Friends Mica and Bardo live in Huayapan, about 30 minutes from Oaxaca City on a good day. Mica’s mom is raising two nephews whose parents are living and working in the States. So it came time for the baptism and of course the accompanying fiesta with DJ music for dancing. Few people actually attended the baptism in the church but instead waited at Mica’s mom’s house where the party was to be…visiting with family and friends.
Women Preparing for party
Tejate is a rich frothy drink that is famous in Oaxaca. You get hooked on it. Labor intensive, it is made with criollo corn boiled in wood ash and ground and mixed with toasted and ground mamey seeds, cacao and the flowers of a tree found only in Huayapam.
The annual Tejate Fair on April 1 in Huayapam is a huge deal with thousands coming from all around Mexico to sample Tejate and partake in the dancing, music and food and crafts tables. Late one night at Mica and Bardo’s house, they asked me if I wouldn’t show up at 9am the next morning. A local TV station was going to film Mica’s mom, Ines, a well known “Tejatera,” as she and Carmen demonstrated the laborious art of making Tejate. They wanted me to film the filming for the family.
When Jennifer got in the car she looked at me and asked if I used to go to the Beanery coffee house in Salem where she worked at one time. Of course I had.
Michael and Jennifer from Portland Oregon visited Oaxaca last week. So at the request of my Canadian friend Charly, who met Michael on a coffee home roast web site, I took them to Huayapam to meet Mica and Bardo. But first we visited the Tlacalula Sunday Market. I’m getting pretty good at this. They bought mucha mescal for gifts and I bought two liters for my mescal barrel.
One afternoon I showed them several of my videos I made of the teacher strike here in Oaxaca…and a couple more of the Day Of The Dead and Charly’s going away party which they seemed to enjoy,
They were only here four days…the last one Michael spent in bed with what we think was altitude sickness…Portland being just a little above sea level and Oaxaca being more than 5000 feet! I took them to the airport Sunday where they were bound for Mexico City and then home. I now have two bottles of real maple syrup, two bottles of especial Oregon Pinot Noir wine and a lot more jazz music for my computer. Thanks Michael and Jennifer!
Sunday I pick up another family (via Charly again) at the airport and take them to Huayapam where they are looking for land to build a house. I think Bardo is getting spoiled with all this Sunday company! And even though I always arrive with an armload of food and mescal, Mica is a saint for doing all the cooking!
Made another trip to the Tlacalula Sunday Market last week with my next door neighbors Ana, Steve and little Oscar. Bought some carved coconut shell halves made for drinking our wonderful Mexican chocolate and then in my impending senility just walked off and left them on the table…not the first time this has happened. But with my new telescopic lens I did get some nice long shots of some of the colorful women vendors that come down out of the Sierra mountains to sell their turkeys, baskets, vegetable produce etc. They don’t like their pictures taken…not respectful. And they often feel that to have their picture taken means that their spirit is stolen…so have to be surreptitious.
Then we tried to find the little town of San Marcos high on a hill west of Tlacalula. After wending back and forth through Maguay, vegetable fields and pastures on dirt paths (could hardly call them roads) and with a little direction from a shy old campesino in a checkered shirt and white straw hot and with a wooden stick in his hand for herding a few cattle, we finally see before us a large green sign: “Servicios de Salud de Oaxaca. San Marcos Tlapazola, Tlacolula.”
As we slowly enter the tiny town we see an older guy sitting on the steps of a tienda…seemingly asleep with his head draped down his chest…but we think it was the tranquilizing effects of his afternoon mescal. Winding our way up a hill above the town for a few great pictures we come across a group of giggling women and girls standing in their Sunday best in front of a covered plaza. “Get their picture,” I urge Ana but when she pulls out the camera they all run back through the gates laughing…ignoring the exhortations of a group of men and boys on the roof above. Shyly peeking around the corner they tell Ana there is a wedding that day. On the way back through the town we see another plaza full of people. I stop to look. Two cute young girls walk up to the car and ask our names and where we are from. They were also celebrating the wedding…their primo (cousin). A couple of men drinking mescal next to them joined in on the conversation…in English. It is not uncommon to find old men speaking the English they learned during their norteno migrations. The young ones are all up north…the small villages nearly empty. It was a Sunday and all the vendors were in Tlacalula so we will have to return one week-day to buy some unglazed pottery that the women are famous for in this town of San Marcos.
On our way back to Oaxaca City we stopped by Mica and Bardo’s in Huayapam armed with beer and the makings for white russians. Mica cooked up a great cena and I gave her a cd I burned of an Italian singer that is popular in Brazil…Ornella Vanoni. I had used one of her songs, “L’Appuntamento” (also made popular in the US by the soundtrack of Oceans 11) in a video I made of our trip to Hierve el Agua and Mica had asked for more of her music. Later four men friends from Puerto Escondido stopped by…a typical Sunday at Mica and Bardo’s.
Last week, with friends, I attended the annual San Andreas Huayapam Fiesta about 25 minutes northeast of Oaxaca City. Very well organized with a lot of people for such a small pueblo. There was a local band that played music during the fireworks that scared the heck out of me and kept me well back from the action. Men ran up and down with with fireworks shooting out of structures built like bulls and castles. Once in awhile small boys would chase after a wheel that would spin off into the crowd.
Then a huge structure was lit with continuous fireworks shooting up and down and up into the night sky. Young men walked around giving out free copas of mescal and cigarettes. Food stands and carnival rides for the kids surrounded the band stands and dance area. I understand that each family was assessed $30 for the fiesta…a very large amount for most people. By the end of the night no one had ended up in jail as is often the case. When the fireworks were finished a great band played for the dance that began at 1am. The band played until 5am with no break.
