Finding a cocucha

Skip and I are on the hunt for a cocucha, a clay pot handmade only in the remote village of Cocucho, Michoacán. We are driving down a country road toward Cocucho, closing in, when a fallen electrical pole blocks the route. “Another way to Cocucho?” we ask a group of school boys. They point toward a dirt track through a cornfield. “Feo,” they tell us. Ugly, nasty, awful. “No turning back now,” we agree. “Let’s do it.” After 15 minutes of bouncing through the muddy field, not a house in sight, we wonder, “Is this dangerous? Are we crazy?”

We arrive in Cocucho unscathed and take a break on a bench in the town plaza. A small indigenous woman, barefoot, approaches, introduces herself as Lupe, and asks if we are looking for cocuchas. She can guide us to Juana’s home, where we will find many pots.

Juana Alonzo Hernandez lives in a one-room house, so unfinished that in the U.S. we would call it a hut: a dirt floor, walls of raw wood, no furniture except for a table, two chairs and a bed. Juana is wrinkly, toothless, five feet tall at most, with long gray hair wound around her head. Like Lupe, she is barefoot and wears a voluminous, brightly colored skirt, an embroidered blouse, and a shawl. Juana and Lupe talk with each other in Purépecha, the language of the indigenous people in that area, but they speak Spanish with us. We explain that we are from the U.S, and that we live in Nayarit during the winter. We are looking for a cocucha about four-feet tall to fill a big empty space at the bottom of our stairwell.

Before we get down to business, Juana wants to talk about the U.S. Are we familiar with Seattle? Her son moved there three years ago for a landscaping job. She shows us a photo of a smiling young man. “He used to send money,” Juana says, “but I haven’t heard from him in a long time. Do you know how much an airline ticket costs? Do you think I could get a passport?” We admire the photo and respond as best we can.

Juana shows us the pots in her yard and explains how she forms them by hand from Cocucho clay. She uses no wheels or molds in the pot-building process. The pots are fired in a charcoal blaze on the ground, not in a kiln. We select a tall, tapered cocucha with fire marks on its mottled surface. It will be perfect in our empty space and it costs less than $100. Despite our protests, Juana and Lupe insist on carrying the giant cocucha to our car in slings improvised from their shawls. They pack it securely in the hatch. We drive back to San Pancho cautiously, protecting our prize from speed bumps and sudden stops.

Victory at Sea

I forgot how dramatic the summer storms can be. "It’s like watching ‘Victory at Sea’," Marsh once said, as we sat on our front porch, mesmerized by the performance. Bolts of lightning attacked the distant horizon and hurtled through the sky over the Pacific. Thunder bombarded our ears and clapped so explosively we jumped in our chairs. As I witnessed the same spectacle last night I thought, Snow birds really don't know what they're missing.

Admittedly, the heat is tough to contend with. I don’t like it either, and will leave again in a few weeks. But it’s worth enduring in order to experience the tropics at their most intense. The greenest of green vegetation, washed clean by the torrential rains, shimmers and steams under a glaring sun. The jungle reclaims itself, shoots tree limbs over roads to form cooling canopies, overwhelms untended land with towering new growth. Even the ocean ratchets up, its color changing to vivid turquoises and emerald greens.

Faced with such intensity, mere mortals are forced to relax and give in. We move more slowly, take more naps, spend more time at home, as we adapt to the natural world that now has the upper hand.

I lived here year-round my first seven years in Nayarit. We who savored the storms, coped with the humidity, and knew how to slow life down to a crawl, thought of ourselves as the only true expats. “Welcome back,” we said smugly to returnees every fall, hoping they would pick up on the superiority we felt. My come-uppance is the slip in social status that I feel now, when locals say "welcome back" to me.

Par for the Course

Ah, the allure of lush green fairways and a gently rolling landscape. Even the sand traps and water hazards beckon. Flags fluttering in the warm breeze entice you to holes you’ll never play. Each day, you peer longingly through the locked gate at the golf course; silent, pristine, empty.

From the beginning it seemed too good to be true. News of a golf course being developed right around the corner from our house sent my husband Bill, an avid golfer, into wild anticipation. How big a golf course? How much would it cost to play? Would it be a public course or could he buy a membership? He planned his daily golf game, relished the thought of how his golf buddies would envy his unlimited access.

As construction began, not the cacophonous parade of earth moving equipment past our house, nor the chorus of water-conservationists crying “foul,” could dampen Bill’s enthusiasm. Watching the course take shape became an obsession. His clubs polished, Bill was ready for opening day.

And then word got out.

There it was, on the San Pancho Message Board. The golf course was going to be “private,” for use only by its owner, his family and friends. Was it a joke? No, it wasn’t. But it was true.

