The One Who Got Away (hopefully not for long!)

Research is hard.  Trying to do research in a foreign country adds to the complexity.  There's the language barrier.  I'm finally using the phone a little better (although still avoiding it when there's text or e-mail available).  There's public transportation--hot, sometimes very crowded.  (I shouldn't complain, since I've never lived anywhere in the US that had public transportation to the extent needed.)  There are cultural differences that render simple interactions indecipherable.  And there's trying to make connections with people/agencies in an unfamiliar city that is HUGE.  So let me describe my current target.

Actually, I have to back up a bit to give some context on what the process has been to make connections with the agencies/programs I came to study.  My main contact in Mexico is a social work professor who does many other things besides teach at the university.  For the first five months I was here, he also had an administrative position within Mexico City government social services.  He also travels extensively both in Mexico and internationally (he's been to Chile, Colombia, Spain and France while I've been here--and I may be missing a country or two).  He's very involved in politics and it's a year in which a new president and governor of Mexico City will be elected.  He is very knowledgeable and connected and the original plan was for the two of us to go to these agencies together so that he could introduce me to the directors who are all friends of his.  The personal connection and introduction is important, but has not happened as planned.

Here's what HAS actually happened:
Agency #1--I visited on a Sunday in November with a social worker (another friend of my main contact), her husband (who works for the government department that runs the agency) and an international doctoral student who also wants to recruit for a research project there.  Nothing was going in the agency that day (and the person I needed to meet was in Colombia, presenting at a conference with my main contact), but I was tagging along on the trip with the doctoral student and I at least got to see one of the locations.  I also learned a lot about what the program does and the development of other programs in its network because the social worker's husband is the architect who has designed many of the buildings in the other sites.

A couple of months later I met the director of the network of all the sites at my contact's birthday party.

Salvador Dali is big here

Agency #2--My contact said to meet him at 10:30 on a Saturday morning at a certain metro station.  I was running a little late (I forget to factor in enough time to walk to the metro and I hadn't had coffee yet either).  This particular metro line is partly underground and partly above ground.  One of the times it was above ground, my cellphone let me know that I had missed a call.  The number wasn't my contact's, but I figured maybe he was calling from home or some other location rather than his cellphone, so I sent a text back to the number saying I was on my way.  When I got off the metro, I saw a guy I recognized, but not my contact.  He had sent someone else to meet me.  Not someone I actually knew, although as I said I did recognize him from having seen him at a couple of events.  I asked where my contact was and the answer was that he had an appointment (or a date, not sure which because it's the same word) so asked his friend to go with me instead.  Okay, fine.  He is a nice guy and I enjoyed his company (and his dealing with getting us the rest of the way to the program in a taxi and then back to the metro via bus) but he wasn't known to the director of the agency either.  But I did meet the director and learned a bit about the program and got some GREAT pictures.  I still need to go back to that agency for interviews.

Grafiitti is one of the artistic media taught here

Agency #3--In about mid-February, my contact started acting anxious to actually do the visits he had indicated we would make.  After a couple of weeks of "we'll go on Wednesday--I'll call you" (neither of which would happen), one day he said that we had an appointment with the director of Agency #3 on Tuesday (when my main contact himself was going to be out of town for another speaking engagement).  Okay, fine--I can find my way there. 

I'm not sure now whether we really had an appointment or whether this was the next time that the director was going to be available to possibly make an appointment, but I decided to go with the "just show up" method of meeting people. I have to admit, I was a little nervous about going to find one of the programs on my own because I know they all are in pretty impoverished areas.  However, I knew that another of the Fulbright scholars here also had an interest in this program, so I contacted her and invited her to go with me.  She had described having difficulty trying to arrange a meeting with this director, so it seemed like a good plan.  We arranged to meet at a metro stop where the two lines we would be using would cross and go together from there. 

The pedestrian bridge over the highway

Before we exited the metro station nearest the program, I showed her where the agency was located on the neighborhood map posted in the metro.  We climbed the stairs to exit and found that there was a highway between us and where we needed to go.  Hmm, let's see if there's a way to cross this.  Ah yes, a pedestrian overpass.  So we climbed the two long flights of stairs on the overpass and turns out my Fulbright friend is a little afraid of heights--and this bridge.  But we made it to the other side.  As we started walking, she was nervously saying, "This neighborhood's a little sketchy."  I tried to reassure her,  "Oh, it's okay.  We'll be fine."  It actually did seem fine to me, but she's an artist, not a social worker.  Later I laughed and said she might think twice the next time a social worker invites her to go somewhere!

A view from the bridge on the way to Agency 3

Anyway, we found the agency, said we had an appointment, and did end up meeting with the director (even though he wasn't entirely sure my contact had set something up).  The director also then set a meeting with my Fulbright friend to talk about her wanting to offer a workshop in graphic design at the agency.

Agency 4 is in what used to be a cinema

Agency #4--A week or two after Agency #3, once again I was supposed to meet my contact at a particular time in a particular metro station.  I arrived just about on the dot, but I wasn't really sure exactly where to meet him so I went outside to send him a text message that I was there.  I fully expected that he was still on the way.  My text didn't go through, though, and the network message was that his phone was outside the service area.  So, unable to contact him but seeing the agency about a half a block away, I headed over to the agency.  I introduced myself and said that he and I had an appointment with the particular person but that perhaps my contact wasn't there yet.  Not only was he not there, the person we were supposed to meet with wasn't there, either.  So I'm looking like the crazy gringa again.  One of the staff showed me around a little bit and talked a little bit about the agency and its programs and then asked if I'd like to meet the director (turns out the guy I thought we were going to meet with isn't the director).  Of course I would!  Right after I got settled in the director's office, I got a text from my contact saying that he was not able to get away from the university but that I should go out of the metro station and over to the agency and introduce myself on his behalf.


The director clearly wasn't too happy about having me dropped on him, and I didn't have even the pretense that I had an appointment with him, so I asked if there would be a more convenient time for us to talk.  We set an appointment for a few days later.  I've now been back for some interviews.

