Coffee in the clouds

On Wednesday night, Tom and Jo came for a two-week stay -- and on Thursday afternoon, we left for a long weekend in the mountains of southern Chiapas, in the coffee-growing region.

Airport joy! Wednesday night before our trip began.

The main coffee-growing region in Chiapas is in the southeast corner of the state. We had planned to spend a night in Tapachula on the way there so as to avoid driving at night, and then continue the next day.

But as often happens, difficulties arose. First, a bloqueo stopped all traffic on the highway in both directions. The protest had to do with workers not being paid and was predicted to last 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, or 2 days, depending on whom you asked. The government would need to meet with the protesters to make an acuerdo (agreement), and who knew how long that would take?

This was our second experience with a bloqueo, so we felt like old hands. We enjoyed, at least initially, the camaraderie with the other travelers and had a few nice chats. It was interesting how calm everyone was, how accepting of the delay; people even expressed sympathy for the protesters. (We tried to imagine what would happen if people blocked I-15; could scarcely imagine a scenario without teargas and violence.)

Bloqueo! It was too dark to get a good picture of this banner,
and without the smell of burning tires it's difficult to
communicate the atmosphere of mild excitement
and nausea.

Around midnight, the bloqueo unblocked, which was fortunate because we had already investigated a couple of hotels along the highway and were prepared to spend the night in the car rather than stay in one of them. We found a decent place in Tapachula, went to bed around 2 (?), and got up early to head up into the mountains.

The finca (plantation) we planned to go to was only about 30 miles from Tapachula, but it took several hours to get there. "Rough" is an understated description of the road, which was mostly unpaved.

As we climbed out of the car, we heard a
hissing sound. Can you spot the bolt
that impaled our tire?

But it was so beautiful there, and the accommodations (for tourists like ourselves) were perfect.

This finca, like many in the region, was founded by Germans in the 19th century. (The Mexican government asked Germans to immigrate there to develop the coffee industry.) So our cabañas were like little chalets in the sky. And there was plenty of German beer and Mexicalemanic kitsch. Tiny Mexican flags sharing table vases with tiny German flags was only the beginning....

At the restaurant.

We were practically the only guests, so
none of the 12-year-olds among us
was self-conscious.

We got in some much-needed yodeling practice, too.

We got a tour that explained coffee production, from the picking of the coffee uvas ("grapes") to the point where the dried coffee is transported out of the mountains for roasting.

The coffee is shade-grown, high-altitude...this is the best
kind, we're told. Strictly gourmet.

See? Shade.

Our guide is from Guatemala, as are
most of the pickers at the finca.

This bag of uvas has a lot of unripe (green
colored) ones. They'll get sorted out and will
be used when ripe, but they'll never
make the big-time, gourmet-bean-wise. 

This machine brushes the skin off,
so that the gold coffee bean inside is separated
from the squishy uva outside.

The beans are washing. Good ones will sink,
less-good ones will float....the separation
into various grades of fanciness
happens repeatedly as the
beans are washed and re-washed.

Papa and Oscar just had to reach in!

Most of the machines, like this still-functioning drying
machine, were brought over from Germany in the 1920s.
(The diameter of this wheel is about 6 feet. The machines
were disassembled and carried up the mountains by mule.)

This is the machine shop, where they make and repair parts
for these amazing old machines.

We don't have pictures of the most impressive and humbling part of this process: the labor of the people who pick the beans. We were at the plant's loading dock at the end of the day when the pickers are returning with their bags of beans. The group of pickers included elderly men and children; the bags they carry can weigh more than 200 pounds. The workers keep track of which sacks of bean are theirs either by writing their name on the sack or, more commonly, tying a piece of fabric of a particular color on the bag. (It seems that many can't write their name.) Most of the pickers are seasonal workers from Guatemala who come and live for four months or so in the company housing (and shop at the company store, and send their kids to the company school, and are treated at the company clinic). Es una comunidad, people said. On a walk later the next night we saw how many little settlements are perched in various places in the nooks and crannies of the mountain tops; we saw one little hillock--clearly the only place that got cell phone reception--where a group of young men were all standing in a clutch, phoning home. Dos meses más  (two more months) I heard one say.

