The Stations of the Cross – Preschool Style

This week the boys participated in the Stations of the Cross at school. (Remember, they are attending a Catholic school.) During the Stations of the Cross, we all processed around the playground, stopping every few yards to listen to Sister Tere (nun and preschool teacher) retell how Jesus walked through the streets, carrying his cross, on the way to be crucified. Fortunately, the retelling concluded with Jesus’ resurrection. The procession included Jesus with his cross, Mary, Simon, a group of mourners, Roman Soldiers, and on-lookers (the rest of the preschool). In the pictures you can see Isaiah dressed as a Roman Solider. The boys in his class were all chosen to be Roman Soldiers. All the mothers got together to figure out how to make the costumes out of cardboard. Micah’s class waved purple and white flags as they walked along at the back of the procession.

Journal Entry March 23, 2007

I went for a long run this morning, instead of basketball practice. I’m enjoying basketball practice (every morning from 7 to 8am), but I also need to include a long, meditative run, for me.
While running I had this thought, which seems so simple, and yet so profound at the same time. “If you want to be a runner, than you have to spend time running.”
And then more thoughts and examples came flooding in.
“If you want to know your neighbors, then you have to spend time with them.”
“If you want to build community, then you have to spend time in the community.”
“If you want to know God, then you have to spend time in prayer, with God.”
“If you want to speak Spanish, then you have to spend time speaking Spanish.”
“If you want to be a peacemaker, then you have to spend time making peace.”
“If you want to be a basketball player, then you have to spend time playing basketball.”

And all this connects to a sermon by one of our Pastor Megan’s friends that I listened to on our computer yesterday while I was folding laundry. She talked about living in the moment – living deeply with ourselves and who we really are…. with each other and with our community. Not only thinking about what we want to do, but actually doing it AND being fully present whiled doing and being with God as the center of it all. Amen.

Large Animals

“Liz, Martin, there are cows in the yard!” called Isaiah. “Liz, Martin, vacas aqui” called Micah too, as they both came running into the house last evening.
This morning, “Senora, Senor, hay burros en el patio!” Isaiah went outside to check, and yes, there were in fact two donkeys in the yard.
These animals, along with the neighbor’s turkeys and chickens are frequent visitors to our compost pile. The large animals only visit us when we forget to close the gate at the bottom of our lane. The turkeys and chickens make their rounds a number of times a day.
Maybe we will have a “large animal” experience after all.

Swimming

There are two swimming pools here! (And ice cream :)

Using Grey Water

We are learning how to use and reuse our water carefully. We take a shower standing in a bucket to collect the water. Afterwards, this water is used to flush the toilet or mop the floors. Isaiah takes a short shower and then sits down in the bucket for a bath in the picture above. We have a collection of buckets in the shower. We also have a small bowl under the faucet in the bathroom sink to catch the water.

In the kitchen, we have a bucket under the sink to catch all of the dishwashing water. This water we use to water plants outside. We have some bougainvillea bushes and pistachio trees (they were already here). (Second picture)

And then there is the laundry water. We have a washing machine! Here is the process. Fist, we wash a load of white clothes. We stop the washing machine just before it drains the water. Then we take out the wet white clothes, put them in a bucket, and add a load of dark clothes to the same water. We then wash the dark clothes. After the wash cycle we let the water drain out into a large barrel. Then we spin the dark load and take it out. Next we put the white load back in and spin it. Then we rinse the white load, and stop the machine before the water drains out, so we can use the same rinse water to rinse the dark load. Finally, we spin out both loads, catching all of the grey water to use on our vegetable garden. (Third picture). Did you want to know THAT much about how we do laundry?

We have plans to install a drip irrigation system to water our vegetable garden. I will post a picture when we have that installed.
Whew!

Spring Fling!

We celebrated the first day of spring on Wednesday with a big parade and school program in the center of town. All of the preschools in town (4 of them) participated. The kids dressed up in animal and insect costumes and marched around three blocks behind a float that their school had decorated. After the parade, we all gathered at the zocalo (center of town) to watch the program. A number of classes did a choreographed dance to recorded music. Micah dressed up as an elephant and his class did elephant type moves to an elephant song. Isaiah was a lion for the parade. Then he changed into his homemade tree costume for his classes’ Hawaiian-style dance. He even recited a line, along with the rest of his tree-clad classmates, at the beginning. “Tengo derecho a la vida.” (I have a right to life.) They have been talking about caring for the environment in class. We had fun. Happy Spring!

MCC Stove - Tlecalli

Last week I visited Teticic, one of the communities where our team works. It takes about 1 1/2 hours to drive there, on what we call "jeep roads", a term Martin is borrowing from spending time in the mountians of Colorado. I accompanied our teammate Enrique to the elementary school and listened to his presentation about dry latrines. Enrique is giving these workshops to elementary students to help educate everyone on how and why to use dry latrines. Dry latrines are one way to conserve water in this area of little water. Next week we are planning to visit the community again and visit people's homes to find out how many dry latrines are in use and what condition they are in. If there is interest in building more, we will talk about that too.

