June 5 - July 7, 2003

In late May, as Ellen and I were beginning to finalize our plans for a month in Oaxaca Mexico, I mentioned to Sheila Mc Elroy that I had been reading Oliver Sack's Oaxaca journal of a 10 day visit to the region with the American Fern Society in the Spring of 2000. Sheila asked if I was planning to also keep a Oaxaca Journal. I really hadn't thought about it, but in that moment, I decided that it was a good idea. The night before we left, Sheila called to say that she would soon deliver a gift, and a few minutes later, she was at the door with two blank journal books - one black and one blue. The black one became my Oaxaca Journal.

Thursday, June 5

Our plans include morning classes in the Amigos del Sol language school, and afternoons to explore the city. We will be staying with a local family, eating most of our meals with them.

As our plane from Mexico City touched down at the Oaxaca airport, I saw through the oval window, a small arrival terminal, about the size of the Gregg County airport, surrounded by palm trees and huge blooming bushes. A facing balcony was strung end to end with waving people, a line of shimmering colors, like beads on a string. I silently wondered if they were waiving to a particular dignitary on our flight or if the locals were just eager for visitors. A reference to Jonestown, Guyana passed through my head. (We would later discover that the city had a population of 350,000.)

As all of our fellow passengers gathered their luggage, connected with greeters, and moved on into their lives, we found ourselves sitting alone on the waiting benches, wondering if we had missed a connection with our hosts, Sylvia and Luis. Were they the couple that anxiously waited by the exit door for so long, and finally left?

As we sat wondering, near the bottom of a broad stairway, a large group of young brown children poured down the stairs from an unseen source above. I was instantly struck with the impression of rural peasants from a national geographic photo. An odd blend of Sunday attire with straw hats and sandals - the girls in long brown skirts, light blouses, and brightly colored scarves around glossy, black heads of hair; the boys in button-up, collared shirts and dingy slacks. They were the welcoming line that I had seen on the balcony from the plane! Scattered among them were older, but not much taller, chaperones, parents, or teachers. A few minutes later another, slightly larger, school group arrived from the street entrance behind us. This group was strikingly different from the first, in Catholic school uniforms of navy blue slacks and plaid skirts and guided by taller, preppy looking adults. As they paraded by and up the same stairway, I could read the school name from the patches on their red cardigans and sweatshirts - Escuela Santa Maria del something or other. Was Thursday the day for field trips to the airport?

After about an hour wait, Ellen took action to contact the Santiago-Garcias. How do the phones work in Mexico? As I kept watch with the baggage, a suave couple dressed in black walked past me and up the stairway. We exchanged a long glance as they moved by. Was it Sylvia and Luis? I made eye contact with Ellen who was at the ticket counter across the empty terminal. I raised my eyebrows and she went after them, across the glossy stone floor and up the stairway. She soon re-appeared at the top of the stairs with the smiling, bowing couple in black - Sylvia and Luis. They had received information that we were to arrive at 5:30 rather than 4:30. On the drive to the house, we passed Sears, Office Depot, Radio Shack, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Sam's Club.

Outside of our suite, a bedroom and private bathroom, is a small covered patio with a coffee table and a sofa. On the wall above hangs a red wire cage containing a single finch - symbol of this silver jubilee, our 25th wedding anniversary trip.

On the roof above our room is a small storage shed in which the 16-year-old housekeeper lives - Adella. Her family lives in a mountain village (pueblo), which Sylvia says is quite remote and hard to get to. (A fellow boarder, Kevin, later told us that her family had come to visit for a few days in May).

Sunday, June 15

(Ellen found some blank postcards in our bedroom cabinet among the materials left by past tenants. One was advertising Rey soft drinks - seven flavors presented as seven reasons to enjoy Oaxaca)

Postcard - Seven reasons to enjoy Oaxaca:

1) The dogs can safely cross a busy intersection.

2) The old men wear button-up, collared shirts with square tails and pleats on each side.

3) Old men in these shirts cut grass in the parks with pruning shears.

4) Zapotec women carry baskets on their heads.

5) Everything is made of painted concrete (or green limestone).

6) Each concrete building is painted a different color.

7) Everyone is encouraged to eat boiled grasshoppers.

