yup and not from the hereafter...
I think I found a market niche.
Here is the new
vacation offering via our tour company:
Be ready to face Mexico ! We make it happen through our gritty real life
training program.
The offer : one week in a Detroit motel .We will try to make it Flint for authenticity.
The program:
-You will only go out after dark ,so the criminal elements don't see you leaving in your neon green tracksuit,taking all your jewellery with you of course so it does not get ripped off in the motel.
- You will stop at the local liquor store ,push in front of everybody as you have cash ,not welfare checks like the unwashed crowd in the store and complain loudly that there are no Scottish
single malts, only blends ,really only stuff suitable for the indigenous crowd.
- The malt has made you peckish and adventurous so you will stop at
a hole in the wall and ask for a barrito,something like that .The guy behind the counter will understand. You the man with the
money ,he to obey. Why else would you be waving a 500 dollar bill in his face, if you did not want him to run himself ragged for you? You are probably his best customer in a month, so why should he not know that you know that?
- Demand a taxi ,shouting out exactly where you want to go,spelling the address for the guy behind the counter as he really is not all that with it and as savvy as you.
- Take a tour of the burned out houses. The driver is from there and tells you that one of the house´s was his Grandma´s. Proceed to tell him that the local people must be pigs, that things like that would never happen in Boise Idaho. And how can he let his Gran live in a place like THIS....
If you survive ,you survive Mexico...
First question: Why did you think when reading what a ridiculous scenario ? ANd even if you DID contemplate going to Flint that is not what you would do?
Reason :familiarity with Flint, knowing how to behave. You would probably look for alternative accommodation, in Ann Arbor maybe. The jewellery would stay in your nice alarmed house and the colour of your clothes would be black.
Second Question: You are really from Twoshack Creek ,never heard of the problems in Detroit and you are still not as scared as you are about going to Mexico. Reason ? You speak the lingo and the people over there roughly look like you.
Think I am exaggerating? I recently had an American lady rush across a busy street towards me and she very likely could have become part of the statistic of tourist killed in Mexico as she paid no mind to the traffic. She lunged towards me, much to MY
alarm with the words: "You do speak
English,don't you ? Where can I find a CLEAN
toilet here ?" Now she did not ask out of pure interest, her interest was urgent as evidenced by her bobbing up and down frantically. I showed her, she was very close to her
destination anyway. But I could not help wonder, how many mexican
women she had passed in a time of lesser urgency. Would it not have been easier to go up to a Mexican woman,crossing her legs, imitating bobbing up and down and lifting her shoulders in an international gesture of not knowing something and look questioningly at her opposite? Her
distress would certainly have been less and under giggles the Mexican lady would have showed the Gringa loca to a Sanborns .Or learn the word baņo (banyo) as it is a universal situation in any city and she could have been prepared?
If at any point you thought that I was serious and feel confirmed that you should never go to Mexico then you are wrong . If you laughed because you can never see yourself behaving like that you have grasped the basic
concept of incongruity.
The point of the above satire is for anyone visiting any foreign country to realise their incongruity with their local surroundings and your unfamiliarity with the conditions. eg in the US more people are likely to know that may not be a millionaire,that you have a Heloc or two. In Mexico people are more likely to believe what they see on TV of the rich neighbour up north ,when they see your shiny white
boat.
In the same vain prepare yourself for Mexico before you go. In a big place like
Cancun you are one of many boiled to lobster colour tourists. In a place like La Pesca not so much. If that is where you want to go,
google the news of La Pesca and the state it is in .There is no point cancelling a holiday in Orange County,California based on the crime statistics of Detroit. There is also no point cancelling or taking a trip on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
If the common denominator of the murders committed is jealousy and
women are of no interest to you should the jealousy murder rate be? How many innocents were caught in the narco crossfire? How many were tourists ? How many were tourists in a tourist area? Analyse and a lot of the fear will go. And that analysis is beneficial for almost any situation. Narco violence happens in clusters.
An
advice given here to a woman happy to go sailing but deathly afraid of cruising and storms and pirates was to make the boat her own,to learn all that she can, to forget about pirates as she was not going where they are. Same applies to going to Mexico or any other country where YOU are different.