Removing the seaweed from the beach in Playa

I have been to some beaches: in Puri and near Mumbai in India, and a lot of places along the West coast of the USA. Nowehere have I seen seaweed pile up like it did in Playa del Carmen- and the Sisyphean effort by minimum wage workers to make it magically disappear on a daily basis. Playa is on the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It is a sister city of Cancun, and is famous for the stunning white sand beaches the world over.

When we were in Playa, Sonya and I would go for a walk in the morning, early, before the sunrise to catch the spectacular free nature show. From an hour before sunrise, to half an hour afterwards, the sky is painted by the clouds and the sun in surreal colours- ranging from the colours of a  delicate pink rose petal to the bright orange of a ripe papaya.

The sun rises beyond the clouds, illuminating the seaweed that washed up overnight on the beach, while the ferry patiently waits to take its load to Isla Cozumel, a small island en el Mar de Caribe.

While we were indulging our senses on the near deserted beach, there would be crews of men on the beach working with the seaweed. Most of them worked long sections of the beach in front of each hotel. They would dig trenches in beach, bury the seaweed in the trenches, and finally pile more sand on top to create a pristine sand beach for the postcards of the tourists.

Digging a pit for the seaweed

There were also people who would comb the beach towing a large plastic garbage bag- cleaning the beach by hand; they tossed in the daily trash of the beach: plastic water bottles, beer bottles, cans, pieces of plastic that had been swept ashore- and none of this was weighed and measured in pounds and hours and humans like the volunteer beach cleanups in Oregon- the state in the USA where I lived.

Hauling away trash from the beach as a minimum wage job.

As per the website: http://www.solv.org/ , this is what volunteers cleaned up on a single day

"Thank you to the over 3,744 volunteers who headed to the Oregon Coast for the 2012 SOLVE Spring Oregon Beach Cleanup to clean up trash washed ashore by winter storms. Armed with raingear, gloves, bags, buckets, and colanders volunteers removed an estimated 60,483 total pounds of trash from our beaches including 1,565 pounds of recycled and re-used materials and 55 tires. The most common item reported up and down the coast was bite-sized pieces of plastic. Other common items reported included cigarette butts (which also contain plastic), bottle caps, bags, ropes, Styrofoam, and tires."

Some of the bigger hotels had larger earth-moving equipment that are custom built for this operation: one was like a combined harvester- it would chow down the sand- seaweed and all, parse it its stomach, drop the sand back on the beach, while the seaweed would be deposited in a trailer following it like a loyal attendant.

The work crew working along the machines.

There were other larger creatures to smooth out the beach: modified bulldozers with a plane to have a landscaped beach- served fresh for our daily pleasure. Smaller vehicles like ATVs are also deployed to transport the crew and haul trash bags out.

An ATV hauls trash.

In addition to being an eyesore for tourists, it makes it harder to walk on the beach, and the seaweed smells like the ocean- a natural smell no doubt- but one that is disgusting to many people (and one that I as a fish-eater know- it is the smell of the ocean that some complain about when fish is cooked).  Is it correct for us to consider seaweed as simply weed? I am not sure of the ecological consequences of doing this. For one, sea-birds may have a harder time finding food. And just down the coast are protected reserves for endangered sea turtles- my guess is that this beach was turtle heaven not a long time ago.

How much of nature can we manipulate for our needs? Is it OK to manipulate 5km of beach along Playa if it brings in the tourists and is good for business and jobs, while we leave 100km of "wild" beach for nature? If the beaches were not emptied of the seaweed, the tourists would go elsewhere.

It makes one think about how we take care of the commons, for the beaches in Mexico are open to the public and no one can own the beach, unlike places in India and the USA. Should the responsibility of taking care of the beach be that of the government, volunteers, the local people or a private agency? It also involves questions about workers benefits like health care and pension, for these workers are minimum wage workers, and other issues like gender roles and immigration.

One of the "insignificant to humans" seabirds, that is part of a flock that look for food in the seaweed.

It makes me ponder about a natural experience- what could be more natural than going to the beach- nothing but the sun, the sea, the sand and the self- when we have to tailor the experience to make it palatable for humans.

The beach an hour after sun-rise; no malodourous eyesore seaweed to impinge on our senses.

Daily life in Guatemala while attending the Casa Rosario Spanish School

One of the frequent questions people ask is where we lived in Guatemala and what our daily life was like while learning Spanish. This entry tries to answer some of the questions. We were lucky to have such a wonderful time in Guatemala.

