¿Cultural Breakdown...It´s always the Same?

The open doors gave way to guitars. Big ones. Fat ones. Half-finished ones. And wood. Wood everywhere. Intrigued, I walked in.

When one finds his/her/itself in another country with no job, no friends, and no family, the one must find things to do. Normally, the aforementioned person is a solo tourist, or an escaped convict. So, the prospective daily goals may include:
1. visiting ruins, museums, churches, or other relics of the dead
2. taking tours of natural wonders
3. walking around with a guidebook glued to the face
4. refuging in the temporary domicile; fearful of the world outside
5. spending the entire day at an internet café, telling everybody how much they love their “new” country; repeat the next day

I try to find people who will speak with me. About anything. Their swollen pus bags. The dog who keeps crapping on their front stoop. The conspiracy of America to own the world. Its in these persuaded bystanders that I connect to the culture. Within their story, lies a nation´s heart. Sometimes jubilant, sometimes miserable.

Therefore señor, many days are spent wandering the streets in pursuit of talkative storeowners, rebellious students, park bench dreamers, and unbelievably bored civil servants.

The philosophy of the street brought me inside the apartment turned music factory.
Guitars in various stages of finishing littered the walls. A giant hand-made table saw clogged the center of the floor. Radiating outward from the makeshift beast, sat various tools of the carpenter. Each one put together by odd pieces of wood, rather then bought from Chinese made servants.

His name was José. For over 30 years, he´d been designing and building guitars. He learned the trade from is father, who started the trade in his late teens. He lamented that none of his three sons showed an interest in taking over the family business. Cheap guitars from China were cannibalizing his business. But at his age, he had nowhere else to go. I guess he could wander the streets with me, looking for other people like himself.

In schoolboy excitement, he grabbed a guitar off the wall and handed it to me. I stroked the handcrafted gem as if I was dusting a fabergé egg. He motioned for me to play. He took a seat on a mound of crumpled cardboard, and awaited the virtuoso´s performance.
I tried explaining that the long hair was due to an odd side affect of hair loss medication. And it wouldn´t stop growing. I was often confused for a musician, I said. Despite having the rhythm of a dying squirrel. He didn’t understand. Just play, son.
So outward came the combination of three cords I mastered in a year of guitar class. Followed by an apology --- My hand had an accident. Poor hand. Couldn’t quite function right now.

Two hours of interchange followed. The famous people who play on his guitars. The children, from who divorce stole. The freedom of not answering to a boss. Tales from his guest followed, about life in the States, and ways to waste time when you don´t have a real job. Neighbors stopped in to say hi. Nephews posed for pictures. Proposals for marriage were presented. After two hours, it seemed as if cultural differences were meaningless. We were roommates. Family. Friends. And this phenomena demonstrates the great irony of travel --- We are fascinated by the foods, styles, and customs of foreign people. But when we have a chance to know them, everything is equal. Desires, Hopes, Fears. Dislike for George Bush. And its through this dynamic, that one day, maybe, hopefully, racism (culturalism) will cease to exist. But as long as people judge their skin differentiated neighbour by their outward appearance, and not by the character that lays beneath, cops will continue to beat the shit out black people. Wealthy South Americans will presume their rural folk to be worthless, ignornant, cheap labor for their plentiful goods. And the World will assume that Africans are untamed savages.

An endearing trait of Guitar Sculptor José was his complete lack of salesmanship. In a nation of financially poor people, entering a shop, even a factory, almost always results in a plea for purchase.

During a two day shopping affair, I visited a minimum of 75 shoe stores looking for a sneaker that would fit. Apparently, Andean people have very small feet. And they are not fond of the corresponding analogy. In every single store, the salesgirl or dude, would physically put their largest shoe on my foot. Always two sizes smaller then I asked for. As I grimaced in podiatrical suffocation, the salesperson assured me that shoe would expand to fit my foot. Guaranteed. I couldn’t return the shoe, but they promised. Hand on the invisible bible of truth. You could hear the bones of the foot snapping. But size was irrelevant. These specially designed $12 shoes were size chameleons in the face of their new owner. That’s how desperate for business people can be.

