Day 5

Today has been slow.  Giovanni gave us the morning off (or at least his idea of a morning off) with lots of homework.  I hand washed some small articles of clothing and did my homework in the sunshine.  I had a close encounter with a humming bird this morning!   It was so close that I could hear its wings beating loudly and then it landed right in front of me.  I never see one sit still.  Its body was so tiny and those little strong wings folded in tight.  It was fantastic.  Where I’m sitting on Kathy’s patio, there are avocados falling from the near-by tree, hitting the roof with a loud thud and then rolling to the ground around me.  Its like a war zone.  haha.  Still its quieter than it has been because the Mexican firecrackers (simple explosive that go BOOM, no color) have finally stopped after New Years.  We had a brief afternoon class and then I worked on my blog and loaded pictures. Afterwards me and the girls played cards with some local boys about our age.  They were funny and the spoke okay and occasionally strange English.  We played Uno (they called it “one” funny huh?) and they taught us two mexican card games.  Then we helped Kathy prepare super.  We made Guacamole, and a huge vat of vegetable soup that we ate with left over Italian food from New Years.  While cooking Kathy filled us in on all sort of stories about the 70’s lifestyle, free love and drama from their pasts.  While waiting for dinner to cook, we all carved faces in avocado seeds because when you scratch them they turn red.  Mine looks like an old woman, or maybe the face on the moon.  Then after dinner was the slide show we had all been waiting for.  Svante is a photographer and he showed us slides of eco-villages all over the world as well as other amazing, vintage pictures from their world hippie travels.  Svante is an actor and story-teller and it was magical for him to tell us about their journeys, their vision and the things they learned.

Its been awhile, Huh?  Here is to four days of catch-up.  We’ll see what I can remember...

Day 6

After a breakfast of fruit, yogurt and granola, we spent the morning having history class with Ria.  Ria (Anna Maria) is a Danish Huehue resident that has been part of the group since they stopped in Sweden ear the beginning of their world tour.  She spent many years in India and Malasia and then re-joined the group in 1987.  Our history class was mostly crazy-sweet-wonderfully excited-very Danish, Ria going on interesting fact-filled rants.  She knows a great deal about Mexico because she works now as a tour guide in Mexico for traveling Danish groups. She told us about some interesting methods that the indigenous people of Mexico use to get out bad spirits, one ways is to use an egg (or an entire chicken) to coax the spirits into.  Then you can break open the egg and see what bad spirits were inside you.  Another more interesting method is by drinking Coca-Cola very quickly, then you burp out the bad spirits.  Funny, huh?

  We also learned that Mexico has some of the most diversity in the world, in multiple ways.  First Mexico has tons of biodiversity because it contains so many diverse climates.  There are Mountains, grasslands and plains, beaches, temperate forests and rain forests.  In Morales, the Mexican state that we live in the tropical and temperate biospheres actually meet so we can look around and see palm trees and pine trees side-by-side.  Mexico is also very genetically diverse.  75% of the Mexican population is Mestizo (or mixed), 10% are pure indigenous and 15% are foreigners.  For example Ria’s husband Andreas, is indigenous Mexican and spanish with nice brown skin, he is part black, with coarse black hair and he is part Irish, with beautiful Blue eyes!  

After class, we spent most of the morning getting ready to go to Totolapan.  The people that we would be staying with came midmorning to meet us and to tour Huehue and then they had lunch with us.  They seemed very nice.  One on the men was named Juan Manuel, from Cuernrvaca, he was an additional chaperone with a tremendous sense of humor and a funny laugh.  The others were members of the family that we would be staying with.  I was feeling ill all morning so I went to Kathy and Gio’s house to get tips on helping my stomach and also to buy a sweater and change some money.  We ended up hanging out at her house half the morning looking through her emails and pictures of her family.  It was so nice.

Then lunch with everyone, including our visitors.  It was fabulous as always and afterwards we sat around chatting.  We got into a heated conversation with Svante, “El Vikingo” about the effect capitalism has had on our way of living, our food processes and our bodies.  Svante says that the capitalist system is like a prison and although I agree with him, the way we are living in the US is wrong- it hurts people, it destroys the earth and it ignores community and health, I believe that the solution is more difficult that just living outside the system the way they do here.  (Not to take away their credit, they do more than just that, they work in numerous ways to educate others about living sustainably, they do education programs for children in schools and they work in community development efforts.)  He’s right.  I don’t like the way that we live, I’m just not sure about my alternative route.   

