The Vilisar Times

BACK AT RANCHO EL NOGAL FROM CHIHUAHUA; MAKING CONTACT (OR NOT) WITH MENNONITES IN CUAUHTÉMOC; SOME CASUAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LIFE IN MEXICO; HURRICANE OTIS
Friday, 30 September 2005

Finally arrived back at Rancho el Nogal about mid-morning today. It was late in the day before we could leave Chihuahua. With four adults and two little girls in the front two rows of seats, I jumped into the back of the open pickup, found some soft things to lie on, and enjoyed the fabulous scenery in the run up to the Tarahumara Mountains and the ranch. As the sun went down and wearing only shorts and a light summer shirt, I began to feel cold. At the first pit stop we dug around to find a sleeping bag and a fleece skiing toque. After that I was comfy and warm and watched the sky fill up with stars, the Milky Way gain in intensity, and an electrical storm show off way down and below our altitude to the south near the Sea of Cortés.

Chihuahua lies at an altitude of about 1700 metres; Cuauhtémoc, about 100 Km farther east on Highway #16, is about 400 metres higher and therefore at about the same height as the ranch itself. You are aware that you are steadily climbing from Chihuahua to Cuauhtémoc; there is this wonderful moment when you somehow come out of various valleys and highway cuts suddenly onto a broad open grassy prairie and you realise with a sigh of instinctive that you are, at last, OUT OF THE CITY! Your gaze is immediately drawn to the far distance. Where the four-lane motorway coasts along the side of a hill and you can look far across and down into the valley, everything looks green and lush in the afternoon sun. Typical daytime temperatures around Chihuahua and Cuauhtémoc are in the mid to high seventies (Fahrenheit; approx. mid-20’s Celsius) and the skies are clear with only puffy white clouds hanging around purely for decoration. The wind is quite tolerable even in the open truck, at least as long as the sun is shining. The air is pure and clean. The view is fantastic.

Making contact (or not) with Mennonites in Cuauhtémoc

Ninety minutes later we arrive in Cuauhtémoc. Bob and Cindy have a little flat that they rent for when they have to be in town. While the other passengers wait at the flat, I take a drive out to “The Mennonites” to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, in ten miles of driving I only find two places selling fruits and veggies; one is really just a small country grocery store; and, the other, depending upon your point of view, is either a large Fruttería or a small supermarket. The former is triste and expensive and the second is just expensive. The larger one did have locally grown apples but the general food store only has Washington State red “Delicious” apples. I reckoned that there would be lots of local apples; that was my first illusion gone.

But I did have a chance to see some of the Mennonite territory. The road is as straight as in Manitoba, whence many Mennonites came starting back in the 1920’s when the Manitoba School Act forbade teaching in any language except English (the Act was actually aimed at French Canadians by bigoted Orangemen from Ontario but German schools got caught in the machinery as well). Also, in World War I, conscription had been introduced in Canada for the battlefields of France, the memory of which was still fresh in Mennonite minds. Mennonites are pacifists.

At Penner’s Frutteria there are a couple of older gents talking with the young man behind the cash register. The older men are uniformly dressed in bluejeans bib-overalls, white Mexican Stetsons, work boots and long-sleeved shirts. The farm clothing looks as if it has never been worn before so I guess this is their go-to-town clothing. During the day I am to see Mennonite women as well whereby the very elderly amongst them wear dark blue conservative dresses with a Babushka (never a hat) over their heads and the young girls, with one exception, wear modern hip-hugger jeans, blouses exposing their midriffs, and tennis sneakers.

I try talking to them all in Hochdeutsch but get only uncomprehending stares in return. The young man speaks only Plattdeutsch (Low German, sometimes referred hereabouts as Plautdeutsch) and Spanish. The older guys speak no Hochdeutsch and hardly any English. Another illusion gone.

