two rather strange entries for you today.

a few weeks ago i was heading to the beach and, as you may remember, what takes 45 minutes by car requires 2hrs and three buses for those of vehicularly challenged. and that is like 90% of the population of oaxaca, so ya, anyway. on my way out of ixtepec, the bus stopped to pick up a few people on the side of the road and as most people come into town once a week to buy food, they had huge crates to load onto the bus. as i had no choice but to sit and sweat (a moving bus is a bus with a breeze, the stationary buses stink), i looked out the window to view all the trash that has been deposited recently.

a quick side story, which i mentioned months ago, is that the open window of (moving or not) vehicle is the trash can. there are litterally piles and piles of trash everywhere(i am talking 5ft deep in places). this bothers no one and i watch mothers teach their young kids to finish their flavored water(this is sold on the streets in plastic bags that are spun around and tied in a knot so that the top around fits snugly around a straw) and then toss it out the window. eat your elote (corn on the cob with chile powder seasoning- again sold on every street corner) and chuck it. your walkman´s batteries are spent? you know what to do. it gets depressing to watch after a while. even more so bc i walk home at night and have to walk in the road bc the ditches are filled to the tipping point with garbage. ah, the istmus of tehuantepec. a lovely place.

anyway, i was sitting on the bus staring blankly at the trash piles when i noticed an elderly woman in traditional dress (80% of all women wear traditional zapotec clothing that has been around for hundreds of years) tossing a rock at the wall. my initial thought was, well, clearly she is not as old as i thought if she is tossing a rock around as if playing a game. due to the sun exposure and nature of life without running water or electricity, a 25yr old woman often looks 50. no joke. as i looked closer i noticed something move next to the wall. a pidgeon. maybe she is crazy, i thought. why would she throw rocks, over and over as she missed, at a pidgeon. crazy is also not new to the istmus, but then i finally got it. she was hunting. urban hunting (as much as ixtepec is urban, but that is a debate for another day). this dirty bird was dinner. startling to say the least.

the last little tale is from yesterday. arash, another english prof, and i were walking home, when we saw a military humvee, replete with large machine gun and gunner, zoom by. as ixtepec is home to a unit of the special forces of the mexi military, i took no notice. after the 15th hummer went by, arash and i looked at each. looking back we saw a huge line of military vehicles full of either soldiers or large guns, rolling into ixtepec. we looked at each other blankly for a second. then we thought of the teacher strike- in its 5th week- and realized that they were coming to break up a riot.

we were wrong. they are here to protect the presidential voting event on sunday. question: if the military guards the ballot boxes, are these same people allowed to vote? the military backs a certain party publicly, soooo... at what point does there need to be another group guarding the military from tampering with the ballots?