After much talking and eating we set off for Totalapan, ELiza and I slept in the car all the way their, while the other girls choose to ride in the back of the truck for an hour.  On our way out we passed through Ocultaplan, the village that Huehue belongs to- we’d never seen it during the day.  That town lives in astounding poverty.  There was nothing there.  Just graffitied walls, broken fences, rusted shops, clothes lines.  It was surprising and sad.  This was just our first view of the real Mexico, outside our protected village.

Once in Totolapan we met our host family.  The Abuelo (grandfather), Manuel, His daughter Dona Isabela and her husband Marcello, their three twenty something daughters; Beilyn, Jessica (and her 7 month old baby, who we spent many hours cuddling) and Mira  and her 14 month old baby Jesell  (who we spent many hours playing with).  I was in love with this family(and doubly in love with their beautiful babies, I wanted to keep them. They were the most beautiful children I have ever seen in my life and I actually considered having babies because of them and then remembered that I could just adopt our own beautiful babies. haha) The family was so kind and welcoming to us even though they didn’t have much to spare.  They have more than most families because they successfully run a glass door business of of their garage and a small egg business on the side (literally on the side of their house-with loud roosters, more later).  

When we arrived we all sat down in a huge circle in their courtyard outside of their house (the area that everything revolved around)  There we were introduced to the family and the concepts and members of the organization that they help run.  The organization is called the United People of Morales and they help families apply for government loan to set up small local businesses (mostly farming).  he meeting was very formal, but Gio said that this is how Mexican get to know one another, in a formal setting.  After the meeting a group of students from Mexico city shuffled in.  They had heard that their were American students visiting and they came to meet us.  We all quickly got acquainted and with some pushing from the adults, soon we were all dancing.  They taught us some dances like the local, Banda, Salsa, and others.  Even the daughters of our host family danced with us and taught us some steps.  It was very fun, and I was actually pretty good at it.  Then around nine we had a dinner of eggs, black beans and potatoes on tortillas.  Yumyum.

Then bed, They family even gave up some of their beds for us to sleep in!  We all slept well until 4:39 am when I woke up to the most terrible sound!  It sounded like someone screaming!  It was those damn roosters except they sounded like no rooster I had ever heard.  It was like a death scream.  I was very thankful for my earplugs.

Day 7

The next morning when I walked into the kitchen Marcello introduced me to abuelo, saying (in spanish) “She speaks very good English!”.  Gulp.  Then he proceeded to sit down al the table and speak to me in spanish so I could translate to the others.  Thus I was elected translator.  So intimidating.  I did alright-there was a great deal of guessing and gesture reading involved, but with some help from Sam and Becca, we got through it.  Our breakfast was very strange-rice noodles with papaya (yum) and these strange green things that tasted like pickles.  Then we were off.

We spent all morning in the back of a truck visiting that projects that the organization had helped set up.  A faming project with chickens, pigs and mules; a woman with a small linen business; and a sheep and poultry farm.  It was very enlightening to see how people lived their day to day lives and how they make their livings.  Even more enlightening was our last stop- a farm owned by a rich frenchman.  Every thing was mechanical (almost nothing in mexico is mechanized), he wastes water, an unbelievable precious and scarce resource in Mexico, by watering his loan, having a swimming pool and a fountain.  He has pidgin and duck fattening machinery that basically force-feeds animals and he breeds these tropical fancy birds, even peacocks.  It was sickening to go from seeing the poverty of good hardworking people to the rich  wastefulness of this frenchman who flies to his farm in his personal helicopter (no joke).  

Back at Dona Isabelle's we had a huge lunch.  We ate tortillas with beans and guacamole and Cactus Salad.  And Mole!  Mole is this Mexican paste made of like nineteen ingredients including: chocolate, tomatoes, chilies, and corn and ridiculous amounts of other strange things that combine to make tasty Mole!!!  While we ate a friend of the family taught us all about Nopal cactus.  They make a salad out of it and it can be used for healing, for making paint, for different types of food and medicine.  it is deeply important to the Mexican people.  When the ancient ingenious Mayan people were still nomadic and traveling from they north they received a vision of an eagle sitting on top of a nopal plant eating a serpent.  When they found this sight that was were they were to settle and build their civilization.  According to legend, they did see that eagle on the nopal plant in the are that is now Mexico City.  So this plant is an important symbol and product for Mexico, possibly even the most important besides corn.