Wednesday, June 23 (E-mail to the boys)

We aren't going to Spanish class this week, taking a break to try to absorb what we have already been taught. We do talk in English to many of the other students we have met and to each other, but we have to use Spanish a lot too. What I am learning in Spanish is replacing some of my English; like my brain is full and any new information has to go over old.

There are lots of dogs living by themselves in the streets here. They are always walking fast and deliberately as if they have an appointment somewhere. They seem to be able to get along well, navigating through the streets without getting run over and finding enough food off of the scraps from people. The people seem to tolerate them well and help them out. We often see the same dogs in the neighborhoods we move through. We are mostly in a 10-block area like in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The city is clean - not much litter, not much dirt. It rains almost every afternoon and the gutters run clear water after the rain. We just went back to the Community Arts Center, Casa De Cultura of Oaxaca. It’s only two or three blocks from our house and when we first got here, I went there to snoop around. It's an old convent from the 17th century - really thick stone walls and inside courtyards. They offer classes all day long for kids in painting, dancing, classical guitar, violin, piano, and ceramics, so the place is always full of kids coming and going; lots of musical sounds coming from the different rooms. We met a six-year-old art student named Ricardo. He insisted that we call him Reechard. He has become like a young cultural attaché for us when we visit the center.

I really did eat a plate of grasshoppers last week, boiled and mixed with salsa. We have joined up with other students at our Spanish language school to hire a driver with an SUV to bring us to the outlying villages. Each has a big street market. Friday we went to a new one with lots of the typical stuff - fruits and vegetables, hand carved animals, gourd bowls, wooden tools, but occasionally someone with baby pigs or goats. Mom got a price on the pigs, about five dollars each, but no way.

We found out about a free arts movie theater and will probably check it out this week. Most of the other people we've met who came to learn Spanish at the school are liberal do-gooders: social workers, labor organizers, peace corps volunteers, high school teachers. The corporate business people must hire private tutors or set up their own schools. The Mexican congress elections are in two weeks and lots of political protests spring up in the city squares. We don't get involved and don't have a clue about the politics. We have seen lots of anti-American, antiwar posters, banners and graffiti.

Most of the street jam box music is ranchero TexMex music - the bandas that wear the cowboy costumes. In the richest tourist neighborhood by the fancy hotels, peasant accordion players sit on the sidewalk and play traditional songs while scruffy kids collect money from the tourists walking by. Lots of sidewalk venders sell bootleg CDs. I bought a compilation of traditional singers, guitarists from the Isthmus - the eastern coastal towns where cultural norms are very liberal and open. (Here it is very conservative with traditional Catholic values). We are going to find some dinner now, probably in a small restaurant. Sometimes we eat from street vendors or venders in the indoor market. We haven't yet been sick.

Thursday, June 24 (E-mail to Carlton)

Today I am headed to a deaf school on the other side of town. The school doesn’t use sign language, but this week a sign language teacher from a Pacific coast village is visiting and maybe I will get to see his Mexican sign language. He teaches at an isolated school and home for handicapped peasants - all kinds of handicaps. They are funded through different international organizations. Two hurricanes completely destroyed the village in 1998, but they have rebuilt it. I will try a mapquest to get to the deaf school.

Monday, June 30

We saw a white collie-shepherd mix in the process of crossing a busy intersection. He first stepped off the sidewalk onto the first paved stone with each forepaw. Then he turned his head side-to-side glancing both ways, waiting until the traffic stopped as the light turned red. Then he trotted across. I have seen several dogs limping along and one with a wounded, curled-up foreleg. I have only seen road-kills on the side of the Pan-American Highway as we traveled by van or bus to the outlying pueblos.

Monday, June 30

The city is kept clean partly by official street sweepers who push orange 50-gallon drums on wheels and sweep with bound straw bundles, but also by scavengers. As I have walked the streets of the central district, I have found little of any interest lying on the road or sidewalks; only an occasional fallen leaf or flower petal. I did once find a coin. I spotted it on the cobblestone as we were entering the Cathedral plaza. Though it was smaller than a U.S. dime, it was easy to see - a clean shiny, silvery reflection against the dark granite. I picked it up and set it flat on my palm, tilting my hand for Ellen to see, just as we were entering the open space of the plaza. Among those walking towards us was a slow-moving, weathered, toothless woman. As she zeroed in on me, she shifted her direction and extended her palm, mumbling for alms. Quite naturally and in rhythm with our pace, I pinched the coin up off of my palm with forefinger and thumb and placed it directly onto hers. She dropped her chin to look at it, her lips tight, and gave it back with a curse and a sneer. Such is the value of a centavo in the Mexican economy.

