4 days, 4 notes: The Ocean

Yesterday we watched a man get swept to sea. We watched him get saved by the lifeguards. We watched him, after his recovery, sink to the ground with his head in his hands  The same day we saw a little girl, neglected, almost get taken to sea by a freak surge. 

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When I went to the beach, I had ideas of spending time contemplating and relaxing, maybe writing a little. I did do a lot of contemplating and relaxing, but the idea of writing anything in the face of the sea, of time eternal, seems pointless. Bearing witness to the brutal forces of nature renders my desire to record my thoughts as feeble and trivial.

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Puerto Escondido is not a place where you can swim. Not at all. The waves are the largest I've seen in my life. Surfers, and the lifeguards that back them up on jet-skis to keep them from getting swallowed up by the sea, look like specks riding the waves. A surfer standing by told us he had been surfing for five years and he's still not ready for the waves at Puerto.

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A man enters the restaurant smiling gleefully. He and the hostess flirt, her giggles rubbed out by the pounding of the surf. The waterline separates life and death  Puffer fish and sea snakes thrown ashore during the high tide languish and suffer in the hot sun. 

Staying at the Hotel Camarena

We're going to the beach! When we asked Ruth for economical suggestions for a hotel, she jokingly told us to stay at the Hotel Camarena. Camarena however is a spanish portmanteau of the words cama (bed) and arena (sand). I suppose the beach is the most economical place to sleep. But we ignored her advice and we'll actually  be staying at a little hotel on the beach called Hotel Rockaway.

Today was our last day of classes. Tomorrow morning we'll be heading out to Puerto Escondido to spend a few days on the beach. Once we return to Oaxaca, we'll have just a handful of days before we catch our flight home. We return on the 20th, a week from this Saturday. We're both homesick and so excited to see everyone!

Ruth

Well, this is a post I've been meaning to write for awhile. Many folks back home have expressed curiosity about our host mother and host family in general. I was hesitant to write too much until I felt like I understood enough about them.

At the beginning there definitely was a language barrier, but slowly, ever so slowly we began to be able to understand Ruth's stories and even to tell her our own. Now I can say that I feel like I understand 95% of what she says. Of course, we speak with her at every meal.

Any time we have a question Ruth has great advice for us: what the best bus routes are, where to go to buy this or that, what food or vendors we should avoid, how much things should cost, what places are worth visiting. She points out our Spanish errors, teaches us new words and idioms. She's also prone to giving us plenty of unsolicited advice (see Viva los Homebodies). She definitely takes the mother role to heart.

Ruth, our host mother and her mother. Though we see her mother almost daily, she was only ever introduced to us as "my mother", so we just call her 'señora'.

If I'm doing my math right Ruth is in her mid to late fifties. She has told us that she started working in an office of the department of transportation when she was 14. She says this was in an unofficial capacity until she turned 16 and could legally work there (I just said ok and kept listening). It's still not totally clear to me what she did, but I think she was a dispatcher (we had this conversation early on). Whatever she did gave her a deathly fear of cars, roads and driving (she's never had a license and has never driven).

So she stayed in that job for 30 years until she qualified for a pension. By then she had 2 kids, Chantal and Luis Alberto. At the time they were in their early teens. Around the same time she separated from her husband and was sitting around going nuts at home, until one of her friends suggested she keep students. So she found an agency and has been hosting students for 9 years now. She had to learn to cook (something she never had time for when she worked). So she took some cooking courses and she's a great cook now. In fact she still takes courses occasionally when she has time.

Ruth and Sid

She has a lot of great stories about her hosting experiences. We got her on tape telling a few. We'll share them when we get home. I feel like listening to her will tell a lot more about her than I can say in a blog post. It's hard to condense someone's identity into words. All I can say is Ruth is kind, indirect, joyful, pushy, witty, anxious, concerned, curious, loves to tell stories, loves to learn, doesn't speak english but knows many unexpected words, like mop and hairspray. She's very fashionable. She likes having nice things but not to the extent of being shallow. She stays on top of the news and always has some event to discuss with us. She loves her dog, Sid. She plays hide-and-seek with him. She's short, maybe not even 5'. I don't know what else to say. She's our Mexican momma.

