Sunday Bike Ride to the Mercado San Juan

Photos of San Juan Market

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Mercado San Juan is famous for exotic meats and bugs. I bought blue cheese and jamón serrano. My flatmate bought juicy grasshoppers with garlic, chinese vegetables and figs. One place has jaguar meat, ant eggs, crocodile, you name it. Someday maybe I'll buy a goat or rabbit or Mmm! cactus worm! When leaving, some men were making shaved ice and we got pelted by ice fragments as we took our bikes down from meathooks.

First Kiva Post

You knew I had a serious side, that's why I'm in Mexico City with Kiva doing what I can to help alleviate poverty. My first post is up on the Kiva Fellow Blog!

Read A Post about Nothing.

Firsts

A few days ago I had my first pulque. I read about it years ago and always wanted to try it. Pulque is a thick fermented agave drink, about the same strength as beer. It's usually flavored. The options I had were guava, pineapple or tomato with lime. I think I chose poorly -- next time I'll try a sweet one! And though it is nothing to jump for joy about, I can check it off the to-do list.

Last night my flatmate sent me a message asking where I was. He had some red wine to share. I texted back from the gym that I'd be home at nine.

Together with our landlord and another flatmate, we drank sweet red wine from the northern Mexican state of Coahuila.  I had never had wine from there before!

Then it was off to shoot pool. Last time, I won three games in a row. As I am a miserable pool player, you can imagine that is another first. I won a fourth before crashing back to normalcy.

We left shortly after midnight, but walked right past our apartment building. Our landlord wanted to show us the mescalería, which only opens late at night.

The place had no room for us, but many clients were outside on the sidewalk. We sat on someone's car. The waitress promptly appeared and patiently explained a few of the hundreds of items on the menu. I opted for a mescal (another agave beverage, similar to tequila) from the state of Guerrero. The landlord ordered chapulines.

Chapulines means grasshoppers, but I'm desensitized to food names. We eat huaraches here, but they're not shoes, they're just shaped like shoes. When I order alambres I don't expect to be served wires.

We ate toasted grasshoppers (flavored with chile, of course) on slices of orange. They tasted just like you'd expect.

And here's a non-first: I had to wake up early after late-nighting it. Off to the town of Lerma.

My Strawberry Neighborhood

I haven't been very clear thus far as to what it is exactly that I'm doing here. I'm a Kiva Fellow. Nuffsaid? Kiva, for those of you that don't know, is an organization that connects people in the developed world with people in the developing world through microloans. If you aren't familiar with Kiva, you'll get the idea very quickly by visiting http://kiva.org.

Kiva Fellows are volunteers that travel to exotic fun places like Mexico, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Bolivia or Armenia, among many others, to serve as a liaison between Kiva and one or more microfinance institutions, or MFIs. My MFI is called CrediComún. It's a for-profit social business that primarily loans to groups of women in rural areas. CrediComún gets a sizeable chunk of its funding from Kiva.

I spent several days apartment hunting. Since I'll only be here for four months, I need a furnished place that will accept a short-term resident, so the best thing for me was to find someone with a room to rent. I told myself "No hip neighborhoods overrun with expatriates!" But there were few options, and the one I saw in Condesa comes with really wonderful flatmates. So here I am in Condesa, hippest of the hip places. One look is all it takes. But there aren't that many foreigners, and despite all the chic cafes and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I just have to walk a block or less to find great street food. And it's reasonably safe to be outside at midnight. Try that in other neighborhoods! (Just kidding. Don't.)

In Chilango slang, Condesa is a "barrio fresa", a hip, or upscale neighborhood. That literally translates to "strawberry neighborhood". I think it fits!

