I was sitting with my back against the kitchen’s rough cement wall, a bucket of bleach perfuming the air beside me. Staring into space I dreamt of being anywhere but on this tile floor, alone in a country I did not understand, living in an apartment that did not feel like home.
A few days before we had transferred all of our belongings from V’s parent’s patio and to our new apartment - Casita Cielo. We had been excited, determined and, in my case, over-confidant in what could be accomplished in the first few days upon arrival. After an agonizing move requiring us to carry all of our worldly possessions up five flights of stairs we had piled everything on the floor and stopped to have a good look our new home. We had not been back since the day we signed our contract, a month before, and in the weeks leading up to our move we had paused every so often to whisper excitedly to each other, ‘Sky House!’, knowing that the place was perfect. In my mind this was to be our refuge from the constant ups and downs of acclimatizing to a new culture and we would stop at nothing to make it our own. I had pictured custom furniture, a home office, a lush patio garden with a bamboo canopy to shelter us in the hot summer days. I envisioned hearing the leaves rustling in the jungle behind us while I sipped coffee at the kitchen counter, delighting in the soft breezes that swept through the house keeping it cool. In my imaginings my only job was to quickly unpack our belongings and I had fully expected everything else to fall into place with ease.
And now we had arrived - the keys were in our possession, a one year lease freshly signed. I slowly pivoted on one foot and surveyed our new kingdom, my Martha Stewart visions collapsing like a house of cards as I took in our new home. It was filthy. Every imaginable surface was covered with dirt, dust and grime. There were dead bugs sprinkled generously on the floor and the unfinished cement walls were home to dozens of papery translucent wings, the original owners of which were nowhere to be found. The windows, one of the apartments major selling features, were covered in a dull film making the outside world appear in a sepia wash. The curtains hung limply, stained from the unknown abuses of previous tenants. We immediately turned around and walked down the hill to the supermarket, quickly purchasing a vast array of cleaning supplies. It would take me five full days of scrubbing to get our very small apartment clean.
That night we discovered what living next to a jungle really entails - big, tropical, nightmare invoking, bugs. Having grown up on the northwest coast where the climate is consistently cool and temperate I had had very little experience with truly large bugs but I was now apparently in store for a lively introduction. For reasons unknown to V and I we have never seen bug screens on windows in Mexico. This is a country where cockroaches are as big as your thumb, where Dengue Fever looms as the next epidemic, where hornets have wingspans like dragonflies. This is a country that needs bug screens. We of course had none and as soon as the sun set our tiny illuminated house became a beacon for every winged creature in a 5-mile radius. To make matters worse, we soon discovered that the house wasn’t sealed properly with large holes between the walls and roof, slivers of night air visible through gaps around our window frames and the front door stopping two inches shy of the floor below. Even with all of our windows shut, causing the house to become stale and hot, we were overwhelmed by insects.
The next morning was the first of many dedicated to cleaning and I spent it bleaching our kitchen counters in the company of several huge wasps, a collection of turquoise flies and a surprising number of thick grey worms which I soon discovered make a heart wrenching crunch when you accidently step on them with bare feet. A foul smell escaped our bathroom, filling the house. The plumbing in Mexico leaves a lot to be desired and I was still getting used to the idea that it was normal for your bathroom to smell like an outhouse. As I left my scouring to confirm that there was not a small animal rotting behind the toilet I heard a dull thud in the kitchen. Several thuds followed in quick succession and I sighed wondering what new creature had decided to pay me a visit this time. I peered out from behind the curtain that separates the bathroom from the kitchen, fearful of how large an insect would have to be to warrant this level of racket. Luckily for me the intruder turned out to be a bird, which had flown in through an open window and was now swooping from one corner of the apartment to another frantically trying to escape. During the half hour it took me to coax it out an open window I decided we were moving. I brought it up with V that night but he had some trouble hearing me over the shrill hum of our water tank. All buildings in Mexico are designed with their water tanks placed on the roof, which is no problem at all unless you too have decided to live on the roof. It turned out that whenever we decided to use our water for longer than a minute the tank would sense its water level dropping and kick on, humming and whining, its scream louder than anything else in the house. Strike three for Casita Cielo.
After a week of coming home to nothing but complaints V went down to our landlords and very nicely requested bug screens. This would allow us to keep some of our windows open after dark and not suffocate in the intense summer heat. It would also hopefully minimize how many birds found their way in during the day. He firmly told me we would not be moving until we had spent at least three months getting to know the place. V still had hope in the apartments redeeming qualities, in the aspects that had won us over in the first place, and he wasn’t going to give up on them as quickly as I was.
A few weeks later our screens arrived and they ushered in a new, more peaceful era for us at Casita Cielo. I had long since cleaned the place to an acceptable level and we were slowly piecing together something that felt like ours. We had created an office area with a DIY desk and apple crate shelving and I had started to build a small patio garden. V had made us a picnic table which had quickly become our favourite place to eat breakfast and had even spent some time patching several of the gaps between the walls and the roof with cardboard. While there were still bugs, the combined effort of the screens and V’s patch job held them at bay and we got used to the water tank’s unpredictable antics. Most importantly we began to relax into the apartments rhythms – understanding that the rooster across the street would begin crowing at 5 am, perfecting the fold of the towel we wedged between our door and the floor, learning exactly how to light our gas oven. These content, mundane moments began to add up until one day, as I quietly watered my plants listening to the symphony of crickets in the jungle behind me, I realized that I was home. Here in Mexico, in a country I did not understand, I had found a small corner that was mine. And I was grateful.
