Bien metido en la vida del campo

Yes, I´m thinking in Spanish as mush as English now, I didnt know how to title this post in English, but I will try to restrict the text to one language!

So, it´s been a while since my last post, not that I havent had regular internet access, more that I´ve felt too in the middle of experiences to write about them. Today, I am waiting for my friend in a cyber cafe,where she is trying to send off a draft of her thesis, so it seemed like a good time to take a little while to pause and reflect.

We have been going to the village to work/ play witht he kids everyday. On Monday, Y and I decided to spend the night there, so we took our sleeping bags and asked one of the señoras for space on her floor... hospitality is as much a part of Mexican culture as it is of Indian culture, we knew that one or the other would gladly host us, especially since she and I have both lived in that village for two mnths each and know the people well enough. It was truly wonderful to have doen that, to spend a whole day and night being part of their lives again rather than just ocming in for a few hours a day, but it was also incredibly exhausting. From the moment we arrived to the moment we left, we did not have a single minute to ourselves... for the most part, we were constantly surrounded by children, ages 3 to 10, inventing one game after another. I had no idea how tiring it can be to be around 5-6 kids for 24 hours (they were all cousins, part of the extended family of the house we were staying at, and since it was raining hard, many of them decided to spend the night there).

It was also heart wrneching, actually sitting down with them and hearing their stories, equally with the kids as with the señoras. There are a lot of single mothers in the area, mostly abadoned by their husbands at a young age, and the woman who offered us her home was one of them. In general, talk to the señoras here, married or unmarried, and they all tell you "mejor sola" (better alone). Alcoholism and violence are so much a part of their lives here, they all genuinely seem to believe that even with all the hardships of raising children alone in a community that is already very poor, they are better off alone. Often, one doesnt even want to know the story behind the statement, with such decision do they make the statement.

That particular day, we also ended up talking a lot about migration to the USA: Many of the men from this village have migrated either to Mexico City or to the USA; some have been sent back several times and have attempted the migration again, some have been able to stay on, all the families have stories to tell abolut the difficulty of crossing the border and then the difficulty of living there. But what struck us more this time was the fact of how many little children had been left behind. In recent years, at least in this family, two of the women migrated, leaving behind young children. A 6 year old in the house we stayed in hasn´t seen his mother since he was a year old, when she crossed the frontera... he talks to her on the phone from time to time, but he really has nothing to say to her, doesnt even really register that she is his mother. His father abandoned the family a long time ago soon after this child was born, so he is now being brought up by his grandparents with money that his mother earns working as domestic help and sends to the village here. Many, many versions of this story exist in this community; almost every family has its own version of it. While one is grateful for the tight extended families that take care of the young children in these cases, the kidsare still often lonely in a way that breaks one´s heart. And I can´t even imagine how hard it must be for the mother to miss out entirely on her son´s childhood so that he could have a childhood.

By the time we left the next day, though, I couldnt believe I had actually spent two months living in that village... so exhausted was I from those 24 hours! Also realizing that, no matter what one wnats to belive, to suddenly be stripped of all the basic comforts one takes for granted no es nada facil. In general, I am completely comfortable there, but the one thing we couldn´t get used to even now was the absence of bathrooms... during the day they use the cornfields, which is fine, but at night these little brick structures they call baños but that are really breeding grounds for disease.

Still, it was a wonderful day. We were served simple but absolutely delicious food (handmade tortillas,eggs with salsa, and locally grown coffee), got to play with lots of wonderfully affectionate children, went berry picking, ate mangoes in the messiest way possible, got lost in the milpa, walked five people to one umbrella in the rain... and came home so fulfilled.

Today, L and I are in a different state.. we came here for a workshop on polinazadores... o, mas bien, she came here for aworkshop on polinizadores, I came here partly out of curiosty and partly because M, my program coordinator from 2007 and one of my closest friends in mexico, is supposed to be here as well and this might be the only part of this summer when our paths cross. Spent most of the day today in a room with about 10 farmers from 4 states, looking at powerpoint presentations of insects and specifically bees! Well, some preserved exhbits too... and learning how one could use the food chain that exists in nature to pollinate and eliminate pests rather than using chemical fertilizers. It´s quite fascinating, for example, a certain wasp is a parasite, but it´s a parasite of a certain worm that can cause the worst plague for corn... so introducing the right number of those wasps can help control the pests without any chemicals involved. It is all new to me, but I love hearing all of this as a discussion amongst the farmers (although the man giving the workshop has a PhD in entology and has done a lot of research on which plants work with which insects, including things like which sort of bee do we want to reproduce in order to prevent certain native plants from becming extinct)... even as I doubt I´d ever have much use for this specific information, especialy since it is tailored specifically to this region of Mexico, it is defnitely creating a whole new level of interest in the natural world and how it works. I do want to continue being involved, in some capacity or another, with rural grassroots movements such as these, and I also want my own organic edible garden someday!

OK, I have more to say about some fascinating ecologically sustainable constructions that I am learning about, but my hour at the cyber cafe is almost over, and I do not want to pay for another hour! So, next time!

Questions born outside comfort zones

OK, so this was originally written as an email to some 10 or 15 of you... but then I realized how long it was and didn¨t want to do that to you all! So here it is on the blog, I¨d love to hear your thoughts.

On the 16th, we finally drove up to Cuetzalan, a beautiful little colonial town in the mountains, where we are staying with one of L´s friends for the next few weeks... Zoatecpan, the Nahuatl indigenous community where we work, is only an hour´s bus ride from here, so we are going to commute there in order to work. The initial plan had been to stay there, but L has a draft of her thesis to turn in on the 28th of this month, and there´s no way you can get any work done there, the children will simply not leave your room until you falll asleep at night (sometimes, they will then climb further up the hill and throw stones on your tin roof to  wake you up!), and they will be banging on your windows before you wake up in the morning. they are adorable, but they are also little devils when they want to be! And as one of them told us today when he got annoyed by somthing we said, "this isn´t your pueblo, it´s ours."

