"Beam me up, Scotty"

I have come home and it is a fairy tale land. With water that you can drink from the tap, tomatoes that do not have to be desinfected before you eat them and bikes on which you can go anywhere. And no-one stares at you, I am free and I even love the rain.
Like in fairy tales there are also evil events and people, but I keep my world small, just as small as I can handle for the moment, although you cannot escape all of it. The photo camera shop does not want to open my camera to see what is wrong with it. "It is a nice camera but it is more costly to repair than to buy a new one." Culture-shock? Throw-away society? A new one costs a lot of material and a months salary, well in Chiapas. But in Chiapas they would open my camera, and simply try. Poverty makes creative and that is what I most miss.

I am happy to see my friends and family, very happy. But at the same time have to be on my own a lot. I sometimes still feel like a scene from Startrek "Beam me up, Scotty", but part of me was left somewhere in Chiapas, and part of me seems to be lost in air above the Atlantic Ocean. I notice at night, when all is still and I look at my blurred photos (all of them failed as there still was water in my camera), that my body and mind are still trying to reassemble bits and pieces. It is a physical experience and it scares me.
But then again, I am probably not made for the modernity of rapid transnational flights.
I want to plant some cabbage plants in my garden, if they root, maybe I root again aswell.

My heart and soul feel divided over an old love that should by now be a new friendship. It drains away all the energy and illusion I felt about my new plans for my internship with Dutch farmers. I feel down and it seems like I am watching all day long to a repetition of a repetition of an elegant dancer on ice, knowing that she will fall on the moment she makes the triple piruette. Knowing it causes me pain and an enormous tiredness and I should have stopped watching by now. I cannot. Maybe because some very little part in me hopes that this time she will make it, as I love her as a part of me, but it is a sad, tragic form of love. I even sometimes wonder if the taped dancer died already in real life, but I dont check the date of the video. Maybe she never really existed. The best thing would be that by her own magic she would convert herself in the dove she has always been and fly away. Set us free, both of us.

To not leave you and me sad, I wanted to give us a tale. It has nothing to do with us, but it makes me laugh like most of Marcos' writing.

http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/eventos/783/

Last days in Mexico

I have to admit that already for three weeks I think and dream of little more than my closeby return to the Netherlands.

After returning to my other ´home´ San Cristobal (see photo above), I passed a moment of melancholy and doubts under the heavy afternoon rains. Had I taken enough out of my stay here? Would I leave this place forever? Would I be able to adept again to the Dutch rythm? Do I want to? Maybe I have changed, maybe you have changed - maybe we do not get along anymore?

My eyes red and swollen by the dermatitis everyone stares even more at me than normally. I want to hide, to disapear. I manage to a little, by reading The lord of the rings, even taking it with me to the bar, to the restaurant where I sit in the darkest corner. I feel bad for not doing anything useful, a very North-West European addiction.

Returning to Fundacion Leon XIII is mixed. A few people in the office are annoyed with my informalism, my coming and going. The people that matter to me are mostly happy to see me. Braulio, a young guy from a community, comes to me:

¨Juanita, como estas? Look, we are at war, with those guys from the office. They want to stop the courses on medicinal plants, can you believe it? We had to do an exam and yes, many failed, but I got 8.6... The new docter says that we have to practise more in our communities, but how can we if we do not have the equipment? And how can they expect us all to pass at once, not everyone can study with such ease. Many of the women have not finished their primary education, but that does not mean that they are stuped, we just need more time!

