1. (1) A Smuggler from Africa

2. (2) Esperantists in Mexico City

(1) A Smuggler from Africa

After checking in at a cheap hotel in Mexico City, I went to my room and found a black man reading a Spanish textbook on the chair in front of the next room. We soon became friends. He told me his name was Bayo (anonym) with the age of 28 and came from Nigeria. I had an idea that the people speak French in Africa, but he spoke English. According to him, besides Nigeria in the south of the Sahara, English is also spoken in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the countries facing the Atlantic Ocean in the west of Nigeria. Bayo taught me Liberia was a colony of the US and the rest were of the UK. Bayo is a Mormon and he had a tailoring and dressmaking shop with his seven workers in Nigeria, however, he lost the shop in the riot by Muslims. Losing everything, he first flew to Cuba. After staying there for 73 days, he flew to Nicaragua. He stayed there for a month and a half, then he went into Costa Rica with the intention of flying to the US. Yet, he couldn't buy a ticket because of his improper documents and so he went back to Nicaragua three days later. In Nicaragua Bayo sent his passport back to Nigeria. At that moment his long smuggling trips started. Two months later, he took a Tica bus that travels all through Central America and got through Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, each country in a day. He was able to get through Honduras and El Salvador successfully without a passport, but at the Guatemalan border he was revealed. So, he offered bribes of US$20 and entered into the country. Bayo told me smuggling is easier and faster as time-consuming procedure is unnecessary. He next smuggled himself into Belize. Belize is a country where the Black occupy 85 - 90 % of its population. He could easily enter the country without his passport and could find a job without proper documents in Belize where there are lots of African brothers. He lived there for seven months, having a job as a guard. Belize is also an ex-colony of the UK and the people speak English. Belize now belongs to the British Commonwealth. Probably because of this, according to Bayo, it is comparatively easy to enter the US from Belize. However, there is Mexico between Belize and the US. If one has a citizenship of Belize, he can freely enter Mexico without a visa. However, Bayo couldn't wait for it and smuggled himself into Mexico, offering bribes of US$20 to a Mexican immigration officer. Later, he obtained the false paper of the US citizen and flew to Tijuana, a border town at the entrance of the West Coast of the US. Yet, his false identification was pointed out at the airport of Tijuana and he got arrested. He was sent back from Tijuana to Mexico City by a police truck and spent four months in the detention house in the capital. He told me he learned a lot there.

In the detention house there are lots of people from developing countries of the world who failed smuggling themselves into the US. I imagined that violence would be frequent there and asked Bayo about it. He answered that the people who want to pick a fight were only the Arabians and that they didn't bother the Black, especially himself , a man of muscle. As the place is not a jail, they can behave freely inside the walls. They can also make a contact with the outer world by telephone. A truck with various kinds of daily necessities visits the detention house three days a week. If you have money, you can get anything except alcohol. The Chinese and the Indian make a hoard of the things and they sell them at double price later. If you have a lot of money, you can offer bribes to an official to get the permission of going out for 30 days and, if things go well, you can disappear into some other country. Bayo wrote a letter for help to the church he belongs to. After sending the 10th letter, an official of the UN came to visit him in the detention house. Two months had passed since he was put in the detention house. The official sent from the UN was a young woman and she came there in an expensive car. Bayo flattered her by compliments. Even doing this, he is somewhat innocent and has a talent not to give a bad feeling to others. He was able to leave there as a political refugee. If there had no been the aid from his church, he would have transferred to the detention house of Campeche in the Yucatan Peninsula. Strangely, the smugglers can go out freely to the southern regions of the detention house in Campeche. There are Guatemala and Belize in the south. The Mexican Government probably don't want to spend money for them and want them leave the country as soon as possible. In the case of Bayo, he would be back to Belize even if the government don't give him a passport. However, among those smugglers from the poor countries like Guatemala and its neighboring Honduras, not a few of them come back, as a repeater, to the detention house where they can enjoy better life with three meals and a siesta than a hard life with hard labor in their countries. This is a headache to the Mexican Government.

