Daisy Roll

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Week 5 Domingo

The clocks change – but we are still woken at six am by fireworks being let off from the church roof next door to celebrate some saints day or other. Mexicans love to let off fireworks for any occasion – or even just to call people to Mass instead of church bells.

Fortunately Daisy seems to find them surprisingly soporific, or barely notices them at all. Perhaps when she is older she will always wonder why she is so sleepy on November 5.

We visit Manuel and Augustina’s church, a distinctively more charismatic experience than the Baptist church we have been attending. The church members are mostly indigenous, so we stick out like a sore thumb, but everyone is very welcoming.


The service features an amazing dance troupe, wearing dresses in what can only be described as grey combat material with glittery swords embroidered on the fronts. They dance for a worship session lasting an hour and twenty minutes, twirling flags, tambourines and streamers, without breaking a sweat (see short video link http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=6882751532).

It’s truly awe-inspiring, but oddly like the friezes of dancing Mayans you see on the temples all across South Mexico. I keep expecting someone’s decapitated head to come bouncing down the steps, and when we get called up to the front I am sure it is going to be us – but fortunately they just want to say good morning.

It’s a day of strange sights – a sheep in a lorry just outside our door in the middle of the city, and a procession in honour of St Martin de Porres (whoever he is), which involves children on floats throwing sweets, and adults walking behind letting off (yes) more fireworks and wearing scary masks. We also see a tour bus that has managed to wedge itself in between two narrow streets, effectively shutting off the traffic for about half the city.


These things between them seem to sum this place up rather well, while the procession also proves that the Catholics here sure know how to party. They are already gearing up for Day of the Dead later this week, and I see people carrying crosses of flowers through the town. The local bread shop is selling “exquisite Day of the Dead bread”, but I’m not quite sure who is supposed to be enjoying it, the dead or the living.

Week 5 Sabado

Begin to fantasise about buying a house here. After all, houses at home have got so expensive that the amount we would have to pay for a small pad here would hardly be noticed in the big scheme of things, and we could always rent it out to extranjeros.

Take Daisy over to Mariet and Enrique’s for the evening. Mariet is making cakes and two year old Itamar is merrily sticking her fingers in the icing, so we take her out for a run in a bid to calm her down.

It’s two minutes walk from their house to a football field with water around it, and suddenly it feels like we could be in England on any autumn afternoon, taking a friend’s kid for a walk. Itamar is distinctly lively (Mariet keeps insisting that she was much like Daisy when she was younger), so we play chase, run around and generally play the fool.


When we return, Mariet is attempting to ice cakes with one hand and carry Daisy with the other. Apparently our daughter was not happy with Conche, Mariet’s Mum, which seems to have hurt her grandmotherly pride a little. Mind you, since Conche’s childminding style appears to involve wrapping any child in a shawl and bashing it on the bottom, I can’t say I am entirely surprised.

We finish the evening with tacos and (unsurprisingly) Coca Cola. I could get used to this. Maybe I am becoming un poco Mexicana after all.

Week 5 Viernes

When the sun comes out, the inhabitants of San Cristobal do too, and suddenly it seems that everyone is smiling.

We take a trip down the andador, or walking street, where people go to see and be seen, and the atmosphere is mellow and cheery. Even the ladies at Santa Domingo craft market, at the end of our road, look distinctly happier.

Like many people here, they make a living out of selling and making “artesanias” – an all-purpose word that encompasses some of the nastiest items I’ve seen in a long time, together with some of the most exquisite embroidery.


Little toy Subcomandante Marcoses are very popular, in honour of the head of the Zapatista uprising that took place in 1994. The doll in the balaclava bears little resemblance to the campaigner for indigenous rights who led an occupation of San Cristobal over ten years ago.

When we last visited, most of the Santa Domingo ladies were selling embroidery featuring native sunflowers and lilies, and we bought a relatively unusual piece featuring birds. Now, they seem to have branched out a little. One lady proudly shows me a piece of work featuring a pussycat in a rather soppy bow, together with a slightly scary looking crocodile.

And what is the creature at the bottom? “Es kangaroo”, says the native lady proudly. Not entirely native to Chiapas – goodness knows where she has seen one of those. Perhaps they have been showing reruns of Skippy?

Donde vivimos

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Week 5 Jueves

Become irrationally convinced that Daisy is missing out on all the things she would have been doing had I remained an (almost) yummy mummy in South London. After all, she has never been to baby yoga, baby massage, baby music group or baby salsa (yes, it does exist).