 

At any rate, so here we are in Cuetzalan. The drive up was insane... hats off to L for getting us here safely despite dark mountain roads, thick fog, heavy rain, and bats flitting across the windshield for a stretch of our journey! As we drove up, i could feel all kinds of emotions churning inside me. Joy at being in the mountains, excitement and nervousness at soon being back in that village where i lived for 2 months, a strange pull I always feel out in the countryside-- an awakening of something more basic and grounded in me that I lose in the city. L and Y were talking about various people in the context of the sort of work they do in these mountains. This project with the kids is a small part of it, a lot of their work is around issues like biodiversity and organic agriculture with the farmers of this region... right now one of the biggest issues n the region is the fight agains genetically modified corn coming in through the United States. A farmer told me his story of how he started usng that corn, and over time the fertilizers it required polluted their waterways so much as to kill some of his animals when they drank from them. He wanted to opt out after that, but he must leave his field fallow for 8 years before it will yield a regular crop without feritilizers again... we are talking about a region of subsistence agriculture, there´s no way his family will survive with even one year of leaving the field fallow. Plus, we are talking about a people that believe the corn to be sacred, man grew from corn according to their legends, so imagine what this whole GM corn owned by US corporations means to them. Not that most of this is going to be news to many of you, you all know of similar places and people, I´m sure, even if not personally. but the thing I´ve always found super inspiring about this region is the amount of amazing grassroot level work that is happening here, the ways in which the indigenous people have organized themselves to start fighting for their rights. Of course, their organizations, like all organizations, have huge problems... still, they are incredibly inspiring. Above all, their levels of commitement to their work have always given me food for thought... it´s relatively easy for us to work on these issues, even get paid to work on them, but for so many of these people, every day spent away from the fields at crucial times has very real repurcussions for them and their families... many similar activiists whom I had met in Bodoland in India were similarly inspiring for the huge odds in the face of which they do their work.

 

Our first night here, we were up till almost 2 AM chatting with our host in Cuetzalan, Mayolo, one of Lupita´s classmates in her Masters in Rural Development program... partly about people and projects here, and partly just chatting, about music and languages and whatever. Once again moved by all the people who are here working to protect the enviornment, working to protect the rights of the indigenous people who have been exploited for far too long... and the very real victories they have had in the last few years. It´s reassuring in the most important of ways.

 

But I still feel conflicted. When M asked me what I am doing right now, I was almost embarrassed to admit that I am studying poetry... no, embarrassed is not the right word. It just felt like such an out-of-context answer, if that makes sense. As much as I know that my work in poetry and peace education is really towards the same larger ideals as his work in rural development, I guess it was just a moment of realizing, yet again, how completely privileged I am even to be able to consider studying something like creative writing! For those of you who knew me back in 2007, you might remember that my summer in Zoatecpan had turned me off academia, had made me distrust the ivory towers that universities often are, made me want to work at the grassroots... it was why I didnt get into the grad school track right away. This time is different though... I´ve been through that journey once, returning to India, working in a non profit for a while, and finding my path back to my creative work through my peace education work... I don´t need to do that again, I know now that my work in art and in education is (or can be) part of the larger peace work that I want to do.

 

and yet, and yet. Going back to Zoatecpan brought back so many of those questions. Our development priorities are so messed up; as far as I know, not a single house in that village of thousands of households has a proper bathroom, many of the teenagers who have been going to school all their life cannot read, the señoras are all losing their eyesight because of the amount of smoke that fills their kitchens with the wood stoves and the number of hours they spend embroidering clothes they can sell to tourists ín Cuetzalan in order to keep their families going. And yes, I have seen worse poverty, I guess it just hits me harder here because I have lived with these families for a couple of months and care about them differently as a result. And here, at a short distance, I am sitting at a friend´s house, (very basic by some standards, but ultra-luxurious in that we have electricity, hot water, a gas stove, and a bed) typing an email to you all. I cant get away from the contradictions we live on a day to day basis. And I can´t help returning to the question of how much of a difference I could ever possibly make through my art.

 

Don´t get me wrong. I continue to believe in art´s power to open difficult conversations about peace and conflict, to give hope, to affirm an individual life through creating voice and spaces for dialogue, and all those things... but in this kind of context, it doesn´t feel like enough. Nothing feels like enough, of course, but it doesnt even feel like enough of an attempt. But even as I write this, I also know that I have been writing the most interesting and important poetry I have ever written since I have come to Mexico this time. I started working on my first long poem a few days into being in Mexico, and I can for the first time feel the place in my work, not just content-wise but also in terms of voice and style... it does continue to feel important to me that those feelings and frustrations find a voice, and so i am continuing to write in all my free time. But I am having to redefine for myself what my priorities are... I know i do my peace work best through my creative work so i will continue to do my creative work, but i also need to figure out what my commitment to these people, places, and issues is, beyond just my creative work... what else do I have to contribute? My oral history work seems like something that will increasingly become part of my finding that balance: in so many of these areas, where people¨s cultural and political identities are constantly under threat, just recording individual histories is an incredibly important piece of political work. I have known that for a while, talked briefly about focusing more on that work at some point, and am all the more inclined and inspired to do that now. Even if not here and now, but eventually.