We took a couple of hours to rest and then we loaded up agin to go to The indigenous village of San Jose de Los Laureles, to meet a group of Folkloric dancers.  There were only three dancers that showed up to speak to us and 2 of them were in elementary school, so needless to sy they didn’t dace (such as plans often go in Mexico).  Still their instructor, a beautiful politically minded 24 year old talked to us for a long time about her purpose in leading the dance group.  SHe spoke without end on the importance of reviving the Nawat (this is the most common indigenous group in the region that we’ve been in) language, pride, dances and stories.  They also dance other folkloric dances of other areas and they make their own matching costumes too.  The project is also to promote community involvement from everyone, especially they young people who dance with them.  They do service projects and dance at community events to encourage people to keep community alive.  They also promote the ideas that the indigenous people of Mexico deserve a voice in politics and certainly a say in their way of life.  The young dance instructor even ran for a political position awhile back, but did not win.  Still, she is very inspiring and she is doing a great deal of good for the youth in her region in a very creative way.

On our way back to the house me and two other girls rode with Juan and Abuelo behind the truck of other people.  Our cars got separated and our car got lost.  For some reason, even though there was a sign that pointed in the correct direction Juan kept going the wrong way.  It was scary, because we couldn’t communicate very well and we know we were going the wring way with two men that we didn’t know very well.  I usually trust people, but I couldn’t help being a little freaked out.  We must have turned around 7 times before we finally went in the direction that the sign said we should go.  I was very happy when we finally made it home.  We were so tired when we got back and we had eaten such a huge lunch that none of us were very hungry.  We tried to tell that Dona Isabelle that we wanted to go to bed without dinner, but she was so worried that we didn’t like her food that we felt bad and agreed to eat a tiny bit before bed.  I love Tortillas.   Yes we have them at nearly every meal.  The end.

Day 8

We got up early after another rooster-filled night and we went to a protected forest park.  30 years ago this park was all plat pasture land, but the people realized that their soil was in bad shape and that erosion was becoming a huge problem so they decided to plant a forest.  Now, only 30 years later they have a huge pine forest.  The project is not without problems.  Many of the pines have caught a tree disease that, get this, was brought in by imported pine trees.  It is killing many of the pines from the inside out and its contagious to other trees.  They are doing thier best to control the disease and remove damaged trees while planting new trees. Over time their protect was working so well that they decided to open a park.  They bought several of a species of deer that had once lived in the area, but were then extinct and began raising them in protected areas of the forest and then releasing them.  This has thus far been very successful and we got to pet some of the deer that are still in captivity.  They make cute little snorting noises, they smell really strange and they love to like the salt off your skin.  I don’t think that I’ve ever been able to, or ever will again, say that I was covered in deer slobber, but I was. hahaha.  Now the park has a small restaurant (where I tasted homemade tortillas), a zip line, a natural healing clinic, a small wildlife museum and small pretty cabins that travelers can stay in.  It has provided an eco-tourism service that in turn provided jobs, stimulates they economy and building a natural habitat.  

Afterward we went home to pick up some lunch and then we wound our way up curvy roads in terrible conditions to a secret spot on top of a hill where we were having lunch, the truck climbed and climbed and we sat ing the back.  I was holding Dona Isabelle’s black bean in a bucket between my feet, just as we reached the top of the mountain we were climbing we hit one huge bump and SLOSH!  Beans all over my feet.  We werent on a hill, we were on a mountain!  It was actual;y considered a sacred place by the community and the church take a pilgrimage up to it on special occasions.  You could see all of Totolapan laid our below.  It was amazing!  When we got there, their were many people their, Us and our host families as well as members of the organization, farmers (campicinos), community members, everyone was their at a big delicious picnic.  We ate and ate and sat in the sun ( I burnt the tops of my ears) talking to young boys our age and the adults.  The adults wanted to know why we were vegetarians(its hard for Mexicans to cook for vegetarians, but they did) and we tried to explain, with Gio as our translator about our reasoning and ideals.  It was difficult and funny as we described in broken spanish and Gio translated our bad spanish into good spanish about the scientific reasons as well as our dissatisfaction with the farming practices in the US.  The people were very receptive even proud, because in the end we all stand for the same thing.  Farming practices and rights that benefit the people and the body.  The ideals of the Mexican revolution are still very alive today and their is a famous Zapato slogan that says something like “The land worked by the people belongs to the people” this fight still goes on and this idea lives on in their hearts.  As Gio spoke about our ideas and how proud of us he was he began to cry and then we were crying and it was very beautiful.  It is amazing to know that as different as we all were up on that hill that we all have the same goals in mind.  It gives me hope for the future.

