Despedidas (Going away parties)

In between packing, wildling everything I owned down to 2 suitcases, cleaning, transferring files, and finishing up peace corps paperwork, I had a series of holiday/going away parties and lunches my last week in Mexico (thanks to Shane for letting me use some of his pictures)

For our holiday party for the planning department of SEMARNAT, we decided to do carne asada at the state park that in inside the city of Puebla. This seemed like a great idea in the office, but we had some poor execution. 1st, we ended up leaving the office super late after everyone got caught up in last minute projects, still needing buy all the meat and salsas. Then once we got to the park, we got sent to a cabin without the keys and where there was no fire started. We got the fire started (good thing we had a bottle of tequila with us), but couldn’t get into the cabin. We had also lost another member of our department in the park somewhere and never did find him. People that were joining us later had car troubles and the office’s Jeep ended up dying on the road up to the cabin. And then it got very cold and very dark, but we managed to grill and to not burn too many tortillas.

Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe 2009

So I'm a little slow in posting, but better late than never. This year for December 12 I was in Puebla to celebrate day of the Virgin Guadalupe and actually went to midnight mass on the night of the 11th to sing happy birthday to her. People brought balloons and flowers as gifts and many of the balloons ended up at the top of the chapel. The church in Puebla was packed (as were most of the churches across the country). Outside the church there were typical Mexican fair food stalls. Kids were taking their pictures in different scenes with the virgin and some were elaborate enough to have live animals like ponies, goats, donkeys, and lambs.

Kids, stoves, and more kids

My boss and I went out on Thursday to visit the community of San Francisco Jalapexco in the municipality of Teopantlan, pretty close to the volcano Popocatepetl (pictured).


Our visit was to check up (and georeference) a stove project for women in the community. Basically, the idea is to build more efficient wood-burning stoves to reduce the cutting of trees and have chimneys that direct the smoke out of the house to create a healthier living environment. In my experience, most of the children in the communities are pretty shy and quite, this town was the exception. The second we got out of the car I was bombarded by children wanted to play with my camera, the gps unit, my sunglasses, and anything else I had on me. The kids were fascinated with the camera so we took a lot of pictures so they could see themselves on it. Here’s some of those photos.

As we made our way to different homes to see the various stoves, we picked up a couple more kids and soon had English lessons going on. One girl wanted to know how many friends I had in the US and then asked me to name them all. She then started asking me if I knew Sandi, Ramon, Martin….. and I was honestly so confused who she was talking about. I finally realized that she was listing all the people from her town that had gone to work in the US. Most of them are in New Jersey, Puebla’s main migration destination.

Many of the homes in this region of the state are made of palm. The sizes and structure of these houses vary from town to town and here, they were actually pretty tall. I've been in some where I can't fully stand up inside. The doors were still pretty tiny though.

Inside

Additional storage

Homemade mezcal break

The Poinsettias (called noche buenas in Spanish) in Mexico can grow to the size of trees

Charcoalmaking in process

Everything was going smoothly until we got to the last house. I was 3rd in line as we walked into the last house when one of their dogs decided to get a good hold of the back of my thigh. Luckily he didn't break through my jeans, so no need for a shot, but he got a decent bite in that drew enough blood and has left me with a nasty bruise and a slightly gimpy leg.

Thanksgiving and little trip to a cave

I took a short (14 hr because of an immigration stop and tractor-trailor collision) trip up to Valles for some Turkey and a slightly belated birthday cake.

Our turkey

The inside of our turkey

A group of us also went some caves (Grutas de los sabinos) just outside of Valles. The cave system is pretty big, but you can only explore a fairly small section of it since you end up at an 80m drop down to an underground river at the back of the last cavern.

Cisterns in Zaulta, Puebla

In stark contrast to my Saturday and Sunday spent in Mexico City, Monday I was in two rural communities in Zautla in the Sierra Norte of Puebla (about a 3 hour drive). Both communities, El Tepeyac and Zayolapan were involved in projects that gave money to women in the community to build cisterns. The only available water comes from a long tube and a couple hoses that run into the towns. Generally there is water flowing once every 3 days, but it is sometimes as infrequent as every 15 days. Thus, the main focus of the project was to construct cisterns that could be filled with rain water and with water from the tube to give people a more reliable source of water or at least the chance to store water when available. My boss tends to attract children in these small communities and I seem to attract stares as tower over everyone else.

Pictures from Zayolapan....
Pictures from El Tepeyac ........

Most of the people living in Zayolapan and El Tepeyac have family businesses making small pots that are then sold in nearby San Miguel. While we were visiting the cisterns, we passed several homes where the pots were being fired in large wood-burning ovens.

One of my favorite things about fall in Mexico.....the thousands of tiny yellow flowers that blanket the countryside