 In fact, in the course of our conversation the other night, M mentioned two indigenous poets who live nearby, one is Nahuatl, the other is Totonaco (those are the two main indigenous groups in this region). I¨m inclined to asking him if he will introduce me to them, and then if they are open to it, to sitting down with them over a cup of coffee and asking them to tell me more about their art. I think one of the things that bothers me sometimes about so many conversations about art is that they are so elitist... ok, so the spoken word movement takes poetry beyond the academy, and thank goodness for that... but in the context of some of the groups I have worked with and wanted to work with, it¨s still a world that those kids will perhaps never enter. For one, many of them have cannot read or write, have never even formed an alphabet, have no idea what it would mean to write a poem... for another, many of them have been so scarred by the violence all around them, have so learned that silence is survival, it¨s inconceivable for them to stand up to perform their work... and as a teacher in Assam once pointed out to me, it¨s downright dangerous for some of these kids to be seen as confident or having leadership qualities (in regions of violence, they will be the first to be recruited by militants and also the first to earn the suspicion of security forces). And yet, we know poetry has been part of all major cultural traditions, also that it preceded the written word in many cases, so I guess this is partly about whether we can still tap into those oral traditions... but it¨s also, just as importantly, about opening up to different ideas about poetry¨s place in people`s lives. My guess is that poetry amongst the Nahuatls and Totonacos, at least originally, is much closer to prayer than to entertainment... the same is true of their dances and of most of their art, they are religious rituals, not to be taken lightly. I want to understand more of that worldview, understand this art I care about from a completely different lens. Let¨s see if I can make these conversations happen... heck, what I really want to do is to do some oral history work with these poets, capture some of their life stories, and then go back to NY and do it with some of my more academic poetry classmates and some spoken word artists... and hopefully at some point do some of it in India. More and more, as I become aware once again of the harsh circumstances amongst which so many people still live happy lives, I am curious to see what the role of work like ours can be... what art and poetry have meant in different people¨s lives across cultures. I think a lot of "professional artists" assume that, because writing poetry or painting or dancing or whatever changed our lives, it will change others; lives too... I want move beyond that (rather simplistic) assumption by actually listening to these stories. Because of time constraints, it might not happen during this trip, but hopefully it will begin here, and at any rate, hope it will happen soon enough. 

OK, clearly, I could go on forever. But now I want to shut up and I want to hear you. Talk back to me, will you please? :)

I think my host father wants to adopt me...

Seriously. For the last 4-5 days, he has asked me everyday, more than once, if I have considered living in Mexico and if not, why not. Yesterday we even had a conversation-- him, L, her brother did, I was mostly listening-- about what I could do if I decided to stay. I coud teach english, I could translate for sucha nd such organization in oaxaca, I coud... you get the drift. They are so confident I could make my way here, don´t understand why I don´t want to. It´s been fun trying to explain that, no offence to their country, I love it deeply, I dont have a good reason to stay here. I´ve had those conversations before with people about the USA, and there I do have a coupe of good reasons not to want to stay (ok, one good reason big enough to make up for everything else: the medical system that has caused me too much trouble in the past!)... but how ultimately, it isn´t about why not USA or Mexico as much as why USA or Mexico when I have everything waiting for me back home in Delhi... if I had a good reason to stay, I´d think about it, but things being as they are, why even think about it? Still, it cracks me up because of how often he asks me this question, as if anyday I might suddenly have found a reason to stay. Too sweet.

Tomorrow, we head to the Sierra (at last!). At this time tomorrow, I will be trying to keep up with a group of 30 something children running about the hillside. I´m looking forward not only to being back in the mountains but also specifically to Zoatecpan. it´s been 3 years-- 3 long years-- and while I am on one hand excited to go back, on the other hand I am wondering how things will have changed. The little babies I carried about will now be running all over the place; my host family in the village has a new baby in the house; I dont expect to remember many names, and I am not sure how many will remember me either. In my heart, the village is frozen in time, and going back feels like it should be a going back to what I left behind... but of course, the years have passed for them just as they did for me, they will have grown as I have, and this will be an interesting re-encounter.

Been thinking a lot about what this process of creatng homes, only to leave them behind, entails. As fortunate as i feel to have been able to travel so much and live in so many different places, a part of me also dislikes the way that means I will never again belong completely to one place the way I did before leaving home for the first time. I have come to accept that from here on, at any given moment, about 3/4 of the people closest to me will not be physcially where I am... maybe over time, as I settle down in one place, that number will come down to half, but at least that many. Yes, it´s wonderful to have close friends scattered throughout the globe, but it´s also frustrating always to be missing someone!

Well, I have little more to say today. Shall sign off here, hoping to receive emails from some of you soon, and will write next from the Sierra Norte de Puebla.

A most memorable birthday

Sorry i went missing for a bit there, been very tired and a little distracted. but here I am today!

The birthday in Tepoztlan was beautiful. The hike up to the pyramid is exhausting but incredible... 2 kms of steep uphill climbing, coupled with the fact that you are ascending about 600 m in an hour (at some point my ears began to pop!). Especially beautiful on weekday mornings, when ther are few people around, so you really have a sense of both the history and the ecology around you... the entire hike is in a preserved ecological park, not a single puesto or shop from when you enter until you reach the very top, and impressively almost no garbage either. I had to stop more times than I care to remember, and I coudnt help thinking that if that´s how out of shape I am, those kids in Zoatecpan are going to destroy me! They run about the mountainside like little goats, and since we will be accompanying them on their trips to photograph local flora and fauna, we will have to keep pace. They are going to have fun laughing at us city folk, ah well, it´s a well earned laugh! Almost all those children have, from the age of 4 or 5, been accompanying their mothers to bring firewood and water from far off places: their little legs, arms, and backs are incredibly stronger than most of ours have ever been. Who knows, maybe 3 weeks of working with them will whip us into some kind of shape, in ways that are much more fun than going to the gym! ;)

At any rate, despite the one mandatory moment of "I give up, I can´t complete this hike," when you do get to the top, the view makes up for everything. The cliffs around that area are beautiful and strange, one can spend forever looking at them and looking for shapes as one does in clouds. And when you get to the top, you also feel a certain camaraderie with whoever else is there... people who would never have stopped to exchange glances in the city suddenly smile at each other and make small talk, as if we now know that we are together in the moment. After a Spoken Word night at SLC some weeks ago, JS said something about the magic of the fact that it took millions of years of growth in different parts of the earth to ensure that all of us shared that night together in that teahouse... I felt something similar about being on top of that pyramid, by myself, and with groups of strangers who came and went while I sat there drinking it in. I spent more than hour at the summit, soaking in the view, soaking in the history, trying to imagine the past, wondering at the generations and centuries that have been part of this spot-- the Aztecs, the Spanish, and now tourists like myself--, marveling at the journey that has brought me from my childhood home in a little mountain town in the Himalayas to this little mountain town in Mexico. In so many ways, I felt incredibly fortunate. In a place where hundreds of thousands have prayed, I offered a prayer of gratitude as well. it´s the kind of place that makes you pray, regardless of whether you believe in prayer.

