We have now been in Jol Tuliaja, Chiapas for 2 weeks! We have had a full two weeks of varied activities and experiences, I will try to share the highlights and some accompanying photos for your viewing pleasure :)
Our good friends, Manuel and Wendy drove us to the bus station early in the morning. Thanks guys!
Our luggage barely fit in the car, the largest bag squished between us in the back seat! This bag contains our bed and blankets and pillows, we are glad we brought it all!
There are 28 villages in the territory for this one Tzeltal congregation. Jol Tuliaja is known to be the poorest and most primitive village in the area, but it is where the kingdom hall and pioneer home are located. This village does not have running water to each home, rather the river is very close by and there is a public water source or “tube” that brings water a bit closer for those farther from the river. The homes are very simple wood construction with metal roofs and concrete floors They look much like a shed or barn would look to those of you in the USA. There are a few concrete buildings in the village, however these are rare. Most of them look just like the Pioneer home we will show you. It is common for the “kitchen” to be a detached building because the people have a wood burning “stove” (an elevated pit for making tortillas, their main staple) Our kitchen does not have this but is still detached as you will see. The rest of this email will focus on the home, the hall and the water. Enjoy...
Mike in the kitchen doorway, just 3 steps from the door to our bedroom. Not very far from the main house.
Top right is the “sink”, an open window at which we stand and wash dishes with water from a bucket. We rinse them out of the window where the water drains down the hill. Carina loves to cook so Mike and I are often on dish duty.
This clever sink design is unique to this kitchen, the other families in the village carry their dishes to the river to wash.
This kitchen is small, but well equipped. As pioneers have come and gone, they leave behind many helpful tools for future pioneers to benefit from. Thank you!
Below: view of the pioneer home from the back sort of, the detached kitchen is now in the front left of the photo. The two doors on the main building are for the two bedrooms, ours is on the left.
Mike giving the public talk just days after arriving, notice Carina seated on the stage, she translated the talk into Tzeltal from English.
Mike posing with his three new buddies, Santiago, Santiagito, and shy Jamin who wouldn’t stand up. Santiago is one of only 6 baptized brothers in the hall.
Mike taking the lead one morning in service, in Spanish!
Our street: notice the blue Kingdom Hall, and the “kitchen” behind it. Just outside our open gate and across this street is the public water source.
We thought the home had running water to be hooked up when we arrived. Well, something has since broken and can’t be fixed, hence the Tube, it is a pipe , a really long pipe that brings water from up the mountain where the river starts. So it is gravity fed and pours out water onto the ground all the time even when no one is around. That is until it breaks. And it broke on our third day here! Good news? The river is just a block or two from the house, and we have plenty of buckets, and now we know why.
So for 9 days we trekked to the rivers edge and back fetching water, lots and lots of water. Remember, you use water for just about everything? Yeah, well, you realize just how much you use when you start to measure it in buckets. Thankfully, this past Saturday afternoon, the town fathers got together and fixed it. When the water began to flow once again it felt like manna from heaven! Is that wrong?
The following shots are of the “tube” prior to it turning off. As mentioned, it is public, which apparently includes stray children, pigs , chickens, and turkeys! All of which randomly roam through our yard constantly.
FYI: Mike is the only male in the village who can be seen fetching water...this is a woman’s job and so he gets a lot of smiles and stares as he performs this task.
Mike preparing his talks in the “living room”, one of the 3 rooms in the home. As you can see it has a bed because it doubles as a bedroom Wednesday through Sunday for Grant and Maritza. They usually stay 45 minutes away on the property of the Assembly Hall but have been trying to spend more time down here with the friends to encourage them.
The table and chairs are where we eat our meals together, all 6 of us, it is snug. Below are shots of our room, we sleep under a mosquito net, because the tops of the walls are open to the outside and everything can potentially come in at night.
We hang damp things in the room to dry because it has been too rainy to dry things outside. Notice the open suitcase, that was temporary! On our 3rd day here, the same day the Tube stopped supplying water, we discovered that a rat had ravaged our suitcase. It disturbs me to imagine what may have happened, it actually happened at night while we slept. One morning I sorted laundry to wash and noticed one of Mike’s shirt collars was chewed off! And a pair of his underwear was hanging out of the suitcase, half in and half out, suspicious...then I couldn’t find a pair of my under wear! At this point, Mike believed I was going crazy and that I must have moved his underwear, and I must not have packed the missing pair of mine. Then we remembered the night before hearing a plastic bag rustle near the edge of the room and discovered it had been half eaten as well, the remnants of it were in a small hole. So to prove me wrong, Mike shines his flashlight down the same hole and to his surprise and my horror he pulls out 3 small remnants of my underwear! This was the point at which I had my mini melt down! I quickly recovered and now we laugh about this. Oh, and Jol Tulija has one less rat these days :)
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