This is the 1st post of a 4-part post on my fieldwork experience in Oaxaca, Mexico. This are unedited field notes that show the moments that have nothing to do with technology during my fieldwork. Here is where I explain the context for why I’m sharing these notes. (Post 1,Post 2,Post 3,Post 4)
-post-4-of-4-eating-live-insect”>Post 4)
I felt the heartbeat of a baby donkey inside the mother’s tummy!
I haven’t even felt the heartbeat of a human baby inside a mother’s tummy before! It was totally crazy! We were hiking back to the village after we spent a morning learning about how the pueblo is reforesting its land to capture water and how it currently receives water from the mountains without any pumps - just through pure gravity - and on our way back we saw two donkey’s tied up to a tree. This donkey is pregnant. Can you see it’s big tummy?
It was such a beautiful moment - the air was so clean and all you could hear were the birds and crunching of the earth from the donkey moving around. I really happy to be so connected to everything around me at that moment - the air, the clouds, the blue sky, the animal, the grass, the earth, and the water. I breathed in the smell of fresh trees and sometimes whiffs of donkey poo - even that was lovely.
Leonardo taught us so much that morning about water supply, management, and distribution. I am amazed at the knowledge that each pueblo to maintain themselves.
I think that a lot of times in urban areas, we are so removed from our daily resources - we don’t really understand how seeds become the food on our plate, who picks the fruit so that we can afford vegetables without running a farm, how water arrives in the house and etc. Massive infrastructure is highly capitalist societies automates and centralizes many functions so that larger populations can be organized in more concentrated or spread out areas. But the flip side is that we lose so much knowledge about our basic necessities.
I don’t mean to say that I felt that life in a rural area is more “simple” - I don’t like that connotation - that urban areas are more complex and rural areas are more simple. Everything that I was learning while I lived in the village was super complex.
For example, there was an immense amount of complexity involved in the village’s water system - but what was most interesting was that the level of complexity was most relevant for the village and it was one that the chose for themselves, it was not something that was decided by the government or some water company. The current water system relies on pure gravity. The water is from the ground and it is delivered through pipes that were built 20 years ago. Since it is from the ground and they do not use massive fertilizers, the ground water is clean. The village has plans to build a electro water pump but they are trying to figure out the best way to do it sustainably without negatively impacting the land. Therefore, they’ve started a reforestation project to capture water in several parts of the mountains before they proceed with the electro water pump. To me, this is really complex thinking because it’s strategic. They are thinking through the consequences of over-digging a hole to suck out ground water with an electric pump - they are thinking about the future of the village. That is just beautiful.
Anyways - I ended that morning with touching a baby donkey inside its mommy! What a great morning to start a day of fieldwork. I got some great interviews so far.
Post 2 of 4: spending New Year’s Eve Dancing til 5am
