days 3 and 4

Blog days 3,4 and 5
I think I'd better write about the last few days while I can still remember. They have been some of the hardest, most stressful and yet most satisfying days I've ever had. I've barely slept since Wednesday and feel wrung out, but I've had tremendous rewards and am extremely elated that my workshop was a success.
On Wednesday afternoon we finished my tour of Lomas de San Isidro early, after only a few hours. I think Oscar and Stephanie went way out of their way to accommodate me, but were worried that I would miss my bus or my lunch and sent me to the TAPO bus station plenty early. I still had the snacks that Susan had made for me from the previous day and my water bottle, so I managed to catch an earlier Oaxaca bus. I also was able to change Susan's bus ticket to Oaxaca for a ticket for me to go to Juchitan and on to Tuxtla next week, so we didn't lose the money we spent.
The trip was fast and interesting. The day was clear and once out of the smog around Mexico City I could see the mountains, including Popo. It's a good highway but the route goes through a very rugged mountain range and must have been difficult to build. I enjoy just riding on the buses in Mexico and looking at the scenery, it's so different from our Oregon. ADO buses are really nice and the driver put the pedal to the metal so we arrived about a half hour early. By the time I got to the Hotel Principal and checked in, it was dark though and I was a little disoriented about my location. For some reason its easy for me get turned around in downtown Oaxaca and I was afraid if I walked too far at night I'd get lost, so I constantly checked my bearings and tried to stay within sight of the hotel, but. I had a nice dinner of a seafood paella in a corner restaurant.
My Oaxaca cell phone that I was counting on refused to work however. I was sure that I could get it charged up and add minutes to it and use it, but nothing seemed to work and no one had an idea about what was wrong. I wasted a couple of hours trying to get it to go, before giving up and going to bed abut 11:30. I really needed to contact my local coordinators, but without the phone for information I was stranded.
Oaxacans love to party and love to honk their horns when they are partying, or when there is the slighted traffic slow down. They also shoot off loud fireworks for all occasions, including birthdays and holidays, at all hours of the day and night. It really lifts you out of bed to have a loud explosion right outside your bedroom window at 3 am! At any rate I was starting to fuss about my workshop and not sleeping very well anyway.

The next day, Thursday, I didn't know what to do until someone contacted me. I sent some emails telling them where I was and waited to hear back. I was afraid to leave the hotel for fear of missing them, but it did give me a time to work on my presentation and get a little better organized. I was worried that I had a lot of small and large things to purchase for the workshop before Friday and I didn't know what would happen if no-one contacted me.
About 1 o'clock Bonifacio Fernandez, the local coordinator showed up and so we set off to buy stuff for Friday. I bought pans to cook food in in the solar stoves and black spray paint to paint them with, box cutters to cut the cardboard to make the stoves, and a lot of other items large and small, cheap and expensive. I also got my Oaxaca cell phone fixed, which has helped a lot in keeping things organized. I don't fuss or worry so much when I know what's happening. Cecelia Barry, the leader of our trip and her husband were tangled up with the family they were staying with and couldn't meet me till Friday morning so I was pretty much on my own at that point.
The Mexican lady who met me at the airport, Maria Elena Martinez, is a real authority on nutritious cooking, plus has street cred because she grew up in the slums herself and knows how things are. She agreed to come to Oaxaca and make a presentation on using the solar stoves for healthy cooking, which was really welcome for me. She was going to come on Thursday evening and participate on Friday and Saturday. The problem was that my phone wasn't working and she didn't have email so weren't communicating. I was told that she would be arriving at 6 pm at the bus terminal, so I waited there from 6 till 8:30 during which time several buses from Mexico City arrived. I didn't know what had happened, whether she wasn't coming, or missed the bus or what. I went back to my hotel and started making long distance calls back to Mexico City to try and find someone who knew what was happening. After several calls back and forth to people I found out that she had taken a different bus line and arrived late at a different bus station. Then she took a taxi that didn't know where the hotel was and just dropped her off somewhere! I got her cell phone number and when I called her, she was wandering around the streets asking people if they knew where the Hotel Principal was. By this time at10:30 at night I was frantic with worry, but she didn't seem too concerned. I guess Mexican people are used to crazy hassles. After we finally found her and got her checked in, neither of us had eaten all day so we finally found a late night restaurant for a meal. I finally got back to my room at 11:30 on the night before my big presentation, and by this time I was so emotionally exhausted that I could hardly think.
I couldn't sleep though, either, thinking about my workshop the next day. I had counted on this last evening to get ready and now I was sinking fast. I got back around 1 and started sorting my stuff and writing out my program. I was really worried because I didn't know who was coming. Every time I spoke with Bonifacio he gave me a higher number. I was counting on 10 or 15 people, mostly professionals with NGO's and he was saying 30 – 40 people, mostly community members. At that point I threw out my original technical lesson plans and rewrote them to focus on the individual and what he or she could do for their own water. This was a better lesson anyway, plus I didn't have to explain all these technical terms in Spanish! I worked the rest of the night and by 8 in the morning I had new lesson plans and materials. They seemed way less professional or organized than the original lessons that I had someone painstakingly translate for me. But it was what I had, and as I walked out the door of the hotel, I had the distinct feeling of being a condemned prisoner walking to the gallows.
Continued tomorrow