El Censo

As we approach the expected day to start construction, Tuesday, I just can´t help but feel like we are forgetting something important. I guess we´ll just find out what that is on Tuesday...

Andrea and I were working on a census of the population of Damasco today. The purpose of the census is to have a better idea of how many people are in need of a dry sanitation toilet as well as help with the creation of a new lottery, if we continue with the lottery route for the remainder of the toilets. Salvador, the agente municipal, helped us with the necessary translation, as my Tzotzil ability wouldn´t have gotten us very far. But I do think, after today, I´ve got down all the one-word greetings and salutations (i.e. hello, how are you, thank you, goodbye...not exactly a deep conversation). We ran into Salvador at the primary school, I think he was probably handling some business there as the agente municipal. The teacher of the school is from Teopisca, the nearby city, and spoke spanish, which I think is the language they use to teach kids in the school. We arrived there during the physical education period, which consisted of the children walking around the basketball court with the teacher yelling ¨1-2-1-2...etc.¨ I can think of a few more interesting sports than walking in a circle. More than half of the students at the school were boys, but I would say that there were a lot of girls in the class as well....which is promising that they are getting an education. I´m not sure how many of the students will progress to secondary school, I´m not even sure where the closest secondary school is. I think, however, that most of the kids have to start working after they finish with primary school. While we were standing there waiting for Salvador, one of the boys in class yelled out my name...I don´t have a clue how he could have remembered it! I said hi and asked him what his name was... but I can´t believe that I already forget it (possibly Victor?).

The census basically consisted in going to each house and asking the names of everyone that lives there. Most of the men work in the fields during the day, so we were mostly talking with the women today. The women have to stay home and watch after the young kids and cook all day. The ones with young babies carry them on their shoulders all day in these pouch type sashes. In San Cristóbal, I see a lot of women from nearby communities selling the different things they've woven, but I don't know how many women in Damasco weave...so far I only seen one person in the community weaving. They do have a lot of women running stores that sell coke...there is no shortage of refrescos in Damasco! Most of the houses in Damasco consist of two buildings, the building where everyone sleeps and the kitchen and stove building. They are typically made of pine wood from the nearby forest, but a few of them are built with cinderblock. The building for where people sleep typically has a roof made with láminas (corrugated steel), while the kitchen typically has a tar paper roof which you can see the smoke eminating from when they are cooking. The women and young children stay inside the kitchen most of the day cooking, which can create a major health probelm due to all the exposure to particulate matter from the burning wood. Everyone was helpful with completing the survey. It was surprising that a few of them took a few minutes to remember the names of all the people in the house...but the women were definitely better at remembering the names than the few men we talked to. One household had 12 people living there! She just kept listing off name after name.

While we were walking around the community, Salvador took us through a short cut which was basically walking in the middle a muddy creek. It was hard to believe this man in his late 50´s/early 60´s taking us on a short cut that I would only expect from a 6th grader. It was kindof fun though (and we got the mud cleaned off our boots later when we got caught in the typical afternoon flood storm in San Cristóbal). After we completed the survey, Salvador invited us to his house for refrescos...mmm, I love real sugar coke. ¡Qué rico! He pulled out some little chairs for us to sit in. For some reason, everyone in Damasco seems to only have tiny dwarf size chairs. I guess they would take up less space than normal size chairs, but they make you feel like a giant sitting in them. Salvador has a house on the top of the hill, so you can see in all directions. We were talking about how, as the agente municipal, it's his job to settle disputes when people come up to him with their problems, but he said it isn't that much work to be the agente municipal. He was also talking about how he has three sons that came to Georgia to work for a chicken packaging plant. They really liked it there and had saved up enough money to buy their own houses close to Damasco. Salvador is a lot of fun to talk with, I don't really feel that cultural barrier between us that I normally feel when I'm talking with people in poor communities. There are still times that I will say something and he doesn´t have the slightest idea what I´m talking about...but I think those are inevitable.

So as long as things go to plan, we are going to empezar with construction on Martes.