así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

i went to guatemala for a vacation at the end of february and here are the resulting photos:

http://www.zooomr.com/photos/yoda784/sets/44643/

you´ll have to copy and paste because i don´t know how to make it a link.

Apparently all I needed to do to make the water come on was to write a blog about it.  The water came on this morning at around 6 am so I don´t have to worry anxiously if I´m going to run out of water mid-shower.  Despite the inconvenience of not necessarily knowing if we will have water, I think it´s pretty cool that I can still go and visit the site where the water comes from.  I mean, I realize, having a well, that I can also do this at home, but so many people can´t.  Anyone who has city water…where does the water come from?

Someone asked why it was that I got pink highlights in the first place.  I have a friend in beauty school here and she needs people to practice on.  She cut  my hair at the beginning of the year and the pinkness and the braid are the latest addition.  I´ve also gotten a pedicure from her…all for free

I´ve changed the title of the blog…it took me a long while to figure out how to do so, otherwise I would have changed it awhile ago.  When I first named it ´así es´, I didn´t fully understand the meaning of the phrase.  So now the title means, ¨this is how it is… from my point of view, pues¨ as opposed to the more arrogant ¨this is how it is.¨  Sorry that it was so haughty for such a long time.

the green in the forefront is watered on a regular basis. the women are a part of the garden group in zacango.

I think we’re just about out of water. We have city water in our house, which means we don’t have to pay for it. The older houses in town have city water, but someone (I assume the government) is refusing to put taps in the newer houses that are built because there is so little water available. People who don’t have taps need to buy water. We have a tap that empties into a small cistern, from which we pump water up onto the cistern on the roof. The water in our house then, is all gravity fed (besides the initial pump up).

The city water, however, has not come for over a week now. It usually flows pretty early in the morning and if we don’t pump water up to the roof or turn off the tap, the ground cistern will overflow. Our ground cistern is pretty small. People often build fairly large ground cisterns so they don’t have to worry about overflow. In our last house we had a huge, underground cistern and we were never lacking for water. Now we’re living more like most people we work with. That’s not true. Since we don’t have to pay for water or walk two hours every day in order to get 80L of water, we’re still a far cry from the people in the communities. But we do pay even more attention to the amount of water we use.

We shower in a large tub/bucket thing and then use the water that we showered with to flush the toilet. It turns out that you can flush a toilet just by pouring water into the bowl. Our setup is as follows: we stand in our shower water (sort of like an extra long bath for the feet) in the big bucket. After the shower, we pour the water (or as much water will fit) into a pail that is beside the toilet. After we use the toilet, about a half a pailful of water will flush everything down. We also have a bowl in the sink and the water that we use to wash our hands, we add to the pail as well. We also use our shower water to water our houseplants.

There’s a very interesting book by Brad Lancaster titled, “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” that’s got all kinds of very practical and well-explained ideas on how to use the water that we get for free (rain) more efficiently.

It was impossible for me to grasp how precious water is while living in the US. Granted, I grew up in Oregon, where we’re often more concerned about flooding than droughts. But the amount of water available for free or a at a very low cost in the US is amazing. And not only is it available for very cheap, it’s also all drinkable. That is amazing. We use water that we could be drinking to water our crops and flush our toilets with. And we waste untold amounts. I heard all this information while living in the States, but it never sunk in. Well, of course we always have water, why wouldn’t we? The water that comes out of the tap, well, yes, it’s drinkable. And why shouldn’t it be?

Water that is not clean enough for drinking can be used for pretty much every other necessary water use. Bathing, washing dishes, watering plants, washing cars, etc. Water that has already been used to flush the toilet is no longer usable for such things. Water that has a lot of fat or grease in it is also not useful. Water that has dish soap in it actually can be very helpful for soil. It helps the soil to absorb water more easily. Water with a small amount of dish soap sprayed on plants can help with pest problems.

Drinking water, and water in general, is a precious, precious resource that we don’t appreciate to its fullest.

On a completely different note, I have pink highlights in my hair. I, who have never dyed my hair, nor had any sort of interesting cut, have pink things in my hair. And a ratail kind of braid.

my pink hairs

It never fails…the things I should arrive at on time, I decide that I should integrate myself into the culture a bit more and arrive late….thus arriving after the event has passed. Or, the opposite happens and I feel that the event is probably something I should be on time for and, in fact, I arrive an hour before everyone else. Today I went to a roof raising party and when I arrived there was no one there other than the owner of the house, as they had already finished the roof raising and everyone else had gone home. She very kindly fed me part of the two goats they killed for the party. Apparently one goat feeds ten hungry men.

I watch movie trailers for entertainment here. Seeing as the movies from the black market are often scratched and there is often an “unknown error” that causes the movie to quit playing, my life is filled with half-seen movies and clips of the best parts of movies. I shouldn´t talk down about all black market movies…a good number do actually work properly. And I delight in the fact that I can buy five fairly new movies for ten dollars.