After lunch we went back to the house and the two guys our age (friends of the family) offered to walk us to the town square where they were selling lots of toys for El Dia de el Reyes (Three Kings Day) a Mexican holiday celebrating when the three kings brought gifts to the Christ Child.  Traditaonlly this is the day that Children get their Christmas presents.  The market was selling lots of brightly colored, last minuet toys. We walked around, bought Coca Colas and Pan Dulces (Sweet bread), visited an old church (with creepy ceramic painted elephant heads out front) and wondered about.  Chris had one run-in with some creepy people, but Adrienne, one of our trusty guides told us and we rescued him. Then we walked slowly home.  When we got there, our host family had sent out for El Pan de Reyes or King’s Bread, a bread baked especially for this holiday.  It a type of traditional game to eat it too.  The bread is baked into a huge circle with tiny dolls baked inside and and everyone has to cut their own piece.  If you get one of the dolls then you have to buy tamale for the next celebration in February.  It was very fun.  I ended up with three dolls, so I am officially in tamale debt. haha.  We also drank a drink called atole, and depending on who makes it it can be very good.  Isabelle’s was kind out like drinking purpleish-brown syrup, but Dona Maria at Huehue makes the best in the world!  Its like thick apple cider, yum.  We ate a tiny dinner and then Becca and I helped Jessica wash dished until almost 10:30 pm (its sad but that is really late for us here, we are always so tired).  It was fun to wash and talk (or try to talk) with her and it was a good way to show our appreciation.  Then bed.

Day 9

We got up really early to eat breakfast (Ramen noodles?) and then visit the president of the Municipality of Totolapan.  We waited a long time (Mexican time is always relative) and finally had a brief kind of awkward meeting with a short fat man with a thick mustache.  After our meeting we rushed over to Tlayacalpan to meet a couple of potters.  The first one showed the processes of how he makes his clay, with dirt and cat-tail fibers.  Then he let us make our own tiny pots and figures using all hand-building.  It was dirty and very fun.  Then we visited another potter, he used similar practices and let us explore his workshop.  Our final stop was at a 400 year old catholic cathedral that over the years had been used to convert the Aztecs, then used as a fort during the Revolution, and was later used as a hospital during times of plague.  Honestly it was creepy and we got very bad vibes from this building.  Our guide showed us rooms where monks would go to meditate and beat themselves when they sinned, they had old naturally preserved mummies that were mostly children and were very shriveled and creepy.  We also learned about the huge carvings of the saints that the spanish made the Aztecs carve and carry through the streets.  Secretly the Aztecs that were not converted would carve hollow saints with their old idols inside them and they would be punished if the saints found out.  There were creepy old Spanish paintings of the virgin mary and the Baby Jesus painted so that their eyes would follow you- the Spanish would use images like this to frighten the Aztecs into conversion and submission.  It was a cold dark place, built on top of old graves and ancient pyramids and it felt very sad there.

Afterwards we spoke with the family on the lawn and was a huge holiday procession pour from the church, complete with the Three Kings, incense and a small marching band.  Then we parted ways and drove back to Huehue.

When we got back it was almost like culture shock.  I hadn’t realized before how sheltered we are in this little village.  I was almost dizzy from a late lunch, complete exhaustion and the unbelievable tranquility of Huehue after experiencing the “real” Mexico.  I sat comatose for awhile looking through my pictures, unpacking and eventually catching up on journals.  I wrote for most of the afternoon and when I emerged I felt much more rested and very content to be home.  We had another village celebration for Three Kings Day with our group plus some community members and their children our age.  We ate even more Kings Bread and now my Tamale debt is unbelievable.  Haha.  Its nice to be home and I look forward to the work ahead.  We begin our interviews with the village members for their thoughts on our service project tomorrow.  I think that it will be difficult to sort through their words and ideas and our opinions to find a cohesive project, but I believe it will be rewarding in the end.