To be honest, she hasn’t even been in a buggy or car seat for a month and half, and we have been fashioning toys out of aluminium foil and a blown egg because we worry that she’ll get bored with the limited selection we have brought with us.


We visit Granda – the John Lewis of San Cristobal De Las Casas – in search of a baby bouncer in the only place in town with a baby section.

Unlike John Lewis, however, Granda proves somewhat difficult to get into, due to the fact that most of the road in front of it has been removed for some reason (gone for cleaning perhaps?) The practice of leaving holes in the road with no warning is common around here, and a constant occupational hazard of walking around.


As department stores go, the shop is unusual. For a start, if you want to buy anything they take it away from you and give you a ticket, which you have to take to one till, get a receipt and then collect for it somewhere else. For another, the foyer is filled with Mexican ladies doing their embroidery in the haberdashery section.

Still, it does have an escalator (all of ten steps long), which apparently the inhabitants of San C were queuing up to ride when it first opened. The baby section is a riot of baby bottles, rattles and pink fluffy babygros. It also has a small selection of buggies (but how on earth would you manage to wheel them out of the door?)

Sadly it appears that I can add “baby bouncer” to the list of baby things that simply do not exist in Mexico, along with bouncy chairs, baby monitors, changing mats, pre-packaged formula milk, toys more exciting than a rattle, and cellular blankets. The lady behind the counter is baffled when we ask for one, and doesn’t even come up with the standard response here, which is “you can get it in Tuxtla”.

Tuxtla is the big city down in the valley, which is apparently a mecca of shopping where you can apparently buy (amongst other things) yeast, electric kettles, casserole dishes and the Holy Grail. But baby bouncers, apparently, simply “no existen”.

Daisy is just going to have to remain underdeveloped. Her Tzotzil is coming on in leaps and bounds though – and we have actually found a baby massage class, so maybe she won’t be so far behind the rest of the NCT class after all.

Week 4 Miercoles

Consider building an ark. The local paper is full of nothing but weather, which, since it divides its news by town is rather repetitive. Apparently it is raining in Tuxtla, in Comitan, in the villages, and now the rain is proceeding towards Guatemala (where it can stay, as far as I am concerned).

In San Cristobal, according to the paper, the wind has brought down several trees and a lamppost, which is scarcely exciting by hurricane standards. It also isn’t doing much for the arts festival, which starts today and is attended only by a few people huddled morosely in the corners of the zocalo.

I buy a new jumper, which is the first article of clothing I’ve bought since having Daisy, and which is a bit ethic, but fabulously warm. It’s amazing how, after only a few months off work, you can revert to wearing the same sort of clothes as you did as a teenager. I also fail to restrain myself from buying Daisy yet another pretty embroidered blouse. She will have far too many impractical clothes by the time we get home.

Week 4 Martes

Cold front numero cuatro continues, with lashing rain, and winds strong enough to rattle the glass doors all round our apartment. Water comes in through some of them and we have to sweep it out with a broom. I am thoroughly sulky.


My Spanish teacher just keeps saying “no es comun”, which appears to mean… “the weather was alright here until you turned up”. I air my theory that our daughter is in fact a reincarnation of the Mayan rain god, Chac, given how rainy summer was at home as well. He agrees – but doesn’t offer to buy us a ticket home immediately.

To cheer ourselves up, we cook banana bread and then go out for a meal to a fantastic and warm French-Italian place that makes its own pasta. It’s oddly like a ski lodge (complete with vin chaud) and is also very, very warm. Our meal, with drinks and three courses each, comes to eight pounds. I am thoroughly cheered.

Week 4 Lunes

We fall victim to “Cold front number four” – yes, they are so rare that they number them, and life begins to get very wet indeed.


The ladies who sell crafts at Santa Domingo market certainly have the right idea. When we walk past them they are just packing up, and many of them are not seen again until the sun comes out.

We take a trip to see Eneas and Mari, who are watching a Mexican film involving a not-very-macho guy in a sombrero. Because he is not very macho, he is finding it difficult to get a girl, apparently – but it all turns out alright in the end after a lot of singing.

Catch a taxi home through the pouring rain, and reflect on the fact that the folks back home (well those who aren’t reading the blog, anyway) probably think we’re sitting under a cactus somewhere with a cold beer. Sigh.

Week 4 Domingo

Augustina and Manuel and their four children come for lunch, which proves to be a novel experience for all. Rather surprisingly they turn up on time after church, but thankfully they are happy holding Daisy while I get the dinner ready.


