Day Length

Our home in Papagayos rests south of the Tropic of Cancer. In the summer the sun passes north of being directly overhead at mid-day, but the day lengths vary only about an hour through the annual cycle of seasons with the average day about twelve hours long. Nearly equal amounts of daytime and nighttime.

During our visit in Fairbanks, Alaska, in early July we got to experience the "land of the mid-night sun." Actually, Fairbanks is a little bit south of the Arctic Circle, but the daylight to dusk cycle fills each day at mid-summer.

For some reason I awoke at 1:30 in the morning on July 6th. I peeked out of the closed blinds in our camper and I could still see the green of the cottonwood leaves and the grass nearby. All nature called me to walk to the Chena River that flows past our campground.

The thrushes chanted their mantra to call the sun back for another long-in-the-sky day. It was not the spiral song of the Vermont veery or the heartaching beauty of the wood thrush, but their own sweet Alaskan melody. The mosquitos dive bombed my head using my ears for bull's-eye targets. A fish jumped to catch an insect for breakfast in the swift tannin filled waters. Two gulls flew upstream in their sleek flight jackets in contrast with the ragged shoreline white spruce trees.

By 3:00 AM there was color rising in the eastern sky, a blush of rose, and the sky overhead was brightening to blue with the approach of morning. There was plenty of natural light to read and write without using electric lights. The smell of damp cottonwood filled all the space between the water's edge and our camper as I headed back to the screened refuge of our traveling home.

Diversity

As I steered my cart down an Anchorage supermarket aisle on a quest for ketchup, I saw a young woman intently studying the jars of spaghetti sauce. Something about her manner told me she was feeling overwhelmed by the display.

I said hi and that was enough to give her permission to ask for help. “Please,” she said, with a wave of her hand that encompassed the hundreds of jars of spaghetti sauce. “For this?” and she pointed to a cellophane bag of pasta lying in her shopping cart.

I nodded as I took in the variety of brands and styles available and imagined what it would be like to choose one if I couldn't read English. “¿Habla español?” I asked, just in case that would make our communication easier, but she just stared at me blankly. I tried a different tack. “United States,” I said, pointing to myself. Then I pointed to her with a questioning expression on my face.

“Azerbaijan,” was her answer. I don't even know what language people from Azerbaijan speak, but I was confident my Spanish wasn't going to be of much use in this situation.

I surveyed the spaghetti sauce choices quickly and found a row of jars that featured pictures of the main ingredients. One variety showed garlic next to the tomatoes, another basil, another cheese. I did my best to indicate that any of the several hundred jars would be a good choice. But it wasn't my place to decide her menu for her.

We parted, but a few minutes later I ran into her again in the detergent aisle. I never thought about how many choices there were for someone who simply wanted to wash some clothes. She indicated with her hands that she only wanted a little detergent, but she was confused by the small boxes of dryer sheets. As well she might be. I tried to explain that those boxes were not soap and steered her attention to the smallest liquid and powdered detergent choices available.

We didn't develop much of a relationship in the few minutes we spent shopping together. But it was enough for me to reflect on the human diversity that makes my life so interesting and rich.

Back in Papagayos, everyone except for Laurel and me is Mexican, and in my mind our neighbors' collective characteristics define what it means to be Mexican.

However, my image of what someone from the United States is like is a little more complicated. I have a picture in mind based on the dominant culture as I understood it from the vantage point of my childhood. But my image is so often wrong that I'm ceasing to be amazed when I see that my fellow countrymen and women come in so many skin tones and speak so many languages. It makes me proud.

Once Friends, Always Friends

It only takes a moment to become friends, to fall in love with someone. An open look into another person's face, to give a welcoming smile or nod, that can be enough to connect my heart to a new friend. Sometimes such a meeting is followed by a slow building of confidences, stories, personal histories as we search for and forge connections and commonalities. But even if we don't have much time together our minds have touched and we know each other, know we will always share friendship.

In 1995 I went to the UN World Conference for Women, NGO Forum near Beijing, China. My goal was to make a friend from every continent. I walked with my heart open. One morning, as I was going quickly between workshop offerings I passed a woman who was also walking with her heart and eyes open. I recognized her as a person I wanted to get to know, to build a friendship with and turned to follow and catch up with her. She had also turned to find me! We spent five minutes sharing a little about ourselves, then traded contact information, embraced and said goodbye. My life has always been richer for that time spent together. I wrote several letters and received one from her. But she was from Libya, at that time a country labeled as an American enemy, a forbidden place by my government. My letters and hers were censored. Yet I still carry her in my heart.

This summer we have visited many friends. I felt loved and honored by spending time with each of them and building on our earlier connections.

Most recently we stayed with Joon and Shim (and their daughters Shina and Dona) who we first got to know through Steve's work as an English as a Second Language teacher in Brattleboro, Vermont. When they moved to Vancouver, British Columbia from Brattleboro we stayed in touch and even visited on an earlier trip west. Then we moved to Mexico, changed our email and Joon changed his email. We lost each other. We tried the old phone numbers, we tried asking mutual friends for the new contact information without any luck. We were lost to each other. Then one day as I was working in the garden in Papagayos Steve burst out of the house with wonderful news. Shina had invited him to be a friend on Facebook, we could connect. What a joy to hear again from our friends.

Last week when we arrived at their door Shim said, “You look just the same.” She said it in clear English which had not been available to her the last time we visited five years ago. The girls had grown, of course, from giggling grade-schoolers into thoughtful middle and high school students. Both are now published writers. Shina showed us her portfolio of art work; Dona gave us a tour of her Facebook page with photos of many friends and adventures.

