It's a small world after all...

Even as I often feel adrift here (and paradoxically am already saddened to leave people who have, or I expect to, become real friends--luckily or not, many are Americans I can expect to see in the States in the future, and also, yay facebook connectivity), I am reminded that the social world encompassing Oaxaca is a tiny one of a certain sort. Case in point, Sat after still feeling in a bit of a fog, I headed off to my local organic Sat market under semi-protest. It's been a hard week with my crazy neighbor really sort of dumping her own craziness on me (and I'm not using crazy lightly) and I've been feeling very vulnerable. So going to the market was something I had to motivate to do. However, I knew I wanted to get specific things (including coffee), I knew I always love that market, and I knew that there was a fair chance I might run into someone I know. But, it's just around the corner so I was pretty focused on getting in and out (maybe coming back in the afternoon when I would be more likely to run into friends after a workout and shower) and in a slightly grungy state.

I walked in and got my usual broccoli and arugula (my vegetable vendor now has little lemon/lime hybrid looking things too) and stopped to talk to the woman who sells tomatoes and comes in 2 days a week from 4 hours away (I like to ask people how far away they live). She's (Augustine) fabulous, we've had long conversations about organic farming and her husband is a consultant for other small villages who are transitioning from conventional to organic practices. It was great to talk to her about how she frames these health issues (things like the water they use from the wells is cleaner than that closer to the city, so the inside of the plant is also healthier-- I still wash all veggies unless they've been prewashed) as well as hear her views on buying directly from farmers. It is very much reflexive of the impact of NAFTA that she told me farmers who sell through middlemen to the big markets (and then presumably throughout the State if not country, although they're tiny operations) get almost no money and make only enough to subsist and we talked about the value of healthy fresh food and why at this market people are willing to perhaps pay more (it also is a market that has a big American and tourist presence).

Leaving her I headed up to my favorite ready made food stand run by an Italian man and Korean woman who make great fresh pastas and pestos and cookies and decent S. E. Asian salads when I was struck by the profile of a woman talking to 'Sandro, it was another anthropologist (A) I know from NY who graduated from my program and then came back to teach in the Latin American Studies center and with whom I took a class (of course I couldn't remember her name for the life of me for about 5 minutes). Her work has taken a turn in a similar direction as mine and she was in Oaxaca for a short research trip/ vacation. She introduced me to her husband and we chatted and then an acquaintance came through and a contact A had here (a fulbrighter my friend C had tried to put me in touch with, who never returned my email) and then more people A knows from NY who also happen to have connections to Oaxaca-- all a little overwhelming. And in the meantime my friend K and her boyfriend G came in with a friend of their's I knew from my first two visits here who was just back for the weekend. And then while talking to them I ran into one of the doctors I work with in Tlacolula. It was all a little overwhelming and made me supremely conscious of my unwashed hair :-)

And so I'm trying to hold on to that feeling of connectedness when I fall into feeling lonely without community here-- also that I have a friend who would call me and ask me to babysit her 3 kids when her daycare plans fall through...... lots and lots of hide and go seek in my tiny apt (lots of hiding in my armoire and under the bed). And in a week my really good friend from college A is coming with another friend and after I meet them in Puebla, A and I are going on some kind of adventure.