The Cool Tarantula (Baxter's Post #3)

[Baxter dictating to Greg]

When my mom was at work the other day, she saw a dead tarantula. Tarantulas are creepy spiders that can poison people. It's hard to tell how big it is from this picture, but I think it was about the size of a small Pokemon ball.


Tarantulas can bite their fangs into other animals. They eat reptiles like lizards, grasshoppers. Some tarantulas can live up to 30 years. If you want to learn more about tarantulas visit
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/cgi-bin/paint/fssaukf/subjects/arachnids/spider/Tarantulaprintout.shtml

-Baxter

Bug World (Mahlon's Post 3)

One really cool thing about Mexico is that there is such tropical weather that geckos and bugs like ants and beetles come into our house all the time and just wander around like people! Usually it is really cool to see bugs around the house but sometimes it is not cool at all when you see an ant crawling on the top of your bedroom. If somebody would look at one spot they might see three geckos at once. So if you like tropical weather and interesting species, come to Mexico!

A Gecko on the ceiling:

A close-up of the Gecko:

el dia extraordinario, part I

[Kristin here, signed in as Greg, I think]
I awoke a few minutes ago in the usual way--much too early, before everyone else, the sun rising....and to the sound of some critter landing on the metal, corrugated roof that serves as a ceiling in our upstairs abode at Dona Olga's. It lands with a thud that quickly becomes the sound of smallish sharp nails scrambling to gain purchase on the slick, graded sheet above, unsuccessfully, I think, for the sound rarely lasts more than a minute before the frantic pawing ceases abruptly. My best guess is that the animal is a squirrel, though in my early morning mind it more often becomes a baby pterydactyl, wounded, having fallen from its circles above el Tacana, the nearby volcano.

Today I tried to go back to sleep, but was unable to as I remain haunted by yesterday's events.

That day also started out in the usual way: baby pterydactyl on the roof; Spanish homework in the morning; breakfast (some amazing meat dumplings Myra made from leftovers we had brought back from Union Juarez); the truck ride with Miguel to el Albergue; acupuncture on a few people there until I ran out of needles... But there's where the ritual ends. At about noon (actually, at about 12:30, which passes for noon here if someone tells you they will arrive at noon but doesn't until half an hour later) the local acupuncturist arrived at the shelter. Her arrival was the culmination of several days of saga which I will not go into now, but essentially involved some serious detective work in a another language, a trip to a mountain pueblo to find an aging acupuncturist who had died, and then a few phone calls to his children, both of whom had learned the art of acupuncture from him, and both of whom now live about 10 minutes from where I am staying in Tapachula.

Her name is Mariana Torsi, and here she is with her baby of 4 months and her companion whose name I missed:



Mariana is one of the children of Doctor Torsi, who came from France to Tapachula after learning all there is to know about acupuncture there.

Historical aside: actually, "all there is to know" turns out to be a lot. The French were very influential in the history of acupuncture in the West. Many of the great works were first translated from the Chinese by French enthusiasts early in the last century. Among the early French pioneers was a man named Georges Soulie de Morant (1878-1955) who, during a long career in China as a French ambassador, apparently compiled the entire 5,000 year old theory of acupuncture for dissemination back in France. Much of the activity among French intellectuals in the field centered around this borrowed material (see http://www.physio-centre.net/cms/index.php?page=33 for more details). According to Mariana, the late Doctor Torsi actually studied under "Solie de Morat," who I positive must have Soulie de Morant, whose name appears in various permutations when you Google the guy. My own acupuncture teacher, Dr. Joseph Helms, also learned acupuncture in France, though much later, and from Maurice Mussat, who I'll bet a gazillion pesos knew Georges Soulie de Morant.

The bottom line is, this woman knows acupuncture, learned it from her father who in turn learned from one of the French originals, and was now standing beside me in a Mexican shelter for injured migrants holding a baby of 4 months. Julianna was there assisting with translation which turned out to be a good thing, since Mariana was dropping pearls of wisdom like they were over-ripe mangos, with me under the tree with a too-small basket. She had offered to bring me some needles this past weekend when my search for a needle vendor led me all over Chiapas and back again and ended with her and her brother (I promise to tell the whole story somewhere else!), as well as to watch me practice and to share what she could. My fantasy, however, was that she would also decide--once she saw the migrants and the great need for her services--to start volunteering there herself. This vision is of course rooted in my own great need to provide something lasting here at Albergue, something that extends far beyond my own skills and availability and that is rooted where it should be rooted, in a sustainable way, in this community. The utility of acupuncture here--the great physical and emotional suffering, along with the very accessible energetic templates of the persons here--have me convinced that this is what is needed.

