# Charming Cultural Exchanges



## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Amusing Vignettes:

Some indigenous friends we have become close to down here in Chiapas are artisans designing and manufacturing textiles and the other day we were enjoying lunch at their home; compound, actually, in an indigenous community near San Cristóbal when, in the course of passing over-the-table conversation, we discovered that one of the ways they make a living is through the gathering (in the steep and challenging mountainsides surrounding San Cristóbal) and selling firewood. We were interested in buying some firewood which they were selling at very good prices as opposed to local vendors in the city and suggested they supply us with firewood on an ongoing basis in the future. They deliver firewood to the city in their family truck as well as to their fellow villagers so were pleased to take us on as new customers but the following exchange ensued:

"We had no idea you cooked with firewood."
"We don´t. We use it in our fireplace to heat our home and cook on our gas range."
"Oh, OK."

Firewood is, of course, an essential ingredient for preparing their meals but to heat the homes which ordinarily have no fireplaces - this is remarkable.

Then, later on another day, as they enjoyed lunch in our home, they noted that some small Maya dolls they had previously sold us were attached to our refrigerator over various notes on paper holding such information as emergency numbers, récipes and so forth and they became curious as to what that was all about. The following conversation then took place:

WE: "But those are refrigerator magnets you sold us down on the Andador so we bought them to hang on the refrigerator door and secure certain information for easy access when needed."
THEY: Refrigerator magnets; what are those?"
WE: "Well, you sold them to us so you must know what they are."
THEY: "Not really. We liked them but had no idea they were magnitized and could be attached to a metal door.
WE: Well, now you know so you can use them on your refrigerator door."
THEY: "What refrigerator?"

I tell you these two stories because I find in fascinatiing how the things one culture takes for granted with which another culture has no experience . They have learned much from us but we have also learned a lot from them. One of the great pleasures of living and learning from other cultures with which one is unfamiliar.


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## PanamaJack (Apr 1, 2013)

Well said Hound Dog. 
I remember when my father was working at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala and my mother and I flew to visit him from the states. I was just 9 years old and it was before we moved permanently to Mexico. My father's maid invited all to her home outside of Antigua in a town called Pastores to have tamales. When Telma served the tamales, the first my mother had ever seen, my mother asked, as she looked at the mixture sitting inside the banana leaves, "do we eat the green leaves as well?" Of course no one but my family members understood, but once it was translated everyone had a BIG LAUGH!!!


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Hound Dog said:


> Amusing Vignettes:
> 
> Some indigenous friends we have become close to down here in Chiapas are artisans designing and manufacturing textiles and the other day we were enjoying lunch at their home; compound, actually, in an indigenous community near San Cristóbal when, in the course of passing over-the-table conversation, we discovered that one of the ways they make a living is through the gathering (in the steep and challenging mountainsides surrounding San Cristóbal) and selling firewood. We were interested in buying some firewood which they were selling at very good prices as opposed to local vendors in the city and suggested they supply us with firewood on an ongoing basis in the future. They deliver firewood to the city in their family truck as well as to their fellow villagers so were pleased to take us on as new customers but the following exchange ensued:
> 
> ...


Their practice of gathering firewood is a non-sustainable practice. What will they do when the forests are gone. This is a big problem for future Mexico and Mexicans. In about 2002, Mexico created the Comisión Nacional Forestal (CONAFOR) to address this problem. Your friends may not cook with firewood, but many people do. They also cut trees for fence posts. One of the efforts to improve things is to get people to use more efficient stoves that use less firewood.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

[_QUOTE=TundraGreen;3155601]Their practice of gathering firewood is a non-sustainable practice. What will they do when the forests are gone. This is a big problem for future Mexico and Mexicans. In about 2002, Mexico created the Comisión Nacional Forestal (CONAFOR) to address this problem. Your friends may not cook with firewood, but many people do. They also cut trees for fence posts. One of the efforts to improve things is to get people to use more efficient stoves that use less firewood.[/QUOTE]_

Boy, TG, I could nor agree with you more that firewood harvesting and essential utilization by local people decimate the forest lands and that more efficient means of using natural resources such as the remains of the trees in our forests is desirable. By the way, no one more than the indigenous people with whom we often congregate, would rather conserve on the utilization of wood destined to fuel their fires that make their food more appealing and digestible than those who spend their days hauling firewood up steep and unforgiving mountain paths, especially during the rainy season, so the family can survive on properly cooked meals for the next few days.

We just returned from a journey up the Chiapas Highlands to back country towns such as Bochil and a dozen other communities in the high mountains and the number of poor we saw hauling scraps of "firewood" up steep slopes on headstraps, most of that firewood being the detritus of rotting firewood along countless mountain trails, were uncountable, and I say we have nothing to reveal to them. On the other hand, the forests of Chiapas are being exploited daily by the most despicable thieves and their criminal cousins in the state and federal governments .

I makes me heartsick.


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