Still, no parade of carts appeared, no golfers or caddies, just the staff who faithfully maintained the grounds; planting, pruning, mowing.

“If he’s going to have his own golf course, why doesn’t he play?” Bill muttered as we drove past. “Wouldn’t a little putting green in his backyard have been enough?”

Then, he packed up his clubs and went back to the little nine hole course near La Penita.

Recycling in San Pancho

If you don’t have a lot of money, you have to make do with what’s at hand, so commonplace materials are used for multiple purposes in San Pancho. A big olive oil tin, cut down and with a stick for a handle, becomes a dustpan. Salt rubbed into a copper pot with a sliced lime does a nice job as a metal polish. If our painter needs a funnel, he inverts a plastic bottle and cuts off the bottom. The carpenter seals and stains wood with his old motor oil. These ingenious measures are good for San Pancho’s environment, but that is incidental. The motivation is to save a few pesos.

In addition to being economical, recycling can fulfill an artistic impulse. Guys who work in garages, for example, seem to be inspired by discarded car parts, though they probably aren’t thinking “reduce, reuse, recycle.” A man-sized Pink Panther sculpture constructed from mufflers and tailpipes stands at the entrance to a nearby mechanic’s shop. I’ve seen carburetors, bolts and oil filters transformed into sculptures of horses and female torsos.

A formal recycling program was started recently in San Pancho, and we needed it. EntreAmigos (entreamigos.org.mx), a non-profit that does good works in the village, and Alianza Jaguar, a conservation program, placed recycling canisters on the main street and set up a drop-off center for glass, aluminum and plastic. Then entreAmigos spearheaded the construction of Recicla Parque, a playground built entirely of plastic bottles, shopping carts, tires, fishing nets, drainage pipes and other debris. They operate Trabajarte, a program so women so can make and sell craft items out of recycled materials.

Now we are officially doing something “green” in San Pancho, but recycling is not a new idea here. A quote I like from Teddy Roosevelt -- “Do what you can with what you have where you are” -- comes to mind when I see people making good use of stuff that could have ended up in a landfill.

Goats Redux

Life on our street teems like a telenovela, those popular soap operas to which many Mexicans are devoted. Birth, death, marriage, divorce, a couple of near-murders, the odd theft, we’ve seen it all. Layers of raucous laughter stratify the street, and song and greetings and the banter of children at play. A net of exuberance draws together family and friends and friends of friends.

We were happy spectators. Until the day the goats moved in.

The bawling drew me, high pitch, strung out, anxious. I looked through the cyclone fence that separates our back yard from our nearest neighbor. Two small goats bleating like newborns, twin noses pressed against chicken wire walls of a lean-to shed. Apparently unhappy with accommodations, the goats complained throughout that first day, night, first week, second week.

Then silence so loud I went to investigate. The shed was empty. Out on the street I saw my neighbor try to fold and stuff the goats into the back of her van. I asked where they were going. With a laugh she said, "Comer (to eat)," her fingers tapping her lips. While I hoped she meant the goats were going to visit a more fertile grazing ground, in my gut I knew they were going to grace a dinner table. Gone to their gustatory reward.

Then one day two new arrivals, trailing yellow leashes, walked through our open gate, clip-clopped down the stairs, circled the tile ledge surrounding the Jacuzzi pool, nosed up to me, brown eyes soft, curious. My husband and I each grabbed a leash and dragged the goats next door.

"Hola," we called. Twice, three times. No one responded. "Let’s just put them in their pen." As we made our way around the side of the house we passed an open air toilet, a pile of plastic kitchen ware worse for wear, mounds of debris, detritus, unidentifiable.

The goats tugged on their leashes, apparently anxious to reach the lop-sided lean-to at the back of the property. We let them go.

It was a shock to see how our neighbors lived. Adults, children, grandchildren always clean, neatly dressed, but their home was a hovel. A junk yard hovel from which we daily hear bursts of laughter, song, good-natured teasing. Hard contrast with the way we live: bookshelves dusted, picture frames T-square straight.

What are we missing here?

The Rains Come

My husband and I came up to our mountain house at the beginning of June. Nearly all our San Pancho friends had left for their northern homes, and for excellent reason—it was way too hot on the coast. The ones who stayed were all found, upon close questioning, to have air-conditioned bedrooms. We do not, given that our bedroom only has one and a half walls. The day came when life was no fun at all and desultory plans to move up to the mountains shifted to let’s-get-out-of-here mode.

But when we arrived it was hot up here, too. A mile of altitude, intense sun, steep cobbled streets, and as yet no rain—a walk to the store and we dragged in overheated. However, our house was dim and cool and the nights required a quilt. It had been no mistake to make the move.

