Rainy Season in Pozole

Rainy season Pozole (this essay is out of sequence.  Soon I will finish editing and post the backstory of my summer in Pozole, where I introduce some of the mentioned characters)

October 4, my early departed grandmother’s birthday, finds me making serious enquiries about finishing my house in Luz de Compassion.

I spoke with a contractor from Edil Construction, whose number I found in the yellow pages.  Mr. Gonzalez advertised that he spoke English, so I called him.  We arranged to meet tomorrow and drive out to the house.

I then let my fingers do the walking to a solar energy engineer.  I went to his tiny office in a humble, partially paved neighborhood on the outskirts.  He is quite knowledgeable about Pozole and its state of electricity.  He will meet me there tomorrow, as well.

Using his whiteboard and a fading yellow marker, he worked out the configuration that I was trying to describe to him.  Before I left China I had a serious sit-down over dinner with Pierre, where he taught me what I needed to know.  I wrote it down, but probably on my China phone.  Have no clue where that phone is now.

Happily, he told me that there was a project underway, the land had actually been bought (or committed, however a utility company deals with land ownership) to build a large solar array in Canatlan to supply electricity to Pozole.  We at LdeC would have to pitch in to pay for the cables that are needed to extend the power to us, but it would still be simpler than trying to build my own array.

I thought time had come when I needed to visit the house myself.  I was eager to see Dog, too.  In early afternoon I set out.  I arrived, to find the roads impassible with mud.  The creek that I need to drive through is swollen, too, and impassable.  What used to be a six-foot hop along stones to ford the stream was now a raging river twenty feet across.  As I entered the village I got stuck right away.  Fortunately, it was within a short walking distance to Beto’s shop.  Two of the young men, neither being Shubert, came and got me straight.  They warned me to stay up on the old railroad road, park there and walk in. 

The walk in was probably about a quarter mile.  That is the path that runs from the main paved Canatlan highway down the hill and between two fields, and comes out just yards from the entrance to LdeC; a poorly maintained right of way access.

It was not just muddy.  The path is unevenly strewn with rocks.  There are deep stands of water, green with algae, maybe 6 inches deep in spots.  The rest of the path, where it rose above the puddles, was slippery mud.  I was wearing sandals.  I remember a time in Bamei, in East Tibet, when I was driving along a dirt path turned to mud.  I was going slowly, but the car came off one submerged rock and landed on another sharp rock at just the right angle and force to blow the tire.  Even Gonzalez, the next day, with his big Nisan Pickup truck, would cry uncle midway, park the truck and go the remainder on foot.

I hadn’t gotten far down that path when I spoke out Dog’s name.  She gave a little woof, as she played with her black son in the mud 100 feet further down the muddy road.  I called again, and she saw me.  The tail started wagging.  Soon she was in a full run.

We walked together to the camp.  I looked for the dried food I had left, but no doubt has all been consumed.  She felt like a stuffed sausage herself, no ribs showing, so I know she has been eating well. Her topside was white and clean, and I could find no fleas.  Her son is with her, returned from the family who had adopted him some months earlier.  He is wearing the backup flea collar I had left.

In the summer I had glimpsed a small cat and a kitten in the compound, but never got close to them. I now learned that this was mother and daughter.  The mother seems the size of a 6-month kitten herself.  The one kitten had grown enough to where the mama wasn’t protective of her.  In fact, this petite mother relished petting.  The kitten was skittish, unapproachable.  Compared to Dog, whose belly and legs were black with mud, the cat fur was pristine white, around the tiger striping of the mom, more white and no striping for the kitten.

The weeds and corn were high, uncut.  Remember that Juan was just planting when I left, mid July.  Now the corn looked nearly ripe.  There are full grown round winter squashes, and white beans (chicharon) swell the green pods hanging on the bush bean plants.  Juan had shown me a handful of the seeds he was planting, back then.  I thought it odd to mix corn, beans, squash and what he called ‘rice’.  The long grass now has seed fronds on top, so I will have to ask him if these are indeed a grain, or just weeds. The garden is not as nice as the remnants of the garden I saw last November.  That garden seemed to be more orderly, planted in rows of corn, and a separate patch for squash.  This garden plot is overgrown with weeds, and a jumble of squash, bean pods and corn crowding each other out, and all choked by weeds.

Everywhere I drive in Durango and environs I see this huge yellow flower in wild profusion.  I see them not only by the side of the road, escaping stone fences, just everywhere, as well in what looks like cultivated fields.  They seem like miniature sunflowers.  They must produce some kind of food.  Perhaps oil, like safflower oil?  I shall have to ask after that, too.  The front of my house is a wall of these flowers, six feet high.  I had to struggle, at the edge of the row where it meets the brick façade of the house, to get past them.  I tried to go directly through the wall, but it was impenetrable.

