Broadcast, Ominous Clouds
Today everything seems ominous, even my dreams were dark in nature. I have a hard time accepting we will have a New World Order from now on and the powerful impact a twittering, orange man can have towards the minuscule men and women of the rural town of Coatecas Altas, Oaxaca.
I was grateful then, when somebody brought their cell phone into the communal bathrooms at Bonanza. I was washing my hair, thinking about al the products that I use when I take a shower and how they all seem less important in this scenario. How is it that we made this world look like upon what we believed we were entitled to? Glowing, silky skin? Rich, lathering scented foams? All these unnecessary things harm the bamboo branches that filter this precarious and thirsty soil. Is it the skyscrapers or the cement in our floors that allow us to negate these and other repercussions towards the Earth we inhabit?
I realize, after rinsing off hopelessness from wireless, scattered posts about the US presidential inauguration on my cell phone that so many uncertainties can be blown away by just concentrating on my people today, on us, on our near future, as long as the world we know, doesn't vanish from our sight. The show must go on.
After washing the dishes, I notice how, sustainable has become invisible, bearable, common. In a way, pondering about if this were to be my future, I guess I would accept it, yet, here's the giant BUT, only if the other world, the one I know, would be lost or gone.
There's something so seductive about the comfort we are used to. I think that it is not I who takes care of shoveling and emptying large rooms full of shit, of watering the orchard, of tending the animals, or looking after the worms that create compost. It seems to me, we have always lived this way, sustainable or not, someone always seems to take care of the shit we leave behind.
Once again, I become a bit uneasy as I go through our schedule. Today, we asked some of the women of the community in Coatecas Altas if we could visit their houses to try to grasp their real needs, aside the needs expressed by our client, Grupedsac.
It always amazes me, I am going through these experiences and becoming part of these projects. I feel so blessed but not in a Christian way. Getting to know my country in such a profound way is such a great opportunity. There is no reason or way I would get to be so lucky as to be invited into an unknown dimension. One that we have no clue about, because we have never been poor without been broken, because pride has always come before a desperate cry of need. We just can't fathom on our daily basis the lack of our usual meals, our food posts with exotic flavors; in short, we can't begin to imagine our bodies waking up at 4 am to get wood in order to heat water to take a bath.
Doña Graciela is the woman I will be spending my day with. She carefully explains to me, the house we're going to is not actually hers but from her husband's family (a common practice to most of the women that get married in rural environments). "Four families live under this roof", she tells me, as her small daughter complains because she is trying to be carried by her mother's arms, for the remaining way towards their house. They both came from the public clinic, where the little one was prescribed with Tempra to help her cope with the fever from the flu.
I ask her to do whatever it was she had planned for today. As we approach her house entrance, I ask her not to waste time on me, that I'd rather become a passive observer of her daily routine. She accepts.
Her house is part of a small conglomerate of improvised buildings that emulate a family neighborhood, all from her husband's side. We walk by a fresh, wooden bookshelf from one of her brother in law's recent carpentry work. Hens and roosters walk by creating a traffic on their own, some chicks are chirping, a huge pile of green pumpkins lie on the floor, the hanging limes of a tree become an irresistible yearning for a bunch of flying wasps.
She goes straight to the kitchen of one of the houses to grind the corn she boiled with calcium oxide the day before. We talk about circumstantial things, and I ask her how she met her husband. "He's older, way older. He and his brother came to study carpentry to the same place I was studying sewing and dressmaking. And that was it". She smiles.
I wanted to know how it was to live with the husband's family, so I asked her if all the women in his family were nice to her, or even if her mother-in-law was a good person to share a house with.
As she moved around the kitchen, making small balls of dough placing them on a large tortilla press, she multi-tasked on different parts of this complicated labour by feeding the firewood of the stove, or pushing her daughter to go and play outside with her cousins.
"No. It's not easy living with them. The money my husband makes is distributed amongst all the families. That is, my mother-in-law gets the money wired to her name and she distributes it to all of us. My mother just passed away a year ago and my father tries to help me too, for example, with the meds the doctor just asked me to give to my daughter. I seldom have cash and my husband is not here for half of the year, he goes away to Hermosillo to pick vegetables."
Two hens get into the house and try to peck at some corn grains that fell on the floor.
I look down at the leg of the table. It's really old and full of termite holes. I try to imagine four families crammed up on a small space like this, all sleeping on a petate by the floor. Why is poverty a thing we have come to accept as normal?