My First Borrower Visits

I resisted the tempatation to grab one of those tortillas His only job: haul water when needed They make many flavors of atole here Mexico is a country of contrasts Shawls La Nopalera My two Kiva coordinators

Thursday morning I met my two Kiva coordinators at the metro station Observatorio right next to the bus station.  Before boarding I bought a quesadilla to eat on board. It's probably not what you think. A quesadilla is crispy here like a rolled taco, and it came with a ton of nopales on top. If you don't know what those are, hold on a sec. The two hour bus ride to Atlacomulco was scenic. First we passed through Santa Fe, the rich neighborhood on the western edge of Mexico City. There are tall modern skyscrapers with signs that say "Microsoft" and "Chrysler" and so on. Then the highway starts climbing, and you pass through pine forest, see a few mansions in the hills and recreational areas. Then there's Toluca, the large industrial capital of the state of Mexico. Our bus went around it -- going through it looks like it would have taken a long time! There were apparently no cheap options for buses. In Guatemala I pay around $4 to sit in a crowded "chicken bus" for a 3 hour journey. Here it was more than twice that, but very cushy with a movie and reclining seats. An hour later we were there in the office. I met the staff, five of us hopped in a car and off we drove to visit borrowers. First, a lady who grows cactus. Mexicans eat a lot of prickly pear branch. When it's young and tender, they remove the thorns, chop it up and stir-fry it and serve it on top of just about anything. That's what nopales or nopalitos are. This lady was very comfortable talking about her life and her business. Being able to borrow (despite interest rates that would make many people uncomfortable -- more on this another day!) has made a huge difference in her life. She uses the money to buy things to sell at retail (for example, when she doesn't have enough cactus to sell, she'll buy from neighbors and sell that at the market), buy plants to grow food and cash crops, buy manure, and to improve her house. The second visit was an hour away. This lady uses her loan to buy shawls to sell in the market. She does very well. The shawls are not cheap, around $50 - $80. If she sells two per week, she's doing well. She was so clear-spoken and energetic I wanted to take a video of her, but she laughed and said no, that Kiva lenders wouldn't loan her any more money if they heard her talking. She has two children in middle school and a nine year-old in fourth grade. I told her about my goddaughter (ahijada) in Guatemala, how she didn't start school until she was ten. The shawl vendor laughed and said they were going to make me the godfather of her daughter, and have a big party. Everyone except me howled. I said "er... ah..." and turned red. The third visit, another hour away, was a lady who makes tortillas. Like the other two, she was very much at ease talking to this group of loan officers, office people from the city and a crazy gringo. She was also very bright, energetic and full of life. Her grandchildren looked prosperous in their blue school uniforms. We got back to the city at nine, making it a twelve hour day. It went by in no time, and I can hardly wait to go to Lerma next week!

The DF -- A Tough Gig

Chapultepec on Sunday afternoon

Mexico City, el Distrito Federal, the DF, home of the defeños (as its residents call themselves), has the reputation of being a hard place. And it is in many respects. It has more than its share of violence and stress and desperation.

But it doesn't look all that rough when you stay away from the places you're supposed to stay away from. Here are some of my experiences since arriving a few days ago.

The YWCA was in a run-down part of town with a group of 50 or so homeless people sleeping along one side of it. Everyone working there and staying there was incredibly nice. The showers are hot, it's very clean, the elevator doesn't stop at the third floor, the stairways are dark at night. The wireless internet works well in the lobby but rarely makes it to the rooms. In the neighborhood, there are hundreds of food stalls, so you can eat well for very little money. It's very quiet except for an occasional loud drunk or insistent honking in the middle of the night.

Apartment hunting was a bit tough. I thought I would try to avoid the trendy part of town, but in order to get a furnished room inside an apartment, I didn't have any options. A coworker invited me to her part of town, nothing there for the tourist, south but not close to the university. Working class, but safe and friendly. I got to look inside a few crumbling buildings, very livable, but not furnished. The few shared apartments around there were only available for students. I found two places in trendy parts of town that would suit me after 3 days of hard work, and I finally settled, quite happily, in Condesa.

Sunday I spent most of the day on walkabout. Avenida La Reforma, which has something like six lanes in each direction, was closed to motorized traffic until the afternoon. Tens of thousands of people were out biking, rollerblading and jogging. There were even policemen on rollerblades.

The weather is perfect, there's much to do, the street food is great, and despite the fact that I've almost been run-over a few times, the people are very friendly. This first week has been great!

Around 2 pm, a peaceful rendition of La Reforma was opened to cars again...

Such a rough life for me here...