As it turns out, internet access in rural Mexico is almost non-existent. There is, however, one computer with internet access in a teeny tiny library in the “big” town of Rayones, Nuevo Leon, where we are currently staying. Unfortunately, the hours of operation haven’t allowed us to really access the internet but today is probably the last chance I’ll have so here is my very long blog post from Mexico...

Currently, we are staying in “big town” Rayones but on Monday we are heading up to the mountain villages where there are no phones or computers and virtually no running water or electricity either. As excited as I am to get to the meat of what we’re doing here I’m a little nervous to be so far from the outside world. Even though we haven’t had much time to use the phone or the internet here in Rayones it has been comforting to know it is there.

Since we’ve been here most of our time has been spent on orientation, training, and setting up. Our main focus has been on tourism because the nonprofit we’re working under has been asked by the Governor of Nuevo Leon to give a report on issues and suggestions regarding tourism. Basically, the Governor has decided they ARE going to start advertising and pushing tourism so Fifth Sun has gotten involved to help identify potential issues and suggest possible solutions. Our job has been to go out to potential tourist sites and report back on problems we see both from an American tourist perspective and from an anthropological perspective.

I personally wish tourism wouldn’t come here because I fear tourists may cause more culture change and damage than the revenue could ever make up for. Most of the students believe the same but Fifth Sun justifies our involvement by saying that applied anthropology is not going to stop tourism from happening but we can mitigate change.
Since being here I have learned so much and am beginning to understand how anthropology can (and can’t) save the world.

Since we can’t save the world in three weeks I think I may return home, with a group that is leaving a week early, and come back for the second session at the end of summer. I truly enjoy being in the field and I think I may have found my calling, its just unfortunate that my calling doesn’t pay in dollars, or pesos, or money of any kind. Fifth Sun hopes to be able to pay project leaders in the future so my hope is to stay involved in whatever way I can and maybe one day they’ll be able to hire me.

My main focus here is the literacy project and since the organization hadn’t previously done any work with literacy I’m starting with nothing, which is wonderfully frightening. So far I’ve discovered some major barriers to teaching literacy, for example: locals believe that “school” and “classes” are for children only so we have to find a way to teach literacy to adults without asking them to attend a “class”. I have some ideas but we have a ton of research and surveying to do before anything actually happens, which means nothing is going to get off the ground during this session.

By this point many of you have stopped reading because I’m breaking Dan’s number one rule of blogging: Don’t make long posts. Sorry Dan-o but I’ve only got one chance to get all this out there. And there’s more…