The descent was much easier, although I was so exhausted that at one point, I realized that whenever i stood still for a moment, to catch my breath or admire the view or tie my showlace, my legs began to tremble unconrtollably (keep in mind that I was staying in a guest house all the way across town from where the ecological reserve begins, so before the hike even began, i had already walked quite a bit). Finally decided I´d sit down for a few minutes at one of the rest stops, and struck up a conversation with an old gentleman sitting there. He had come from another state with his family, but by the time they got to the about the halfway point on the hike, he didn´t feel up to carrying on, felt it was too much of a risk at his age. So he sat down at this spot, and his family continued on. he asked me how much longer he shoudl expect to wait, I had to tell him it would be at least an hour and probaby more before they got back, and he sighed saying "they didn´t even leave me the car keys!" We chatted a little longer, he asked where i was from and what I was doing there by myself, and I ended up telling him a little about the project in Puebla and about how this little trip out of DF was my birthday present to myself. He wished me a happy birthday, then asked if I would allow him to give me a birthday hug. Sweet old man, hugged me and wished me all the very best for the project and for my trip, assured me that God would fulfil all my desires... I thanked him, and we parted ways, he continued to wait for his family, and I continued my descent. I stopped for lunch 8around 4:30 PM!) just outside the ecological reserve... I actually just stopepd to read a menu, and an old lady dressed in a traditional dress of one of the indigenous communities called out to me, "What can I get you, hija?". I swear, she could have offered me plain toast and I would have probably agreed, so sweet and grandmotherly was she. I asked her for something traditional and she offered me itacates-- how should I explain them? Think of it as a sandwich of 2 mini paranthas with chicked or potato or whatever stuffing you want inside. She slapped the dough into perfect traingles with her hands, just the way the señoras in Zoatecpan make tortillas, none of those city machine made tortillas, and two of those itacates were more than enough to fill my stomach. I thanked her, paid, and carried on, warmed by her warmth... even though this was a commercial exchange of a meal, it felt so much more personal than a regular meal in a restaurant. Both of those encounters reminded again of the warmth of this culture and its people, especially in small towns and villages, which in turn reminds me so much of home in India.

All in all, a beautiful day. Got back to DF later that night, absolutely exhausted, and every muscle in my body hurt yesterday. And yet, when I sat in on L´s more traditioanl birthday celebration last night, with cake and alcohol and a room filled with people, I felt so glad and so grateful for the way in which i got to spend mine. Don´t get me wrong, I definitely had my moment of missing everyone and wishing I could have come home to close friends and family that night... but all the same, I felt so happy and so complete out with nature and the indigenous gods, it felt like the right way to spend the first day of the next 25 years of my life!

And all your wonderful emails and facebook messages only made the day more special, brought all of you here with me. I love you all.

Tepoztlan!

Here I am, then, in this beautiful little mountain town, only an hour outside Mexico City but in other ways a world apart. I hear that it gets very crazy here on weekends because of the proximity to DF, but right now, it feels like a wonderful sleepy little town that knows it has something special to offer (it was named one of Mexico´s "magic towns")... so yes, little puestos selling local handicrafts and all crop up here and there, yet it feels far from touristy in the nuisance sense of the word.

I admit I was a little nervous about taking that bus out of Mexico City without knowing where i would stay or having a cell phone or having a map of the area. But all that nervousness has slipped away now; things have been remarkably easy. The bus driver announced my stop, i got off on the highway, asked around for the town... there was really only one way to go, and a BEAUTIFUL half hour walk later i found myself in the town center. A local government building there was able to procure me a map of the town, although not after looking at me strangely, this tourist who shows up on a Thursday morning. I walked for about an hour, checking out various places to stay and askng for prices... I finally settled on a lovely little guest house called Posada Saritas on the outskirts of the town. Basic, but has a lovely garden with a hammock, is clean, and is run by a sweet lady who makes me feel safe and welcomed-- what more could I ask for? Spent today just walking about town, but think i will head back to read or write or something like that early today so that i can wake up and leave for the pyramids early in the morning tomorrow.

Had the most amazing ice cream from a famous chain here. For 20 pesos (a little under USD 2), you can get a cup with three flavors in it... now, the hard part is choosing which 3 flavors! When I can, I shall post a photo I took of their list of flavors... i think they had about a hundred, you name it, they have it. They even had lettuce flavored ice cream, which i admit i was tempted to try, but i let that one pass! However, their "mangolin" flavor, a mix of mango, lemon, and chile, is to die for. Never tasted anything like it; if any of you are ever in this part of the world, you know you have to try it. Also passed a wonderful looking "Mexican chocolaterie," made a mental note to myself to find it again tomorrow, I know where my birthday slice of cake is coming from now ;)

All right, more later, I´m going out to continue my walk. Just wanted to let you all know that i am here safely and enjoying myself!

Restlessness

One week in, I´m starting to get restless.

I miss having a regular schedule, somewhere to be, something to do everyday. It´s nice for a few days, but i get tired of it very fast. Of all the things I miss about my other homes, i miss my alarm clock the most! I need to go buy myself a travel alarm clock... somehow, just being able to wake up at the same time everyday helps me feel more in rhythm, something as small as that will probably take away some of this restlessness I feel. Actually, everything about adjusting to the days here has thrown me off a little. Breakfast at 10, Lunch at 4 PM! My body is weirded out. I expect to get used to it in another week or so, then there will be the task of re-accustoming myself to New York timings in a few weeks. Similarly for the language, i already find myself starting to think in spanish more and more, but at the same time, it´s a little frustrating and a little stressful not to be around any English speaking people (although when I did bump into some Americans at the artesania market yesterday, i distanced myself from their English-speaking-ness as fast as I could!) Ah well, therein lies the joy and the challenge of travel no?