Julianna later remarked on how strange it was to be unable to translate some words which I seemed to recognize immediately: "vejiga-sesenta," or Bladder-60; "el governador-veinte," or Governor Vessel-20; "estomago-trentiseis," or Stomach-36....a few of the big, energy-moving points in the body. It was way-cool.

But how time flies when you are researching the history of acupuncture and translating from the French! I am soon expected across the street, to treat the woman who lives there for smoking cessation with auricular acupuncture. This saga will have To Be Continued. For now, I will leave you with half of the day's punch line, which is that Mariana did not offer her services, as she is recovering currently from a difficult cesarean section and likely needs the Chong Mo addressed with some serious needling. She did, however, spontaneously volunteer the services of her brother, Carlos Torsi, who I plan to call today. I am hoping to compile all of the treatments I have done on the migrants thus far for his use when following up on my patients. In that hesitant way that one gets excited about an arranged time of meeting but knows (hopes? knows? hopes?) it will occur later, I am deliriously excited.

Greg's First Post

Okay, so I've been chided and called out by my family for failing to post anything to the blog since I set it up two weeks ago. A few things I really want to write about are the amazing impact this trip is having on my children; my complex love-hate relationship with the Spanish language (so beautiful! so many accursed verb endings!); ruminations on our neighborhood and the amazing children we've been getting to know; the role technology is playing in our communications and learning here; my experiences in the city; and our discovery of a small coffee farm where the man and woman who own the place took an hour to show us their coffee trees and teach us about the equipment they use to ferment, dry and roast the beans. But to get things started I'm going to offer a quick overview of what my days look like here, together with a few choice images that have captured my eye during my explorations of the city.

My days start with getting the boys involved in some form of home-schooly type activity (the other day Mahlon worked on fractions, Bax wrote in his journal, and both worked on building models of Mayan and Azetic temples). Once they're rolling, I spend about 2-3 hours online doing various work-related things.

Me, in our sitting area, so hard at work I'm blurry:

We live in the south-west of the city, in an area called Infonavit Las Vegas. "Infonavit" is an acronym that stands for "Instituto del Fondo Nacional para la Vivienda de los Trabajadores." Which means "Institute for the National Fund for Workers' Housing." It is basically what we in the states call a government-funded housing project.

The houses in this area are all built of concrete, are 1-2 stories tall, are set very close to each other, and are nearly all painted in stunning bright colors.



After breakfast at around 10am, the kids and I take a cab
to the north-east of the city to Mahlon, Baxter and Tula's nanny lives. After getting them settled, I walk towards the center of the city, taking a different route each day. Along the way, I encounter many things both beautiful and puzzling. Some examples follow:

- Zapateria Frank (="Frank's Zapateria"= "Frank's shoe store" where I can only hope the Mothers of Invention frontman bought his brown shoes footwear):

-A revolutionary rooster:
-Strolling musicians:

-Restaurants with Confucian virtues:

-Hopped up VWs:-Gorgeous posters:

-Many, many small stores--the most common of which, I've noticed, are devoted to selling one of the following types of thing: cell phones, eyeglasses, clothing, auto parts, tools, paper supplies or food:-Emblems celebrating the town:

Eventually, after 10 blocks or so, I end up at the Parque Miguel Hidalgo,
where I sit to have coffee, do some reading, then prep for my Spanish class, which runs from 1-2. I then walk back to the nanny's and either take a taxi with the kids to pick up Kristin and head home for a 3:00 lunch or stay in the center city and explore with the kids. I spend my evenings playing with the kids and the neighborhood kids (yesterday was a long game of soccer) and then, after a late dinner (around 8 or 9 here) I usually get on my laptop to catch up on some work, work on my Spanish a bit, then head off to bed around 11 or 12.

More soon...