Back to Agency 1 again--So now I'm getting brave.  I called the director of the network of sites and asked to set up a meeting, reminding him who I was and where we had met.  He arranged to meet me at the program site at a particular day and time the next week.  I exchanged texts confirming the time and date early the next week.  Then I went out of town, just overnight, but I would then be arriving back to Mexico City the day of the meeting.  While I was on the bus on the way back to Mexico City, I got a text for the director that he had to go to his actual office that day and I could meet him there.  Great--I was all prepared to go to one site and now I had to figure out where his office is.  It turned out okay--even though I arrived to call on him in his government office, in a government building, without ANY picture identification (I know better than this!).  I didn't even have the photocopy of my passport that I usually carry!  The security people weren't going to let me in but then they called the director's office and he said he was expecting me (the not-so-bright gringa this time).  I got to meet the site director as well as the overall director.  I've even been back to the program site for an event (this time I took along my husband and a friend of a friend visiting from Colombia)--good thing I hadn't needed to meet the director there for the meeting because it turned out that I didn't know what metro stop it was near, partly because I had gotten there in a car on the first visit.  I'm good to go there for some interviews now--hopefully this coming Saturday (and I know how to get there now).

Agency 3 again--I had managed to get a business card from the director when my Fulbright friend and I had visited, and it had the director's e-mail address.  I sent him an e-mail last week asking if I could meet with him again to get started with data collection there.  I said we would need less than one hour and I could be there anytime except Monday morning.  He responded with a time for today. 

This morning I got up early enough (for once!) and made the final preparations to my questions.  I arrived at the metro close to the agency at the time I was supposed to meet with the director--close enough to be culturally "on time".  I crossed the scary pedestrian bridge (I'm braver when I'm responsible for someone else being there, you see).  I recognized some of the buildings on the other side of the bridge and the railroad tracks that my friend and I had crossed (she hadn't liked that, either).  Then I wasn't entirely sure whether we had turned left for a block before continuing in the direction parallel to the highway/railroad tracks.  I started to go a block to the left, but it was clear that the first street I would come to was quite a distance--that just didn't fit my memory.  I decided maybe it was on this street parallel to the railroad tracks and started walking that way.  I knew I would recognize the agency when I saw it and, sure enough, there it was with the giant armadillo painted on the side.

To make the story a bit shorter here,  the director wasn't there when I got there, so I was waiting, reading e-mail on my US phone, reviewing my questions and making some notes about a few other things I wanted to ask about.  Other staff began to arrive, many of whom I had met on the first visit (but not sure they recognized me).  Finally one woman I think I had not met on the first visit said she would call the director to see when he was arriving.  She came back with bad news that, unfortunately, he hadn't gotten the appointment in his calendar and was at another meeting out of town.  He would have to contact me when he gets back, to reschedule.

So, that's the one who got away--this time!

As I said to start with in this post, research is hard.  Many times anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong.  It may not have disastrous results when things go wrong, but it definitely is frustrating!

Earthquakes

The second earthquake to be felt in Mexico City since I got here just happened a little more than an hour ago.  We're okay--just a little seasick and we don't have any electricity.  Before living here, I had only felt an earthquake once, and I didn't realize what it was at the time.  With these, there is no doubt as to what is happening.  I'm sitting on the couch, which is where I usually work with my laptop or whatever I'm writing on or reading.  Doug was at the table, which is where he works.  I felt a sharp jolt, like the wall behind me had been hit by something.  The walls are poured concrete, probably highly reinforced because we are on the first floor of a six-story building, so I'm imagining that it would take a wrecking ball swung by a crane to make the wall feel what I felt.  Then the couch moved.  I said to Doug, "The couch just moved."  And then it kept moving.  I said again, "The couch is moving."  "We're having an earthquake."  It's really hard to estimate time in a situation like that, but the movement went on for a while.  The floor was sort of rolling under us.  We had both gotten under the table--I'm not sure why getting under the table is a good idea, except that it's supposed to protect you from falling objects or glass. 

This is standing just outside our door

After it seemed to have stopped (actually, we couldn't tell whether it had or not!)  we got out from under the table and collected up our cellphones and coffee and headed outside where people were gathering.  We live in a building that is very modern in style.  The front of it is black cut stone up to about 15 feet above the street and then glass above that.  One wall of our living room is glass--four glass doors that can be opened and folded back to make the room open to a narrow terrace.  Likewise, one wall of our guest bedroom is glass and also can open by sliding.  Suddenly as I'm sitting four feet from the window in the living room, a building that has a glass side doesn't seem like such a great idea.  Even worse is that when we leave our apartment, the door opens into the interior courtyard of the building--which has exterior stairs and walkways leading to the apartments on the upper floors.  One of these metal and wood walkways is above our door, so that's kind of scary in an earthquake.  There also is a rather large tree suspended about 30 feet in the air on this end of the building.  It's an interesting way to have some green inside the courtyard.  Again, though, it's kind of scary to have that hanging there where we have to walk under it--not exactly under the tree but under the heavy cables from which it is suspended.  Then the entry way to the building is glass on two sides.

This is looking up at the tree of death if it falls in an earthquake!

We went out to the street where, as I said, people were gathering.  Our street is an avenue with one lane in each direction and a wide median which has a sidewalk down the middle and plantings of tall trees and other shorther trees, bushes, and plants that we grow as houseplants in Ohio.  We hung out there for 10-15 minutes while the building was checked out by the maintenance guy and the doorman.  The power came back on after a couple of hours, but after the last earthquake in December, it was out until the next day. 

Now that the power--and internet connection--is back, I've heard from quite a few people here in Mexico, in the US, and in Sweden and England.  As far as we can tell, friends here are okay.  There seem to be some mostly minor injuries here in Mexico City from bricks falling and such.  The epicenter was a couple hundred miles from here, but Mexico City is highly affected by earthquakes because it is built over what used to be a lake and the fill over the lake bed is not incredibly stable.  (Some of the really old buildings in the central historic area quite noticeably lean from past earth movements.)  CNN is reporting that this is the strongest earthquake to hit Mexico City (variously reported as 7.4 to 7.8) since the 8.1 quake of 1985.  That one toppled many buildings and killed about 10,000 people.  Knowing that is part of what is anxiety-producing.