While I am sitting in the car outside later eating my (very boring Washington) apple, a very blond man in his early twenties sticks his head through the passenger window and asks me where I am from. The car has South Dakota plates on it and is therefore of interest. He has been up to Manitoba to visit family. Every one speaks Plattdeutsch around here as the first language, he tells me, and Spanish or English as the second or third language. Often teenagers are sent up to Canada or the U.S.A. to learn English (and perhaps to find a wife too).

Spaced all along this long straight road are farm-implement dealers, metalworking shops, irrigation companies, car dealers, and a myriad of other farming and rural services. Interspersed amongst the industrial buildings are single-family dwellings. And some of them are more in the category of “trophy homes”. I see frequent billboards advertising (in Spanish) high-priced American pickup Ford, Chrysler, or Chevrolet trucks with 8-cylinder engines). Cuauhtémoc must be a very prosperous town indeed since I never see this kind of advertising elsewhere in Mexico.

The signs along the road remind me of my own youth in the Niagara Peninsula and my time as a young Canadian-Army officer in Manitoba; both areas have strong Mennonite communities. On the signs are familiar names like Penner, Pendergast, Prendergast, Dyck, Schmidt, Schmitt, Manitoba, Canada, etc.

At lunchtime I stop at a steakhouse for lunch. The parking lot is full of expensive vehicles, half of them big pickup trucks, all of them spotlessly clean. Inside the restaurant I note the same high standard of cleanliness and efficiency and the same lack of style and flair as any good restaurant in Manitoba or Nebraska. The flatter the land, the less the flair, perhaps. The hamburger is clean and well-engineered and otherwise unremarkable. There was no apple pie; only pecan. So, what do they do with the apples around here? Half of the clientele appears to be Mexican men, the other half Mennonite couples or families. The waitresses, teenagers, speak only English and Spanish. No Hochdeutsch and no Plattdeutsch. One teenage waitress told me she learned English in Kansas.

It is an interesting drive. I stop at the big Frutteria and stock up for the ranch. When I go to the big Soriana supermarket, a leading food retailing chain in Mexico, for some other things later I find that fresh produce is cheaper and better here then at the big fruit store surrounded by farm land. A third illusion gone.

Darkness hits us on the road, me in the back of the pickup. Since Bob, the ranchero, has been unable to get the 4-wheel drive repaired in Chihuahua over the past week, we drive only as far as Yepachic, where the unpaved roads into the ranch begin. While Bob and I find accommodation at the two-room-inn called Lucy’s, Simon and the others put up with relatives in the primarily Indian village. THE town is off the electricity grid and the houses are all dark when we arrive about 2100. Raoul, the innkeeper, opens the door to us and shows us to one of the spotlessly clean rooms. It is totally dark outside and very quiet except when a huge 18-wheel juggernaut goes through on the mountain highway, splitting the silence like a lion’s roar. It is still dark when the cocks in the village begin to crow and a lone donkey or mule begins to heehaw, sound directly from Hades.

Some casual observations about Mexico after spending a week in Chihuahua

A week in a bustling Mexican provincial city (pop. approx. 1,000,000) permits me the following superficial observations:

1. As a rule Mexican women wear their medium or long hair pulled back from the forehead and tied in a bun or ponytail. They do not generally wear permanently-waved hair or bangs and consequently you get a good view of their faces.
2. The women here often tattoo eyebrows; however, this and other facial tattooing (lips, eyelids, etc.) are far more common in Los Angeles than here.
3. Mexican women are very fashion conscious. But everybody seems to be wearing only hip-hugger jeans and short, belly-exposing blouses. No matter what the clothing, high-heeled (even extra-high-heeled) shoes are very common. Skirts are not as usual as trousers. At least half and maybe more of the women I saw dressed in this fashion should consider something more flattering.
4. In public Mexicans are quiet and well-behaved. You very seldom see anyone smoking in the street. In fact, smoking anywhere is not so common. You certainly do not see people swigging from water bottles, pop bottles or cans and alcohol.
5. Chihuahua is the market town and state capital for a large ranching state (Chihuahua is Mexico’s largest state). You really notice this downtown where we stay; there is street after street of cowboy-boot stores (mainly flash alligator or snake skins tinted in wild colours), cowboy-hat stores, saddle and harness shops, farming pharmacies, etc. And you see lots of rural people or recently-rural people, mainly men, in white Stetsons, colourful cowboy boots, wide belts with flashy buckles, and of course blue jeans. Out in the suburbs where the Big Boxes live, you also see cowboys or drugstore cowboys although you see many other types of people too. The city cowboys wear cellphones too.
6. There are a lot of sexy lingerie shops, no doubt to balance the plethora of cowboy apparel shops.
7. Rural Mexican men, at least, don’t wear underwear under their jeans. Don’t ask me how I know. Poorer cowboys sleep in their clothes.
8. A variety of housing materials is used for housing: adobe and plaster for the cheaper and older houses; concrete block and plaster for the next up; and, red brick for the top people with more or less ornamentation added. Rooves are normally slightly canted around here (they do have a rainy season) and consist mainly of corrugated iron sheets fastened to wooden beams. I don’t count the huge trophy houses of bygone eras or the gaudy trophy houses of the newly rich.
9. At the mall and along the periphery highway you will find all the same boring retail enterprises you find in the U.S.A., Canada and Europe led of course by Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, KFC, McDonald’s, Cineplex, etc., etc. The interior and the exterior of the main mall are indistinguishable from their brethren in every other country. Meanwhile, the downtown is emptying and crumbling.
10. Mexicans around here are polite drivers.

Hurricane Otis

Hurricane Otis, recently upgraded from a Tropical Storm, is headed this weekend toward Baja California with winds of 65 mph and gusts of about 85 mph. I need to contact Alex in Guaymas and ask him what he is doing and would he please check Vilisar’s mooring lines and especially the chaffing gear.

