Our first weekend trip was to Arrazola, a mountain town or pueblo about an hour outside of the city. Arrazola is world famous for their carved wooden figures known as alebrijes, they are extremely colorful and come in all different shapes and sizes of mostly animals. The whole group along with Dr. G. and Lindsey from SURCO took the bus from the city to Arrazola on Friday morning. The bus reached the end of its line and we were at our destination. Lindsey had prepared us that the town was very hilly and she was right. The 5 minute walk we had to do once we got off the bus was quite a workout. We arrived at our destination where we met members of the Ecoalebrijes Artisan Association. The association is made up of the families of Arrazola who make alebrijes for a living. It is a relatively new group made up of 18 families from the local community. They work together to support each other and seek out opportunities to promote and sell their work. Members of the association gave us a presentation about themselves and the alebrijes.
The alebrijes are carved from copal trees, which we would later help to plant. Our whole weekend in Arrazola was our community project. After our presentation we divided up and found who our new homestay families would be. My roommate Niki and I stayed together and lived with Fidencio and his family. The family consisted of Fidencio and his wife, their one daughter, their son, and their grandson. As everyone else had to walk to their new homes, Fidencio drove Niki and I in his 1960s VW beetle.
Compared to the city, Arrazola is an extremely poor town, they really do not have a lot. Our family's home was a concrete slab with basically no furniture, very minimal furniture, brick walls, and a metal roof. For the weekend Niki and I had the daughter's room and she stayed with the parents.
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| Our room for the weekend for the two of us. |
Fidencio showed us around the home. He showed us how we would use the bathroom which meant filling a bucket with water and then pouring it down the toilet to flush. On a side note while I'm thinking of it, since this toilet didn't it reminded me of something we all found interesting. A majority of toilets that we used throughout the whole entire program did not have toilet seats. Toilet paper was not flushed down anywhere because of the weak septic system throughout. Our homestay in the city had one but most other toilets we ever used did not have toilet seats. Back to our home in Arrazola, also if we wanted to shower you would fill the bucket and then rinse yourself off with that in the bathroom.
Our family was amazing there because they wanted to constantly keep us entertained. They wanted to show us as much as possible in the little amount of time we were there. Fidencio walked us around the outside of their house for a little bit showing us and telling us about all of the different flowers in the area. Next he took us down to a large field to plant Amerinth, and extremely nutritious plant that can grow just about anywhere. Fidencio is on committee which fights for land use in the town from the government so that it can be used for things such as new school facilities and planting crops which will benefit the health of the community. They were currently in a battle with government that if they lost Fidencio could possibly go to jail for several years.
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| Working hard planting the Amerinth. |
We spent about an hour planting. On our way there we saw Jazlyn and Cynthia from our group and our dad was more then happy to have them come along and help out too. While we were near that field Fidencio showed us where they were working to build new high school classroom facilities. With that they were also building bathrooms. I was really amazed with the system they were using. They were implementing a biodigester to break down the waste from the bathrooms. Such great technology and I was so amazed that they knew of it and were using it in this tiny town.
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| The biodigester system. |
As we were heading back it started to down pour but it felt like a nice shower after all the hard work we had just done.
It was then time to eat...a lot. Our family gave us a delicious comida and we were full. We all ate together and were laughing the entire time. I was using my little bit of Spanish with them and Niki was helping me out a lot too. It was as if there was no language barrier. They were an extremely warm and happy family and you could so easily sense it no matter the language difference. When we left the city, our homestay mom Mercedes had told us to be prepared to eat a lot. She told us how people in the city versus the pueblos eat differently. People in the pubelos eat more often and usually more food. About 30 minutes after we ate comida, Fidencio was asking us if we were hungry. Niki and I were confused since we were still full from comida so we said no. He continued to ask us about every 20 minutes if we were hungry. Finally we realized we were missing something and he had something planned for us so we didn't want to be rude so we said we would go eat. Little did we know he was taking us to his uncle's birthday party down the road. There was at least 50 of his families members there. We met some people and then started eating. There must have been at least 8 course we were served, 3 of them being different types of desserts.
