Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos

This weekend served as a bit of a reality check in my la de dah playing in Mexico semester. Five of us spent the weekend at an orphanage near Cuernavaca called Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (Our Little Siblings, NPH). NPH is home to about 600 orphaned, abandoned, neglected or abused children ages 3 yrs. to about 20 yrs. The goal of the orphanage is to provide food, housing, education and a stable family structure for the kids until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Every Pequeño is required to do 2 years of service for NPH after finishing high school. After their 2 years, Pequeños can choose to go on to university on a full-ride scholarship through NPH. The kids are grouped based on age and gender and each group has a cargador, or caretaker, who is often a former Pequeño. There are also NPH orphanages in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, but the organization was originally started by a priest working in Cuernavaca. The Mexico NPH is located on an old sugarcane plantation, with all the old stone buildings, cobblestone paths and open fields.
In addition to its 600 residents, NPH has an on-site farm that provides the basics for the cafeteria. They have a large corn field, tomato greenhouses, a fish farm, at least 350 pigs, a sheep herd and a goat herd. They employ a few people to maintain the farm but most of the labor comes from the 2 yr. service kids. Each child is personally sponsored by a family or individual, many of them international, who provide them with basic clothing, shoes and necessities. The orphanage has an on-site dental and medical clinic and the NPH school is considered the best in the area. The thing that struck me the most about this organization was just that: the organization. All the kids seemed to know their group's schedule and the rolling plantation style dispersed the 600 kids so it didn't seem crowded. Chores such as sweeping and kitchen duty rotate through the groups to serve 2 purposes: to prevent paying many employees and to introduce a sense of ownership/responsibility/work ethic. NPH seems to do a lot with their limited resources and the kids seemed overall healthy and happy. The younger kids were less than shy in asking for hugs, piggyback rides and candy and the older kids were also very talkative (at least within the confines of our conversational Spanish).
We were asked to bring an activity for 25 kindergarten-aged kids, preferably with an American culture theme. Obviously, fingerpainting mini pumpkins was the most logical solution. We hauled a bagful of mini pumpkins all over the Mexican bus system and scrambled to translate Halloween-related words into Spanish. While half the group painted pumpkins, we attempted to wrangle the other half into playing games. We should have expected that it would be a significant challenge to occupy 16 six-year-old boys for half an hour. The circle for Duck Duck Goose ended when everyone wanted to sit in the middle. Simon Says was cancelled when one niño strategically directed his saliva onto Mitch, our token ND boy, while he was stuck under the ¨Simon Says Hug Mitch¨ pile. Simon did not in fact say ¨Spit in Someone´s Hair¨. Pirate Ship ended in a scraped knee and a few tears. Erica´s valiant attempt to teach a funny camp song was foiled by the significant language barrier. Overall, I´d say it was a success.

After getting up for a 7AM bus and spending all day in the hot, hot sun with the niños, we were exhausted by about 8PM and all slept nearly 10 hours. Our bus ride back to Puebla was not as smooth as it could have been. Apparently a car accident had closed the main highway between Cuernavaca and Puebla so we had to take an alternative route featuring every pothole and speedbump that Mexico had to offer, a lovely bus tour of several cornfields and a cheesy Nicholas Cage movie. We eventually made it back, a little bruised and nauseous, but full of a week´s worth of hugs.

I spent a lot of time this weekend considering how different my life would have been without my parents, siblings, and extended family. Not to mention a stable home environment and education. So this is a ShoutOut to the Redline Fam: Thank you. I miss you and I love you more than bees love honey!

Oooo ooo, we’re halfway there!

This weekend was relatively calm; I spent Saturday and Sunday at my host family's house. We drank coffee, watched movies, chatted with visiting relatives, and of course, ate. It was great to have a weekend without a schedule or an early wake up time. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've slept past 9:30AM since the end of July. Is this what it's like to be an adult? I wonder. Considering that this past Tuesday was the 50% mark for my time abroad, I thought that I'd take this opportunity to summarize some lessons that I've learned while in Mexico.