Once again I have bought no tortillas (will I ever learn?), but the family insist they are ok without. It’s only after we sit down to eat our lasagne that I realise that they don’t really know how to use cutlery, because they eat using the tortillas at home.

A somewhat comic moment when they go to wash their hands before dinner, and Manuel announces that there is no water. I panic, before realising that he has never seen a tap with a lever on it before. The water is flowing just fine.

I cook banoffee pie for pudding, which is about the sweetest, gloopiest thing I know how to do, and it goes down an absolute storm. Mexicans have the sweetest teeth of anyone I know – their cakes are basically cream with cream on them.


In the evening we settle down to watch telly in our new lounge, and enjoy the third Harry Potter film – in Spanish. I get most of it, but am bemused by the adverts, which seem to be beset with health warnings.

The ads, and there are plenty of them, are mainly for foodstuffs, credit cards and shampoo. Any advertisement of foods seems to have to carry a warning saying “eat well” or “eat fresh fruit” on the bottom of it, while the shampoo adverts carry the baffling “Health is beauty” slogan on the bottom of them. Toothpaste ads say, “there is no substitute for visiting your dentist” on the bottom.

Rather disappointingly, the credit card adverts do not carry a warning saying, “Don’t spend what you can’t afford”, which I can’t help feeling would be more useful.

Week 4 Sabado

On a whim, we decide to move apartments, after seeing the flat upstairs from ours. It is similar, but warmer because it is higher up, and has a private balcony and lots of light flooding in. There is only one snag – if we want to move, we have to move now, before other guests arrive the next day. We have people coming for dinner.

We manage to get the stuff moved in under an hour, and are in, installed and cooking ten minutes before Paul’s Spanish teacher and her boyfriend arrive for dinner. Daisy, of course, is nowhere near ready for bed, but manages to go down ok in her new surroundings.

We now have a fantastic view of the mountains from all our windows, and I’m enjoying having a nice light kitchen to cook in (Mexican homes tend to be rather dark). We’ve also got the television in the living room now, rather than having the only cable point in the bedroom, which is great for the evenings.


We have a nice evening with Laura and her boyfriend, who is one of the first US Peace Corps ever to arrive in Mexico, though seems unimpressed by the fact that he still has to install computer networks when he wanted to do something else.

We lapse into English fairly early on, with three native English speakers, and afterwards I feel guilty that I should have practiced more. Laura puts salsa on her mashed potatoes (Mexicans!), but both of them seem somewhat over excited by the concept of apple crumble, so I feel at least I’ve made them one thing they liked.

After our guests leave, we realise we have some other visitors – rather more unwelcome. The cat that thinks it lives here has left some fleas all over the bedroom. Fortunately they seem uninterested in Daisy, but Paul gets bitten to bits. Resolve to fumigate the flat asap, and kick the cat out.

Week 4 Viernes

I realise my Spanish must be improving when I have a chat with my Spanish teacher about interest rates and whether Britain should privatise the post office.


He studied Economics at university, and is clearly delighted to be able to discuss things with someone who even vaguely understands what is going on. I learn the Spanish for interest rates, mortgages, deprivatisation, and a host of other things. He also explains that many people are now being offered cheap credit cards and then getting into trouble when they can’t pay them back – sounds a bit like home.

Like most Spanish teachers here, Reginaldo is fascinated by England, but has never been. He has seen a documentary that I think may have been about Siberia, but he is convinced is about the UK. As a result, he thinks that if you go out in winter in the UK you might die of a heart attack after an hour because it is so cold, and that people routinely fall in the Thames by accident.

I curb my natural desire to wind him up when he asks about Big Ben, double decker buses and other English icons. No, I don’t know Margaret Thatcher, or live in Big Ben. He’s also quite disappointed I don’t work for The Times – but goes away and does his research on the Telegraph and decides it is probably ok to work for that too.

We now have a great routine with the Spanish lessons. I do two hours in the morning and Paul looks after Daisy. Then he brings her to the school, we swap her over and I take her back with me while he has an hour doing much more complicated Spanish. It’s great to be able to say more every day.

Week 4 Jueves

A huge relief today when we get Daisy weighed at the local hospital. She’s put on half a kilo in ten days. If she continues at this rate she will weigh as much as a baby elephant by the time she’s two.

There’s a lot of comfort in being able to put a little spot on the growth chart that takes her back onto the ‘normal’ scale for a child her age. She’s still not taking masses of formula, but clearly it’s enough just to tip her into a quicker growth rate.


