It has been a long journey to Chichihualtepec. Two and a half hours in a suburban to Huajuapan, then breakfast and an hour’s wait for the 90 minute bus journey to Chazumba. The place names sound strange and mysterious, from somewhere much further east, although the full title of each place name has a Spanish-Catholic counterpart: San Diego de Chazumba,
We are picked up at Chazumba (not much more than a bus stop and pretty Dominican church) by our guides from the community museum. We bump down a dirt track in their pick up truck for an hour and a bit, past mile after mile of arid looking land, hills, maize, cactus, high lands stretching into the distance. It seems implausible there’s a place with a museum at the end of this road, but at last we reach our goal, a small town with a sign in white rocks on the hill above it: welcome to San Jose Chichihualtepec. I feel touched, and a bit sad at this expression of civic pride. How many people can possible come past and see this sign each year...?
The effort to make us feel welcome lasts throughout our four day visit. We are shown the highlights of the town: the museum (indeed a treasure), the health centre, the town square, the church, the water supply. (Our guests are slightly saddened by our refusal to drink the local water which has been duly tested by a laboratory and signed off as drinkable.) We are solemnly introduced to the local committee who are in charge of the community, a doleful looking president, the secretary, the man in charge of fiestas. Our guide apologises (twice) for the absence of a formal presentation. We got to town too late on arrival, and there was a meeting going on during our last evening: a circle of cowboy hats in the kiosk on the town square, the men discussing land prices and grant offers from the government.
We are taken for an amazing walk through the scrub to the site of one of their archaeological finds, and back for a simple lunch of vegetable soup and tortillas. Our hosts apologise always for the simplicity of the food they offer, the poverty of their village, but they offer everything with a generous spirit and an open heart.
On our third day we are taken for a trip to 'the river'. There is no river water here, indeed the townspeople are disconsolate at the failure of the maize crop twice in a row due to the lack of rain in the spring time. But there is a little water underneath the ground, enough for a simple irrigation system, and the vegetation is a little greener here than elsewhere. We assume the trip to the river is another walking expedition, but it turns out to be a picnic. Our companions are all in their 60s (most of the village is retirement age, the young people have all left to find work elsewhere, returning for feast days or in their own retirement) and they set to work with gusto: lighting the fire, creating shade, collecting maize, herbs, onions, limes from the fields, peeling corn cobs, boiling chickpeas. The women advise each other with kindness and laughter how to tend the food. After two hours we have a feast of vegetable-corn-chickpea soup (a kind of broth) with tortillas, and toasted corn cobs. We are lightheaded from cold beers and home made mescal, and our health is toasted once more. Our host stands up, wishes us well, thanks us for coming to Chichihualtepec, apologises for the poverty of our surroundings, looks around the dry, arid maize fields, looks back at us and says: we give you this with an open heart.
And I am sorry Chichihualtepec because I cannot remember right now how to translate your name place from the Mixtec original, although I know it refers to the hills all around you that you hold so dear, the landscape that shapes your community. But I do know and will always remember what hospitality means here, and what you mean by welcome.
"Welcome to Chichihualtepec"
Never was proud. Because a proud, you will be in should agree to the occasion stubborn; Because a proud, you will refuse the advice and friendship help, Because a proud, you will lose objective standard.
Posted by: Nike Shox Navina | September 18, 2010 at 04:01 AM