Tag Archives: puerto escondido

Goal #1 for 2015: Have a Convivio (not to be confused with a fiesta)

4 Jan

As a child-free adult in the U.S., I used to throw parties at my house on a regular basis. In part, it was an excuse to get the whole house clean for at least a few hours. It was a reason to cook up some food to share- a double batch of 3 or 4 little dishes or casseroles, and when that ran out, that was that. It was an excuse to go check out the beers on clearance at Scheller’s liquor store or try out a new cocktail recipe. And most of all, it was a reason to get together with friends, relax and be silly. Sometimes my roommates and I would throw theme-parties or dress-up parties- like the 80s party, the drag party, the princess party, zombie prom, fancy cocktail hour, to name a few. Sometimes we called it a celebration of the season- the “time to take the plastic off the windows for spring” party or the “summer solstice / come sweat your pants off” party or the “we turned the heat up two degrees for you guys” party. Sometimes we had big potlucks, occasionally with a regional theme- Slavic dishes, or South American. Sometimes it had just been a few months since I’d had a party and I needed to clean my house and go on a cooking spree. There was usually dancing, and good conversation, and cards and / or dice and potentially other games (the occasional chess board, or sometimes a drinking game).

Having a party was medicinal for my soul, despite all the prep work and all the clean-up afterwards (maybe that was good for me, too, somehow). I loved it when lots of folks would stay the night (too drunk to drive) and I’d wake up and make chilaquiles or some other hangover food and strong coffee. These parties, whether there were 7 people or 47 popping in and out of the house, were a big piece of joy in my life. They are one of the things that I miss the most about my life in the U.S., and my life before Lucia.

In our 2 and a half years here so far, I’ve neither been to nor had a party anything like this. Not to say that people don’t party. In fact, parties here are supposedly more frequent than in any other Latin American country (or so my Spanish book said back in university). There are parties for all things Catholic, like you could never imagine. There’s the day for the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of Juquila, the Virgin of who-knows-what-else, even though it’s all the same Mary essentially. There are parties for a saint that a neighborhood is named after. Even in the barrio de Jesus (the neighborhood named after Jesus), they figured out how to make it another day of celebration in early January by calling it “Tata Chu,” the chatina (regional indigenous language) way of saying “heart of Jesus.” There are parties to celebrate the town (in Puerto Escondido there’s a whole month’s worth of activities and festivities to celebrate in November), parties for political reasons, parties to celebrate Mexico (Flag Day, Independence Day, the start of the Revolution, and much more), not to mention other events and private parties. So there is plenty of celebration happening here; that can’t be disputed.

Celebrations here, for me, however, are not places to let loose and be silly and chat with lots of folks. It is fine for men (and sometimes women) to get drunk, so maybe that’s fun for them. And some people manage to let loose by dancing with a million people all night long, and they certainly look like they’re having fun. But it does not give me the kind of social interaction I crave from parties. Maybe it’s just because I’m a foreigner, but there never seems to be any good conversation happening if you are not magically sitting at a table with interesting folks you already like or know. People don’t just walk around and mingle. The only way to get up and do anything is to dance, so hopefully you like the music. There are definitely no games, unless it’s a kid party (and then it’s mostly just breaking open piñatas). As a guest at parties, I always feel like I’m just sitting awkwardly at the table waiting to be served, staring at strangers and getting stared at. 

Parties here are (by my standards) outrageously large and lavish affairs that I never, ever want to try to produce. We were just at a wedding, for instance, where we didn’t even know the bride or groom. Conan is good friends with the padrinos of the wedding, which is how we got invited. There were hundreds of people there, before other random acquaintances started showing up for the night time dancing, and that was a “private” party. Even a “small” private party requires either hired help or lots of family members with spare time. The hosts are constantly running around refilling drinks, serving this, serving that, handing out the first round of party favors, cutting the cake, etc. etc. etc. There never seems to be a moment for them to sit with their guests, relax, chat, enjoy the party that they’re throwing.

Lucia and her abuela at the wedding. Notice on the table there are pots of fresh flowers for people to take home,

Lucia and her abuela at the wedding. Notice on the table there are pots of fresh flowers for people to take home and napkin holder things with the bride and groom’s names on them. In the background you can see their wedding cake, which is about 7 or 8 large cakes. 