We also make a visit to the local old people’s home, with people from the church who take round tea for them on a Thursday afternoon. It’s quite an experience. Whereas an old people’s home in the UK tends to be warm and stuffy, this place is open and cold, with rooms leading off what is basically an outside courtyard.

Mariet explains that it is unusual for an old person not to be looked after in the family, and it is a ‘shame’ for a family to put someone in an old people’s home, so the people here are essentially either abandoned or have no relatives.

It also becomes clear that there is no distinction here between homes for the mentally ill and old people’s homes. We meet Marie, from Chamula, who is clearly not that old, but also not that clear about what is going on. She still wears the traditional green ribbons in her black plaits that the women wear in Chamula, and talks about being abandoned by her family.

We meet a lady who is nearly 100, and blind. She is almost the only person in the home to have grey hair. You almost never see white or grey hair here – so I’m glad I got mine coloured before we came otherwise people would think I was ancient!

There seems to be little to do in the old people’s home other than attend chapel services or watch telly. I just hope they give them enough blankets when it gets really cold in the next few months. It’s funny that a culture which is so worried about children getting cold should be so unconcerned about the welfare of old people.

We celebrate Daisy’s weight gain by having a Chinese takeaway with Mariet and Enrique, which does not in any way resemble the sort of Chinese takeaway we have at home. It comes with a little packet of chillies in sweet and sour sauce and they seem to charge us extra for the take-away containers. This is Mexico, after all.

Week 3 Miercoles

Day 20 [Wednesday]


Daisy turns three months old today, and celebrates by having her worst night’s sleep and grumpiest day in ages. The local people blame the hurricane that has swept the coast, which has made San Cristobal rainy and cold. Apparently the change in pressure can stop children from sleeping, and it certainly seems to have turned our smiley daughter into Little Miss Whingey.

Can hardly believe we have all survived three months. Daisy is doing so well in general –smiling, babbling away, rolling over and grabbing things. She has broken several of her mobiles and I’ve been forced to make more out of biscuit boxes, and she’s begun to break them too. The only worry has been her weight, and she’s now beginning to look bigger and less fragile, which is a huge relief.

We watch Happy Feet (the cartoon about singing and dancing penguins) with Mariet and Enrique and their little daughter. It’s clearly a pirate copy, since occasionally someone will say “this is a sound test” over the dialogue, which has been dubbed into Spanish. With the Spanish subtitles as well I can just about understand what is going on.


Daisy loves “Patas Alegres”, as it is called in Spanish, and sings along enthusiastically with the penguins until we leave at about 11 o clock. The children here don’t seem to have bedtimes – both Itamar and baby Pablo are still up and carousing when we leave, while Daisy is very sleepy because we usually put her to bed at eight.

Week 3 Martes

We take a trip to the museum of Mayan medicine, to see how indigenous people are really using those refrescos. It’ s a place on the edge of town, walking past a series of shacks offering everything from tacos to computer games.

It’s not so much a museum of the past as an explanation of how things work in the villages. The “Living Chapel”, is used by traditional healers that are part of the indigenous group that run the place, and contains blessed images of the saints. The healers use Coca Cola (and Fanta, it appears), eggs, live chickens, pine needles and candles as well as the local distilled spirit, posh, as part of the healing process.


I’ve seen the same things happening in the church at San Juan Chamula nearby, but you can’t take photos there, so these are the nearest we can get to showing what it is like. The museum also shows how many candles it is necessary to light in order to cure different illnesses. For vomiting and diarrhoea you would need fifty different candles in three different colours – enough to start a small conflagration.

Candles assume an entirely different significance here, and if you burn them in the evenings your Mexican friends are likely to assume you have become animist Catholic. They are sold in the market in huge bundles, in every size from about four foot to birthday cake candle size.

The museum also shows a video of a birth in one of the villages, complete with commentary from the local midwife. The women keep their skirts on to give birth, and are aided by their husbands, who may use special movements of their knees to speed things up (I wonder if they learn them at a kind of Tzotzil NCT class?).


After the birth the baby is rubbed with an egg to cleanse it, and the umbilical cord is tied with string (two knots for a boy, six for a girl) while the woman is ordered to rest and not carry heavy things for three months.

There is also a Mayan pharmacy on site, so we visit it to ask if they have anything to increase the production of a mother’s milk. The man doesn’t recommend SMA Gold, but instead suggests that I boil some dried fish up and then drink the liquid. We can’t work out whether he is serious or whether he really hates the gringos. I’m not that keen to try it out though.

