I wrote this column while jet-lagged at 02:18am on Wednesday from my eclectic Mexico City Airbnb. On alternative days, the apartment in the trendy area of Roma refused to have hot water in the shower and its moody padlock on the street-side gate meant I was locked out a few times, having to call the hostess to help me out with her set of keys at ungodly times of the morning after I was out immersing myself in Mexican arts, culture and lifestyle. But that wasn't the most interesting part of my stay there.
Across the border Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, and the world’s number one candidate for either a hair transplant or for opting for a chiskop the next time he has an appointment with his barber immediately and predictably made sweeping announcements.
The US Commander in Chief declared that deporting “millions and millions of criminal aliens” and classifying Mexico’s drug cartels as terrorist groups was going to bring back the golden age of America. Basically, almost his entire inauguration speech blamed the US’s problems on the Mexicans, but the wonderfully jubilant Mexicans I interacted with the whole of Monday seemed unperturbed by it all.
At the Zocalo — the main square in Mexico City, also known as the Plaza de Constitucion — not a single Mexican seemed to care about the repercussions of the next four years.
Juan Manuel, who sells the most delicious wholewheat tacos in the suburb of Tepito, calmly deadpanned and paraphrased what his president Claudia Sheinbaum said: “Nothing will keep us out of Mexican America.” This was after Trump repeatedly said he's renaming the Gulf of Mexico — which was named in 1672 — the Gulf of America, as “it has a nice ring to it”.
At the Aztec pyramids in Teotihuacan, the locals were super chilled about what their annoying neighbour was up to on the other side of the wall, and reassured each other that nothing he rants about on the global WhatsApp group is going to give them sleepless nights.
I was gobsmacked at just how cool this was going down with the locals I interacted with. It was like they'd gone through something similar before, and they knew all this madness would blow over again, like Trump's unruly hair in the wind.
You're probably wondering what all of this has to do with you, as you take a sip of your drink of Woolies sparkling water with ice cubes floating in it. The lesson from the citizens I met in Mexico City and surrounding towns is that things are never as bad as they seem, and that anxiety attack you're experiencing is most probably heartburn from too many quesadillas.
Here you are stressing about where your recently matriculated teenager is going to find a tertiary institution that will accept them (are we still allowed to use that word?) with Life Orientation as the highest mark of 41%. Relax. Woolies is always looking for talented individuals to “develop” their product offerings to include products like vetkoek and easy-to-cook, odourless ox tripe. Your “Michelle” will be just fine.
Or maybe you're only getting your January salary on the last day of this month and your Midrand landlord has already threatened to confiscate the four-piece matching crates that you call couches, if you short-pay the rent for another month. Clearly you can see that Trump wanting to take over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal are much bigger problems than you losing your SAB merchandise from 1999; you'll be just fine.
A lot of South Africans are also uncertain about what 2025 will bring for them, on the back of a Sixty60 scooter. Captains of industry are betting that the South African economy is finally going to improve, thanks to predicted lower interest rates and some state-owned enterprises being on the mend. But the most important question is whether the price of eggs is going to decrease. That's what really keeps us awake at night. Ho hum, we'll all be fine.
Right now in Cape Town, we have 48-year-old “Lauryn” from Llandudno who's wondering why she just can't seem to keep a man, after swiping right so many times on Tinder. Little does she know that her relationship issues are dwarfed by Trump’s declaration that the US will only acknowledge two genders: male and female.
The entire LGBTQI+ community in the US is up in arms, trying to find ways to fight this discrimination. Luckily, Americans from all backgrounds and orientations tend not to struggle with paperwork when it comes to permanently relocating to Mexico. They'll be just fine unless Lionel Shriver's predictions in her novel The Mandibles come true and, after the dollar collapses and America is relegated from superpower to pariah state, a thriving Mexico builds a border wall to keep out desperate illegal Americans.
Calm down. All will be well, as time has proven multiple times before. Yes, the first American convicted felon to hold office has closed off his first 24 hours with an avalanche of bizarre executive orders — such as withdrawing from the World Health Organisation and from the Paris climate change accord — but even he cannot halt the hands of time that will bring back sanity to the world at the end of his term. For now, enjoy a margherita and bite into a spicy burrito! All will be well ... unless it won't.
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