Cleanliness is next to...god what is that smell?

Oaxaca is a fairly modern city and offers everything you could expect to find in a city of its size in the US. Oaxaca state however is the 2nd poorest of Mexico's 31 states. I'm not sure how much this dictates its water quality in comparison to the water quality of other places in Mexico. I just don't have enough experience with the rest of Mexico to speak with any authority.

However after being in Oaxaca for 3 months I feel I can speak about its water quality generally. First of all the adage to not drink the water is not any sort of exageration. I don't even know one Mexican who drinks the water. There is a different distribution system of drinking water here. There are water trucks that deliver water in 5 gallon containers to homes and in bulk to businesses and public buildings. Our host mother Ruth just texts the water guy whenever we're running low on water.

The whole problem with the water is the pipes. At the water plants here they treat water to similar standards as we have in the US. The thing is, Mexicans had indoor plumbing and large public waterworks when we were all still using outhouses in the US. However, the pipes have not been updated very much. They're old. They leak. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if they didn't run alongside sewage lines (which also leak) and under streets that accept chemicals and oil from the roadways. So everything else in the groundwater, gets into the clean water. People that actually live right beside water treatment facilites drink the water, because it's fine. It hasn't been contaminated yet.

The rest have to buy their drinking water from another source. What really sucks though is that, unless you have an in-line water filtration system in your home, you have to use the contaminated water for washing your hands, washing your clothes and showering. Sometimes we see the film of roadway oil on the top of the toilet water after it's been flushed. So we're washing our clothes in water that could contain oil, chemicals, sewage, etc. What we really don't enjoy thinking about and talking about is that the same water is coming from the showerhead. Luckily I haven't noticed any residues on my body after showering, but I have once smelled sewage strongly while I was showering. Maybe it was sewer gas escaping the trap. Either way it grossed me out so much.

Long story short, we can't wait to get home and shower in clean, even drinkable, water. Moral of the story: thank your lucky stars we backwards Americans didn't start installing large-scale public plumbing until the 19th and 20th centuries.

I make my living on the avenue of the dead

Not really, but some people do.

David and I at Teotihuacan, the 1000 year old ruins outside Mexico City. We were on top of the pyramid of the moon. Behind us is the 10-story pyramid of the sun and the avenue of the dead. 

This past week leading up to Easter is called Semana Santa (Holy Week) in the spanish-speaking catholic world. The week and its activities and celebrations are actually much more important than Easter day itself, which has no celebrations, just the regular Easter Mass. Many people get the week off from school and work. Many go to the beach. We instead went for a tour through the heart of Mexico, visiting Puebla, the Great Pyramid at Cholula, Mexico City and Teotihuacan (above and below).

Haggling with some folks who actually do make their living on the avenue of the dead.

Supposedly this was a good week to travel, as our host mother Ruth told us that the major cities would be very quiet due to everyone vacationing at the beach. Mexico City has 20 million people, so after visiting there during Semana Santa I can only say I can't imagine how busy it is normally.

The National Cathedral on Mexico City's main plaza

View from the terrace of our hostel in Mexico City.

 Because of our travels we actually missed the majority of the Semana Santa activities in Oaxaca (which Oaxaca is famous for). Apparently all of the churches put up elaborate alters to saints or to a specific rendition of the virgin. Visitors file in and out of the many churches (it seems there is one on every corner) to view the alters. Then Saturday there was something called the Procesión de Silencio, where the alters are carried through the streets in silence. Unfortunately we missed it all, but we were here to witness the huge swelling in the number of tourists who began arriving the Sunday preceding Easter. The Zocalo was packed. 

I'd like to say more and put up some more pictures from the trip but we also want to save some things to show people when we get home! Which is two weeks from Saturday! See you all soon!

David doing in a suero (beer with lime juice and spices)

Murals around Oaxaca