"el gripe"--or, just one more thing I never learned in medical school

So I had always sort of chuckled when looking at pictures in Spanish language textbooks in that chapter that describes las enfermedades, or illness. All of them mention "el gripe," which has been translated for me as "the flu," and sometimes "a really bad cold," and without exception there is always a cartoon of some guy looking miserable with a rag around his head and his feet in a big tub of hot water. This image has always perplexed me, as I have never used or seen used such a remedy for anything other than a warm-up to a pedicure (and not even that, since Kevin Winthrop told me about that little town on the coast of California where all the women developed massive ulcerations from soaking their toes in tubs infested with mycobacterium....). At any rate, I had sort of chalked up the images to artistic license mixed with some long-lost folk remedy that nobody uses anymore.

How wrong I was.

Apparently, el gripe is well known in these parts. And believe it or not, the only solution is to put your feet into boiling hot water followed by a vigorous rubbing with a warm towel, application of Vick's vapo-rub, and finally, socks. No part may be omitted if you want to chase out el gripe. Here is the rationale for the above, and a description of why it works:



In hot climates (read: this one...did I mention it was about 102 degrees today?), there is the danger of overheating one's head, which leads to a red face or upper body rash, a head ache, lethargy, and a cough. The risk is hugely increased when one walks around barefooted on cool tiles, which we all did immediately upon arrival and for about 2 days therafter--until convinced that we were all succombing, one by one and through nothing other than our own recklessness, to el gripe. Baxter was the first to develop the cough which, of course, we thought nothing of: he has asthma, he didn't get enough sleep during our travels, of course his asthma was going to flare, etc. More albuterol; more advair. Only, it wasn't working for his cough. He wasn't getting worse, but he also wasn't getting better. Enter Cougher #2, Tula. Now, she does not technically have asthma, but as we are a bit gun-shy when it comes to that particular ailment, I have not hesitated to administer any and all of her brother's medications when the need arises, say, when she has a cough. So I did. And they did NOTHING. She, like her brother, did not seem to be coughing from asthma. Neither did she have other symptoms that would lead me to believe she was coughing from a typical upper respiratory illness. It was at this point that I began to search for Other Explanations.

Dona Olga, with whom we are living, had been mentioning something out of the corner of her mouth that I had failed to understand for 2 days, so I finally pressed her for an explanation. She had been admonishing us for not wearing our "chanclas," or flimsy little house sandals. This and only this was the way to prevent "el gripe," which in essense was described to me as "all the heat leaving the feet and ascending to the head, where it causes a cough and red face and a rash." The hot water feet remedy, it was explained, was a way to "pull the hot back down out of the head," thus curing the cough and eliminating the rash....



Now, to my western ears this of course sounds like craziness. But I am struck by how similar in concept this explanation is to that of "rebellious qi." In traditional Chinese acupuncture, "rebellious qi" is any qi that does not stay where it is supposed to stay, or travel through the body along the usual routes. For example, "rebellious qi" is accepted to be the reason behind hiccoughs, belching, and some forms of dizziness. It is also an accepted etiology for coughing--especially for coughing that occurs upon coming inside after running around in cold air. Interestingly enough, the cure for this flavor of "rebellious qi" is to warm the KI-1 (Kidney-1) point with a lit moxa stick until the cough subsides. Where is KI-1? Well, I am glad you asked. It happens to be the only point on the body located on the plantar surface of the FOOT.




So, of course we lined the kids up on Day 3 with a bucket of hot water and put them through their el gripe treatment paces. Dona Olga actually did the honors, and while I was somewhat mortified that she got to be the one to rub away three days of el grime from my childrens' feet, I was grateful for the private tutorial from an el gripe expert.



Tula and Baxter have not coughed since.

I will also mention, for those of you public health folks out there (and you know who you are), that we did, in fact, all get our own pairs of chanclas the following day, and have been wearing them religiously since. Mahlon and Baxter like to remind Tula with the following song cribbed and altered from Avatar, called "Chakras:"

"Chanclas, chanclas, everybody loves chanclas...."

A day trip to the volcano--El Tacana

So we made it safely to and back from el Tacana today, and the trip was well worth the effort and the stress over whether we were going to destroy the doctor's car. (We did not.) Greg was quite liberated by his position in the driver's seat. Whole new vistas open up when one is not confined to combi routes and so forth, and we spent a good deal of time off the beaten track. Of course, the usual sibling behavior emerges soon after settling into the familiar surroundings of a car interior, and it wasn't long until the squabbling became annoying and we had to expel one of our members and make him jog alongside. As you can see, he was a pretty good sport about it.



