Maize

Maize is synonymous with Mexico. The Mexicans call it maiz, and it’s colloquially known as corn in the United States. Maize is the base of the Mexican diet. Mexicans use it to make tortillas, or thin cakes made of corn flour. To make tortillas, you soak and dry the maize kernels in lime juice and water, remove the skin, then stone grind the kernels into masa, which is the paste that forms tortillas

Tortillas are in turn the base for antojitos, which are like Spanish tapas, and are small plates of food. Tortillas are used to make tacos, flautas (tortillas tightly wrapped around chicken and fried with lettuce and cream), enchiladas, quesadillas, chilaquiles (fried tortilla chips in a spicy tomato sauce), tostadas (fried tortillas spread with refried beans and topped with anything). Tostadas are particularly popular in Sahuayo. They’re more like crackers than tortillas. Sopa de Tortilla is soup with tortilla strips. Mexicans even produce niquatole, which is a maize gelatin, or tejate, a drink made by marinating maize flour, mamey pits, white cacao beans in water and then sweetening it.

The tortorillia on my street, Insurgentes, produces over 800 tortillas per day. Buckets of masa sit on the floor, ready to be smashed into tortillas. The maize comes in bags, and leaves as a flat tortilla. The masa feels like mud.

Maize has been cultivated in Mexico for six thousand years. It was depicted in Olmec Art. According to the Mayan bible, Popul Vuh, humans were created from maize. Even today, people in the Oaxaca state call themselves hombres de maiz, or men of maize. Maize is more than a staple ingredient; it’s a form of identity. Today there are 340,000 farms that grow it in Oaxaca, in the Tehuacan Valley. This valley is known as the “waist” of Mexico because it’s the most narrow part of Mexico at 160 km (100 miles). Maize is usually not grown in large expanses of fields like it is in the American Midwest. Instead, farmers have retained the ancient growing pattern known as the milpa. A milpa grows crops in a way that they would grow in nature. Maize is grown next to squash, melons, beans squash chilies, yams, jicama, amaranth, and other staples, because they complement each other nutritionally. Neither contains all essential amino acids. But beans and maize combined would make a complete meal. For example, eating maize alone over time would lead to pellagra, a disease caused by a deficiency in niacin, an amino acid not found in Maize.

Not only is maize grown on thousands of farms, but the hundreds of varieties mean that each one is associated with a particular region, town, or even farm. Americans typically think of corn as sweet yellow corn. But in Mexico maize comes in different shapes, colors, and flavors. The reason for this is that maize openly pollinates, and farmers constantly sift through the different seeds to produce the myriad varieties.

Maize is as baffling as it is delicious. Kernels are wrapped inside a husk, so it cannot reproduce itself. Humans have to do that job for it. Botanists have never found an ancient ancestor to modern maize. The only similar grain is teosinte, which doesn’t look like maize and is not an efficient food source. Grains in most wild grasses form near the top of the stem, and then shatter. Mutations in wheat blocked this shattering, and allowed humans to cultivate it. There is no known form of non-shattering teosinte. Botanists, then, are not sure how Indians evolved a form of maize that doesn’t shatter.

Maize could have been combined with Zea diploperennis, a relative, or Eastern gamagrass. What’s more likely is that breeders thousands of years ago searched through teosinte stands for plants with desired traits. Indian breeders looked for the teosinte plants with the right mutations that would produce a non-shattering grain.