Joon pressed many books on us to read during our visit. He has spent the past five years developing the Creative Writing for Children Society. One book held Shina's story called “Facefriends,” an account of using the online social networking service to locate her best friend from second grade. I laughed out loud at her list of details from living in southern Vermont and wept tears of joy at her reunion with her dear friend.

One evening after a dinner of delicious traditional Korean food Joon announced, “Tonight I will take you to meet our friends, Shawn and Jo Ann.” He had us go up to their neighbor's front door, only two block from their house, and knock. He coached us to inquire where to find Joon and Shim. Shawn just laughed and said, “They are hiding by the garage door!” We all laughed. These four Korean Canadians clearly enjoy each other's company.

Jo Ann, round faced and lively, told of their surprise reunion. Shawn and Jo Ann were taking a week of vacation from their home in Winnipeg, Manitoba to Vancouver, B. C. and had decided to spend Sunday morning at the Korean Church. But it had been noisy and she felt restless. Jo Ann decided to leave the service and go to the washroom. On the way she heard someone call her name. In this strange place, so many kilometers from home, who could possibly know her? She turned and saw a grownup version of a girl she had sung with in high school choir back in Seoul, Korea. Shim rushed to her and they had embraced and haven't let their friendship go since then.

Joon and Shim have plans to move again this summer. We promised to stay in touch and sorely wish we could give then a hand with packing and moving, but we have our plans to go to Alaska.

As we head out on the road again, my mind goes to my Libyan friend. In 2004 our countries naturalized relationships, opening the way for trade and communication again. I hope someday we will have a surprise reunion, the chance to cook traditional foods for each other, to sing and walk the same path together for a while. To fall more deeply in love and smile as we pose for pictures together.

Green Angels

I heard about the Green Angels the first time I went to Mexico back in the 1960's. The Green Angels are bilingual mechanics paid by the Mexican government to aid tourists and other travelers on the nation's highways. They cruise all the major routes looking for motorists that need help. They carry spare gasoline and diesel fuel, jacks and tools, a limited selection of hoses and belts and wire and hardware, and a generous amount of mechanical ability and common sense. Their service is free.

As we were driving north along a lonely highway toward the border we developed a coolant leak at our radiator's drain valve. I tried to close it tighter, but no matter what I did the coolant kept dripping out. We used most of the drinking water we were carrying to add to the radiator to keep the engine cool, but we kept driving knowing that eventually we'd get to the next city where we could find a radiator shop.

All of a sudden I recognized an oncoming vehicle as being a potential source of help. I hadn't been thinking about the Green Angels, but when I saw the approaching utility truck painted white with a large green stripe, I instantly remembered everything I'd heard about these angels of mercy on the Mexican highways. Only seconds before they passed us, I flashed our headlights. As I pulled off onto the shoulder they slowed and turned around and came back to where I had parked.

Victor and Jorge greeted us cheerily as they stepped from their truck and we shook hands. Then they inquired how they might help us. We showed them the coolant leak and they tried a couple ideas for fixing it, although they weren't successful. They did give us directions to the nearest radiator shop along our route where we would be able to have another drain plug installed.

As Victor was looking at our radiator, he glanced over the engine and noticed a worn spot on a vacuum line that was leaking air. He insisted on replacing that section of hose. I think he would have been disappointed if they hadn't been able to fix something for us.

Before sending us on our way, they asked us to fill out a brief form that they were required to submit for each incident. When we got to the comments sections and started to write in Spanish our appreciation for their service, they laughed and requested us to rewrite it in English. Maybe they get more credit from their boss for assisting foreign tourists.

As we said goodbye, we thanked them for their help and they wished us well. I was glad that after all these years of knowing about the Green Angels I finally had the opportunity to take advantage of their assistance. I will add this experience to a long list of examples of Mexican hospitality.

"More Than Tourists" Goes On the Road

This week we will be loading our camper onto our pickup truck and leaving our home in Papagayos to head north through San Luis Potosí, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and finally Alaska. We've been hired to work on an RV tour of Alaska this summer. Our job will include bringing up the rear of the caravan and assisting with a number of tasks.

We'll be looking for ways to have meaningful contact with whomever we meet along our path. We hope to apply some of the lessons we've learned here in Mexico to help us be more than tourists wherever we travel.

We'll keep you posted.

Swine Flu in Papagayos, Mexico

First of all we want to let folks know that we are well and there are no known cases of swine flu in Papagayos at this time. Now I'd like to tell a little more about how folks here are reacting to the health warnings.

On Sunday April 26, 2009 we went for a picnic in the next valley with our good friends Simón and Rosa. The day was bright and breezy and we enjoyed a spread of good food under the shade of a Huastecan Fresno tree, then a walk along a stream bed to the site of a waterfall. We were unaware of a pandemic. All was well with the world. It was great to be alive and sharing time with friends.

After our picnic and walk we headed into Ciudad del Maíz to do a few errands and a little visiting before heading back to the village. In the stores and on the streets we saw a few people wearing masks over their noses and mouths. We asked one shop keeper about the masks after a masked customer left the store. He said there was some kind of disease going around.

We headed to the Ortegas' house to do our visiting. Jazmín was sitting in the shade outside the kitchen. She stood up to greet us with the traditional handshake and kiss on the right cheek. After the usual exchange of pleasantries she asked if Chuy was going to school the next day. As far as we knew there would be classes the next day. She reported that she didn't have to go to school until May 6th. That all the schools were closed because of the swine flu. She also explained that some people were wearing tapabocas to prevent the spread of the disease. We made a point of washing our hands well with soap and water before asking for a drink of water and going to check in with Jazmín's elderly grandparents.

