Can I do this

I may have come to an important conclusion about myself. I don't think i am cut out for developmental work in countries with "emerging economies" (at the very least I don't think I am not cut out for Mexico). More patience is required than I have. There is too much adhering to other peoples schedules, to many dealings with ignorant people, and too many inefficiencies in the system. I don't think I am flexible enough to cope with all of these things. Also I feel to much pain as a result of what I see. I take too much to heart, the inequalities and hardships of the people I interact with. I don't know how to really help them. Maybe I do know deep down but I am too selfish in my desire to live my own first world life to really face it and do something about it. I am often torn by the feeling that my life is my own and as long as I am not directly messing with anybody else's deal I have the right to live it however I want, or do I, having grown up a privileged upper middle class American with all of the opportunities any person could ask for, have a moral and humanly obligation to try and help those, who simply but for fortune, are living in wooden shacks, with a dirt floors, and no water, in Chiapas Mexico???

Enough philosophy, for I am far to ignorant to answer this question. The picture above is of the truck 8 of us rode in with coolers full of chickens and 5 gallon jugs of water as pillows. Luckily for my comfort all of the young Mexican kids wanted to ride in the back so they could listen to there music and act crazy. I got to ride up front with an ex pat couple from Palenque. Over the 5 hour drive to the rural Habitat for Humanity site near the Guatemalan border, I got to know Manuel and Anita quite well. Manuel was born in east LA, but his parents are Mexicans. I would say that he is in his late 50's to early 60's and has been living in Palenque for the past 26 years. He has seen it grow from a city of 5000 to a city of over 100,000 in that time, talk about a strain on the environment and the water infrastructure. Anita was born in Brazil, but her parents are American and she grew up on the east coast. She has been living in Palenque for the past twenty years and I think that is where the two of them met. They are very interesting people not the least which because of their views on UFO's and quantum mechanics where, Anita is of view that matter and light are interchangeable. These opinions aside, we had a lot to talk about, and they were very interested about my views on how we, as workers down in Rural Mexico, but also how we as society in general, should tackle environmental problems. It was during this conversation that I realized how much I had actually learned in my year in Graduate School. I could not have spoken intelligently and to the depth I did with them a year ago. It made me feel good that I was actually getting something out of the program, I had invested so much time in.

Okay I am tired and Karen and I need to go get some food soon. It is so nice to have someone else around finally who understands where I have come from to get here. Oh by the way Papa, Manuel, who incidentally looks like he could have played the Dwarf in lord of the rings, was fascinated by my telling of some of your life stories, the bar in Spain, willie lump lump, working in the lead smelt, pastor in Oakland, taking us out of school. He thinks your his kind of guy!!!

Elke

Carlos and Santos

Mexican kids always get very serious looks on their faces when you take their picture (unless they aren´t expecting it and their mouth is full of taco) and I haven't yet figured out why!!

So Carlos and I had tacos again on Sunday and he even brought his little brother Santos with him. While we were eating, I found out from Carlos that school started Monday, so naturally I asked him if he wouldn´t be around anymore. Oh no he said, he would back every afternoon to try and sell more horses. Sheesh, I thought I had it rough when I was 9 cause I had to ride my bicycle like 15 blocks to get little league practice. What a doofus I was. I am still amazed at how those two little kids could pack down four Tacos each. Oh, and on Wednesday Carlos sold his horse with Sub Comandante Marco dressed as a Ninja.

Carlos was also very keen to confirm that we would be on again for tacos next Sunday. when I said yes, he smiled and laughed. I am under no delusions that he was happy because he would have the pleasure of my company for another meal. I know he is in it for the tacos, but I don't mind, as we both get something out of meal that is important, he gets fed and I get perspective. We actually had a bit of a group for dinner as my four Italian friends joined us. The guy, Simo, and I hit it off great and hung out for a couple of days together. We made a deal that if I come to Italy next year and the timing works he´ll let me take him to his first MotoGP race.

