Ishmael is the night watchman at the hotel. He comes at sunset and leaves at sunrise. Last year he got fired. The owner can be difficult. This year he’s back. Sometimes at night his wife takes the steep walk up the driveway with one of his grandkids, bringing him a plate of food wrapped in a towel. They meet at the gate and sometimes she stays while he eats. She never smiles.
Every night Mary Kaye and I give him a report on whale sightings and bug him with questions about marine life and town history. He probably doesn’t understand much of what we are saying but that doesn’t seem to matter, the sam could be said of us. Lately we have been spraying his feet with insect repellant. Mary Kaye has been telling him it is all natural. I don’t think Ishmael gives a hoot but he likes the stuff. When we leave we are going to give it to him. We think of him as a revered elder even though, my guess is, we have him by a few years.
For most of his adult life he worked in the local slaughter house butchering sea turtles. At the peak of the “harvest” the water in the bay at Mazunte was red with turtle blood. The Mexican government made an agreement with an international wildlife group, the slaughter house was closed and funding for a turtle museum and tourism development was made available. The ocean property that the slaughter house was on was parceled out and numbered, a lottery formed and the workers picked numbers and were awarded parcels as compensation for losing their jobs. Ishmael harvested his share.
Ishmael B
Ishmael’s wife has a small restaurant on the main street of Mazunte. It isn’t very busy and I get the feeling she likes it that way. A few years ago one of Ishmael’s daughter started talking about opening up her own restaurant. So she did, right next door to her mother’s. They built a small cement building with a palapa roof and equipped it. It took some money.
Can you imagine entering a bank in the states and asking for a business loan? And when asked for your business plan you told the loan officer you wanted to open up a restaurant so you could be close to your mother, same menu, same prices, same everything and exactly adjacent. I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that. But in fact, I very much doubt there ever was a meeting with a bank about a loan. No need, don’t judge a book by its cover, My bet is Ishmael’s pockets are deep..