And then of course there´s the fact that Y is in Argentina this week and L has classes 8AM- 8PM this week. I wouldnt exactly say that I´m lonely-- thats not it--´but figuring out what to do with myself, all by myself, all day is proving a challenge! I think I´m going to head out to Xochimilco today, not so much to the museum (I´m not in a touristy mood) as just to sit by the water and read, perhaps. That´s something to be thankful for, the fact that I am comfortable enough in this city and this neighborhood to feel like I can get around by myself.

The plus side remains the writing I have been able to do over the last couple of days. That long poem is coming along in very interesting ways, almost all the sections have by now been rewritten several times, and i am going to start typing it up today... it´s hard to edit and move around sections on paper! Maybe it´ll become one of my first poems to go up on this blog; many of you have asked me why none of my poetry makes its way into this space, and the truth is I´m not sure. So maybe it will.

Also found some very interesting reads on L´s bookshelf. One book about popular education movements in Central America caught my attention in particular. And yssel lent me a book about indigenous populations in Mexico, a very interesting read, trying to look at the ways in which there seems to be a separation in the understanding of indigenous identity and mainstream Mexican identity, problematizing this divide and suggesting that we look at a multicultural society instead of locating these two aspects of Mexico in different time periods. More on that as I read further (although, I really should go buy myself a Spanish-English dictionary if I want to be reading these fairly complex texts in Spanish!). Between all that reading and my own writing and the 3 novels I bought at the airport, I should be able to keep busy until we head into the mountains. So yeah, J, you were right, I´m ending up doing more research here than I had expected, what can I say, you know me too well! :P

Ah well. Zochimilco today, perhaps el Zocalo tomorrow (I want to go look at Diego´s "El hombre y la ciencia" again). And Thursday, I´m going to head out to Tepoztlan because I want to wake up in the mountains on Friday, my birthday! Saturday L celebrates her birthday early because we will be in the mountains on the actual date, so I guess we´ll end up celebrating together with her friends! Then a couple more days here before heading into the Sierra... we seem to have found a place to stay in Cuetzalan, still to confirm it, but looking like it will work out, which will be fantastic (as compared to arriving there with our backpacks and hoping for a room to rent!). Well, this entry is really going nowhere, is it? So more later.

Sunday at home

I intended to go out to Xochimilco Centro yesterday, to take a trajinera ride along the ancient Aztec canals (yes, james, I asked around, they are the ancient Aztec canals). Not the tourist boats but the local "bus" that is used by the people who live and practice agriculture on the little manmade islands created there more than a thousand years ago. But eventually, me dio flojera as they would say here, and I decided to stay home instead.

Still, it was a good day. Wrote 9 1/2 pages of poetry yesterday, part of the first draft of what might become my first long poem in sections (or a series of short poems). Was on quite a roll there! Also, 7 pages of prose in my diary, although that´s less of an accomplishment (judging by the length of my emails and blog posts, you can imagine that my diary entries tend to be long in general). Still, good writing day.

Currently reading "Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai. I admit I was prejudiced against the book because of an interview I heard with the author, got annoyed by some of her takes on the writing life. But the book is utterly beautiful. I´m actually trying to hold off reading too much of it in one day because I am afraid it´s going by too fast, want to hold on to it, savor it more... finally realized I could always come back and reread it another time, and that allowed me to keep reading! The woman is a great story teller, but she´s also a poet, there are so many lines of poetry hidden in her novel (here´s one of my favoties: "his laugh would have registered bright pink on the litmus test"). In fact, this long poem of mine carries an epigraph from the book as well. It´s been a long time since I raved about a book like this, so yes, I highly recommend the read!

Also, finally finished converting hundreds of video clips towards our documentary into the right format for us to work with them. Utterly boring work, days of copy-paste, L and I are so glad to have finally completed it. Now, the process od actually trying to create a 30 minute video from this footage should be more interesting. I didn´t think I´d be learning iMovie, of all things, during this Mexico trip, but in some ways, that´s the nature of this work, isn´t it? The visible work in the community is one aspect, and all these other skills need to go into making that possible! Plus, I´ve wanted to learn to use iMovie anyway, so no complaints there!

Then there were the conversations with my host father. He´s such a wonderful man, old fashioned and the patriarch in many ways, yes, but so sincere and clearhearted, so honest and so simple, that it´s hard not to love him. He grew up in a small agricultural village in Oaxaca (which I visited for an afforestation campaign during my previous visit to mexico), came to Mexico City when he was 25, and for forty years worked at the same department store as a clothes salesperson. He retired last year at age 64, and now he has set up a little stand selling music outside his house. I shall take photos of that to explain what I mean, but it´s one of the things I love about this neighborhood: for many houses, the division between home and work isnt so sharp, all over the neighborhood you see posters outside houses advertising whatever they can sell-- from fresh cheese and lunch to dance classes to the lady who will read your letters out to you. Señor O sells music. His CDs hang off a special rack on his front gate, and he stands there in his sombrero, blasting pop music on the small stereo he has there. I haven´t seen more than a couple of people stop by in the course of an hour, sometimes he sells more than at other times, but the way L puts it, it isn{t so much about earning money off of this work but more as a therapy, a having "something to do" now that he is retired. My bedroom window is right above the gate, and I sometimes leave the window open at night because it can get very warm inside without even a fan, in which case I wake up to the mix of loud Mexican music and the calls of his roosters. It´s a wonderful way to start my day :)

He´s curious about India and about the USA, curioous about the world beyond Mexico, the only country he knows. Every so often, he will ask me a question that throws me off completely. One day, he wanted to know how well I have planned my life, do i know what age i want to be when my children finish primary school? (He was disappointed to learn that I didn´t). Another time, it was about whether men in other parts of the world are as attached to their mothers as Mexican men are (Have you heard of mamitis? Everyone here jokes about thsi peculiar disease that befalls mexican men, where they cannot stop comparing every woman in the world unfavorably to their absolutely perfect mothers!). He wanted to know what I would do if I were married to a man with mamitis-- how would I win him back? I laughed and told him I´d never thought much about that either, but he was dead serious about those questions, insisted that most divorces are born out of yong brides not knowing what to do about their husbands´ mamitis. Then, he talked to me, L, and two other friends who were having dinner with us about the importance of cultivating love like a rose... when it recieves the proper care, it blossoms beautifully. L joked that some love is like the camphor flower, parasitic, destroying everything in its path, caring only for itself.. that you never know if it is indeed going to turn out to be a rose. Different flower metaphors crowded around our dinner table, and he grew a little upset with L´s cynicism... finally just told us that, although we might choose to look at the world that way, he had tended love like a rose and it had given him beautiful results. L´s mother died 6 years ago, but you still hear him talk about her as if she just left the room for a bit, so much love, she is so present in this family, it´s hard to deny him his conviction in love like a rose!

