We eat breakfast at the first José Luis Magaña Lemus’s house. He is the first José Luis Magaña Lemus because he is much older than the other José Luis Magaña Lemus, who lives down the street but is not, as far as we can tell, related. Our host does not find it interesting or surprising that he lives in a town with his doppelganger. Ah yes, he says to us. “José Luis Magaña Lemus, down the street. He works with windows.

Gary and I have noticed Sr. Magaña before. He is a squat man with a pronounced hunch who speaks from his chest. His lips are tough and rubbery and seem to suck inwards from lack of teeth. He whistles a lot. With his wife and chickens, Sr. Magaña lives in a ramshackle assortment of structures just across the street from the local clinic and has offered to feed us breakfast, lunch and dinner today.

Gary and I live and work as volunteers in the town and, consequently, are dependent on its residents to feed us. Up to this point, we have eaten at, among others:

* Three large, clean, multi-floored houses occupied by lonely women whose husbands and sons are in Nebraska

* A kindergarten graduation ceremony

* Several roadside carts specializing in menudo

* A single-room shack with dirt floors occupied by a lady who owns four cats, all of which she hates

* The lopsided home of the local DJ

* Two really bad pizza places.

Sr. Magaña is probably the least attractive of our hosts so far.

As he lets us into his house, José Luis Magaña Lemus leans in very close, as a way of making us feel welcome. Unfortunately, as he explains to us, he had tried to beat a marauding skunk away from his chickens with a two-by-four only a few hours earlier. This is perhaps why he smells very much as if he had been sprayed by a skunk. He elaborates a little about the incident as we walk, massaging my shoulder with great enthusiasm. He mumbles and my Spanish is bad, so the story comes through somewhat garbled: I can make out that he hit the animal on the head very hard. He also says, as far as I can tell, that his awning plough is on fire.

His wife waits inside the small, dark kitchen area, with teal walls sparsely featuring crucifixes and unframed photos of family members. The floor is covered with sacks of beans and, oddly enough, thick books, bound in wood. The wife immediately informs us that her husband has recently been sprayed by a skunk. We let her know that we are aware of this, and she nods. She then tells us that her name is Eusebia Magaña Magaña de Magaña. I choke a little bit.

Is something wrong? she asks me.

No, no, but I maybe only have a little somethings in my throat, I reply in my Spanish.

Brushing flies away from the families’ bag of week-old pastries and sipping sweet tea, it soon becomes clear that Sr. Magaña’s habit of leaning in close to talk is, while disconcerting in that it reveals his spotted gums, necessary if we ever to hope to understand him. His mumbling is not helped by his tendency to speak while chewing.

[ — ] all of you [ — ]? he asks us. We wait for a moment. It becomes clear that there will be no further explanation. I turn to Gary.

Pardon? says Gary.

How, he repeats, does [ — ]?

Good, I say. Very good. This is a dangerous move. I probably should have said “just last week,” or maybe “nonprofit organization.”

[ — ], Sr. Magaña clarifies. I decide that my next response, regardless of his question, will be “Fantastic.”

Sr. Magaña has now realized that we do not understand him and, in an ill-advised attempt to get through to us some other way, has begun singing — softly at first, and then much louder, in a wavering baritone.

Veeeeeeennnnnn acáááááááááááááááááá, moreeeeeeeeeeenaaaaaaaaaaa, he says.

Fantastic, I say.

To be frank, I am ready to leave at this point. I have had my share of sweet tea, and I’m a busy man. Before 10 rolls around, I have to make a working model of the large intestine from construction paper. I can feel my habitual morning-time exhaustion creeping up as our hosts become less and less intelligible. But Sr. Magaña is not done. In fact, his extended family is coming to visit now.

What is interesting about this plan is that, judging by the family photos I could see from the table, the Magaña clan is larger than most countries’ legislative bodies, and Greg and I already take up a substantial portion of our hosts’ tiny home.

Heralded by the sound of four white ‘97 F-150s parking on gravel, approximately 10,000 people enter a room the size of a box of Chinese takeout. I don’t remember their names, these spike-haired, be-poloed city folks who crowd around our calloused host, showing pictures of their friends to grandpa on their cell phones. There are too many of them, and they are too well dressed. Standing room only.

The room is very much filled, I point out to Sra. Magaña, who nods.

Her husband begins to sing again.

There is something strange about dining in a complete stranger’s home. It is the travel experience condensed and contained, held in by the stare of the cook and a bowl of corundas. Caught in the press of the Magaña bloodline, perpetually massaged by a 60-year-old I cannot for the life of me understand, I can do little more than accept another cup of tea. I am paralyzed by mental mockery of the situation. An ancient, musky campesino singing? It must be symptomatic of the larger rift between the Mexican and American ways of life.

Only weeks later, when José Luis Magaña Lemus, still unintelligible, asks me to take his only copy of Bernal Díaz’s “Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España” as a gift, do I realize that I should have joined in.