Misterios de nuestra vida mexicana

Misteriosa....

Here are a few of the mysteries we've enjoyed solving and not solving:

1. El misterio de la luz roja. Why, in the early evening, do small red lanterns appear outside certain homes? They're pretty, they cast a friendly glow against the creeping twilight...but what do they mean?

They mean: tamales for sale.

Our tutor, Memo, laughingly told us that when he first moved here from his home town, he, too was perplexed by these lanterns. Where he comes from, a red light indicates a house of ill repute. When a friend supplied the local meaning, Memo was taken aback his friend's vulgarity; tamale is a euphemism, too, it seems. So he was really amused when he got further clarification: No, not THAT kind of tamale!

2. El misterio del campanero. Who is that muchacho wearing an orange-colored vest--he who walks the streets at night ringing a bell? He looks so sad....

He is: the trash reaper (the grime reaper?).

Trash is picked up every night here in our neighborhood; you just take your plastic bags to the designated corner and the truck comes and picks them all up. But you have to time it right; no one wants the street dogs to rip into the trash bags, so you want to put it out just before the truck comes. How do you know when the truck is coming down your street? You hear the trash reaper, ringing his bell.

Memo said that everyone, everywhere in Chiapas (maybe in all Mexico?)  knows this sound and has been programmed to react immediately. He finds it funny that, every night at the sound of the bell, everyone starts scurrying around grabbing bags, finishing up a little sweeping, rushing to the street.....  As he points out, the truck will come again tomorrow; it's  not the last time ever. It's not the apocalypse, we agreed, not the Trash Rapture (el Rapto)! Still, every night the bell tolls for thee.

3. El misterio de la fregona. We have two string mops to clean our tile floors. I was excited to try them out; it looks cool when other people use them. But problems arose. The strings: tended to clump into two or three dirty dreadlocks. The coverage: limited to the narrow band of wetness I could achieve by dragging my clumped fregona-dreads across the tile. The rinsing: impossible to evaluate efficacy thereof (the bucket has a little strainer that you load the dreads into and push down on as if to make a dirty tea below). The corners of the floor: scarcely tickled by the flung strings of the fregona, despite repeated focused effort on my part. Will I ever learn to use this kind of mop competently? I really admire the way some people here can, with a flick of the wrist,  manage to shoot the mop strings into the corners of the floor the way a toad gets a fly: ZOT!

This is an unsolved mystery so far. Suggestions gladly accepted.

4. El misterio de la Casa del Misterio. Around the corner from our house is....the House of Mystery. This is a BIG house that has tape across all the gates---SEGURADO (secured)---and a police car out front 24/7. Why? What horrors have occurred there, what acts of unspeakable wrongdoing?

Possible flat tire, front left.

This is also an unsolved mystery. We're thinking of asking Memo to walk down there and (politely!) inquire of the policeman.