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It was dark when we arrived in Oaxaca (wah-ha-ka) City, a colonial capital of about 600,000 people perched on a high, dry plateau surrounded by towering mountain peaks that I could see silhouetted in the moonlight from windows of the plane. We landed in a small, but modern-looking airport. The air was cool but comfortable. Flowers and palm trees were all around.

Along with the rest of my group from Mount Sentinel Secondary School’s Quest for Community program I was immediately stuffed into a van and ferried off to our hotel. It was on the way out of the airport, as we crossed over a river, when my I got my first of many overwhelming whiffs of the stench of human waste.

It didn’t take long for me to get a sense of the contrasts found in Mexico’s poorest, but perhaps most-beautiful state.

Beauty and character everywhere

The next day I barely got a chance to see the city, aside from the insane traffic on the way out. We were off to the nearby Zapotec communities of Teotitlan and Tlacochahuaya where we visited small business owners who benefited from zero interest micro loans we provided them.

These towns were beautiful, and I got my first taste of Spanish Colonial architecture – with it’s mellow lines, brilliant colours and stucco texture. Signs for hand-made traditional rugs were everywhere in Teotitlan and signs all along the highway advertised many varieties of mescal, a liquor made from the agave plant. The Cathedral de St. Geronimo in Tlacochahuaya was my first Spanish Colonial Cathedral and I fell in love with the colours, ornate detail and gold-embossed lines.

But it didn’t take long to decide that these towns were very tourist-oriented. And while the people whose home-based businesses we visited seemed pretty poor at the time, in retrospect they were rather well-off compared to many people who live not too far away from them.

Much of the next few days in Oaxaca City was spent taking Spanish lessons and exploring the area around our hotel. The central part of the city is vibrant and beautiful. The blazing reds, yellows, blues, and greens characteristic of the Spanish Colonial buildings were even more showy in Oaxaca. They glowed in the warm light of the early and late day sun; an irresistible subject for photography.

I also fell in love with the many old, beat cars in the city – and particularly the uncountable number of vintage Volkswagen Beetles in every colour of the rainbow – such character in these cars. The only downside to them was when one started up just as we walked by – it farted out a cloud of stinky, black exhaust that would make a skunk cringe.

The Cathedral St. Domingo is a centerpiece of Oaxaca’s historic downtown area and a spectacle on the inside. Intricate religious imagery was bordered by patterns of real gold and lit by glowing stained-glass windows. But because there were so many people milling about, I didn’t spend that much time doing photography there. I just got what I could with my 50mm prime lens, mostly ceiling details, and went on my way.

Thunderous bangs and booms that set car alarms wailing permeated our time in the city and culminated in a parade and fireworks show to celebrate Black Nazarene (Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno in Spanish). I got the chance to follow the parade, weaving in and out of the crowd with my camera. Oaxacans seem to be quite the celebratory people.

The other side of the city

But during the time I had to wander about the city centre, it was clear to me that the area is very tourist-oriented and caters to more affluent aspects of Oaxacan society. Fancy restaurants, gift shops, and boutiques are everywhere, as are police. The downtown is peppered with uniformed officers carrying machine guns, hand guns or batons. There seemed to be few homeless people or beggars to be seen.  I had to wonder if the police were there to not only give tourists a sense of security, but also to keep the “lesser elements” of society away from the downtown area and out of the consciousness of tourists? (Taking photos of the police is a big no-no in Mexico)

The longer we stayed in the city, the more evident the divergence became between the Oaxaca City we saw on the surface and the place as it really was. We got off the beaten path a bit one day on a walk and ended up meandering through some alleyways, where the houses and cars got undeniably shabbier. Some of them were crumbling brick and stucco, while a few were more like squatter shacks.

