Days and nights in Huajuapan.

Tlaxcala, 11 PM: Umm, There's a Situation.

I stared slackjawed at the gathered feast, which had been laid out carefully on lovely "we have guests" china. A feast that had clearly taken half a day to prepare. Oh, and didn't I mention that it was the matriarch and patriarch's anniversary that very eve?

Now:

At that precise, astral moment I realized that I had never once in the course of my short and fairly uneventful life wanted to eat less than I did right then.

Oh, the food looked and smelled just great - fantastic, even - and under any other circumstance I would have hastened to the feedin' trough as quickly as decorum and my jouncing fatrolls allowed, but it was motherhumpin' late, I'd just gotten off an international flight and, if I may be brutally frank, flying gums up the works *gestures* down there. What I really desired more than anything was a fluffy bed and a Sprite Zero, but judging from the hand gestures and general herding motions towards the groaning table, this was, on that mild Tlaxcalan evening, to be unthinkable.

I looked out over the spread. Grilled pork chops. Fresh, home-baked bread. Homemade cream of mushroom soup. Baked ham garnished with pineapple. Beer, wine and soda. And - holding court over on the corner of the table-

*BWAMP*

A gigantic salad. WTF is my problem, right? Well, before I left to go to Mexico, I'd read several websites that recounted the faceless horror confronted by Americans and others who had shat themselves into comas while in or after having visited Mexico. Essentially, they all said the same thing. While these savvy world travelers (who, they assured the reader, simply did NOT wear day-glo fanny-packs) had been careful to avoid items like, oh, big glasses of tap water with hunks of tap-water-ice floating about them, they'd been felled - nay, poleaxed - by such sweet, innocent items as fruit, homemade cheeses and salads. Why? Of course, all of these items were either made with or washed in the very same tap water that one had been so careful to avoid. Duh.

The salad and I exchanged pleasantries from across the table and, while keeping an intensely close watch on it, I set to my grim task while having a delightful conversation with the clearly weary but excited family. I then became aware that the salad had begun speaking to me - softly at first, but with ever-intensifying vigor.

"I have lovely, crunchy parmesan-garlic crrrrroutons, señor! My tomatoes were grown in the lush fecundity of black volcanic soil! What about my moist, green lettuce? Oh sheeet, you're afraid of the water. Umm, the lettuce! It's... leafy! Yes, leafy!"

I continued to savage a pork chop whilst trying to avoid a stop from the now circumabulating salad. With dawning horror, I realized that the Mexican family in attendance were all passing the salad without taking any for themselves. The bowl - itself quivering in delerious excitement - was placed in front of me, nearly 3/4 full, tongs at the ready. Eat, eat, they all urged, their eyes wide with anticipation and helpfulness.

Of course I caved. What the feck was I supposed to do? Tell them that the salad, which clearly had been made specifically for our imperialist First World dietary needs, was going to cause me to contract a parasitic load? That the very sight of it conjured visons of midnight rides, hunched and ashen, on the porcelain bus-seat to Giardiaopolis? I hosed it down with enough Italian salad dressing to float the Islip Barge upon and prayed that the vinegar would destroy anything "living" in it, finished my meal and patted my stomach appreciatively. In the end, I actually did feel better having eaten - and the company was superb - but I could feel every piece of that lettus holding court in my belly, waiting and watching.

As I trundled off to bed at 1:30, I heard it spoken that we would be getting up early the next morning to hasten to Huajuapan (a largish town in the Oaxaca province) for this family's patriarch's mother's birthday hootenanny. By "early" I'd envisioned 8, maybe nine AM, for rising, showering and a swig of coffee.

5 AM

When my uncle knocked on my door at an hour one generally associates with, oh, death, I opened my right eye and realized that I'd been asleep for about nineteen minutes. The room I'd been bunking in had a window that had been opened to allow for a lovely midsummer breeze; without this breeze I began to schvitz uncontrollably, and this clearly wouldn't do.

The problem:

This window opened onto the yard, wherein were penned (and strike me dead with a clawhammer if I am making this up) a turkey and two tiny, mutated goats. When the window was closed, I schvitzed. When the window was open, this was the exhange I was privy to:

Goat One: *bleeeeeeeeeeat*

Turkey: *gobblegobblegobbleGOBBLEDAMNITGOBBLE*

Goat Two: This shit's wack.