The garden was glorious. Rose, gardenia, agapanthus, plumbago, hydrangea, geranium, bougainvillea, impatiens, begonia, calla lily, zinnia, hibiscus, nasturtium, trumpet vine, and more, whose names I don’t know, were all blooming. Especially grand were the datura trees, as I call them, with their pendant flutes of exquisite fragrance. One is twenty feet high and greeted us with a good 300 blooms.

This beauty is accomplished by having a gardner, hose in hand, all winter. We are symbiots with our mozo Marcelino—our garden survives; his daughter gets a quinceañiera, the traditional fifteenth birthday celebration for those girls whose parents can afford it.

The rains arrived right on schedule and none too soon as I had begun thinking about those stories from India where people go crazy waiting for the monsoon and start hacking up their neighbors. Not Marcelino, of course. One night, mid June, there was spectacular downpour and it has rained every day since. The output ranges from thunder and lightning storms to the gentlest mist. The eaves and drainage channels may run floods of water or one’s hair may wear no more than a net of droplets after half an hour outside. There may be a sprinkle around five in the afternoon, or it may rain for several days running.

The heated ocean evaporates, the saturated air rolls in over land and, cooling, condenses into rain. Weather 101. San Sebastian sits in an amphitheater of mountains with the ocean as stage, and we don’t miss a drop. The rains come and a few hours later the miracles begin. Resurrection ferns emerge from every cranny of the stone walls. Moss goes from russet brown to electric green. Mountains erupt with purple flowering vines atop fresh-leaved trees. Tiny white and yellow orchids appear on branches. Pink crocus-like tempranillos cover hillsides. Orchid cacti sprout fleshy blooms from the nodes of their thick leaves. And the weather is perfectly cool.

Now the rains are doing the job of watering the garden, but they are not an unmixed blessing. Bougainvillea decide to take a blooming break, geraniums have to be put under cover. Double hibiscus fill with water and hang upside down, as do the grander floribundas. Zinnias are beaten over and have to grow J-shaped stalks to reach their preferred orientation. And some plants just rot and die no matter what you do.

The rains are a mixed blessing for the people, too. In our first year we lost access to the contents of our drawers when the wood swelled. Now we know to keep drawers slightly open but not how to keep mold from dusting leather chairs, cloth-bound books, carpets, canvas of paintings and wooden furniture. When the clouds descend to the level of the village, I must quickly close doors and windows so the white billows don’t roll inside and soak the beds and sofas. A frequent topic of conversation, in the warm candlelight of an evening, is how to deal with the incessant electrical outages. We never know when landslides will trap us up here for hours or even days.

But picture this: Our house, built in imitation of the local rustic colonial style with tile roof and approved slopes, does not leak. We curl up under our covers and couldn’t care less if it pours all night.

The Governor Comes To Town

On the steps of the hospital, the nurses stand in two straight lines; their caps starched white, uniforms pressed, barely moving in the breeze. The VIPS assemble near the newly hung banner that reads “Inauguracion Ampliacion de Hospital General de San Francisco.” Freshly painted terra-cotta walls shine in the sunlight, neatly pruned flowers and plants border the walkways; not one wayward piece of litter is in sight. All is ready for Ney Gonzales, Governor of the state of Nayarit to dedicate the newly renovated hospital.

Security is in place. Earlier, police road blocks kept the area around the hospital cordoned off. Now an assortment of law enforcement vehicles and personnel maintain a watchful presence; the scratchy static of their radios adds background drama. Photographers, outfitted with large, serious cameras, multiple lights and bags stake out their places along the roadway. I see familiar faces; many of my neighbors are here and I recognize others from the restaurants and shops in town. We wave at each other across the growing surge of onlookers.

At the sound of the approaching helicopters, the crowd hums with excitement. The governor and his entourage are approaching; all smiles, they shake hands, pose for photos and pat the babies. Applause! Thin and more slightly built than the associates who accompany him, the governor is all energy, keeping a rapid pace and offering a constant stream of greetings and comments. He commands full attention. The crowd responds with enthusiasm and respect.

The speeches begin. There are introductions and acknowledgements. Everyone agrees that this is an important day, a very special event, for San Pancho and the State of Nayarit. The governor speaks.

We are all very fortunate, he says, to have such a fine hospital in San Pancho. He wants the families of Nayarit to have access to the best possible health care. But, he reminds us, that good health is an individual responsibility; that we have an obligation to ourselves and our children. He talks about diet and exercise, the dangers of smoking and alcohol, drugs. He reminds us that mental health is important, too, and he talks about the dangers of depression. His tone is serious, thoughtful.

Is this just politician talk? I look around at the crowd who are listening intently, many nodding in agreement. No, I decide. His message has hit its mark.