Research begins

Within 10 minutes of arriving in the community I’d call home for the next two weeks, my first research site, I was told of the kid in the neighboring community who had his hand macheted off in a drunken argument and the brawl turned machete melee in this town.  Luckily, I was informed, they were just alcoholic drug-addicted day laborers from a different town.  And it wasn’t until a couple days later when I heard of the “machetazos” in 4 other nearby towns that same Sunday.  I had been here a handful of times before, running support for an environmental education program operated by the university.  But this was my first time alone. 

The trip out had been fine.  Took a bus for 5 hours to a small town, with La Bestia running right through the heart of it, decided I didn’t want to wait 4 hours for the next bus and then walk 8 km to my destination so I decided to take a taxi.  So here I am, in Ramonal, Tabasco.  Approximately 4 km from the Guatemalan border.  An old transit point for migrants, drugs and those escaping the law.  Really the middle of nowhere.  Home to about 400 people and surrounded by farms, forest and swampland. 

I sleep in a hammock in the town’s event center.  There’s a spigot with a bucket that I use to shower.  The fan does a pretty decent job of keeping the mosquitos away.  That and I coat myself in repellent before bed.  Heavy DEET.  None of that lemon eucalyptus hippie nonsense.  I have a sweet arrangement with some of the old ladies around town.  They give me food, some really tremendously tasty food.  I spend roughly $6.50 for three meals a day. 

I had trouble sleeping the last couple nights.  I think it was a combination of nervousness and excitement.  Nervous in the sense that I was about to embed myself in communities far removed from society.  Areas without a police presence, or any State or Federal government interference for that matter.  Places were rapists are lynched by townspeople and the sharp end of a machete ends far too many arguments.  Towns where there is little to do aside from working the fields, encouraging many to hit the sauce for days on end or make babies at will. 

Excitement in the sense that this is why I spent the better part of a year enveloped by the Fulbright application process.  I spent my first month in Villahermosa visiting projects, meeting with academic folks, developing relationships with these communities and now the time had finally come to study the impact of aquaculture in rural communities.  My dream since college had finally come true. 

That, and I was also really stoked to peace out of Villahermosa. It’s got pretty much zero going for it.  It’s one of those cities where seemingly every other building is a car parts store or copy place.  The nightlife is limited to handful of blocks with mediocre vibes.  True, it has a nature reserve, a mammoth lagoon and forest in the middle of the city with herons, monkeys and crocodiles, but all the city’s runoff drains in to it.  Heck, many houses and restaurants around the lagoon even dump untreated sewage into it.  The result is a fetid, neon ooze green water with dead fish floating everywhere.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find Splinter and the rest of the gang living there. 

But hey, I can’t complain.  Living here gives me access to rural communities with aquaculture and I’m collaborating with some big players in fish farming.  Also, I realized that getting to DF from Villa is pretty much like SF to Vegas and so I plan to take full advantage of the proximity when I need to let the demons out. 

You see, I love my work and it’s always been my dream to work to combat rural poverty and food insecurity.  I love being in secluded areas, surrounded by nature, taking things real nice n slow. 

But there’s also another side of me.  A raucous, selfishly reckless, boozing, weed smoking molly raving maniac that needs to be let out of his cage from time to time and fed a hearty dosage of fiesta.  You feel me?  So for the first time since leaving SF, and although Villa is not the most happening place, I feel like I have that with the proximity and accessibility to DF and other sweet places in Mexico.  The further I dig into our southern neighbor, the more I find myself falling in love.