posted by rjb,
6:08 pm

<$BlogRSDURL$>

		News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
For more pictures of Ron and Kathy Bird and the Vilisar, see these beautiful photos by Albert Pang Click here to e-mail Ron Click here to e-mail Kathy Archives January 2004 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 Vilisar Translation Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty. SachverstÃ¤ndige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; GeschÃ¤ft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.	Saturday, October 01, 2005 BACK AT RANCHO EL NOGAL FROM CHIHUAHUA; MAKING CONTACT (OR NOT) WITH MENNONITES IN CUAUHTÉMOC; SOME CASUAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LIFE IN MEXICO; HURRICANE OTIS Friday, 30 September 2005 Finally arrived back at Rancho el Nogal about mid-morning today. It was late in the day before we could leave Chihuahua. With four adults and two little girls in the front two rows of seats, I jumped into the back of the open pickup, found some soft things to lie on, and enjoyed the fabulous scenery in the run up to the Tarahumara Mountains and the ranch. As the sun went down and wearing only shorts and a light summer shirt, I began to feel cold. At the first pit stop we dug around to find a sleeping bag and a fleece skiing toque. After that I was comfy and warm and watched the sky fill up with stars, the Milky Way gain in intensity, and an electrical storm show off way down and below our altitude to the south near the Sea of Cortés. Chihuahua lies at an altitude of about 1700 metres; Cuauhtémoc, about 100 Km farther east on Highway #16, is about 400 metres higher and therefore at about the same height as the ranch itself. You are aware that you are steadily climbing from Chihuahua to Cuauhtémoc; there is this wonderful moment when you somehow come out of various valleys and highway cuts suddenly onto a broad open grassy prairie and you realise with a sigh of instinctive that you are, at last, OUT OF THE CITY! Your gaze is immediately drawn to the far distance. Where the four-lane motorway coasts along the side of a hill and you can look far across and down into the valley, everything looks green and lush in the afternoon sun. Typical daytime temperatures around Chihuahua and Cuauhtémoc are in the mid to high seventies (Fahrenheit; approx. mid-20’s Celsius) and the skies are clear with only puffy white clouds hanging around purely for decoration. The wind is quite tolerable even in the open truck, at least as long as the sun is shining. The air is pure and clean. The view is fantastic. Making contact (or not) with Mennonites in Cuauhtémoc Ninety minutes later we arrive in Cuauhtémoc. Bob and Cindy have a little flat that they rent for when they have to be in town. While the other passengers wait at the flat, I take a drive out to “The Mennonites” to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, in ten miles of driving I only find two places selling fruits and veggies; one is really just a small country grocery store; and, the other, depending upon your point of view, is either a large Fruttería or a small supermarket. The former is triste and expensive and the second is just expensive. The larger one did have locally grown apples but the general food store only has Washington State red “Delicious” apples. I reckoned that there would be lots of local apples; that was my first illusion gone. But I did have a chance to see some of the Mennonite territory. The road is as straight as in Manitoba, whence many Mennonites came starting back in the 1920’s when the Manitoba School Act forbade teaching in any language except English (the Act was actually aimed at French Canadians by bigoted Orangemen from Ontario but German schools got caught in the machinery as well). Also, in World War I, conscription had been introduced in Canada for the battlefields of France, the memory of which was still fresh in Mennonite minds. Mennonites are pacifists. At Penner’s Frutteria there are a couple of older gents talking with the young man behind the cash register. The older men are uniformly dressed in bluejeans bib-overalls, white Mexican Stetsons, work boots and long-sleeved shirts. The farm clothing looks as if it has never been worn before so I guess this is their go-to-town clothing. During the day I am to see Mennonite women as well whereby the very elderly amongst them wear dark blue conservative dresses with a Babushka (never a hat) over their heads and the young girls, with one exception, wear modern hip-hugger jeans, blouses exposing their midriffs, and tennis sneakers. I try talking to them all in Hochdeutsch but get only uncomprehending stares in return. The young man speaks only Plattdeutsch (Low German, sometimes referred hereabouts as Plautdeutsch) and Spanish. The older guys speak no Hochdeutsch and hardly any English. Another illusion gone. While I am sitting in the car outside later eating my (very boring Washington) apple, a very blond man in his early twenties sticks his head through the passenger window and asks me where I am from. The car has South Dakota plates on it and is therefore of interest. He has been up to Manitoba to visit family. Every one speaks Plattdeutsch around here as the first language, he tells me, and Spanish or English as the second or third language. Often teenagers are sent up to Canada or the U.S.A. to learn English (and perhaps to find a wife too). Spaced all along this long straight road are farm-implement dealers, metalworking shops, irrigation companies, car dealers, and a myriad of other farming and rural services. Interspersed amongst the industrial buildings are single-family dwellings. And some of them are more in the category of “trophy homes”. I see frequent billboards advertising (in Spanish) high-priced American pickup Ford, Chrysler, or Chevrolet trucks with 