The next day we checked online about the swine flu epidemic. We found the websites of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control to be especially useful to us. Now we are checking them twice daily for updates.

In the afternoon on Monday our teenaged friend René stopped by to visit. Instead of a handshake he had settled on linking crooked elbows as a suitable form of greeting that was more sanitary. It was a little funny, maybe a little too physically close, but a great conversation starter about the influenza and health precautions. But then he leaned over our lunch that was heating on the stove and asked what was cooking. Steve pointed out that he could be more thoughtful about health precautions around food.

That evening we walked over to Simón and Rosa's house. On the way we saw another friend. The automatic handshaking ritual froze in mid-air. He said what with the flu and all, maybe it would be better not to shake hands and we agreed. Clearly we need to find a friendly, healthy alternative to this national custom.

At Simón and Rosa's we were greeted by traditional firm handshakes with everyone there. We were offered chairs and then food, but no chance to wash our hands first. We ate anyway. We'd come to find out if they had heard if the meeting planned for next weekend had been canceled or not because of the flu epidemic. Simón is in charge of a group of folks in our state learning to make and use herbal microdoses for healing. A large meeting was planned for as many as forty people to gather here from all parts of Mexico. Simón said he was waiting for the call. If someone didn't call him by tomorrow he would initiate the idea of postponing the meeting until after the flu passes. That seemed like a good idea to us.

Last night, Wednesday, Hector and Chayo came to our house for a little visit. I think they smelled the chocolate chip cookies that were baking in the oven. We offered them coffee and cookies which they were glad to accept. While the water heated for the instant coffee we also offered them anti-bacterial alcohol gel to clean their hands. Hector held out his open palm to receive a squirt of hand sanitizer and explained that he had washed his hands many times during the day and had just showered so his hands were probably pretty clean. I know they had just passed through the barb wire fence near their pig pen to get to our place. I guessed that another cleaning wouldn't hurt.

Our conversation centered around the flu news reports and rumors, the numbers of sick people and deaths and questions about which states in Mexico were already affected. We shook hands when we said goodnight, then went to wash one more time before brushing our teeth and heading to bed.

I was awake in the middle of the night with my mind full of unanswerable questions. We have planned for months to travel to the U.S. at the end of May. Steve had questioned if maybe we shouldn't be prepared to leave sooner than that, possibly on short notice, if there was a warning of imminent border closings, for example. My mind was a tempest. Should we leave Papagayos as soon as possible? Or should we wait and leave on our planned departure date?

After tossing over and over for an hour I finally woke Steve to talk about it. We came to a compromise decision. We will prepare now so we could be ready to leave on short notice. These preparations are all work we would be doing in the next few weeks anyway. If we stay until our original departure date we can get all the gardening done and leave the house and yard in great shape. If we have to go early, Hector and Chayo will help harvest the garden and water the new plantings for us.

The other main decision we made is to keep in close touch with our grown children, our family and all of our friends both near and far.

Our true security still comes from our broad network of close relationships. At the deepest levels, all is well.

Belief In Cures

Chayo came over to visit on Saturday. She was worried about her young adult nephew who lives in the north. He has had headaches for a month and has not been able to work because of the pain. The young man's mother, Chayo's sister, had called to see if information about a cure could be found here in the village. This was a last resort for them following doctor visits and expensive prescriptions that did no good. If they could concoct a cure at home that would be great. If not they were thinking of coming back to the village so he could be treated by a healer in the village.

The healer that was consulted is doña Luisa. After a phone conversation a cure was suggested of bathing his head in a tea made from romero. By the time this information was passed back north Chayo's nephew had been scheduled for an MRI to rule out a tumor in the brain. Chayo believes it is best to follow every possible option to find a cure.

This conversation led to her telling us about other cures she has seen work. When she was a teenager the girls of the family had to carry water long distances to fill the needs of the family. She and her sister had made a trip to a pond with the large water buckets and were headed back home when her sister had an "attack." The girl fell on the ground and Chayo thought she was dying. After a few minutes she came back around and they went on home. In the next few weeks more attacks followed and the family sought a cure. The recommendation was to drink the blood from a male deer while it was still hot. This proved impossible, so blood was dried and later made into a tea. After drinking this concoction, Chayo reported, her sister was cured.

Chayo also knew another girl who had taken ill because she was afraid of dying after the untimely death of a friend. A curandera was called in and touched the girl in a certain way on her head and made washing motions in the air around her. Soon she found relief and was able to live fully afterward without fear.

With belief, with thoughtful hands and prayers, Chayo said, cures can be found for illnesses that pills and doctors can't remedy. (Here is where you read the disclaimer - don't try this at home without supervision, etc. This is the intercultural acceptance part of the story. People here believe in cures more than in doctors. People in the US believe in doctors more than cures. In your own life you get to choose a satisfying combination according to your beliefs.)

The Curandero

A few weeks ago I was riding our horse when he stumbled and pitched to his knees. I was thrown off sideways and landed on some rocks with the horse laying across my legs. I've healed for the most part - the cut on my elbow is now just a series of small scabs and the pain in my shoulder and ankle is hardly noticeable. For the first several days after my fall, I was walking really twisted as my left hip was out of joint. But after about a week of applying ice packs and ointments, I had thought I was better. I was walking straight again, and my hip no longer hurt. But perhaps I made a mistake by thinking I had healed enough to begin using the mattock and shovel and wheelbarrow to continue an earth-moving project I had going in our back yard.