Here you can see

Here you can see the barbie dolls in wedding dresses- another gift for the guests. Of course, people help pay for and do the work on these lavish parties, but still! It’s madness to me. 

Then there are public parties, something that’s produced every year for the whole town, but whose host changes yearly. This year we went to the celebration of the birth of Jesus (aka Christmas for serious Catholics) which our good friend Argelia’s family was hosting. When Arge was younger and suffering from lots of respiratory problems, aside from going to the doctor and also getting lots of home remedies, her mother made a promise to the Virgin that if Arge got better they would someday host this party (welcome to Mexican Catholicism). Something like this requires years of savings and months of preparation.

At this particular celebration, over the course of two days there are hundreds of people in and out of the house, people that expect certain things- a dish of pozole (a kind of chicken and pork and corn soup) on the 23rd, tamales for brunch on the 24th, traditional ponche (fruit and cinnamon and cane sugar based punch, served warm)- the evening of the 24th, and much more. There are piñatas and other treats for the kids. There are multiple bands. Kids come and recite poetry about the birth of Jesus. There’s a play-like event related to the birth. There are multiple long masses at the church and long processions back up to the house. A week later there is more celebrating, taking the fake baby Jesus to the host family for the next year. “Please, let’s never throw a party like this,” I told Conan after we only got to talk to Arge for approximately 2 minutes.

But I do desperately want a party- Kentucky-style, like in all those Old Louisville apartments I had, before we were parents. What I want is called a “convivio” here, a get-together (because geez, you wouldn’t want people expecting that giant kind of party). Our wedding, compared to most weddings around here, was a tiny convivio, although we invited 100 people. What I want is way smaller than our wedding. I want maybe 10 people, 20 at the most, to stop by our house, have a drink, play some cards, chat. I want to cook for people, but not have the food be elaborate nor be the main attraction. I want to play different kinds of music, so people feel like dancing, perhaps. I want to make a cocktail for someone. I want a reason for our whole house to be clean at once (instead of our usual, one room at a time). I want to sit out on the porch and laugh in good company. Maybe we can bust out the cards, too. I know it won’t be the same as when we were single folks in Kentucky. We’re not in Kentucky, we’re not single, and we’re not even the same as we used to be. But we have some friends here and some lovely acquaintances that we could potentially nurture into friendships. And we’re still fun (at least if I can stay awake)! And I’ve decided to make this a priority, a goal for this budding new year. Bringing this type of joy back into my life is surely a valid resolution. Even if it only happens once this year (twice would be better, though), I will have a get-together. Although it might not be the raging blast that some of our parties were in my early twenties, it’ll certainly be better than a resolution to lose weight!

Happy New Year! May you find joy in many little moments throughout every day!

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“Plans? What Plans?”

7 Dec

This is what my mom said to show me how “go with the flow” she was going to be on this trip. It’s all fun and games until groups are blocking the airport when you’re supposed to leave, though. Then we can talk about the importance of not making plans as a resident of Oaxaca (unless you’re prepared to constantly have them derailed).

A year ago, our house was “almost finished,” which was an extremely loose definition. Here people who aren’t rich build something to put a roof over their head and then slowly improve it over the course of their lives. In the U.S. you just make mortgage payments; here you make sacrifices and you wait patiently and keep working, and you still might or might not have a nice house before you die (but there’s no mortgage payment, at least). I was only vaguely aware of this, in that way where you’ve noticed a phenomenon but not yet applied it, when we made a plan for Lucia and me coming down to Puerto to “finish the house” last December.

Plans, like owning a house, are also a horse of a different color down here. Many people don’t bother to try to make life plans, because what’s the point? Life is so blatantly not in your control. Not that I believe it’s in your control in the U.S., either, but many things there are indeed much more predictable and reliable than things here.

