Twilight in the Maya pueblo of Ek Balam. The sun is a sloppy egg yolk, poured onto the horizon, backlit with flames. Children’s laughter ricochets up the gravel road that runs through the village of three hundred people. The roosters are in full throttle. Their crowing has spanned the day. It begins as early as three a.m. and won’t end until after nightfall. They are joined now by the barking of dogs, coaxed from underneath trees by cooler temperatures. The steady rasping of frogs. The drone of thirsty mosquitoes.

Doña Guadalupe and Don Andrés have invited me for dinner. They have six kids: Mauricio, age 21, Beatriz, 18, Ángel, 15, Alberto, 13, José, 11, and Cruzita, 9. The five youngest children still live in Ek Balam, but the oldest son works in Cancún and comes home to visit every other weekend. They live in a palapa – a wooden house covered with a thatched roof and opposing doors that allow for a steady flow of air. The Mexican government provided materials for a second house, which is rectangular and built of white cinderblocks strong enough to withstand hurricanes. In ninety-eight degree, ninety-eight percent humidity weather, the cement house doubles as a sauna.

Sarah, an anthropologist from Southern California, is living with the family for ten weeks as she does field research for her thesis on community-based tourism. She becomes their seventh child, folded into the family. Doña Guadalupe swipes her clothes when Sarah is not looking, washes them, and lays them on her hammock after they have dried. Don Andrés keeps a watchful, fatherly eye, taking note of every little detail. He fusses when he spots a new blister on her foot, makes sure she eats when she feels ill, inquires daily about her boyfriend back home. Both he and his wife are ecstatic that she is in a relationship – a new and very reassuring development since her stay three years before.

Just outside the cinderblock home, the children decide to play hopscotch on the grid drawn in the dirt. Cruzita brushes away the ubiquitous almond fruit from the ground and runs barefoot to the house to get playing pieces. As we wait for her, a turkey hustles away with her brood of twelve poults. Chickens meander to their roosts, pecking at the earth along the way. Two ducks saunter to the side of the house and squat down in the gravel to preen glossy white feathers. With a deft hand, José pitches rocks at the almond fruit dangling from the tree above us and lands a ripe one. He bites into it to show me the red ripe fruit, then sets it down on a rock and smashes it with a stone to reveal the sliver of almond inside.  Read More...