Cuajimoloya

Last week we went on a three hour bus ride to a small town in the mountains called Cuajimoloya. There are only about 600 people who live there and they didn't get street lamps until 1997. It's 10,000 fas so it gets very cold at night and in the morning. All the kids there have the rosy cheeks like the kids in Tibet because it gets so cold. It is absolutely beautiful, mountains as far as the eye can see. There is one tractor for the entire town and they all share it. Alot of the people are farmers and have animals. Unlike the city, it is very quiet there except for all the animals.

We got there thursday around noon and went pretty much straight into the classrooms. We were spilt into groups of 3 and assigned a grade. I was in the grade 3 class. We did an identity art project with the kids. Zapotec is an indigenous language, but unfortunately emphasis has been placed on Spanish and not many people speak Zapotec anymore. They are trying to reintroduce Zapotec to the kids. So it was our job to ask the kids when they drew their pictures of Cuajimoloya to ask them if they knew any words in Zapotec. And tell them that we were very interested in learning the language. This made the kids excited to share the words they knew and the other kids wanted to learn words so they could share with us.

We went on a couple hikes while we were there. We went on one at night and it was amazing all the stars that you could see in the sky. It was absolutely beautiful. You could see even more stars than you see at Chilliwack lake. We went on another hike in the morning before we went to the classes again. Our guide told us about many different plants that are used for different things. Some for tooth aches, some to quite babies, they use sap to make casts. There are some catci that grow for 100 years before they get flowers and they only grow one flower a year. We saw some that had close to 30 flowers.

Cuajimoloya was an incredibly beautiful and peaceful place. We were very fortunate being able to go there. Apparently Omar (our Spanish teacher) has been working with the community for 15 years so that we students can come there and experience the culture and enter the classrooms.