All the children, all the vaccines.

So now we know that coffee is far too cheap.

We drank a LOT of it there; it was flowing freely.

"Doctor, doctor! What can I do? Every time I drink a cup of
shade-grown, high-altitude coffee, I get a sharp pain
in my eye! What can I do??" --
-- "Take the spoon out of the cup."

We had a great time. Some of us really, really didn't want to leave.

The sky was out there, not up there.

Our cabin is on the right.

The porch of our cabin.

Everything was very tidy and, well, very German. (Imagine
the labor required to keep it thus. It seems like the jungle
will swallow you in 5 minutes if you don't keep moving.)

I like the topiary.

They also grow flowers for selling
within Mexico. 

Flower curtain.

This little cobra-like flower wanted to
join us for a cup of coffee on the porch.

These birds are quite big....

Adiós. Auf Wiedersehen.

¡Corremos!

This morning, Sunday, we got up early to participate in a road race. It wasn't fun to get up early, but neither was it fun to hear a MARCHING BAND going down our street at 6:30 AM.

(Well, that's not completely true; it was a little bit fun to hear a marching band at 6:30 AM. We're still enjoying the daily mysteries here--they are mostly happy discoveries, after all. Case in point: This week Sean and I were driving along a street and saw a crowd of people gathered around a culvert. I was thinking the worst--a drowning--and we pulled over to ask. It turns out that some kids had discovered crabs in the water, and they were crowd-sourcing ideas for catching them. They had had some success with tortillas tied onto a long string....)

(Do freshwater crabs exist? Another mystery. The people said they were catching "cangrejo" though, and held up something red and crab-shaped.)

(Okay I give: just googled "freshwater crabs in Mexico" and I'll save you the link: they do exist and they like polluted canals in Chiapas in particular. )

Listos.

Might be harder to breathe with that on.

Anyway. So this morning the kids and I ran the 5 km, and Sean ran the 10 km. It was great. I ran with the kids, and they ran the whole way without stopping or complaining. (However, it did occur to Oscar to ask, at about the halfway mark, why we had signed him up for the race without asking him first if he actually wanted to run it.)

Love the start. So exciting.

Love the end, too. We did it!

Sean ran hard and beat his high-school time: 35:45! It's possible that the distances weren't perfectly measured, but we'll never know, will we?

Wilhelmina took this picture
of Sean's strong finish.

Afterward, we walked to a French bakery and had cappuccinos and pastries to reload our carbs.

In other news of the week: Oscar moved up into 5th grade (he asked the headmistress himself, and she agreed it would be best) and Wilhelmina had a friend over to work on homework (the very charming Lore, who has a musical laugh and a terrific smile).

After the homework, we went to see the Moscow Circus
on Ice in plaza in front of the cathedral.
(Circus was part of the Festival Cervantino.)

Lore y Wilhelmina y mucho azucar.

How was your weekend?

La Virgen, outside Tenejapa

This weekend we went to a village called Tenejapa. Similar to the people in Zinacantán, the indigenous people in Tenejapa are known for their weaving and embroidery. The style of their clothing is very different from the florid purples and pinks in Zinacantán; in Tenejapa the women wear black wool skirts with one line of geometric shapes embroidered around the middle. They put their hair in two long braids and weave ribbons into the braids. The statue in the photo above was in a roadside shrine outside the village; La Virgen is done up in a bit of the Tenejapa style. (We don't have any photos of people in this traditional clothing; they don't want photos taken of them.)

San Cristóbal was next to La Virgen.

 The pace of things in Tenejapa was so...slow that we felt sufficiently at our leisure, over lunch, to listen to Oscar tell an entire story and to become friends with the very nice owners of the restaurant. (The food was great, too.)

The long version, director's cut.

Hector and Maria Eugenia.

