Arrazola, Alebrijes and Community

After arriving by bus on Monday morning, we found ourselves in Arrazola - a town famous for their vivacious wooden sculptures of whimsical creatures. The bustle of Oaxaca city can be overwhelming with buses, vendors and crowded streets, so we were eager to get away for a bit and go somewhere with a sense of community.  Shortly after our arrival, we split up into our respective homestays. While difficult at first to coexist without our usual roommate crutch, it proved to be very rewarding. Each of us got to know a distinctively different family.  Some had painfully adorable children frolicking around,

Caleb working out with his little brother

and others had a family dynamic refreshingly different from the city.  “In my family, everyone worked together as one single unit, with virtually no gender roles. My host father said that his father strongly believed in machismo, and he decided that he wanted to be nothing like that. Staying with this family was a breath of fresh air; they had so much love” (Carter Lincoln). In another family, the mom shared deep and personal stories about her and her loved ones.  “We spoke about immigration, and the dangers of illegal border crossing; all over a cup of chocolate caliente” (Julia Helms). Without technology at our fingertips, we were readily available to converse with our parents and learn so much from their experiences.

After spending time getting to know our families, we began learning about the community’s eco-alebrijes project. The principal economy in Arrazola is the making and selling of these sculptures.  We worked with the eco-alebrijes initiative; a sustainable plan that constitutes the goals of the community. Oh, and also we got to plow an amaranth field with some bulls.

Copal and amaranth trees are harvested for the use of their wood in the production of the alebrijes, and a group of artists have begun to replenish the populations of these trees by participating in reforestation projects. “It was really a progressive take on sustainability. The most inspiring part was that the trees weren’t being planted for the village to use; they were simply being produced by townspeople as a reaction to their own consumption.” (Bianca Rizzio).

This idea of sustainability is also reflected in the education system, which we saw later in the week when we worked in the school.

It was awesome to be overwhelmed with adorableness, while speaking Spanish to those more realistically at our level (i.e., kindergarteners).  We spent our time at the school helping out with their sustainability project.  They're doing a recycling project that reuses waste, such as soda bottles, to plant vegetables and make watering cans. The kids are encouraged to care for the Earth by picking up trash on the streets, which is how we got all of the materials to create recycled products.

Our week ended with a meal together with our new families.  It was then that we truly saw that, be it through blood or not, everyone in Arrazola was connected. “We noticed that much of the functioning of the community relies on the idea that work and play and every day life are shared concepts.  When someone needs help, there is an assumption that someone in the town will care for them” (Sam Wright). With five out of seven of our group members growing up in Vermont, many of us were back at home in this rural environment. “The community bond combined with the small town feel of Arrazola, reminded some of us of [home]” (Shawn Dunwoody). “I found this way of life to be very relaxing and reminded me much of small communities in Vermont where the town is like a single entity” (Caleb Brown).  When painfully parting ways with Arrazola, every single one of us mentioned appreciating the same thing – the sense of community.