Using Your Imagination

First, let me answer the obvious questions. You must be asking yourself, “Hmm, I wonder if Clay has been on Mexican television yet?” It also may have crossed your mind, “Man, wouldn’t it be cool if Clay lived with a convicted felon?” The answers, respectively, are yes and no. Yes, today I was on Channel 12 and no, it’s not cool to live with a felon, but, don’t worry, it’s (hopefully) only for a few more days. Yesterday we rode a bus with about 20 kids from Tamaula to León, the biggest city in the state of Guanajuato. León will play host to the World Youth Conference in August and yesterday was the Pre-Conference to select the 20 kids that will represent Guanajuato in the fall. Unfortunately, our kids weren’t able to present their proposals (which were about how they were going to solve the Millennium Development Goals) because someone forgot to sign them up. This same person was a judge in the competition. Right, we haven’t figured it out either. Despite this disappointment, I have to hope the kids enjoyed being in the city, seeing a lot of different people, eating free food, and playing different games (like riding a mechanical bull). I’ll be honest; it’s surprising that I ended up on TV. The two other American girls and I left the conference to explore León and didn’t come back until there was free food much later in the day. But there I was. Beaming on channel 12. Do I mind if you think of me as an international TV star now? No, I don’t really mind.

(I skip down to the next paragraph knowing that my mom’s heart is still beating fast waiting to learn why the convicted felon isn’t going to felonize me.)

So, I’m learning something about how Mexican vacations work. First, I’ll throw out the reminder that I live in a 5-bedroom house with 8 other people including one baby  and one pregnant woman. This past Tuesday I came home from watching a movie with the kids to the welcome sight of 8 new friends! I assumed they’d be leaving that night. I still hoped they were leaving when I went to bed Wednesday night. By Thursday night, I learned they were planning on staying about a week and I decided I should start treating them more like real people and to try and start remembering some names. Still haven’t mastered the names but I would say we’ve created more of a bond. Yes, I still sleep in a room by myself and no, I have very little inkling of where everyone else is sleeping. I was having lunch today with Caroline (fellow UNC student) and assorted members of the two families. The dad of the other family (who is never out of his US Army uniform) happily and quickly informed Caroline about his three felonies in the US. They were for drunkenness, a fight, and something else—something that definitely wasn’t killing somebody. That I would remember. I don’t know why people want talk about this so casually. I can’t speak for Mexicans or Hispanics at all, just for the men I’ve talked to here in Tamaula, but I haven’t heard a story about any man who went to the United States and was proud about staying sober. My action plan—support immigration policy that encourages men to travel with their wives. It might be less fun but I feel like everyone will be better behaved.

The Important Stuff

I spend most of my time talking to people about using and getting water, possibilities for the future of water in Tamaula, and how water affects their daily lives. The situation is more complex than I would have imagined for a town of 218 people and I learn more every day. The goal of these formal and informal interviews and other research activities is to produce a report in English and Spanish by the time I leave in 19 (!!!) days. In the report I want to lay out short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals for improving access to, cleanliness of, and sustainability of water in Tamaula. My hope is that the Fundación Comunitaria del Bajío, Choice Humanitarian, and the Karen May Foundation, along with other groups, can use the report to ask people for money, create funding priorities, and generally make peoples’ daily lives better.

I’m blessed to be living and working with Caroline Wood, another UNC student-researcher, who is focusing on the intersection between migration and development. More than I would have expected our research is overlapping. She’s conducting a census for the town and included some questions about water storage capacity and whether or not families have a cistern. We’re also both very interested in land rights and how that whole system works. One of the options moving forward here, if the new well doesn’t replenish itself fast enough, is to buy some land on the other side of the mountain and pump some water from there. She also has a lot of conversations with people here and learns a lot of local gossip, etc. about water that she’s nice enough to share with me. I occasionally get the goods on someone’s migration story and can serve as an extra pair of eyes and ears for her. Hopefully I’m returning the favor.

Knowing what I do now about doing my research, I have found one thing that is most important. I’m bringing a different perspective, an outsider’s perspective, to the situation here. I can rely on this but if I want to imagine how things can be it’s really important to use my imagination to picture what can be.

It’s equally useful to try and figure out how 17 people are fitting inside this one house.