There's no place like "home"

I usually caution people who use a Wizard of Oz expression in conversation, that individuals with a connection to Kansas don't appreciate those expressions.  However, two graduate degrees, two years of elementary school and diehard Jayhawk basketball fan status surely entitle me to use one now and then.   But what does that have to do with this blog?  you might ask.  Well, in the movie, the Wizard of Oz, the main character, Dorothy, who has somehow been transported to Oz during a tornado (blatant Kansas stereotype), chants the phrase as part of her effort to be transported back to Kansas--home.  What she finds--SPOILER ALERT--when she wakes up in her bed is that the characters she's been interacting with in Oz actually are people from her life in Kansas and that she hasn't really left at all.  Still, it was all so real and so scary.  I had occasion to return "home" recently--not to Kansas but to Ohio.  Being back in Ohio but then returning here to Mexico City, I shared some aspects of an alternate reality with the movie.  No, there weren't flying monkeys or ruby slippers or a field of poppies; and when I returned here, I really had been gone.  The latter was clear from the reactions of a couple of people I see frequently in my daily life here who pronounced it a miracle that they were seeing me!  (I learned that that's what is said to someone you haven't seen in a long time, on seeing them again.)  The comparison to the movie is that somehow this life in Mexico City feels more real and more vibrant than my other life, even as I was glad to see and reconnect with friends back in Columbus.  (Remember, Oz was in color, Kansas in black-and-white.)

For one thing, things were weird in Columbus--my car wouldn't start because it hadn't been driven in five months; our telephone wasn't working; my office has moved in my absence, so all of my books and office crap were still in boxes and my computer is who-knows-where (I can still remotely access it, but I don't know its physical location).  I was in Columbus for just a couple of days before a conference in Washington, DC.  Although I've done a pretty good job of letting go of the doctoral program while I'm gone, interacting with other OSU faculty sucked me back in to thinking about things that need to be done.  (Seeing my current and former doctoral students didn't have that effect, probably in part because I have continued to interact with many of them.)  That version of reality isn't really real for me right now (no tears here over that!), so I was glad to "click my heels" (by which I mean fly from DC to Houston and Houston to DF) and get back where I want to be.

What's so great about it? someone asked me at the conference.  I gave an answer that probably didn't convince her, which was something like describing my day today.  I'm trying to stick to a schedule of working on weekdays, but today is Saturday.  I had plans to go to the gym and then work on non-research related tasks the rest of the day.  However, my plans changed a little, starting when I remembered that I was out of milk for cereal.  Instead of going out for milk, I just ate a handful of cereal and a banana before I went off to the gym.  The weather has been really gorgeous since I got back (highs in the 70s and sunny).  Today was a bit warmer than the previous days.

Mexico City has a program that places these "eco-bicis"
in various locations.  There's an inexpensive annual
membership that entitles members to take a bicycle
for a half hour at a time, to facilitate getting around
through the heavy traffic in a "green" way.

After I left the gym, I decided to have breakfast--real breakfast--before I returned home.  The gym is three blocks from our apartment in one direction; the place I went for breakfast is almost three blocks in the other direction.  After breakfast, I had to go get coffee, of course, being addicted.  The coffee place is in the same block as the gym (actually, on the first floor of the building while the gym is on the second floor), so that was several blocks back there and then two blocks back home.  A couple of hours later, I was thinking about going to see a movie.  There is a movie theater about four blocks from our apartment.  I haven't found a great way to see what's on there, so I walked over to check that out.  The only thing I was interested in seeing had a showing about 9 p.m.--a little too late for me to want to go there by myself (there's all kinds of security at the little mall it's in, including a guard with an automatic weapon--which doesn't actually make me feel safer!).  I had made a grocery list, though, so headed toward the grocery store, now six blocks away.  Before I got to the store, though, I decided that I was too hungry to buy groceries and then make dinner, so I would just have to go out.  I kept walking past the grocery store, finally ending up about a mile away from home at an Italian restaurant that was new to me.  I ordered pizza, which was really good!  Half of that boxed up, I retraced my steps and went to the grocery store, then carried three bags of groceries home.

This display of honey and other bee
 products is on a dolly that is
pushed around by a vendor.

While I was at the Italian restaurant, sitting outside, I was approached twice for a shoe-shine (I had on running shoes with white mesh uppers--clearly not candidates for shoe-shine);  once to buy honey/beeswax/bee pollen; once to buy cigarettes; once to buy various locally manufactured snacks; lottery tickets; large, long-stemmed fresh flowers; a battered CD of a street performer; big baskets; a book from a Hari Krishna; a copy of the Brothers Karamozov in Spanish, maybe something else I'm not remembering.  The Hari Krishna guy was wearing one of the stranger outfits I've seen--tennis shoes with orange socks; a long orange skitrtlike garment; orange tee-shirt; black glasses; and an orange fishing hat.  Earlier, I had almost been run over twice by the same taxi, the first time because it was backing up the street the wrong way as I was quite legally crossing it.  I think the driver was actually trying to back up enough to turn around to go the wrong way in the lane as far as the intersection; instead, the driver eventually went forward and whipped around a turn-through the median, whereupon he almost ran over me again.  I say "almost ran over me" but it wasn't really close either time.  I've gotten really good at avoiding traffic and minimizing the time waiting for it, much like other people here.

Cart of fruit, stationary in the park at this time,
but it is pushed around earlier, providing a snack
 opportunity.  Fruit is only one of several
types of food that are sold this way.

Returning from the grocery store, carrying my three bags of groceries, I observed the next cardio craze as I walked through the park--Aztec dancing!  Seriously, it is very high energy and would be great cardio.