Week 3 Lunes

Paul attends even more meetings, which are called juntas here, a word I have never seen before without it being preceded by the word military. I stay at home with Daisy and enjoy some domestic time in the apartment.


It’s kind of wonderful travelling with only the things you absolutely need, given the amount of stuff babies typically generate. I feel we have finally got close to William Morris’ adage, only having things that are beautiful or useful – although we’re majoring on the useful here.
Of course, there are some things I’m missing, since there’s only so much you can achieve with two 23 kg luggage allowances. I haven’t bought any books yet, and Daisy currently has more of a library than I have. I have two Mexico guides and she has Baby Shapes Three and Four, as well as the literary classic ‘That’s Not My Penguin’.

I realise I am in need of literature after spending ten minutes absent mindedly rubbing the textured patch on the last page of her penguin book (“That’s my penguin, its baby is so fluffy’). I really need to get out more.

Of course, we’re already acquiring whole buckets of stuff (including, of course, a bucket) to add to the things we’ve brought with us. We’ve bought a metal kettle, a series of pans, reusable bags and a jug to put pens in. We’ve also (how British are we) bought a toaster because there is no grill on the oven.

It was nearly seven pounds and includes an inbuilt set of pincers to get the toast out. I feel it’s worth it for the ultimate comfort food.

Week 3 Domingo

I take Daisy out of my comfort zone, which seems to have shrunk considerably since I gave birth. Paul is the trustee of a project out here that is run for schoolchildren, and we have a meeting with Unicef and another local group to discuss a possible merger and the future of the project.

The meeting is in a community centre on the edge of La Hormiga, one of the first settlements to have sprung up outside the peripheral road of San Cristobal. These settlements are called “The Belt of Misery” (note to estate agents, needs some rebranding), because the expulsados who live there started off living in shacks with no basic services.

Today La Hormiga has changed considerably from when Paul was first doing research there, with many two-storey buildings, electricity and water and a bustling market. The community centre is half an hour’s walk from where we are living, and for some reason we set off on foot with Steve, the American who started the project.

It’s a stony road, and I wince every time Paul loses his footing (he’s carrying Daisy), and we arrive half an hour late after Steve stops to buy arroz con leche (a kind of rice pudding drink) and tamales at a roadside stall. The assembled children and parents applaud as we walk in, but I can’t tell whether they are being sarcastic or not.

The community centre is basic and there are no facilities for heating Daisy’s milk. I swiftly take her home while Paul stays and hears how important the project has been to both children and parents involved. La Chozita gives scholarships to indigenous children and has given them a place to do their homework in the afternoons as well as classes in native languages, Spanish and maths.


It’s wonderful to see how confident some of these children, who could otherwise have ended up selling crafts on the streets, have become.

Week 3 Sabado

A second disastrous attempt at English cooking. We invite Mari, Eneas and family to cena – which is evening dinner here (the main meal tends to be at lunchtime). I decide on an innocuous meal of roast chicken, roast potatoes, carrots, broccoli and gravy, followed by crumble (again) and cream.

What can go wrong? By inviting them to ours, I have cut out the likelihood of being forced to eat a lot of offal, and by six o’clock, which is the time they insist they will turn up, everything is ready and set.

Seven o’clock comes and goes, and no-one arrives. Paul attempts to ring the family to see if they are coming – no reply. Finally, at twenty past seven, half of them turn up in a cab. Eneas and Julio (his son-in-law) are nowhere to be seen.


Mari is bearing an ominous covered dish – which I try and take without grimacing. Seems like I’ve not escaped from her cooking after all. She explains that it is chicken in chipotle sauce, but it is definitely bits of chicken that we don’t eat at home, particularly an awful lot of feet. Yummy.

I put it on the stove for later. Eight o’clock comes, and still Julio and Eneas do not appear, despite the family insisting that they will turn up on foot. Jeremias, 5, is getting tetchy, so we decide to serve up.

It emerges over dinner that Julio and Eneas have gone to the equivalent of a PCC meeting, which has clearly overrun. By the time I serve up it is a bit late to eat, anyway, which isn’t helped by the fact that nobody likes the food.

Mari’s sons are bemused that there are no tortillas to have with dinner, and I haltingly try to explain about carbohydrates. “Ah, “exclaims Mari’s son Jose, who is fortunately an English teacher, “the potatoes are the tortillas”. The family looks glum.