1. Don't play in the street. Vehicles have the right-of-way and crosswalks do not exist on most streets in Mexico. It is left to the pedestrian's discretion and agility to cross the street at whichever point seems least dangerous. I have found that speedbumps are a good place to cross because the driver will at least have to slow down to save the undercarriage of their vehicle, if not out of concern for the pedestrian. This "each man for himself" attitude extends to the driver's seat of each and every vehicle in Mexico. Despite the general disregard for traffic laws (or perhaps lack of traffic laws?), I have only seen the aftermath of one fender-bender and one single car accident. The average American driver would be donezo after 5 minutes of driving in calm Mexican traffic. My host mom explained to me that it's all about the attitude. American drivers tend to focus only on where their own car is headed and don't notice other vehicles until something is going wrong, and then it's too late. Mexican drivers are constantly watching the taxis, buses, bicycles, exchange students, and stray dogs that are wandering into their path. They are expecting the unexpected and so it is no longer a SLAMONTHEBRAKES emergency when a Notre Dame girl plays deer-in-the-headlights.
2. Do not put toilet paper in the toilet. It doesn't matter if you are in the nicest hotel in the country or the shittiest (haha.pun.) restaurant bathroom. Put it in the trash can, por favor. This takes a bit of getting used to because most of us have been throwing the TP in toilet for the last 20 years and the idea of all that sitting around in the trash can is not exactly pleasant. But the consequences of angering the Mexican plumbing system are less pleasant. On a related note, we were all originally outraged by the idea of paying five pesos to use a bathroom on our first trip out of Puebla. This has now become the usual fare and we've becoming pros at taking advantage of restaurant bathrooms, bringing our own tissues, and just holding it. And we have also learned that sometimes, you just have to cough up $5MX. You would not believe how much drama $0.40 can sometimes cause.
3. Count your change. This habit serves a triple purpose. The first is to make sure that the cashier didn't accidentally or purposely cheat you out of $5MX (you might need that later for the bathroom!) The second is to avoid a situation in which you want to pay for something (like a public restroom) that costs $5MX and all you have is a $500MX note. No one in all of Mexico will give change for a 500 peso note, including most banktellers. The third purpose is to conserve your precious Notre Dame stipend. While we are definitely spending less of our own money than any student studying in Europe, thriftiness is still highly encouraged. I could whine about this stipend drama some more, but it could be much worse and it's more important to appreciate everything we DO have. This is an exercise of prioritizing costs, pinching pesos, and occasionally shelling out some pesos with a smile.
4. Greet everyone. It is irrelevant that you don't know that bus driver, security guard, or random old lady on the sidewalk. Just smile and say "Hola, buen@s días/tardes/noches." You should also not think too hard about why "Good afternoon" is the appropriate greeting for anytime between 11AM and midnight. You cannot know. The one exception to this friendliness rule is the Mexican catcaller. When confronted with a foreign girl wearing anything besides a burqa or baggy sweatpants, construction workers and truck drivers cannot control the urge to whistle or make a crude comment. You should in no circumstance acknowledge these advances. This includes giving them the finger. Bad idea.
5. Public displays of affection are never frowned upon. No one has actually told me this word-for-word, but based on the sheer number of couples (not just teenagers; also middle-aged adults) practically making babies in public, I feel pretty safe drawing this conclusion. For example, we went on a night tour of Puebla that featured dramatic reenactments of Puebla's most popular ghost stories. The appearance of 25 gringos, a screaming ghost woman and a suicidal ghost man did not discourage the couple from mackin' it on their bench 2 feet away from the crowd. A less scandalous embodiment of this "friendly" attitude is the greeting (see Lesson #4) accompanied by a kiss on the cheek. You always kiss the other person's right cheek and this ritual can be applied in nearly any social situation, including with doctors at the hospital and friends of a friend of a friend. Again, it is irrelevant whether you have even met this person. Just go ahead and kiss them. No te preocupes. If I'm completely honest with myself, I would have to admit that these public displays of excessive affection seem excessive to me because Americans are relatively cold in the middle of their laaaarge personal bubble, in comparison with the rest of the world. There's not really a problem with this, it's just different and takes some adjusting of personal bubble radii.
6. Pre-medicina is not the same as medicina.This is a double-edged sword (I'm not sure that I'm about to use this phrase correctly). When asked for the 700^th time what I study, there are two choices.
   1. Answer, "medicina." This can quickly backfire as the questioning doctor next question will be something like, "Well then you know how to put in a catheter, right?" Wrong.
   2. Answer, "pre-medicina." This leads to a chingo of questions, mostly revolving around why in the world one would want to spend so much time in med school. I could explain the differences between medicina en México and pre-medicina en los Estados Unidos in my sleep. In fact, I may have done that in my dream last night. This answer may also lead to a lecture from a medicina student about how we're not learning anything by observing and that it would be a much better use of our time if we actually did anything. No shit, Sherlock.

