Experiences

Conversation In The Zocalo

Posted on by Laughingnomad

It is creepy odd…the dirty war at night we don’t see…the bustling life of the Zocalo by day.

Monday was Mike’s last day in Oaxaca. Merilla & Peter, expats from Australia, Mike and Gerardo and I met for coffee at 1:30pm at the Terranova Cafe in the Zocalo. Benito and Jose happened by. Mike mostly entertained the small children who were vending woven wristlets and chiclets…and I was mostly trying to understand the Spanish being spoken at the table.

At 6:30pm, after beer, comida and much conversation, Merilla, Peter, Gerardo and Mike and I retired to the Casa de Mescal for mescal and a cerbeza ultimo. By 9pm we headed home.

Mike left tuesday (this morning) in the dark to catch an 8am plane for Las Vegas. Good-bye house…good-bye friends. Two cents says he will return on November 6 with my son Greg. I truly hope he does. I am ready for down time and Mike can take Greg around.

Sunday Morning In Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I am cranky this morning. I was up all night because of a very noisy wedding party in the courtyard below my apartment window. So I went to my favorite food stall in the Benito Juarez market where I had Spanish-English intercambio with Dulce, a 19 year old university student, while eating breakfast of eggs, beans, potatoes and milk with coffee. We will watch my bootleg copy of “Nacho Libre” this evening together…probably in Spanish. It will be fun to watch her reaction to the movie.

Bought a copy of Noticias where I struggled to read an article about the German writer, Gunther Grass, who has just admitted he was in the German SS for a few months during WWII. The press is making a big deal out of this. I spotted a long-time German expat sitting a few tables away, who I had talked to briefly yesterday, so I took my article and joined him for a short but very interesting German history lesson before he had to leave on the bus back to Mexico City. In the absence of any historical insight, we Americans see everything in black and white. And this politically correctness drives me crazy I said. Yes, he said…it’s a disease! It leaves only room for a simplistic view of things, he said. And stops dialogue, I said! With that he gave me a good handshake and left for his bus.

Lovely Oaxacan Family

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last night I visited a gentle sincere Oaxacan family that lives about 20 minutes in the mountains northwest of the city in San Andreas Huayapam. The couple roasts fragrant locally grown coffee and delivers it to outlets all over.

I gave them flowers I bought at the 20 November Market and they made some of their fresh coffee…but only after insisting I have a glass of Oaxacan Mescal.

The couple and one of their best friends and my colorful Mexican translator, who spent several years meandering around the States, and I sat for hours at their outdoor kitchen table and talked…about coffee…and a hundred other things. Two other couples stopped by for a few minutes.

Whats To Love About Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Juanita, the Mexican-American woman I met at Pachote Market, will ride down here with me in my car in September…a road trip to Las Vegas to see Greg, to Phoenix to see friends and across Texas to the border at Loredo. On the way to Oaxaca we will stop in Querataro to visit my old friend Patty Gutierrez. Juanita now lives in Guadalajara, where she was born, after raising her children in LA…two blocks from where we lived in Highland Park in 68 and 69! She is in Sacramento now visiting her son and daughter and will take the bus to meet me in Portland.

Her daughter Veronica teaches English to children at the Colegio Motolinta de Antequera, behind la Iglesia de Los Pobres on Dalias Street in the Reforma section of town, where incidently she watched the attack of police on the teachers outside her building a few days ago. She met her husband when she came here for a temazcal workshop in nearby San Jose…her husband’s parents were the instructors and she often translates for norteno participants now.

A Temazcal is a traditional sweat bath. The word is Nhuatl (Aztec) in origin and means “steam” (temaz “house (calli). Temazcals were common throughout prehispanic Mesoamerica and an important component of traditional therapeutic and purifying rituals. The temazcal itself is a small, closed, domed structure traditionaly constructed of adobe. To produce the steam, rocks are heated and herbs and water thrown onto the hot stones. (Claustrophobics might want to think twice.) It has become the fashion, Veronica says, for many Europeans to come here and combine a Temazcal workshop with a traditional Oaxacan marriage ceremony performed by her father-in-law.