Monday, June 30

Ellen started back to classes at Amigos del Sol this morning - her third week of classes. We both took a break from classes last week to rest, to practice what we learned in the first two weeks and to use the opportunity for visiting Monte Alban and other morning and mid-day activities.

I am sitting on a bench in the Zocalo, the main city square, facing the Cathedral's side. Four Zocalo dogs are sleeping on the stone platform across the cobblestone street from me. The most recent arrival among them, a yellow male hound, is being challenged by a Husky. I guess it to be the dominant male (later I discovered this Husky to be female - the queen of the Zocalo dogs. Seeing her frequently around the plaza, we would finally have an opportunity to pat her and scratch her head). A small, fluffy white poodle with dirty legs is trotting by with a man and two women, parents and grandmother? The walking traffic is quick and purposeful this early in the day - people going to work and school. 9:30 a.m. A light drizzle is falling.

I am not continuing classes at Amigos del Sol. Instead, I am writing, reading, drawing and studying from the Amigos' notebook and my own class notes of the first two weeks. The Oliver Sacks' Oaxaca Journal has begun to be much more relevant reading now that I can identify the locations he mentions and can empathize with his experiences.

Yesterday, breakfast was served late because everyone had partied on Saturday night. On Sundays, the whole family has lunch together with the boarding guests. After lunch, Luis usually brings out the Mezcal, the gold of Oaxaca, and pours a few rounds for everybody. I read in the guidebook that it is rude in Mexico, even insulting, for a man to refuse a drink from another man. I always oblige.

We had spent Saturday night with our American classmates Cindy and Greg. It was their last night before flying back home to Colorado Springs. Greg is an organizer for a non-profit group which promotes and supports affordable public housing. He had worked in Biloxi, Mississippi for a few years in the 1990s trying to help people who had been displaced by the construction of new Casinos. Cindy just finished her first year in a public school as a social worker, a child advocate - mostly with emotionally disturbed and developmentally delayed fifth grade girls.

We had agreed to meet for drinks at a tropical bar near the church of Santo Domingo, before walking to dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the Zocalo. When we arrived at the bar, we found Gregg standing in the rain under a broken, flower-print umbrella. Cindy was down the street doing some last chance gift shopping at the Women Artisans market. The bar was too crowded and noisy, so we headed to the market to pick up Cindy and then on to the Zocalo for dinner.

The rain was falling hard and steadily as we stepped out of the Artisans market. Ellen and Cindy were talking about the broken umbrella. Cindy explained that she bought it during a trip through Italy and, even though it was losing its function, she couldn't bear to part with it. Ours was the second umbrella of the trip. I left the first one hooked to the arm of a Zocalo bench one sunny afternoon. It rains nearly every afternoon, so if we plan to be gone for several hours we take the umbrella.

The four of us crowded under two umbrellas to negotiate the walk down the stone sidewalk. From behind us, a young local boy passed, wearing bubble wrap as a serape to keep the rain off his shoulders. On his arm, he was carrying a basket of hard candies, boxed chicklettes, lolly-pops and a pack of cigarettes. As usual, by her nature and personality, Cindy immediately struck up a conversation in broken Spanish, accumulated from her two weeks of Amigos del Sol classes, daily intercambios, and constant communing with the natives. When she asked his age, the boy answered, "eight years old". He mumbled his name while skipping along with a wide Zapotec grin, but none of us was able to understand it.

Sylvia, our house-mother, explained to us at lunch one day that many city kids have moved in from the pueblos to sell small handmade items or candies from a basket to help support their families. Many fathers have left to find better paying jobs in the U.S. The guidebook (page 43) lists the average daily wage of an active worker in Oaxaca at $4.60. U.S. = $100. (based on a Mexican government census and World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998). One of Ellen's classmates, married to a student of Mexican history, told us that Oaxaca sends more migrants to the U.S. than all but two other Mexican states. Our hired driver, David Sanchez, told us that 9 of 10 families in his village of Ocotlan are without live-in fathers.