As part of this questioning, there is always the inevitable "where are you from?" which leads to another hard choice.

1. Answer, "Idaho." No response, because no one believes that it's a real state. In the event that someone pretends to know where Idaho is, one can debate explaining the "Famous Potatoes". And upon deciding that this is a good idea, probably confuse las papas famosas with los papas famosos or los papás famosos (the famous popes and famous fathers, respectively). Explain that no one actually lives in Idaho, there are just a lot of lakes, mountains, and snow. Wander away.
2. Answer, "Chicago." This is a flat out lie. Hope that no one asks detailed questions. Complain about the snow, cold and wind. Wander away.

Anyways, that's my life. Take my hand and we'll make it. I swear.

Correction

After much debate among the Notre Dame-Puebla crowd and multiple Wikipedia proofs, I stand corrected. Apparently I should have entitled my blog "Ometeo" or to be even more accurate to the original Nahuatl, "Ometeotl".
Ometeo.

Oma Teo

I spent this week playing University of Notre Dame-condoned hooky and went to Zacapoaxtla and Cuetzalan, mountain cities in the northern bit of Puebla (state). I can´t reasonably give details about everything that we did all week because THERE´S NOT MUCH TIME, so I´m going to pick some highlights and call it a day. First, some background. Cuetzalan is a reasonably famous town tucked up in the mountains near the state of Veracruz. It has been named a pueblo mágico, or magical city, by the Mexican Tourism Dept. and the name is pretty fitting. The region is generally known for its above average preservation of traditional language, dress and culture. This includes the indigenous pre-Hispanic language, Nahuatl, that is still commonly heard in the markets, villages and even radio stations in and around Cuetzalan. The outfit of choice in this area is an all white shirt and skirt/pants with embroidered borders, woven belts, and no shoes. The men all wear cowboy-style hats and the women tie their hair on top of their head.
Zacapoaxtla is a smaller town between Puebla and Cuetzalan. We spent Monday through Wednesday in Zacapoaxtla and the health clinics in surrounding villages before moving on to the larger regional hospital in Cuetzalan. The rural clinics still have to worry about issues that we have nearly forgotten in the United States including malnutrition, intestinal parasites, and lack of education about STDs, etc. The Cuetzalan hospital has a relatively new, government-funded program that allows traditional and modern medicine to be practiced side-by-side. In addition to radiologists, general surgeons and pediatricians, the hospital offers curanderas, parteras and hueseras. These traditional healers, midwives and bone healers (there´s not really a direct translation for this one) use only herbs and natural plant products while attending to their patients. The majority of them are older women who learned their profession from their mothers or grandmothers and walk an hour or more, barefoot, to arrive in town. We were able to spend Thursday and Friday in this unique hospital, chatting with the curanderas through the English-Spanish-Nahuatl language barrier.

Ok, the scene is set. Enter my science-minded self and my affinity for making lists.
MY TOP 3