How is this for crappy luck. So the first non Mexican friends I make, three of whom are 20 something Italian women, and are only in San Cristobal for one day, who Simo tells me the day after they leave, that all three were totally enchanted by me. Damm that sucks!!! Now I gotta go and get something to eat and then go to sleep by myself in my old beat up bed. I gotta get a good night's sleep cause I will be spending all day tomorrow sampling wells and rivers for organic elements and bacteria. YEAH

Simo and I having breakfast at my $1.40 place (he loves huevos rancheros)

A Boat Ride through the Sumidero Canyon (This river originates in Guatemala and exits out at Villahermosa in Tabasco, which I might add is a city with very little that could be described as hermosa)

Yet another example of how Motos bring folks together

This morning I was ate breakfast at a little hole in the wall that is around the corner from my apartment. It is a great spot for breakfast; my staple is huevos revueltos con chorizo and a licuado de papaya. I also get beans and tortillas with that for 15 pesos ($1.35). In any event while I was waiting for my food I began to think about how I was going to structure the next two weeks. See, the presentation to the Colonia, 5 de marzo, didn’t go down so well, meaning we didn’t even get to present. There is a big turnover going on with the Colonia administration board and so we are going to come back in two weeks and present again once the new board is in place. This isn’t all bad as it gives me time to sample and analyze the water quality of the river and the Colonia´s wells. I can also get my structural plans set and have my costs totally mapped out. Now on to the fun part of day, the motorcycles.

My food had just arrived when a group of four Italians meandered down the street. There are so many Italian tourists here that it has gotten to the point where I have an 85% chance of picking them out before they even speak (hell there are so many I have 50/50 chance simply by random luck).

“I fumbled in my closet through my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt” – Johnny Cash

They hesitated a bit in the street looking unsure of what they wanted to do, giving away the fact they had just arrived, but after about a minute of deliberation, they decided to come. After they ordered we got to chatting and after the normal pleasantries were settled (where are from, how long will you be here, yada, yada) I found out that the guy, Simo, is a huge fan of Motociclismo. When I told him that I was going to watch the Czech GP we was down to come. So after breakfast (turns out also that one of the girls sells wine in Rome) Simo and I headed off to the internet Café to watch the GP. There was one problem though, my login access to Mototgp.com only allows me to be logged into one computer at a time, and since only one of my earphones was working, one of us would have to watch our shared computer without sound. For someone who hadn’t watched MacGyver as much I had as a kid this may have posed a problem, but I simply busted out my pocket knife, spliced the wire, connected the live end to the input, and…, just kidding, I ran down the street two blocks to an electronics store and bought a new set of earphones for $4.50 J. Now with a functioning earphone a piece, we settled in for the GP (for Howard, Mike, Jon, Dean or anybody else who doesn’t want any more info stop reading).

The race wasn’t very good; Capirossi pulled out from the start and won by more than 5 seconds (which is like winning by three touchdowns in football). Even Hayden finishing 9^th didn’t bother me much as I got to watch some racing. Simo is going to join me for some cheap Tacos later tonight, and hopefully Carlos will show up again to eat with us. Either way I think this evening should be fun.

Not Triathlon ready

So I since I needed some wheels while I am here I got a new cycle. This is by far the ugliest bicycle I have ever had (and I have had some beeters), but hey it works. I have to say Mexican Bicycles are not designed for people of my size. Anyway, here´s to hopping that it holds up.

Elke

Smokers can be so rude

I have just about had it with people who decide that it is okay to smoke in confined public places (restaurants, bars, stores, etc.) and then make no effort to blow their smoke away from me. These people are fucking rude, there is no other way to put it. The next time some rude ass guy lights up a cigarette and lets his smoke conveniently migrate over to me, making it extremely difficult for me to simply enjoy say my lentil soup, I wish I would have enough balls to go into the bathroom, take a shit in my hand, bring it out put, it up to his nose, and ask him if he likes the way that smells?

