Oaxaca

A Field Guide To Getting Lost

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son, Josh, the little weasel, asked me what it felt like to be living alone in Oaxaca. It got me to thinking. Then I picked up a book at Sharon’s apartment entitled “A field Guide To Getting Lost,” a book written by a woman in San Francisco. It reminded me of a blog entry I wrote one thoughtful day in Bangkok. Here it is for those of you who missed it.

June 12 2005

Perfect Memories
“What A Perfect Day…It’s Such A Perfect Day…And Then We Go Home.”

Have been re-reading a book that I have been dragging around with me for the last year. Pico Iyer can set my imagination afire like no other travel writer. One of his pieces reminds me of the fall of 2003 when I was traveling alone down the coast of Viet Nam. Imagine all the people sharing all the world: I was riding behind Mr. Binh, my kind motorcycle taxi driver, and after three days on the bike my rear-end was numb. He takes me to a small food stall by the side of the road leading out of a little town on the South China Sea, where we wave down a local kamazake minibus that will careen down Highway 1 to Hue. The bus is crammed full of Vietnamese one on top of the other so I sit on some rice sacks until someone gets off and I, the older one, am graciously allowed to have the emptied seat. A couple of giggling girls offer to share a small sweet tangerine with me.

The driver had very long hair-possibly in his 50’s-with a pocked and scarred face…signs of a life lived on the edge. This guy is feeling powerful and narrowly misses oncoming overloaded trucks leaning at odd angles. He is having a great time and I am breathless waiting for my life to end. Suddenly when he throws a dirty towel to the back of the van and it lands in my face he looks back with a grin to see if I am alright. Gasping, I return his thumbs up with a laugh.

“Travel the World and the Seven Seas…Everybody’s Looking For Something. Some of them want to use you�some of them want to abuse you.” For Pico, the best kind of traveling is when you are searching for something you never find. “The physical aspect of travel is for me,” he says “the least interesting…what really draws me is the prospect of stepping out of the daylight of everything I know, into the shadows of what I don’t know and may never will. We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary, and into the presence of whatever lies just outside our apprehension…” he goes on to say. “I fall through the gratings of the conscious mind and into a place that observes a different kind of logic.” Transcendence… and pure Pico.

“Nobody told me there would be days like these! Strange Days Indeed.”

El Pochote Market & Cinema

Posted on by Laughingnomad

North and east from my apartment on Fiallo St., through the Zocolo, under tents and guy-wires, I walked to meet my new friend, Sharon, at an organic market called El Pochote, just north and east of Templo Santo Domingo. It had rained hard the night before and on the way I got drenched with at least a bucket of water. I looked back to see where the water came from and saw a woman poking a stick upward to release the water collected on top of a plastic tent. As I looked at her, she seemed to bear a silent look of terror on her face. She’s afraid of “susto,” I thought…afraid I would caste an evil spell on her. But that was just my interpretation, of course, having had very limited experience with health care for Zapotec and Mixtec migrants in Oregon. Unhappily, I continued on.

The market is very small and no one seemed to know where it was except a western-looking guy with an eastern European accent carrying some books. So an hour late, I finally caught Sharon leaving the market. We walked across the street to a bakery and bought some deep-fried peppers stuffed with chicken, nuts and I don’t know what else but it was fantastic…juicy and the flavors just kept coming and coming. Then she took me to see her roof-top apartment where, as a master gardener, she will raise plants and herbs. Nearby we visited the the Oaxaca Cultural Center that offers free art, music and photography classes within a beautiful old nunnery. I loved the feeling inside…children making art, practicing the piano…

Then we returned to the market where I bought some lead-free Mexican kitchen pottery for my apartment. We shared some mole enchiladas and a tostada “sandwich” and then watched part of the International Indigenous Film Festival (on extremely uncomfortable seats) that is being held at the Cine Pochote at the market site. Exhausted, we trudged home.

The next day Sharon visited me to see my apartment and then walked east to the nearby Mercado 20 de Noviembre where I bought a plastic shopping bag, some grapes, green beans and some perfectly formed green onions and cilantro to make salsa. Sharon was tired and getting a cold so she left for home, while I stopped and had a bowl of delicious menudo (tripe soup) before leaving.

Sharon says she will soon go with me to Mercado Abastos, so huge she says I can easily get lost, to the Women Artesans Of The Regions of Oaxaca cooperative for shopping and will take me to her favorite coffee shop.

When I returned to my apartment Gerardo’s cousin who lives downstairs, was delivering a set of T Fal cook-ware, some glass mixing bowls and a big bottle of purified water. I had only emailed Gerardo asking for those things that morning! Incidentally everyone drinks bottled water here. A young guy from Texas sitting next to me on the plane to Houston had been at the University of Oregon delivering a talk on toxicology. He told me the water here was full of arsenic. Incidentally, he said the water in the Willamette River in Oregon has a high level of arsenic also.

Hector, Sharon’s apartment manager, told her about a very good curandera (healer) so this week we will visit her and have a healing, sauna and massage.

Meanwhile, Gerardo, who wants to get a masters in tourism, has offered to drive me to nearby villages while we practice 30 minutes English for him and 30 minutes Spanish for me.

Later, checking email, I excitedly discovered that my old friend, Patricia Gutierrez, who married a Mexican national and lately moved to Mexico, will be driving here next week with her husband “to give me a hug” and get her mail that I brought from Oregon.