1. As I said, the first few days of this adventure we spent in rural health clinics. It turns out that this past week was National Health Week, a campaign that focuses on updating vaccinations, administering anti-parasite medication, nutrition education and sexual education. I met some truly inspirational public health workers who spent the week hauling around boxes of desparasitantes, Vitamin A, and condoms. The school I remember most was the first we visited, a government-funded boarding school. It housed kids from ages 7 to 13 years and many of them didn´t go home for the whole semester, either due to travel or financial reasons. Needless to say, these kids were starved for any attention and the appearance of my blond self and my Korean American rotation partner was almost more cultural excitement than they could handle for one day. After assuring the kids that the medicine tasted just like coconut yogurt and checking that they drank it all, we were mobbed with questions and had to be reminded each time that there was another classroom. We were probably slowing the health workers down more than we were helping, now that I think about it. Whoops. Everyone I met in the Zacapoaxtla area was extremely welcoming, friendly and politely curious. One little kid piped up that we were the first Americans he had ever seen. This helped us to understand a little better why everyone kept taking pictures of us as well.
2. So I think I´ve mentioned my theory on intimate touches before, but we can review. The idea is that people need physical (as well as social and emotional and intellectual, less relevant) contact with other people to be happy, I´m pretty sure that it releases a good hormone of some variety. Anyways, I have a habit of blaming my bad moods on not giving or receiving enough intimate touches that day. You might ask: Libby, how is this relevant at all to traditional medicine in the mountains of Mexico? Well on Friday I was about to give up on that silly traditional medicine hospital because nothing was going as planned, the doctors abandoned us for their lunchboxes, whinewhinewhine. Then a very professional-looking female doctor told me to fill out some paperwork and follow her. I stumbled through the paperwork and followed her to the pediatric ward. After explaining her half dozen patients´ cases, she directed me to wash my hands and directed me towards a tiny, wailing baby in an incubator. This baby had weighed less than three pounds at birth and was not looking great. The young mom had not been around much and wasn´t spending as much time with her new baby as the doctor wanted. I was instructed to comfort him, talk to him, touch him gently, and stay there until he fell asleep. Interpretation: this little guy needs some intimate touches pronto. So I held his itty bitty hand, rubbed his belly, and sang the only Spanish songs that I could think of. This may have consisted of a Shakira hit and the Cordera de Dios (Lamb of God) song from Mass. If I had to pick a favorite 30-minute period from the last week, this would be it. It was all about going with the flow, being patient, and being in the right place at the right time.
3. This is actually going to consist of 2 separate but chronological activities (yes, I realize I´m already breaking my own rule). On Saturday we went to a nature preserve outside of Cuetzalan that doubles as an organic coffee farm. We were guided through the quasi-rainforest by the Mexican equivalent of a forest ranger and stopped often to examine trees, ferns, leaves and lichen. Most of these stops were accented by the command, ¨Cómelo!¨ as the guide handed out leaves. We were pretty skeptical about eating the first piece of lichen that he handed us, but by the end of the hike we were obediently sticking leaves in our mouth, stretching our limited Spanish vocabulary to describe it´s taste and drinking spring water out of a leaf-turned-cup. No te preocupes, don´t worry, we all lived to tell the tale. While this was all very exciting and was sufficient to quench my NATURE ADVENTURE cravings for a few weeks, it was just the trail to the main attraction. Hidden down in a valley was a beautiful waterfall that fell into a deep pool before hurrying off into the rainforest. It was not quite frozen snow, but it was darn close. Nevertheless, we had just tromped through the buggy woods for an hour in shorts specifically to risk hypothermia in this waterfall, so that is what we did.

Other activities this week included: attending nursing school classes, eating pan dulce, lots of market wandering, a group appearance on a local radio show, a Zumba dance class, a visit to the ancient ruins of Yohualichan, several intense games of Bananograms (boardless Scrabble) and Pictaphone (Pictionary/Telephone hybrid), and a few killer workouts up and down the hilly streets of Zacapoaxtla and Cuetzalan. I´m still feeling that one in my calves, for sure.
The last fun fact that I will share before bedtime doubles as an explanation of the title. In addition to massage and herbal treatments, curanderas use temazcal bathes in their traditional treatments. A temazcal bath is the Mexican equivalent to the Native American sweatlodge, in which water and herbs are poured on hot rocks to make a sauna-like atmosphere inside a small dark hut. The rituals of a temazcal bath are based on the pre-Hispanic religion of the area, which focuses especially on the four directions of the universe, the numbers 4, 5 and 13, and the duality of nature. Oma Teo (don´t quote me on the spelling) refers to the bi-gender or genderless deity that was important in a way that I can´t exactly remember. Anyways, we ended up saying ¨Oma teo¨ every time that a new hot rock was introduced, the special tea was served or we entered or left the temazcal hut. Or anytime that there was an awkward silence. So it was said a lot.
In summary, I had an indescribably marvelous week and ironically learned much more than I would learned reading 16th century Spanish literature in a classroom. HA.

Ciudad de México- photos

Dae Effae

This is not Latin and I am therefore not as intellectual as you were probably thinking for a minute there. "Dae Effae" is the phonetic Spanish pronunciation of DF, which stands for Districto Federal. As I mentioned before in Vamos a la Playa, The country, the state, and the city are all referred to as "México" and DF is used to try and clear up some of this confusion when referencing the city. It´s more o less the equivalent of saying DC instead of Washington (although apparently the population living east of the Rockies forgets that there is a state with the same name and I always ask ¨Seattle or Spokane?¨ and am always disappointed by the ¨neither¨ answer). Annnyways, we went to DF/Mexico/La Ciudad de México this weekend. Fun facts: Mexico City is the world´s 3^rd largest metropolitan area by population according to Wikipedia (my favorite reputable source) and is Latin America´s largest city. I´m going to channel Sam for a minute and share a fun history fact: Mexico City is built on top of the ruins of México-Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec capital. The central part of the city sits in the dried lake bed of Lake Texcoco and is slowly sinking and shifting.

