Week #54 Fontezuelas
On Wednesday we took a bus to Pachuca in the state of Hidalgo to participate in a protocolario event the next day. I was able to book the bus and hotel on-line with my new corporate church credit card, simplifying project expenses on my end. Previously, I would pay for everything and then get reimbursed which would take about three months.
We are grateful the trip was uneventful as being anywhere on a road comes with significant risks. Sister Schlachter saved the day when we started out by pointing out I had chosen the wrong bus terminal but were able to redirect the Uber en route. We had asked a different Uber driver on Sunday what foods we should try while we were in Pachuca. He suggested three things barbacoa (meat slow cooked in hole in the ground, escamoles (ant eggs sautéed in butter) and pastes (pronounced past ays, British-origin pasties/pastries but with Mexican fillings) and we were able to try all of them. The pastes are a remnant of English miners who worked in Pachuca's silver mines in the 19th century.
The barbacoa and the pastes are definitely things I would order again. The preparation and delicate taste of the escamoles were interesting but not something I would order again - the taste was like, well, honestly like slurpling up a runny nose during my childhood. The fellow that elegantly prepared them at our table, said they are only available during certain times of the year but they freeze them so they can be served year round in the restaurant. There are several other insects to try on a future trip: Xamues (stink bugs), saltamontes, jumiles (a grasshopper), chicatanas (adult ants), cuetlas (high in protein but this one would be the most challenging for me as they are finger-sized caterpillers...), and red and white maguey larvae (apparently the red ones are tastier). Below are some pastes (pronounced, past-ays) we brought home and heated up in our oven for our supper when we got back - the three cheese and apple ones were my favourites.
The project we went to involved 40 women that were the heads of their households, as their spouses have gone to CDMX or the USA to work. When we arrived these women were standing behind a handmade sign that said !Bienvenido! (welcome in Spanish) which they also shouted when they saw us. They later took a seat in the bleachers for the official ceremony (photo below).
An earlier project helped them build cisterns to store captured rainwater. We had an opportunity to ask them questions. They told us about the challenge of rolling out the chicken wire on the road, weaving in heavier pieces of wire and then rolling it into a cylinder to set up on end as the outer framework for a cinderblock and cement cistern, like this one. They worked together in small groups under the direction of the organization (also a women) to build a cistern and rainwater capture system. The structures are expected to have a working lifespan of 30-plus years. Getting the materials delivered to communities like this one is complicated, not only because of where they are but the deliveries have to be first approved by local committees, each with interests of their own, not least among them those of monopoly suppliers who expect to receive payment equivalent to the profit they would have incurred if the the sale had been theirs.
They women said they used to spend about an hour to an hour-and-a-half every day walking one way to a water source and then carried the water back. With water being so precious, effective cooking and personal hygiene wasn't something they were familiar with, resulting in gastrointestinal illnesses. I remember as a child bathing in a very small amount of water on the Flamme farm with my younger brother, Greg, until our adolescence and the two of us no longer fit in the tub anymore. These women would have had much less access to water than that. We saw two stone encased wells. The water level was 10 meters and getting deeper. They draw water out of them with a rope and a pail. It didn't look like there was much action around them but it is still the rainy season and with the rainwater capture systems they have, drawing water out of the well isn't necessary. I asked if children ever fall into the wells as they are not covered - they either didn't understand the question or it was too painful a topic to talk about.
With rainwater now available and a demonstrated ability to manage its use throughout the dry season, they are ready to take another step, which is the focus of the project we were there to validate, to build gardens and chicken coops to make fruits and vegetables, eggs and meat more readily available to improve their and their family's nutrition. They said nearest store is 90 minutes away by bus and the cost of the fare is an economic burden, let alone the price of groceries - they go to town once a week or less. They subsist mostly on a diet of tortillas, beans and squash which we saw growing all around us it is the rainy season still. They live on the side of a mountain on a pile of rocks which they have used to build terraces to hold what soil there is and the rain. There were trees on the mountains at one time but there aren't anymore, it was likely used for firewood. Without trees to slow down the rainwater, the aquifer their wells tap into are not replenished and the water level continues to drop. Adding to the problem, more economically successful spouses sending money home from the US have drilled one-family wells, adding to the challenge for everyone else.
The women are excited to learn how to grow new crops and how to produce their own eggs with the possibility of selling what they didn't need for their own families to generate income for other necessities.
In the Q&A session there were only two or three women willing the respond in any way. One of the questions the organizers asked was if they had been diagnosed with chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension or anemia. One women said that she had been diagnosed with anemia in the past but that it had been remedied. The rest were silent. We later learned that very few of them speak Spanish and that their first language is Nahuatl. The organization said that when they probed deeper in interviews in Nahuatl, most admitted they had never heard of the diseases referenced though they certainly had the symptoms. There is stigma in being ill as medical care is scant. They have a clinic attended by a doctor, but for tests they would need to go to the Pachuca, almost a two-hour trip one way. They said the doctor is always there and never on weekends. The focus of the project is improving nutrition so health baselines for each of these women are established, a blood screening test to check for anemia and estimating their BMIs (risk for diabetes) with followup tests conducted 12 months later to measure improvements. These women's health is used as proxy for the health of their family. The gal taking her blood pressure is the same one that will direct the construction of the gardens and chicken coops. Both require barriers to protect what they produce from predators.
This gal opened up her home to use and allowed us to observe as they ran the series of baseline tests on her. She was also one of the few that participated in the Q&A.
The best meal we had was the one they women shared with us. After the ceremony they quietly each pulled a container with food out of their bags and set it on the table - a potluck of sorts for this special occasion. The mood was formal but festive.
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