As I was slogging through the bog towards LdeC, I was thinking I needed a pair of galoshes.  Indeed, on the drive back through Canatlan I did stop and buy a pair.  Meanwhile I found an old pair sitting on a bench in the small corral.  I decided I could borrow them for the walk back to the car.  I doubted they would be missed overnight.  Of course they are old, with plenty of punctures through the rubber giving me a wet walk back, but at least I would have clean shoes for the drive home.

After I stopped at my house and picked up the things I felt I needed in the city right now, I went to Doug’s house to wash my feet and shoes.  I was a bit surprised to find that there was water at the sink.  Doug keeps one large melmac bowl on his fridge.  I pulled it down and filled it at the sink. There are no wash basin there.  The water coming into the bowl had flecks of dirt or hay in it.  Using this, I was able to clean my feet, although I made a bit of a watery mess on the floor.  Doug is due this weekend from Canada, so I’ll have to make time to clean that in a day or two, once it dries.  When I left in July there was still a half-full 5-gallon jug of water. After washing the bowl in the sink,  I then used purified water to rinse out the bowl before putting it back on the fridge.

Dog was happy to be back in Doug’s house, where we had spent many summer weeks.  After we left my house, Dog’s son went his own way, and Dog kept to my heels on over to Doug’s house.  She came inside, watched me for a minute, and then disappeared.  When I was ready to go, I found her on her usual perch, on the pillow on the car bench.  I should have checked it for mud (at least I no longer worry about fleas), but I was tuckered.  Perhaps I am not acclimated to the altitude; I felt heavy-limbed.  We had a happy memory moment there. 

I locked up the house, picked up the things I fetched, and left the camp.  Because my key did not work the padlock of the gate, I had to squeeze myself through the bars.  Surprisingly, I made it.  She followed me back up the path, through the algae green puddles and the mud, to my car.  I opened the driver’s door and sat while I changed shoes and wiped the muddy waters from my feet.  In the summer she was a most reluctant car passenger.  However, this time she was ready to jump into the car.  Sadly, I had to hold her back.

So tomorrow is a big day.  I will finally bring the dream into the sharp focus of reality.  I will have a serious meeting with the contractor.  A few days later I should have an answer.  How much will it cost to make this house livable.   Then I have to decide if it is worth it.

I called Gonzales, the contractor, and Eddie, the electrician, to warn them they needed either a high 4-wheel drive vehicle, or mud boots for our trip to Pozole in the morning.

I tried calling Juan, the caretaker at LdeC.  He didn’t answer the phone.  I attempted to leave a message, but I am not sure he knows how to listen to messages.  I also texted him.  One way or the other, I hope he will get to the land early enough to open the gate, and to prepare a path through the overgrowth to my house.

Coincidentally, next Monday Jhampa will also bring round an engineer, to consult on the septic or sewer system.

Now if we could only agree to dig a deeper well.

Thursday started as an overcast day, but there had been no rain in the night.  That was a good thing, since I had carelessly left the VW sunroof open.

I make a quick trip to Soriana Supermarket to buy kibble for the dogs and cats, and a pan de los muertos for my own breakfast.

Gonzales picked me up in front of the Oxxo mini market which is next to the Motel, at 9 am.  We had a nice chat on the long drive to Pozole.  I learned that he had spent quite a number of years working in construction in the States, including Danbury, Connecticut.  Not a place I picture having an enclave of Mexican workers.  What do I know.

I talked about the house and my plans.  As I talked, it became clear that I could live in the house with a bare minimum of work.  I wouldn’t have to immediately finish off the half-bath and the second bedroom.

We arrived.  I noticed he had not worn boots.  He had on ankle length sports lace-ups.  He felt confident in his Frontier, I guess.  However, as we got halfway down the road and he saw the green algae on the surface of the water-logged ruts, he decided to go no further.  I felt bad for him, me in my newly acquired galoshes, but we got out of the truck and went the rest of the way on foot.  Just as I had vocalized my thought of the previous day, that it would be pretty awful to slip in the mud and fall head long into the algae goop, I slipped and fell.  I went down on one knee, before regaining balance.  Oh well, no harm done that a washing machine couldn’t fix.

At the gate to the compound we both tried jiggling the key in the padlock.  I slipped through the bars, but he just could not.  Fortunately, Juan emerged out of the head-high weeds coming towards us, and unlocked the gate. 

We beat our way through the weeds and tall yellow flowers to the house.  We surveyed it, tossed around ideas, and finally came up with a plan.  He would plaster all the walls, even the unfinished half-bath and bedroom, after tiling all floors.  He would plaster and seal the disgusting looking celiing. There were blotches of what looked like that dangerous black mold you hear about.  He would fix all that, and also put a finish on the roof to further seal and strengthen it.