I purposely didn´t advertise this little adventure to the folks back home for a few reasons: 1) it´s Mexico City 2) I´ve never been to a city larger than Chicago 3) we were traveling without a male escort. Mom, aren´t you glad you didn´t have to worry all weekend? The thing is that although Mexico City is ridiculously huge and it definitely has some bad neighborhoods and fair share of security problems, so does any big city. Being in the midst of it all doesn´t feel that different than any other big city, there´s just the knowledge in the back of your head that it keeps on going. And going. And going. As for the security issue, we stayed in a reputably safe neighborhood, got off the streets before dark, and traveled in a pack of 10+ people. Which tended to draw quite a bit of attention, but that's better than attention of the "look at me, I'm a solo, wandering gringa" variety.

Now than I'm done with excuses for why this was a good idea, let's do this thang. We rolled out early Saturday morning, bussed to the Puebla transportation station and took a bus to Mexico City. Mexico City happens to be famous for its amazing metro system and we took full advantage. Each metro line is color coded and each station has a clip art picture associated with it. The line transfer points are so clearly marked with huge colorful signs that it's nearly impossible to get lost. Also, it costs about $0.25 per ride. You can't beat that deal. Courtesy of my travel guidebook (shoutout #2 to HP) we found a very nice little Youth Hostel in a quite suburb and 3 blocks away from a metro stop. After dumping out bags we headed to the Museo Nacional de Antropología which is supposed to be one of the best-arranged museums in the world. After our visit, I would believe that statistic. One could literally spend an entire weekend in that museum and not see everything. Best bargain of the day: the museum is free for students. I don´t have any pictures because I didn´t want to risk carrying a camera, but there were some amazing dioramas and more pre-Hispanic artifacts than you can count. I also got what was probably the best horchata that I have ever EVER tasted from a shanty little stand outside the museum. Horchata is ricewater with cinnamon, sugar and sometimes other spices and has a milky consistency. The museum ate up most of our day and we were all ready to call it quits by dinnertime and watched the ND-BC football game instead of playing in the streets of Mexico City at night. Win-Win-Win (because we won. Finally.)

Today, after eating the free hostel breakfast, we packed up our bags and hopped on the metro to visit The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We had been told by several people that we shouldn´t make the trek out there because it´s so far from everything else, would be too crowded and that we should just go another time, but I am glad x´s 10 that we disregarded this advice. It was a beautiful, clear morning, there was almost no one around and we arrived just in time to attend mass. (This was not as magical planning as I´m making it out to be because there´s a mass every 45 minutes.) The Guad Basilica is actually a complex consisting of a new Basilica, the original Basilica, a museum, several chapels and statues galore featuring Juan Diego and Pope JP II. Apparently this basilica receives more visitors annually than the one in Vatican City. Add one more to the list because I have been there, seen that. The whole time we were there I was struggling to wrap my mind around the fact that we were in fact THERE. I imagine that it´s a similar feeling to visiting Paris or Machu Picchu; the feeling of living in a history book.

The best part of this trip for me was probably the self-efficiency aspect. We didn´t take a single cab, we didn´t stay in a hotel, and we didn´t have everything perfectly planned. We became very good friends with the metro map and lost all fear of asking random vendors on the street for directions. A close second for favorite was the girl time. At least half the trip, before we acquired one of the ND boys, was a grand adventure for the 10 ND girls. Once again, I´m going to credit divine intervention for the great group of ND people into which I was thrown. Everyone has their moments of course, but we all get along in general and have a great time traveling, joking about professors, comparing people we know from school and openly sharing all sorts of digestion-related details. This last bit is maybe more of a pre-med thing (sorry Pat Beard) than a friendship thing, but we´ll take it.
For anyone who´s counting, I have officially been in Mexico for 2 months and 1 day and next weekend will mark the halfway point (enter the Bon Jovi soundtrack of our lives). I have that surreal mixed feeling of having just arrived and having spent a lifetime here. I´ll let you know if I decide which is more accurate.
PS: Pictures are on the way, the Internet is not agreeable at the moment.