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Oaxaca Adventure: How I spent my 50th birthday
Two years after hearing Cecelia's enthusiastic seminar on building latrines and laying irrigation pipes for rural Mexican Indians in the mountains of Oaxaca, I was still undecided about going to Mexico. I didn't speak Spanish or Mixteca. How would I get along with my co-workers -- virtual strangers? Did I want to pay $500 to $700 to Northwest Medical Teams (a Christian aid organization) to fund my trip? Did I want to use up five hard-earned vacation days for this "adventure"? What if I got diarrhea?
On the other hand I'd never travelled to Mexico, and it would only be for a week. Cecelia, the team leader and a world traveller, had made five or six trips to Oaxaca, her favorite travel destination, she said.
I wanted a different kind of vacation. For once I'd like to be working and giving -- rather than doing something for myself.
So in the fall of 2000, I signed up and paid my fees to NW Medical Teams. Over the next several months I attended trip planning sessions, met my six co-workers, took a beginning Spanish course, and filled out a maze of forms. Our trip was scheduled for early August, 2001.
Each of us packed two duffel bags. One was for personal items. The second was stuffed with gifts for Mixteca families: new shoes of varying sizes donated by Nike; Goodwill clothes we picked out; tools, toys, toothbrushes and toothpaste. Cecelia planned on having a kind of Christmas in August for the Indians.
Cecelia and I both work at the same community college. I'm a graphic artist. She's a director of community education, specializing in travel. Others in our small group included Jeremy, who works for a tool manufacturing company, which generously gave many tools to the Indians. Suzanne was just out of college, and planned to travel to China after this trip. Kim was also a recent college grad and worked in a hospital. Pete was an engineer and a veteran of an earlier trip to Oaxaca with Cecelia. Ramona was a registered nurse from Utah.
What we had in common was a thirst for a little adventure, a desire to make a small difference in the world, and curiosity to know people from a different culture. Most of us spoke Spanish well enough to communicate. Kim and I knew only a few polite words: "gracias", "por favor", and "de nada".
We flew out of Portland, Oregon on a predawn Saturday flight to Los Angeles, made a delayed connecting flight, then sprinted through the crowded Mexico City airport to make our last leg to Oaxaca, wearing our white NW Medical Team t-shirts. That made it easy for our Manos de Ayuda ("Helping Hands", sister Mexican organization to NWMT) hosts to spot us at the Oaxaca City airport.
Our van trip to the city center hotel was a slow hour's drive through a slice of the Mexican third-world. Broken down, old model cars, trucks and buses spewing black smoke made it hard to breathe on the beat-up roads. Mexicans walked beside us on the muddy side-paths, occasionally waving to us. Abandoned, decrepit houses and sheds, adorned with ugly graffiti, lined the roadways.
Casa de la Tia Hotel was a welcome contrast to the noise, filth and choking air of our drive. It had a courtyard for sitting and dining, with small, live trees and large flower pots. Our rooms were well off the street, clean and quiet. To top it off, our hotel proprietor was a gracious American expatriate. She taught at the university and ran the hotel with her Mexican husband.
We made reservations for the following weekend; our five-day stay in the rural community of San Pedro de Cholula would be sandwiched between two weekends at the hotel.
On Sunday our group walked around the sunny streets of Oaxaca and the "Zocalo" (city square), teeming with indoor markets and colorful street vendors hawking their wares. In the afternoon, we toured historic Monte Alban, site of an ancient Mexican civilization.
Monday morning we piled our bags into the back of a pickup truck, shopped for groceries and large water bottles, then drove in a van for three hours, east of Oaxaca, climbing gradually higher into the mountains on a one-lane, rutted dirt road.
At mid-afternoon we arrived in the hilly, scattered village of San Pedro de Cholula. Small shanties dotted the steep hills among crops of corn and beans. Cattle, sheep, and burros grazed here and there. We could see some natives watching us curiously from their homes high above us. Some of them welcomed us at the old schoolhouse, which would be our home for five days.
One of them, Miguel, spoke both Mixteca and Spanish. He would be our friendly translator, mostly communicating with our Manos guide, Augustine, who spoke both Spanish and English fluently.
