I'm Still Alive!

Sorry it's taken me so dang long to get back online. Things have been crazy busy since the move, and I barely had a chance to set my computer up today. The unpacking is almost finished, though, so I can stop hatin' life now. I tried to keep a journal of the every day things going on here, looking at it now, a lot of it is kind of boring, so I'm just going to post the ones that don't put me to sleep half way through.

Banana Annie

My first real conversation with one of the locals here in Sayulita didn’t happen with a nice, normal, Mexican family, or even with one of the more colorful indigenous Cora or Huitchol Indians. No, my first encounter was with Banana Annie, or as her sign reads in front of her jewelry shop, Banannie.

Annie is a fifty seven-year old, platinum blonde artist and resident of downtown Sayulita. She told me she came here nearly ten years ago (though she refused to divulge why or how) and started hawking her handmade jewelry in the tiny town square.

I met Annie on my third day here alone, after my husband had gone back to L.A. I was sitting outside her shop on my quad, debating on what to do about dinner, when she called out to me. “Hey! You looking for something?”

“No, just looking around,” I assured her.

A couple passed by the front of her store at that moment. Annie let out a cackle and spoke to them in a voice just bordering on manic. “Denver, right?” When the couple nodded, whether in agreement or to humor her, I’m not sure, she cackled again with glee, pointing one hideously manicured finger (I’m thinking pink Whiteout, but it could have been the standard, nipple pink house paint so common ‘round these parts) at her temple and winking. “Yep, I know,” she said smugly. “I’m Crazy Annie, I know everything.”

She then stepped off her porch and approached me. “So what’s your story, sweety?”

“Well, I’m just looking for a place where I won’t feel too conspicuous eating alone.”

At this, Annie took hold of my arm and tugged until I got off my quad. “Oh, you don’t have to eat alone. I just made some curried rice and I always make too much. Come on, you can have dinner right here with me.”

“Oh no, I don’t want to intrude.”

“Nonsense!” she insisted. “I’m Crazy Annie, I love intrusions.”

It was at this point that I discovered that Crazy Annie has the attention span of a fish. Twice she stopped mid-sentence to talk to locals who greeted her with, “Hola, Ana!” asked her how she was and hugged her warmly. Then she led me inside her shop where I followed behind her as she flitted from one end to another, showing me her wares. Then we went out to the back where her adorable little adobe house and the rest of its occupants were; twelve cats and a gorgeous black lab whose name I can’t remember. The lab stared at her adoringly as she introduced each of her cats by name (can’t remember any of them either) and told me their origins.

Finally, she flitted past the stove, which reminded her that she had offered to feed me. She climbed up on a milk crate (the stove was tiny, but it was perched on top of the counter and she couldn’t reach it from the floor) and served me up a plate of rice that looked delicious, with the exception of some suspicious looking squares of meat that had me eyeing the cats with fear. She pointed out all the ingredients, corn, peas, onion, sunflower seeds, and assured me that the meaty stuff was tofu. Then she led me back out front to sit at a small plastic table, which she informed me was a relic from her days of selling jewelry in the square.

“I’m gonna run next door and get us something to drink.”

“Oh, let me get it, Annie. It’ll be my treat for such a nice dinner.”

“No, no,” she pooh poohed my offer with a wave of her hand. “How much is a glass of Jamaica?”

Ugh. For the record, I hate Jamaica water. My brother calls it Mexican Kool-aid. Hibiscus flower water with sugar, ick. But it was ice-cold and tasted wonderful in the afternoon heat and humidity. I gulped it down and ate the curry, which was delicious, even the spongy ‘meat’, as Annie ran off to help a customer.

When she returned, I asked her if she knew of a local dentist. I had an infection in one of my wisdom teeth that had gotten into my jaw and ear and it was starting to really bother me.

“Oh, oh, oh, Diego! NO!”

I looked up from my food to see her bolt out into the street, yelling at a toddler across the way, who was joyfully stepping off the curb and into the path of an oncoming (albeit slow moving) car, to come see, “Ana banana!”

After safely returning Diego to his mother, Annie returned, and without skipping a beat, said, “I love my dentist; he does an awesome job.” She then gave me a grin that displayed the most gruesomely crafted set of dental implants I’d ever seen.

I smiled. “Yes, he does.”

“He’s in Bucerias (the town just before Puerto Vallarta). Would you like his number?”

I humored her and took the small piece of paper on which she had scribbled the dentist’s ten-digit phone number.

We chatted a while longer. Annie told me she was a big fan of American Idol and the Gene Simmons reality show. Occasionally, she would punctuate her conversation with, “Oooh, I love this song!” As yet another golden oldie from the sixties played through the speakers at the front of the store. Every other sentence or so, Annie would interrupt me to call out to Diego, wave to someone she knew, or thought she knew, and offer up the information that she was “Crazy Annie” to any tourists passing by.

I thanked Annie profusely for her kindness and rose to leave, but she had already lost interest in me and was out on the sidewalk talking to another small group of tourists.

I sat on my quad and watched her for a moment, realizing that part of Annie’s persona was no more than an act. It was what people expected from a single, older woman with too many cats, living the expatriate life in a remote village outside the US, and so she complied. Though part of Annie really was cracked, and I’m sure she felt the loneliness we all feel sometimes, perhaps even more so, she looked as happy as anyone I’d ever seen. She had friends who treated her like one of their own, even though they all called her loca. She had her dog, her cats and her jewelry.

I started wondering, which came first, the crazy or the move to Sayulita, and decided that it didn’t really matter. If Annie lived in the States, she’d be ostracized, maybe even institutionalized for her nuttiness, where they’d tried to ‘fix’ her…and she’d be miserable. Here, she was free to be herself, to act as friendly and as batty as she wanted without being judged…at least not too harshly. She’d found a home in Sayulita, a family, and as much happiness as any fruit loop could hope for. God bless you, Banannie.