So el Tacana is a giant dormant volcano about an hour's drive from the city of Tapachula. The road there consists of long stretches of lush, green lowlands, followed by winding narrow roads along steeper terrain through small villages, and finally you get to tiny pueblos with mostly rocky dirt roads that dead end into trails that head up the mountain. In the lowlands are several old coffee plantations, or finchas, which were built mostly by Germans, Chinese, and Japanese. Some of these have been turned into boutique hotels, others into restaurants like the one we ate lunch at in San Domingo: "la Casa Grande." The grounds were lovely and contained a small, refreshing pool that we quickly emptied of locals with our boisterous game of "daddy throws the boy as far he can." The lunch was good, if a little stale. I suspect it was reheated from el desayuno, which is what we get for eating las comidas at odd hours (noon instead of 2 or 3pm). Mahlon and Baxter were taken a little by surprise when their hamburguesas, ordered "solamente con queso," arrived without the "carne."



We continued up from there towards the looming mountain, which disappeared and reappeared from behind wispy wandering clouds as we approached. The route between small towns seemed to be perched upon a ridge between mountains, with steep drop-offs into thick jungle on either side. There was a bit of nausea in the back seat, but no follow-through, over this fact. Here is the obligatory foot photo with el Tacana in the foreground--for my old compadres who know such a shot is required with every road trip.



Our ultimate destination was Union Juarez, a small, friendly town about an hour up from Tapachula. Apparently one can hike on from there for the 2- day ascent to the top, with an overnight stop along the way in a hut. I don't think I need to add that we did not opt for the overnight hut stay on this trip (or, as Aragorn would say, "Today is not that day!"). We did however see several people (mostly old abuelos, or grampas, actually) heading up on foot, each of them wearing very little and carrying a large machete. Here is a picture of one of them. His name is Julio. He was happy to pose for a picture, but he insisted on buttoning up his shirt and he refused to hold his machete. I had to take a step back to get it in the picture. Julio......



When I asked him why he was hiking up the volcano, he said because he liked it. Fair enough.



Many of the houses in Union Juarez impressed me for the obvious pride of ownership. Most are neat and clean in appearance, even those which clearly are home to families in great poverty.



Many, like the one below, have family emblems or crests over the front door announcing the surname of the family living there.



Several were home to gardeners who, making the most of a temperate and moist climate, used plants in interesting ways to decorate their abodes. Here is my favorite:



We stopped for home made ice creams at a family-run coffee business (more on this later, I am sure, by our resident coffee addict--er, expert), and enjoyed a spontaneous tour as well as a small dog they keep in the back, who--according to the boys--could "jump about 5 feet in the air!"



There is much more to be said about el Tacana, but I will leave you with this thought. See this picture of the local school? With the basketball court overlooking a volcano in the distance and a giant precipice in the foreground? Mahlon's comment: "I bet they lose a lot of balls."



Yes, perhaps they do. But the real question is, where do those balls end up--in Guatemala or in Mexico? Hmm. To Be Continued....

Baxter's Post #2

[Baxter talking, Dad typing]

"Last weekend we went to the beach.

We got a lot of sunburns. It was fun. The waves were really big and the water was warm."

"At the beach, we bought chips.

They had Star Wars Clone Wars cards inside."

"This is a picture of my Captain Cody from Star Wars Clone Wars card.

I got it in a trade with my brother."

"Yesterday, we went to 'Central Musical de Tapachula,' which is a music store and upstairs they have pianos you can use.

It cost 20 pesos for an hour. I played some of my songs. I liked getting to play piano again. "

"We were walking down the street and we saw a big guy in a costume.

My dad said he would give us a peso each if we hugged him, so we did. "

"Last night we went to play soccer with some of the kids in our neighborhood. We played soccer at a park on a basketball court. I got a goal!

After that we went to play Xbox on a video game machine outside one of the kid's house. It cost 1 peso per game. The kids were really nice. I think they let me get the soccer goal. They also gave me and my brother the first couple of turns on the Xbox. "

"Then I played with a really kind girl named Gabby.

