long time...

Dear blog readers (that is, if there is anyone still left that considers themselves readers of this blog),
I realize I have not written on this blog for approximately a month and half, a fact that Emily reminds me of almost every weekend. We now have only one week left in the ranchos, and so with Emily’s motivation (or her trying to deny that her blog is mine) I’ve decided to write something brief about the past month and a half.

During this time, Emily and I have painted two houses. As explained before, the government has given houses to a number of people in the ranchos, and we’ve become involved in the painting of a few of them. Our student, Efigenia, asked us to paint the front of her house without knowing even if we could paint, not to mention paint well or not. Thankfully, we did know how to paint, and I had already helped someone here paint before that. We painted stars on her house.
Last week, Efigenia’s sister, Verna, asked us to paint the front of her house, too. When we asked her what she wanted on it, she said stars, or maybe a chicken. We offered the idea of painting a sun, a moon, and a star. They laughed quite a bit at the idea of painting a sun on the house. Needless to say, we did not paint a chicken on the house; we ended up painting flowers.

At the end of October, Emily and I had the opportunity to be godparents of the two babies in our host family. Jovani (eight months old) and Alina (six months old) were baptized in the Catholic Church. I don’t really understand the concept of godparents, but Emily and I were asked to be them. We weren’t the real godparents, which are called the godparents of the baptism, but rather we were the godparents of the medallions. This meant that we bought small medallions of the Virgin on necklaces for each child. It was a lot of fun. I felt really good to have established that sort of relationship with the family. When we were there at the church and later at the party at the house, we really felt like family members. Sometimes, I felt like more of a member of the family than the extended family. Since that time, we have built an even closer relationship with the family, I think, and there is much more trust and a more relaxed feeling between us. I feel that we’ve moved beyond most of the feelings and attitudes that constitute a host/visitor relationship and have arrived at a more familial relationship.

My research has progressed quite a bit. A couple weeks ago, I went to the municipal offices here in Irapuato and found the engineer that is in charge of the rural water systems in the municipality and thus in charge of the water system in Santa Rosa. He was very nice and willing to share with me, and I got some good information from him. The next day, I found him and members of the water committee from the villages and the engineer from the state government in Santa Rosa. They were there with a group of engineers from a private company whom the state had hired to do a complete diagnostic test on the well and the entire water system, even down to the charges to the users. I got contact information for the engineer from the state (supposedly the state government is who installed the well and water system originally), and I’m going to meet with him today, November 26th. I hope to get the last bit of information from him that I need to have a good picture of the installation and beginning of the water system, and I also hope to be able to get a copy of the report they had this company do. I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be a problem at all for me to get a copy, because the municipal engineer willingly gave me a copy of sounding they had a company do on the well a couple months ago.
For those of you who are completely lost and don’t really know what it is I’m researching, I’m studying the piped water system that exists between three of the four villages (‘ranchos’) where we teach literacy students. The system has been in place for about six years. The majority of my research is to find out as much as I can about the past, present, and future of the water system, but I am also (in one way or another) studying how this piped water system has effected the people and communities it serves in a development aspect. My original assumptions were, of course, that a piped water system constitutes a higher stage of development, but I wanted to know how it’s really done from the people’s perspective, figuring that there are necessarily other consequences that a piped water system brings to front that may or may not qualify the community as being further developed.

And now, a word from our sponsors (a.k.a. Emily):

Hello, Matt’s blog. Have you been feeling rejected? Neglected by weeks without a new entry? If these feelings sound familiar, I invite you to come on down to Emily’s blog (www.lavidaranchera.blogspot.com), and check out the latest goings on in the ranchos. Don’t be deceived by the name; it’s just as much about Matt as it is about Emily, since they’re temporarily joined at the hip for this Latin American extravaganza.

At Emily’s blog, we know how to take care of our readers. Entries are guaranteed weekly by Monday at noon. Pictures included with at least 90% frequency. And these aren’t just empty promises: if you notice that we’ve violated one of our guarantees, notify management via a blog comment, and we’ll send you a free gift certificate for some unidentified and useless thing. Speaking of blog comments, please feel free and encouraged to share your thoughts with the rest of the Emily’s blog readership by posting your comments. Don’t procrastinate or delay. Just hop online and post those comments today. Watch your world expand as you come into cyber-contact with a spectrum of readers. Just remember to identify yourself, and share a little something about how you got onto Emily’s blog (this information helps us let other potential readers know what they’re missing out on by not visiting Emily’s blog. It may also be sold to large telemarketing agencies who will crush your soul with their soliciting, but try not the think about that).

So remember, when you feel left out in the cold by scarce blog entries, when you just want somewhere dependable to turn to, give Emily’s blog a try. Our blog is your blog.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program:

Last week, I went with Martin, the dad of our host family, to ‘cuidar’. This is nearly a daily activity that involves taking the cows out of the corral behind the house and out to the grazing land outside of town, watching them all day, and then bringing them back in the afternoon. I wanted to learn how to ‘cuidar’, so I had asked Martin to take me. I actually didn’t end up spending the whole day out with the cows because Martin sent me back with his son and the donkey to make sure the huge stack of firewood didn’t fall off the donkey. We had ended up taking the neighbor’s cows and goats as well. It was a very interesting experience. Though you do have to make sure every now and then that the goats don’t go off in another direction or that the calf doesn’t get left behind, these animals know where they are supposed to go and where they are supposed to come back to. Martin told me that starting around Christmas, and I think lasting until it rains again, about in April or May, they let the animals go and graze on their own. They’ll take them out part way in the morning, just outside of town, then they’ll go out further on their own, graze all day, and then come back in the afternoon/evening. It’s quite amazing.
Making sure no cows or goats get left behind and that they are going the right way apparently involves shouting at them with some unintelligible grunting noise, hitting them with a stick, or throwing rocks at them. You can hit the cows with fairly large rocks and it doesn’t seem to harm them at all—it’s just like hitting a thick piece of leather, but it does get them to move. Martin also would throw pretty large rocks at the goats, but usually from a distance, like when they started moving ahead without the cows. He normally wouldn’t hit the goats, but just get near them, and with about three throws like that and yelling at them they’d move back.
It was pretty fun to ‘cuidar’. I learned that the cows and goats still obeyed me even though I wasn’t their owner. Once I got down the yelling and throwing rocks part, I could move a whole herd of goats. (Martin took care of the cows most of the time I was with him that day.)

Well, that’s a quick run down of a very few of the things I’ve been up to in the past month and a half or so. This will be our last week in the ranchos, then on Monday, December second, we’ll all travel to Guadalajara, where Brandon will catch his flight home and the other three of us will go to stay at Angela’s parents’ timeshare on the beach in Puerto Vallarta for a few days.

There’ll probably be another entry next weekend.