But I will stand stand up and say my word. Aren´t we the basis of the Fundacion, I thought it was set up to help us!¨

Indeed, sometimes this development organization seems to be set up rather to provide people with work in a comfortable office. Don Juan, the herbal medic (I wrote on him in February or March ¨Medicina¨): ¨It is just that some people have other ideas on their mind. The people are enthusiastic, come every month for two days, pay their own transport, bring their own food. But see the office people think otherwise. But don´t worry, Juanita, the work will go on, with or without the Fundacion. It is my mission to pass on the old knowledge to my people.¨

On Monday I can tell Braulio and Gaspar (25 and 23, Gaspar having shared a few weeks with me in the Fundacion, sharing and exchanging our lifes experiences, he with a family of two already...) that our project for a small health house in their community has been approved: a space for their herbal medicine consultory, a place for the midwifes, equipment to prepare herbal medicines. Financed by Grassroots projects in the Netherlands (http://www.grassrootsprojects.com/). The people are happy, want to start right away and I start taking up money untill my daily limit. Mexican banks are cheating horribly on us: it is so expensive to take up money even for Mexican themselves. They even have to pay for having it on their account, so most of them do not have an account...

I get nervous, but manage to arrange transactions for the rest of the money, passing via Carolina with her Dutch and Mexican accounts and via Marcelino, my collegeau, who has become a dear friend. After we managed to forget again that we could be lovers. After our little history the amor de contrabanda (smokkelaarsliefde). Such a beautiful word, for a such a confusing thing.

On thursday I assist at the primary school graduation of Lazaro Jimenez Ruiz, a boy I do not know himself, but is a son of Sebastian from Rancho Salvador Allende, La Selva. To my surprise, not just Sebastian is there, but also Javier, Manuella and their kids (two of them at the same internado/ internaat) from Corozal and they seem happy to see me. These children have left their homes at about ten years old, staying so far away from their families in this internado in San Cristobal together with other kids from other communities.

The ceremony is very Mexican, including a lot of marching (yes, all Mexican children learn to march before they can even read well...), reciting at the flag, dancing, singing, naming the best students etc.

From the Selva comes worrying news. Doña Mica seems better now. But the army has entered Israel, entered San Gregorio and found `everything´, as Sebastian and Javier say. Everything means all the narco-traffico going on, including the air plane providing them with gasoline (from the same company we fly with... there is no other). Let´s hope it is the right people getting punished, those who make the money. Not nearby communities like Corozal, that are not involved, a fact that can easily be ignored by a government looking for any good excuse to evict them....

In the end of the week, I ´risk´ a one-day trip to Palenque the beautiful ruins and some waterfalls closeby. By tourist bus, as the docter says ¨I do not want you to go to these warm humid areas anymore than is strictly necessary.¨ I pay with a tearing, red eye, but it was well worth it.

Then it is time to go up North, finally. By sheer chance I have bought the same ticket as Marcelino and Gaspar who are going to give a workshop in San Luis Potosí. Hours never last so long in company, although most of them are past in half sleepy state. Goodbye is warm with hugs, thank you for everything, please take care of yourself, you too and of your families, guys. They promise to check their newly made email accounts (a rainy afternoon workshop I gave them), once in a while.

Visiting Puebla in a few hours, is like Michel says: ¨Nice those colonial cities, but not that special when you have seen Granada...¨ Being on my own, my eyes still hurting from the airco, I don´t really enjoy it. I go on to Tehuacan that same day and suddenly cannot take all the ¨güera, güera, hello, goodbye love¨, stares and hisses anymore. I feel strange and alone and count the days.

After eating in a (for me) too posh restaurant (where are the little eating stands?), I feel asleep deadly tired in the most expensive hostel I have staid in in my entire stay in Mexico: 9 euros. The cucarachas/ kakkerlakken walk over the floor.

But the next day is another day. I easily find the office for information on the Biosfera de Tehuacan-Cuicatlan and at 10 I walk in a beautiful cactus landscape. A friendly guide explains me that a cactus is not just a cactus, but that there are so many different shapes and names. And that you can eat them, can use them to make long trips through the desert (there are already given courses to illegal immigrants to survive their ´cross´ to the USA through the desert), that they have all kind of medicinal properties. And hallocunogenous, but think before you try them, because the most famous one el peyote is going in extinction!