Afterwards, we visited Andreas, one of the community leaders. He is in the process of building an adobe house (see pictures above.) His wife made us a delicious meal, including handmade tortillas, made on a "Tlecalli" stove. This kind of stove, one of the appropriate technologies that our team is promoting here, uses less firewood and eliminates smoke from the kitchen. It is a cleaner was of cooking. It is economical to build. It is safer because the fire is contained inside the stove, versus an open fire.

Visit from Opa

Opa came to visit us last week! We had a wonderful time together. He brought Isaiah's bike and many other goodies. Thanks to everyone who helped make his trip possible. It was a week full of working on the house, visiting local artisan shops, seeing the town including Sunday market and just spending time together. The boys especially enjoyed having Opa tell them bedtime stories and the noises he made while we drove on the oh so bumpy roads here in Olinala. Who wants to be next?

Neighbors

Last week our neighbor invited us over for tamales. They enjoyed showing us some roasted pumpkin seeds (Martin and Tranqilino). The boys enjoyed playing with Sonja and holding some baby chicks.

Our House on Mango Avenue

We now live at #10 Mango Avenue in the Barrio San Jose, Olinala. Yes, this is the “house on the hill.” We have a wonderful front porch, with hammock, and beautiful view of the town with mountains in the background. We have two bedrooms, a living room, dinning-room, kitchen and bathroom. There is room outside for our soon-to-be installed drip-irrigation garden and lots of space for the kids to run. We share this space with three huge mango trees, which bear more mangos than our neighbors can sell and eat. Mango season is from the end of March to the end of July.

Martin has donated a tremendous amount of care and sweat to making this space user friendly – such as installing copper pipes in the kitchen so we can have running water, installing more electrical outlets in the kitchen, putting up a roof outside to shade the south-side of the house and create an out-door storage space. He also installed a solar hot water system and fixed and connected the nearby water storage tank. We are also working on ways to collect rainwater from the roof. We are contemplating building a dry latrine as well.

Our home is on the edge of town. It takes us 5 minutes to ride bike to the MCC office and 7 minutes to ride bike to the boy’s school. (10 minutes to walk to the office and 15 minutes to walk to school.) 15 minutes to walk to the Z ocalo, which is the center of town.

We do the bulk of our food buying at the outdoor food market in the Zocalo on Sunday mornings. We buy all of our drinking water. A pick-up truck drives by every few days and picks up the empty containers and sells us full ones. Our neighbors share food with us once in a while. Today our neighbor brought us a huge papaya from his tree. Other people stop by who are selling tamales, or corn on the cob, or popsicles or a hot drink.

And we are learning to know more of our neighbors. Our immediate neighbors have a 4-year-old daughter that both our boys adore. When we can’t find our boys in our yard, we are remembering to check next door.

Know that each of you is welcome to our home on Mango Avenue. Nuestra casa es su casa. (Our house is your house).

Recent Conversation Topics: (just to name a few)

*Any and everything about WATER.
*Women’s sewing group re-forming in a nearby community.
*The different religions here in town – Catholics, Jehova’s Witness, Evangelicos.
*Requests for English classes. “We want our kids to learn English for when they go north, to the United States. So they can understand and be understood.”
*Dry Latrines. In this land where there is no water, why are we using precious water to flush toilets, to carry our excrement away?
*Why are you here?
*How did you learn Spanish?
*What are Mennonites? What do you believe?
*Basketball, basketball, basketball. (Liz, that is)
*Drip Irrigation – what is the most efficient way to water a garden?
*Do you eat spicy food?

Water Storage Tank Repaired

Our house on Mango Avenue now has a 5,000 liter water supply tank/cistern.
During this past week, we worked to repair a 100 year old tank that had leaks in the sides. We hired some local cement workers to repair the inside. Martin, with advice from fellow MCCer Enrique, worked to connect tubes that run from the tank to our house. Now we have a water supply that should last 3 months or so. We have a “back-up” 1,000 liter storage tank on the roof. During the dry season, we have to buy water to fill up the cistern. This water is for everything EXCEPT drinking. We buy all of our drinking water. During the rainy season, the well just up the hill might fill up enough to fill the community cistern (on the left-side of the second picture) as well as our cistern.

Solar System Installation Completed

Our house on Mango Avenue now has a solar system for hot water.
We bought a 160 liter tank and panel. A number of people have expressed interest in learning more about solar energy systems.
In these pictures you can see Martin finishing up the installation and connections for our solar system. This will provide us with hot water for showers and in the kitchen. The following day we all took hot showers and gave thanks to the sun for sharing it’s energy with us. Ahhhhhhh.

Journal Enrty March 3, 2007

At some point I want to write more about my relationship with the dust here in Olinala.
I remember what my friend Mike Hofkamp said one time, “You know Liz, God is dirt.” This was somewhat shocking to me initially, but Mike went on to say something like the following:
“We are made in the image of God. We come from dirt. From dirt we were formed and to the earth (dirt) we will return….so God is dirt. Organic dirt.”

I love our new home. And there is lots of dust right now, during this dry season. And lots of mud to come I’m sure. So I think of Mike and his statement that God is dirt often. And when I think of this, the dust on the floor, and well, everywhere, it doesn’t bother me as much. And I think, welcome God. You are welcome here.