Crossing into Mexico
Crossing the border to Mexico on foot in Tecate is a throwback to times of slow travel and old movies.
Even if you spent at least 45 minutes with the help of your tech savvy seven-year-old grandchild to obtain a tourist visa on line in advance, you still have to join a long queue of fellow travelers to get processed.
You get shown to an office building with a rather large bare room that contains a huge empty desk without a chair or obvious purpose. In the corner of that room is a narrow door to the place that houses the important official who will grant you entry into the country. His room (and of course it is a man) is so small that only three people are allowed to step inside at a time.
Meanwhile, the line outside the important room winds all around the perimeter of the bigger room and out the door to where on the steps another (the hot, sunny, and windy) segment of the queue continues.
When you finally get into the holy important small room, it is a surprising letdown. It is unadorned except for a lonely trashcan and THE desk. The official business desk where all the processing occurs. Behind the desk sits an impressive looking middle-aged man in a crisp tan uniform. Impressive because he could have stepped out of an ad for a hair product or could have been featured in a sleek travel magazine on Southern style. He radiates confidence and ease, not to be confused with power, and I see his eyes crinkle jovially.
He actually seems to love his job. What job is that exactly you might ask but because of the tightness of the room I can only say what the three cases ahead of me required of him. He needed two pens of different color and had those waiting to his right. In the middle of the table in front of him stood one metal ink stamp with a huge ergonomically correct handle. He would wave you over to stand in front of him (no chair) and you would lay down your papers like an offering. A passport, a pre-acquired visa printout (see procedure mentioned above), and a paper showing proof of visa payment. First a friendly comment is made about something. The weather. The first name. The state in which the passport holder is registered. Then he swivels with passport in hand over to a computer (yes! There is technology involved) and swipes it. The first time never worked but ultimately it does. Then the inspection of the visa itself, names compared and whatever starts. Soon the stamping begins and truthfully I can’t keep track of how many, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, the table vibrates with the force, lifting some papers which hover for a split of a second. The pens now come into play, he needs to switch between them as one color goes with stamps and the other with signatures. Now, the visa printout has two sections so with a flourish and yet looking like an enthusiastic little school kid he takes a metal ruler and rips one side from the other. One side gets filed behind him, the other sits waiting to be inserted (last step) back into the passport pages.
He works swiftly, but mindfully, this is repetition but he treats it with a sort of reverence. I watch and find him strangely attractive in his dedication and joyfulness, like a monk cleaning the floors of a cathedral. One can’t help but look and marvel. Such mindless work. Such important work. He worked hard to earn his seat in this chair in this little office. It must be a dream job.
The traveler with the stamped papers can now leave the room, going again through the narrow door frame used to enter, past the queue of waiting people and out into the sunshine.
It felt like I just witnessed something special, felt humbled by this lack of efficiency, by this purposeful disregard of automation and anonymity.
Welcome to Mexico.