When I started walking crooked again, Chayo suggested that our neighbor don Pancho could help me. Don Pancho is a curandero. Our dictionary translates the word as "quack," but the people here in Papagayos use the term with respect. It refers to a healer, one who may not possess a medical degree but nonetheless has a natural gift for curing others.

I went over to don Pancho's place and he agreed to see what he could do. Don Pancho is an elderly man with eyeglasses and long dark hair flowing from his ears. He explained in Spanish and mime that he would massage my hip. He led me across the yard and into the part of the house his family uses for sleeping. He pointed to the bed in the corner and I understood that would be the "massage table." I crossed the room, but before I could lay down, a very indignant chicken rose up from the pillows and squawked and fluttered her way across the room and out the door.

Hanging on the wall above the bed was a large and worn photograph of a much younger don Pancho dressed in the fanciest get-up you can imagine. As he liberally applied Vick's Vapor Rub and kneaded my muscles, I asked him about the photo. Yes, he had once sung and played guitar in a mariachi band in Mexico City. But his fingers hadn't touched a guitar for many years. I suggested that his fingers probably remembered. He wasn't quite so sure about that, and anyway his interests had changed. Music was no longer his passion. And besides, his beautiful mariachi suit had been eaten by the mice.

When he finished the massage, he rubbed on a tonic from a large Pepsi bottle. It was the color of Pepsi, but he assured me that it contained alcohol and a number of herbs and that he had concocted it himself. He said I should come back in a couple days for another treatment. Meanwhile, I should not shovel any more dirt; I needed some more recovery time.

As we opened the door and exited the bedroom, the very indignant chicken squawked and re-entered, ready to reclaim her spot on the bed. She had been waiting impatiently for us to finish so she, unlike me, could get back to work.

Easter Week in Papagayos

The week leading up to Easter is called Semana Santa. Here in Papagayos, it's a time for visiting and for families to gather. It's a time for picnics. We went with Chayo and Hector and about twenty of their relatives on a picnic on Thursday. We crowded into three pickup trucks and drove several miles down pasture lanes and through cattle gates to a place in our valley that Laurel and I hadn't seen before. We sat on the edge of a large pond surrounded by shade trees. In spite of the fact we had brought enough food to feed forty people, Hector repeatedly threw his net and hauled in small fish to be cleaned and deep fried there over a campfire.

A tradition we imported with us from our culture is watching the sunrise on Easter. Laurel and I got up early and took lawn chairs out to the yard. Facing the hills to the east, we sat and sang a couple Easter hymns. As we waited for the sun to clear the horizon, we watched a flock of about thirty garzas fly in from the north. These long-legged, long-necked herons wheeled above us. For ten minutes or so they were a mass of two opposing spirals as some chose clockwise and some counter-clockwise in their dizzy circling. As we looked upward, each garza was a profile without detail, a silhouette appearing dark gray to us against the brightness of the imminent sunrise. One by one they dropped out of formation and spiraled lower to land in the full lavender bloom of a jacaranda tree. As we watched each bird dip below the eastern ridge against a backdrop of dark green foliage, we saw each silhouette burst into a feathery collage of detail and change instantly from gray to bright white.

Our six-year-old neighbor Gabriela reminded us about a week ago that she remembered our annual tradition of hiding candy and colored eggs. Mid-morning on Easter, we went over to Gabriela's house and told her that yes, the Easter Bunny had come and had left colored eggs outside in our yard and candies in our house. She and her younger cousin and brother came over and searched and found the treasures. The Easter Bunny isn't accustomed to traveling to Mexico, but for us and our neighborhood children, he'll make the trip.

What a State We're In!

The republic of Mexico, officially titled Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the United Mexican States), consists of 31 states as well as a federal district with the nation's capital Mexico City.

We live in the state of San Luis Potosí. It is named after our state capital, a town that was founded in 1592 as San Luis in honor of King Louis IX, the only French monarch to be made a saint. When silver was soon discovered nearby, the name Potosí was added, in reference to the rich silver mines of Potosí, Bolivia.

Roughly just north of the geographical center of Mexico, our state is ranked 15th in size and 16th in population. In a nation of 31 states, it's hard to be more average than that.

But for budding geographers who like to pore over political maps, there are a couple of special, not-so-average things about our state. One is that it holds the distinction of bordering more states than any other in Mexico. In the USA, it's Missouri and Tennessee that hold the record for each bordering eight other states, but San Luis Potosí is the winner by touching nine neighbors. (Padre Salvador, one of the priests in Ciudad del Maíz, was in an expansive mood recently and sang us a song about San Luis Potosí and its ten neighbors, but the lyrics included a state that is only nearby and doesn't actually share a border. So we're sticking with nine as the official count.)

The other geographical oddity that makes San Luis Potosí famous is its shape. There's no denying the state outline looks like a Scottish Terrier. With its oversize ears pointing north and its furry nose headed toward the west, the state just about jumps off the map and onto your lap. (Incidentally, here in Papagayos we're on the doggie's back. Think of our location as a flea.)

So my brother Warren was recently making friends with a stranger in Virginia. When he found out the stranger was Mexican, Warren casually mentioned that he has a brother (that's me) living in Mexico. "Oh, in what state?" the stranger asked. Warren couldn't remember the name San Luis Potosí, but he did remember enough to describe it. "Well, on the map it looks like a Scottie Dog."

"I'm from San Luis Potosí too!" the stranger exclaimed. "That's my state!"