We set up our camp in the concrete and wood schoolhouse, then walked to a nearby home to watch experienced Augustine build a "Lorena" stove. We would build 14 of these mud and brick stoves over the next few days, our group divided into crews of three and four.
The villagers needed stoves with roof venting to use their cooking fires more efficiently, and escape the lung-damaging effects of smoke inhalation. Some sheds they cooked in were black with soot from open fires, where they cooked tortillas.
The Lorena stove was usually built on an existing waist-high fire base of stone and mud, inside a shanty. Soil, dug out from the dirt yard, was shoveled into a pile outside the shed, Pebbles were sifted out by hand, and lime and water mixed in to make a glue-like mud, or "lodo." Bricks, hauled in earlier, were stacked and ready to go.
Augustine roughly levelled the base with a shovel and trowel, then arranged a continuous row of bricks into a square enclosure, about three feet by three feet. He tossed mud underneath each brick and used his level to even the first row of bricks. He then added a row of bricks inside the row to divide it into two sections, one for pots and a larger section for the "camal," a large clay, slightly concave plate used for cooking tortillas.
Three layers of bricks were stacked, packed with mud, and levelled before Augustine cut tin supports for the pots, camal, and stove pipe. They were put in place and mud packed and shaped around them for a custom fit. The pots and camal were then removed and the mud allowed to dry for a day, before the family would cook their first meal.
The whole process took about two hours. Augustine had built dozens of these stoves, and he was fast. It took us novices about three hours on our first stoves, but we got faster. In the end we built 14 stoves in four days.
The husband of the family usually helped alongside us. His wide-eyed, brown-faced kids watched us work and sometimes helped. The families were thankful for our work, shyly shaking our hands, and sometimes offering gifts, such as oranges. On a previous trip Cecelia had been given a goat, but had to give it back; it wouldn't make it through airport baggage check.
On our hikes up and down steep paths to the Indian dwellings, we passed small goats and cattle, herded by eight-year-old kids. These were scenes out of National Geographic magazine. Miguel, about 55, led the way. As we huffed and puffed in the thin mountain air, at 8,000 feet elevation, Miguel was composed and smiling.
Sunburned, mosquito-bitten, tired, hot and dirty at the end of the day, we took sponge baths at an outdoor faucet. We walked a quarter mile to outdoor toilets. Later, we paired off to cook dinner for our group at the schoolhouse in the evenings. Ramona and Pete brought canned fixings for a Turkey dinner -- Thanksgiving in August.
In the evenings, some Mixteca men and boys showed up to play basketball at the rustic outdoor court. They invited us to play. I had no sneakers, so I clomped along in my hiking boots. I found I was able to connect with these people on the court through the language of basketball; we played every evening.
When night fell I often took a walk in the cool air. I'd never seen fireflies before. And once I sat on the steps of a nearby old church and watched hundreds of bats, silhouetted against the starry sky, streaming into an opening in the building.
On our last afternoon at San Pedro, we organized our gifts into piles, and brought one family into the schoolhouse at a time, to fit them with shoes and clothing. Perhaps one hundred citizens assembled outside the schoolhouse, patiently waiting their turns. Augustine herded them in and out, with good humor.
After a long drive back into Oaxaca City on Friday, it felt great, after five days, to shower, shave, and share a restaurant meal together. And to sleep in a bed, rather than in a sleeping bag. It took a few days for mosquito bites to heal; my elbows were red, itchy, and swollen.
I had one day left to shop at the Zocalo, before I flew home on Sunday. But I awoke with "la turista" -- diarrhea. I bought some medicine, but stayed in my room most of the day. I passed my 50th birthday up in the mountains, and the group threw a small party for me and Suzanne (who also had an August birthday) Saturday evening in the hotel. I ate little food, but enjoyed the attention and small gifts.
Despite some anxiety about catching my flights while still sick, I said my farewells to my team and made it home without incident. This was a mid-life birthday I'll always remember and feel good about. If you get the chance, take a week of your life to help our neighbors on foreign soil.
Find out more about Northwest Medical Teams International a Portland, Oregon, based relief organization.
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