Volunteer Mexico

Yesterday, as a group, we didn't have to meet up until 3 p.m. Over breakfast a few people were throwing out ideas of what to do -- take a cooking class, go shopping, visit Benito Juarez's house. None of that was really sounding great to me. Someone mentioned volunteering and soon I was on the hotel phone talking to the assistant director at the Centro de Esperanza Infantil (Center of Hope for Children). A few hours later I was washing dishes in the center's kitchen as school children filed in for a free hot lunch.

In the United States, kids whose families qualify receive free or reduced lunch. According to the director of Centro de Esperana Infantil, children in Oaxaca don't get lunch unless they pay for it. But through the center's free lunch program, students who qualify can come to the center for free lunch everyday. The center also provides tutoring and after-school activities for the kids, whose parents are mostly local artisans. The kids often sell their parents' wares on the streets at night.

This is fellow Fulbright participant, Courtne, serving lunch to the kids:

The program is funded by donations, mostly from a sponsership program. Individuals and groups can sponser a child for $250 a year, which pays for the child's free meals and participation in the center's activities. If you are interested in sponsering a child, visit www.oaxacastreetchildrengrassroots.org.

Cupping

Today we had most of the day free to explore, so three of us visited the Oaxaca office of Sustainable Harvest, a specialty coffee importer. I'll give more details later about he we got there and why the visit was amazing. For now, here are some photos:

 

Language in movement

The students with whom Omar Nunez works near Oaxaca, Mexico, are similar to millions of other kids around the world -- poor, marginalized and brimming with incredible untapped creativity.

Nunez is the director of the Ollin Tlahtoalli Language and Cultural Center in Oaxaca. The organization was founded in 2007 and exists to serve indigenous communities near this southern city.

"All schools use the word culture constantly because it sounds good in a language program," Nunez said. " But I wanted students to experience Oaxacan culture in a bit of a different way rather than just going to the market. That is, of course, culture, but I wanted to do something different."

Nunez's different approach intertwines language, art, photography, videography and oral history. He travels to rural schools to work with at-risk elementary and secondary students in projects ranging from community murals to student-directed videos.

Language

Recently Nunez arrived to a rural school and announced that he and the students would be exploring three different languages: English, Spanish, and the local indigenous language of Chinanteco, long forgotten by most families. The students were immediately excited about learning English. After all, most have aspirations to work in the United Sates. But it wasn't until days later that a student named Rigo whispered to Nunez, "I speak Chinanteco."

The students are shy about it, Nunez said, ashamed in some cases of their indigeneous heritage. Nunez later capured video of the student teaching his classmates simple words from the native language: mama, papa, milk, and tortilla. The children struggled to pronounce the words from the tonal language, but Rigo was a patient teacher, timid but beaming as he repeated the words for his friends.

"It just empowers him so much," Nunez said. "That's what we try to do when we go into the schools. We turn the students into the actual teachers."

Art

Vilma, a student who lags behind academically has benefitted, Nunez said, from another of his programs that provides art education to rural, at-risk students.

"She is actually dislexic and struggles so much with school," he said. Art became her way of expressing. Art became a way of connecting with her mother. Art became a way of connecting with her teachers. She became empowered."

Vilma began to paint stories, using text, paint, even bracelets that she made by hand.

"Most of these kids had never even had paint in these communities," Nunez said. "They are just amazed to see how they can combine colors to make a new one."

Nunez brings the student artwork from the villages to Oaxaca to exhibit in an art show for parents and members of the community. Funds raised from an auction at the art show go back into the education programs for indigenous communities.



Nunez also incorporates art education through the creation of murals. The students discuss their communities and design murals that depict the most important aspects of the village, often sparking greater dialogue. For example, students wondered if they should depict more women in their mural and which denominations of local churches should be included.

"We are creating spaces to negociate in terms of what is happening," Nunez said.

Adult members of the community would also join the discussions as they watched the painting progress. They pointed out inaccuracies and offered suggestions, sparking new conversations between generations.

Photography

In two separate projects, Nunez provided students with cameras and video cameras and instructed them to document their community.

"They are really good with the cameras. They are amazingly good," Nunez said, pointing out that working with photos and videos falls beyond the normal range of opportunities to which these young people have access.

"When you ask them about their future they say, 'Well, I'm going to migrate to the United States,' especialy the boys. They don't really have a lot of resources. The aspirations are really, really narrow because of that."

Nunez gathered Flip cameras, laptops, even his own personal camera for a group of secondary school boys to use to make their own documentary videos. They made short videos about the tortilla-making process and about a boulder in their village that is marked with prehistoric symbols.

