Hi y’all! I’m Jayaker, one of the five Loewenstern fellows working with Cántaro Azul in San Cristóbal this summer. Quick intro: I’m a rising senior at Will Rice from the suburbs of Dallas, majoring in BioSciences with a minor in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities.
I find it hard to believe that Hafsa, Ana, and I flew in just last Friday, but here we are. Needless to say, it’s been a whirlwind week.
We started working at Cántaro on Monday. On Tuesday, our mentors Hector, Pablo, Julio, and Iris gave us a tour of El Encuentro Ecopark, where Cántaro built La Casa del Agua. The rest of the week, work-wise, has been focused on selecting projects and background research. I’m excited to work on plant-based alternatives to traditional chemical flocculation and using the common reed (Phragmites australis) in constructed wetlands to treat wastewater.
That’s enough about work though — the real story from this week (and I assume the nine weeks to come) is the city. Today, we left Cántaro around 1pm to get lunch and work at a coffee shop, Sarajevo Café Jardin. I got chilaquiles (again) and learned how to order eggs in Spanish.
After lunch, we walked to El Mercado Viejo. Hector said earlier in the day that we could get anything at the market, and that is absolutely true. We only explored about half of the market, but still we saw everything from beans to fresh flowers to fruit.
An important preface to this next section: I have a bucket list, but solely for fruit that I’d like to try at some point. Before today, I had never added or checked off more than maybe two fruits in a single day. As seen below, I had … a few more than that.
Some highlights: nanches, which Ana bought and are very tart, black raspberries, which Melissa bought and taste like raspberries, and a fruit that I bought which we actually don’t know the name of but tastes kind of like a more tart guava. That’s all I’ve tried so far, but I’m looking forward to the rambutan and mamey sapote, and many more new flavors over the next nine weeks!
As an aside, we decided to take a taxi back to the house from Mercado Viejo. We decided to all squeeze into one taxi, which led to some interesting photos (I was told I couldn’t post this blog without these).
That’s all from me for now, but I’m hoping that my next blog posts will chronicle our work, day trips in Chiapas, and of course, more fruit. I’m excited to work with the incredible people at Cántaro and to continue exploring San Cristóbal (though maybe in multiple taxis next time).
Thank you for posting, Jayaker! Nice to see you are making progress with your list of fruits to try. I’m curious about the nanches, I would call the small round yellow fruit nanches, not the dark raspberries, but I would not be surprised if this was just a regional difference. It would not be the first time that I see people using the same word to refer to different plants or foods in different parts of Mexico.