Yesterday morning Veronica and I met for a cup of wonderful organic fair trade coffee in the Friday/Saturday Pachote Organic Market. Elvira, a Zapotec woman I have made friends with is a part of a new women’s collective that grows and roasts their own fair-trade coffee…it is not certified organic yet…a long and costly process. Elvira also sells vanillan, pimiento (pepper) roasted pumpkin seeds, fresh strong cinnamon, panela and honey…all grown or made on her little farm. Sweet smiling Elvira comes to the city every week-end five and a half hours each way on the bus. She spends Friday and Sat nights with my friend Sharon before leaving 5am on the bus again Sunday morning.

At Pachote (and also found on the street and in the other markets) you can eat food prepared by indigenous women…tacos made from blue corn, drink atole, a hot frothy sweetened Oaxacan corn gruel drunk plain or flavored. You can eat chapulines, toasted grasshoppers…a Oaxacan delicacy. It is said that if you eat chapulines, you’ll be sure to return to Oaxaca. You can eat memelas, small soft torillas spread with asiento (rendered pork lard and bits of chicharron (called chitlins in southern U.S) and topped with crumbles of fresh cheese. If you are really hungry you can eat chicken mole, a sauce based on ground chiles and spices…sometimes with chocolate. There are 7 different moles prepared in Oaxaca, most of them referred to by color…colorado (red) coloradito (little red), amarillo (yellow) verde (green) and negro (black, plus chichilo and manchamanteles (tablecloth stainer.) You can eat quesqadillas, a corn tortila filled with cheese and squash flowes toasted on a hot comal or clay griddle. My favorite for breakfast are the tamals…corn masa filled with mole red or green often with bits of chicken…wrapped in corn husks and steamed. Or you can just drink a big cup of tejate…a traditional drink made of corn masa, cacao, mamey fruit seed and rosita de cacao flowers dipped by the tejatera from a huge wide, shallow bowl. I’m still learning to like this drink.

Veronica showed me those little round avocados that you can eat with the skin on…panela, dark sugar wrapped in corn husk made smoky-flavored after sitting around a charcoal fire…little mild round red peppers called canarios…small round sweet squash…baskets and bags made out of high-sierra pine…home-made Mescal, a Oaxaceno specialty made from the Maguey plant. It is recent (hot and strong), reposado (aged and smooth) or anejo (aged for several years in oak barrels with the flavor of cognac (expensive) and often above 50% alcohol. You can buy beautiful Oaxacan pottery fired without lead, huge purple flowers together with spindly orange flowers that remind me of the Indian Paintbrush that grows wild in Eastern Oregon…all good stuff…you see where my money goes.

Through Veronica I met Willy, a very sweet Swiss expat whose sister lived in her little casita for 20 some years. When she died a couple years ago, Willy, who had often visited, moved into her home. Willy cooked us breakfast of egg and tocino (bacon) tucked into grilled bollios (Mexican buns), cheese, fresh orange juice, and rich dark organic coffee made in his French Press coffee-maker in his little open-air kitchen with an incredible view of the surrounding valley. He showed us his “poleo” leaves, drying in the sun for tea…”la yerbo de boracho” Veronica laughs…boracho meaning “drunk.”

We talked about other local delicasies…like “huitlacoche” or what sounds like parasytic mushrooms that grow on husks of fresh corn that is fast disappearing because of pesticides sprayed on the corn. Veronica lamented that out of a thousand varieties of mushrooms only a couple hundred are still extanct because the locals pull up the “whole family” by the roots instead of leaving the “children” to grow larger in the future…destroying the plant…thinking of the “short term” need for subsistence.

Willy says he was an industrial design engineer by trade…but here he really is an artist…designing lamps made out of sticks and branches from around his home. I told him he could market that stuff in New York City…but he is not interested. He is also helping an international non-profit based in Europe to design an eco-education program in his beloved Sierra…not building buildings…but just to take people in on treks and teach them about local ecology. Willy is bilingual and is the most respectuful of local expats I have met….preferring to leave the revolution to those who know best how they want to conduct it for themselves.

And this is just the beginning of what’s to love about Oaxaca.