The park is used for many things, including some combination of dog training and doggie day care:

This stand sets up here several times a week
to sell "nieve"--literally snow but it's an ice
product made in giant freezers like for
homemade ice cream

If I can put my finger on it, I think what I like about being here is the vibrancy.  There's always music--some of it is bad, of course.  Most of the time, there are people outside, coming and going, sitting in cafes, restaurants, the park, on an overturned bucket in front of a store or shop that offers valet parking, cooking or eating at a food stand, loading food onto the back of a bicycle or motorscooter for home delivery, making flower arrangements to sell, with cut flowers.  We can walk to almost anything we need (or take public transportation and then walk).  Not everything is perfect, of course--the sidewalks, for one thing, frequently are in bad, bad shape.  Clearly, many people are struggling economically.  Narco crime is in the newspapers, mostly in other cities.  Traffic can be horrenduous and public transportation full to the gills, so to speak.  Ohio didn't feel real, but this does.  For now at least, it feels like home.

(I drafted this post about a week after returning from a trip to the U.S. in early January.)

Theresa's Travel Tips

We just returned from vacation so travel is on my mind.  We had lots of interesting experiences, several of them not exactly what we had planned or hoped to do, so I thought I would write some about the places we visited, how we traveled around, mistakes we made, and how we improvised.  Don't worry, though, because our improvisation did not include any sleeping on the sidewalk!

Our first visit to Mexico, about eight years ago during the summer, was to Mérida, the capital of the Yucatan state, and to several other locations on the Yucatan peninsula.  Twice since then we have spent the Christmas holidays in Oaxaca, and we have also visited a number of other cities/towns in several other Mexican states, all to the south of Mexico City.  So for this Christmas holiday, we decided to go back to the Yucatan to visit places we had not been or that we had hardly been, and to see how our perceptions have changed. 

Here is a map of Mexico to give you some idea of locations I'm referring to;
Unfortunately, not all are labeled.  The highlighted areas, from left to
right, are Oaxaca, Villahermosa (little dot), Campeche.  Merida is to the right of
Campeche.

One of the places we wanted to go back to was Uxmal, an archaeological site.  On our first trip, we went with a large group from a conference to Uxmal for the evening “light and sound show”, thus, we really hadn’t seen the site.  If you ever have the opportunity to go to one of the light and sound shows at an archaeological site in Mexico, I encourage you to take a pass if you have anything else you could do that evening.  Anyway, Uxmal was definitely on our list of places to revisit, as was Mérida. 

We have been to a number of other archaeological sites in Mexico, places that were once cities or ceremonial centers for prehispanic cultures.  The various groups (Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec and others) built in different styles and in particular used different styles of decoration. 

Here's an example of decoration from
Kabah, as site near Uxmal

Several different languages were spoken (and still are—Spanish is a second language for a number of indigenous people in Mexico and another percentage don’t speak Spanish at all), but there was some interaction among the groups.  Thus, their religious and ceremonial centers also have similarities.  The sites usually have pyramids and one or more ball courts where a game was played with a ball.  The game wasn’t for sport or entertainment, but instead was a ceremony that included the sacrificial death of the winner.

The oldest sites belonged to people who are now called Olmecs.  They are distinctive for having altars (and other stone pieces) in the shape of heads, both human and animal.  We call these the “big, giant heads”, not, of course, a technical term. 

This is one of the big, giant heads
from La Venta

To give an idea of the scale,
here is us with one of the
big, giant heads (not the
biggest one even)

To make a long story shorter, I learned that there was a museum/park that contains most of the heads from an important site that was endangered by drilling for oil.  This is in the state of Tabasco, in the state capital of Villahermosa.  The site is called La Venta and it still can be visited.  After we saw the park with the heads, though, we decided not to take the two-hour bus trip to see where the heads used to be. 

Since we weren’t going to have to get up early to start out on that day trip, we decided to go to the hotel’s bar for some wine.  We were staying at a Quality (pronounced “coo-al-i-tee) Inn, so expected a small, quiet watering hole.  It ended up being a very enjoyable evening of people-watching and some live music, complete with backup singers and costume changes.  There was one group of about six or seven couples that reminded us of Tony Soprano out with his buddies and all of their mistresses.   There wasn’t really a dance floor, but people got up and danced anyway.  I love the dancing here and I really want to learn how to do it. 

When I had planned our itinerary, I first thought we should fly to Villahermosa and then rent a car to drive to the other places we were going.  Doing a one-way rental, though, was going to be a bit expensive, plus add the stress of dealing with driving in uncertain conditions.  So my next thought was to fly from place to place.  I axed that plan, however, when I realized that there are not direct flights between the cities we wanted to visit (Villahermosa, Campeche and Merida), but that we would have to connect through Mexico City.  Check out the map above and I think you'll agree that didn’t make sense, so I started looking at bus options. 

Day two in Villahermosa we spent finding the bus station, waiting in line, and buying bus tickets.  Oh yeah, and finding decent coffee (somehow the free continental breakfast at Coo-al-i-tee Inn had only decaf!) and seeing a bit of the town.  Finding decent coffee wasn’t really a problem—we had seen a coffee shop fairly close to the hotel.  However, after drinking our coffee, we weren’t in a very good location to get a taxi.  This was also one of the times when the travel guide book we were using was less than helpful.  The bus station was located, the book said, “a few blocks from the center” of the town.  It may have also said in which direction, but there was a discrepancy with what it called the main north-south street and the main east-west street (which seemed to have those directional orientations only where they intersected each other, and otherwise to be more or less parallel).  Also, it was hot and humid.  I know, I should not complain that it was hot when most of my readers were probably enjoying 38 degrees with a steady drizzle.  We started walking uphill toward the center of town.  We could tell it was toward the center of town because we could see the belltowers on the cathedral.  Every town we have been to in Mexico has a central plaza of some kind and a big church near it.  Did I mention it was hot?  Oh yeah, well it was.  After walking for 15-20 minutes, we finally saw a taxi discharging passengers and solicited transport to the bus station.  The taxi whisked by the cathedral (finally!) and then drove what I would consider to be more than a few blocks, dropping us off at the bus station. 