Playing God and Creating Soil

Gardening has always been a key part of my life and sometimes it makes me feel like God. So far I have had twelve different gardens; all but three of them I started, literally, from the weedy ground up.

In 1999 while living in Guilford, Vermont and gardening a patch that had been gardened for at least 40 years, our rototiller broke permanently. I was tired of the noisy gas-guzzler and ready to take a new route to gardening. A trip to the public library rewarded me with a copy of John Jeavons' book "How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine." He is the director of the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Mini-Farming program for Ecology Action. (See our link at the bottom of this blog.) My gardening life has never been the same since.

There are many parts to his ideas about gardening that excite me. One of them is the idea that you can actively grow soil. Not just use it or prevent it from eroding, but build on what you have. Help Mother Nature to nurture you. I liked the idea.

Since that year I have been growing compost crops. For example, I grow grains that can be harvested for the cereal, of course, but grown mostly to build compost piles to later feed back to the soil. My crop rotation now includes about 60% of the garden area for compost crops.

As I see it, I'm growing feed for my livestock - the microorganisms in the soil who do all the real work around here to cook up food for my vegetable plants. When my cattle are happy, I'm happy.

So, I've been playing God lately. Perhaps it would be fairer to say I've been imitating Mother Nature. I have been creating soil.

Of course, each of us has to start right where we are with what we have. In my case, this land came with a deep fertile fine-textured clay soil. This is a good soil to start from, but it means that water does not drain well. We had standing water in our first garden bed during rainy season and all the plants drowned. When it is wet we can't walk two steps without getting huge clumps of mud collected under foot. When it is dry the ground is hard as a brick, literally. And it has a dense covering of crabgrass - a plant that wants to become the king of the plant kingdom by rooting at every node and with the ability to grow six feet a week in rainy season. My hands ache from trying to keep it pulled from around the garden edges.

My goal is to grow soil that is ideal for pampered vegetable and grain crops planted in the limited area of our greenhouse and intensive garden beds. I want soil that is easy for me to work and weed. (In my past I've gardened in natural sandy loam soils and hardly knew what a treasure I had in terms of soil texture and tilth!) Here I want to develop a soil that tender baby roots can penetrate and make good contact with to find all the water, nutrients, air, and warmth that they need to grow without restrictions.

So, while playing God, I stripped the crabgrass, roots and all, off the garden beds, surrounding walkways, and from the soil under the greenhouse. I loosened all the topsoil that I could from the roots and saved it for my soil concocting. Using a wire mesh screen with one centimeter openings, I sifted rocks out of many cubic yards of river sand. I spent hours under the oaks trees in the local forest stealing their supply of leaf mold and soil to bring back to my mixing area. When I didn't have compost ready to add, I raked up dry manure from our neighbor's horse corral to contribute the organic matter needed in the mix for my garden.

With all the ingredients ready I measured carefully by the shovelful equal parts of topsoil, sand, leaf mold, and organic matter and put it all in the wheelbarrow. This was my mixing bowl and I used a trusty hoe instead of a big wooden spoon to thoroughly blend the combination. Adding rainwater from the barrel waiting under our eaves, I gave it enough moisture to change the colors dark and the smell to a rich forest flavor. Not so much water that it dripped and oozed, but just enough to settle the dust and bring it all together into a loose dough.

While I played God, Steve was hard at work, too. With a garden fork he opened the clay as deep as the tines would go, working in a cross hatch pattern so it was all as loose as possible. He added more sifted sand, letting it flow around the fork and down to form drainage paths for the water and roots to follow.

Then I wheeled the soil-feast into the greenhouse or to the garden bed. One shovelful at a time I filled the raised beds with my approximation of sandy loam soil. Then raked it level and watered it in to place.

In a few years I hope to grow the best soil possible. So, last of all I invited all the magical microscopic life to come live here, to make these raw ingredients into real soil.

It is clear that I'm not God yet, but I know I'm helping Mother Nature by creating a seed bed ready for planting.

Bursting with Life

In our corner of Mexico the weather is lovely in February and March. We have blue skies and sunshine with tee-shirt-wearing temperatures during the day and it's cool enough to rest well at night. Perfect. Having no rain for weeks means that watering the garden is a daily joy.

Last week the clouds, coming inland from the Gulf of Mexico, started to bunch up around the east side of the Gran Sierra. The view got hazy. I started to notice the humidity of the air I breathed during my morning walks.

Wednesday evening there was a fine mist in the breeze. It felt like rain, but we didn't even get a brief shower. In the morning Chuy told me he had dreamed of a beautiful rain that watered his father's recently planted corn and beans fields. All the farmers in the village must have shared his hopes for a good soaking rain. We waited under a solid cloud cover.

As Steve finished doing the dinner dishes that evening we heard the swish of the storm's approach. Then the first tapping on the sheet metal roof began. Soon the gutters collected a steady fine stream of water to drop into the rain barrel.

We got a glorious, slow rain timed so the soil could drink up every drop. Friday morning the hill sides were puffing and sighing with satisfaction. A maze of cloud shreds still draped the folds and twirled over the high ridge tops. The sun, peeking out for the first time in several days, spotlighted the newly unfurled lime colored leaves on the white oaks putting them in sharp contrast with the tender ruddy-brown of the red oaks' new growth on the slopes above the village. All of them were bursting with new life. Perfect.

Some Thoughts on Immigration

A friend forwarded an e-mail to us recently. She had received an opinion piece about Mexican immigration in the United States and wanted to know what we thought. As I read it over, it struck me that it wasn't so much the content of the piece that bothered me, but the tone of the writing that made me sad. It was mean-spirited.