Mari shakes salsa over her dinner and insists that it is “very nice, but she is full” in much the same way that I do at her house. She insists I try her chicken, and I gingerly take what might be a bit of neck (can’t face the feet, they are just so… feety). She is fascinated by the pepper grinder, and keeps grinding pepper over her hands.

Luis, Mari’s other son, only eats the potatoes. Jeremias, who is nearly falling asleep in his mother’s arms, only eats the broccoli.

He cheers up at the mention of pudding, but the crumble doesn’t meet with his approval, and I’m forced to provide a chocolate bar instead. The kitchen piles up with uneaten dishes, including an entire chicken, and Paul’s fire smokes out the entire apartment.

Jeremias falls asleep on the sofa while we unwrap the presents they have bought for Daisy. It is hard to seem as delighted by Mari’s present – a bright pink nylon dress with matching knickers that says “Grandma’s house” on it (both grandmothers will be so delighted by that), as I am by her daughter Lore’s – a beautiful handmade traditional indigenous children’s dress made by a craftswoman from local village Chenalho. Sometimes I wonder how Lore can belong to the same family as the rest of them.


As they file off into the night just before midnight (Eneas and Julio have still not turned up), I can almost hear them discussing our weird cooking as they leave. “No tortillas? No chile? No mole?”. No doubt we’ve given them enough to discuss for a week. Mari kindly leaves us her chicken dish. “Que lo comen!” (“You should eat it”) is her parting shot. But I’m afraid it goes straight in the bin.

Week 3 (Day 16)

Day 16

Another rainy day, and we visit Manuel and Augustina, who live on the edge of the city, for lunch. Augustina cooks mole, the famous Mexican chocolate sauce, which she probably started at 6am.


With mole, each ingredient is cooked separately before adding, and the stew can contain 40 or 50 separate things, so it is a long and intense process. Unfortunately, I’m not all that keen on the result, but it’s wonderful of them to cook us something so special, so I attempt to eat it while balancing Daisy on my lap.

Manuel and Augustina’s house is on the edge of the city, looking out onto fields and mountains. Perhaps it would be better described as a conservatory, since much of it is outside. The steps lead up to a kind of outside courtyard (very slippery in the rain) and the rooms run off this, and have a corrugated iron roof. When the conversation gets beyond me, I count the holes in the roof and wonder how they cope when it is really throwing it down.

Like most Mexican houses, the decoration is austere, consisting mainly of photographs of the family, and, bizarrely, of us. There is a picture of us on our wedding day, and one of me making bread in the kitchen. Do they just get these out because they know we are coming, or are they always there? It’s slightly weird, really.

Whilst we eat, we are forced to watch a DVD of an awful Colombian Christian singer, who dances exceptionally badly. I probably shouldn’t have remarked on this, since the youngest daughter clearly has a crush on him, and looks slightly sulky.

We learn some new words in Tzotzil, which is the language Manuel and Augustina speak at home. ‘Olol’ seems to be the word for baby, which would explain why we keep hearing it in the market, while the word for dog sounds a bit like a sneeze. Daisy seems to quite like being talked to in Tzotzil, and is very happy cocooned in Augustina’s arms.


The family are very amused that I can remember how to say “monkey ears” in Tzotzil – such an accomplished person I am. My repetition of this phrase (“chicken mash” – easy to remember), provokes a disproportionate amount of laughter. Perhaps it actually means something far ruder?

Manuel wants to take us up to La Era, the place in the mountains where he comes from, where an evangelical church has been started with the permission of the village elders. Given that the family were thrown out of their village because they had become evangelical Christians, this is a big deal, and it is a great honour to be invited, and would be fascinating.

However, last time Paul went up there with Manuel the villagers threatened to throw him in prison and harm Manuel, so we’re not quite sure that this is a good thing to do. Manuel insists it is safe, but we won’t take Daisy up there until we’re thoroughly sure he has permission to bring the ‘kashlan’ (white people, or chickens, depending on your point of view) up into the mountains to church.

Last time, Paul only escaped thanks to a bribe and some hastily purchased refrescos, which just goes to show how important fizzy drinks are to the average Mexican.

Refrescos – an all-purpose word for Coca-Cola, Pepsi and a variety of other soft drinks called things like Squirt, pop up everywhere in Mexico. You’re served them when you get on a bus, and you take them to people’s houses instead of a bottle of wine, and in some villages they even pop up in church.

The Catholic/Mayan villagers believe that burping is very holy, and so they drink Coca Cola in front of the images of the saints to induce a kind of holy burp-fest. Daisy, of course, will be one of the holiest people they’ve ever met. In Chamula, where this practice is common, the richest person in town is the man with the Coca Cola franchise (followed closely by the Pepsi man).