A grizzled 40-50 year-old mestizo man has just sat on my bench, smoking a cigarette and talking to himself in Spanish as if on a cell phone. (He is not.) He seems to be switching from telling jokes to interviewing a job applicant.

The voice of a young woman is wailing across the Zocalo from the protest tents. In the street which passes by the main government complex on the other side of the plaza - the state capital building - is a temporary camp set up for political protests and demonstrations: tables and wooden platforms shaded by tarps strung up with nylon ropes. In the past few days I have seen groups, small and large, congregate under the tents or spill out to fill the cobblestone street. Spectators and participants focus on a singer strumming a guitar and leading protest songs or ranting narratives, some in Spanish, some in Zapotec, illuminating government corruption, injustice, and oppression. The area is flanked by large canvas banners, installed by various groups with various complaints. Most are government workers in various departments calling for better wages and benefits, some demanding freedom for political prisoners. Yesterday the area was blocked by two dozen parked red and white taxicabs, identified by door insignia as from the village of Mitla, a 1,000 year-old settlement.

So the broad-faced 8 year-old Zapotec boy was now part of our entourage, five of us trying to stay dry under the battered umbrellas. Gregg handed their broken one to the boy since he was already wetter than the rest of us. As he was also significantly shorter than us gringo adults, Greg and Cindy decided to let him walk alone and pulled out plastic parkas from a backpack for themselves. The boy was delighted with his sole control of the umbrella and bobbed it along ahead of us like a marcher in a second-line Mardi Gras parade. Seeing this from behind, Gregg gently suggested to Cindy that they make a gift of it to the boy. Cindy, with her nose crinkled, agreed.

As we approached an intersection (these were always tricky even on dry sunlit streets), the boy's foot slipped out from under him and, falling to his elbow, the basket of chicklettes and his small money box spilled all over the wet sidewalk. Cindy dropped to her knees to help him gather everything up. The boy was laughing, flashing his broad toothy smile. Soon we were all back on route to the Zocalo with our little friend marching ahead, bobbing the umbrella and swinging his candy basket.

When we reached the arcades of the ground-level restaurants, Greg informed the boy that the umbrella was his to keep. In the plaza light, I noticed that the basket was nearly empty and that there were no cigarettes left in the pack. Cindy wondered aloud if he had been selling single cigarettes from the pack. With more Zapotec smiles, he handed a wrapped mocha candy to each of us, turned and marched across the cobblestones with his new, tattered umbrella bobbing out of sight. His mama would be pleased with his sales, but maybe skeptical about the new umbrella.

Now my bench neighbor is offering a soliloquy to nobody in particular.

The four of us ate our last meal together at a second story restaurant - El Vasco, on the opposite end of the arcade from La Casa de Abuela, where we ate our first meal together. We stayed at our table long after dinner as Gregg described the year and 1/2 he spent in Israel, the Gaza strip and the West bank, (1991-93) working through the United Methodist Church as an advocate for Palestinian causes.

The bench neighbor just rushed off toward the cathedral plaza past the sleeping Husky, the only Zocalo dog left. She is curled up napping on the stone platform adjacent to the cathedral. The small man who has been on the bench across from me is now doing business at his shoeshine chair. He had been writing in a small notebook, just like me. The drizzle is coming faster.

Cindy told us a story of observing two young boys catching pigeons in the Zocalo. She described their method: a string used as a snare, looped on one end, and bread crumbs used as bait. They caught two as she watched from a bench, sitting next to an old indigenous man. He explained to her that pigeons are sweet and tender - that the mother of these boys will be very pleased when they deliver these two home for dinner.

All four dogs are back, realigned in their original positions - a gray and white shepherd mix, the black and white collie, a male yellow hound, and the Husky.

The yellow hound is leaving. He seems to have been treated as an intruder by the others. I'm going to Mayordomo for hot chocolate.

Tuesday, July 1

After lunch we walked toward the Cathedral to catch a cab up to the observatory and planetarium atop one of the mountains overlooking the city. We finally flagged one at the corner of Reforma and Morelos. Ellen chatted with the driver on route until we arrived at the steps to the planetarium, only about a ten-minute ride.