Christmas display that seemed
out of place because
otherwise everything
looked like summer

Now, the travel books will tell you that there is a website where you can buy tickets for most buses in Mexico.  I have actually used a website to buy bus tickets here a couple of months ago.  However, before we left Mexico City I had tried to use two different websites (one directly with the bus company that has routes in that area and one more general one), neither of which was functioning.  I try to do as much travel planning and arranging as I can via internet.  One reason is that bus stations are somewhat confusing.  There are several different bus companies and different classes of service.  Sometimes a particular class of service has its own ticket window, as do different companies.  Trying to figure out which line to get in is a challenge!  We wanted to have a departure time that was not too early but that would get us to Campeche before evening.  From my previous reservation attempts, I knew it was at least a five or six hour trip.  You can’t always buy tickets in advance because if the bus originates somewhere else, the company doesn’t know how many seats there will be at your location until the bus gets there.  The agent at the ticket window showed us her screen of what was available.  There was a departure at 10:30, so we said we would take that.  It was a different company than we had used previously.  She warned us that it was an “economical” bus with no bathroom.  I asked if it was air conditioned—yes.  Okay, let’s go for that one. 

Now, if one were an astute bus traveler, she or he might have realized that this was a second class bus, which make frequent stops and perhaps have seats in poor condition.  Unfortunately, we were not astute bus travelers.  The next day we discovered that you couldn’t check baggage ahead of time, but had to scramble with other passengers to get the luggage loaded into the bottom of the bus.  Also, the luggage area already had quite a bit in it.  One family or group had so much stuff in suitcases, boxes, and large totes that it wouldn’t all fit and they brought a lot of it with them onto the bus.  When we bought the tickets, the agent had showed us a screen with the seats available and we selected ones near the front (we’re astute enough to know this is a good idea; we also were prepared with Dramamine).  However, when we got on the bus, there were two women in our seats.  They "politely" assured us that seats are not reserved and they weren’t going to move.  The only two empty seats together were the row behind them.  One of the seats they occupied appeared to be broken in that it was leaning back practically in Doug’s lap.  I was not very happy about the seating situation but soon realized that we were lucky to have seats (!), as there was at least one person standing in the back of the bus.  He was later joined by other people standing in the aisle as the bus stopped and picked up additional riders.  At various points of the journey, there must have been 15 or more people standing in the aisle or the front of the bus, including a woman holding a baby.  When the bus would make a stop, vendors got on selling snacks of various kinds and soft drinks.  Contrary to the movie version, however, I’m happy to report that there were no farm animals inside the bus.  We eventually made it to Campeche as did both of our bags.  It was more like nine hours than five or six, however.

Downtown Campeche

Campeche historically was a port city.  It still is a fishing port.  It was a base from which the Spanish mounted their attempts at conquest of the Yucatan peninsula.  Because of pirate attacks, a wall was built around the city so that it could be better protected, and two forts also were built in strategic locations. Parts of the wall have been preserved, as have the forts.  These, and the colorfully-painted, restored colonial buildings of the walled portion of the city, are the primary attractions. 

This fort retains its ancient canons

We decided to visit one of the forts, which currently houses a museum of Mayan artifacts.  The fort is several miles south of the city.  The guide books suggest taking a taxi to get there and then picking up another taxi for return to the city.  It's often the case that taxis are available at historical sites.  As our luck would have it, though, there was not a taxi in sight when we were ready to leave the fort.  We looked for some shade where we could consider our options:  1. ask the museum staff to call a taxi for us; 2.  walk back to the main road where a taxi was more likely to pass by; 3. hitch a ride with other visitors returning to Campeche.  We tried option #1--staff said they didn't have the phone number for taxis (why didn't we think to have the phone number with us, or better yet, my Mexico cell phone AND the number?).  We considered #3 as we waited a while to see if a taxi would show up.  Then we decided to walk back to the main road...where there was a bus stop.  We hopped on a bus, not knowing really where it was going (but it was heading the direction back toward town).  Typically, local buses have a listing on the right side of the windshield of places along their route.  This will usually be on hand-lettered signage or painted on the windshield.  There's not much time to look at the sign, what with fumbling with change for the fare and negotiating the steep climb into the bus while the bus has already started moving again.  We were in luck this time, though, because the bus was headed--at some point--to El Centro (the walled portion of the city).  The bus driver was road-raging a little bit, stopping beside another bus, opening the door so he could yell obscenities at another bus driver.  When we saw one of the gates on the town wall, we got off.  We were kind of proud of having developed enough cultural competence to ride a bus, even though we didn't know exactly where it was going, and have it get us close to where we wanted to be.

Doug--"Dramamine, please"
on the way to Merida

Back on the road again we soon went for a short (2 hr.) ride to Merida. 

Christmas Day we spent on a tour to Uxmal.  I mentioned earlier that we were retuning because it's an interesting site and we hadn't really gotten to see it on our previous trip.  Doug was also interested in Uxmal because one of his "academic ancestors" died in a fall there.  The tour group consisted of three people from the US (us, of course, and another man we'll call "the hippy, dippy guy"), and four people who spoke Russian (a couple who had immigrated to Australia in the 1970s and two young women from Russia).  When the Russian Russians, who were in the front of the van, heard the Australian Russians speaking Russian to each other in the back seat, they both whipped around and embarked on an extended conversation in Russian.  Some tense moments, and a renewal of the Cold War, took place when the Australian Russian woman said to us, "I hope you don't think we're being rude, " as she leaned across a seat between Doug and the hippy, dippy guy, "but we haven't spoken Russian to anyone in such a long time." 

Why did we call him the hippy, dippy guy?

The hippy, dippy guy acknowledged as to how he actually did think it was rude to make all other conversation impossible.  That's when the Cold War began.  No more conversation of any kind until after we reached the first site we were visiting.  Things had thawed by the time we were returning to Merida, though, with one of the Russian Russians talking to me most of the return. 

Uxmal

We were interested to see whether our perceptions of things had changed--the food, the city, etc.--now that we have a great deal of experience with Mexico and speak Spanish.  For instance, we wanted to see if the traffic would seem as wild and chaotic as it had the first time.  We also wanted to test out our language improvement by visiting the anthropology museum again because last time everything was labeled in Spanish.  So, while we were in Merida, we ate Yucatecan cuisine for most meals. It is some of the most wonderful food and we tried several dishes that were new to us.  The traffic seemed much calmer, but we think that instead of a change in our perception, there has been a change in the city (more upscale development, a little less gritty).  We were much more comfortable interacting with people, now that we speak Spanish, but also experienced more people trying to speak English to us than we remembered.  In our final language test, we were disappointed to find that the anthropology museum has had a makeover and the displays now have both Spanish and English text.  And, in a demonstration of how small the world really is, I ran into Grace Johnson, an Ohio State colleague, on vacation with her family, at the anthropology museum and later on an excursion to a nature preserve on the gulf.