Long Bus Tour

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Took a tour of Colonial Reforma today…in the northern part of the city. Went to immigration to get my year-long visa and on the way the bus driver got into a stand-off with a car whose driver was yelling something at him at a stop-light. The bus driver gave him what-to…never heard so many madres and pendejos (assholes) in one sentence before…and he kept it up. The light turned green and the bus won…cut the guy clean off and forced him onto another road. I think I was the only passenger interested…the others have seen this before no doubt.

But on a bus going the wrong way back to the Centro…took a tour through the entire Colonial Reforma…gears grinding…brakes screeching…music blaring…and over those damn topes (speed bumps) every 50 feet, up and down the hills. The driver yells at me…where you from…in English. I know better than to say the US…that’s obvious. Oregon I said. Oh, I was there four months he laughed…strawberries I asked…yes he said…he was in Phoenix four years and Fresno for six years. You like Oaxaca? Yes, I love it! I noticed he didn’t ask me if I liked “Mexico” He asked me if I liked Oaxaca. I think he likes it too!

Have run into several young guys at the market who have picked strawberries in Oregon…their English quite good. Willamette Valley strawberries are the best in the world by the way…thanks to cheap labor by migrants from south of the border.

Serendipity

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When I was in China a couple years ago, I met a lovely British woman in her 30’s using an internet next to me in the bar at the Camellia Hotel in Kunming. We have kept in touch while we each have traveled our separate ways…she spending the last year in South America and Mexico.

She is back home now…an artist printmaker by profession. But she had told me about Alejandro, a long-haired artist who dresses all in white that she spent time with in Oaxaca City. And I had seen his picture she had posted on a photo web site. One day as I was sitting in a cafe on Alcala St. near the Zocalo, I swore I saw Alejandro walk past. I emailed Hester who told me to go up to him next time I saw him and tell him hi for her…which I did yesterday! I emailed her again, saying that he is beautiful, and this was her description of him:

Dear Eunice,
That’s funny about Alejandro. He is beautiful. He is also very interesting to talk to. He is really insightful and we used to just sit and tell each other stories. Good for my spanish….good for his patience! His artwork is really interesting too. I kind of felt we had a teacher and muse thing going on. He liked the fact I was lively and emotional and flitting around (geographically and mentally) and I loved his insights, wisdom and his peaceful self-fulfilled nature.

I am still hoping to make it to Oaxaca round Christmas time. Will keep you posted. Wouldn’t it be great to meet up again after all this time. I really did enjoy our short time getting to know each other in Kunming.

Are you enjoying living in mexico? How do you find life in Oaxaca? Your blogs have been great. It has been so nice for me to keep up to date on everything that is happening there politically and socially and also to hear about the people you meet and friends you’ve made. I felt sort of homesick even though it isn’t my home.

Serendipty friends!

Unexpected Adventures

Posted on by Laughingnomad

At Pachote Organic Market while sampling Mezcal, an alcoholic beverage made in Oaxaca from the agave plant, I met Juanita, a lovely Mexican-American woman, who was here visiting her daughter. We connected immediately and it turns out that after having one child in Guadalajara and three in LA, she lived for 30 some years in Highland Park…two blocks from where we lived while my husband was doing a pediatric internship and residency at LA County Hospital. We left a couple years before she moved in but her husband’s brother lives on Marmion Way…the same short street our next door neighbors moved to shortly before we left LA. Juanita has just left her husband and moved back to Mexico.

So, after meeting her daughter, Veronica, in her little casita north of the Zocalo, we all drove to a nearby hilltop overlooking a little valley to visit Willie, a Swiss expat, artist and industrial designer. He graciously served us avocado and tomatoes and grated carrots with lime and salt and we had a bowl of Veronica’s black beans. Besides designing lamps and such out of sticks of cane gleaned from the hills around him, Willie is helping an international organization design an eco lodge in the Sierra Madre mountains.

Veronica, born in Mexico but raised and educated in LA is teaching English to third graders. I get an insight into the teacher’s strike when she tells me her husband never went beyond primary school but was able to purchase a teaching permit. This permit can be held until he decides to retire…or just not teach anymore…and then the powerful Teacher’s Union will pay him retirement wages. He can pass the permit down to his children or sell it to someone else. My landlord, Gerardo, had told me that many of the teachers are not qualified so it was interesting to hear this story. Veronica is currently estranged from her husband…he is busy striking while she is supporting their one and a half and six year old children. The other side of the story.