What a respect grows in me towards them when I hear how slowly they grow: a few centimeters a year. So I am walking through a forest of a few hundred years old, some plants reaching 1000 years!!! And they survive with a few rains a year, and could do without them for a few years.

The world is still full of wonders.

In the evening I find the eating places on the market, so much more cosy. Lucy who attends me wants to go to the Netherlands, because she loves tulips. She will sell tortillas, enchiladas, enmoladas when she comes there. I like her dream...

Still hungry I eat salad in a more hygienic place. But when I eat an elote for dessert later in the street, the lady passes a small cloth over my corn ear to dry it. It looks as if it has a lot of bacteria, but I don´t have the heart to say anything. I am white and therefore too nice, too much in need of being accepted probably. I will chew some probiotics before going to bed tonight. These days, I consume family packs of them anyhow.

Tomorrow I will go to Mexico, my last destination. Have a look at the museums, staying with Carolina´s family (although she herself is away for a course). And then....

HOME!!!

Goodbey to La Selva: conflicting realities/dreams

In Salvador Allende, I experience once again conflicts in realities and generations.
Tono, one of Don Chebo´s son-in-laws, has come back after more than two years of working in the States. He brings back a huge music stereo tower. His family still does not have a toilet, not even a compost one. Talking about priorities. He would have brought a car, he says, but there is no road.
Tono, used to be promoter in agro-ecology. He was a good promoter, enthusiastically working the non-burned milpa and sharing his knowledge with the community.
But Tono looks lost now. ¨Did the community change while you were away?¨ I ask him.
¨Yes, it looks sadder¨.
¨But is it the community that has become sadder or do you see it as such?¨
¨I don´t know. When I went away I was happy, full of illusion, now that I see the village again...¨
While we see his colourful wife, his laughing children running around freely, the beautiful trees, the men joking around. His eyes are full of other realities, of cars, of cities, of restaurants, of 24 hours-shops, of movies, of going out, of his friends (male ánd female as he emphasises).
When he accompanies us to the milpa he says he does not like this work anymore. ¨I used to like it, but after working in a restaurant, this work seems so hard to me. I want to go back. I will go back. My wife does not want to come with me, but I want to go. I will ask her to send me some of the children, because education in the USA is free, even for us illegals. And maybe my Mexican boss can help me to obtain papers, then I will earn even more. ¨.

Sebastian, the catechist, and Juanita are expecting their 8th child. Another one, not intended but it will be received with love. Juanita has some one and half month to go, but she walks around all day, carries buckets of water etc. When I say that I admire her, Sebastian replies: ¨She is used to it and we have experienced that a woman who does not exercise will have difficulty in giving birth. Here the women give birth en cuclillas (op de hurken) supported by their husband, this way it never takes long.¨
Together with them lives Sebastian´s sister Guadeloupe, a single mother. The two women do everything together. The father of Guadeloupe´s children (of which she has been allowed to only keep one) Feliciano is married to her sister Jacintha and is expelled by Don Chebo to a Rancho nearby after having made Guadeloupe pregnant for the third time. In another village, Carolina hears speaking of Feliciano like ´un hombre chingon´ (een echte vent) and of Guadeloupe as a fallen woman. The typical Latin American double mentality.
Sebastian is not so enthusiastic about his brothers (two of them are still there) and nephew´s temporal migration to the States. ¨Look it depends a lot on the man. There is this young boy in Amador Hernandez, he left together with them in February. He is very responsable and does not drink. He has already sent back 20 thousand pesos, while having paid his debts. His father is a responsible man too and is administring his money well. When he gets back he will have some cows or can start a little business, especialy when the road is build. My brothers send money, but not so much. They bought a car there, they like the adventure. I hope they do not bring back diseases.¨

