Water wars

Ted. Judy and I spend a lot of time in warm and dry parts of the world. Everywhere we go, someone eventually mentions water. Be it Denver, Málaga, Cape Town or Oaxaca, the local news is full of stories about water. “Where can we get more?” “How can we use less?” “This growth is unsustainable!” 

In many countries, like the US, the local community runs pipes to all of the buildings and houses and provides unlimited clean water that is pressurized for consistent flow. I wonder how many folks appreciate just how awesome that is.

That is not the case in Oaxaca. Here, the water comes from the surrounding villages in trucks and is delivered, for a fee to houses and offices. The water in these tanker trucks is pumped into a tank that is located under each building. 

From there, each building has a pump to transfer water periodically from the main tank to the cistern (small tank) on the roof. Water flows to the sinks, toilets and showers by gravity.

Access to our underground tank + pump

Black cistern on our roof

When the underground tank is empty, one places an order for more water to be delivered. The waiting time continues to increase. Just today, I took our dirty clothes to our local laundry and was told that the one day turn around will stretch to 2 or 3 days. “We have no water,” was the explanation. 

Our local English library is constantly struggling to maintain water for the bathrooms used by many visitors.

This truck water is fine for washing but, with all of the opportunities for contamination, is really unsafe for drinking. So there is another system for drinking water. Those same water trucks deliver water to small water purification shops that filter the water into refillable 20 liter (5-1/4 US gallon) bottles that cost around $2.50 each. That is what we use for making tea and coffee, brushing out teeth and drinking. 

A typical water purifying shop

And yes, they deliver!

This bottle will last us about a week.

The whole system is based upon the ability to transfer enough water by truck from wells and reservoirs in the villages to the thousands of buildings in the city. It has worked pretty well for decades but unprecedented growth is proving to be a challenge. The villages are struggling to keep up with their own needs (largely agricultural) because of recent droughts and conflicts are increasing. 

Engineering solutions include drilling large wells deep into the aquifers or constructing new reservoirs to capture more water from the seasonal rains. Local residents call for improvements but infrastructure projects like this do not seem to be important to the politicians. The governments study and plan but don’t build anything. 

This scene is being repeated in dozens of countries around the world. Occasionally, politicians get pushed to the wall. Spain recently announced they will build more desalinization plants along the Mediterranean (using EU money), so I suppose there is some hope for the future. 

But the battles continue. Many years ago, Mark Twain summed up these conflicts rather nicely, “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting about!”

We're all American

Judy. Recently I attended an intercambio at the Oaxaca Lending Library. This is a meeting of Spanish speakers and English speakers on Saturday mornings. We gather in mixed groups of two or four and speak for an hour in Spanish and an hour in English, each of us trying to help the others improve their language skills. 

There are several intercambio groups in cafes in the city, but this is the largest and oldest, having operated for over 20 years. It's a delightful, if difficult two hours, and a great way to meet some of the locals.

A couple of weeks ago we were listening to the instructions, when the gentleman in charge said, "Every Oaxacanian should meet with an American." From the back of the crowd, a young Mexican student said, "Sir, we are ALL Americans."

That hit me hard. I've believed that for a long time--North, Central, South America. We are all Americans. The question becomes how do we in the United States define ourselves as a country. We all tend to call ourselves Americans, and that's understandable. This country we're in right now is the United States of Mexico, which we call Mexico. Of course the logical conclusion is that we'd call the United States of America, America. 

Some years ago, while taking a tour of Ottawa, Ontario, our tour guide said, "We are a diverse country, with French speakers, English speakers, immigrants, farmers, industrialists, and so on. Do you know what we all have in common? We are not Americans." Wow. But they are. They're Canadian Americans. But she had already accepted that the USA has the rights to the name.

Now, I'm not convinced this is a world-shaking issue. Most countries refer to us in some form of American. But I do remember in one of my early Spanish lessons learning that people in the United States of America have a Hispanic name:  estadounidenes.  While forms of American are used in most countries, some have chosen alternative terms.  In Germany, US-Americaner is sometimes used, and in France, we're rarely but truly called Etats-unian. Italians periodically use statunitense. Esperanto uses usonano.

So that day when the Mexican man said, "We are all Americans," I asked Eduardo, the young man with whom I was speaking, how he felt about that. He was quite shy, but asked, "Would you be offended if I called you a Usonian? That's a term that was suggested years ago for people in the United States." 

No. I am NOT offended. Even though I consider myself more of a citizen of the world, my passport is from the United States of America. You can call me an American, or you can call me a Usonian, or even a Worldian. I hold those terms proudly. But from here on out, I'll probably be a bit more specific as to where in America I'm from. Other countries deserve the name America, too.

Eduardo and Fatima at our Intercambio

Bill, my fellow Usonian

 

Quote du Jour

“Having no destination, I am never lost.”