Our plans to finish the house in a couple of weeks quickly got reduced to “just get the bathroom up and running and then we’ll move our tent from your aunt’s house to our house.” That was after we had changed our plan of me just cooking food in Juquila and taking it down to Puerto and spending a couple of days a week there. As soon as we got here it was obvious that much more help than that was needed; my presence and domestic help just a couple days a week was not going to cut it. Another nice-sounding, well-intentioned plan down the drain- welcome back to Oaxaca, Julia.
My to-do list here is a cross between a cruel joke and my saving grace. It’s helpful and harmful all at once. Without it I’d go crazy, but I know it will never, ever all get done (and daily, probably not even half of it happens). For instance, flu shots have been on my list of things to do for a solid month now, and it still hasn’t happened. Not that I haven’t tried. But all the students at the university were renewing their insurance in November, causing day-long lines in the Preventative Medicine office, so I waited for that to calm down. Then, of course, they were out of the vaccine. So I wait and cross my fingers. I keep multiple lists on paper (the long-term to-do, this week’s necessities, to-do before work today, etc.), so that these dozens of pending to-dos are not all being juggled in my head, stressing me out constantly.

When my mom and Dee were visiting, for the first couple of days, I had that illusion (delusion?) again that you can control your life. We made plans to eat lunch in x restaurant, for example, and then we carried out those plans. We made plans like, “we’ll go swimming in the hotel pool, then take showers, then go for a walk,” and sure enough, we were able to fulfill these plans. Granted, much of this illusion of control was due to money (my mom and Dee’s money, not ours, that allowed us to make those kinds of easy plans). If I had enough money a much larger portion of my plans could happen in a timely manner, too. Like I could probably find a private doctor to give us all the flu shot and go ahead and cross it off my list (although I’d still have to find out who- vaccines are mostly reserved for public institutions, who never have enough, probably because some of it goes to the private sector). But some of the lack of control is also just a cultural difference.

I witnessed this culture clash in action the day my mother-in-law came into town. She had told me she was going to cook some food and bring it down and arrive during my lunch break so we could eat together (my lunch break is about 2 and 1/2 hours long). It sounded like a really great plan. But last time she planned to arrive during my lunch break there was some protest happening with people blocking the road from Rio Grande to here, so she was delayed by having to get out of the van and walk a ways before finding another van for the rest of the route. People around here (my beloved mother in law included) are not famous for their punctuality to begin with, and when you add in all these other common possibilities for delays and cancellations, it’s almost more reliable to count on someone showing up late or not at all than on plans happening as scheduled.

Sure enough, when Conan came to get me on my lunch break his mom was just leaving Rio Grande, a 40-60 minute trip, depending on the circumstances. And even once she arrived, she had other plans and things to do before arriving at the hotel to eat with us- dropping off a chicken at her sister’s house, talk of going to buy some disposable plates, etc. Meanwhile, the gringo faction had made new plans, deciding that we would go to a restaurant instead, and have Paulina’s food for dinner. The logic was that then I could potentially start eating even if Paulina arrived very late, so I had time to eat before returning to work. This logical plan, however, was not destined to be, as is so often the case once there are plans involving more than one person (every single day of the week). There were a couple irritated phone calls between Conan and I, being the go-betweens between my mother, who didn’t know why we were still waiting for Paulina when we’d already changed the plans to accommodate the time changes happening, and Paulina, who absolutely wouldn’t hear of us going to a restaurant when she was bringing delicious home-cooked food. So the minutes of my lunch break ticked away, and once Paulina arrived it was not the leisurely, pleasant lunch it was planned to be- partially because I was running out of time, and partially because I think everyone except Lucia was then irritated and out of sorts. Welcome to Oaxaca, where plans are subject to change 15 times before anything happens.

So I can see why people don’t bother making plans. It’s excessively frustrating. Here you can only count on not being able to count on things. There are the unexpected things that come up, like the airport being blockaded by protesters the day my mom was supposed to fly out (they let passengers in anyway, but we weren’t sure it would happen until we got there). Then there are expected “unexpected” things, like teachers being on strike (which is practically constant here in Oaxaca). Then there’s the institutional lack of commitment. Like when there’s some big construction or remodeling happening, for example, they don’t give an estimated completion date until it’s finished. Most businesses don’t post their hours of operation anywhere, because who wants to be held accountable for that strict of a schedule? The doctor at my insurance company still won’t even give me an official due date on my pregnancy, despite being in my third trimester. (Try planning your students’ exam dates when you’re not sure when your maternity leave actually starts!) It’s a constant adventure.