My dad tried to pay for the games but Gabby said no and she paid for them all. "

Infonavit Las Vegas

We are living with a family in a sector at the southern end of town called "Infonavit Las Vegas." Having driven all over Tapachula by cab and combi at this point, I think this is still my favorite section. The houses are smallish, colorful, and squished up against one another.


The streets are crooked and bumpy and often under-paved, some of them even dirt, so cars drive nice and slowly through them. (Any stretches of paved road of any length in this town are peppered with thin but deadly speed bumps that require you to almost come to a stop to avoid blowing out your tires, which also really cuts down on the speed of traffic.)


We have numerous kids living around us. David, on our right, often throws a ball around with the boys before dinner. But last night marked the first major immersion into our neighborhood nightlife. The boys had been out all afternoon with Greg on a mission to find a piano to practice on, and arrived back at the house a little before 6. Tula and I had been hanging on the street corner, a couple of gringas looking for fun, and had encountered some young Tapachultecas who were enjoying Tula's antics. One of them, a 12 year old girl named Gabi, bought us all ice creams from the small tienda that one of the neighbors runs at odd hours out of her home, and we all enjoyed the tastes as well as the sounds of words like "cacahuate," or peanut.



The boys and Greg soon became involved in a game of pick-up that started out as basketball but morphed, over the course of the next couple of hours, into soccer and then, finally, as everything always does, no matter where you are apparently, into screen time (another neighbor, this one with a mini-arcade outside their door, hosted that group experience). The boys apparently have another date for tonight, "a las seis y media."

So I am up early today--6 o'clock, which even beats Mahlon. The morning was clear and almost crisp, which is all the more enjoyable given that within 2 hours os so the sweltering heat will descend upon us and leave us wondering why we brought so many long sleeves (oh yes....something about mosquitoes...?). Today we are going to drive to the nearby volcano, which this morning is particularly clear from our window.







From this view, you can see the car that the doctor from the shelter lent me last night after I treated him and his wife with acupuncture. I think it must have left them both in a state of major disorientation, because the trip is not short and consists of, I have beeen told, a very winding and treacherous road up a steep incline with some crazy passing and lane-changing rituals, but there's acupuncture for you. Perhaps in addition to my usual caveats for the next 24 hours ("no beer, no ice cream, no sex, no bamboo shoots," etc.) I should have listed, "no rash lending practices." In any event, we are delighted by their generosity and plan to take full advantage of having our own wheels and not being wedded to schedules of buses without seatbelts.

Mahlon's Post #2

It is kind of hard living with another family because you have to follow all of their family rules and you have to be quiet and good.But it is also really cool to be made breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and also sometimes really good and tasty snacks. These are the easy and hard things when you live in a different family's house.

Tula's Post #1

Here is Tula riding with Mahlon in the backseat of one of Tapachula's ubiquitous taxi cabs. None have seatbelts, nor room for a carseat, even if they did. All drive fast. (A stop sign here seems to be a reminder to lightly honk your horn as you blow through it.) The good news: no injuries yet!



Here is a chicken that Tula and I encountered on one of our walks (see more walk events below).



One afternoon we visited the seemingly always deserted park down the street. Tula, who has not yet witnessed what see-saws can do for two people, enjoyed experimenting with a one-person approach.



Tula has been really interested in taking walks in our little neighborhood, Infonavit Las Vegas. Here are some pictures she wanted to share (okay, here are the cutest pictures ever that I couldn't help uploading).

Question: "What are you doing, Tula?"




"I am swinging!" [This is the more-frequented of the nearby neighborhood parks. On this particular night, there were lots of other kids hanging out and we made some friends. Strangely, two of the four little boys we met had names that sounded almost exactly like our boys'--"Max" and "Mailon." They were universally astounded at the size of their American counterparts, both of whom were much younger than they. I have been using the phrase "mis hijos gigantes" a lot, which goes over well.]



"Sweeping." [This is a nap. It used to happen quite regularly, but now it only shows itself on occasional taxi rides home from Marisa's house, where the kids stay while Greg and I work. It's kind of becoming a problem for our afternoon aventuras.]



"I'm bwushing my teeth." [...and Mom's hoping she remembered to rinse that brush with potable water after the last brushing....]




"Spinning around for my baby, baby, baby baby baby." [Read: "losing interest in this post, this post, this post....." More later!]