 Back at home, Sean and I made a run to the market.

A chorus line! The man selling these
leggy lovelies told us that Sean could NOT
take a photo of him, but of the chickens,
well...sí.

We spent half our grocery money
on firecrackers. Oscar didn't mind.

 On Sunday, in yet another instance of we-don't-quite-know-what's-going-on, we showed up for the opening day of the soccer season. We knew there would be a ceremony and that afterward Oscar's age group would have a game. We didn't know that there would be hundreds of players, that Sean's team was also expected to participate (the coach made Sean go home to get his team shirt), and that the event would last a couple of hours.

The Mini Talentos marched in first. 

Some teams had cheerleaders. 

Oscar and his team. (Official uniforms arriving next week.)

Wilhelmina supplies the girl power here.

Totally no fair: this team's coach
had a REAL EAGLE mascot.

Peeps in Wilhelmina and Oscar's club (younger set).

The military police (armed) attended. 

Also this weekend: Wilhelmina has been asking about neo-liberalism. One of her teachers, Griselda ("who's pretty grim," according to Wilhelmina), has been talking about " economic policies where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and they try and globalize the world and erase cultures and lose borders." Wilhelmina thinks it could be happening, but she thinks that might be extreme because, as she  says, "people are pretty attached to things like their culture and their country, and it seems unlikely that people are making a special effort to stamp out cultures." So much to learn and talk about! (We've already commenced our internet research and kitchen roundtable discussion.) This weekend wasn't long enough.

One more Virgen. She is in our yard,
watching out for us and (hopefully)
battling neo-liberalism. 

A funny thing happened

Sean is playing on a couple of different soccer teams. On Thursday night, he had an injury that took him out of the game; the other players suggested he go visit this particular massage therapist who specializes in sports injuries. So yesterday Sean went to see the masajero. After he'd been gone a couple of hours he called me to report that he'd passed out on the table. 

Apparently the masajero is a practioner of deep and unrelenting pressure, neither solicitous nor mindful of customer requests for mercy. And so one minute Sean was cringing through the pain, trying to breathe through it...and then suddenly the next minute he was struggling to consciousness, completely disoriented,  the masajero yelling at him to wake up. 

Where am I? Why am I naked? And who is this big man slapping me?

(As Sean was leaving, the masajero said, "For two weeks, no alcohol, no sex, and no weightlifting. And what time do you want to come back on Monday?")

~~~

Speaking of the mysteries and perils of Mexican athletics, we visited Tenam Puente, another Mayan ruin, last weekend on our way to Guatemala. Like many sites, Tenam Puente has a ball court (actually I think it has more than one), an H- or I-shaped field with angled sides like bleachers along the edges. We read the plaque describing what is known about how the game was played, and we all agreed that no matter how many times we read about this game it still is very hard to picture (except the part where they behead the losers; there are enough carvings of this to make this aspect vivid in our minds): the two teams played with a solid rubber ball (heavy) and hit it back and forth using only their hips. (Only their hips??)

(Okay, I just read this description from Señor Wikipedia which was very interesting (I still can't picture it though):  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame )

We were the only ones at the site that afternoon. It was so beautiful. We played tag in the ballcourt and the kids got all mesoamerican. 

  

Two celebrations, a sighting, and a death

Virgen de Merced is the patron of the church and the barrio.
She's frequently pictured with chains (something about
appearing to Christian captives of Spanish
 'Mussulmen'  in the 1200s).

As the kids already described, last Sunday Sean and I made sure to get out of the house early enough to see the parade associated with the celebration of La Virgen de Merced, the patron of one of the main barrios in the center of town. People had been talking it up for days: clowns, floats, marching bands, kids dressed as angels....

But it turned out that the parade was the day before. We missed it, just like we missed Sean's soccer game (that was a different day, too) and about 12 other events since we've arrived here. Why? We misunderstand good information, we get bad information, we misunderstand bad information...there are lots of reasons and usually it's not big deal, but I was discouraged about missing the Virgen de Merced desfile. 


We heard a bit of music in the distance, though, so we trudged down the street to see what that was all about. It was a small group of people led by a guy carrying a picture of La Virgen and followed by a minimal band (drums, tuba, a couple of trumpets). The guys in the middle were bent down low over the street, and I first thought that they were pilgrims crawling on hands and knees (a fairly common sight), but then I read the slogan on the back of their matching t-shirts (EQUIPO DE PóLVERA) and saw more closely what they were doing...and I looked up just as Sean looked up at me with a huge smile on his face that probably matched my own. For we realized that they were laying down a line of gunpowder in a crack the middle of the street, every few feet punctuating it with a big firecracker of some kind. The line behind the POWDER TEAM  was several blocks long already and headed toward the church; the people in the street said lift-off was going to be at 12 sharp, ten minutes from now.

We phoned the kids back at the house and had them get ready to meet us. We all ran back to the church to be in place for the big moment. 

Wait for it....

At the appointed moment (not 12 sharp, incidentally), the church bells started ringing, and blocks away at the far end of the barrio, they lit up the line. 

It was scary and wonderful to see the spitting fire and explosions advancing down the street toward the church. I had my ears plugged but was surprised to actually be able to feel the blasts on my chest as the burn line got closer. And bells ringing and ringing overhead. 

Snacks and toys always on offer.

Wow. It was no parade, but it was terrific. 