I have a lot of trouble with the term "illegal alien." I think of an alien as a creature from outer space, not another human being who happened to be born on the other side of an artificial line called a border. And while an action might be illegal, I can't accept the notion that a person can be illegal. To my thinking, laws should be made to protect and serve people. If a law classifies whole groups of people as illegal, if the law strips people of their dignity and human rights, perhaps there is something wrong with the law and not with the people. (For a more in-depth look at border issues, use the link at the bottom of our blog for Border Network for Human Rights.)

To me, the whole idea of national boundaries is questionable. Throughout history, land has been claimed by whoever was most powerful and richest at the time. Laws are passed, soldiers are mustered, people are killed - all so that someone can claim the right to resources and deny those resources to others less fortunate. Much of the land that we call the United States of America has been taken away from the people who happened to be living on it when richer, more powerful strangers arrived and claimed it. This includes much of the land now called Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, which used to be part of Mexico until the first half of the nineteenth century.

For a variety of reasons, most of our neighbors here in Mexico are poor. Almost every family in Papagayos includes someone who is working in the United States, either legally or illegally. These families depend in part on the income that can be sent home from the workers who have gone north to find jobs. As a US citizen, I can't justify denying these workers jobs just because my ancestors arrived in the United States first. Even the first "native people" who crossed the ice bridge from Asia onto this continent were immigrants. And every immigrant since then, including each of my ancestors, has either been welcomed or despised. For my part, I choose to welcome others rather than turn them away.

To me it's ironic that the essay our friend sent us ends with the phrase "In God We Trust." I can't imagine that God wants us to draw boundary lines across this beautiful earth, to build fences and pass laws to keep others out. As I understand the will of God, it is that we should treat our fellow humans as our brothers and sisters, to consider them to be children of God just as we are, and to share our resources with them. The Biblical injunction to love our neighbors as ourselves means to me that we should welcome all kinds of refugees (including economic refugees) into our land and into our lives.

My nation, the United States of America, was built in part upon might and greed, land grabs and slavery. But my nation was also founded upon ideals of liberty and justice. I try to remember those ideals and let them inspire me to show compassion and fairness.

Under the Palapa

In the heat of the afternoon I sat with Chayo under their palapa (a circular, palm thatched, open air sitting room.) There was a slight breeze. We were cool and comfortable sitting in plastic patio chairs listening to the dry palm leaves rattling in the wind. Just breathing was enough. It felt good to be alive.

Every few minutes one of us would think of a comment. A slow conversation, kind of lazy, that was not in any kind of hurry.

"That hen had fourteen chicks, but now only four are left, " she said as she scooped a little ball of fluff into her hand. She stroked its head a moment to calm it before setting it back on the dirt near its mother.

"It's Elsa's birthday today," was my comment as I watched the household across the street preparing for a party. Then my eyes shifted to the clouds building around the Grand Sierra mountain in the distance beyond the house. I sighed with pleasure.

"The weather is changing. The clouds will bring cold. Tonight or tomorrow," Chayo informed me. She is always teaching me the basics, like how to forecast the weather, from her wealth of life experience.

Next, my eye swept the inside of the palapa. Wedged above the beam and below the palm roofing were a dozen books. Chayo followed my gaze.

"There are a lot of books."

"Have you read them all?" I queried.

"All the ones outside the box."

"And the ones inside?"

"I haven't taken the time, yet. I'd rather do my sewing."

We took the box down from the place where it has been gathering dust.

The box of books was from the Mexican government. Inside there were readers about adult health issues and self care; there were related workbooks with questions and blank lines for short answers; there was an atlas of the human body with maps of the nerves, blood vessels, bones and muscles; and also a guide to first aid.

Chayo is in an adult literacy program. She has been slowly adding to the education she got in her two years of schooling as a child. Now she gets the boxes of books and a visit once in a while from a tutor. But reading and writing is hard work for her.

I read and write for fun. I have a pile of books I can't wait to get to read. Ideas for writing are always stewing in the back of my mind. A day doesn't go by when I don't pull a gardening reference, cookbook, or dictionary off the shelf. The next carpentry project will be a bookshelf to contain the tomes that are now stacking up on top of the ones already in the existing shelves of our house. There will be a section of children's books, too, set low and within reach of our young friends. In our village books are a luxury. In our house they are everywhere.

We thumbed through each of the books in her collection. There were lots of colorful pictures, large print, and open space on each page. They looked like second or third grade readers to me. To my friend, they looked impossible.

Maybe I can sit with her, under the palapa, and together we will read.

Riches

Ismael went into the woods near his ranch, El Ojo de Agua, to help us find some leaf litter to use as fertilizer for our garden. He knew a place where trees had been felled and sawn into boards years before. Now the bed of sawdust had rottened into soil.

With every swing of his mattock he dug a foot into the ground bringing up a pile of dirt the texture of moist cornmeal. "¡Ire!" Look at this, he exclaimed with every new strike. I felt like we were mining black gold. This well composted sawdust is just what we need in the garden to help loosen the clay soil and lower the pH.

I was working nearby scooping already heaped leaf litter into a used feed sack. In my hand I noticed a cup shaped object about the size of a pingpong ball. "What is this?" I asked in Spanish and put it in his calloused palm.

"Oh, it comes from the trees. It's dirt," he said as he crumbled with his fingers.

"Ire." Again he dug another deep scoop of delicious earth. Now I had half of a nut in my hand; it reminded me of a small black walnut shell.

"Look at this," I said as I handed it over.

"Nogal," he responded. I looked around for the familiar nut tree. He pointed to our left, "It's over there."

