Note: This is an excerpt from But For the Shadows, Mexico Is Color – 2,730,000 Steps in a Magical Country

From About 60,000 to 80,000 Steps

Today, our first Sunday in San Agustín, we make a foray into town to find an ATM. We have to walk the mile and a half from our temporary housing at the university, where I’ll be teaching, because we’re very low on cash and cannot afford the small bus they call a combi. We only have enough to pay for our laundry, which we’ll pick up on the way home. 

There’s a fair going on in town, complete with booths, rides, and junk food. On top of that, it’s market day, a brand-new phenomenon for us. Though the fair monopolizes the center of town, the market squeezes in around the edges: stands upon stands of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, meats, housewares, clothing, shoes, leather goods, spices, herbs, cooked prepared foods—tables and chairs provided—toys, stationary, flour tortillas—a rarity it seems—artisanal cheeses, eggs, milk, local produce such as nopales—prickly pear paddles cleaned of their spines—squash blossoms, the flower of the agave plant called gualumbos, and buckets of squirming little red worms called chinicuiles. The venders assure us they’re delicious. I’m sorry (or not sorry) to say I won’t be trying them. 

We are pleasantly overwhelmed by all this activity. The colors, both of the wares and the tarps overhead are brilliant. The hawkers call to us: “Mango, piña (pineapple), sandía (watermelon), papaya…. Güera! Güerita! Bonita! they call to me, meaning, “White girl, little white girl, pretty girl!” I giggle. I’m hardly a girl, but it gets my attention. I smile at them, flattered, on some level. On another level, I’m fully aware of the “colorism” behind these greetings. 

Yet, no matter how enticingly they call out to us, we can’t buy anything because we have zero money. We are heading to one of the four ATMS in town to get some cash so we can buy more groceries, which we would love to purchase in the market. First, we head to the bank, the only one in town. We try the ATM. Empty. No cash. Trying not to panic, we go across the plaza to one of the other ATMS. No cash. We walk to the other side of the block where there are two ATMS right next to each other. People walk away from the machines shaking their heads. “No hay efectivo.” “There’s no cash.” Now what?

There are a few small grocery stores in town, chain stores called 3B. They are a little more well stocked than the OXXO, but not by much. The OXXO, by the way, is too far to walk. We head into one of the 3Bs to find they do not accept credit cards. Almost no one does in this town. What we really need is a store where we can get groceries as well as cash back. 

We come upon a friendly policeman who informs us that every Sunday is market day, using the word tianguis, which is new to me. He tells us that the ATMs run out of cash because the town fills up on tianguis day, this particular Sunday made worse because of the fair. He says that, to get cash back with a credit card, we have to go to a big grocery store called Aurera. It’s a couple of blocks, just up this road, he tells us. Relieved, we start walking, practicing saying tianguis (pronounced tee-AHN-gheese though Jon memorizes it by saying “tea and geese”).

We walk, and walk, and walk: six blocks, eight, ten, twelve. We begin to wonder if maybe it was closed and we missed it. We are really on the outskirts now and wondering if the store even exists. Finally, exhausted and hungry, we come upon the place. Jon is carrying a backpack and is told he can’t go in. So I go in and rustle up everything I can find that isn’t too heavy to carry though I’m inspired at the thought that, with the cash back, we’ll be able to catch one combi into the town center, and the one from there to the university. In fact, with cash, we can get all kinds of things at the tianguis, and maybe even venture to try some of the street food. 

I get up to the cashier with bread, lettuce, tuna, ham, almond milk (yay!), a bottle of water, potato chips to scarf down now because I’m starving, and a few other various and sundry things. I’m happy and relieved to find that the card works. And yet, no cash back. Not with this type of card, this AMERICAN card. I’m despondent as I go to tell Jon. Now, we have to walk all the way back into town and all the way to the university. As I go to fish a tissue out of my pocket, I discover 40 pesos there, above and beyond the laundry money. Glory hallelujah! It’s just enough for each of us to take the two combis that will get us home and not have to use the laundry money. We cram potato chips into our mouths and chug the water as we wait for the combi, huddling under my umbrella because the sun is searing. 

We make it home and collapse for a while before going to get our laundry, which is fresh and more beautifully folded than any laundry I’ve ever seen. 

Georgina Young-Ellis is the author of twelve novels, and a Fulbright grant recipient with a masters in Spanish. Jonathan Ellis, artist and software consultant, has his masters in Media. Together, they wrote this memoir of the astonishing nine months they spent in a small town in Mexico.  

All photos courtesy and copyright Georgina Young-Ellis, published with permission