Then we visited Hijos de la Luna, a home for displaced children – most of whom are the children of sex trade workers and immigrants. Again we crossed the river of overwhelming stench and were clearly in an impoverished part of the community. Coco, the founder of Hijos de la Luna, takes care of more than 50 children with no funding at all from the Mexican or state governments. Right now she can only afford to care for them until they are 13. Then they have to go out on their own. Where do they go? I could only think of the dusty streets and shabby buildings that surround Hijos as the place they might end up.

Yet this whole time we were surrounded by a beautiful and unique landscape of cactus, scrub brush and high mountain peaks. A warm, energizing sun shone down on us through the day, and we slept in the cool breezes of the desert night. We ate good food, slept in clean beds and drank clean (though bottled) water.

It didn’t take long for the urge to leave the city to arise in me. I wanted to get into those mountains and see what they held. But I also wanted, more than anything, to see how people outside the city live – the poor and indigenous people, the farmers and campesinos – the real people of Oaxaca.

Keep an eye out for a story and photos from the second half of my trip to Oaxaca, when we head into the mountains and spend time at a rural farm.

On January 9, 2012 I left Canada and headed south with a group of 18 students from Mount Sentinel Secondary School’s Quest for Community Program. I joined them as a chaperone on their quest to investigate what makes communities healthy, vibrant and sustainable through two weeks of traveling, giving and working in Oaxaca – Mexico’s poorest and most culturally-diverse states.

We started our trip in Oaxaca City, a beautiful. bustling city on a high plateau, where we took Spanish lessons at Instituto Cultural Oaxaca, visited several small local businesses who were benefiting from zero-interest micro loans we funded through Fundación EnVia and spent time with the children of Hijos de la Luna, while taking time to explore the city and soak in the culture. We also visited Monte Alban, a vast architectural site and ruins of a once-prominent hilltop city of the Zapotec and later the Mixtec indigenous peoples – where we learned  about an ancient community.

We soon left the city and headed for the hills – literally. We spent four nights and three days in the mountain villages of La Neveria and Benito Juarez – both at around 3,000 metres above sea level. The residents of these tiny communities are mainly of Zapotec heritage and live quiet lives farming the hillsides of the Sierra Norte mountains, just north of Oaxaca City. But they have also formed a partnership amongst the eight villages (Pueblos Mancomunados or Commonwealth of Villages) through which they govern themselves with direct democracy and promote ecotourism in the region that allows more young people to stay in the communities. While there, we pitched in to help local farmers with their corn harvest, gave gifts of blankets, toques and mitts to local children and also learned more about their governance and community structure.

Then it was time for the long descent back to the valley where we spent the final days of the trip at Tierra del Sol, a learning centre for sustainable living. Nothing goes to waste at Tierra del Sol, where they practice biointensive farming, build with the materials at hand, use solar and wind energy, and don’t accept any plastic or other types of waste from the outside.

We were there to learn the principles of sustainable living, but also got a rare chance to put them into practice while helping out a young family.

Mario and Sol live at the end of a dusty dirt road in an 8-metre by 8-metre mud brick house, with a tin roof and no walls inside. Before we got there, they were cooking outside over an open fire in the hot desert sun and using a hole in the ground for a bathroom.

With the help of Tierra del Sol founders Pablo Ruiz and Adriana Guzman Salinas and the volunteers who come to learn from them, we helped Mario and Sol learn the biointensive method of organic farming, built an earthen oven, and got close to finishing a dry toilet, shower and walls to block the wind – in two days. Our main building materials were corn stalks and mud made from the soil we were walking on.

And, it was an exercise that benefited everyone involved. We got to learn new, valuable skills. Mario and Sol were overjoyed at their new facilities, as well as the fact that so many strangers had showed up to help. And Pablo and Adriana got the opportunity to help spread the principles of sustainable living in their community.

On the final day of the trip, the Quest for Community kids held a toy-making workshop with a group of local school children. It was great to see how quickly they bonded and how much fun they had together.

This is the first installment of photos from our trip to Oaxaca. I will be following it up oon with my personal photos from the trip that convey my vision of the place and its people.