LAS VARAS 1 MARCH 2007

PHOTO : Church in Las Varas.

Today we discover real people goodness. Drop Luc at school and from there to Chacala main street (small dirt cobble road) to wait for the local “collective” to take me to town. Extremely frustrated with my poor knowledge of Spanish, but the shop owner understands me and tells me where to wait. I am joined by Mary and Alain from Tuscon, who has sailed down on their yacht. He is from France, but has live in the USA for a long time. It turns out to be a long wait, but their company is really great. They invite the two of us to come and visit them on the yacht! It takes me an hour and 15 minutes from dropping Luc off until I am in town. The paint shop is at the taxi stop, and thank goodness we manage to sort out the language barrier. (One of our first Spanish classes at home was “coloures”, so I know all the names of the colours!). It comes to more than R 700 and the shop does not take credit cards. I ask where the “banco” is and within minutes I am in the front of the shop owners pickup and we are on the way to the bank! He mixes the paint by hand and proudly tells me he has been doing it for 15 years! It takes 2 hours to get the order and then he offers to drop me at the centre! I run to get the taxi to be in time for Luc’s school coming out. From there we grab a taxi and back to Las Varas. Luc uses the opportunity (of missing lunch at the resort) to order all sorts of sweet stuff. Everything in Mexico has sugar in – from the fruit juice, to the dried fruit. Or chilli and salt (even on the fruit). I order some watermelon from a fruit seller (with a bicycle like an ice cream man). By this time Luc has developed an urgent need to go to the loo – always in the middle of a place where there is no loos or pace to do your thing! But his actions speak a universal language and an old man sitting in front of a shop calls the shop lady and the offer Luc the use of their toilet! We eventually get to the centre and start painting the murals. We are joined by one of the kids who come to the centre, Daniel. He works really hard. Later some of the students arrive, but they are slow and lazy! They leave us halfway, but 2 little girls join us. At first we have major language barriers and I misunderstand them, thinking they are Daniel’s sisters and here to pick him up. Then, half an hour later, I discover they also want to paint! We finish at 5 and we take Daniel for a snack and a “refresco”. A bit worried that we will not find a taxi back. But after half an hours wait, it arrives. We meet Tracy on the taxi – she is a volunteer at the primary school, and invites us to come and speak to the kids about Africa. We are exhausted at the end of the day and hit the bed early.

REFLECTION:
Now getting into real Mexican time – what would have taken me 30 minutes in SA to do, today took me about 3 hours. Will the people at home understand if I tell them that we will only be back in 9 months and not 3 as originally planned!

MOMENT OF THE DAY:
Our first car accident in Mexico. The taxi driver on the way home, drops 2 ladies and their babies at their home. And reverses into a pickup parked behind him. He gets out, looks at the pick up, gets back in the taxi and drives off. Everyone in the taxi (and the neighbour sitting on his veranda) is in hysterics – laughing – NO ROAD RAGE HERE!