Elke

Made a friend (well bought a friend really)

So I was in a cafe having a Frapucino trying to figure out how I am going to present our ideas to the people of 5 de Marzo on Saturday. I was about ready to leave when one of the street hustler kids approaches me (I don´t know of a better term to describe the kids who try to sell you trinckets you absolutely don´t need). So this kid comes up to me in the cafe (he is about the 200th kid I have had to turn down since i have been here) and asks me to buy this black horse made out of yarn for 25 pesos. I tell him no thank you, but he sticks around. I ask him who these ninjas are on this black horse and he says it is Subcomandante Marcos and some other zapatista. He then says it only costs 20 pesos, which is a really good price if someone is truly looking for a 12 inch tacky yarm horse with a couple of zapatiatas on its back. He again asks me to please buy it becasue he is hungry. I tell him that I won´t buy his horse but that if he is hungry I´ll buy him a couple of tacos. To my suprise he agrees, so after I pay for my frapacino, my new friend Carlos and I are off to have some tacos.

On the walk over the restaurant I find out that Carlos is 8 years old and has 1 sister and 3 brothers. I asked him if he has eaten yet today and he says no (whether he is being truthful i cannot tell). I notice that one of his shoes is busted, and that both he and his clothes are very dirty. We get to the restaurant and we order. He wants two chicken tacos with cheese but, orders must be three or more per person, so of course when I ask him if he can eat three he says yes. I order two al pastor tacos, one bistec taco, and one chiken taco all with chese. When the waiter asks what we want drink I ask Carlos what he wants and he says a coca cola. Before our food comes I ask him a few more questions. I ask him if he goes to school and he says yes. I ask him if he is working because it is the summertime and again he replies yes. I ask him how many horses he has sold and over what period. He tells me he has sold one in about one week. Our food has now arrived and I ask Carlos if he needs help opening his coke. He responds that he can do it himself. After three tries, including one with the assistance of a napkin (smart kid eh! thats the canadian coming out in me) he is unable to open the bottle, so he sheapishly hands it over to me. In order not to make him feel bad I make it look like I am straining real hard to open the bottle, which obviously amussues him. On my third try I hold my breath turning my face red as I strain to open the bottle. This really gets him laughing at which point I break the cap´s seal and present him with his hard faught open coke bottle.

Once our food arrives He imidiately puts one of his three tacos in his little basket. I ask him if that is for latter and he says yes. I ask him how late he will work? Until 10:00 or 11:00 he says. After another bite of taco, I ask him what time he started? At 10:00 in the morning he says. I ask everyday, everday he says. The rest of our meal was a bit quit, but I could tell that he was hungry as that little boy ate up those tacos pretty fast and used the second one to wipe every crumb up off the plate. Nearing the end of the meal I offer a deal to him. I tell him that on Sundays I will be at the cafe at about 7:00. If he comes by he and I can go and get tacos. His reponse was to ask if I meant every Sunday. I said yes and put out my hand to shake on the deal. He seemd to be a combination or suprised and excited as his put is tiny hand softly into mine. We left the restaurant to head back up the street we came down. I was off to the internet cafe to email my group memebrs, he was off to the plaza to try and sell his yarn horse carrying sub comomdante marcos dressed as ninja. For the first time i am rooting for one of these street kinds to really make a sale. Whether i will see him again or not, I´ll likely find out sunady.

Now depending upon your perspective this night´s events either paint me to be a very benevalent guy who distresses at the plight of the little kids in the developing world, or paints me as a pathetic guy who has to bribe little kids with tacos in order to make friends in a town. The funny thing is that there is truth in both views and I don´t know if that is partially a compliment to me or a representative of one of my many character flaws. Interesting, very interesting.

Now I got to hit the hay.
Elke

(sorry for any misspellings. The spell check isn´t working and my back is making it difficult to concentrate)

Lab work not for me (Lagoons are)

So I just got back from spending 5 hours in the lab running ammonia tests on well water samples taken from the various municipal wells (SAPAM is the name of the organization that runs the wells). Because the tests had long reaction times I was able to reflect on my day off last Sunday, and the trip my professor and I took out to Lagunas de Montebello.


Lagunas de Montebello is a national park that is made up of some 9 major Lagoons and about 94 minor ones. It is right on the Guatemalan border, and my professor and I actually crossed in Guatemala briefly. There is no real checkpoint just a rural road. Our guide said that is was about a 7 hour walk to the next town and I thought it would be real interesting to hike through the Guatemalan highlands on my way to Tikal (maybe next trip).