However they produced modern maize, today it's an integral part of Mexican life, and its spread throughout the world has fed millions.
Kevin

Welcome to Sahuayo

The town of Sahuayo is 10 miles south of Lake Chapalan, which is the largest freshwater lake in Mexico. Unfortunately, industrial pollution from Gaudalajara, the second biggest city in Mexico, has heavily polluted it with industrial waste. Gaudalajara is on the other side of the lake. Sahuayo has 60,000 people but two universities. So it’s like a Mexican college town. I saw plenty of young peeple walking around on the first night. Ricardo told me he loved all the “muchachas” here. Part of the city is built on a hill. At the top, it abruptly ends. There is no sprawl. Coming into town, visitors are greeted with McDonald’s, several car dealerships, auto repair shops, and a huge bodega (grocery store). It looks like one of those ugly towns along America’s interstates. The main highway bifurcates the city. The east side is very ritzy, with plenty of posh homes with gates, and an army of workers tending their gardens. The west side is where the central plaza, and the main cathedral is. It’s the city’s tallest building and it’s clearly visible frum the south of the city. If you want to know what Sahuayo feels like, without actually coming here, then I suggest you walk through an Hispanic quarter of a city. Powerlines hang above the streets and the buildings aren’t as well-maintained. It’s certainly not elegant, but not dilapidated. For entertainment the people like to sit in front of their homes or shops and tell stories. During the day, they like to congregate at the marketplace or at the central plaza. My apartment is on a Insurgentes St. It’s two blocks south of the main plaza. Restaurants, street vendors and a couple pharmacies surround the plaza. Just south of the plaza is the marketplace. This is where I found all the produce that I need during the week. There’s no shortage of melons such as cantaloupe, watermelon, and papayas. The traditional staples such as oranges, apples, and peaches, are at almost every stand. Some vendors sell dry beans, spices, candy, or baked goods. There wasn’t much meat at the market, other then shrimp and full chickens. It truly feels like an old world market. The vendors start talking as soon as you stand for a moment in front of their booth. They weigh the food and then tell you how much. Prices are elastic. If you don’t have as much as they want, they usually give you the food anyway. Either they’re very nice, or they give you an initial higher price. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.The whole city shuts down at 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, at least on weekends. I wanted to buy strawberries (16 pesos per kilogram), but it was 3:30, and the vendors had had enough. I noticed that most of the other stores had closed as well. I could only go to the local pharmacy to find anything. The joyerias (jewelry stores), zapaterias (shoe stores), and ferreterias (hardware stores), had all closed. The only noises in the city were the motorcycles. People get around mainly by walking but a lot of people own mopeds. They don’t bother to wear helmets, or stop for pedestrians. This is bad because they are sacrificing safety. This is good because it shows peeple know what’s best for themselves and know what’s a reasonable risk. As long as people understand the rules, nobody cares. The streets are usually one way and narrow. Old vans take people to where they need to go. Vendors sometimes ride a bike with a carriage attached to the back to sell their goods. Some men walk around with bread (pan) in their baskets. My room mate Erika and my head teacher, Cecilia, both told me this area was safe. I believe them now. While I’m still hesitant to walk down some streets, for the most part I don’t have to worry. At least no more than in Washington, D.C.

Arriving in Sahuayo

Travel Day
From the time I woke up to the time I got to my apartment in Sahuayo, I had been traveling for 18 hours. Getting to Sahuayo required two plane rides, two bus rides and a taxi trip at the end. Clearly, Sahuayo isn’t exactly the most popular destination spot in Mexico. I couldn’t see much the first day. Everything was dark and I wasn’t sure when I had arrived. I wus eager to see my new home for the next five months. I’m glad it wasn’t any of the previous stops, which were not great places even by Mexico’s standards. When I arrived at the bus station in Sahuayo, Ricardo, the coordinator for my school, CulturLingua, somehow recognized me and said my name. I was amazed. Could it have been that I was the only young man with a backpack at a bus station in Sahuayo on a Friday night? Ricardo took me to my new apartment in downtown. We had to carry my 75-pound suitcase up three flights of stairs. I met my roommates, Erika and Kris. Erika is 20-years-old and from South Africa, while Kris is 24-years-old and from Ohio. Erika is the veteran; she’s been here for an entire two months. Kris has been here for only a couple weeks. Another teacher was at the apartment, and he had just arrived earlier this week. While they drank beer and told disgusting stories, I unpacked my life and looked forward to the rest. The photo is my room. It has two beds, but no desk and no dresser. Storage is a problem. The second photo is the living room. The place is spacious, but too much for me. I actually prefered the little room I had in San Francisco.