A year into our move to Puerto, our house is 100 million times more livable than it was (finished, though, it is not). And I’ve accepted that it’ll probably never actually be finished, but hopefully will continue improving through the years. I haven’t lost all hope of being able to make and carry out plans, but I’ve learned to take my own plans and ambitions with a big old grain of salt, a raised eyebrow, and a shrug-it-off-and-have-a-beer attitude, at least on a good day, if not every day. Maybe you’ll come visit and experience it for yourself- just leave your plans at the airport, please.

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The Science of Magic (A Visit to the Partera)

23 Nov

I didn’t really want to go to this particular midwife (partera), because of our friend Chica’s telling us about the woman’s uncanny ability to accurately predict a baby’s sex. Conan and I are into surprises. We didn’t find out Lucia’s sex and we planned the same exciting ignorance with this current creature in my belly. But said creature was killing me with his/her positioning and movement and I was desperate for a cure. I was on my second day of come-and-go pain that in moments was so bad I had trouble walking and talking normally.

I’d already been to the doctor to rule out an exploding appendix or other non-baby-caused problems. As soon as I lay down in the office, late that evening of day one of pain, I’d felt some very hard appendage (foot? elbow? I don’t know) move up even further to the top of my giant belly and push out so far it protruded, like a cruel little taunt. The doctor pressed on it and I almost screamed. I went ahead and diagnosed myself with Mean Acrobatic Baby Syndrome. The doctor told me to come back the next day for an ultrasound to confirm that the pain was being caused by baby’s crappy positioning (he called it “compound presentation,” but whatever). “So, the point of the ultrasound is just to tell me that yes, this creature is in a bad position. It won’t actually help anything. Correct?” I asked. He had to admit that was the case. “And how about if I just go see a midwife, then, and get her to correct the positioning?” I suggested, although I’d really already decided by then that that was my plan, regardless. The doctor agreed that this was a reasonable thing to do, because here in Mexico even doctors respect midwives’ knowledge and abilities for the most part. 

Part of what midwives do down here is give massage- therapeutic massage, not a nice little relaxing massage. If you’ve had a miscarriage, you’re likely to go to a midwife to get a massage that’s supposed to help make sure the miscarriage is complete. If you want to get pregnant and haven’t been able to, they give massage to help with that. Some give massages related to other problems besides pregnancy. They are often skilled herbalists as well. And of course, being midwives, they assist in giving birth.

Chica led us (in the car) down a rocky dirt path to the midwife’s house. Chica is related to her, somehow or other, addressing her as “Tia” (Aunt), which here can also be a second or third cousin or any manner of other connection via blood and marriage. The midwife is 95 years old and retired now. At her request, Conan got some plastic chairs out of her second room, and we sat out on her porch to chat. She told us a bit about her life as a midwife, which she had been her entire adult life. Then she told us “something you won’t believe.” She said she had lost all of her teeth and couldn’t even eat tortillas, and then they started to grow back. They didn’t look like new teeth, and they certainly weren’t false teeth, either- there were only a few on the bottom of her mouth, and they were crooked and yellowed and some were just little nubs of teeth. But Chica and her husband swear that she had no teeth not too long ago. It sounds to me like something straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. I decided to maintain a skeptical belief;  I can’t prove that it’s true nor that it’s not, so I’ll just go with the “anything’s possible” attitude. It is, after all, a strange and mysterious world that we live in.

Finally we got down to business. She set me up in her bed with a shawl underneath me. She started feeling around on my belly, much softer and gentler than what I was expecting to move this stubborn confused baby around.

getting adjusted by the partera

amazing hands moving around the baby

the partera working on me

 

“Es niña” she says matter-of-factly, it’s a girl, without asking if we want to know, without asking if we already know or not. “How can you tell?” asks Conan. “You can tell by feeling it. They let you know right away.”  Conan tries to insist on further explanation. “But how do they let you know?” She says she can’t explain it; you just have to feel it. I decide she’s probably right, but I will stubbornly remain in “ignorance,” waiting till this child presents him or herself to know “what it is.”