After touring the Lagunas we ate lunch at a little shack down by one of the lagoons. The cook was our guide's wife and she cooked us some delicious fresh fish caught right out of the Lagoon. While we ate we were entertained by our guide's kids. They were a couple of the funniest and sweetest little girls I have seen. They would recite little poems for us in exchange for a Peso. I asked them if they were school and they said yes but that it was vacation time which was why they were out here with their mom and dad. I know my rants sometimes portray me as a bitter, angry, frustrated young man, but bit situations like these that really get to me. Girls like Marisola (the younger of the two) and her sister deserve better than what they get. I almost wanted to kidnap Marisola and bring her back to the US with me. However I can't raise a daughter right now and since I don't have a wife or even a girlfriend to help me, I quickly realized the foolishness of this plan. I do hope that her situation does not preclude her too much from doing something she feels good about.





















On the way Back from the Lagunas we stopped at a Mayan site, whose name escapes me. The ruins were not on par with Tikal or Copan, but they were impressive nonetheless

Stuff Stinks

Tomorrow the training wheels come off as my professor leaves and I become the sole representative of UCSB left to do work down hear for another three weeks. It will be nice when Karen arrives in the begining of September. She will be a big help as she has experience in things that I don´t. Until them it is me, Sabas, Jesus, Hilda and Juan.

Today Arturo, Juan(one of the researchers at ECOSUR), Nacho(a student there) and myself, went out to various points in the water shed to take water samples and flow readings. This is the third time I have gone out into the water shed to take flow readings in various streams and I have come to an important conclusion. I am of the belief that it is evil for the humans in the wealthy parts of the world, who have access to clean water, to allow the humans in the poor parts of the world to bathe and wash their clothes in water that smells like shit. I don't mean in water that smells bad I mean in water that smells like shit. I think Americans would be much more sympathetic to the Guatemalans, the Hondurans, the Iraqis, and the Vietnamese who they are partly responsible for fucking over, if they themselves had to take their baths in their own toilets. I think Western Europeans would be more willing to give support to Africa, basically an entire continent they are responsible for sending into the shitter (no pun intended) if they had to wash their clothes in a sewer outlet pipe. I only got my feet, hands, and arms wet when I did my sampling and I felt disgusted. This, coming from a guy who sleeps in the desert on a red ant hill!!! It ain´t right, it just aint´t right. Now I am not trying to be pious and preach, as I have not done enough to be part of the solution to this problem, but I am trying g to figure out how I can help.

On a funnier note, in the 7 days I have been here I have eaten 19 conchas. For those of you who don´t know a concha is, it is the type of round Mexican sweet bread (Pan Dulce) with the frosting on top.

Elke

Down to work

I have been in San Cristobal for 4 days now. My Professor, Arturo Keller, and I have been in and out of meetings all week, but have still found time to tour the water shed and take stream flow measurements. San Cristobal is a beautiful city up in the highlands of Chiapas. At about 7000 ft the temperature is quite mild despite the fact that is so close to the equator. It is presently the rainy season here and there is a daily thunderstorm, and can at times dump loads of water that turns the cobble stone streets into small rivers themselves.

So far we have been doing a lot of project planning, figuring out who we can work with, what their problems are, and what they are receptive to. Without any definitive plans we have kind of established a two part strategy. First we are going to work with a local Colonia (neighborhood) building actual water and sanitation improvement projects. These would likely include rain water capturing systems to provide both drinking and clothes washing water as well as biological filtration areas to clean both black (sewage) and grey (wash) waters. The town has very limited municipal water sources and very primitive sewage systems. The other part of the project will involve working with members of the local university and the city itself to collaborate on water sanitation projects such and constructed filtration wetlands, and river bank buffer zones. The next couple of weeks will be key in finalizing the direction of the project.