We continued working; him diging, me filling large bags. "They say soil is richest if there are many different kinds of leaves and organic matter in it," Ismael informed me.

"Yes, it's true for people, too. Those who are friends with many different kinds of people are the richest in love."

"Estoy de acuerdo," he agreed.

One Pine Tree At a Time

Yuya dropped by yesterday afternoon to get a tour of our garden. She usually has classes at the preparatory school in Ciudad del Maíz on Wednesdays, but the teachers had meetings all day and she got a day off.

Her first question was about all the tall grasses that I cultivate in the garden. They are wheat, barley, oats, and buckwheat that I grow to cut for making compost. Later in the spring I'll let them grow to seed which I'll collect for the next round of compost crops. (I only use open pollinated varieties, so I can save seeds to use and share.) We checked out the new compost pile I'm building up with all the plant materials that I'm clearing before a flurry of planting next week. I described the layers of green materials, the dry materials (sawdust right now because I don't have anything else), and the thinner layer of garden soil that is a catalyst for the good changes in a compost pile. In a way, it feels like I'm making a rich meal for the soil. I feed the soil; it feeds me. This made sense to Yuya.

She told me that she had taken a class last year in which they planted, tended, and harvested a garden at school. She liked to spend every spare moment after class in the garden. Here at home in Papagayos it's hard for her to keep a garden. Her mother's chickens scratch out everything she plants unless she covers the new baby plants with a lot of thorny brush. Even then, the children in the neighborhood often make a mess of things because she isn't around most of the time to watch over her garden.

Yuya went on to talk about her current classes; her favorite is Ecology. She has hopes for planting shade trees here in our village, especially near the Catholic chapel, the three schools, and the town playing field where soccer, baseball, and horse races happen in their seasons. I was delighted to hear of her thinking about this type of project, because I share her interest in planting and caring for beautiful public trees. She was a little frustrated, however, because she had recently found out that an opportunity to do just this had been lost to Papagayos. The town judge had been given the paperwork to apply for a state funded program of reforestation. Signatures had to be collected and the papers returned by a deadline. He did nothing with them. If only she had known, she would have willingly taken this responsibility on herself. "If we don't take action to care for our village, no one will," she said in exasperation.

During our first year here, Steve and I worked with students at the middle school to transplant trees in their schoolyard. Only a few have survived, but it was a start that I wanted Yuya to know about. She and I walked around to the shady side of our house to see the 38 young piñon pine trees that I sprouted last fall. I also have planted and am waiting for the sprouting of a few mesquitillo seedlings. The mesquitillo is a lovely local hardwood tree that has been completely eliminated close to our village because of over-harvesting and no reforestation. Through EcoSol we have made contact with the NGO Reforestamos México. (See the link to their website below.) They are providing educational and technical assistance to local groups all over the country to plant new forests and improve the health of existing woodlands. They are helping me learn to grow seedlings for future transplanting.

Yuya and I agreed that if each person takes action and does what she or he can, we will create a greener world.

A Spanish Lesson

Before we moved to Mexico, Laurel and I had been enrolled in an advanced level Spanish class in Vermont, so we naturally assumed fluency would be a small additional step once we were surrounded by Spanish-speaking neighbors. Now that we've lived here two and a half years, that ultimate goal of fluency seems farther away than ever. The more we learn, the more we realize we don't know.

There's an expression people use here that caught my fancy. It is used whenever someone is explaining their failure to remember something. For the last couple years I have misheard it as semi olvidé, which I understood to mean "I halfway forgot." I liked the way it seemed to minimize personal responsibility, with the implicit claim that one's memory was only partly defective. It especially appealed to me when the speaker included the adverb completamente, as in "I halfway forgot completely."

I was joking about this expression the other day with our neighbor Chayo, who patiently explained that I had it all wrong. I tried weakly arguing for my version, holding out for the prefix semi. Chayo admitted the prefix has a use; she sells 2% milk in her store that is semidescremada, or "halfway uncreamed." But she wouldn't budge on the phrase in question. And who am I to argue with an expert in the Spanish language?

It turns out there is no halfway about it. The expression I had misunderstood for so long is really se me olvidó, which means "it forgot itself to me." Now that I'm getting used to saying it correctly, I've decided I like it even better than my other version. Before I was halfway responsible for forgetting something, but now, when something forgets itself to me, I am completamente innocent.

Grow Where You Are Transplanted

I've always kept a garden. Our family had a Memorial Day Weekend ritual of rototilling and planting a summer garden in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. One year, a new boy in the neighborhood passed by and asked my father, “Where did you get all that dirt?” I always knew there was good earth under my feet.

In October, 2006, less than one month after we moved to Papagayos, we set to work clearing sods from a three foot by twelve foot patch of ground. We hauled in sand and learned from our neighbor Hector how to collect tierra de la sierra or leaf litter from under the large oak trees in the hills that surround our village. We scratched these soil amendments into the wet native clay soil. Then we planted lettuce, beets, garlic, spinach, and peas which we harvested until April.

Since that first garden bed we have expanded to thirteen double-dug beds for a total of almost 500 square feet of planting surface. Growing a garden here keeps me learning, thinking, and talking with our neighbors.

An elderly friend who has lived here all her life visited that first garden bed. She was pleased to see the greens and root crops and was impressed by the peas. But she had to ask what the plants were with the knife-like leaves. When I told her they were garlic she clasped her hand to her mouth. “I didn't know you could grow garlic here!” I thought to myself, I didn't know you couldn't. We have a lot to share with each other.