This went on, oh, all night long. Later, in the bleary pre-dawn gathering of goods and people for the shove-off to the Oaxaca-lands, I asked if my family or the lovely Mexican family had heard any livestock disturbance(s) in the early AM. They, naturally, denied any knowledge of said event(s). This supposes that either a) I am unnaturally sensitive to the sounds our enslaved animal friends produce or b) I am not, clinically speaking, OK.

Huajuapan: Where One Parties Until They Light the Jesi* on Fire

* plural of Jesus

We arrived in Huajuapan later than anticipated and thus missed some sort of celebratory breakfast for Abuelita , who was to turn 69 the next day. When we finally arrived, dusty and fatigued, from having watched a family soccer game in a verdant field on the outskirts of town, we were informed that we would be just in time for the blessing of the house by a local priest. And, by the way, please come over here to sit down so that we can feed you and feed you and then, when that's done, feed you some more.

Cousin Mary and I sat down in eager anticipation tinged with corporeal dread of what was to come. First appeared a lovely hominy/chicken soup, which I fell upon quite eagerly until my spoon hit something in the bottom of the bowl. As I lifted the mass from below the lovely hominy I beheld

chicken vertebrae

covered in sinew, and in a vague "s" shape. Ah. Chicken neck.

Now, I'm not ordinarily the squeamish type. OK, when a spider falls on me from the ceiling or if a moth wheels in my general direction, I do shriek. But when it comes to food, I'm usually the one who's getting the quahog pâté on a bed of musk-ox jerky. So, when I saw the neck, I shrugged, fished it out of the broth and continued eating.

About ten minutes later, one of the family members brought out a small Tupperware container and began pointing at it as if the secret to turning Pinesol into a sustainable, clean-burning petrol-substitute were inside. When I peered in, I beheld - naturally! - thousands of fried and chilipepper-covered locusts. Very small ones, to be sure - I had to look twice to tell what they were - but there they were.

Bugs. At the dinner table.

I did what most of you would do: I took a massive pinch of bugs and I planted it firmly in my mouth and munched. I thought: how often am I going to be offered food this weird? What, other than the vaguely insistent thought of becoming a host, was keeping me from mawing down on a big plate of bugs?

They taste -if you care - like old lawn clippings. With chilipepper. Fried.

As I snacked on arthropods, a second platter and a container full of hand-patted corn tortillas was placed in our vicinity. I actually had smelled the dish before it came out, but for the life of me I couldn't imagine what it was. As I beheld several foamy-looking blackish squares, my testing spoon raised for the sampling, I hesitated and decided that, just this once, I would ask what it was.

Oh, what's that? They are squares of baked blood? And I am to take a square, mash it onto a tortilla, and feast?

I was too stunned to even ask from which animal's arteries this bounty had sprung, which ordinarily would have been a valid question. As I kept the bugs and the chicken-neck stew at bay, another dish came out. This one had slices of yet another blackish treat, and again, the family fell upon it and began the chore of stuffing tortillas with it.

I didn't even need to prompt: the pregnant woman across from me pointed at two spots on her abdomen, near her back. Ah. Kidneys. Good. Yes, clearly. Mmm hmm.

As she mimed what I should be doing with the blood, the kidneys and the now completely-ignored insects, she unwrapped a foil-encased object which she then planted firmly onto a tortilla and began to unceremoniously savor every bite of what I'd hoped had been a chicken tender.

If by "chicken tender" I meant "goat tongue", then yes.

By the time the tamales came (moist corn paste, beans and shredded chicken wrapped in a corn husk), I was already envisioning the raptures involved in wasting away and perishing in another country.

***

Dusk fell over the mountain-rimmed valled surrounding Huajuapan, and word was that this night - as the first night of a gigantic, nine-day festival honoring the patron of the town, Jesus of Our Hearts - there would be fireworks in the plaza of the town's cathedral. In my rush to become excited about the fireworks display, I barely took notice that the "fireworks" that were to be lit in the plaze we were entering were

mounted on fifty-foot wire towers held on the ground by men holding hemp ropes

Ah.

Clearly.

***

When I return : What, possibly, is sinister about a firey Jesus on a rickety, held-together-with-masking-tape tower of incendiary doom? How did Domonic get awakened the next morning? Also: what DOES a plate of fried, chilipepper-coated bugs do to one's constitution?

Until then, I remain,

Domonic (iftherehadbeenwildhoneycombitwouldhavebeenSOJohntheBaptist) Potorti