Mangos are coming into season, so mostly I eat mangos, cabbage, granola and, at the moment, all things soy. Why cabbage, you might ask…I have no idea. I crave cabbage with vinegar, salt and pepper. I´m going to teach a class this coming week on how to use soy beans so for the past week or so I´ve mostly made things that involve soy. Pudding, cake, stir fry, fritters, etc. It is an amazing bean. I´m not convinced we should promote here anymore, but I did last year, so now people want to know what to do with it.

People keep giving us cheese that they´ve made. We cannot keep up with the amounts we´re given. People are so incredibly generous. Someone gave me seeds the other day that someone had given her and she was so excited to give some to me. She also gave me a bunch of herbs and some radishes that she had just bought. The seeds are probably one of the weirdest things I´ve ever eaten. I find them somewhat addicting, though Merideth thinks they have no flavor.  If you eat a handful and wait a minute or so, you start to salivate profusely and then, if you drink water, the water tastes sugared. It´s bizarre. Before you eat the seeds, the water tastes normal, afterward, sugared. Weird. I have no clue what kind of seeds they are.  Additionally, I feel that I have eaten a good number of these seeds, yet the bowl is still apparently as full as it was when I first poured the seeds in.

has anyone ever had success with making tofu using lemon juice or vinegar as a coagulant?

it’s getting hotter. i can now put on shorts and a t-shirt in the morning and not have to put another layer on top.

i have a $5 Zimbabwean note. amazing, seeing as now they’re printing $100 trillion notes. and businesses are accepting currencies from other countries. nuts.

why are there always so many questions in development? should there be this amount of questions in normal daily life too? normal daily life being defined as your home environment…

sigh. off to chiaucingo.

I’ve been reading a book called, “The Journey of Desire,” by John Eldredge. It’s made me think a lot and it’s also gotten me rather excited. So I’m going to cut and paste some of my journal entries from the past week into this and I would welcome comments and responses.

I think I should also read “The Divine Conspiracy,” by Dallas Willard. Eldredge quotes from him a lot. This being one of the quotes:

To one group of his day, who believed that “physical death” was the cessation of the individual’s existence, Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38). His meaning was that those who love and are loved by God are not allowed to cease to exist, because they are God’s treasures. He delights in them and intends to hold onto them. He has even prepared for them an individualized eternal work in his vast universe.

The life we now have as the persons we now are will continue in the universe in which we now exist.

George MacDonald: I think we shall be able to pass into and through each other’s very souls as we please, knowing each other’s thought and being, along with our own, and so being like God.

That’s awesome! Eldredge then goes on to describe heaven as being like a Jewish wedding party. The rugs are rolled back, there’s tons of food and everyone’s dancing. There will be so many people to see and talk to and we have all the time in the world to do it. I feel like now, at parties, I really only talk about superficial stuff with people in part because there are so many people to see and talk to that I don’t want to take the time to just talk to one or two people about something more in depth or real because then I won’t get to talk to anyone else at all.

Then Eldredge uses the Yeats quote again…the one that I think I’m going to put on my wall:

And the people came together
and the people came to dance
and they danced like a wave upon the sea.

So what if heaven is all about doing work that you love to do, in an incredibly beautiful place where people are open with each other, where there is no shame or grief or rejection and you get to be with people you love? I think sort of one of those collective artists’ studios where there are a whole bunch of people working and everyone has their own space that they can do whatever they want with. But in heaven, you wouldn’t have to worry about selling your art to have money to eat or a place to sleep because there would be enough food. And there would be places to sleep and you wouldn’t have to worry about it.

If you loved to cook and garden…that’s what you would do. If you loved to lead exercise classes…that’s what you would do. What if you loved to lead exercise classes for disabled people? And there are no disabled people in heaven? I suppose that would be just as joyous for that simple fact—there are no disabled people in heaven. What about people who love nursing? Or those jobs that are sort of ‘fixing’ jobs, like plumbing or doctoring or such things? They won’t be needed, will they? What will they do? Maybe it is that whatever your hobbies are that you can’t get enough of in your free time, that will be your work in heaven. Because heaven without anything to do sounds pretty boring to me.

So those are the journal entries…let me know what you think…

Lollipop and Creme Puff

I had to follow my childhood tradition of naming the pets after foods. Lolli and Puff for short. They´re only about five weeks old and cried constantly for the first two days away from their mother, but they seemed to have adjusted fairly well. Both kittens are pretty adorable and are rather funny to watch play together.

i´ve just gotten back from sweating buckets in Nicaragua and am sitting in the freezing Mexico City office feeling sleepy and waiting for my bus this evening to go back to Olinalá. we had a meso-america mcc retreat for the last four days in Managua, Nicaragua. i´d never been to Nicaragua and, seeing as i didn´t see much of the country, it´s mostly just another stamp in the passport. that´s not completely true. we went on a boat ride on Lake Nicaragua, walked about a tourist town for about a half hour, went to a market, a view point and an exhibition on Sandino (of whom the Sandanistas are named after). the rest of the time was spent in meetings and socializing amongst the other mccers, which was utterly delightful. well, the socializing was delightful. the meetings were good in a very different way.