She finished moving the baby around and then grabbed each end of the shawl underneath me and sort of shook me around, as much as a frail 95 year old might. We thanked her profusely and gave her 100 pesos for her time. She told us to come back when I go into labor and she can give me a tea to speed up the birth “so they don’t try to operate on you.”

The adjustment was not a magical fix. I was pain-free for a couple hours, but by my 4pm class I was in terrible pain again. After that, however, I rubbed around where the baby was and talked to it when it started giving me problems, and the pain lessoned. In the morning I had cinnamon tea, recommended because she said my belly was very cold (whatever that means). I had some more pain that morning but then it was over. Days later I haven’t had any more pains. Is this attributable to the midwife? To some tea? Did the baby just get their act together? Does it matter why?

Do I believe that her teeth grew back, or that she knows my baby’s a girl? I’m sticking to my skeptical belief. Maybe it’s so, maybe it’s not. It’s living that line between needing to question everything but also knowing that there are some things that are not really explainable. It’s trusting centuries of women’s wisdom in midwifery while also appreciating seeing a baby via ultrasound. It’s trusting how I feel and what I know about my body, sometimes more than what a doctor says. It’s believing in the science of magic, which is definitely what it means to me to produce a new human being anyway. 

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This Animal Once Had a Head… And, there it is!

26 Oct

You know you’ve been living in a “developing” country for a while when you see an article titled “Hand-washing Dos and Don’ts” and you assume it’s going to give you tips on washing clothes by hand instead of discussing hand hygiene. Or when you can haggle over prices and only feel slightly embarrassed instead of too mortified to even try. Or when riding your bike through the mud is an regular occurrence (during rainy season) and not an extreme sport. Or when things like a car radio become complete and utter luxuries, things that are so far down on your list of things to buy “someday when we have the money” that you cease to even dream about them. Or when it’s no longer strange to see entire families on a motorcycle. 

But the biggest sign that I am no longer new to southern Mexico is, of course, food-related. Specifically, this long-time vegetarian has a very different relationship to animal products. Granted, I have always been a vegetarian that ate meat while traveling in a different country, because a) I want to try everything, and b) people often offer you, the visitor, fabulous hospitality which may include animal flesh of some kind, and I really don’t like to snub my nose at such niceness unless it’s absolutely necessary. So in Chile I ate beef empanadas and completos (hot dogs, really, with avocado and mayonnaise and other such Chilean-style dressings- only while drunk). In Italy I probably ate my weight in salami (which was one of my favorite meats from childhood anyway) and proscuitto. In Ireland I tried black and white pudding (NOT a sweet treat- it’s blood sausage!), among other things that can be eaten with or without potatoes. In Argentina I ate milanesa galore (totally not exotic- just breaded meat). When I visited Mexico before moving here, I got invited to try turtle stew and turtle eggs (the eggs were good, the stew was a texture I wasn’t thrilled about). A couple days later, I was horrified to find out that what I had eaten was a protected species in the area. But such are the adventures of a traveling vegetarian willing to try anything.

Living here is a bit different. We mostly eat at home, and what I cook hasn’t really changed. Most days of the week my diet is full of fruits and vegetables and eggs and grains and a little dairy. Conan occasionally buys and cooks some kind of meat, some of which I’ll eat bits of and other things I don’t. There are all kinds of “weird” not-vegetarian things I have learned to adore, like chicatanas (a kind of fly-ish insect that you make a sauce from). There are other things that I still haven’t convinced myself to try (like chapulines, these grasshopper-like things they sell lots in Oaxaca City- my friend Corrina swears she was burping “spicy grasshoppers” for days afterwards). 

We do eat some meat on a semi-regular basis. Every once in a while someone gives us a live chicken, for example, or Paulina kills one of her chickens, and I’ll eat the hell out of that (especially if there’s mole sauce involved). That said, I haven’t yet learned how to kill one and clean it yet (or really to cook it, for that matter). Someone else always ends up doing it for us. It was on my list of things to learn this year but I have yet to accomplish it. Maybe for Christmas. I am a chicken connoisseur now, however, in that I can pretty quickly tell the difference in taste and texture between  pollo de rancho and  pollo de granja (de rancho is a chicken from someone’s back yard, that’s been eating worms and table scraps, and de granja is mass-produced and are always fattier, for one thing).

