Love Thy Neighbor
Washing one’s face in our Oaxaca home is not just a simple matter of turning on the faucet. The water system is a complex Rube Goldberg affair. The water flows occasionally – sometimes Tuesdays and Saturdays – from the municipality’s system into an in-ground cistern. It’s up to us to flip the pump switch to move it from the cistern to a tank on the roof.
Well, turns out the durn cistern was not filling with water. Three neighbors gathered to weigh in, each with a different solution. They were disappointed when I called the plumber; one neighbor told the plumber to his face that his solution was misguided. It very well might have been. He had to send his young assistant (14 years old, he had to leave school for lack of funds - books and uniforms here, even for public school can run $300) down into the dank tank to retrieve a dropped pipe.
All of which is to say that we live in a cozy community of 80 or so families. The founders’ originally came together with an ecological and communitarian vision; today diversity is more common. The uprising of 2006, in particular divergent opinions about the direct action tactics of the teacher’s union and its allies, have caused significant division.
But we’re interested in making friends with anyone who will have us and in reviving community in any way we might contribute. We consulted with our neighborhood confidents – staff of the local community organization CAMPO – the Center for Support to the Oaxacan Popular Movement - to plot. A neighborhood party for the kids wouldn’t be a bad idea, they thought. With all the subtlety of Cortes, we dropped flyers throughout the neighborhood and hung colorful signs that were washed away in one in a series of torrential rainstorms.
We billed it as a “Fiesta Juvenil” - a youth party - in the afternoon, with no alcohol. It had been raining for days with the hurricane season fully underway. We woke up on the morning of the party to blue skies and hot sun. The Moss-Haarens and the Moore-Blooms divided the tasks and the party fixings started to take shape: 150 tamales retrieved from the woman in front of the cemetery, a piñata and hibiscus tea leaves purchased at the sprawling and amazing Central Supply Market – a maze of small vendors’ stalls.
Under a small party tent that we borrowed from CAMPO, we organized games: a 3 legged race, an egg race, “Twister”, musical chairs and the grand finale “the egg toss”. From there, it was all football, soccer and tamales. Did we make friends? I think so but you’d have to ask the neighbors to be sure.
Washing one’s face in our Oaxaca home is not just a simple matter of turning on the faucet. The water system is a complex Rube Goldberg affair. The water flows occasionally – sometimes Tuesdays and Saturdays – from the municipality’s system into an in-ground cistern. It’s up to us to flip the pump switch to move it from the cistern to a tank on the roof.
Well, turns out the durn cistern was not filling with water. Three neighbors gathered to weigh in, each with a different solution. They were disappointed when I called the plumber; one neighbor told the plumber to his face that his solution was misguided. It very well might have been. He had to send his young assistant (14 years old, he had to leave school for lack of funds - books and uniforms here, even for public school can run $300) down into the dank tank to retrieve a dropped pipe.
All of which is to say that we live in a cozy community of 80 or so families. The founders’ originally came together with an ecological and communitarian vision; today diversity is more common. The uprising of 2006, in particular divergent opinions about the direct action tactics of the teacher’s union and its allies, have caused significant division.
But we’re interested in making friends with anyone who will have us and in reviving community in any way we might contribute. We consulted with our neighborhood confidents – staff of the local community organization CAMPO – the Center for Support to the Oaxacan Popular Movement - to plot. A neighborhood party for the kids wouldn’t be a bad idea, they thought. With all the subtlety of Cortes, we dropped flyers throughout the neighborhood and hung colorful signs that were washed away in one in a series of torrential rainstorms.
We billed it as a “Fiesta Juvenil” - a youth party - in the afternoon, with no alcohol. It had been raining for days with the hurricane season fully underway. We woke up on the morning of the party to blue skies and hot sun. The Moss-Haarens and the Moore-Blooms divided the tasks and the party fixings started to take shape: 150 tamales retrieved from the woman in front of the cemetery, a piñata and hibiscus tea leaves purchased at the sprawling and amazing Central Supply Market – a maze of small vendors’ stalls.
Under a small party tent that we borrowed from CAMPO, we organized games: a 3 legged race, an egg race, “Twister”, musical chairs and the grand finale “the egg toss”. From there, it was all football, soccer and tamales. Did we make friends? I think so but you’d have to ask the neighbors to be sure.
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