So, armed with a final plan, he took off to his truck.  I didn’t want to think of how he was going to get his truck back out of that long wet trail.  I understood that he is a business man and I was taking a big chunk out of his day, so I had paid him 400 pesos.  He wasn’t doing me a favor, this was a business transaction.  That assuaged my conscience a little.

Eddie should have been there by then.  I called him.  He said he was about 20 minutes out.

He called me back a little later, and asked if it was okay to drive through the river.   I told him the little that I knew; I had been advised not to attempt it.  Juan had just told me that by going a little further on the railroad path, there was a passable road.  I passed that along to Eddie.

Eddie must have backtracked a little, and found a resident with whom to discuss roads.  He showed up quickly, from the direction of what had been, last June, a shallow stream.

We took a few moments to survey the wires suspended across poles along the road.  We noted the one meter on the wall of the compound’s enclosure.

We walked to the house, the weeds barely pressed down from the recent foot traffic.  We surveyed the inside of the house, and it then occurred to me that there was no junction box.  We looked at each other with the same thought, but he was ahead of me.  Outside, he said.

So we fought our way through the overgrowth to the back wall of the house.  Sure enough, there hung a tangle of wires and a little box without its fuse.  He explained to me that here we had aluminum and copper trying to join, some of the wires were exposed and oxidized.  Lovely.  Clearly, this was the job he came for.

Further, to ensure an undiminished flow of current, he suggested we run an independent line with its own meter from the road to my house and my junction box.  This solution felt right. 

As we headed out, I suggested that as a courtesy we talk to Juan, and explain our plan.  We found him in the little corral, working the power saw.

They stood and talked a while.  When Eddie mentioned getting a separate meter for me (and each subsequent house), Juan apparently said he didn’t think the power company would give permission.  Eddie told him that he had friends in the department, he knew the ropes, and would have no problem obtaining my very own meter.  Juan looked ahead and just nodded, taking in this information.

Just then a great big backhoe or earth mover roared up towards Eddie’s parked truck, and stood noisily idling.  The two men got the hint, and quickly moved the truck inside the gate.

I said a sad farewell once again to Dog, knowing that at least she would have delicious kibble again.  I mean, it is not like she has been starving.  The pets’ dish in the corral was laden with tortilla and beans.  Nevertheless they greedily chowed down on the kibble, so I think it will be appreciated. We hung the bag of kibble from a hook in the rafter of the tiny enclosure in the corral, beyond their reach.

As we drove home, Eddie and I had a most interesting conversation.  He talked about how Durango has only recently started to grow, but still didn’t seem to have much to offer foreign tourists.

I think Durango is a well-kept secret, and maybe it is time to let the word out.  The vision began to grow and develop.  His father has a parcel of land ready for development, about ten minutes outside the city.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it developed into the kind of condos that retired people liked, with maybe a clubhouse where the residents could meet and play cards and such, and have weekly trips of sightseeing and shopping organized by the management.  That sort of thing.

I said I needed to create a web site, perhaps a blog, for ex pats.  I should carefully document all there is to see and do in Durango.  I wonder if there is a golf course nearby.I would gather some of the history of interest.  Eddie mentioned that there was a very ignored war memorial in the hills we were passing, dedicated to the revolutionaries of the Zapata era who freed the republic.  Leading to the thought that there must be many more hidden treasures, known only to the natives and mostly ignored.  There is the wild west restoration, which is a bit of an amusement park, he says.  There is still the the 'chupaderas', a movie set built by John Wayne and not incorporated into any amusement park.  Downtown, there is the cable car from the museum to the one hill that sits in the middle of the city, offering an awesome view.

But most of all, I need to write vignettes of life in Durango.  What does a retiree need?  In my opinion, the weather here is ideal.  The blue skies of Durango are famous in Mexico.  The temperature is constant.  There are chilly nights in the winter, but the daytime sun quickly pushes the temperature back to 70 degrees.  The downtown area is small but picturesque, with traditional markets.

The traffic sucks big time, but where in the world is that not true anymore?

At the moment, the airport has limited flights, unlike Torreon where one has multiple options to fly to Mexico city or other domestic destinations.   But once the flood gates open and demand increases, surely another airline or two would want to enter the market.

So, gentle reader, whereas yesterday I despaired of my life, feeling like a withering expendable appendage, today I am re-energized with a vision, a project. 

I paid for three more nights at the hotel, and hope that soon I will be moving into Pozole.  Eddie has a colleague, a fellow electrician, who is a native.  He has set him to work finding temporary housing for me among the many vacant homes in our little hamlet.

Oh, and by the time we had reached the motel, Eddie already had an estimate for me.  The project, he said, would cost 5,500 pesos; about $333.  

Here is how the land looked in July, during sowing. That is my brick house