San Pedro La Laguna in the morning, from the road that goes to the finca during a morning walk.

Lake Atitlan is a volcanic crater ringed by several several hills, volcanoes, cities and villages. We lived for more than two months in San Pedro La Laguna in the Guatemala highlands. Here is a link to the location on google maps: http://goo.gl/maps/g4CnI

It is a quiet town of around 15,000 people, and all the places in town were within a kilometer from our house. We were studying Spanish at a Spanish language school called Casa Rosario.
(link to the website of the school: http://www.casarosario.com/ ). It was founded by the brothers Vicente and Samuel Cumes Pop. It is now run by Vicente.

We lived with Samuel's family in an airy and spacious concrete house, a stone's throw from the lake.
Samuel's family lived on the ground floor. There were 4-5 identical rooms along the corridor. One room served as a the TV room, another as the place which stored Samuel's art supplies, while the rest served as bedrooms. The kitchen was 20 feet away, and so were the bathrooms and the two toilets. The storey floor above had an identical floor plan. The third storey had two rooms, and an open terrace to hang clothes.

The place we stayed at in San Pedro. Notice the gas burners at the end of the balcony

The family kept the house clean, and cleaned the students' toilets and living area regularly. They replaced the toilet paper as needed, and we had a change of  bedsheets and pillow covers on a weekly basis at no extra cost. They collected the trash from the dustbins daily- all we had to do was to separate the organic from the inorganic. The organic waste was composted across the street in a piece of land owned by the family. When I first arrived, I did not realize that the ring of banana trees was there for a purpose- it was the prescribed method of composting around the lake- the banana trees would extract minerals from the compost thus preventing the water which would seep through the compost from eutrophying the lake. Among other plants on that piece of land were coffee bushes, with green berries of coffee that are harvested annually in November.The inorganic waste was trucked by city employees to an open air dump 5-6 km away from the city, on the windy road that connected San Pedro to Santiago.

The rooms were simple: a bed, a dresser, a table and a chair. In addition to the door, there were big glass windows in the room on the side facing the corridor. On the opposite wall, there were big glass windows that looked into the neighbour's yard. One could see kids playing hide and seek through the sieve of the jocote tree full of unripe fruit. A family in the neighbourhood with four cats had two houses that were separated by our house. It was not uncommon to see their cats skimpering across the corridor to go from one house to another. To our disappointment, these cats were never interested in us. We wanted to pet them like we had pet the pregnant house cat "Sasha" in San Marcos, where we had stayed for two days before coming to San Pedro.

Because it was the off-season, we never had more than 2-3 other students living with us. Many of the students ate in restaurants and so we did not have trouble sharing the kitchen. Even then, one had four gas burners.

The sink to the right and the restrooms to the left: all bright and airy.

Elevation played a big role during our stay in San Pedro- the house was at nearly the level of the lake, and so was the school. Thus there was no elevation loss/gain in going to and fro from the school. However, the market was situated only half a km away, but more significantly it was uphill from us; not much in terms of elevation gain but it had some steep sections where when I was new in town, I would clutch my quadriceps near the knee and bow my head down with the strain of the climb.

Our daily routine revolved around going to the classes everyday at 8:00 AM. On some days Sonya would go for a run along the road that goes to the coffee plantation. On others we would go for an early morning stroll, and climb the steep road to the market and walk around town. At 7:40 AM, we would have had breakfast, which could consist of leftovers, bread and omelette, or simply a drink of atol- a drink made with with bean flour added to warm water- not unlike the chaatu drink favoured by rickshawwallahs in India.

Getting Ready for Class in our room in San Pedro.

The classes were from 8-12: four hours. We had a break from 10 to 10:30AM, and again from 10:30AM to 11:00AM. All the classes are one to one: one teacher for one student. Thus the level of teaching is adjusted as per the needs of the student-whether they be advanced or a novice.

When I first started, the classes would be quite intense involving a lot of learning, and I would stare at my watch, and be startled to see that it was only 8:40AM; for I was used to the 60min classes from the USA. However, my teacher was intelligent, and could sense my fatigue. Sometimes she would joke and ponder if I had slept well the night before. The classes were fantastic because she was free to be flexible- unlike some other Spanish schools. She mixed things up with grammar drills on the board, notes on verb-usage, conversation, reading articles from the newspaper, writing exercises, homework correction. Conversation topics were myriad; our families, San Pedro, Guatemala, India, prices of things in the market, gossip about students and teachers. 