Someone else in an email asked if I thought the next president, at the upcoming election, will be good for Mexico. I know nothing yet about Mexican politics, and have to search out some good sources of information.

I have been making open pot “sheepherder’s coffee, in my new T Fal french “milk pot” like my dad used to make in sheep camp. I had forgotten how good it can be. (Whatever is a milk pot?!) But I need to find some coffee filters for my new coffee pot. People in Mexico drink Nescafe. Ugh! Never got used to it even after visiting Asia off and on for nearly four years. Also, I am having a hard time remembering to put TP in the basket instead of flushing it…

Now if I could just learn to use the buses!

Oaxaca City

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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After three weeks in Salem sorting through 40 years of junk…one pile for St. Vincent de Paul, one pile for the dump, one pile to sell at the Assistance League and the rest in boxes to be stored in the basement until the house is rented out again…I took off for Oaxaca Mexico leaving Bob with the house.

Inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples – Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs – the terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds of Monte Albán were literally carved out of the mountain and are the symbols of a sacred topography. The nearby city of Oaxaca, which is built on a grid pattern, is a good example of Spanish colonial town planning. The solidity and volume of the city’s buildings show that they were adapted to the earthquake-prone region in which these architectural gems were constructed. Oaxaca City is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Monsoon season here for the next couple months…hot and humid but not as bad as Thailand…rains buckets several times a day then sun comes out.

Houston airport is huge and I nearly missed my plane connection. No problem getting off the plane here…small plane from Houston configured with two rows on one side and one row on the other). 32 pesos or about $3.00 into the city from the airport on the shuttle.

Oaxaca City, pronounced “wahaca,” is generally referred to as Oaxaca and that is the way addresses read…Oaxaca, Oaxaca Mexico. The Zocolo (central plaza) and the streets for blocks around it are closed from traffic due to a teacher’s Oaxaca State union strike. DSC00616.JPG

Teachers are here from every region. They are camped out in pop tents and under plastic tarps…just sitting with piles of belongings and food. There is a big inequality of teacher’s pay…they get anywhere from 50 pesos to 600 pesos a day. (about ten pesos to dollar). Here is one brushing her teeth. brushing teeth.jpg

But Gerardo (apartment manager) said many of the teachers are under- educated and the strike is bad for the city. Someone said the unions are very powerful here…teachers are forced by the unions to sit in the streets or they won’t get union benefits. Teachers still receive full pay even though they are striking. Kids are the losers. The government apparently isn’t listening. Heard last night that they took over the airport and all the planes are grounded. So guess I got in just in time.

The city is charming…two story buildings…some very colorful. Outsides often are drab but inside the outer gates the interiors are beautiful. The whole of the Centro is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

My apartment is a two story building with four apartments inside an outer building. I have a key to the outer “portal” and key to an upstairs apartment. When we arrived the carpenters were literally installing the kitchen cupboards…shavings and dirt and tools everywhere. Good thing I stayed in the hostel the first night. The 5-bed hostel room was clean and lovely (Paulina Youth Hostel) but hot as hell and stuffy…apartment much better. Free breakfast was great. So Gerardo took me to his house where his mom fixed coffee. They have had over 200 guests in the last ten years…showed me a picture of the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton who stayed with them for several weeks while studying Spanish. His mom has a cooking school on a patio outside the kitchen. Patio walls painted indigo blue and yellow. Then Gerardo took me to a supermarket to get ingredients for his mom. Then he took me with him to tour the Ethno Botanical Garden. After the tour I ran into a woman about my age, Sharon, who sat across from me on the plane. She has just moved here from Connecticut. She had earlier worked for the City of San Francisco for 25 years. She also lived in Veracruz for three years and is fluent in Spanish. She will be a good friend. We are meeting at a market Sat morning. Then Gerardo and I went back to his house where we feasted on yellow mole that his mom made for us. A young guy from CA staying with them and who is studying Spanish joined us as well as a German woman in her 30’s who is here studying Spanish for the 3rd time. Gerardo’s mom and she and I are going out next Friday to a bar to listen to salsa music. Gerardo, 25, is defending his bachelors thesis on human resources on tuesday.

When we got back to the apartment it was finished, clean with huge vase of flowers on kitchen table. I couldn’t believe it!

But the beds are hard as a rock…was really sore this morning. I miss Lyn’s bed…it was perfect. Going to have to get some foam or something! Kitchen pretty sparsley outfitted…about like Greg’s! 🙂 But I do have a brand new blender, juicer, coffee pot and fan. Wish I had some of the stuff from Azalea St. DSC00658.JPG

Glad I brought my down pillows…pillows here lumpy and flat as a pancake. DSC00662.JPG

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Went shopping at the supermarket last night at 8…finished at 10 and took a taxi home in the slogging rain. Most stuff had unrecognizable labels. Places here don’t cater to tourists like in Asia. I am realizing how comfortable I had become getting around in Asia…not so confident here…but went out walking today to get my bearings and then went to Sam’s Club (like Costco) in a taxi.

Lost my credit cards twice and found them again…not good for the nervous system. Tried to buy a sim card for Thai phone but it didn’t work…didn’t work in US phone either.

Unpacked already…extra bedroom has two twin beds waiting for my son Greg and his friends…and anyone else who wants to come. Wifi works great. Bought a bottle of wine and a wine glass…guess I’ll burn some sage and celebrate.