We shared a boat on the last tour and a table at lunch with one couple from the US and two couples from Mexico.  We spoke (almost) as easily in Spanish to the Mexican couples as we did in English to the "Americans".  What had previously felt so foreign that we couldn't figure out why all the streets were named "Calle," feels quite comfortable now.

What Am I Doing Here?

I'm happy to report that I've finally visited one of the programs I plan to include in my research.  I could write about how it is that I hadn't yet been able to do that (which would include an exploration of culture/personality--I'm not sure how much of each of those is at play), but instead I'm going to write about the visit and some of what I already know about the program.  This is what I thought was so interesting that I built my research project around it and programs like it:

Faro de Oriente
"Faro" is an acronym for Fabrica de Artes & Oficios; "Oriente" means east in Spanish.  Thus, Faro de Oriente is a program in the eastern part of Mexico City.  I'll explain what the other words actually mean shortly.  However, faro also is a Spanish word in and of itself and it means "beacon," like a lighthouse beacon.  I'm relatively sure the double-meaning is intended.

Faro de Oriente is one of four similar programs located in far-flung, periferal, impoverished locations in Mexico City.  Two are in the southern parts within the boundaries of the Federal District (both in somewhat or very rural areas), the newest one is in the northeastern part of the District, and the original is in the east (oriente).  As subsequent Faros have been developed after Faro de Oriente, they have developed programming addressing the different needs and desires of the communities in which they are located, but they are all within a network and all are programs of the DF Secretary of Culture.  The purposes of the Faros are to increase the availability of cultural opportunities in the marginal outlying areas of DF, and to provide training in the production of arts (artes) and crafts (oficios) to populations who have few other educational or training opportunities and to provide the space for such work to be done (a fabrica is a factory or production facility).  Exactly what each Faro does, however, is highly influenced by the communities and community-building in each area.

The Visit
What my research project is about is juvenile delinquency/crime prevention within the context of various programs for youth and young adults in Mexico City.  I plan to look at six different programs/agencies, half of which are operated by the government of the DF and half of which are operated by non-profits.  A preliminary step in my research process is visiting each program/agency to observe operations and meet the people in charge who can agree to give me access.  I am necessarily reliant on my local contact to help make these visits happen. After plans for two visits failed to materialize, in some frustration, I recently attempted to make contacts to initiate visits on my own.  This effort did not produce positive results (cold-calling in Spanish was a bit of a disaster and almost everything that could go wrong with such an effort, did).

However, hope springs eternal.  My local contact mentioned another potential opportunity to visit Faro de Orient last week, right before he was leaving the country for several conferences in South America.  I got a text message Saturday morning to contact a friend and colleague of his who was taking another woman, who is a doctoral student from Switzerland, on a visit.  I was able to connect with Angeles and we arranged a meeting place outside a metro station for Sunday morning.

We finally found Tamara (the Swiss student) and her car.  It was decided that Jose  (Angeles' husband) would drive.  The visits ended up taking all day, as the distances between the programs were large, especially when considering the lack of any direct route between them, and the notoriously heavy, slow traffic.

While Jose, Angeles and I had waited for and tried to find Tamara, I got to know them a little bit.  Jose seemed very knowledgeable about the Faros.  I asked if he were also a social worker—no, he’s an architect and has designed many of the Faro buildings.  He was a great resource to meet, not to mention a really nice guy.  Angeles also was very helpful and Tamara gave me hope that I'll one day actually be able to speak Spanish much more fluently.

As we drove, going first to visit Faro de Oriente, Jose talked about the history of the Faros.  The Faro de Oriente is in the eastern part of DF in the Delegacion of Ixtapalapa.  ("Delegaciones" are subdivisions of the city, sort of like New York City's boroughs.)  The program was established during the administration of the first governor of DF from the PRD (the political party of the left).  Currently, Faro de Oriente provides workshops in the arts/crafts, such as metalworking, carpentry, ceramics, the making of alebrijes (more about these in a minute), sewing, various printing processes such as serigraphy, paper-making, and music, all for free, to children, youth and older adults in the surrounding community.   The workshops require pre-registration and there is always more demand than there is capacity in the workshops.  They run on a tri-mester basis, year round.

The Faro campus is surrounded by a fence but the gates were open wide on one side and we drove through them onto a concrete-covered open space.  Several other vehicles were parked facing the fence.  Right outside the gate was a truck selling snacks.  There are several buildings, including the most recent new construction--a theater that had its grand opening in August.  It’s a space that can be used in several different ways for performances of different types and sizes, either inside or outside with the building opened up as a large stage.  The main building is a two-story, multipurpose building.  It has areas devoted to the different modalities and offices.  Some of the areas are classrooms, but most of the building is more or less open. At one end of the top floor is a community comedor (dining room) where meals are served to people from the community through a program of a different department of the DF government.  There is also gallery space.  The building is a remodel of a building that was built by the local government but had been abandoned for something like eight years prior to Faro obtaining it.  Jose said that during the time the building was abandoned, the community used the land and building as a trash dump for everything including derelict/abandoned cars.  One of the first tasks to ready the site for the Faro was clean-up of all of the garbage and debris.  That activity alone was a community improvement.  The campus also has another large building that houses the actual work space for metalworking, carpentry, and the making of large alebrijes.  

This is an alebrije.  Essentially, alebrijes are sculptures of (usually) fantastical animals.  The original ones were carved from copal wood and painted, in a small town in Oaxaca.  These are quite large (as can be seen by comparing the dragon/dinosaur to the two small children being menaced) and made, I think, of papier mache over a wire frame.

Apparently there is an interest in environmental sustainability.  Rainwater is captured through fields of lava rock, stored in underground cisterns and used for the restrooms throughout the buildings.  The large workshop building is built with high windows on all four sides, to maximize the availability of natural light.  Small openings on the lower part of the building, and venting up high, help to naturally cool the building.  The cooling technology is used on the theater as well.