A typical open air class room in Casa Rosario: a dream setting for learning. We did have plastic hairs to sit on; one for the student and one for the teacher- they are moved daily and stored together in one location. 

In the beginning I was relieved to talk in English at 10:00, but later with more Spanish under my belt, I would try to speak in Spanish during the break- but would have to switch to English because some of the others were not so fluent in Spanish.

Vicente, the director of the school would make a daily trek to the market, and bring fresh watermelons, pineapples, bananas and chuchitos for us. The teachers would cut the fruit, and all of us ate the food whilst sunning ourselves. Chuchitos are a local speciality with a chunk of spiced chicken surrounded by corn dough wrapped in milpa leaves. We had steaming fresh chuchitos from the market, and it was a delight to untie the slender string cord, and bite into the dough. You could get chuchitos in the market which had a piece of jalapeno or chili sauce in it- an extra kick which I love- but Vicente only bought the non-hot ones as not everyone liked them. After we were done eating we would toss the all organic leftovers, be they milpa wrappings from the eaten chuchito, banana peels or watermon rinds into a big pile at the designated area in the garden- they would simply decompose in the open in an eco-friendly manner. I quite enjoyed the tossing.

Fresh Chuchito from the market

During the break we would usually split into two groups: students and teachers. The teachers would converse in Tzutuhil, and we would converse in English. Sometimes there were students who were not good in English, because they were from mainland Europe- but we got by. It was a great opportunity to socialize and talk to other travellers in a non-bar setting. Many a time, we would plot our afternoon adventures: kayaking, swimming, visits to nearby towns, meeting in the evening for coffee, while eating fruits and chuchitos.

Group shot at Casa Rosario, San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. What a lovely garden setting for our classes

At 12:00, Vicente walked around the garden, and announced that the classes were over. Sonya and I would walk back home and have lunch. Sometimes, we would trek to the market with our teachers, and replenish our food supplies.

Afternoons were devoted to rest, surfing at an internet cafe at the market or something physical: kayaking in the lake, a swim at a place 3 km from the town, a walk along the lake. The school had a couple of kayaks that the students could borrow for free- but if the group was large some of us would rent kayaks for the afternoon near the Panajachel dock.

In the evening we would spend time in adda- at the house with other students- or at a restaurant or a bar. We would cook dinner in the open balcony, and then go to sleep. 

Las personas de Playa

Playa del Carmen is a town on the beach with around a 100,000 people on the west end of the Caribbean Sea on the north American mainland. It is around 60 km south of the more famous Cancun. While doing the CELTA course in Playa for a month, I ran into a number of people. With most of them I had one time exchanges, with others like the students in the English class I was teaching, there was time to interact after the classes.

A lot of people were interested in where I was from. Sometimes for fun, I would ask them to guess. I would be thrilled if they mentioned Argentina or Chile. Back in Guatemala, a couple of people even guessed that I was from Mexico. In Guatemala, in San Pedro, there was a vendor on the street who used to sell blankets on the tourist path on the way to school. Sonya and I used to pass by him, and we never bought anything from him. He had a perfect North American accent, and would shout out, "Come on my friend, do you want to buy some blankets?". I was jealous of his loud booming voice and his accent - he sounded exactly like an educated US American. One day after many weeks, on the way back from class, he asked me in the same accent, "Where are you from my friend?". Instead of walking by, I stopped, turned towards him and replied "Soy de la India". He got up, leaving his bundle of blankets on the street. He turned and stood next to me side by side. He put his bare left arm next to my elbow and extended it parallel to the ground. In a flash he used his right arm to lay my right arm next to his- elbow to the wrist- with our skins touching; I used to wear a black sweater to class, but on the way back when it was warmer, I would wrap the sweater around my waist and walk home in a t-shirt. He paused for a bit, and examined the evidence carefully with his deep-set eyes. He tilted his head towards me, and said, "We are the same color". I peered at him through my glasses, and raised my eyebrows, bobbed my head up and down, and said," Si, amigo". "We are brothers", he said with a deep conviction.