Bayo had already been staying in the hotel for ten days when I checked in the same hotel. He learned Spanish at a language school three days a week. The UN paid all his expenses. His room had a bathroom and was US$2.5 more expensive than my room. He was given US$73 each week for his living by the UN. He asked a Spanish dictionary and he got one immediately from the UN. He also could have gotten a pair of glasses if he had wanted. He was living an easy life. I thought I would also be a political refugee like him and would want to move to a room with toilet and shower.

Bayo came to my room every day. One day I made a phone call to Leonara, an Esperantist woman, in his presence. He had asked me about Esperanto several times before, and that time he became really interested and seriously asked me about how to learn, how to be a member of the Esperanto circle of Mexico City and how to communicate with the Esperantists of the world. So, I told him that I would ask about the learning and the circle in Mexico City to Leonora, whom I was supposed to see again the following day, and I copied both the lists of the Esperantists of the world and a Esperanto dictionary into a CD to give him. To learn only Spanish is not easy, however, his desire for knowledge was strong. Bayo knows well about Japan. And he wants to marry a Mexican woman in order to get a passport and dreams of visiting Japan later so that he can make money. He has obtained detailed information about Japan from one of his friends who visited Japan as a tourist and saved money after working illegally for seven years, and who was deported in the end. Bayo seems to know about the situations of Japan more than Japanese. Osaka Municipal Government, whose management is never international, unreasonably believed that Osaka was less known to the world and tried to hold the Olympic Games in Osaka. Its plan ended in failure. It is true that the people in Canada or the US do not know of Osaka, probably because they don't care about Japan or because their education level is low. However, in Mexico everyone knows about Osaka. The mayor of Osaka had unnecessary worries. It is a really good thing that Osaka failed in holding the Olympic Games. The motive of Osaka Municipal Government was originally wrong. I think Japan should see the whole world, not paying attention only to the West.

(2) Esperantists in Mexico City

Around the central square in Mexico City I couldn't easily find a cheap hotel that has a parking area for my motorcycle. At the seventh trial I finally found a hotel with a parking. In spite of its low charge, the hotel was good. However, the hotel asked me US$2.5 for the parking. That kind of thing had never happened before. On account of the unexpected expense, I took a room without a bathroom that was $2.5 less expensive. The total charge of the hotel room was $17 per night. It exceeded my budget of $15 for a hotel, but I compromised, thinking other hotels also might charge the same if they are located in downtown. Against my expectation, I found a desk, a TV and even a telephone in the room. I was glad, hoping I would be able to make an access to the Internet in a hotel room after a long time in Cancun. But, I couldn't connect the modem cable with the telephone, because the telephone cable was fixed to the telephone. I followed the telephone cable by my hands and opened the lid of the wiring case on the wall. Three cables were connected in the case. The universal adapter for telephone jacks that I took with me from Japan has a crocodile-mouth-shaped clip as a final means. I supposed one of the tree cables must be a ground cable, but I didn't know which. So I tried every combination of connecting the two of the three cable terminals. But, there was no reaction in the modem checker. I gave up and instead made a telephone call to Leonora, the Esperantist with whom I had been making a contact by email since Veracruz. In spite of my Spanish-mixed, fumbling Esperanto, she talked to me patiently and sometimes even with affectionate laughter. In addition her voice sounded much younger than I had expected. She told me she would treat me to dinner in her home.