Manuel explains that refrescos are key when a man wants to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage up in the villages. The father of the groom visits the father of the bride, bearing a hamper of beans, bags of sugar, meat, and fizzy drinks. He asks for the woman’s hand, and if it is accepted, they drink the refrescos together, and he leaves the meat and beans as a gift. Seems like everything important here is sealed with Coca Cola.

Week 3 (Day 15)

Day 15

It rains, a lot. Before we came here, Paul promised me that in San Cristobal you see the sun every day. This turns out to be mostly true, but not this week.


Despite the city having a rainy season, which we are just reaching the end of, it seems surprisingly badly geared up for a downpour. The gutters are perfectly positioned to drip water on passers by, and the houses are built in a style that might be more sensible for the Tierra Caliente (hot land) at the bottom of the mountain, but is a little austere here in the rain.


Luckily our apartment is set up for foreigners, and we are able to hole up by the fire and read the local papers. Just like at home, they seem to be mostly about the weather, and politics, but there is the occasional gem that tells you a bit about life here.

A man has been shot for being a witch in Teopisca, according to one rather ghoulish report, which details the exact location of the shot wounds. Then there’s the stunning full page story, with the headline screaming “Children aren’t finishing their homework”. Pope Catholic, then?

In Chamula, the nearest village to here, a man has been arrested for helping one of the political parties that the rest of the village do not approve of, while it has been “Journalists Day” in San Cristobal, and the paper devotes a whole page to photos of men with moustaches looking like they are having a miserable time.

One very boring official who claims that he “charts the weather every day”, warns the country that it might yet rain this year, and the paper also has a page about a “charity” trip to the cinema for some poorer children.

Unfortunately the “charity” that has allowed these children to visit the cinema for the first time is Cinemax, which owns the large out-of-town film complex. The children are given popcorn and their happy smiling faces are photographed for the newspaper. Sounds more like drugpushers offering the first hit for free.


Paul reads La Jornada, the Mexican version of the Guardian, which tells us about Gore’s peace prize, and a campaign for indigenous rights, but I prefer Real Jovel, the weekly local paper full of traffic accidents, fights, and a bizarre social page featuring the sort of very pale Mexicans you never see in the streets of San Cristobal. The words are shorter, too.

Week 2 (Day 14)

Day Fourteen

We are getting through a lot of clothes. While Daisy is taking the formula, we are seeing quite a lot of it again, all over her clothes, my clothes, Paul’s clothes, and the bedding.

We do not have a washing machine. Instead we go to Our Laundrette of Perpetual Optimism, where you can check your laundry in any time you like, but it may never leave.


Every other day we take a huge bag of clothes in, and they weigh them (all washing is priced by weight), and tell us they will be ready in about four hours time. Four hours later, we go back in, and our clothes are sitting in a soggy heap somewhere in the corner.

I don’t think they are trying to disappoint us on purpose, more that time simply runs away with them. There always seems to be something better to do, rather than the washing. One time we go in and the family are doing some kind of hopping dance around the room, and another time they are making orange and white Day of the Dead decorations to hang in the shop. They are also very serious Baptists, and are doing some kind of crossword about the book of Joshua.

Everything goes in at the same (high) temperature, meaning that I can kid myself that Daisy is growing massively because one of her babygros has shrunk. Her bibs, which have a waterproof backing, have gone distinctly crunchy, but thankfully still work. I am now washing them by hand, along with her baby sheepskin, which takes a long time to dry.

We make a banana cake for the birthday party we have been invited to, using red and yellow bananas we have bought in the market, and the only type of chocolate you seem able to buy here, which is distinctly granular and comes in little balls.

We have begun to fantasise about opening a (good) chocolate shop and café, since there is nothing here, and most tourists and residents love chocolate. What’s more, Mexico is where chocolate was invented, so it is a surprising lack. Xhocalatl Nichim may never get off the ground, but it’s a nice dream.


The birthday party (for the 17 year old brother of our friend Enrique), is loud, sugar-laden …and teetotal. I’m sure Eduardo doesn’t really want to spend his birthday surrounded by his extended family and a couple of gringos he has never met, but he seems pleased with the cake, at least. Mexican cakes are mostly covered in cream and the tradition is to push the birthday boy’s face into the top (muy hygienic, no?).


Daisy sleeps happily through all the screaming children and clucking old ladies, and it isn’t until we get home that she does a spectacular projectile vomit over all of her bedclothes just as we are settling down to sleep. Back to the laundrette tomorrow, then.