This business of comparing the skin colour by placing one's elbow next to mine happened at a couple of other places in Guatemala and Mexico. One on the island of Cozumel off the island of Cozumel, we were trying to rent a scooter for the day.We had met the garrulous agent at the dock on the way out from the ferry. The agent was leading us to the rental office, it was half a block away from the main road along the beach. Halfway, up the block he stopped next me, and cocked his head, and asked me,"De donde eres?". "Soy de la India". In a flash, his left arm was placed next to mine, elbow to wrist, while his right hand maneuvered my right arm to lie side by side to his. "El color es mismo. Es de cafe". He was done with his scientific analysis, and moved on to talk about where to refill the gas when returning the scooter.

At another time, we were walking on the beach as usual in the morning in Playa. One of the resorts we passed by, had this friendly guy in his late thirties, who used to greet every jogger, snorkeller, dog-walker and biped, "Buenos Dias". This was uncommon in Mexico- where there were so many people on the street. We had said, "Buenos Dias", to him a couple of times, and one day, we chatted for a long time. His job was to ensure that people who were not guests did not sit on the beach chairs of the "hospedaje". His Spanish was easy to follow, and we had an interesting discussion with him about the beach, religion and humanity. He mentioned how the beach in all of Mexico was open to the public. The hotels obtained special permissions from the local authorities, and could set up the beach chairs a certain distance away from the surf. The hotels would also call the local police if there were fishing boats who were too close to the coast in areas reserved for tourists/swimmers. The police would levy a fine on the boat owner. He seemed to know a lot about India, and asked me a questions about idol worship, and why I thought people did it. He said that he knew that all humans originate from the same place in Africa, but have different skin colours, "por el clima" - because of the climate, nothing more. He pointed to his skin and mine, and said that we had the same skin colour because we are from countries close to the equator. It was a great conversation, and after about 45 minutes, we bid good-bye to each other. We were in Playa for only a week after that, and never met him again. Quisas, encontremos una vez mas.

Another interesting person we met on the main tourist street of Playa, La Quinta Avenida, was a person who was dressed in white next to a tourist booth. After two minutes of trying to sell us a destination to Chichen Itza for free, the scheme according to him was that somehow the government was trying to promote tourism- and he would get paid if he got a certain number of visitors to visit the monument, he was interested in knowing where we were from. India and the USA we told. He was a sharp and intelligent guy, and quite the talker- all we could do was listen to him. He told us about he was finding it hard to make payments to support his ex-wife and child, launched a tirade against the conservatives in the USA, informed us that while Marx had some good ideas, he was a but foolish in some areas and then told us how he had nearly sparked a fight among Indians in Canada. Apparently, he was working as a boss in some warehouse or restaurant in Canada, and one day he had asked his fellow workers, ("Punjabis, and others from North India, and a few from Pakistan"- which part of India made the best curry, and how does one make it. He had been working for weeks with them, and everybody used to work quietly, but that day, one guy mentioned how his town was "world-famous for its chole"; someone  countered that with a recipe from his town, and before you knew it, people stopped work, and started arguing with each other. He said that he realized in hindsight that it was a dumb question to ask. He had somehow managed to calm the situation, and learnt a lesson for life. Anyway, life in Canada was behind him, and his parting comments were, "here he was working in the tourism industry like everyone else in Playa"

It is interesting how many of the Mexicans we met had been to many cities in the US. When we mentioned we were from Oregon, they knew where that was, and would mention places they had worked in or visited in the USA.

The semiotically rich world of a 32 month old

Recently, Sonya and I were at the home of relatives, and got to spend time with a 32 month old child. The last time, we had visited she was 24 months old and did not speak a lot. It was amazing to see the change in her in the intervening 8 months. More so because, in the interim, Sonya and I were in Guatemala and Mexico, and trying to improve our Spanish, and had just finished our CELTA (to learn how to primarily teach ESL, English as a Second Language, to adults).

In San Pedro La Laguna, my Spanish improved a lot, courtesy the excellent teacher I had at Casa Rosario, and also because I was practicing it with the people around me. I was absorbing new words in context, and they were sticking to my brain, and not trying to memorize vocabulary flash cards. While doing the CELTA, I also learnt that it may not always be the best to give a definition for a word that a student does not know. Instead try to explain the context, and perhaps give a synonym if that fails. And in a 2 hour class introduce no more than 7 (plus minus two, I may add :-) new words. When analyzing this, I realized that the same had been happening to me in Guatemala.