As we talk about tortillas, her daughter comes in the room and by accident, places her small finger inside the tortilla press as her mom compresses the corn dough down. Her scream takes us by surprise, but we laugh too. It was so unexpected yet no major harm was done. She carries and tries to console her daughter as much as she can, but her little eyes keep watering and sobbing for a long while.
It's time to leave so I thank her for putting up with my questions. She smiles and says it was OK.
As I walk to the high school, I notice my head is pounding again. One of the students wants to take to her home a small, abandoned puppy she found there. I tell her is OK if her parents are OK with it. To my surprise, they let her take the puppy back home. "Maybe we should call it 'Flea'", I say, as all her small, hairy body is swarming with fleas. Some students freak out, some others don't care and keep holding her on their lap.
Part of me feels out of sync with the world and appreciates it. As we go back to Bonanza, I just don't want to acknowledge what has already happened to the world. I'd rather have it that way and instead of spending some free time looking at the twitter posts or videos from the US presidential inauguration, we keep working with the students. Gathering observations, pouring them over at the tables. Distinguishing the pebbles from the marbles, the gold nuggets from the soil.
Now more than ever I think we have to do this. There is a sense of urgency that needs to be addressed, and understand this is important. More important than world order, more important than a "wicked problem" called Peña Nieto or Trump.
I ask her to do whatever it was she had planned for today. As we approach her house entrance, I ask her not to waste time on me, that I'd rather become a passive observer of her daily routine. She accepts.
Her house is part of a small conglomerate of improvised buildings that emulate a family neighborhood, all from her husband's side. We walk by a fresh, wooden bookshelf from one of her brother in law's recent carpentry work. Hens and roosters walk by creating a traffic on their own, some chicks are chirping, a huge pile of green pumpkins lie on the floor, the hanging limes of a tree become an irresistible yearning for a bunch of flying wasps.
She goes straight to the kitchen of one of the houses to grind the corn she boiled with calcium oxide the day before. We talk about circumstantial things, and I ask her how she met her husband. "He's older, way older. He and his brother came to study carpentry to the same place I was studying sewing and dressmaking. And that was it". She smiles.
I wanted to know how it was to live with the husband's family, so I asked her if all the women in his family were nice to her, or even if her mother-in-law was a good person to share a house with.
As she moved around the kitchen, making small balls of dough placing them on a large tortilla press, she multi-tasked on different parts of this complicated labour by feeding the firewood of the stove, or pushing her daughter to go and play outside with her cousins.
"No. It's not easy living with them. The money my husband makes is distributed amongst all the families. That is, my mother-in-law gets the money wired to her name and she distributes it to all of us. My mother just passed away a year ago and my father tries to help me too, for example, with the meds the doctor just asked me to give to my daughter. I seldom have cash and my husband is not here for half of the year, he goes away to Hermosillo to pick vegetables."
Two hens get into the house and try to peck at some corn grains that fell on the floor.
I look down at the leg of the table. It's really old and full of termite holes. I try to imagine four families crammed up on a small space like this, all sleeping on a petate by the floor. Why is poverty a thing we have come to accept as normal?
As we talk about tortillas, her daughter comes in the room and by accident, places her small finger inside the tortilla press as her mom compresses the corn dough down. Her scream takes us by surprise, but we laugh too. It was so unexpected yet no major harm was done. She carries and tries to console her daughter as much as she can, but her little eyes keep watering and sobbing for a long while.
It's time to leave so I thank her for putting up with my questions. She smiles and says it was OK.
As I walk to the high school, I notice my head is pounding again. One of the students wants to take to her home a small, abandoned puppy she found there. I tell her is OK if her parents are OK with it. To my surprise, they let her take the puppy back home. "Maybe we should call it 'Flea'", I say, as all her small, hairy body is swarming with fleas. Some students freak out, some others don't care and keep holding her on their lap.
Part of me feels out of sync with the world and appreciates it. As we go back to Bonanza, I just don't want to acknowledge what has already happened to the world. I'd rather have it that way and instead of spending some free time looking at the twitter posts or videos from the US presidential inauguration, we keep working with the students. Gathering observations, pouring them over at the tables. Distinguishing the pebbles from the marbles, the gold nuggets from the soil.
Now more than ever I think we have to do this. There is a sense of urgency that needs to be addressed, and understand this is important. More important than world order, more important than a "wicked problem" called Peña Nieto or Trump.
Comments
Post a Comment