~~~~


...And then today, a block away, a parade! For a festival of the small church just up the street, La Virgen del Rosario. We heard the music, ran out of the house, and got some great photos of a truly strange and wonderful little desfile. 

La Virgen del Rosario is another story; suffice to say
she is the patron of battles. (Talk to her before your
next soccer game.)

After her joyride, La Virgen will be re-installed
in the church at the top of the hill.

One of two bands from the congregation.

Some celestial beings, underwhelmed
by terrestrial transportation.

Parachicos! There's a long story about these guys;
we'll get into it later. Teaser: they are meant
to look like blond Spaniards.

These guys were part of the parade, too. The tall one in
the blue skirt had bottles of beer tucked in his
cleavage; he and I danced together a little.

Thrilling participant.

Team Virgen.

The hair on that particular Jesus didn't seem to bother
this sweet virgen.

So here I must note that this is exactly what it's like for us here in Mexico, every single week: mixups and disappointments powerfully overmatched by really delightful surprises and mysteries. 

You miss the parade but get the explosions...and later you get another parade.


~~~~


This is something that I've read about, but never seen: dogs stuck together after mating. Sean and I were running and came upon these patient creatures by the side of the road. 

They will part amicably, I predict.

Sean and I discussed our mutual ignorance of this phenomenon. Why does it happen? Is it bad? Are you supposed to do something for them, to help them disunite? 

Here's what the computer says: It's called "tying" and it's normal (can last from 2 to 30 postcoital minutes); some people assert that it's necessary for impregnation (for some reason I resist this assertion, but what do I know). You are NOT supposed to do anything for the tied couple (e.g., do NOT throw cold water on them, which is one thing I remembered hearing about), as they will eventually untie themselves. If you get the couple all riled up, the male could be injured, as one can imagine. 


~~~~


On Friday we drove to Guatemala to get our passports stamped. We had a bit of explaining to do on both the Guatemala and Mexico sides of the border (I just erased my boring account of it all; in any case, it ended well). And just today when I was washing dishes I flashed on a memory from that busy day and reminded the kids: when we were trying to explain the situation to the third or fourth Customs official who got involved in our case, a stretcher was carried past the door. The body on the stretcher had a sheet over the body and a handkerchief over the face. 

At the time we were so busy talking and trying to resolve the visa situation that we didn't really process the fact that a dead person was carried right past us--had died, probably, just a few minutes before. 

That border town is incredibly busy, noisy, crowded, confusing; it's in a narrow green canyon stuffed with vendors and trucks; it's full of comings and goings...but it seems we ought to think about that particular person's passing for just a minute.  Descansa en paz.