What better way to celebrate one's birthday than to have loved ones play a friendly game of pin the bald spot on the head? Such was the short straw I drew for my 49th birthday.
Brian, Susanna and I returned from an amazing hike some way up the nearly 10,000 foot mountains just out our door - Tyler had feigned a belly ache (not uncommon in these parts) and peeled off to prepare a surprise party for me. We had Anna and Meena (Anna is a dear, dear Australian friend with whom we worked in El Salvador who had the amazing foresight to hitch up with the equally dear Meena) and their children - Rahoul and Asha as well as the Moss Haaren and Bloom Moore clan. We ate, danced, laughed, and not surprisingly, found the bald spot.
Afterwards, we went up the road a quarter mile to the appropriate technology center of CAMPO - the Center for Support of the Popular Movement of Oaxaca. CAMPO is a non governmental organization that I've come to know through Grassroots International. We've been supporting them for many years. They are a mix of community planners and organizers, engineers and lawyers working with indigenous community to protect their human rights and develop their communities through a grassroots process - trying to undo the damage that Mexican party politics of exclusion and marginalization of indigenous communities has wrought. The community where we are living - Casa del Sol - was founded by many of CAMPO's founders - and is an unusual and unusally welcoming sort of co housing community.
Fortuitously, CAMPO was celebrating something (life, they said) and it coincided with my birthday. With watermelon, mezcal and salad in hand (no Entemann's baked goods nearby to bring), the gringos (sorry to throw you in the same lot, Australia) descended on the party. They'd slaughtered and cooked a couple of their sheep and rabbits, we feasted, and then played Mexico vs USA in the CAMPO cup. We lost rather badly - despite the stellar efforts of Arlo and Talia.
Brian, Susanna and I returned from an amazing hike some way up the nearly 10,000 foot mountains just out our door - Tyler had feigned a belly ache (not uncommon in these parts) and peeled off to prepare a surprise party for me. We had Anna and Meena (Anna is a dear, dear Australian friend with whom we worked in El Salvador who had the amazing foresight to hitch up with the equally dear Meena) and their children - Rahoul and Asha as well as the Moss Haaren and Bloom Moore clan. We ate, danced, laughed, and not surprisingly, found the bald spot.
Afterwards, we went up the road a quarter mile to the appropriate technology center of CAMPO - the Center for Support of the Popular Movement of Oaxaca. CAMPO is a non governmental organization that I've come to know through Grassroots International. We've been supporting them for many years. They are a mix of community planners and organizers, engineers and lawyers working with indigenous community to protect their human rights and develop their communities through a grassroots process - trying to undo the damage that Mexican party politics of exclusion and marginalization of indigenous communities has wrought. The community where we are living - Casa del Sol - was founded by many of CAMPO's founders - and is an unusual and unusally welcoming sort of co housing community.
Fortuitously, CAMPO was celebrating something (life, they said) and it coincided with my birthday. With watermelon, mezcal and salad in hand (no Entemann's baked goods nearby to bring), the gringos (sorry to throw you in the same lot, Australia) descended on the party. They'd slaughtered and cooked a couple of their sheep and rabbits, we feasted, and then played Mexico vs USA in the CAMPO cup. We lost rather badly - despite the stellar efforts of Arlo and Talia.
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