The planetarium shows were limited to audiences of ten or more, and we were only two. We wandered around the perimeter of the building, taking in the views of each of the three surrounding valleys, and started back down the winding road on foot. A man exiting a car with his family advised us that we would see the city better on foot. After five minutes of walking we found the civic amphitheater used for the summer festival. Many pairs of young lovers were off in private areas of the park kissing. At the final sharp bend, a larger than life bronze sculpture of Benito Juarez, looked out over the city, high on a green limestone base. Juarez, contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, was governor of Oaxaca and then Mexico's first and only indigenous President - the great hero of the common people. His name and image are seen all over Oaxaca.

Just below the base, the peaceful mountain path terminated abruptly at a winding highway carrying fast traffic. During a lull in the buzz from the cars and busses, we managed to cross over to a paved parking lot and scenic lookout. Down in the valley, the city spread left and right to the edges of our view. As I searched for familiar landmarks to trace our usual walking routes, Ellen was approached by a young woman selling woven wrist bracelets ("for wrist, ankle or hair", she explained in Spanish). She was accompanied by a son, about 4 years old, who grabbed and hugged Ellen around the knees. Off to the side, on the parking ridge, were her other two children - a two-year old son and a sleeping adolescent daughter.

She asked me if we were from Estados Unidos. Ellen and I both responded in unison, as we often have here: "Tejas". She told me that she has an amiga in New Jersey and pulled out a worn piece of paper, business card size, with a name, address, and phone number on it. Ellen struck up a conversation with her. The amiga was supposed to send money for the kids who needed medicine, but they hadn't heard from her yet. Maybe when we get back, she asked, could we call the amiga or write her a note?

While they talked, I entertained the four year-old who motioned for me to put him up on the stone wall. I initiated an umbrella game, pressing the latch button to let it fly open and then closing it tight, again and again. He liked this as did the two year-old brother who toddled over to get in on the action. I picked up the baby, leaving the hermano alone sitting on the wall with the opened umbrella. My palms and wrists became gritty from holding the baby. He had been sitting in sand and mud while his mom worked the tourists.

After about ten minutes of earnest discussion about contacting the New Jersey friend, Ellen broke away and we descended a nearby concrete stairway, following signs to a restaurant below. I left the umbrella with the boy until our return from dinner. After memelitas, chile rellenos, and cervezas we ascended the stairs, retrieved the umbrella, and entered a waiting red and white cab, promising to try to reach her New Jersey friend.

On the return ride through the city, I noticed two dogs at a bus stop as we waited for a light to change. One was dangerously underneath a stopped bus. It seemed intimidated by the other dog perched on the sidewalk and backed further under the bus. As the light changed and the bus lurched into gear, the rear double wheels bounced up and over the hiding dog, who let out a quick yelp. The sidewalk dog escaped. As our cab pulled off, I caught a glimpse of the limp black and white body lying in the road in front of three or four women who were standing for the next bus. (It was the first and only dog death that I witnessed on the trip.)

Wednesday, July 2

About three days ago, Ellen discovered a small, shiny black water beetle on the tile floor of the bathroom. We decided then to just leave him alone. He has now become our surrogate pet. We named him Jaime. This morning there was no trace of him. I wondered if maybe he died of old age. What is the life span of a beetle? Where did he come from? Where does he go? Does he live below the drain plate? Then as I was sitting on the foot of the bed to organize the books, I saw him shimmying along the wall beside the bed, slipping under the duffle bag in the corner. Or was that another beetle? Yesterday Ellen wondered aloud, "I wonder what he eats"? After lunch I found Jaime upside-down on the tile floor in the bathroom. He was kicking. I scraped him up and put him into a flowerpot on the patio.

Friday, July 4 - Aguilar sisters, second visit to Ocotlan.

Ocotlan was one of the first pueblos that we visited, the first charter trip guided by David Sanchez back on Wednesday, June 11. Our first stop in Ocotlan had been a string of workshops run by the four Aguilar sisters, Guillermina, Irene, Concepcion, and Josefina. The sisters are known throughout the region for their clay sculptures of folksy characters of Oaxacan culture: saints and sinners - borochos, ladies of the night, market women, street dogs and the many personalities of Frida Kahlo. We only bought one at that time - Josefina's version of Our Lady of Solitude (the Dominican, El Soledad), for my mother, thinking that we would shop around before indulging. We have seen Aguilar figures in most of the artisan shops of the city, but none quite like those that we saw at their studios. So after lunch we decided to set out on our own for Ocotlan.

