Weeks 23 & 24: Monday, January 29, 2024 – Sunday, February 11, 2024

Dearest family and friends,

What's happened in the last couple of weeks?

Well, after getting back from Tilaco two weeks ago, I came down with what they call la gripa, which is the word in Spanish for really anything from a cold to the flu, so I was out of commission for a good part of the week. 

Although, despite not being 100% last week, Rayanne and I still managed to make quite a bit of progress on the projects we are looking to get funding for. We spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday of last week running around the community, talking to various individuals and families about their interest in participating in our community gardening project and our rainwater capture project. With a significant amount of interest, we hustled to gather all the names of people that wanted to enter the projects and measure the amount of land that is (hopefully) going to be occupied for the gardening project. But our hard work paid off, and last Thursday, Rayanne was able to accompany a couple of members of the community to the CONANP offices in Jalpan and apply for the projects we're hoping to get started on in a couple of months. 

Luckily, this week I was feeling much better. This week was a pretty normal week, teaching Tuesday through Friday in the elementary school and middle school. In the middle school, we taught our students about composting and the key components for starting a compost in their home or in their school. We chose to do a compost workshop now because the students recently started a school garden, so we thought the composting lesson would pair nicely with their other project. In the elementary school, we're teaching our students about pollution — what it means and how it occurs. In the next two weeks, we're going to focus on water pollution and talk about why we have polluted water and what we can do about it. With the younger students, it's better to start with more concrete ideas before delving into the complexities of climate change. 

Yesterday (Saturday), I went to Xilitla with my host Margarita, her son Miguel and his family, and Rayanne. We started the day off by eating lunch in the home of Miguel's sister-in-law, Nora. Nora graciously invited us into her home, and once we got to talking, we found out that she speaks excellent English due to having spent much of her childhood in Homestead, Florida. Her family is from Neblinas, but like so many members of the community, her mom and sister went to work in Florida, and they brought Nora along with them. 

                            

So rather than speaking Spanish in school, Nora had to learn very quickly how to speak English and learn alongside her English-speaking classmates. Now, I'm not sure if it was due to where she was living, or the time period in which she was living in Florida, but many schools in the U.S. today have English as a second language or ESL classes to offer to students who don't speak English as a first language. However, to my surprise, Nora said that she was the only Spanish-speaking student in her school besides one of her teachers who was of Cuban descent and was able to help Nora catch up with her English by translating for her in Spanish. 

One of the most interesting things about living in Mexico is hearing people's stories about their experience in the U.S. So many individuals — practically someone in every family in Neblinas — have lived and worked in the U.S. at some point, and it is always so eye opening to hear about their experiences, whether it's how they got into the U.S. or what they did once they got there or how they learned enough English to get by but pretty much lived in the U.S. without speaking English unless absolutely necessary. Everyone seems to have a story, and they all paint a picture of how difficult it is for individuals to get into the U.S., but how integral working in the U.S. is to their livelihoods, and even more, how employers and everyday citizens in the U.S. benefit from having members of our closest neighboring country seeking work in the U.S. Whatever your beliefs are about immigration to the U.S., everyday, millions of people cross into the U.S., looking for work and hoping to provide for their families. And for me, it is so powerful to be able to put faces and names to the statistics that we hear about so often in the U.S. Just something for you all to think about. 

Anyhow, after finishing up our lunch at Nora's house, we found our way back to the center of town in Xilitla and treated ourselves to frappes at a café. After walking around for a little while and purchasing our fruits and veggies for the week (I bought a box of strawberries and 2 plums for myself), Miguel took Rayanne, Margarita, and me to the surrealist garden with giant sculptures commissioned by the English poet, Edward James. The surrealist garden is a major attraction in Xilitla, with natural waterfalls and pools which one can swim in. We didn't actually enter the garden — admission costs 160 pesos a person (roughly $10) and we didn't have sufficient time — but from the outside, what we did see was quite impressive: massive concrete sculptures surrounded by lush vegetation. One day I plan to pay the admission and get the whole experience.

Today, Rayanne and I visited members of the community who are interested in participating in our biodiversity monitoring brigade — another project sponsored by CONANP. In order to qualify, the group has to be comprised of an equal number of men and women, something which may sound easy, but there is still a good amount of sexism in the community of Neblinas. Or rather, the men who want to be part of the group don't believe that women can hike into the mountains like they can. They'd rather the group by purely men, however, they won't receive funding if they don't include women, so there is our quandary. But, luckily, our list does include an even balance of men and women. And we will try our best to show the men in the group that the women of the community are equally as qualified as they are. And if they struggle to do the more challenging hikes, well, there's practice for that, or there are less dangerous options. While our main focus as Peace Corps volunteers in our program is climate change, we are also charged with placing an emphasis on the participation of women and youth, because, for many reasons, women and children are more vulnerable in the face of climate change, and it is our job to help lessen that risk and provide women and youth in the community with tools to help them become more resilient and more self-reliant. 

Those are the highlights of the last couple of weeks. This week and the following week are my last 2 weeks in Neblinas before heading to Querétaro for our early in-service training (EIST) and a nice vacation in Mexico City, but I'll try to keep you updated about the happenings before then.

I hope you are all doing well!

Talk soon,

Ilana