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"Flashlights and Fireflies"

You would only need to spend a few hours here at the Ruiz family farm to understand why I don't want to leave tomorrow. There are no telephones out here. No cell phones. No e-mail or messenger service. For that matter, there's no electricity except for a small diesel generator that roars to life early in the morning to light the kitchen, just after the roosters begin to crow. The farm is peaceful. The days are relaxed and slow. The Ruiz have plenty of time - all day everyday - to laugh and tell stories while working side-by-side at their beautiful old wooden looms.

Traditional Zapotec rug weaving, it turns out, is a very social activity. The Ruiz family looms, like so many others in this town, are dedicated exclusively to rug making, and are housed under three-sided shelters. So everyone works outdoors, enjoying the temperate Oaxacan weather. The Ruiz's looms all face out upon a magnificent vista of low lying blue mountains and miles and miles of an unspoiled countryside.

Today the Ruiz were running low on spun wool for the looms, so we spent most of the day carding heap after heap of fresh-shorn sheep's wool. It takes about ten minutes to card each handful of wool. But after those ten minutes, that handful of rough wool turns fluffy and as soft as powdered snow. We carded wool all morning, piling it up in a large woven basket to be washed in the Ruiz's new concrete and stone washbasin, built in the middle of their yard.

After washing the wool, we laid it out to dry, then spun the dry wool into strong yarn, washed the yarn, tinted it with a variety of natural dyes, and finally hung it out to dry again so that it will be ready to weave into rugs on the looms tomorrow.

Rosa, the beautiful 75-year-old mother of the Ruiz clan, kept a careful eye on my novice wool carding techniques while Cristina and Delfina worked the big stone mortars and pestles, grinding tiny, gray, dried cochinilla bugs into a brilliant red powder. Just a pinch of the powdered bugs, added to a big, ceramic dye pot full of water, stains the wool a rich, ruby-red. They women added the color in increasing amounts to different dye batches, so we'd end up with a variety of reddish hues to choose from when weaving the rugs tomorrow.

I learned about the cochinilla bugs earlier this year, when I visited Manuel Cancho and his family, tapestry weavers in Ayacucho, Peru. The cochinilla bugs are slow moving, mite-like insects. They live on nopal (prickly pear) cactus leaves and are cultivated in many parts of Latin America for the rich red dye they produce.

We added handfuls of other natural materials to other pots - two handfuls of eucalyptus bark went into one boiling vat. The eucalyptus evens out the wool's tone, turning it to a warm shade of tan. We also combined a variety of green leaves to produce a dusty-gray dye. I noticed a ceramic vase full of two-day-old, fermenting pomegranates. The liquid had turned from bright red to a rotten, slimy yellow. But that color turned the wool a beautiful, golden yellow. One of Gregorio's nephews, Domingo, showed me some miniature pansy-type flowers, growing scattered in the yard and between the rows of corn. We got on our hands and knees just to see them - they're very small. Pinched, they stain your fingers dark purple. We collected a small handful of the dainty petals, enough to stain a hefty pile of wool.

Rosa's husband, Gregorio, and several of his sons and daughters started the fires and manned the various vats of boiling dye during the afternoon. Domingo taught me to spin the wool, carefully pinching, twisting and pulling the soft, combed wool with enough pressure to form it into yarn but not enough to pull it apart on the spinning wheel.

Every so often Gregorio and his sons Israel and Gregorio Jr. would lower a big hook down into one or the other of the boiling cauldrons. The hook was attached to a rope strung up over one of the rafters. The men would pull hard to drag the heavy piles of dyed wool up and out of the ceramic pots. Steam roiled up and off of the hanging wool as the hot water cascaded back into the pots. It was a spectacular sight.

Then the wool was washed again and strung up to dry in carefully draped bundles. Finally we'd feed the bundles back onto the spinning wheel, carefully rewinding the yarn onto little spindles. Then the wool was ready to be put to work at the looms to create the Ruiz family's magnificent Zapotec rugs.