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| Just some of our feast |
Let's just say our clothes were a little tight by the time we left. Niki and I were in awe the whole time. We could not believe where we were and what we were doing. We had known this family for only a few hours and it was already like we were their children. We were not able to eat everything but we had to try it all. Fidencio got so much enjoyment from watching us try everything. Niki and I also couldn't stop laughing the whole time, one because we were so happy and two because we were amazed at the amount of food. Every time we looked there was another type of cake being cut and served. When I laugh a lot I cry and Fidencio got a big kick out of that. He kept joking around telling me not to cry and that it was okay if I didn't want to eat everything if it hurt that much. Niki and i just kept saying to each other how lucky we were to be having that experience. We were wondering at the same time what all of the other students were doing and if they were going to be as fortunate as us to have such a cool experience. Earlier in the day and at this meal Fidencio told us about the way they like to eat. He told us how they like their women with curves so they always encourage them to keep eating and take seconds. He also told us how he will joke around with his wife and tell her that if she loses weight he will leave her. They appreciate good food and find it beautiful in a way when people like to eat, unlike our view in the US and other western countries. He kept telling us that he liked the way we ate because we would try everything. Niki and I really tried to seize that super fun and once in a lifetime moment we had at the birthday party. We headed back to our home ready for a nap.
We hung out for a while and our original plans were to do some of our community service in the afternoon but it ended up raining really hard so we had to cancel so the rest of the night was free.Our family wanted to take us on an adventure. There are flowers in the area that only open up at night and are white and glow on the mountain side. They also smell really good. Our family wanted us to see them so they drove us up into the hills. We all went just after sunset and roamed the hillsides picking the flowers. We made a bouquet out of all of them when we were done. When we were heading there, Niki and I forgot to bring sweatshirts. Since it was going to be a little chilly our dad turned around and went back and got two of his jackets for us to use. It really felt like he was our dad and brought a smile to our faces. It was just about fully dark when we were leaving and the views from the top of those hills were amazing. You could see so far and just saw lights everywhere off in the distance. You could see the whole city of Oaxaca which was about an hour away. It was some of the best views I will probably ever see in my life.
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| In the hills wearing one of our dad's jackets collecting the flowers. |
That night we slept very well. It was a little chilly sleeping since we were up in the mountains. We were woken up by roosters the next morning.
Saturday morning we all met together to do our community service. The first thing that we did was head down to a big park type area that has a large running path which a lot of people jog around. However, there was lots and lots of garbage there so we helped to pick it up. We were there for a few hours and there was so much that we all filled our large bags and then couldn't get anymore because we didn't have anymore room. One would think that picking up garbage would be miserable but we all found a way to make it fun and turned it into a competition so we were racing each other to see who could get the most garbage.
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| Showing off our finds. |
After that we continued to help out the community by planting copal trees, the trees they use to make the alebrijes. We planted over 50 trees that day.
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| Working hard and loving it. |
We then had some free time so Niki and I went and checked out some of the other students' homes before returning back to ours. Once we got back our mom made us another delicious comida. We relaxed for a little bit since we had been working so much in the morning. Later in the afternoon we then went back to the original spot where we heard the first presentation about the alebrijes. This time they told us a little more about them and we were able to make some purchases. I bought several cute things including a large purple elephant which my family had made. Some of the alebrijes:
After all of us had made several purchases, everything was cleared out. An older gentlemen from the community, in fact the father of many of the adults whom we were all staying with told us his story about his involvement with the Bracero program. When he was just a young boy in the 1940s he came to the US to work and make money for his family. He worked on farms and helped grow and manufacturer several different types of crops. He recalled all of his stories from the time. Such as how the Mexicans were treated and interrogated when they arrived even though they had all the correct papers. One thing in particular which he told us which made all of our jaws drop was how the Mexicans would be contained in a room and sprayed with DDT in order to make their skin a little whiter. That was disgusting to hear. He then went to go on to tell us how well he was then treated after that. He really enjoyed his time working in the US and would maybe one day like to revisit. The issue was that he never really got all of the money he worked hard for because the Mexican government took a lot of it and claimed they did not know. It is an ongoing battle for some bracero participants to get the money they deserve for themselves and their families. It was a very moving story to hear. Usually when we hear stories like that it's always the reverse and you never get to hear the perspective of someone from Mexico who came to the US to work. Afterwards we all headed home to get to bed to prepare for our big adventure the next day.
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Lindsay
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