Some of the issues that had to be puzzled through included how to work with this heavy clay soil, how to manage a growing season 362 days long, and how to recalibrate my four-season-gardening mindset to a wet season/dry season climate. There is still a lot to learn. I haven't yet found a source for statistics on seasonal high and low temperatures and average monthly rainfall, though there is a weather recording station about two miles from here. Neither have I found a regional seed catalog and the choices in Ciudad del Maíz are meager.

All the challenges are outweighed by the ease of growing greens year round, eating strawberries in January and February, and harvesting peas over a five month period from one planting.

I've heard it said that one should grow wherever one is transplanted – and I intend to keep doing so.

I Really Should Stay Awake at EcoSol Meetings

For about a year now we've been meeting with an organization called EcoSol, which is an acronym for Económica Solidaridad. Sponsored by the Catholic diocese, this group promotes economic solidarity by providing technical and moral support for projects that its members want to carry out. At our local level, there are usually no more than about ten to twenty participants, and it has been lovely to be part of this close-knit community. The main work we have done together is to build eight greenhouses in the last several months (including one at our house, shown in the photo on the day it was blessed back in December). In spite of being the only non-Catholics in the group, we have felt very welcome and included.

The other day EcoSol met to build another greenhouse, and after lunch (we always eat well) there was some group business to discuss. The combination of a warm afternoon, a full stomach, and Spanish conversation flowing too fast for me to comprehend all conspired to lull me into, well, if not an actual nap, then perhaps extreme drowsiness. However, I snapped back into wakefulness when I heard the priest Padre Salvador mention our names "Esteban y Laurel." With us struggling to understand even the gist of the topic under discussion and everyone else struggling to explain (all at the same time), Laurel and I finally figured out that they were trying to create a new volunteer position of group coordinator, and they planned on us being the ones to fill it. When our simple shaking of heads and wagging of forefingers (the classic Mexican gesture for NO) proved ineffectual, we tried to explain that the very fact we didn't understand what they were talking about should be reason enough to disqualify us. They weren't buying it. Finally, we thought of another reason that it didn't make sense for us to lead. We explained that we believe the history of racism and imperialism between the United States and Mexico means it makes more sense for us to back the leadership of Mexicans instead of us slipping into a pattern of taking charge. Although they assured us of our equality within the group, I think they could hear our argument as valid. We promised we would continue to wholeheartedly support the group from within the ranks and without a title.

Cultural Differences

Often it's the little things that stand out as cultural differences. En route from the border the other day, we stopped for lunch at a little shack along the roadside. There was a trailer truck idling outside, so we figured the food would be good. It was, and the woman who cooked and served our meal was friendly. When I asked her for a chocolate milk, she poured me a tall glass of milk and handed me a jar of powdered cocoa so I could mix my own. But I didn't have a spoon, so I asked for one. I hadn't noticed the jar of small plastic spoons in the center of our table. She reached for the jar and accidentally dropped it. The jar shattered, spilling its contents on the dirt floor around and under my chair. As she bent to pick up the mess, she handed me one of the spoons from the floor. I shrugged mentally as I almost unconsciously noted this as a cultural difference. A waitress in the United States probably would have found a clean spoon somewhere to give me. As our Mexican waitress continued to reach under my chair to clean up the spill, I noticed that my personal space (as defined by my culture) was being invaded. And as I measured out the cocoa powder into my milk, I realized that this short spoon would never reach the bottom of the tall glass, and so I wouldn't be able to stir the milk thoroughly. Not a big deal, but I couldn't help thinking that a "real restaurant," the kind I am used to, would have suitable spoons. Meanwhile, the radio was turned up too loud for my taste, and when the trucker outside started playing his competing music at top volume, the cacophony was jarring to me. It didn't seem to bother anyone else.

Laurel and I have come to use the term "cultural abrasions" to describe these small cultural differences They are the little things that rub us the wrong way. Any one incident by itself is insignificant, but they add up to a sense of discomfiture. It is too easy to feel one's own culture is superior; that this waitress, this restaurant, this country called Mexico are all doing it wrong. It is an ongoing struggle to maintain an open mind and heart, but a struggle that is worth the effort. Through the process of accepting cultural differences as valid, I have the opportunity of examining my own values and priorities, and ultimately noticing the similarities we humans share.

Welcomed Back as Friends and Neighbors

We arrived back in Papagayos yesterday afternoon after a month long visit to Vermont and Oregon. As we entered the village we started seeing many friends so we rolled down our windows to shout greetings and wave. Our young friend Alex was heading out to help his cousin feed a horse at his grandparent's house. He caught a glimpse of us before the body of the horse blocked his view. He squatted down to smile and wave to us. We saw him framed between the belly of the horse, its legs and the ground. We felt well loved, returning to this place where we are welcomed as friends and neighbors.

Chayo and Hector didn't come greet us even though their house looked like they were at home. While we were unloading things from the pickup, Chayo whistled so we'd know she was coming over. We stopped our labors and went to shake hands, embrace and exchange kisses on the cheek. She told us she hadn't heard our diesel truck as we drove in. It wasn't until she was sitting in front of her house working on her embroidery that she noticed our truck was here and the doors of our house opened wide. We asked her what was new and she said everything was the same as always.

Even though I'm used to getting all the news of the village from my good friend Chayo, it wasn't until later we found out that the house next door has been sold after a year of being on the market. The roof has been finished on the living quarters for the teachers of the middle school. A neighbor who lives in the compound across the street from us got a bad bite from the fierce dog who lives in back of us. The man needed four stitches on his upper arm. Big news for this quiet town.