San Francisco Honors Bush

A California group and the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wants to switch the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. The group submitted the proposal this week. Although sewers are essential to any functional city, most people don't want to think about sewers, much less what's in them. Proponents figure that since a sewage treatment plant is designed to clean up messes, and Bush has left sucha big mess, it only makes since. Another resident put it nicely on the local news: "I think sewers are representative of George Bush's thinking." The head of the group said, "We think that it's important to remember our leaders in the right historical context."

Proponents might have it all wrong. As disgusting as they are, sewage treatment plants provide enormous benefits. They prevent all the waste the city accumulates from going into the bay. The city would be an environmental disaster without sewers.

Will the measure pass? It will cost $50,000 to change the name. The Public Utilities Commission said the city has bigger issues to deal with. California Republicans plan to fight the proposal. A former spokesman for the Republicans said proposals like these are why people think San Francisco is whaky (they don't think; it is). If there enough level-headed people here, the measure won't pass. But former mayor Willie Brown supports it. He might garner some support the bill.

Defaming the current president by placing his name on a sewage facility is immature and disrespectful. The group that's collecting the 7,000 signatures needed to put the proposal on the ballot in November say they already have 10,000. It's just one way that San Francisco is breaking away from the country. Farewell, SF. Hello, SD.

Kevin

How different is San Francisco?

Last week Apple released the latest edition of its I-phone. For several days there was a long line on Stockton St. It took me a couple days to realize these people had lined up to exchange thier old phone. I wasn't surprised that people would waste several hours to get a new gadget as soon as possible, but it struck me that San Francisco has more in common with other cities than we think. The city council and Gavin Newman, the mayor, want to restrict smoking even more. And the California state legislature is considering banning trans fat. Other cities have banned smoking and trans fat (New York banned trans fat last year, and Paris and London both have strong restrictions on smoking). Perhaps San Francisco is like any other American city. The only difference is that you might have to listen to someone tell you that the man on the corner is the devil. I would write more, but I need to give my spare change to the homeless man who needs money for marijuana research.

Kevin

My Place

Here is my roommate, Lizandro, and I. He's from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He came here to learn English but right now he's just working. He plans to go back and get more training in a few weeks.

I help Lizandro learn English. He's having problems learning all the phrasal verbs like "take on" and "take out" and "take up." He's learing English; I'm learning how to help others learn English. We complement each other.

I have yet to meet one other person at Vantaggio Suites that is American. I spoke with a girl who sounded American but was really from Calgary, Alberta. She's here to for ballet school. Everyone else is foreign, but they come from a broad array of countries: Mali, Japan, Turkey, Brazil, Spain, France. It's interesting.

The hostel isn't that bad. The room is nothing more than a couple bunk beds, a small refridgerator and freezer, a microwave, and a bathroom. The biggest hassle is going upstairs to use the computer and kitchen. I'll only be here for a few weeks, so I can't complain. The hostel is only a 15 minute walk from Saint Giles and about the same distance from Whole Foods.

Kevin

San Francisco

San Francisco has many positive attributes: a progressive way of life, a "green" attitude towards the environment, cool weather, Golden Gate Park, seafood, nice architecture, etc. But there are too many strange people here. There are too many homeless people standing around voluntarily. There are drug addicts on every corner. The government here only abate that behavior I'm afraid. On Sunday, homosexuals flaunted their way of life in the Gay Pride parade. I went to Crunch Gym on Van Ness and told the young woman at the front desk, "there's a strange mix of people in this neighborhood."

"No kidding," she replied.

Would I live here? Without the hobos, addicts, and people on the street, perhaps. It's still not humid or hot enough for me. Gas is $4.55 per gallon, but I wouldn't drive here anyway. Again, there's much to like about San Francisco. But after one year or so, I'd have to leave and look for that place in the world where I belong.

Kevin