I'm going to take this post straight from my journal, as I took a lot of notes on this outing. Hope you don't mind the informality...you know, 'cause up until now this blog has been very black-tie, if you know what I mean.
-start the morn waiting for a city bus. Some guy tries to steal my mic whle I make an attempt to board. He siddles up and unclips a compartment of my bag. I catch him, so he saunters off without shame. Now I'm looking at everyone funky the rest of the morning. I feel terrible about that.
-hop out at El Monumento and a tortillera points me towards the taxi stand bound for Guelatao. A long line of people await to cram five to each taxi (not including the driver). Imagine a small Honda Civic. My turn arrives, and I get the middle seat up front--right where the stick shift sits. Yea.
-Guelatao is unbelievably beautiful. Conifers blanket the hills, hills that stretch until they meet azure skies. It's a tiny hamlet (perhaps the first true hamlet I've seen); a mere 500-person population. The town dips and ascends around the bends in the road. A small lagoon sits near city center. The people at first go are so friendly.
-I can't find the director of the station. He's instructed me to meet him at his office in the morning. I am late, I confess. I climb the hills from where the taxi let me off on the highway to the small station office. Not there. "He's down near the basketball court." I descend to the court. Nope. I meet a local man who tells me he lived in Michigan for 5 years. He invites me to coffee and, I think, later to marry him. Another guy sees that I am lost and walks me futher into town until we bump into some kid in a CDI truck (CDI is the commission that sponsors the radio station). The driver talks fast and winks at me a lot. A miniature player-in-waiting. He drives me to a street off the town center where a big green tarp has been hoisted over several long tables and chairs. The conversation goes like this:
Him: Are you hungry?
Me: No, not really.
Him: Sister?!?
Me: No I'm not.
Her: Are you hungry?
Me: No, not really, but thank you.
Him: Yea, she needs something to eat.
Her: Get out and have a seat. We'll get you something.
I get out, of course, and get something to eat. It's hopeless to fight.
-lots of proposals. I've got three so far. 1. a guy stripping copper from a junk heap who lived in Grand Rapids for a spell working in an automotive factory. He's looking for an American wife so he can "arreglar" his papers. 2. Some young kid who studies business in Oaxaca City. He needs a dance partner with whom to pass the cool Oaxacan nights. 3. An old dude who passes me on the street. He wants a picture of a pretty girl, he tells me. Then he asks if I want to "learn Zapoteco." I think he means something else. When he asks for my phone number and I refuse, he tells me not to be so closed off. I pretend not to understand Spanish all of the sudden and walk away.
-it's night. It's cold. I'm sitting in the Food Tent. That's what I'll call it. I'm surrounded by families who have come to celebrate the 26th anniversary of the indigenous station based in town. Or perhaps they are families of the many musicians, dancers and stiltz walkers who have come to town to spread merriment. This little book and pen are my only companions at this point. I've roved; I've recorded. I've interviewed staff in the kitchen, bands, a stiltz walker. But now it is time to huddle and eat something warm. Bread and beans. Bread and beans. I can see my breath.
-the night takes a turn after dinner. I start to chat with a young man named Federico, a painter who is in town displaying his paintings at the local museum. On the corner coming up from the Food Tent I bump into Daniel and Cornelio from the Tlaxiaco station. We all pop a squat on the Plaza just as the Calenda arrives. A Calenda is a moving parade, normally set up to celebrate the festival day of a church. In this case it was to celebrate the station. Kids designed tissue paper "puppets" that are held high on 8-foot wooden poles. The band leads the way around the village streets as the kids and their tissue popsicles trail behind dancing. They pour into the Plaza last and continue to dance for an hour. Little plastic cups of mezcal are passed around to keep the crowd warm. They bring out a fireworks bull. How can I describe this...? It's like a bull suit that someone hoists on his shoulders. On top of the bull is an elaborate towers of fireworks. They set one ring off and as it explodes, the man carrying the bull dances around the Plaza, excitingly close to the crowd. I can't even begin to imagine this kind of thing taking place in our litigious, American society. It was fantastic!
-the youth band from Ptlapa is incredible. Not one of them can be older than 13. And according to the director of the station in Guelatao, they come from 10 hours away in the mountains, from one of the most marginalized and poverty-stricken towns in all of Oaxaca. I try to interview some of the girls in the band. They are shy, speaking mostly in Zapoteco to each other as I try to cajole them to tell me their names, or what instruments they play. One whispers answers to the other, one brave enough to speak into the microphone. They wear festival clothes today. Long, cotton dresses, white, with simple embroidery over deep pink underskirts.
-I spend the night in a room at someone's house, a short half-block from the Plaza. The small room has a non-operational sink that hovers over the bed. It sits off the courtyard of the house. It's simple and cheap. Just what I need. Though, as the temperature drops that night, I wish that I had just one more blanket. I bury my head under the one I've got so I don't have to think about the small fog collecting around my every exhale.
-had breakfast with another artist who is exhibiting at the museum. He grabbed my elbow at the Plaza this morning and said, "Vamos a tomar un café, no?" His drawings turn out to be beautiful and strange female figures, with small poem/inscriptions penciled in the corners.
-meet up with Cornelio and his son, from Tlaxiaco, after breakfast. We traverse the lagoon and follow the small cascade up to its source, and then decide to continue walking up and up to the next pueblo along the highway, Ixtlán. It's nice to stretch my legs and feel my heart and lungs pump a bit.
-we return to revisit the Food Tent for lunch. It's barbacoa. We separate and find each other again several times throughout the day. I search in vain for a small spot of shade to sit in while I listen to one of several bands play. The skin on my nose and upper cheeks is growing tight. My lips are chapped. I can tell I'll be burnt tomorrow. It feels good--like a physical manifestation of my trip--something to say I was away in another world this weekend, soaking up as much as I could, and it burned me a little.
-the sun starts to set. I know this means I have to begin packing up my gear and finding a way back to Oaxaca City. I shuffle down the main street to the foot of the village limits. A long line of people wait across the road for taxis heading to Oaxaca. One will arrive from Ixtlán, almost totally full, save one seat. I'll never get home at this rate; I'm at the back of the line. So instead, I cross the pavement and get in line for the taxis heading uphill to Ixtlán. It's 60 cents, so what the hell. I jump out at town center and get right into a cab headed back downhill for Oaxaca City. Sure beats waiting in the dark on the side of the road back in Guelatao! We weave back and forth, back and forth, up and over the Sierra Juarez heading back south to Oaxaca. I'm pressed between two people in the back seat. I let my head flop back to rest; I relax my legs and arms and let the back-and-forth sway of the car rock me against my seatmates. I doze a bit, catching snippets of headlights as they race past us uphill. I spot the tiny cluster of lights as we get close to Oaxaca, and smile at the return. Returning feels good.
-hop a bus for my apartment. Drop everything at my front door and start the shower so it will be steaming hot when I jump in. Slip into pajamas and read but two lines of a book before I am sound asleep.
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