That evening Juanita and I decided to go out dancing but when we found the club closed we walked up to the Zocalo to find other entertainment. We found a traditional music and dance performance called a Calendula in front of the Cathedral depicting political commentary…boys under huge 15 foot tall paper mache “bodies” swinging back and forth wildly out of control.

Then the fireworks started directly above us. It felt weird being seeing all the sparks rain down directly upon us…possibly dangerous I thought. The fireworks were being lit too close to the Cathedral and started bouncing wildly off the walls and roof instead of up in the air. Then all of a sudden fireworks began shooting horizontally at us and people stampeded backward. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the fireworks stand was on fire. Juanita and I ran smack into a vendor’s tent and fell but quickly helped each other up. All I could think of was the other stampedes I had heard of, but most of the people around us didn’t seem too concerned so there was no panic…they’ve seen this before I thought. So that was the end of that.

We got a cup of coffee further up Alcala St. and sat in front of another Cathedral listening to some boys drumming…and watching a fire-stick twirler…finally making our way home about midnight in the cool night air.

Then came another unexpected adventure. I turned on the stairway light just as I was reaching to put the key in the door when I noticed what I thought was a salamander hugging the wall by the doorknob. I touched him…expecting him to scurry up the wall but he didn’t move. Don’t touch it, Juanita quickly warned…it’s a scorpion! Big one!

One Oaxacan Migrant Family

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Yesterday I went to Tule…a small town of about 15,000 near Oaxaca City. What a charming place. Most of the men are gone up north, my driver said (as a huge brand new black diesel pickup backed up to a vendor’s booth) and come back before Christmas. Yes, I know, I said.

I read that as much as 70% of Oaxaca’s budget is augmented by money from the migrants. The problem is that this takes the pressure off the local political system to make substantive changes in the economy.

I am finding out that some migrants up north are willing to live in crummy conditions so they can save every penny and then come back and build a house and buy a car. Everyone’s dream. On their web site June 17 MSNBC featured an article entitled “Migrant’s Money Goes A Long Way In Mexico. The article goes on…”Last year, Mexican migrants sent home a record $20 billion, making them Mexico’s biggest foreign earner after oil, according Mexico’s Central Bank. In the first four months of this year, the amount was $7 billion, a 25 percent increase over the same period last year. Half of it flows into poor villages like Boye, a corn-growing community of 900 people founded by Otomi Indians long before Europeans came to the Americas. Clementina Arellano grew up with her six brothers in a shack in this dusty town. She now has a home with Roman-style pillars at the doorway and a garden full of flowers and singing birds. How did she transform her fortunes so dramatically? By waiting tables and sweating in a furniture factory for about 10 years in Hickory, N.C., and sending home up to $500 a month.”

I am still emailing a girl I mentored for several years while working with a violence prevention/alternative education program for Latino school drop-outs. Her Mixtec family lives/lived high in the Oaxacan mountains. The girl, I’ll call her Maria, isn’t in the US legally and can’t come back, but she told me in an email that I could go with her family to her village next time they came down. She said they had a huge house that was “big enough for the whole village to fit into” and there would be plenty room for me. I know because I saw a picture of it when I was in her home. In the summers, when other migrant children were attending the Summer Migrant School Program, Maria and her siblings would continue working in the fields to help their parents earn money.

Maria had never been anywhere in town except school and wasn’t socialized vis a vis US culture. She and her cousin were angry…had joined a gang and were getting into fights in school. I used to take them places…would always have a thermos of coffee in the car with me. Now Maria says whenever she smells coffee she thinks of our trips…cute. Most of the Mixtec families from Oaxaca were wonderful and I fell in love with the people.

Maria had two incisors that were growing straight out of her gums. A local dentist was willing to extract them for free (write it off) and give her braces. At her last appointment she sold her jacket to buy him some flowers. I told the receptionist later to make damn sure he knew where the flowers came from.