When Carolina goes to another farm for a few days in hotter areas, I stay in SA, not to make my dermatitis worse. They insist on me not sleeping on my own. ¨Are you not afraid?¨ They are surprised, maybe reaffirmed in their view that I am ´a lost girl, way to independant´. Here a woman never sleeps alone, first she sleeps with her parents, sisters, then with her husband and children.
My ´tokalla´ (naamgenoot) Juanita (23), thus keeps me company. She is pretty, hardworking and intelligent, although never given the opportunity to study beyond primary school. One afternoon I hear her explaining national politics to the other women in tseltal, while she is sewing clothes on her foot-driven machine, the other women listening somewhat incomprehensive, a child on each breast. At night in bed she explains why she has refused the plenty mariage offers so far: ¨I dont want to marry yet, I want to see places, like you! If you want to suffer you marry at 14, 15. If you want to enjoy life you wait. Women suffer a lot. No, not more, but less when their husbands are in the States. Because if he is there you have to serve him food and wash his clothes aswell. My boyfriend is in the States for 3 years now. He told me he has someone else, so I said that I have too. I like a boy in Ocosingo, he works as a taxi driver and his family has a fruit stand in the market place. I want to live in town too, I like it much more than the Rancho. He is respectful. He asked me to go and eat something together, but I told him I cannot go out with him, it is against our custom. He wants to marry in one year, but I want to wait another five year as I don´t want children yet. I may be able to go to women´s gatherings in other places.¨

Lazaro, her brother with thirteen children, starts what seems a confession, to me one evening. In the evening life centres around the ´living room´ of Don Chebo and Doña Mica, where the lamp on sunlight is installed and coffee served. ¨I am regretful.You know I had the opportunity to go out of here. They offered me a job for the government, I could get a higher education. I was out and about a lot. But I knew that if I would get that job, I would leave my wife and the five children we had back then. Because when you got money you buy a car, you start to drink, you see other women and one day you fall in love and forget your family which stays behind in misery. It was already happening, I liked other women. I got together with them for a year, half a year. We were almost going to seperate. But I decided that it would be better to stay. To buy good cows, to build up a better life, here. So I decided to have many children, so that they would retain me, they would tie me to the community, to my family. And when I am with them I am content, when I´m out I think of my wife.
But I am not happy in this place anymore and now I am stuck. I am disillusioned and regretful, because I thought I could change our live to the better here in the Selva, but I could not. Now the only thing left for me are to make sure my children go out of here, study and so get a better life. Here it ain´t life. This year I will send Remiglio [Lazaro´s child but brought up by his grandparents] out to study...¨

Next day, I find a crying Don Chebo for breakfast: ¨I overheard Lazaro yesterday, telling you that it ain´t life here. That he will send Remiglio to study, that he is now working too hard, is my servant. But we have given this child everything he needs, clothes, medicines, food. Yes he will go to study, but when he is a bit older. First I want him to know the life and work of the land. My son says we ain´t life here. Yes we have life, but it entails work, a lot of work. He does not like work, is a politician, that goes out if he gets the chance. I don´t know why my children leave, if here there is work enough. If you work you have a decent life. Ok, we do not eat meat everyday, but we have food.¨

The end of my last stay in La Selva is full of conflict too. Doña Mica (Don Chebo´s wife) is seriously ill, her belly blown up, she refuses to eat more and gets weaker by the day. We are waiting for the small airplane to take her to the hospital, with all the women, men, children and grandchildren for three days in the landing lane. Boredom, worries, despair. Sudden jokes and playing chess. Carolina is filled with painful memories of the last weeks of her fathe´s life. I am secretly dreaming of my arrival to the Netherlands in three weeks, of eating bread with appelstroop, tahini, Dutch cheese, of riding my bike, of seeing all of you again.
No plane comes for us, as ´the weather is bad´ and one plane is decomposed, we here over the radio. However, the weather seems to be no problem, for the other airplane that circles around non-stop. The narco-trafficantes, as everyone knows, who find this weather safer to do their tricky business.
While waiting under a carpet for the heavy rain to stop, Miquel says ¨This is our reality¨.