I visited her at home on the following day. The left room of the entrance of her house was used as an office and the whole wall was covered with the bookshelves, which were occupied with the Spanish books translated from those written in China. A personal computer was laid on the long table. I couldn't find a public telephone house neither in Cuernavaca nor in Mexico City. There are lots of telephone houses even now in the country towns in Mexico, but this kind of business probably cannot exist anymore in the capital or in its surrounding area in which automatic card phones are equipped on every corner of the sidewalks. So as in the home of the Esperantist in Cuernavaca, I asked her to let me use her telephone so that I could connect my PC to the Internet. I could update my Web site and exchange emails. Even this was very helpful to me. Leonora is a beautiful and very attractive woman. But unfortunately, she told me she had a fiance in the US. The large picture of the fiance was shown in the background of the screen of her PC. She asked me if I knew the man. I answered “No”. Then, she told me that the man had stayed in Japan for ten years before and recently worked for an office concerning Esperanto in San Francisco. Leonora met the American Esperantist in the 5th Esperanto Convention of All Americas held in Mexico City last year. “Who? Oh!”. Watching the photograph in the screen closely, surprisingly he was Joel Brozovsky who stayed in the Omoto, the religious group in Kameoka, Kyoto, Japan. I was stunned by the coincidence. Before I left Japan, some of us of Osaka Esperanto Society talked about him - where he was in the US and what he was doing there. If I knew he was in San Francisco, I would have met him there. I am very sorry about this.

Soon later, her mother came to the house. Her name was also Leonora. I didn't pay much attention to her name. She told me that years before a Japanese Esperantisto also had taken a motorcycle trip to Mexico and that she had corresponded with him then. “Really?”. I thought the rider must have been me. But, according to my memory, the person who made a great effort to find a motorcycle shop for used bikes in Mexico City for me should have had a different name, and should have lived in Guadalajara. As the motorcycle shop the person found for me seven years before didn't have the motorcycle I wanted and in addition the price was around double, I changed my idea and bought a bike in San Diego of the US. I didn't visit the kind and helpful person in Guadalajara during the previous trip, because I didn't have enough time and traveled with a woman rider who didn't speak Esperanto. I regretted this for a long time after the trip. I once again thought about the Japanese rider. Except me, there mustn't have been many other Japanese Esperantists who traveled by motorcycle in Mexico. I immediately looked for the name in the name list of my PC. Oh, the person who had helped me was Leonora Torres, just the woman before me. I apologized to her for my rudeness and thanked her for the help she had given me. What a coincidence!

The daughter Leonora told me that there would be a meeting of Esperantists on Sunday two day later, and certainly I went there. I arrived at the nearest subway station from her house just on the appointed time at 10 in the morning. When I finished two puffs of smoking at the exit of the station, I heard a man's voice calling “Toru!” from the street in the front. However, the person whom I was waiting for was a woman named Leonora. The car from which the voice came was a red Volkswagen. That was certainly the car of Jorge in Cuernavaca. And, there were Leonora and Jorge in the car. We picked up the mother Leonora on the way and headed for the meeting place. When we arrived there, the old lady named Estrela guided us to the meeting room. The flag with a green star and the picture of Zamenhof, the creator of our language, were hung on the wall of the room. The room was quite large. I came to know the place was the office of the Esperanto Federation of Mexico (MEF). Eleven Esperantists gathered there from various parts of Mexico. All spoke in Esperanto at the meeting. The agenda began with the report of the budget and proceeded to the coming Universal Congress of Esperantists in Brazil. However, I didn't understand well, because everyone spoke fluent Esperanto. I felt miserable of myself. But while I kept listening to their conversation for one or two hours, I gradually came to understand little by little. I found that Jorge, who took care of me in Cuernavaca, was seemingly the president of the MEF and that he himself updated the Web site of the MEF. Knowing this, I asked him if I could link their Web site with mine. They easily accepted my request and told me they would link my Web site in return. That was really an honor to me. In the end of the meeting a young woman named Marta talked about her experience of having been to Moscow to study Russian for a year in the previous year. She also spoke fast and fluent Esperanto, however, I was able to understand 80 to 90 percent of her speech, because of my getting accustomed to the language and thanks to her clear pronunciation. It made me very happy.