 - Ikkyū, 15th century Japanese Zen Buddhist monk

Carnaval

Judy.  Ash Wednesday, the day that starts Lent on the Christian calendar, is this week, and around the world, countries celebrate the last few days before Lent. In Rio de Janerio, it's Carnaval. In New Orleans and other cities in Louisiana and Mississippi, it's Mardi Gras.

Since we started traveling, we've been to three Carnivales in Hispanic cities: in Cádiz, Spain, in 2018; in Málaga, Spain, in 2022; and this year, in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was delighted to find each one vastly different from the other.

In Cádiz, Carnaval is celebrated with a huge song festival. Groups from all over the country come to dress in costume and sing crazy songs (many political, that few people understand), sometimes in hopes of winning a grand prize. Families also dress up, especially the kids. The streets are so narrow and crowds so large that sometimes we couldn't even get to our apartment.

Government buildings get involved, too.

You don't have to sing to dress up.

This band was hoping for the grand prize.

A beer--or two--makes the singing more fun.

Snow White just needed to look adorable.

In 2022, as the world was opening up after the Covid Pandemic, we spent Carnaval in Málaga. This was a much fancier celebration, more reminiscent of the feathers of Mardi Gras, but on a much smaller scale. People often carried their own "floats". Everyone was beautiful, and happy, and people in the parades threw confetti at all of us. At the end of the evening, a Drag show was held with the city's most famous queens. I couldn't get close enough for a photo of that.

The stage is set.

Kids dress up, and pull their own floats.

Guys can get really fancy, too.

I was in awe of this lovely lady pulling herself the length of the route.

Participants throw confetti and candy to the crowd.

This year, we're in Oaxaca, where there's no doubt that indigenous legends have their say as well. There are bands, beautiful women, and devils, and participants in the parade often grab bystanders to dance or to smear them with black makeup. The parade winds through the streets from Templo Santo Domingo to the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, the city's patron saint. At the plaza there, all the bands and participants crowd in with total cacophony and fun. Liquor flows freely, and everyone crowds around to watch. 

The signs were out for days.

Masks and blackface and whips

Loved this lone dancer

Abuela gave the "stink eye" to the crowd.

Devils were out in force.

Beauty and the Beast

It wouldn't be Oaxaca without the dancing ladies

This little boy had quite a different costume than the kids in the other cities.

 

 

Mexico vs Spain

Ted. No, this isn’t about a football (soccer) match. I just decided to list a few thoughts comparing and contrasting two countries that we love. 

Mexico is huge - about four times bigger than Spain. It’s the 13th largest country in the world and is actually bigger than Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom combined! 

Mexico has 2.5 times the population of Spain, giving it the largest Spanish speaking population in the world. 

The GDP (economy) of Mexico is a bit larger than Spain’s but on a per capital basis it is less than half. So, while they work very hard, the Mexican people are generally poorer than the Spanish people. To make matters worse, a high percentage of the wealth in Mexico is concentrated at the top. The Mexican middle class, while growing, is much smaller than Spain’s. Interestingly, on this visit we are seeing a lot more Mexican tourists visiting Oaxaca from other parts of the country. 

We find prices in Mexico now to be roughly the same as in Spain. One trend is that tipping in restaurants in Mexico is becoming more prevalent. Credit cards are still not widely used in Mexico.

The future looks brighter in Mexico for young people as the unemployment rate is only 3% whereas in Spain it’s nearly 12%. 

56% of the people in both countries say they are Roman Catholic. 15% of Mexicans describe themselves as Protestant or “other Christians” and 29% have “no religion or another religion.” In Spain, most non-Catholics say they are atheist or agnostic. 

Spain has some diversity of languages. In addition to Spanish, there are many native speakers of the Catalan, Galician and Basque languages. Mexico is much more linguistically diverse though, with 68 recognized language groups. 

The weather in Mexico and Spain varies from region to region but where we stay in both countries it is usually warm, sunny and dry. 

The food, music and art in Mexico tend to be more vibrant and, dare I say, spicy. Spaniards are a bit more formal and dignified (unless you are in their homes). Just contrast mariachi music and flamenco. 

Spain has worked hard in the last few decades to improve its infrastructure. Their network of planes, trains, buses and roads are much superior to those found in Mexico. It is easy, and cheap to quickly travel from Málaga to anywhere in Spain or the rest of Europe. Spaniards can boast of safe, well lit streets and sidewalks, clean water and efficient trash and recycling that Mexicans, outside of Mexico City, can only dream of. 

So, how does the vibe differ? Spain has much in common with its European neighbors while a lot of the Mexican culture comes directly from its indigenous roots. People in Spain are very friendly once you get to know them but they can be a bit cold to strangers. Mexicans are quicker to respond to a “Buenos Dias!” when you pass them on the street. However, especially when comparing a poorer city like Oaxaca with a wealthy tourist destination like Málaga, there are glaring differences in the condition and cleanliness of the streets and buildings. We don't feel unsafe walking the neighborhoods of Oaxaca but some folks from the US might describe them as "sketchy."

The bottom line is that we enjoy vastly different experiences when we visit these two countries but we love each in its own way.