The car will be ready Saturday at 11…the mechanic said. Then on Sat a call came…there has to be some modification in order to set the domestic alternator. Mechanics don’t work on Sat afternoon so the car will be ready at 11 Monday morning. Eleven came and went. Car will be ready at 1pm. 1pm came and went. A call to the garage indicted that the mechanics went out to lunch and won’t return until 4:30pm. Gerardo, who has been making the calls, chewed them out…all lies…no wonder Mexico has such a bad reputation among Americans he said. They delivered the car…one cell of the battery is “boiling” the mechanic said. Now I suppose I will have to get a new battery before I end up stranded in the mountains somewhere.
To charge the battery, Gerardo and I drove to Huayapam again. We picked up Max at 5pm in the Zocalo. He was tickled to get out of town.
Bardo was not at home. His nephew had had an accident with his mother’s car and rolled it…was at the hospital with cuts and bruises…and Bardo had gone to check on him. Bardo soon returned and we sent out for pastor and asada tacos, grilled onions, limes, hot guacamole sauce and hot green sauce…adding a few tiny very hot green chiles from Bardo’s bush by the outdoor kitchen. After some of Bardo’s freshly roasted and ground pluma organic coffee, we piled Max into the car, which thankfully started up, and delivered him to his apartment.
The last thing we heard was “noon tomorrow in the Zocalo!”
Saturday afternoon, Gerardo and I went by collective taxi to Huayapam to take some cds full of Mike’s pictures he had taken of the soccer game to Bardo’s son Pavel. Returning to the city about 9pm we decided to stop by the Cucuracha for mescal…place was pretty empty for Saturday…and no live music. Walking back to my apartment we met Benito, a Zocalo troller (for free beer and food from the extranjeros-foreigners in English). The girl he was with wanted us to go with them to a club with live Mexican music & kereoke during the breaks. A bucket of six beers was 40 pesos or $4. The place was packed…people singing traditional Mexican songs along with the kareoke singer…Gerardo translating for me. A lot of culture in those songs…some putting goose bumps on me. One song was about an angry woman who had decided to put a stop to what I interpreted was the mysogyny from the males…her voice rising to amazing screaming decibles toward the end.
By 4am Gerardo walked me home through the barricades…stopping to talk to the four guards standing around a fire they were feeding with paper garbage…one older…the others young…one holding a long metal rocket launcher to give a signal if any trouble approached.
Sunday was obviously a down day with no activity on my part.
After getting in at 3am early Saturday morning, Mike and I returned to Huayapan at 7am Saturday to take Bardo’s son’s soccer team to a tournament…all 12 of them…in my car. You can watch a soccer game just so long. So Bardo and I went back to the house for a light lunch with his wife Mica…leaving Mike to snap a few pictures of the players. Returning to pick up the kids, Mike introduced me to a gracious woman at the soccer field who had studied with Osho in India, (remember the Rajneeshies in Oregon?) who invited me to a weekend meditation retreat!
Back at the house, out came the three liter jug of mescal I had bought from a vendor in the Zocalo. By this time, Gerardo, the tourist guide friend of Bardo’s who had spent 10 years in the states, called me on the phone. I’ll be there in a few minutes, he said.
After a few rounds of mescal, beer and coffee and conversation, we all headed off to the mountains for a fresh trusha (trout) dinner. (Sorry, Charlie, we missed you!) By 8pm we were on our way back to Bardo’s after Mica and I each bought an armload of lilies…and so the days are going.
Yesterday morning Mike and I drove 30 minutes to Monte Alban…a gigantic Zapotec ruins on top of one of the mountains surrounding Oaxaca City…passing early morning walkers along the way. We were the sole visitors this morning in this ancient ruins…meditating on the lives of this great indigenous people…looking sadly at the carvings of naked vanquished enemies. And we are surprised that the descendents of this proud people are standing up to their oppressors and shouting Basta!?
Around 500 BC ancestors of Oaxaca’s Zapotec people founded what many believe to be Americas’ earliest metropolis. They raised monumental platforms, pyramids, palaces and ceremonial courts. Encompasing 3 sq miles, Monte Alban flourished for centuries as a city with as many 40,000 at it’s height a thousand years later until an invasion of Mixtecs from the north who became the ruling class in a number of valley city-states. The blend of Mixtec and Zapotec art and architecture sometimes led to new forms especially visible at the sites of Yagul and Mitla.
Monte Alban is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
By 10 am we were drinking bad coffee with Mirella, my Australian friend and my friend Sharon in the Zocalo.
Then I walked across the Zocalo to visit Max at a sidewalk cafe. After awhile, I received a call from Gerardo. “Come to Bardo’s and bring some beer and cheap mescal,” says Gerardo. Just as I hung up, an old Mexican comes by our table selling a three-liter gas can full of mescal…smooth yellow mescal…”anejo” (aged) mescal. I bought a liter of water, dumped it out, gave Max a liter and took off for the apartment to get Mike who had collapsed in his room earlier for a nap. “Hey, Mike, get up, you want to party?” And off we went to Huayapam…of course getting lost in a small village but finding our way through dirt roads to Bardo’s house. I gave out my gifts I had brought for the family and Bardo sent out for great pastor tacos with those glorious sweet roasted onions while Gerardo regaled us with the story of his march, his hard life in Mexico and ten years in the US while poor Bardo, tired of listening to Gerardo’s untranslated (slurred by this time) English, finally retreated with his wife Mica to their bedroom to watch TV.
Dodging the burning tires and barricades through the Centro, we finally made our way home at 2am…eating left-over vegetable soup and guacamole before collapsing into our beds.
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.
Laughingnomad 