8-cylinder engines). Cuauhtémoc must be a very prosperous town indeed since I never see this kind of advertising elsewhere in Mexico. The signs along the road remind me of my own youth in the Niagara Peninsula and my time as a young Canadian-Army officer in Manitoba; both areas have strong Mennonite communities. On the signs are familiar names like Penner, Pendergast, Prendergast, Dyck, Schmidt, Schmitt, Manitoba, Canada, etc. At lunchtime I stop at a steakhouse for lunch. The parking lot is full of expensive vehicles, half of them big pickup trucks, all of them spotlessly clean. Inside the restaurant I note the same high standard of cleanliness and efficiency and the same lack of style and flair as any good restaurant in Manitoba or Nebraska. The flatter the land, the less the flair, perhaps. The hamburger is clean and well-engineered and otherwise unremarkable. There was no apple pie; only pecan. So, what do they do with the apples around here? Half of the clientele appears to be Mexican men, the other half Mennonite couples or families. The waitresses, teenagers, speak only English and Spanish. No Hochdeutsch and no Plattdeutsch. One teenage waitress told me she learned English in Kansas. It is an interesting drive. I stop at the big Frutteria and stock up for the ranch. When I go to the big Soriana supermarket, a leading food retailing chain in Mexico, for some other things later I find that fresh produce is cheaper and better here then at the big fruit store surrounded by farm land. A third illusion gone. Darkness hits us on the road, me in the back of the pickup. Since Bob, the ranchero, has been unable to get the 4-wheel drive repaired in Chihuahua over the past week, we drive only as far as Yepachic, where the unpaved roads into the ranch begin. While Bob and I find accommodation at the two-room-inn called Lucy’s, Simon and the others put up with relatives in the primarily Indian village. THE town is off the electricity grid and the houses are all dark when we arrive about 2100. Raoul, the innkeeper, opens the door to us and shows us to one of the spotlessly clean rooms. It is totally dark outside and very quiet except when a huge 18-wheel juggernaut goes through on the mountain highway, splitting the silence like a lion’s roar. It is still dark when the cocks in the village begin to crow and a lone donkey or mule begins to heehaw, sound directly from Hades. Some casual observations about Mexico after spending a week in Chihuahua A week in a bustling Mexican provincial city (pop. approx. 1,000,000) permits me the following superficial observations: 1. As a rule Mexican women wear their medium or long hair pulled back from the forehead and tied in a bun or ponytail. They do not generally wear permanently-waved hair or bangs and consequently you get a good view of their faces. 2. The women here often tattoo eyebrows; however, this and other facial tattooing (lips, eyelids, etc.) are far more common in Los Angeles than here. 3. Mexican women are very fashion conscious. But everybody seems to be wearing only hip-hugger jeans and short, belly-exposing blouses. No matter what the clothing, high-heeled (even extra-high-heeled) shoes are very common. Skirts are not as usual as trousers. At least half and maybe more of the women I saw dressed in this fashion should consider something more flattering. 4. In public Mexicans are quiet and well-behaved. You very seldom see anyone smoking in the street. In fact, smoking anywhere is not so common. You certainly do not see people swigging from water bottles, pop bottles or cans and alcohol. 5. Chihuahua is the market town and state capital for a large ranching state (Chihuahua is Mexico’s largest state). You really notice this downtown where we stay; there is street after street of cowboy-boot stores (mainly flash alligator or snake skins tinted in wild colours), cowboy-hat stores, saddle and harness shops, farming pharmacies, etc. And you see lots of rural people or recently-rural people, mainly men, in white Stetsons, colourful cowboy boots, wide belts with flashy buckles, and of course blue jeans. Out in the suburbs where the Big Boxes live, you also see cowboys or drugstore cowboys although you see many other types of people too. The city cowboys wear cellphones too. 6. There are a lot of sexy lingerie shops, no doubt to balance the plethora of cowboy apparel shops. 7. Rural Mexican men, at least, don’t wear underwear under their jeans. Don’t ask me how I know. Poorer cowboys sleep in their clothes. 8. A variety of housing materials is used for housing: adobe and plaster for the cheaper and older houses; concrete block and plaster for the next up; and, red brick for the top people with more or less ornamentation added. Rooves are normally slightly canted around here (they do have a rainy season) and consist mainly of corrugated iron sheets fastened to wooden beams. I don’t count the huge trophy houses of bygone eras or the gaudy trophy houses of the newly rich. 9. At the mall and along the periphery highway you will find all the same boring retail enterprises you find in the U.S.A., Canada and Europe led of course by Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, KFC, McDonald’s, Cineplex, etc., etc. The interior and the exterior of the main mall are indistinguishable from their brethren in every other country. Meanwhile, the downtown is emptying and crumbling. 10. Mexicans around here are polite drivers. Hurricane Otis Hurricane Otis, recently upgraded from a Tropical Storm, is headed this weekend toward Baja California with winds of 65 mph and gusts of about 85 mph. I need to contact Alex in Guaymas and ask him what he is doing and would he please check Vilisar’s mooring lines and especially the chaffing gear. posted by *rjb,* *6:08 pm* Comments: Post a Comment
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