Another Emergency Trip to San Cristobal

Farah and I have returned to San Cris after 5 nights of no showering. We came back two days earlier than expected because the charger for our particulate matter pumps short-circuited this morning. Murphy's law. Anna Mo and CB told us that all we had to do to get a truck to Yabteclum (to get to San Cris) was go down the hill and go left, then wait for a truck to pass by. We walked an hour with all our laundry, a computer and our broken equipment up and down the hills but nothing came. We tried to make conversation with people we saw on the road, which was probably really entertaining for them since we know about ten words in Tzotzil, one of the native languages in Chinalho, the municipal area where we are staying.

We finally caught a truck to Yabteclum. I never thought I'd be so happy to ride in the back of a dirty truck, standing up with over half my weight strapped to my back with about ten other people. We made it to Yabteclum and then got a taxi to San Cristobal. The whole thing took us about 3 hours.

Being in San Cris is like a breath of fresh air. We tested the pumps to make sure they were still not working (they weren't) and then tried to reach Rufus, our PI. He wasn't available so we decided to get some coffee and food, and then go do laundry and wait for siesta time to end (a lot of shops close from 2-5pm). On our way to the laundromat, with all our dirty clothes, we found an electronics store and decided to stop there and ask for help. Of course, we had brought all our equipment with us. He referred us to an engineer a couple of stores down who ultimately was able to fix our problem, amazingly enough. Meanwhile, we bought a surge protector so that the inconstant voltage in the mountains won't wreck our machines.

A couple of days back, while Anna Mo and CB were here dealing with the pumps, Farah and I started the adoption study for last year's project. Up until then, we'd always been questioning whether we were doing the right thing installing stoves in these homes, essentially changing a cultural tradition that's been in place for thousands of years. It was a relief to find that the women are using their stoves and that it does make a difference in their quality of life. They save wood and have less symptoms associated with the smoke that fills their kitchens from the open fire. They still continue to use the open fire (fogon), because it heats up faster, enabling them to make more tortillas. The stove is not a perfect solution for these women, but it has made an appreciable difference. We also found that younger women tend to use the stove more than older women, so perhaps this is a cultural change that will occur over generations.

Doing the adoption study enabled us to get to know the community better, too. Farah and I learned some more Tzotzil words and how to greet and ask basic questions. We greet the women by saying "miliote" and they respond by saying "li ayun" in a high pitched singsong voice characteristic of the language. The women and children are very shy but are starting to open up to us. We took pictures of the families and the children who we met, and then printed them out on our photo printer, which they loved.

One of the things that make us glad to return to San Cris is the amount of hiking we had to do the past two days. On the first day, the houses we hiked to were nearby so it wasn't so bad. The second day, Farah and I split up. When I asked where we were going for the day, the health promoter, Alberto, pointed to casitas on another mountain. Farah ended up going to another community across a canyon, and ended up only benig able to do one house there. We are becoming masters at navigating steep, muddy, rocky, narrow trails in our knee-high rubber boots.

Now we are off to dinner. Fernando's wife, Carmela, cooks for us in Q and could not be more generous. Her meals are the best after a long day of hiking. Although we love rice, beans and tortillas, we are very excited to change up our meals here in San Cris. Hopefully, while we're here, we can also bring something special back to Carmela and her family.

It's been a long week, and I am incredibly homesick and miss everyone back at home. Hopefully, I will get used the rugged lifestyle (aka camping 5 days a week) and not being able to get in touch with the people I care about for extended periods of time. All in all, I'm having a great time. Thanks to Gregorio, I sleep like a baby in my cot in Q. We will blog again soon. As John Rose says, salud y justicia.

(Jackie y Farah)