EIL Intercultural Learning

Preparations for the Gran Fiesta on Tuesday are coming along well, although the work is beginning to take it´s toll on my body! Repeatedly winching buckets of bricks with no gloves on has left my hands blistered and sore, and bare-footed football has left similar scars on my feet! The day is long, working from  7:30am-6pm with only an hour for lunch, but the progress is amazing, the roof is almost complete and it looks magnificent. The work is great craic, and the time flies in.  After a hard day´s work, we all take a little Mezcal ´for strength´ in the back of the pick up truck as we ride back to the beach - it really does put hairs on your chest! There is a great sense of community about this festival - as the sun goes down, everyone from the village is around the church (La Capilla) preparing bouquets of flowers, clearing weeds and leaves, preparing fireworks, clearing away the tools for the Rosary that evening - there is a real buzz about the place as everyone pitches in.

I´m still not sure how much Religion plays a part in this festival, although the locals are taking great pride in the appearance of the church - there is also music, fairground rides for the kids, football, and plenty of beer, but I will find out on Tuesday whether it is a Religious festival in the same sense as St Patrick´s day. Certainly here in Mexico the Saints are more important than back home, but there seems to be less emphasis on attending Mass than in the Roman Catholic traditions back home.
 
Two evenings ago, none of the guides were around in the evening, and I got my first chance to lead one of the turtle liberations! Most evenings in August, one of the guides will descend on the beach with a box of the tiny Golfina turtles that have hatched that day in the Coral (a kind of incubation hut for the eggs on the beach). Tourists then line up about 10 metres from the waves and pay a donation to release a baby turtle into the ocean. This particular evening there were only about 20 tourists, and I tried to explain to them a few of the facts I have learnt about the turtles here in Ventanilla, in my best Spanish of course! There are 3 kinds of turtles found on this particular beach - the Golfinas (which are released at this time of year), the Laud (leatherbacks, which come to the beach at night around Winter time) and the Negra. The eggs are collected very early in the morning by the tortuga team here and kept safe in the coral. The sex of the turtle depends on the temperature of the sand when they are laid - as a result of global warming, there are more males, and thus more competition. For some of the tourists it is an emotional experience watching their new friend take his first tentative steps towards the surf, before being swept away by a ginormous wave - however only 5-10% of the turtles released actually survive, the ocean is a dangerous place. Usually we wait until sunset for the liberation in the hope that the birds have already had their dinner, but there was a stray seagull eyeing up the feast on the beach - the usual practice is to throw sand at the birds as they swoop in, and this evening a 10 year old from the village was the hero, getting a direct hit with a stone, and scaring the predator away!
 
As I am writing this a marching band is just walking past outside in the main square in Pochutla - I can only guess that the celebration is for yet another patron saint of the area, although the people here don´t need an excuse for some music and dancing! This evening I have a lesson in Palm tree climbing by the beach with Ramon, the local expert - I am used to heights after the work on the roof this week, I just hope I don´t get a coconut to the head...!