Puebla

I’m officially in Puebla and have been working for about 3 weeks. I work SERMARNAT (the secretary for natural resources and the environment) which is an entity of the federal government. My job over the next two years is to assist with the management of two large watersheds in the state of Puebla. One, Alto Atoyac (about 5,000 km2), includes the city of Puebla as well as other parts of the state and the state of Tlaxcala. The end point of this watershed is a highly contaminated reservoir about 30 min outside Puebla. The main contamination issues in this watershed are from untreated sewage and industrial discharge. Ultimately the rivers in this watershed join with others and flow into the Pacific Ocean. On the other side of the continental divide, I´ll be working with the Necaxa-Laxaxalpan watershed that flows into the Gulf of Mexico in the state of Veracruz. The majority of the section I will be working with is located in the Sierra Norte, or the northern section of the state of Puebla (much of which is cloud forest), but also some parts within the states of Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, and Veracruz. This watershed, while still contaminated from untreated sewage, is much more rural and has more impacts caused by agriculture and intensive livestock grazing. Basically my job will be to coordinate all the other federal agencies that fall under SEMARNAT (things like the national commission for water, and the equivalents of the forest and national park services) as well as state and municipal governments in the management of the two watersheds.

One of my other jobs is to organize a conference on natural disaster preparedness. At first I figured this would be flood risks since my background is in water resources, but I have since come to find out it is actually going to be about volcanic risks since Puebla and the surrounding municipalities are situated near several volcanoes (Malintzin, Popocatèpetl, Iztaccìhuatl). So that should be right up my area of expertise.

I’m currently apartment hunting and think I may have found a place. Looking here is a little different than searching in the state for several reasons. First, you pretty much have to walk around and look for signs on buildings. For the most part, most apartments don´t come with anything so you have to get a refrigerator (think dorm size) and a stove (lucky if you can get one with an oven). I’m looking in the historic center of Puebla which presents some other obstacles. There are no closets in any of the apartments and the bathrooms are usually a tiny room in which everything gets wet since there’s no space or real reason to have a shower curtain. My two favorites right now are in the same building. One, is two rooms and has 2 balconies that overlook the street. It has 15 foot ceilings with exposed wood beams, tiled floors, and is in a nice old historic building with an interior courtyard. (plus its like 2x the size of my apartment in Vermont). Sounds great right? Well, the thing is that right now there’s no shower, so the landlord is looking into the logistics of putting one in. If that happens I’ll definitely take it, but it still is lacking one other little thing…a kitchen sink. Fortunately, with a combination of plastic wash tub in the apartment and the communal area to hand-wash your clothes, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue and is overshadowed by the two balconies. So we´ll see. If not I´ll take the one big room in the same building that has a balcony that overlooks the interior courtyard.

I´ve been living with a host family for the last month and one of the rules of the house is that I have to wash my socks and underwear by hand and hang them out to dry on the clothesline. I mention this because I think many of you would laugh at the image of me hunched over a wash board scrubbing and wring out my underwear. Good news is my possible new apartment has the same washboards and washtubs so I can continue that tradition if I want to.