Playing Oxen: A Mexican Standoff

Late last week, while riding the bus back to school after my lunch break, we had a bit of an incident. But in order to explain the bus ride, you first have to have an idea of what the road is like... And I found this great description on my former co-worker's blog (thanks, Emily!), and I don't think I could describe it better...

the roads that lead the universidad de la sierra sur to the main roads are not paved. they are both pathetic attempts to connect the university – out in the middle of cornfields and cacti - to the town of miahuatlán, and look like the only vehicles to be rolling along them should be horse-drawn (which, incidentally, is not all that uncommon). fist-sized rocks, grooves of eroded soil, and potholes that small children could hide in are just a few of the fun features awaiting travellers to the university. one road takes the bus 15 minutes on its lumbering journey to the town center, only because to go over 10 mph would cause all the passengers’ heads to repeatedly hit the ceiling of the rickety steel box on wheels. the other road, which leads to my house, is slightly less potholed and bumpy, but traverses an arroyo (dry eroded river bed) that is carved with unnavigable grooves and ridges and that turns into a mud pit after 10 minutes of rain.

So that's what the roads are like. And last week was a particularly rainy week, so there were a number of days when the bus took the alternate route to avoid crossing the arroyo. On this particular day, we were en route back to the university, about to turn on the final stretch of muddy road when the bus driver stopped. All of us looked at each other, knowing the bus driver was considering turning back and using an alternate route, rather than risk the bus getting stuck in the mud. We started chanting "¡sí, se puede!" (you can do it!), usually saved for more monumental decisions, but he began to turn the bus around. Everybody groaned, knowing how long it would take to backtrack and take the other road, we would definitely be late. In a stroke of genius, a woman yelled for him to take a little side path, by no means a road, but she assured him that it would lead to the university in less time. So he did.

It was an adventure. The path went between corn fields, and had deep tracts of mud that the bus somehow managed to slip and slide its way thru (felt like we were on ice at times). We were so close to the university, our destination in sight, when we saw an obstacle in our path: a pair of oxen yoked to a cart, trudging their way thru the mud. There wasn't room for us both (I think the bus was widening the path as it went). But who would move first? It was a classic Mexican (or maybe Oaxacan?) version of playing chicken, rickety steel box on wheels vs. horned beasts of burden...

In the end the farmer steered the oxen down a row of corn (gallantly granting us passage), and put an end to this round of Playing Oxen...

*Note: No oxen were harmed in the writing of this post*