Week 2 (Day 13)

Day Thirteen

After three attempts, Daisy is now happily chugging down two ounces of formula at a time, as well as breast feeding, and it seems to knock her out a bit. She sleeps for six hours, which is incredibly rare, and I’m torn between being sad that she needs the formula and being glad that she’ll take it.

We go to Chedraui, the big hypermarket, to buy more feeding bottles etc. They all carry a health warning here, saying “Remember, breast milk is the best start to life”, which doesn’t make me feel much better.

I understand why they ban advertising of baby milk, and why they keep it on the top shelf in the chemist, the dirty secret equivalent of a dirty magazine, but it doesn’t help your confidence if you’ve done absolutely your best to feed your baby nothing but breast milk and you still need the stuff.


At Chedraui, we also buy Daisy some new clothes, as she doesn’t have quite enough here that fit her. We could have bought her a little pumpkin outfit, with matching pumpkin underwear for me, as Mexico gears up for its big autumn festival, La Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

The festival is 1st and 2nd of November, but seems to be becoming rapidly hijacked by American Halloween on the 31st. Mexicans will buy sugar skulls and visit the graves of their ancestors to eat on the 1st and 2nd (1st for the infant dead, and the second for other relatives), but they will also don plastic masks and go trick or treating.


We buy decorated sugar skulls for our neighbours, Nell and Adrian, because we are going to dinner with them. We also find a selection of horrid Mexican clothes for Daisy, that make her look like a shop assistant. She needs to hurry up and grow so she fits into her next set of outfits.

The clothes and toys in Mexico have great slogans on them. We are tempted to buy a toy helicopter that says “To and fro trickling of person. Unconventionality trickling in all directions”. Baffling.


There is also a green plastic dinosaur with the catchphrase “Band your eyes on the funny toys”. At a guess, they are made in Japan.


Dinner with our Dutch neighbours is marred by a serious incident of Daisy rage, as her system gets to grips with the new milk and she continues on her mission to never sleep, ever. We get her back to our flat, but she only gets sleepy when I lie her next to me and cuddle her while we watch telly. I lift her into her crib with her eyes half open and she finally goes out like a light.

Week 2 (Day 12)

Day Twelve

A depressing visit to the paediatrician, because we promised to get Daisy weighed while we were here. You pay fifteen pounds here for a very thorough check up, and the doctor was actually excellent, after he had got back from his lunch hour at twenty past five.
He confirmed what we had suspected. Daisy is incredibly healthy and happy and advanced, but her growth is still very slow, and she has now all but fallen off the British chart for babies of her age.

He suggests we give her formula, and we reluctantly agree, and buy SMA Gold from the pharmacy. It’s about twelve pounds for a tin that will last us two weeks, which is fine for us, but crippling for a local family in the same circumstances. We’ve brought all our sterilising equipment with us, so are all ready to give bottles as necessary.

I’m saddened by the failure of my breastfeeding, although of course I will continue to do it before her formula feeds, and spend the evening lamenting my uselessness. In the event, a surprising thing happens, which no-one here or at home had predicted.

Our daughter, who has been happily taking bottles of expressed milk since she was two weeks old, will not accept the formula. She takes the bottle but spits out the liquid. I’m thoroughly depressed and don’t really know what to do, but Daisy seems fine, even show offy. She rolls from back to front for the first time, something she isn’t supposed to do for months.

Week 2 (Day 11)

Day Eleven


I attempt a typical English meal for Enrique and Mariet after Sunday’s church service. Because our oven is so slow, I can’t really do roast dinner, so I decide to do pork with apples and cider, with rice, and an apple and blackberry crumble with custard.

It’s oddly difficult to do. We buy pork in the market, which is fine (probably the best meat to buy here, as long as it’s cooked properly), but as I’ve already mentioned we have to break the law to get the cider, and we quickly learn there are two kinds of cream, one of which is way too sour to use in custard. Blackberries and apples are easy to buy, but a pot to do crumble in is hard as most people don’t use their ovens. At an earthenware stall at the back of the market we finally find something that resembles a casserole dish. I also find rosemary in the market to flavour the dish.


Mariet and Enrique are polite about my efforts (even though they shake salsa all over the main course). Mariet has never seen rosemary before, even though you can buy it here (it’s probably only used in Mayan medicine or something). They like the crumble though, including the custard, and I attempt to write down the recipe in Spanish so they can replicate it at home.