I had the good fortune of spending the US Thanksgiving Holiday working with Puente a la Salud Comunitaria in a community in the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca.  It was the first time Puente had given a plactica (educational talk) in San Ildefonso Amatlan and by all accounts it was a great success.  As a result, Puente plans to work with San Ildefonso Amatlan during the 2008 calendar and I hope to place AMIGOS volunteers there for the summer as well. 

Puente Health Promoters Hitzel and Liliana and I left Oaxaca City at 6 a.m. in a Puente vocho (VW bug) filled with amaranth products, plactica materials, and kitchen utensils for the day’s visit.  The drive was beautiful—taking us through Oaxaca’s high desert filled with a variety of cacti, passed foot hills and small towns including San Antonino Castillo Velasquez (my AMIGOS community from 1998 when I was a veteran volunteer in Oaxaca).  Along the way Hitzel and Liliana and I talked about the plactica we would give to the “padres de la familia” in San Ildefonso Amatlan as well as other things like Lila Downs’ recent concert in Oaxaca City. 

When we arrived to San Ildefonso Amatlan we were met by the supervisor of Accion Comunitaria, a municipal organization that helped organize our visit.  After inviting us for coffee and pan dulce (sweet bread) at a local home, we were introduced to the Autoridades (local authorities) and taken to the large municipal meeting space where the “padres de familias” (parents of families) were arriving to work with us for the day.  Soon, everyone had been given a red baseball cap and camisa (shirt) to promote Accion Comunitaria’s current campagn of healthy eating.  After formal introductions by the Autoridades, Liliana and Hitzel began their plactica introducing Puente a la Salud Comunitaria and the use of amaranth to the community members.

Liliana and Hitzel gave a wonderful plactica which included breaking the participants up into 4 groups and drawing what they imagined an amaranth plant to look like.  The women especially seemed to really enjoy this activity and then Liliana facilitated a discussion about what nutritional properties were contained within the leaves and seeds of the amaranth plant.  The history of amaranth in Oaxaca was also given—the fact that amaranth was once a mainstay of the Oaxacan diet before the Spanish conquest and that over time the tradition has been lost.

What impressed me the most about San Ildefonso Amatlan was the high amount of enthusiasm in which we were received by the community members and the obvious effort they had made in organizing our visit.  Not only were the mothers of the families present and participating but also the fathers of the families.  Once the plactica had been given everyone joined in to help prepare the comida (meal) in the municipal kitchen.  We prepared rice, huevos a la Mexican (scrambled eggs with tomato and chiles), chocolate (hot chocolate), and alegrias (a local tradition of popped amaranth and molasses in a bar).  Each item that was cooked included amaranth in various forms.  Everyone had a great time and we all enjoyed eating together our amaranth rich meal!

After our meal the large group of about 40 community members and their children walked to the local health clinic.  There, Hitzel and Liliana did an activity about how to plant and take care of amaranth plants.  We then did a sample planting in a plot within the health clinic grounds.

As the day wrapped up I really couldn’t imagine being anywhere else for Thanksgiving.  I felt so blessed to be able to spend the day with the residents of San Ildefonso Amatlan and to work with Liliana and Hitzel from Puente.  For a day that is meant for us to give thanks, I had a lot to be thankful for—this opportunity to work for AMIGOS again, to learn new things from our partner agencies, to be around the incredibly generous and loving Oaxacan people and to appreciate their culture.  This was truly a beautiful day and one that I will always remember. 

The local authorities and our Puente Team at day's end.

    The drive home...a beautiful day.