The parents would leave the children, some just toddlers, on their own for two months every year and return to Oaxaca to work on “their land” so they wouldn’t lose their right to it…since the land is communal and if it isn’t worked a certain amount of time each year, they would lose access to it and would also be ostracized from the community, Maria said.

Maria was in the program for nearly 8 years…from the time she was in the 7th grade until she was a junior in high school and finally went to a live-in alternative high school program. She is now living with a significant other…has a two year old and is in a nursing program at Portland Community College and working. Her primary language is Mixtec. She has done this on her own. She was very artistic and had dreams of being a clothing designer…or maybe just wearing the clothes that designers design. She would draw these jaw-dropping pictures of girls in gorgeous elegant dresses…

I understand why the teachers are striking! Basta!

Mexican Cumbia Dancing

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I had forgotten how much fun it is to dance to Mexican music! I think I am a Mexican trapped in a gringo body! Last Friday, Gerardo and his mom, Socorroo, invited me, a few of her friends, Michael, a charming very long-haired young guy from LA who is staying with the family while he studies English, Chin, a young guy from San Francisco but originally from Taiwan, an Australian couple who will be moving to one of the apartments in my building and a few others to go dancing with her at El Pescador at 510 Miguel Cabrera St…only a couple blocks from my apartment. Two bands play the club…one up and one down. The one up was a kind of Mexican cumbia band with a drum pad, an incredible singer, a bass guitar and electronic keyboard. We started at 4pm and after many drinks, including the local Mescal and some finger food delicioso, we closed up the place at 10:30 when everyone drifted off to other clubs.

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Chin and one of Gerardo’s mom’s friends.

Chin was really cute. His face was red all night…blushing from all the attention he was getting from the middle-aged Mexican women in the group who were having great fun dancing in their very suggestive way…especially when we formed a circle putting each person inside by turns! Chin will never be the same after Mexico!

I was sitting next to the Australian woman who I thought was Mexican. After some time I finally turned to her to greet her in Spanish. She laughed a great laugh as she answered me in English! In past lives her husband was a heavy metal rocker and his hearing is nearly gone so he is now playing Mexican music. His wife is also in the music business where they met and married two years ago. They are a hoot as many Australians are! It will be fun to have them in the apartment building. But don’t get a TV, her husband warned me…you’ll just be tempted to listen to English!

After the club closed, Gerardo’s mom and I joined Gerardo and his classmates who were having farewell drinks for their visiting law professor from Mexico City at an upscale place called El Pichon north of the city. The group is studying to be tour guides and I had a rather interesting conversation with a twenty-something young guy sitting next to me who wanted to know all the terms for making love. Why is it that some middle aged American women want to be with young Mexican guys in Mexico, he asked. This information was new to me. Some tour guide he is going to make, I thought.

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Two of the girls in the tour guide class.

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Law professor and Socorro in earnest conversation.

Attempting a conversation in Spanish with the law professor, I learned a fine distinction between words. We were talking about the coyotes who take Mexican migrants across the border to work. I mistakenly called them ciyotes with a long “i”. Puzzled, he finally figured out I was refering to coyotes with a long “o”. He laughed and told me that, ironically, a ciyote is the sole of the foot (or shoe). A coyote is an animal…and also what the curriers are called. You never forget words that are corrected on-the-spot.

This Mexico gig is going to be alright, I thought at the end of the night. But going to have to figure out an excuse for turning down drinks in this country!

Emails From Leila

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WOW what a city. BANGKOK is alive. It is New year for them amd they celebrate with water. The streets are alive with people walking arround with water pistols and clay. Everyome is om thr street. You goota srr it to belirve it. I a, tryimg hard to stay dry. I a, im a pub lookimg out the door. Free intermet here too. The ,usic is nom stop. The people have beem doimg this for 3 days. I arrived here on Khao San Rd this mormimg 5 a, om bus from Laos. This key pad is worm out amd I a,guessing the keys. I am mot drumk. Love you all Leila

Eumice get in here. The city is alive. You would love it. Wear a bra. Pleasr come Leila. Hree internet here im pub. Ill check soom. leila

I groan. Leila is on Kao San Road where all the backpackers stay. I don’t know if I can take any more of this! I am 62. She is only 50!