I have learned how to cook fresh fish, though. And you know we’re not in the U.S. because we cook it and serve it complete; head, tail, eyes and all (you do take out the insides first). And it’s funny because it doesn’t gross me out in the slightest. I don’t think it even did at first. Maybe it’s the result of years of preparation, from my mother telling me stories about her childhood visit to Mexico, being served a fish with the eye staring up at her. Or maybe it’s just that I suppose if you’re going to eat an animal, you might as well admit that it’s an animal. So there I am, picking the last bits of meat from the head, leaving the bones like a cartoon version of what the cat pulls from the trash (pretty much the only time we see all the fish bones in Louisville, Kentucky- on cartoons). Most often the fish I’m eating has been pulled from the ocean that morning by Conan’s uncle, and every last bit of it is delicious. 

Conan eating the whole fish! Can't find my picture of the whole fish I cooked recently : (

Conan eating the whole fish! Can’t find my picture of the whole fish I cooked recently : (

I reassessed my vegetarian-inclined limits again the other day when we went to Conan’s friend’s house for brunch. His friend is a butcher and told Conan he’d be killing a pig that day. For better or for worse, I didn’t eat before leaving our house, banking on the fact that if nothing else I could eat tortillas. We went out back to his open-air “workshop,” where the pig’s head, along with other parts, were still hanging from meathooks. “Yep, definitely pork meat on the table” I confirmed to myself.

We hung out and talked as he continued to prepare the meat. Much of the ribs and other choice cuts, which he’d already finished preparing, would go to a near-by restaurant where Conan and I eat sometimes. As we chatted, he was chopping the skin and other leftover pieces into chunks to fry, a food called buces (maybe kind of like pork rinds, but fresh and thicker? I don’t think I’ve ever had pork rinds, so I can’t be sure). We were going to eat the buces for brunch, so I pretty much resigned myself to tortillas then, since I’d had buces before and the texture does nothing for my appetite. But the company was good and Lucia was in seventh heaven with their super docile chihuahua, who was happy to be picked up and rather roughly handled by my kiddo for long periods of time.

fresh pork meat

fresh pork meat

Conan’s friend was telling us that he doesn’t normally make buces, that usually those parts he uses to make lard. So it was like a special treat that we were having buces. I thought again about perspective being everything in life. But then, when the buces were pulled out of the fryer, he set aside some parts that were mostly meat, which Lucia and I tried. And we both liked it! So as it turned out we had tortillas and avocado and some pork, not to mention a successful visit where I didn’t have to feel awkward and embarrassed about refusing someone’s food.

the giant vat of oil for buces and lard

the giant vat of oil for buces and lard

buces- the finished product

buces- the finished product

Not only that, but I surprised myself by how not-grossed-out I was in the whole situation. I think it actually may help me eat meat when I am seeing where it comes from. I even cooked the chorizo he gave us and ate some of it myself (which, really, is easy to eat because it’s loaded with garlic and chile guajillo, yum). Granted, I’m still never exactly excited about the meat hanging on racks in the market, or the ladies constantly waving the flies away from their grilled salty fish. I have zero plans to try and incorporate more meat into my diet, because I don’t think it’s necessary, really. I like the relationship I have now with animal flesh, in which it’s something special and not everyday, certainly not for every meal. I like that I can look forward to freshly-killed-chicken tamales for Day of the Dead next week. I like that I can eat some fresh chorizo every once in a blue moon and not worry about all the grease and my cholesterol or whatever, because it’s only every once in a while. I like that we spend less money by not buying meat. I like that we use less resources by not consuming much meat. And even though there are some animal parts that you’ll never talk me into liking (such as chicken feet and cow feet, but which I have tried, thank you), I still like that all the animal gets used here, that there is constant acknowledgment of what this is and where it’s come from.

So while some perspective changes are kind of sad, while I’d prefer to still be driving down the road screaming along with some Sleater-Kinney or Against Me, while I wish I never, ever had to think about washing any clothes by hand, other perspective changes are pretty cool. I guess I gotta take the good with the bad, eyeballs staring back and all!

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