But the most prevalent movie theme was that of unrequited love. Jorge, 15, a gifted artist who had always been good at drawing and painting, joined two classmates to create a video that portrayed some of his most private feelings.

"It's a story really about Jorge, about him being in love with his cousin," Nunez said. "But it's his cousin."

Nunez recorded the boys as they watched their movie for the first time. Present at the viewing also was Jorge's cousin. It was the first time Jorge was able to tell everyone how he felt. Jorge viewed the movie with a mix of trepidation and pride, glancing from his classmates to his cousins, and joining the applause at the movie's end.

Programs like these are almost non-existent in Oaxaca and surrounding areas. Nunez dreams of making these opportunities even more accessible by opening a place in the mountains for kids to go to after school to experiment with art and photography.

For more information about Ollin Tlahtoalli Language and Cultural Center, visit www.ollinoaxaca.org.mx.

Inked

Today we visited the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas to check out some really, really old Mexican and Colombian maps and books.

The first two are 16th century drawings of natives interacting with Spanish conquistadors. To read about this history, go here.

Here are depicted some young women who would become the first mothers of the earliest mestizos in Mexico.

Along the side of the manila folder that holds this old text, it is noted that these writings were written by Hernando Cortes to Charles V in 1524. The bottom of the page includes the words pies, manos, and beso. This is an expression of kissing the hands and feet of the king. Pre-emoticons.

The following map was made by native Mexican artists on Eurpopean papers. The map is of the state of Morelos east of Cuernavaca.

This map uses hieroglyphics to show the locations of various places in the community. The green boot-looking figure represents a hill where lots of yucca plants were located.

This is my favorite image -- a little guy smoking with rattles in a bathtub.

The following pages are from the same book. They show the intriciate artistry and penmanship of the authors.

 

Limes and Pears

I arrived in Austin yesterday to begin a journey that will take me through Mexico and Colombia. There are 16 teachers on the trip, all of us here to be a little bit better at what we do and because travel is just cool. Last night the group met on a river boat for dinner and to catch a glimpse of the bats of Congress Bridge flying out to catch mosquitos. The bats didn't fly as expected, but we did get most of the awkward first-day introductions out of the way. Today we have endured two seminars about the respective histories of Mexico and Colombia.

Later we heard about the various international markets for Mexican limes. Mexicans, apparently, prefer very small limes because Mexicans always use the same small tool to juice the limes. Only those tiny key limes will work with the tool. Americans like medium limes, very green and shiny and fresh-looking. But what to do with giant limes? Sell them to Japan, of course. Japanese people don't actually like limes and will not eat them, but they love to use them as home decor. The really big limes, they say, are great to set out as a centerpeice.

The guy telling us about the limes, Marco M. Muñoz of IC2, works to help people in Veracruz, Mexico, to be self-sufficient without giving them any money. Lime producers don't make any money if they send limes of the wrong size to the wrong market. And it costs nothing to give them these tips.

Muñoz is also telling us about a group of pear producers he met in a very poor community. I zoned out when he first started telling the story, and when I finally drifted back in, I thought he was talking about purse producers. "Purse" and "pears" sound very similar in a Spanish accent. Just for fun, try substituting "purse" for "pears" in the following story.

Muñoz was sent to this little town in Mexico specifically to try to help the people be less poor. He worked to match the pear producers with a broker who would sell the pears at a market. As is turned out, though, the pear producers weren't actually producing pears; they were just kind of picking pears up from the ground and putting them in a basket. When Muñoz asked one of the so-called producers if he would eat the pears himself, the man said he would not. After all, the pears were basically rotten, just fetched from the ground. When Muñoz pointed out that perhaps rotten pears wouldn't sell very well in the market, the guy got all annoyed that Muñoz actually wanted him to work to pick good pears.

"You are the only ones who come to put us to work," the man said. Why would they want to work, he argured, when the Red Cross gives them medicine, NGOs bring toys and clothes, and the government provides food?

"They are not really helping anybody to be better," Muñoz said of the charities. "I learned why poverty is such a good business."

So, Muñoz said, the first thing you have to do to help a community is make sure they want the help.

"Identify the people that really want to work. Don't waste your time with people who do not want to work."

I suppose the concept applies to both purses and pears, but it doesn't really apply to teaching. I have often heard teachers say something like, "Well, if he doesn't want to learn, I can't teach him." It's a tempting stand to take and one of the reasons teaching is so difficult.

But what do you do about the kids who are just picking up rotten pears and putting them in the basket?