On a side note I read a couple of interesting articles last week in the Economist. In an study conducted by the International Energy Agency, Canada is the third largest consumer of energy per capita in the world, and more surprising to me is that the average Canadian, per year, uses 50% more energy than the average American and has consistently done so over the last 30 years.

The other article dealt with farm subsidies, and issue I thought the US was the most protectionist about. Turns out the US ranks ninth in the amount of farm subsidies it gives out based on a percentage of the total value of its agricultural products. The EU gives more than double the amount of subsidized support than the US and more than 3 times in absolute terms. The other item that shocked me was that while Canada´s absolute level of farm subsidies is less than 1/7 of what it is in the US, its relative amount based on the value of its agricultural products is about 50% more than the US.

Made in D.F

I have made it to Oaxaca. It got here in probably one of the most inefficient ways possible, but it would not be me if the getting there were simple. I left Santa Barbara on Thursday afternoon the 27th. This was later than I had planned since I needed to be in Mexico city on the morning of the 31st and 4 days is not that long to cover over 2200 miles on a motorcycle, the majority of which would be in Mexico. After a lunch stop in LA I was even further behind but I was not worried, as I planned to ride through the night and get to El Paso by mid day. After a short midnight nap in the Arizona desert I was cruising along and at about 2:30 my motorcycle just died on me, cut out. I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to restart it but it would not light up. Luckily there was a clear patch of desert just off the highway (I-10) so I just rolled the bike down off the shoulder burn and went to sleep. I figured I could try and fix the bike the next morning when I was fresh and there was light. I woke up the next morning at 5:30 and proceeded to spend the next 6 hours performing every diagnostic test and adjustment I could think of, short of stripping the engine down. For those first 6 hours nobody stopped and since I had drunk all of my water by 8:00 am I was feeling pretty parched. After fiddling with the bike to no avail i called a tow truck company who said it would cost about $250 to have the bike towed to phoenix. I really did not want to pay that on top of what I knew was likely to be an expensive repair, so I began actively flagging down cars. The first guy to stop was was very knowledgeable about cars and motorcycles so he and I set about to try to adjust the timing, figuring this could solve the problem. After he and I tinkered with the bike for about an hour not only was he getting thirsty, but he could see that I was looking faint. So we loaded up the bike into the back of his truck (which had over 300,000 miles on it), and headed out into the desert together . As luck would have it, he too was going to El Paso, Juarez really to see his girlfriend. So the two of us drove the remaining 650+ miles together. This guy, Josh and I could not have been more different. I have had about as much formal education as one can, while he really didn´t even go to school, I don´t mean high school I mean no school really. I grew up in upper middle class suburbia. He grew up a nomadic gypsy in Mississippi, Texas, NC, etc. My experience and knowledge is almost all theoretical while his is almost entirely practical. I could go on and on but I will spare you. It is safe to say however that we had an interesting drive. On the 28th we made it all the way to Las Cruces where we crashed at a motel six. The next day we made it to the Kawasaki dealer in El Paso at about 11:00am where our worst fears were confirmed. If you have no desire to read about the workings of motorcycle engines skip ahead to the next paragraph. here is what happened, the bolt that holds the cam chain sprocket to the exhaust camshaft, worked itself loose. When it became loose enough, the piston which turns the crankshaft, which turns the cam chain, which turns the sprocket no longer turned the camshaft and as a result the exhaust valves were open while the piston was speeding toward TDC. As a result both exhaust valves were bent and with bent exhaust valves there can be no compression and therefor no go.

The second kicker was that because it was Saturday the parts could not be ordered until Monday, which meant the bike would not be ready until Tuesday afternoon at the earliest. So, since I had to be in Mexico City by the 31st I had no choice, but to leave the bike in El Paso and hop on the 28 hour bus to Mexico city. The bus trip wasn´t that bad. Mexican busses are much better than the Greyhound busses in the Us and canada, but I really would have preferred to ride down. Yesterday My professor, his sister, and I visited a Eco sanitation facility in Tepostlan which was doing a lot of the things that our group is looking into. Tonight I take the overnight bus to Tuxtla and then over to Chiapas for 6-7 weeks. After that I can return to El Paso and ride home.