So much for that. This week, L has classes everyday, leaves home at 7 AM, returns around 9 PM. I have to contimue working on that video, but also must find other ways to entertain myself. A trip to the city center sounds good today... hoping to visit a local handicrafts market, I love Mexican handicrafts, and handicrafts in general, and who knows, I might even find little gifts for some of you while I am there! :P

Dances, and then some

Yesterday, L, L´s father, and I went to a festival of Mexican folk music, being held at the National Teachers´ College in Mexico City. It´s a three day free festival, 10 AM to 10 PM, with God-knows-how-many groups playing 4 or 5 songs each. We spent about three hours there, listening to music from the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Michoacan (I might have missed some others). What a treat, while I cannot at the end of the day tell the difference between the different folk traditions, the groups from Guerrero and Oaxaca really touched me in a way few musicians ever have. 

They had a huge wooden dance floor in the middle, and at any given moment there must have been 3 or 4 hundred people, perhaps more, dancing to the music. I found myself repeatedly amazed by how well people knew all the different folk dances, there was some free styling, but in general, you could see the formal elements of the folk dance throughout the dance floor. The dancers included everyone from young couples to parents out with young children to groups of teenaged friends to elderly couples or this one beautiful woman, probably in her 80s, who twirled her skirt and danced in a world all her own. There´s one dance from Michoacan, I forget its name but have seen it before, where the movements are those of "los viejos" (the old people)... it also involves making a train of people that moves across the dance floor. More than 9 trains of people formed across this dance floor when that music came on, each must have had 40, 50, 60 people, and as they all moved about the floor, I was amazed to note that there wasn´t a single collision across that very packed floor! It looked like so much fun too, one of those moments when I really wanted to jump up and join in, then had to remind myself I didn´t know the dance! There is something about Mexican folk culture, though... it´s the only music and the only dance that has ever made me want to join in. I´m thinking both about a community dance held at Zoatecpan while I lived there and at the Dia de los muerots celebrations in Santa Ana, the only 2 times in my life that i have voluntarily joined in a dance and enjoyed it. Partly, it´s the music that gets under one´s skin in a way that forces one to move, even if one is sitting in a chair, and partly it´s the community aspect of it... I remember watching a mother dance with an infant strapped to her back in a shawl. Amidst music so loud that we had to shout to be heard, and amidst her not at all subdued dance moves, the 1 year old slept blissfully. I loved that these moments were enough a part of that child´s life.

In the metro on the way back, though, I found some of that evening´s high slip away from me. I´ve written before about how Mexico City´s subways are full of people selling everything from lollipops to pirated DVDs and also about the variety of preformers who board the train and do their thing, then ask for money. In general, I enjoy that madness of the train, there´s never a dull moment. Yesterday, though, I had to shut my eyes and wish it away. A man got into my subway car, bare chested, and scattered broken beer bottles across the floor. Then, he began his stunt show, throwing himself against the pieces of glass, his back, his chest, breaking them further with the weight of his body and with his fist. I shut my eyes, but could still hear the sickning clink of flesh against broken glass. When he finished, nobody wanted to pay him for that stunt, so he gathered his glass and moved on to the next car. As he walked away from us, I searched his back for scars and saw none, just one gash across his shoulder. Then, I could hear the clink from the next car, and I felt my stomach turn. I can´t understand how one could do that to oneself, and as much as I outherwise like supporting street performers, this one just left me with a bitter aftertaste that I couldn´t quite shake off.

More settled

OK, so I am starting to feel more settled now than I was yesterday, and therefore also more comfortable with all the changes and uncertainty.

For one, I move to L´s house yesterday since Y left for BsAs. Since this is the house where I lived for 5'6 weeks in 2007, there is comfort in the familiarity of the place as well as the neighborhood. She lives at the southern extremity of the city, in a neighborhood that is still more reminiscent of a small town or village than of a bustling city. Everyone knows everyone, you shop at the nighborhood tienda, the little shop selling quesadillas, the lady who makes the wonderful licuados. The Mexico City overrun by Walmart, McDonalds, and boutiques with names like "American Hot" (I promise Im not making that one up!) ´seem to belong to a different time and place. it helps, of course, that her still very much a farmer father keeps dogs, birds, rabbits and roosters in the house. I woke up to the rooster ´s call this morning, and it´s hard to feel trapped in a big city when that happens!

So, I´ll be in the city longer than I wanted to be here... will be spending 3 instead of 4 weeks in the mountains. L and Y are both overwhelmed by the things that need to be done before June 15th, at their universities, places of work, and for this project, so I´m going to help out with some fundraising work... mostly, editing a video of past workshops, which will accompany funding proposals for the next workshop. Yes, less exciting than being out in Zoatecpan right away, but this work needs to happen in order for that work to happen, so ah well.

Talking to L yesterday also reassured me about the project. Ironically, what reassured me was the realization that they already know they don´t have a vision or long terms sense of the work they are doing. Unfortunately, for reasons that range from funding to local politics in the village between the church and the women´s cooperative we work with, they are not sure they will continue working in the same region beyond next year. Thus, a certain level of fear as far as committing to a long term project there, or even building up too high hopes for what they could accomplish there. I did try posing questions about if we could find ways this year to make the work there sustainable in the future, if there was a way to build enough ownership for the older children and the members of the community to take off from where we leave, but I think the degree of work that would require is overwhelming for them right now. Fair enough, they are doing this project on top of being full time students and working part time, I can see why time and money have become precious resources. Their collective, they do hope to maintain, they do hope to continue working with children of indigenous communities and of migrants, just perhaps in other partes of the country. So, scaling down our ideas for the summer project considerably.

