked towards the beach and ran into Adriana, a local woman from Pochutla who owns a restaurant here who I really like and want to become friends with. We chatted and I told her I had just been thinking of her and wanted to text her, when I ran into her. During our chat she encouraged me to keep walking to the beach and see all the debris the water had turned up. 

The beach was lined with wood and coconuts. I was oddly amazed by the amount of coconuts the water had spit out and wondered why that was. In addition to ejecting the coconuts, the ocean had also rejected a bunch of plastic water bottles and some other types of trash. It felt like a shame to me but it also felt like it wasn’t such a huge amount of trash that I couldn’t just pick it all up, but I had no trash bag. 

Walking back up one of the main streets of the town, I stopped in for a coffee and a librito, my favorite sort of pan that the panaderia sells. I told Brisellea that she looked great today and she laughed like the sweet 18-year-old she is. The taxi driver that usually says “taxi?” as I walk by today met my eyes and said “buenas dias!” I realized that maybe by sheer time, maybe by smiling and saying buenas dias, or maybe by staying despite being a foreigner—whatever it was, suddenly I felt like the locals saw me. Like really saw me. And that felt nice. I think I really see them too. 

At the top of the street I found a store selling garbage bags by the unit so I bought one feeling like that would be enough to clean the beach. I ended up chatting with the store owner, Edgar, and he explained the issue with the trash, namely that the town is so small, it doesn’t know what to do with the trash that is created by tourism, as there is no one in particular that manages the trash in the streets. We discussed a lot of things about the potential future of the town, mostly from an environmental perspective, before I excused myself to see Carlos but also because I know I’m not a local and while I may want to help and become a part of this community, it’s not my place to tell anyone how to handle their hometown. 

That said, it’s nice being in this small, beachside town in Mexico. Not because the beach is nice or for the food but because after enough time looking I see it for what it is. 

The town is after all just a Pueblo, and a part of the grander Pueblo that is Mexico. I love seeing the Pueblo people in their Pueblo, but also how outsiders, whether Mexicans from other parts of Mexico or straight up foreigners who live here, can be a part of this, if they would like to treat themselves like they are a part of it. They can be a part of something bigger than themselves. They can be a part of the town and the community. I can be a part of the town and the community.

It did not occur to us at all when we found out that a hurricane may be coming to leave. 

It was an entirely unnatural reaction to me and Carlos to leave. It didn’t even cross my mind until my friends back home asked me why on earth I was staying for the hurricane. In a way, it didn’t surprise me that it was strange that we were staying. I don’t feel a great amount of ownership over the city my family lives in in the US. I am not sure I consider myself belonging to it, or it belonging to me. Like a lot of things in the US, the relationship with where my family lives is transactional, and not based on a lot of meaning. 

I would love to live in a place that means something to me. What does that even mean?

We want to be a part of this. That’s why we were here, to scope out land to build a house, move, and raise our kids. “It takes a village,” they say. Well, this is a village. How could we leave just when things got tough?

I didn’t stay for the hurricane. I am staying for the town. The town in which I feel like I am now a part of. “A part of”—maybe those of the words that start to get at a sense of belonging, which something I haven’t felt before in my American life. “A part of”—maybe that is the beginning of the way to describe this feeling I have gotten from Mexico after giving up the United State, unbeknown to me at the time. “A part of”—maybe that is a phrase for something that I am just at the very beginning of understanding.