The ladies tell stories in Zapotec all day, while a few of the younger men, most of whom spoke Spanish in addition to Zapotec, told me about the long history of the Zapotec rug tradition - dating back more than 500 years before the birth of Christ. "But we didn't have wool before the conquistadors arrived," Israel commented. "We used cotton before sheep arrived on the continent."

I've admired the Ruiz family's rugs since first seeing their work on the NOVICA Web site. My first two NOVICA purchases were Ruiz family rugs, earlier this year. Gregorio was pleased to hear that I was a customer long before I decided to visit.

Tonight Rosa, Evelia, and Cristina prepared a hearty dinner sans animal products. I assured them they didn't have to abstain from meat on my behalf, but they insisted that they commonly ate exactly what they had prepared for me - a salad of fresh local greens, chomporado (a hot, thick drink made of corn masa, hot water, and locally-grown bitter chocolate), and caldo de chapil, a delicious soup made of chapil greens (a delicate, mild weed that looks like young, tender alfalfa but tastes delicious), sliced zucchini-type squash, and fresh cut corn kernels.

The older women served us, repeatedly getting up to offer the men and myself seconds and thirds. Several plates of communal fare were heaped in the middle of the table including thickly sliced, fresh Oaxacan cheese and enormous Oaxacan-style corn tortillas. We tore the tortillas to scoop up the delicious soup. We also passed around potent, fresh red chili paste, fresh sea salt, and heaps of juicy, sliced green limes.

We sat at three large tables. The children sat at one table, the women at another, and the men at still another. I was seated with the men, either because I was the guest of honor or simply because the men spoke more Spanish. Some of the women only spoke Zapotec, one of the many indigenous languages spoken throughout Oaxaca. Twelve-year-old Manuel sat with us, rather than with the other children. He's very much a young man. He put so much hot red chili in his soup that it turned a thick, bright orange.

The men told me about their lives as members of the tight-knit Teotitlan del Valle village. And they talked at length about their excitement over their now-booming rug business, thanks to their tremendous success selling their work to the world on the Internet. Twenty-two-year-old Gregorio Jr. told me he's been taking a bus into the capital for a month now, to take English lessons. And next week Israel will start taking a bus in the other direction several days a week to learn computer skills in Tlacolula, a larger town nearby. Israel said one of his first goals is to learn to access the Internet, so he can view his family's pages on the NOVICA Web site. Although the Ruiz have collaborated with NOVICA for nearly a year, they haven't yet seen their page on the site. I wish I could be with Israel when he first checks it out!

Later we sat outside along the family's long concrete porch, and Gregorio Sr. explained his plans to build a traditional adobe rug-making studio in the center of the farmyard. The family's goal is to design a structure large enough to entertain visiting families from abroad. "Now we have customers all over the world," said Israel, "and some of them want to come visit us. Soon we'll have a place for them to come to share champorado and a meal, and watch us demonstrate how we make the rugs."

Rosa doesn't speak much Spanish, but somehow we managed to carry on a conversation about rebosas. She had draped a traditional black and white silk rebosa over her shoulders to stay warm - a stiff breeze had just picked up. I mentioned to her that I'd found some beautiful rebosas in Mexico State a few years earlier. She seemed pleased about that. I told her that I'd also seen some beautiful rebosa-like scarves in Bali, but made of very thin silk.

Six-year-old Guillermo stood next to us with a flyswatter. He wasn't swatting flies, but going crazy killing monster ants that were quietly crawling behind us in a straight line across the porch. "Guillermo!" scolded Rosa. Guillermo looked up sheepishly. I was glad I wasn't an ant.

Later, Israel pulled me aside. He wanted to know if the Balinese rebosas could be purchased through the NOVICA site. I explained that some were indeed available, as were some beautiful silk scarves on the Thailand pages. "Our wives love silk," he explained. "And they love rebosas." He wanted to know exactly how he could go about purchasing the scarves once his brother accessed the Internet.

Well, this flashlight is getting dim, and it will be dawn soon. I'll say goodnight for now.

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