I am miffed. I am sitting in my casita (little house) in Guanajuato moaning and groaning about something over which I have no possible control. I feel like swooning to the bed and uttering vile curses, but, as my wife often reminds me, What good would that do?

I have written about this aspect of Mexican life before in my books and columns-that which is stinging like a bee in my bonnet right now. I am sitting in front of a computer right now whose internet DSL connection is deader than a doorknob. I am sitting in a casita with not one drop of drinking water left to soothe my burning thirst. Dead Internet and not a drop of water is what are tormenting me right now as I hack out these words. But things happen you say and you are right. Things happen. The only problem is that when they happen in Mexico they happen here like nowhere else upon the earth (except possibly in the rest of Latin America, Spain, and Italy)!

As I have lamented before, life in Mexico as an American expat is smooth sailing until something bad happens. Until something comes up that requires even a small level of cooperation and a modicum of efficiency, life here is pretty good. The climate is great, the food is fantastic, cost-of-living is low, and we are treated fairly well by our Mexican neighbors. Truly the stereotypical hospitality of Mexicans toward foreigners is well deserved and easy to encounter even as tourist. All goes well until something doesnt.

Something is bad now.

Inexplicably, when the guys who deliver the bottled drinking water get it into their heads to stop coming around your street, you are at the mercy of God Himself for your water needs. Without committing a cultural insult and actually confronting them, you simply have no explanation for why they will suddenly decide it is your time to die from dehydration.

The way this works is that the companies who bottle the drinking water send their guys in bottled-water laden trucks to cruise the streets yelling a plaintiff cry, Agua...Agua! You have to run to the nearest window and scream this back at them. They follow the sound of your screeching until they make eye contact. They ask how many bottles you need and then haul your water into your house.

This process falls apart sometimes. For reasons I cannot begin to understand, they will suddenly stop coming to your house. They will offer you no explanation for trying to kill you by dehydration nor will any of your dying neighbors know why either. You can call the companys phone number and they will promise vehemently to come running to your aid with life-sustaining water. However, once again a TMO (Typical Mexican Operation) takes place when you finally reach someone to order water:

They will swear upon The Virgin of Guadalupe (the patron saint of Mexico) that water is on its way and, of course, this means that it will never show up. Water will never come.

Currently, we are at 10 phone calls and counting. Our record so far has been calling for 7 days before they showed up with some water.

The internet, when it crashed, took us 25 phone calls before getting someone who could tell us they tested the line and that the trouble was on their end. The person gave the usual vain promise to get it fixed...I am not holding my breath! I will have to go to an Internet caf


I Am a Sinner – What About You?
Global Sourcing and Supplier Online by Dylan