Faces of Tamaula

At the presa with the boys

At the presa with the boys

Girodani and Ricardo listening to my Ipod!

Giordani and his brother Ricardo

Guanajuato

Guanajuato

Guanajuato

Mineral de Posos

Mineral de Posos

Guardian of the Minas in Meneral de Posos

Ricardo or "Ricki"

View from my balcony

A day in the life of Josefina

I live with Josephina and her three daughters in the rancho of TAMAHULA. It is quite funny because the people of Tamaula write the name of their rancho with an “H” in it as TAMAHULA but on the entry gate of the rancho it is written without. I guess this has to do with the relatively recent establishment of the rancho but of course this is just a supposition. Anyhow I am going to describe a typical day of my host mother, Josefina. In the morning she gets up to make fresh corn tortillas every day. She grinds the corn to make the masa and then enters her little shack situated right next to her house with the only light of a 8x10 inch window opening can give her. She makes all her tortillas for the day and the best ones are the fresh ones! We eat breakfast at about 9 or 10 in the morning. While we eat we share stories of all sorts and the recurring theme seems to be scary stories, legends of Tamaula or any spook story so far. I guess they must be trying to scare me off! Josephina has an amazing laugh. She is such a good hearted person. For instance, anyone who comes in her house is offered a tortilla and whatever food she can prepare for them. She told me that she would expect, and hope, that if any of her kids were in need of a tortilla that one would offer them one as well. After making the tortillas and chatting, Josefina does the outside chores. She cares for her animals which include 15 pigs, chickens, a donkey, a cow and dogs that roam around and peek into the kitchen begging for hand outs. She also washes clothes in a cement basin, bleaches the whites and hangs everything up on clothes lines that I always knock into because they are very low. One day, I washed my clothes by myself in the basin and I had to stand to the side of it because my back was hurting from bending down. Josefina told me that I was supposed to stand in front of it, and I told her that it was too small for me and that my back was hurting from bending down—she laughed her heart out. Josefina washes the dishes outside as well. All the water they use for bathing, for dishes, for drinking, for cooking, for washing clothes comes from bins they have outside. In the rainy season they fill up of rain water but in draught season the government brings them two bins per family for a week. They bring their donkeys and horses in order to carry the heavy weight of the little water they are allotted per household. I came during the rainy season so there has not yet been a lack of water but I can only imagine how they have to carefully supervise the use of water in order to not waste a drop of it. While Josefina does the hard outside work, the girls Karina and Silvia take care of the inside house chores. They sweep then mop while watching their novellas on TV. Oh yes I need to mention that there are TVs in every room…or at least almost, there is no TV in the kitchen. They follow their novellas (note the use of plural here) daily. Once done with the house chores Josephina and her daughters sit down in the living room on one of their three couches and start crocheting and embroidering. The other day I brought out my pair of pants that needed to be repaired. I have been willing to mend the seam for at least a year now and I finally got to sit down—in front of a novella—to fix them. Josefina told me to leave it for her—“Deja le!” she told me—but I asserted that I could fix them by myself. Once I was done Josefina took a look at the job I had done and she agreed, I did indeed do a good job J (Thank you mama!) When lunch time comes Josefina warms up the tortillas she made in the morning in a large flat pan over the oven. Most days we would eat lentils, frijoles, sopa, papas, eggs all with chile in it to add some spice. Some days if there has been a party every household gets left overs of the chicken with mole that we eat at dinner. Any tortillas that are left over from the day’s batch are discarded; well not really they keep two trash bins under the kitchen table, one with any organic wastes for the animals and the other with any inorganic waste that they will burn outside. What is very bad is that they burn EVRYTHING including plastic and polystyrenes. But on the other hand there is no waste pick up here in Tamaula…
On the weekends, Saturday evenings, Josephina’s four others daughters that study in Rancho Nuevo return home to their casita. I could tell that she loves having a house full, I mean she is even open to hosting three foreign guests!
Other happenings are the “juntas,” the meetings that occur as often as something needs to be done. I have already seen two in the past four days. Josefina assists in both the ALL mens’ junta and the juntas for the women. The men got together in order to nominate which of the men in Tamaula will be working to fix the road. If the nominated cannot fulfill their task they have to pay a fine. This money that is paid goes to improving the infrastructures in TAMAHULA.