Here´s what it will probably look like at this stage: the children of Zoatecpan, aged 4 to 10, are preparing a book of local flora and fauna, with photographs and/or dired flowers and leaves, names of the plants and animals in Nahuatl and Spanish, and traditional uses of the plants and animal prodcuts. A biologist friend of L´s is helping them identify the less common plants, and their grandmothers are treasure troves of wisdom about possible medicinal and other uses of pretty much any plant. This book will then be compiled, and provided we get funding, 1000 copies will be printed for the local school(s) and students. It´s a fairly simple project, but it can accomplish several important objectives, from working as a team to understanding their environment better, from giving them a sense of pride in their work to bringing their lives and their geography into a classroom that teaches them only in Spanish and only about a world far removed from their own. In some ways, I would have preferred doing more long term work, but in other ways will also be good to have an open and closed project by the time I leave. Let´s see how it unfolds.

And before I sign off, here´s a story I cant get out of mind and should provide us all with some food for thought. L told me yesterday about an indigenous community in the North of Mexico that she visited a few months ago. There are only about 60 surviving members of this tribe and linguistic group, and they have long faced terrible discrimination. Recently, the community came together and decided that none of them were going to have children because they want the langauge and the community to die with the current generation. It gives me chills just thinking about it... what does it take for a people to decide that they no longer want to exist... not just in their current form but in any form? Shiver.

Lessons in flexibility

So, I already know what is probably going to be one of my biggest take-aways from this summer: learning to be flexible. In 2007, they used to talk about having "high hopes and low expectations" for our projects, and I never really liked that way of putting it— going in with low expectations always seemed like accepting things as less than they could be. Today, though, I am reminded of why that advice made sense in the context of trying to work here.

Before I got here, we had talked about spending all of June in the village, and me traveling through Mexico July 1- 15. On arriving, I learned that one of my friends needs to stay in the city until the 13th of June and the other until the 15th. Now, all of a sudden, one of them is going to Buenos Aires for a workshop today and will only return on June 14th. So much for my carefully planned schedule, I'm going to need to improvise and find ways of getting out of DF during this week, I really don;t want to spend that much time in the city (I do love Mexico City, and it does remind me of home in many ways. But right now, I need not to be in a city). It isn't that big a deal, really, but I like having things planned out and scheduled, last minute changes and flakiness always upset me. But I knew even before coming here that there's no way to work in rural Mexico (or rural India for that matter) unless one can get used to those last minute changes... here's a chance for me to become comfortable with the absolute lack of plans!

More than that, though, I'm struck by how there isn't really a vision for this project... my friends know they want to work with the kids of Zoatecpan and have been working with them for almost a year, doing all kinds of fun stuff... but when asked what they hope to achieve, what their long term vision is for this organization they are trying to found, they don't really seem to know. As a result, the work too feels a litle scatteredñ for example, they did a series of workshops on art, a bunch of things about rights of children, and a group of their friends did workshops in many if the circus arts... if the photos are anything to judge by, the kids had a blast, and that's important. But surely it isn;t all that is important... we can't get away from questions about whether the workshop in children's rights became part of their lived experience, whether we are giving them the tools to make it so. We can;t get away from asking what our goals in working with these kids are and how these different activities are feeding into those goals. That that hasn't received much thought shouldn't come as a surprise, it's the case with most start-up projects, isn't it? But I'm afraid it's not going to last or grow unless they can find that larger work of which these activities are a part. The organization through which I did the summer project 3 years ago (and the only non profit these friends know closely) suffered from a similar lack of larger vision to guide the everyday activities... and it's falling apart now, they already can't secure funding to pay any of their employees, everyone assumes it will disappear within the year. As the Mexicans would say "¡Que pena!:— they are good people with good intentions, but one needs more than that to keep such an organization running, no?

Now more than ever, I go back to conversations with Paul about how 90% of start-up non-profits fail. I want this project to succeed, but I'm not sure how they'd secure funding or any of that without being able to explain the larger visions behind the project. And it isn;t just about funding either, it's the more fundamental question of do we know we are actually making a difference simply by playing games and doing art workshops? We might be, but we might not be, and unless we have a  sense of the difference we want to make,  how can we know if we are making it?

I feel like I have something to offer there. I;m the only one amongst the three of us who has actually worked with a non-profit for an extended period of time (and a non-profit that is growing and succeeding, at that). I'm also the only one who has received any training in instructional design and the like. My friends have more to offer in terms of on the ground experience— not only have they spent much more time in the communities than I have, one of them is doing her Masters in Rural Development and the other is just finishing a certificate course in the Rights of the Child. Between the three of us, we have quite an interesting and varied knowledge and experience base.

The question, then, will be to what extent we can make those three things work together. I realize I am afraid to ask tough questions and push them to clarify their vision because I feel like that would be arrogant. I feel like I am an outsider to the work... they are the ones who have been doing it all this while, I'm only here a few weeks, who am i to come in and say it needs to bedone differently? At the same time, I feel like I won't be doing justice to them, to myself, or most importantly to the children of Zoatecpan unless I start asking those questions. But I need to navigate this carefully, there are also cultural ideas about how best to do this work and mine will be seen (ironically) as too-Western at first. Let's see where we go from here.

In an interesting way, I'm realizing that doing this kind of work is like poetry in some ways. From the outside, people often seem to romanticize it as being all about the heart, whatever first finds its way onto the page or into the classroom is sacrosanct because it comes from the heart and that;s all that matters. It takes a lot of time, a lot of frustrated attempts at getting the work done, and sometimes a lot of failure before one realizes that structures and systems need to balance out the spontaneity, that while the work must always always come from the heart, it demands a certain rigor and discipline in order to become effective. I'm thinking now of all the times that I too was uncomfortable with structures and systems at Pravah, and I;m increasingly grateful I was held accountable to them anyway. By now, I feel comfortable enough with the structures that were put in place to know when I can break out of them. But I'm glad of having that scaffolding.

