March 21, 2013 · 2:41 pm

Failing at your own business–juice and menudo

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I was finding living without electricity very difficult, so I rented a small ‘local’ (it’s like a garage with a bathroom) in town to use for my computer. I didn’t have any commercial use in mind, didn’t even bother to open the ‘cortina’ (garage door). I just did my planning for school and made up the exams. I was there maybe 3 hours a week.

That seemed wasteful to my husband. He thought I should do something to at least make enough money to pay the rent. Ok, like what? Well, we could sell juice. All right. We had an electric juicer and his mother loaned us an orange juicer. We started with carrot and orange juice. Freshly made juice is sold in little bags with a straw in it, closed with a rubber band.

So we sold juices from 8 am to 11 am every day. We did ok, but I had rented the ‘local’ on the basis of proximity to La Yacata, not its commercial viability. It wasn’t a heavily trafficked area. The neighborhood residents were not well-to-do and less apt to buy something they could make in their own kitchen.

pozole

So the juices phased out, to be replaced by menudo (a traditional Mexican soup made with cow stomach) on the weekends. My husband was an excellent cook and his menudo with an occasional pozole (soup made with corn and pig feet) were delicious. Unfortunately, as these were early morning soups with the reputation of being cures for hangovers, and take hours to prepare, we had to start the evening before and cook all night.

As with the juices, we sold what we made, but didn’t see much profit. So we closed again.

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March 19, 2013 · 7:22 am

Parenting Challenge–Creating an Atmosphere for Education

dinosaur track

Often unexpected finds create the best environment for learning.

When we say that education is an atmosphere we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child environment’ specially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere both as regards persons and things and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. –Charlotte Mason

I asked my 10-year-old son what he thought he has learned by residing in México. His immediate response of “that to get things, you have to suffer” was not what I was expecting. But he’s right. Everything is more difficult here, harder than you might imagine. So how can I, his mother, provide an atmosphere for education when just meeting the basic necessities of life takes so much time and effort?

How do I create an atmosphere for learning?

I provide options for investigation.

I am a teacher and as such have a natural tendency to provide my son with stimulating games and books at a variety of levels. When my son asked me what happened to the dinosaurs, I had a book already in my home library that offered a variety of theories. It was quite advanced scientifically so, I had him skim what was presented there, allowed him to ask me questions about things he didn’t understand and then asked him what he thought the answer to his question might be. When he said he still wasn’t sure, I was pleased to say that neither is anyone else. Did he learn something from his investigation? Most definitely. When we found a dinosaur print in La Yacata, he went back to the same book to try and identify the dinosaur that made the print. Again, he wasn’t sure that he had the correct answer, but finding the one right answer wasn’t the point in the educational experience.

I allow my son to be involved in economic decisions.

Each of our various business ventures has been family efforts. My son has a stake in what we decide to embark on and therefore, has a say in the matter. He also has obligations to make the venture as success as well. When we had the Crap Shoppe, he learned, mostly from his abuelita (grandma) about doing business and negotiation. I could trust him to make sales while I ran to the store or went to teach a class. This has served him well. He has just started his first outside-of-the-family job. He works from 9:30 to 12 Wednesdays in the mercado (market) selling plastic bags to the merchants. He takes a cart and goes store to store offering his wares. He works along with the nephew of the owner, but after the first day, he told the owner that since he did all the work, he should receive a percent of the sales rather than a fixed amount. The truth was in the pudding since when the nephew went alone on Saturday, he sold next to nothing. My son now gets 10% of the sales.

I set an example.

Adapting to this new life has not been easy for me. I make social blunders all the time. It requires every bit of my focused attention to pick up the cultural nuances and make sense of them. I have stumbled along paths that are not remotely what I had in mind when the journey began. And I have learned from it all. I have pointed out to him that even those people who make me uncomfortable, laugh at my errors or are downright mean, have taught me something. In fact, these people have been some of my best teachers. And that as long as I don’t give up, I haven’t failed. As he moves towards adolescence, with the desire to fit in and just be one of the crowd, I hope that my example will serve him well.

I learn from my son.

We work hard for every little bit we have, and no, things don’t come easy. There are hundreds of small disappointments that make a bit of success so sweet. When I am tempted to grumble and curse about a late night walk home because of a flat tire, my son says, “Mom, have you ever seen the stars look so beautiful?” and I can look at it as the grand adventure that it is.

Creating an atmosphere for education is not providing high-tech teaching material in a child-centered classroom. Rather it is providing an environment that fosters questions and inspires wonder. Nothing new has ever been discovered, invented or learned without it.

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March 15, 2013 · 2:46 pm

The first demanda Phase 8

pozo digger

This is the machine that punched a hole in the water table.

So this brings up to early 2012. Our efforts to find out who we are and where we are had been coming along slowly, but steadily. Then came the first demanda (lawsuit).

We were presented the first copy of the demanda (lawsuit) during our routine meeting in January by someone unknown to us. He obviously had been sent by Chuchi to see that we get the paperwork. He was not forthcoming with how he obtained this, just that it had been given to him.

Super Prez read the papers and said he would look into it. The next day, the official notice was sent to his office. In this demanda (lawsuit) the perforador del pozo (the guy who drilled the hole that pretends to be a well) sued La Yacata and Super Prez for non-payment of work completed and nearly double in interest making the grand total about $500,000 pesos.

The lawsuit claimed that a contract had been signed in Super Prez’s office in 2007. Since Super Prez didn’t have an office in 2007 and was not the president of the community group La Yacata at the time, the well hole digger falsified the contract (with Chuchi’s help).

Well, the law works in mysterious ways here. Once a demanda (lawsuit) has been received, the accused party (in this case La Yacata and Super Prez) have 9 days to respond or it’s an automatic win to the presenter (the well digger). So since R’s brother, R2, was part of a legal team, a lawyer of sorts, he wrote a response to the lawsuit alleging falsification of the contract.

Now that a response had been made, the case proceeds to los juzgados (court). There, both sides present their cases to the judge who makes the final decision. It is a laborious and time-consuming process.

R2 decreed that he would accept no money until the case was won. It wasn’t a risk for him really, the charges were ludicrous. Lawyers are paid a percentage of the total claim. R2 said he would be content with a mere $100,000 pesos, after all, he was saving us $400,000 pesos by his efforts. We didn’t have any choice but to agree.

This first demanda (lawsuit) was open from January until September when the judge finally made his ruling in our favor. There was no contract between Super Prez or the people of La Yacata and the well hole digger. The contract was found to be between the well hole digger and Chuchi and therefore Chuchi was responsible for the balance of payment.

The next day R2 came for his first payment from the people of La Yacata. We put in a contra-demanda (counter demand) against the well hole digger in order to get back some of the money we have paid in our defense, but it won’t cover all the expenses. So each lot has a $250 peso cuota (charge) to pay the lawyers. It isn’t fair. We are being penalized for problems Chuchi has made. It doesn’t make the colonos (people) happy at all.

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