Colors

Oaxaca - week 2, originally uploaded by kitty424.

Walking around the town, I've been marveling at the three-tone houses here. A house might be painted bright bright blue, with a mustard yellow trim around the windows, and a band of a couple of feet along the bottom. Then if you look closely, you'll notice another color approximating the original blue has been used to paint to about the height of an outstretched arm, as far up as a painter's brush could reach. That line is jagged, revealing the path of a roller. Sherwin-Williams, with its standardized color palette, has not made it to this town. My best guess is that these jagged lines might be a testament to the 2006 riots - the almost matching paint has been used by those who couldn't afford to repaint their entire houses. In other places, like the walls of the Santo Domingo convent, or the sides of the baseball stadium, the particularly incendiary graffiti is simply painted over with splotches of whitewash on top of a neon pink or an orange wall. In lots of places still, the graffiti remains - some places that probably closed their doors during the riots have not reopened and their paint is now peeling. What seems like every few minutes a teenager somewhere sets off fireworks (the Mexicans have lots of fiestas) or a car backfires on the street. I'm jumping less and less at the disconcerting sound.

For the most part, the houses are one or two stories tall and inward facing, centered around an inner courtyard, with only a dead wall facing the street. The wall might have a couple of windows with heavy grating. Sometimes you can peek in and see into a lush, green courtyard full of flowering plants and shady trees. Our posada is like this. The inner courtyard is bursting with flowers. In the middle of the yard is an old VW Beetle. In the garage has a huge cage with some 8 yellow and green miniature parrots. Sometimes after the rain, Bebiana, the owner of this posada, wheels the cage out into the center of the courtyard. The street directly in front is being dug up by construction crews. This is a godsend, as noisy traffic has to turn down a side street instead of passing by the posada. Next to the posada is the Mexican version of Denny's, the restaurant/cafeteria VIPS, with vinyl seating, sterile lighting, and a 10-page menu that includes everything from tlayudas to spaghetti and papas frances.

I'm sitting on the porch, watching the hummingbirds dart between the pink and purple bushes and the tall avocado tree. Somewhere above me is a noisy congress of birds. A church bell is tolling nearby, summoning for the 5:30(?) mass. These same bell has been waking me up at 6am, though today is the first morning I managed to sleep through it. It's not a pretty bell. It might be cracked, as the noise it makes is more of a low twang, like someone beating on a metal jug or a foghorn blaring. The bells elsewhere in town are prettier, higher tones. Somebody told me that the there are some 26 churches in city center. Walking through the main one during services last night did not reveal it packed with Oaxacans. I counted maybe 6 people in all sitting beneath the bling-ed out frescoes.