The outside of the main building serves as a canvas for large, colorful paintings.  The backside of the building has smaller panels of graffiti-like painting.  Jose discussed the large paintings as being products of workshops.  On one end of the building, the painting had a 2011 date.  I'm not sure whether the backside painting is also part of workshop art.  In front of the building was a LARGE sculpture, which looked like it was left from Dia de Muertos celebrations.  It was a figure with a skull covered with recycled CDs/DVDs (shiny!), with recycled video tape for hair.  Below on the ground was a guitar, covered with vinyl LPs.  Jose explained that most of the materials used are recycled.

Development of a Faro and its Programs

I hope to learn a lot more about this through my research because what I already have heard is very interesting.  When an area is chosen for the development of a Faro, community meetings are held and people from the community recruited to serve on various committee.  There would be a research committee charged with researching what are the greatest needs in the community.  For example, in one community, maybe the roads are in terrible shape and getting the roads fixed is identified as a critical need that the people would like to address.  A committee would then develop strategies for approaching the government to get the roads fixed.  Another committee would be charged with searching for and evaluating potential sites for the Faro.  Another committee would develop a proposal for the Faro, including a request for funding.  These processes take place over several years.  The process itself is social development, as the results also are social development projects.  Community members, including youth and young adults, are developed as community leaders and the community is improved in varied ways that are chosen by the community.

I had hoped to witness the community development firsthand, while it was going on.  I now realize that was somewhat unrealistic, in that the process necessarily takes a good bit of time--longer than the time I have available.  However, as it turns out, it was unrealistic for other reasons having to do with the current global financial crisis and the electoral cycle in Mexico City.  I'll have to settle for asking about the developmental process to see what I can glean from the stories.

Dia de los Muertos Holiday

Perhaps you've heard of it--Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.  It's a holiday in Mexico (celebrated in many other Latin American countries and perhaps elsewhere as well) that has pre-Hispanic origins combined with Catholic observances of All Saints and All Souls days.  The celebrations vary somewhat from place to place and we have read that Oaxaca has particularly interesting ones. We have been to Oaxaca (city), the capital of Oaxaca (state), before for the Christmas holiday season, so we decided to take a trip there for this holiday.

A view of part of the historical section of Oaxaca city

In case you don't know much about Mexico's geography, Oaxaca is one of the southernmost states in Mexico, with beaches on the Pacific coast, jungle, and drier highlands (e.g., mountains).  Oaxaca city is in the highlands.  It's a colonial city, with a central core of buildings dating from the 1600s, including at least four large churches built during that time.  We traveled there by bus--nothing like in the US--a six-hour trip.  The country between Mexico City and Oaxaca, after about the first hour and a half, really reminds me of the southwest US.  It's mountainous and fairly dry.

In Oaxaca, the Dia de los Muertos celebration gets started on October 31.  Many (mostly young) people were in costume--Count Dracula-type vampires were popular with some of the youngest.  Older kids were dressed in various representations of death, such as black monk's hood with a scythe, skeleton, and the special Mexican version which is called La Catrina.  There were parades that involved a band and groups of kids in costume dancing.  On the 31st, the parade we saw included 10-15 kids in costumes on stilts.  Many of the girls were dressed as La Catrina.  At the front of the parade was a 10-foot long paper dragon (no idea of significance to Dia de los Muertos).

The next night, there was another parade with many costumes of monsters of various types (Orcs, etc.). On the 31st, we watched the parade for a little while but then left it to go to one of the cemetaries. I know this sounds creepy, but there were several activities being held at the cemetary. 

The street that ran along one side of the cemetary was essentially closed to traffic by the vendors' booths that were set up along both sides of it.  There was food of various types already cooked or being cooked.  One of the special dishes in Oaxaca is called a tlyuda--it's sort of a large, thin, flour tortilla, crisped on a big griddle and spread with a thin layer of refried beans, lettuce, tomato, various types of meat, and this wonderful white cheese.  There were also booths selling almost every other kind of thing--CDs, sunglasses, pizza.

The cemetary is surrounded by 30-foot high walls and the main entrance was open.  The part we were entering was the mausoleum that had slots for burials in the walls, around the inside of a rectangle.  Each of these slots--and they ran from floor to ceiling--had a lit candle at the front of it.  Across the wide corridor from the burial slots was an area that had lots more graves, family crypts, and elaborate markers.  The graves are typically covered with stone or concrete and a number of them have little buildings, statues, or other structural design elements.


Dia de los Muertos observations have several parts.  People set up altars with offerings for the dead family members who return to be honored.  These are frequently in homes, but also are in places of business. 

Altar in an Artisans' building

The altars may have photos or other representations of the dead, along with various things that the dead favored while living.  So for some, that would be foods they liked (chocolate, mole, fruit, etc.), bebidas or drinks (such as beer, mezcal, coffee, etc.) or representations of favorite activities.  For the latter, there might be a skeleton dancing, playing an instrument, smoking, etc. 

The altars are also decorated with lots of flowers.  There is usually a glass of water among the offerings (hey--the dead get thirsty in returning).  In addition to the altars, graves are cleaned up and decorated, sort of like what is done in the US for Memorial Day.  People spend a good bit of time in the cemetary cleaning and decorating.





We've been told that flower petals are strewn from the grave to the altar so that the dead can find the way home, but in practice we saw flower petals strewn only for a short distance outside the door of a house into where the altar was located.





When we first visited the cemetary and mausoleum, several altars were set up for a competition.  As I indicated above, there also were lots of candles and most of the available light was from the candles.  In one part of the mausoleum, a choir performed music that sounded like Gregorian chants.  At this point only a few graves had any flowers (except for one that was covered with funeral wreaths, probably because it had not been there very long).  In one section of the mausoleum, volunteers were serving hot chocolate and pan de yema, a type of slightly sweet bread.  Both of these foods are traditional to Dia de los Muertos, as is pan de muerte.  The atmosphere was somewhat festive.