So, in textbook reverse psychology, I returned to visit José on my following day´s walk. But first --- the other newly found friends -- Bar owner, Rafi. My purveyor of hot tea, cold beer, and local moonshine. A willing ear to my adventures. And one of many closeted gays who longed for a larger city where their sexual escapades would be shadowed from their nosey neighbor´s knowledge. Señora Mercedes. She was my “Hornado” (freshly cooked pig) saleswoman in the market. A surrogate mother for me. Then, the gang of three watch salesman who every day would try to find me an Indigenous wife (the result of them misunderstanding my joke upon our first meeting). They had a boisterous female neighbour, The Chocolate lady. She sold raw Chocolate that she processed on her farm. She insisted that all three men of the clock were raging homosexuals. They insisted I should sleep with her daughter. The banter was the same every day. And then there was the phone cabin lady. In a country with expensive phone service, most people opt to use private phone booths to avoid exorbitant monthly charges. She liked me. A lot. A woman from the coast who had moved to the Mountains to give her only child a better education. I would play games with the son, while she talked about the differences between coastal people and those that dwelled high above. I fantasized about taking her into the phone booth. Only to realize, every day, that she probably couldn’t fit. With me. And then, finally, to Josè´s place.

Breaking tradition with the cheap Jewish blood bestowed by my equally cheap ancestry, I decided to purchase one of José´s finely built toys. The one with an armadillo shell for a backing. Known locally as a churrango. And rumoured to be the new model for Dodge´s entry into the unlucrative local SUV market. And like those forbiddingly cute church going girls, saving themselves for the sacred wedding day, there is something appealing, strongly desirable, about those that don´t ask for it. Maybe it was a sales ploy. But hand made armadillo guitars won´t be around for much longer. I figured that eventually people would stop talking to me, and I´d need something to do. Evenutally I hope to retire to a South American streetcorner, living off the charity of mocking laughter, emptying their pockets out of shear pity.

And for the first time in a long line of ungratifying purchases, I felt great. José couldn’t contain himself. He immediately started teaching me the delicacies of the miniscule folkloric guitar. He invited the nephews over to watch. And he didn’t even try to verify if my 20 dollar bills were real. He accompanied me on one of his other creations. Drowning out my frightening melodies. His contagious smile made every bad note another bite of freshly baked dessert. I never figured out if the neighbors were simply happy that the craftsman finally sold something, or that their ancient musical tradition was being passed down to an outsider.

For the next few days, I would pay visits to José on my daily walks. Watching him work. Sharing fruit drinks (a very non-gay activity in fruit producing countries). Practicing the guitar, as he laughed at my attempts at local rhythm. Sometimes, we would just sit outside and mock politicians, from here to the border´s north.

Then, on my last day in town, I stopped by for a final chat. José has just put the finishing varnish on an acoustic guitar for a local girl. We retreated to the back of his shop, also known as his living room. The great craftsman. The bearer of tradition. A man who smiled every time I saw him, was distraught. His kids had left. Apparently, it was their first time home in four years. After his divorce, several years ago, his wife got permanent custody. She normally refused her children visitation rights. When he dropped them off at the bus station, he was so wrecked that he couldn’t even look at his kids. His “manliness” prevented his tears from becoming public.

And at that very moment, as he told his sad story, my eyes began to well. On this relative stranger´s couch, in the back of a wood shop south of the equator, the tears began to drip. Most likely the result of my own parents ugly divorce and the suffering my father went through, deprived of the inalienable right to live with his children. The result of a court system that thinks a woman always knows best. And a thousand miles is a simply a number.

Across from me, this stranger turned confidant, mirrored my pain. A generation older, a continent removed, but still the same hurt. The two of us, complete strangers a week ago, sat with swollen cheeks, wishing the past could have been different.

He offered me a drink. No fruit, this time. Only booze. I said no. Mainly cause the local liquor sucks. Really sucks. I´m an alcoholic, he said. Please, share a drink with me. I didn´t drink all week while my kids were in town, but please, I need a drink. I couldn´t. Knowing the terror of alcoholism, I would only be cementing the problem.

And the tears began again. Two grown man, imitating a telenovela. One of the worst diseases a person can catch. One in which your neighbors exist peacefully with the same drug that controls your life. The cause of broken marriages and untimely deaths around the world.

I tried to give him advice. About the positives in life. About the conquerability of the disease. About the support groups that exist in every city in the world. He listened. Probably as he had to a hundred others before me. All wanting to play Jesus to this humble, charming man.

He refrained from grabbing the hidden flask beneath his work bench. At least, while I was still there. He tried feigning that smile I saw the previous days. But at that moment, with all the excitement of foreign culture broken. The mystery of the tribal masks revealed. The joys of a new friendship, turned into the tragedy which is humanity.

And yet, because of that other dominant human trait; HOPE, I felt that José still had a chance. To make musicians out of children. And to play father to his own.