It was the 14th birthday of my Spanish school and in the break there were two cakes. One, a tres leches cake, the other a jelly made with cream and with bits of regular green and red jelly suspended in it. It looked like something out of a 1950s American cookbook. Glad to have tried something I’d only see online photos of before, though I can’t say it was particularly tasty.
After my class I caught a colectivo to Ocotlan. It all proceeded smoothly, I’m happy to say: the colectivo (well, more accurately, a van) was where I had hoped to find it, and I found myself a seat to myself, and the van itself was airconditioned and not overcrowded. It took 40-45 minutes to reach Ocotlan where the Friday market was in full swing.
This is a much more local market than the one in Tlacolula which I visited some weeks ago with the GF. There were, for instance, a good many blacksmith’s stalls, selling hoes and ploughs and the like, as well as goats, turkeys, etc. I bought myself a small scabbard for my knife, one that came with a little metal attachment for a belt. (On returning to Oaxaca I realised that I’d misremembered the size of my knife, which is too small for the scabbard, but it’ll do the job after slicing through the cardboard I’d wrapped it in before). It was roughly divided into the segments: the artisans outside, then a shoe section, a farming section, a few meat sections, and of course plenty of fruit and vegetables. I bought some avocadoes and a half kilo of rambutans, as well as a plastic plate to eat them off, printed with a cartoon character named Rosita Fresita (Strawberry Shortcake, basically, though a far more svelte version than the dumpy bonnet-wearing cupcake-shaped creature from my childhood).
Then I started feeling hungry and was struck with my usual indecision, so finally followed an elderly woman who sat at a table. I sat by her and a bowl of soup was placed in front of each of us. This turned out to be a bowl of what I can only describe as ‘consomme of worst end of farmyard’ as it seemed to comprise the leftover bits of various animals – I noticed several forms of innards from several different types of animals. Luckily it was quite tasty once nicely limed, so I enjoyed it, despite my concern about getting food poisoning.
Revived, I did a bit more shopping: a loosely woven cloth for wrapping tortillas, and a cotton top embroidered with insects. I’m quite pleased with both, though I later spent a good hour knotting the loose fringe on the cloth so it wouldn’t fray.
I then went to the Fundacion Rudolfo Morales, which I’d vaguely heard had some nice artwork. It was locked but I saw a woman through the gates and called out. Another woman, older, with that boldly unnatural makeup that seemes to survive amongst women of a certain age group in Mexico, opened the door. She took me inside, into a lovely open courtyard hung over with flowers, where I was immediately surrounded by a pack of very well groomed dogs of every size but all clearly in flourishing health and of pure breed. I did my usual attempt to hide evidence of my distaste at being licked and petted them. Then the woman showed me the magnificent kitchen and a small outdoor amphitheatre. Then explained that this was a private house (I think she might have been the late artist’s daughter), and the actual work was displayed in the municipal palace. Embarrassed, I thanked her and apologised, though she was clearly pleased to have a Pakistani with very broken Spanish visit, and I left. I could not bear to venture back into the market to find the municipal palace, which was buried somewhere deep inside, so instead I walked on to the outskirts of Ocotlan to find the workshop of the Aguilar sisters, women who make clay figurines. On the way I passed the sign of a doctor with an excellent name: Dr Amilcar Hamurabi, and a small near-spherical church. The Aguilar home was indeed a home, with family members cooking, eating, washing clothes, turning cartwheels (the younger members), etc. The figurines were disappointing, by and large: the small ones were rough and poorly made, while the larger ones, clearly produced by the senior members of the family, were more refined and whimsical but also very large. So I returned to the colectivo stop and returned, this time squeezed next to a large-sized family and on a bench seat which seemed to be on rollers so rocked me all the way back to Oaxaca.
On returning I stopped briefly at Boulenc to buy myself some focaccia for later and a slice of cake for dinner, and a slice of pizza for now. I also succumbed to temptation and bought a bottle of (locally made) chai latte, which definitely owed more to the chai lattes of America than actual masala chai, but was very welcome nonetheless. Then I returned and spent far more time than I wanted on knotting that fringe and then washing the cloth and the new top. And then, bed.