From Blisters to Calluses

June 11, 2018 0 By admin

(Originally posted July 2007)

Hello Friends and Family,

It’s been a very busy week and I’m not quite sure where to start. Last Sunday through Tuesday, we met up with our compañeros from all the other communities for a few days in Zapatitlan. It was a great reunion and it felt like meeting up with old friends. We spent our days in workshops, continuing the sustainable development and indigenous rights discussions that we started

at the end of June. After spending several weeks in the community, we’ve learned a lot and were able to process out experiences. Each group also spent time reflecting on the progress of the group, the relationships we´ve formed in the community, and the projects we´re working on. Our group analyzed and discussed and came up with new ideas to implement in Copales. In the evenings, we thoroughly enjoyed spending time together. We had lots of jokes, funny experiences, gripes and Doña Julia to share among quality friends.

This week, my group has been working hardcore on building the water catchments. Each tank takes two to three days, but we’ve divided our skills and the help from the youth and some señores in the community to separate between two or three houses and build several tanks at the same time. It’s been tough work and we have earned many blisters which are slowly turning into calluses. The work is tough at times as the cement, gravel, and sand are heavy as well as it is vital to attend to each and every detail of the tank, the floor and the taps so that it will last and serve the family for many, many years.

We still are doing workshops and activities with the kids and youth in the evenings, using every bit of energy we have to keep up with them. I think I’ll need to sleep for a month when I get back. This week, we did a geography class with maps of the world, Latin America, Mexico, Puebla and made a map of Copales. The children’s knowledge of the world outside of Copales is limited to the few that have T.V.s and the nearest villages to Copales. We continue to do simple English lessons at the request of the families but also include lessons of the communities indigenous language, Nahuatl, to remind the children of the importance of the tradition. As the world modernizes and globalizes, many of these indigenous language and traditions are rapidly fading around the world.

I feel so comfortable in the community and in general, in Puebla, I sometimes forget that I am an outsider. The families in Copales are used to seeing me walking down the paths and I don’t feel like I stand out as much anymore with my different colored skin and hair, different types of clothes and my accent in Spanish. We’ve been successful in integrating ourselves into the community, but outside of Copales, it’s a different story. The other day, I had a funny experience riding on the bus. I was returning from Cuetzalan, which requires two buses, first to Rayon and another to Los Mangos. I was seated in the last row of a minibus and as we were driving around the curves through the mountains, the driver pulls over the bus and turns around and yells to me:”Hey, Guerra! Where are you going?” and after glancing around and realizing that I was by far the whitest person on the bus and he was talking to me, I responding that I was headed for Rayon. He seemed puzzled and continuing asking me “Are you sure? Are you lost? What are you doing here?” I assured him that I knew where I was, not lost, and that he could continue on the route.

Last night, our group hosted a dinner for the youth that have been helping us this week with the tanks. I taught some of the kids “Go Fish,” a lesson that had to begin with an explanation of the deck of cards. Some of the kids had never seen playing cards. Now,the kids are quite experts and enjoy yelling “Pesca!” to their friends when they don’t have the card they need. We cooked rice, eggs and squash and I made a pitcher of passion fruit juice.

This morning we attended a large community meeting in which we were asked to speak more about our work; the tanks, stoves, workshops and experience living in the community. Thank goodness the meeting was in Spanish, and not Nahuatl, otherwise I don’t understand much. It also makes it a lot easier to stand up in front of the whole town and discuss what we’ve been doing, public speaking makes me quite nervous.

That’s all I have for this week. We’re celebrating the birthday of one of our friends this weekend here in Cuetzalan but we’ll be back hauling concrete again early tomorrow morning.