We returned to the cemetary during the day on Nov. 2, All Souls Day. This is the day when the major cleaning and decorating is done.  Outside even more vendors had set up booths and there were also carnival rides.  Flower vendors had several large stalls with many, many beautiful flowers.The walkways inside the cemetary were packed with people.  Friends and family members greeted each other and stopped their work to talk.  Teens sat around looking bored.  There were a few people playing music and others selling snacks of various types. We felt intrusive and uncomfortable as spectators, where we had not during the previous visit, and left as quickly as we could, given the large crowd.


I'm not sure what we expected and I don't know whether we were perceived as being intrusive.  I think I'm more comfortable when I'm able to be a participant-observer rather than an observer/voyeur.  Not knowing anyone there for this event that seems both public and private, how could I be other than observer/voyeur? I think we walk this line frequently in international work, although it's most apparent to me when I am really being just another tourist.

The all-Catrina fashion show

High Altitude Cooking

The aims of this blog are sharing what I'm learning and communicating about what I'm doing.  Some of what I'm doing is everyday living, but frequently there's a twist to it that involves figuring stuff out and/or trial and error.

You may not know this, but Mexico City is one of the highest altitude national capitals.  Denver is called the "Mile High City" because of its altitude (we learned in elementary school that there are 5280 feet in a mile).  Mexico City's altitude of 7350 feet makes it the almost-one-and-a-half-mile high city.  So here's a little bit of physical science information that you might or might not know:  the higher the altitude, the lower the air pressure.  Big deal, you may be saying.  But if you're trying to cook and even moreso if you're trying to bake, it is a very big deal.  Lower air pressure makes water boil at a lower temperature, thus making it more difficult to cook things in or over boiling water--it takes longer because the water is not as hot as one would expect at a lower altitude.  Why is this an issue in baking?  Well, when water or any other liquid boils, it evaporates.  Thus, in baking a cake, for instance, liquid begins evaporating sooner and this can cause the cake to be dry.  What's more, lower air pressure also affects the leavening process, where certain ingredients produce gases that make the cake rise.  What happens here is that gas is produced faster (which is really what water boiling is as well--water changing from a liquid to a gaseous state), the cake rises faster, but because this is happening at a lower temperature that it would at or near sea level, the rest of the chemical reactions are out of synch.  The structure of the cake is created by the starches in the flour, the sugar, and the fats.  If the cake rises too fast, the center falls because it isn't as done as it should be.  So, there are various adjustments that one can make to a cake recipe to change the chemistry to try to account for the lower boiling, faster rising, etc.  (a little more flour, a little less sugar, a higher temperature, a longer cooking time, etc.).  Okay, end of first physical science lesson.

Remember above when I said Mexico City's altitude is 7350 feet?  Well, to the local population, it's 2240 meters.  That's right--they use the dreaded metric system, not only for distance but also for weights and dry volume (grams) and liquid volume (liters).  Sure, we know about how much two liters is (a two-liter bottle of Coke/soda/pop--duh!), but how do teaspoons and measuring cups compare?  For most of the cake ingredients, if you have measuring cups and spoons for the English system of measurement and your recipe is written in the English system, everything works fine.  But if the fat you are using is butter, the usual way it is measured is by the stick (which is 1/4 pound, 1/2 cup, or 8 tablespoons).  The wrapper of a stick of butter is conveniently marked into tablespoons with additional markings indicating 1/4 cup and 1/3 cup.  But if the butter is sold in a country that uses the metric system (which, by the way, is almost every country in the world except for the US), turns out a box of butter is not one pound and the four sticks of butter in the box are not 1/4 pound each.  With nothing to compare it to in the grocery store, the box looked about the right size.  However, when I opened it at home, the sticks looked like they were flattened--about the right dimensions in length and width but not in height.

All of this is to say, it's Doug's birthday and he was returning from the US, so I was going to surprise him by baking one of our favorite cakes.  First I had to try to buy an appropriate pan for it because, as I may have mentioned previously, there is NOTHING to bake in, in this otherwise very fully-furnished apartment.  Last weekend I found a pan that's not exactly right but I thought it would work.  First I made sure I could get all of the ingredients for the cake.  Then I got my sister to fill in some details in the recipe (via Facebook, of course). 

Saturday afternoon I started to bake the cake.  First step, as my mother taught me, is turn the oven on.  Uh-oh--the oven temperature is measured in degrees Centigrade and my recipe calls for 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Yes, we learned the conversion from Fahrenheit to Centigrade in school, but it's one of those things that I don't really remember.  I could figure it out, but I don't remember it.  Luckily, though, we now have the internets, so I quickly found a conversion calculator.  If I remember correctly, it was 224 degrees C.--something like that.  So I turned the oven on to that temperature.

For this particular cake, making the batter involves melting the butter with water and powdered cocoa.  After this mixture boils, it's added to the sugar and flour and then the rest of the ingredients are stirred in.  So I usually start the butter melting with the water and cocoa, then measure the sugar and flour, etc.  I opened the butter box and dumped out the--oops--flattened sticks of butter.  Shit!  Read on the stick of butter (mantequilla) that it's 90 grams.  Great--how much of a quarter pound is that?  Internets to the rescue once again.  Of course I needed to round somewhat and eyeball where to cut the sticks of butter, but I had enough for both the cake and the icing.

So, how'd the cake turn out?  Well, let me tell you that although I knew that high altitude baking is tricky, I learned all of the specifics that are in the first part of this post WHILE THE CAKE WAS IN THE OVEN.  When I noticed that it looked funny (like, the outside edge was tall and the middle 90 percent of the cake was much shorter).  Needless to say, it's not the right consistency, but it tastes better than several others I made experimentally when I was 13 or 14 (once I got baking powder and baking soda mixed up and used the wrong one, resulting in a two-layer cake that was only about an inch tall and somewhat the consistency of sawdust; once I decided to substitute green food coloring for the red that's called for in a Red Velvet Cake--that cake looked like it was made of spinach).  I think I was so preoccupied with the differences in measures that I was having to deal with that I forgot to explore the OTHER difference--the effect of the altitude!  My mother always said "Live and learn" (as she choked down chocolate sawdust/spinach velvet cake).  Only time will tell whether I learned!