Today Joanne, Katrina, and I went to the Island of Picanda (one of four) in Lake Patzcuaro. Picanda is considered a Purepecha community because all of the residents still speak the Purepecha language and most understand Purepecha better than Spanish. The island does have electricity, but no running fresh water system.
Getting to Picanda from Patzcuaro is quite an adventure. It is about a 30 minute Combi ride through curvy mountain roads to the muelle (dock). Then you basically find someone to take you across in their fishing boat. Let's just say that the curvy roads and sitting on the floor of a fishing boat was not the best for motion sickness, but thank god for Dramamine.
Once we arrived in Picanda we went on a search for women who had a child less than five years old to participate in our birthing survey. For such a small island we were able to do a large number of surveys- which was great. Since most of the women understood Purepecha better than Spanish, Margarita helped translate the survey that I gave in Spanish into Purepecha. Tantos lenguas!
What an exciting and exhausting day!
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