Blog it Like it's Hot

It has been another eventful week in Oaxaca; while nobody is protesting and nothing is burning I'm still going to bed exhausted. I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in San Miguel de Progresso and Santa Maria Cuquilla, respectively. They were both lovely towns and each had their own good story.

San Miguel was absolutely beautiful; if it weren't for the lack of running water it would be a great place to live. It is nestled into the mountainside and surrounded by breathtaking views. The town's livelihood is predominantly based on their woven goods. It was our job, this time around, to take pictures of the process for a catalog that being made featuring the products of this community. When we arrived they told us that we would be walking most of the day; while normally that wouldn't be a problem, when you are between 8,000-10,000 feet it quickly takes it's toll.

I find it important at this point to explain my attire in the later posted photos. While I am of course donning the cutting edge in travel/hiking/bug resistant apparel -a la Adventure 16- I am also wearing the largest hat available in Southern Mexico. It's not that it's a huge sombrero but rather it allows for a planetary head size; no Bialick can ever be told that they don't have plenty of brain-space in noggins of our caliber. It happens to be that the only hat that I could find in my size is what only can be classified as a Mexican fedora; it's like a fedora that's a little bit larger but it's made out of that semi-rigid material that the classic cowboy hat is. Now it has long been my stance that it is both health-conscious and stylish to don a wide-brimmed hat but American high-fashion has consistently disagreed with me. Well I'm in Mexico! So take that Vogue! I'll wear the status quo and that's a wide brimmed hat no matter how ridiculous it looks! That being said, the real reason is that my Red Sox hat has consistently allowed for the back of my neck to resemble the 10 peso lobster mentioned in my first post; so long story even longer, I rocked a mexi-fedora my whole time in San Miguel.

Our first job in the weaving process was to catch a sheep, tie it down, and sheer it. Now I have never sheered a sheep in my life, I've milked a goat once at the Del Mar Fair but never dealt with the sheering. It was odd to say the least. The weirdest part was definitely doing it with scissors; I was afraid that I was going to clip some mutton the whole time. But I got through all that with good grip of wool and we were ready for the dying process. For some reason I thought the whole process was a little more complicated but it ends up it's just extraordinarily time consuming. We treated the wool, which involved mainly brushing it into fibers, washing it in the brook, and then we collected it in string form and prepared it for dying. The dying process took quite a while because you have to boil water in order to complete it; during this time one of the farmers insisted that we come to his house and watch a video of his wedding. It seemed like a beautiful ceremony but his player only worked at half speed so everything sounded a little deep.

We finished up in San Miguel after 12 hours there; it was a nice time but we had to walk some 15 km at altitude in ~90 degree heat that we weren't expecting. The next day in Santa Maria Cuquilla was extraordinarily uneventful in the terms of my previous Mexican experiences: everybody was on time and nobody got hurt; what more can you ask for? We made it back to Oaxaca city center at about 5 pm on the second day.

Thursday Kelly came to town; it is good to have here hear and already there is a sense of completeness in my casa-away-from-mi-casa. When she arrived at the airport I decided to use my nearly-native expertise with Oaxacan taxis and catch one of the cheaper ones just on the edge of the airport. While this was a great idea, in theory, I quickly discovered that there was a reason that nobody else was catching a taxi there and no sooner had we gotten in to the cab were we pulled over by the Mexican Federal Police (Federales) and asked to step out of the car. Contrary to popular belief, Federales under President Calderon's new program are very nice people if you are not breaking the law; not so much if you are. While we managed away scott-free the cabby wasn't so lucky: we saw his cab thoroughly searched and a hefty fine levied upon him.

Sadly the next day I had to leave Kelly to her own devices and go to work. The new group that came in today is from George Washington University and will be working in a different part of the landfill town of Vicente Guerrero that I had pictures of in the last post. We will be working in a different part of town this time, closer to the dump of course, but different none-the-less. When I visited this time we were checking out the job site and traveled by three-wheeled moto-taxi; it's a good thing we found one because the school we'll be working with is not easy to reach. I was wearing shorts this time, which was not very functional, since the school was closed and I was told that I would have to climb a barbed-wire fence to get in. I didn't jump the fence and instead elected to wait for the few measurements to be taken in the closed school; this all seemed like the safe route until I looked up and saw an large number of scavenger-buzzards flying overhead. It reminded me of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly when he's wandering through the desert and the vultures come: it's never a good sign. I've never been surrounded by vultures before and I hope never to be again; while I had plenty of water and I knew I could find some shade it's just something that will always be disconcerting.

But happily I made it out of there and back to Oaxaca for another couple of days. I will be returning there to work with the GW group in the coming week but I think it should be a little less worrying. The town is getting ready for Semana Santa (Saint's Week) during the run up to Easter so everybody is getting set for an influx of tourists. We've been busy but we managed to make it out on Friday night for dinner and a little dancing; at least I know that when the going gets tough that this is a great place to live and it's not all dumps and vultures.
If you have some time you should check out Miss Kelly's blog at http://kmbenedict.blogspot.com