We got a few new tips on using the public transportation system and soon were riding down the Pan American highway on a second-class bus, rolling through mezcal country. Scattered plots of agave plants, (maguey in Zapotec) which are stripped, baked, pressed and fermented to create Oaxaca 's smoky version of Tequila, were flashing by through the gap in the sliding window. As the bus rocked and climbed out of the valley, a colossal love note appeared across a grassy hillside, arranged in white limestone boulders: "Marlen te amor". Ellen spotted a cluster of bee boxes off in a field, each painted a different color, just like the houses of the pueblos.

As predicted in the guidebook, we were stepping onto the main drag of Ocotlan at 5:45 p.m., within 45 minutes of leaving Oaxaca. To reach the first of the Aguilar studios, that of Josefina, we had to backtrack about 50 yards. I had been carrying the camera around my neck by a leather strap, but now I felt reluctant to photograph inside of the gates of the artists' studios. These were also their homes, and we had been cautioned that many locals object to being photographed. Superstitions persist that one can lose the soul if caught in a picture. I read that general suspicion and resentment of Americans pervades all of Mexico. We haven't been quite the benign neighbor through the past 150 years. The indigenous peoples (over 50% of the population of the state) have yet to fully acknowledge the Spanish conquest and continue in the lifestyle of their ancient ancestors. I was feeling pressure to be the polite example, to represent my culture as an ambassador of goodwill. I decided to photograph the welcoming plaque, identifying the gate as the workshop of Josefina Aguilar and then slung the strap around, resting the camera against my back. I entered the courtyard to catch up with Ellen.

As I stepped in, I immediately noticed several newly hatched, downy chicks peeping around in a sand heap to the left. Beyond the pile, under a porch roof, women were working among wooden tables, each covered with completed clay sculptures. A young mother was carrying a baby swaddled into the typical hand-woven dark shawl that we have seen in the markets. Two barefoot toddlers were milling around the table legs. I could see that an older woman was perched low on a stool, working with a paintbrush beyond my view. I stepped back for a better look and, feeling a soft lump under my left heel, as if I had stepped on a wadded sock, I lifted my leg to see a squashed baby chick. It lay between my feet on the concrete with legs and neck extended and a small pink jumble of entrails that had just squirted out from its abdomen. Had I just done that? Oh, my God! Shock, horror, shame, embarrassment, remorse all scrambled inside my stomach. Who had seen? I was acutely aware of the children playing. I used the edge of my shoe to scoot the little tragedy out of their sight. Where was Ellen?

I walked further into the courtyard and around a small fruit tree to find her bent over a central table loaded with merchandise. Waiting by her shoulder to recruit her language assistance, I saw that all eyes from under the porch were shifting from me to the death site and back again, the women mumbling to each other. I caught the eyes of the young mother and implored, "El pollito, lo siento! El pollito, muerte!" She grimly nodded. I got Ellen's elbow and in low tones, asked for her help with translation and explained the situation. As she stood processing the horrible news and searching for delicate phrasing, I approached the oldest of the women, "disculpe, lo siento, el pollito, yo...como se dice" and gestured stomping. Ellen interceded with a word for "foot" and "dead". The grandmother grimly nodded with, "Es mal. Es mal." I wasn't sure if she meant, "this is bad, this is bad" or that the chick was not well, a bad chick that wouldn't have survived anyway.

I retreated from the situation, carefully watching my step, struggling to clear my mind of horror and death long enough to select from the delightfully gay and charming figures arranged on the tabletops, the targeted purpose of this journey. Ellen found the dancing, kissing clay couple that she had remembered from our first visit and together we decided on a market woman with baby at her breast, a red bird on her hip, and a turkey perched atop her head.