Day 2 in mexico

So, I;m going to take advantage of the fact that one of my friends has internet in her home in DF (for the uninitiated, DF is Mexican for "Mexico City" and probably a term I will use to refer to it more and more as I start thinking in Mexican again ;) ) and blog frequently over these next couple of days.

My initial slight disappointment at not going into the Sierra right away has changed to relief. I didn't know just how exhausted i was going to be, but i can barely stay awake today. I want to blame it on changing time zones 3 times in a week... not dramatically, but enough to throw one off a little. Also, I'm still fighting my glandular infection, and the resultant low grade fever does tire me out. So I'm glad now, not only to have a few days of rest in the city, but also to have a few days to get used to the language, the food, the water and all those things... I think this should dramatically reduce the chance of my falling sick once we get to the Sierra. And I hope it will also mean that I can recover completely from the infection and reach there high on energy and in perfect health.

L lost her grandfather yesterday and had to return to her family's village in Oaxaca for a couple of days, so I am now staying with Y until L gets back. In one sense, this feels like such a luxury, it's just the two of us at home, and I get a room to myself! In other ways, it feels strange-- I associate Mexico with too many people and animals in small spaces (L's father is enough of a farmer still as to have not only dogs and birds but also 4 roosters in their Mexico City house!). It's a nice change in terms of being able to get some rest, time to chant and read, time to blog... but in other ways, it feels strange and un-Mexican to me!

But right outside our door, we are very much in Mexico. This morning, I awoke to loud bells, initially wondered if they were church bells but they went on too long; Y told me later that it was the garbage truck announcing its arrival. I also heard various hawkers' cries, not sure what they were selling, but it reminded me of home in India in many ways. And then there are the neighbors: Last night, I wanted to shower after my travels, but Y discovered that we didn't have gas at home because she hadn't paid the monthly gas bill, which not only meant no cooking gas but also no hot water. It was a cool night, she was afraid I'd catch a cold by showering with cold water, so I offered to wait until the next morning. No such compromises needed, she asked me to gather my things and we walked over to a neighbor's house, she explained our situation, and they let me shower there. This morning, we couldn't make breakfast or heat water for coffee, so we walk back to their house with all our ingredients in tow, Y lets herself in, and we make quesadillas on their stove, wash up after ourselves, and leave. All of that feels unusual to me, but in a good way... I like these neighborly relations!

OK, I'm going to go see what we can do for lunch today... not sure I am up for a visit to the center of the city, given that we live in the suburbs and that's a long trip, but would be nice to get out for a while and ground myself in the country again. Also trying to figure out which part of Mexico I want to celebrate my birthday in— it's two days before my friends get done with school, so I could stay here and celebrate in the city with people I actually know, or I could head into the mountains early and celebrate it with a long walk alone to the nearby waterfalls. The latter sounds more tempting, but we shall see :)

More soon.

In Mexico

Well, here I am. Blogging from my friend Yssel´s house in Mexico City. I haven´t yet figured out punctuation on the Spanish keyboard, so no one gets to call me out on that in this post :P

My journey here was surprisingly smooth. I had expected trouble at the Mexican airport immigration, seeing as they have just changed their laws to allow me to travel without a visa, but I was pleasantly surprised by how together they were. If anything, it was the staff at LAX that didn´t know what to do and made me wait around a while; once i actually got to Mexico, it took me only a minute of explaining the new rules for them to let me through! (although yes, i do think it amusing that i had to explain the rules!).

My friend was an hour late picking me up from the airport, so I got to sit around and absrob the Spanish sounds around me for a long time. I feel myself stumbling a little as I try havinga  conversation with her, but interestingly she thinks my Spanish is better than it has ever been. That makes no sense, I havent spoken the language in 3 years, and I feel myself searching for words and for correct conjugations in a way that I havent needed to do before. And yet, I am happy to realize we were able to have a real conversation, about the past, about what we have been doing, about ideas for the work we could do over the summer, and about other fairly complex issues. Makes me confident that, within a few more days, I will be fluent again.

This might sound horrible, but I;m also overjoyed to note that she isn;t in touch with that one-time common friend from Mexico some of you have heard about whom I really don;t want to run into again, being back here is bringing so much of the past back, the wonderful and the less than wonderful, but it;s good to also see that things have changed.

Quesadillas and sopes for dinner... made me happy to be back. If there;s one thing i truly love about Mexico, it;s the food.

As the project itself goes, turns out there really isn´t a plan, or even a proper vision, in place for what we hope to achieve this summer. I had learned to expect that, but it is still a teeny bit disappointing... but only a teeny bit because that means i get that much more of a role in figuring it out with them. Pravah´s and Paul´s training in asking hard questions about the whys of the work we do will stand me in good stead. I;m also hopeful about getting an oral history piece off the ground, brought my dictaphone, wouldn;t that be exciting? Lots of ideas, need to spend some time concretizing them before we head into the mountains.

Looks like we;ll be in Mexico City for a week or 10 days before we head out. Y and L are both still finishing up their school year. They asked me if i wanted to go to the city of Puebla with some of their friends who are part of a circus in the meantime, i;m not yet sure if I want to do that, although it does sound like fun, doesn´t it? Haha, will keep you updated.

Off to Mexico

So, disregard any panic that last post may have caused (although I do appreciate the concerned emails). I'm feeling better and heading to Mexico tomorrow. These should prove to be an interesting 6 weeks.

This past week in California has been utterly beautiful. Exhausting at times, yes, but also refreshing in incredible ways. Catching up with people I haven't talked to in months or years really helped me see myself differently... one conversation in particular, had after a 5 year silence, transformed so much about how I see myself and people around me. More on that some other time, perhaps, but it's really more diary news than blog news. Nevertheless an important week.

It hasn't yet hit me that I shall be in Mexico at this time tomorrow. Hasn't even hit me enough for me to feel nervous or excited or anything. But yes, there you have it, one more adventure. I am looking forward to it when i think about it, and I'm sure it will become more real as soon as I check into that airport tomorrow.

Well then, that's all for now, will blog again from Mexico City in the next couple of days. Stay well, and stay in touch!