the retreat focused on spiritual development. the leaders were two people from one of our (Mexico´s) partner organizations who specialize in bringing together people from different religions, mainly Protestant, Catholic and Mayan, in a safe setting where people can talk about their beliefs. mccers often have a difficult time worshiping in foreign cultures. i rarely go to church in Olinalá because i have a really difficult time understanding the priest, the singing is not what i am generally accustomed to and the images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and all the other saints are very distracting to me. so i mostly just read books about spiritual things and sing hymns to myself.

i found a number of the exercises that we did very interesting and fairly helpful. we did a lot of small group work in addition to self-reflection exercises. there were a number of exercises that we did that took me out of my normal comfort zone, such as staring at other people directly in the eyes. there were two circles, one inside the other, and the circles stood facing each other. we then had to look at the person directly across from us in the eyes for about thirty seconds to a minute without saying anything. this is a very intimate and rather awkward thing to do with people you don´t know very well. or even with people you do know well. it gets easier the more people you do it with.

we had a hymn sing (claro) and a talent show, both of which were wonderful. i greatly miss both four-part harmony and humor that i can understand. the Guatemala team had two impressive entries in the talent show. the first was a retelling of the Christmas story, told in Spanish and then retold, through a helpful internet translation website, in English. hilarious. the second entry was a song written by the Guat team about their team, with a very catchy chorus of, ¨MCC will set you free. MCC is where you want to be.¨ it was great and, of course, very true. caley (mexico salter) captured the entire thing on video, which will hopefully be available for viewing in the relatively near future.

i had not particularly been looking forward to the retreat, for some odd reason. generally i jump at the chance to visit other countries. i was pleasantly surprised on a variety of levels by the retreat. it was particularly nice to visit with other mccers that, though in different countries and cultures, are doing similar work and are in similar situations (in terms of dealing with things such as loneliness, boredom, questioning development work and what we´re doing in general). plus, i got to play some ultimate frisbee and listen to some amazing singing voices. how could that combination have resulted in anything but delightfulness?

(i am writing on my computer so i don’t have accent marks…i apologize in advance).

Dia de los Muertos was celebrated this past weekend with great enthusiasm.  People put up offering tables piled high with food and drinks and flowers in order that all loved ones that have died can return and have enough food for the following year.  When you’re walking down the street, you see trails of marigold petals leading into houses which are meant to lead the dead to where the tables are.

Although these days are very close to Halloween (Dia de los Muertos is the 1st of Nov but it’s often celebrated the day after as well), they are not related, as far as I know.  I feel like Halloween is mostly about dressing up and getting candy, but Dia de los Muertos is much more about the memories of your loved ones.  There was a dance (of course) and all of my friends came back from university and it was great fun in general.

This link, from the BBC, is great.  We hear the music that’s playing in the first half of the clip ALL the time.  The costumes that people are wearing are also very common, as is the bouncy dance that people are doing.  The second half of the link shows more of what goes on in houses here….the flowers, the food and drinks that are put out as offerings.  

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7705462.stm

Enjoy

i´m sick.  i´ve got a nasty cough and my head feels kind of woozy and heavy.  yesterday for breakfast i ate the three g´s: grapefruit, granola and garlic.  grapefruit for the vit C, granola so i wouldn´t get hungry in twenty mins and the garlic for my cold.  i slice or chop the raw garlic and mix it in with the cream cheese that i mangaged to (somehow) make while attempting to make yogurt, and put it on top of bread.  last night i also mixed in a bunch of herbs that merideth had dried as well.  i figured if the cough drops i was sucking on had thyme and rosemary in them, i might as well increase my dosage.

i´ve gone out to communities (xitapontla on monday, teticic and tlanicingo on tuesday and chiaucingo yesterday), but i come back extremely tired and coughing, so i´m not going to nuevo paraiso (new paradise) today, though merideth is.  we partnered with a government organization that assists indigenous communities in a variety of things.  they came to us in july and asked if we would be able to help out with two communities that are beginning a project with community gardens and small animal livestock (there´s another name for that, but i can´t remember at the moment what it is) to increase their incomes.  each community split into two groups, gardens and goats, and then we went to the communities and gave a talk on what our support could be, if they wanted it.  the groups decided that they did, so the goat group worked with manuel, one of my co-workers, and the garden group worked with merideth and i.

we did a two-day cram session, of which went fairly well, but we learned a bunch of stuff and will change stuff (it´s all a process, right?) and so we´ve been doing follow-up this past week and the nuevo paraiso group asked us to come back and give a talk on how to build a worm bed.  so merideth is going to do that today.  and i´m going to stay home and drink tea made from bouganvillia leaves (it´s supposed to be good for colds) and read books on how to do community development work better and how to get rid of pests naturally.

so.  i´m going to go do that.