During the visit, I noticed that the same things were happening with the 32 month old. She was in a supportive environment where the adults around her were supportive and attentive to her needs. Her vocabulary encompassed objects like tow-trucks, colours, giraffes and bio-luminescence, and her word order for sentences was impeccable- not something I can say for my Spanish.

One morning, feeling that my lips were dry, I opened a bottle of oil in the kitchen and poured a little oil carefully on my index finger and applied it to my chapped lips. We were all there in the kitchen at point, and all the adults were having a busy conversation with each other about food- we kept interrupting each other randomly- creating a chaotic environment. The 32 month old was at our eye level as she being held on one hip by an adult. "What's he doing?" she asked. I was amazed- that the 32 month anthropologist was querying the unknown and the unfamiliar- and trying to make sense of this action. What followed was heartening, her question was answered and not ignored, "He's applying oil to his lips because they are dry."  She continued her querying, "What's applying?". The adult followed it by mimicking what I had done- explanation in context without a definition- a CELTA trainee would be proud of such a response.

These "What's ...." questions were plentiful during our stay. When playing with a giraffe, one adult tossed in Africa and savannah, unfamiliar words whose meanings were teased out of the adults. Similarly, the meaning of the word, "spiky", was unearthed by this skillful anthropologist, in the context of the Chritmas tree in the living room. She was absorbing a few words daily in context as a participant observer- which is the ideal way of acculturating oneself to a foreign culture.

I had Lego blocks as a child, or to be more precise, a brand called PEGO, a knock-off version in India for I was extremely lucky to be born in a middle-class family. I had mostly constructed cars and planes out of them- which I have now realized were a stunted version of the possibilities.

The 32 month old was adept at plying the adults to build the structures in the guidebook that came with the Lego set. However, what really amazed me was that she started putting blocks together one morning and started with a block that curved up. She queried what it was and was told that it was a part of a shoe. She attached a cuboid to it of colour, and attached cuboid, all the while repeating to herself the colour she was attaching, pink, green, blue or red. I was wondering, if she was going to put blocks of the same colour together, as I had been doing and build a tall tower- but it turned out that I did not have a fertile imagination. When the structure was 7 (plus minus two) blocks long, she was queried what it was and she replied simply, "Caterpillar".

Of course, I as an adult, was stuck in the rut of building towers and cars out of Legos, anything else was outside the purview of my religious faith, other adults might complete the prescribed projects in the guidebook that came with the Lego set, but in her mind the blocks were teeming with endless possibilites.

She proceeded to place a white, cream and gray block, and finally a car, next to the caterpillar- not unpurposefully. They were for snow, milk, sugar, honey and a car- which were deemed by her to be natural objects in the world of a caterpillar.

Abstract art is child's play

She was a wizard at transforming objects, she made a slide of the paper-guide, a ladder out of a fence, eggs out of plastic balls, and a real slide out of sofa-cushions during our stay. She had made a blanket out a yoga-mat which she was using to put to bed two of her bears. These dolls were special in that they sang out when you pressed their belly or chest, while a hidden lever moved their lips to make them form an "O". Sonya and I were first fascinated with these dolls, and initially pressed them randomly to make them emit sounds. Soon, Sonya was pressing them simultaneously to see if they could sing in harmony. 10 minutes later, the dolls were placed by the 32 month old a convenient level of the sofa cushion, and their chests pressed by the palms of her two hands - a scientific undertaking to repeat the stumbled upon discovery of the possibility of a simultaneous sound output from these two units.

And her imagination extended to situations where there were no real objects. Sonya was tired one morning from playing with her, and was lying on the floor. She wondered out aloud, "Why she sleeping? It's good morning time". Sonya had seen her play with tiny cups and saucers and run a tiny coffee shop. She wondered out aloud if she could be given tea to wake her up. The cups and saucers were packed away at an unknown location, but this did not hinder her from pouring out an imaginary teapot into Sonya's cup.

And not for her the boring linear "goal-oriented" pursuit of adults. Where is the joy in that? A walk is simply not a walk to burn calories and get tired and sleep. It is filled with the infinite possibilities of exploring the cracks on the sidewalk, the stones along the way, hopping if you feel like it- an adventure that does not get stuck in the rut of repetition.

If only we could continue seeing the endless possibilities in all objects, like we did as children, we could continue to live in a timeless magical world.