As the grandmother wrapped these in newspaper, Ellen rooted out from her backpack the Oaxacan Ceramics catalog featuring the four sisters. We sheepishly approached Josefina for an autograph, the stoic one who had all this time been in the corner painting on a clay Frida sculpture. Her knees were flanking a low wooden crate covered with cans of paint. Her loaded paintbrush was in her writing hand. Grudgingly she agreed, and after Ellen fished out a pen, the celebrated artist proceeded to struggle through the task of printing her name. On the bus ride back to the city, I realized that I had left the second umbrella leaning against the gate to the studio of Josefina Aguilar. An inadvertent exchange for the slaughtered pollito.

Sunday, July 6 (voting day)

Last night Evan and I went to Casa del Cultura at 7 pm for a music program. The CCO classical guitar ensemble played four pieces, each separated by much introduction and explanation and then the Oaxaca Jazz Ensemble performed (clarinet, trumpet, flute, tenor-sax, electric bass and Yamaha electric keyboard). The improvisations seemed stale, forced and aimless. I wonder if Jazz improvisation may be contrary to the native Mexican sensibility, the pueblo economy of performing by traditional patterns, learned and memorized, whether in iconic art, handcrafts, music or folklorico dancing. Maybe they lack the egocentric arrogance required for spontaneous virtuosity.

We left after three compositions to return to the house to check on Ellen. She had been resting all afternoon after our trip and mountain hike to Yagul, a two thousand year-old village site. Together, the three of us set out to find food and scored big at a tamale stand that was just setting up (8:30) in front of Merced church and park. We bought two steaming hot Oaxaceno tamales wrapped in soft banana leaves, and one frijole tamale wrapped in corn husk. After picking out assorted sweet breads from the next stand - two muffins, two small wheat disks with the red sparkles (like those we get at breakfast every morning), and two twisted dough biscuits, we hauled it all back to our room and set up a picnic on the bed.

Evan left early this morning by bus for Mexico City, then flew home to Portland, Oregon. At fifteen years old and three years of junior high Spanish, she has been our most approachable language assistant among the gringos. Tomorrow she will start driver's ed. back at Kennedy High, the same school used in the movie, "Mr. Holland's Opus" (she was in the final auditorium scene as a three-year-old).

Today we spent the morning packing and weighing our bags. On Sylvia's suggestion, we walked to Merced Market for a cardboard box and bubble wrap. Ellen picked up four kilos of mole paste to balance the four kilos of Mayordomo chocolate we bought last week. I finally found a Condorito magazine at the news stand there. Sylvia served a special lunch for us - enchiladas covered with mole coloradito, and a cake for dessert. She had called Ellen into the kitchen earlier to show her how the sauce is made - 2 kilos of chocolate mole paste with a blender full of tomatoes. Luis broke out the mezcal and Sylvia brought her family photo albums to the table. The oldest son, Fernando, pointed out that all five family members had black thumbs from being fingerprinted at the voting booth. Elisa will also leave in the morning for Boston. The house will only have Imelda and the new girl from New York University, Rina, as boarders.

After the table cleared, we took a final stroll around town to the mercados and the Zocalo. Nieve (sweetened ice-milk) at Chaquita, we ordered two in aluminum cups - Kissed by an Angel and The Three Leches, and then we took off with an Aguacate to share as we sat in the Zocalo on a bench in the sunlight (all the shade benches were taken). The well-fed Zocalo Husky came to us and licked the inside of my cup. She then received some Doritos and tortilla scraps from the guy in dreadlocks on the next bench over.

Wednesday, July 16 Ellen's E-mail to Cindy and Greg

On our last Sunday, we took the bus to Mitla and got off at Yagul. The bus drove off and we realized it was just the two of us in the middle of Mexican nowhere with a sign that said "Yagul 1". Of course that meant one K and much of it was "up". We had a fantastic day. We walked down the road, which was filled with beautiful flowers and cactus and then through the ruins and to the top of the little mountain where you could see everything for miles and miles. It was spectacular. On the way back, we stopped on the little road at the restaurant the guidebook had recommended as one of the best in the Oaxaca region. It was in fact very good and we bought cervezas even though it was election day! By this time, we desperately needed cervezas! Anyway, we had a great time and after all of our fretting over luggage weight, duty, collecting, and rechecking our luggage in the Mexico City airport with a one-hour layover, all went well and we had a very easy trip home.

Frank Herbert
7/20/03