Regreso

Oaxaca, Mexico – A chapulina is a fried grasshopper. The saying in Oaxaca is that if you eat one, you will return to Oaxaca. I have eaten at least three that I recall. I don’t recommend them, really. Even if you don’t think about what you are doing, they still don’t taste that great. And you can get the little legs stuck between your teeth. But I have eaten some, and so I have returned to Oaxaca.

This is my first journey back to Oaxaca since 2005 (see posts from May 2005). Melinda, Jenna, and fifteen others, most of whom are part of the UBC congregation, arrived on Wednesday, 6 August, as a medical mission team working with local missionaries and friends, Rod and Connie Johnson. Part of our group is staying downtown at La Casa de Mis Recuerdos B&B and the rest are staying with Rod and Connie, who are great hosts. We will conduct a total of four medical clinics, worship with Rod and Connie at their church, and enjoy the beauty of Oaxaca, its people, history, and scenery.

On Thursday, we conducted a clinic in San Andreas, a village Melinda, Jenna, and I visited in 2005. There is no evangelical witness in the village and the team of Christians bringing health care and compassion to the people of the area goes a long way toward preparing the soil for Rod and others to return to with a gospel witness. We saw about 75 patients that day. I was assigned the work of counting pills in the pharmacy, which I was able to master eventually.

Yesterday we drove only twenty-five miles, but it took us more than an hour. We made our way through winding mountain roads, with sheer drops on the side. We traveled along dirt roads pocked with deep holes. Melinda and I rode in the Ford 150 with Fernando, hauling the medical supplies. We also had plenty of time to practice our Spanish.

The village of San Pedro is located on the top of a mountain and has a population of only about 150.. They have a spring to meet their water needs, so people have lived in this location for more than 3,000 years. The ancient Catholic church in the village was built in the 1500’s by the Spanish. The Zapotec Indian village it originally served contained pyramids, temples, and tombs that have since been covered over. According to one local legend, some of Montezuma’s relatives lived at the site when the Spaniards were pursuing the Aztecs. The church building contains stones with ancient hieroglyphics still showing, stones the Spanish borrowed from Indian ruins to construct their house of worship. An American archeological team is making preparations for an excavation of the site.

No evangelical Christians are in the village of San Pedro, but they were very open to our being there. We saw perhaps a third of the population. At mid-day the women of the village served us a meal you could not buy in Houston for less than twenty dollars, I suspect. They brought out mountain trout stuffed with tomatoes, onions, and a sauce, wrapped in a leaf of hoja santa, baked in foil over coals, black beans, rice with vegetables, a squash casserole, and a cactus salad. We had blue corn tortillas for bread and horchata (rice milk) with small pieces of cantaloupe and honeydew melon floating in it.

Our meals at night have been incredible as well. Asuncion, Fernando’s wife, has been cooking for us. Last night’s dinner was pozole, a chicken soup made with hominy.

Today we have taken off for some shopping, sightseeing and errands. I seldom make a journey without some added challenge. This time it was luggage. Everyone else’s bags arrived with our plane. Mine arrived three days later. Melinda and I went with Rod to the airport to reclaim my luggage after dropping everyone else off at the market. Our rental van broke down near the airport on the way. A guy from Alamo picked us up and took us on to the airport. After we retrieved my bag we took a taxi back to Rod’s house. Meanwhile, the rest of the group enjoyed some shopping at the downtown market and a few took a taxi to see Monte Alban, the ancient Indian ruins just outside of Oaxaca.

Tomorrow we will worship and visit more in the city. On Monday we travel to another village for a clinic and then on Tuesday we will provide a clinic for a local orphanage and its neighborhood. On Wednesday we return to Houston.