When a person comes into a room, they greet everyone there – often with kisses and endearments. If two people are speaking and another person comes into the room, the conversation stops and the newcomer is acknowledged. If someone is having a party and you bring an extra person (or persons) – even without notifying your host, the extras are welcomed as though they were at the top of the guest list.

On the other hand, if respect is not shown, the absence is palpable.

In most places in North America or Europe, showing this over-the-top courtesy is not common and so newcomers to Merida may not think to extend it. Because some Yucatecans do not have a lot of experience with the social mores of other countries, they can easily be offended if the pleasantries are not forthcoming. It is difficult to know what exactly should be done, but the basic rule of thumb is that no one should be left alone in a crowd. If you are in a group, be sure everyone is greeted and introduced to everyone else present. If someone new comes into the room (even if they are, in fact, interrupting) they should be made to feel welcome. Inclusion is very important.

As guests in this country, we need to take a back seat sometimes. Yucatecans do not really appreciate our analysis of all that’s wrong with this city. We need to be very sensitive of what we say when native-born people are within earshot. I was at a party once and there was a group of foreign men loudly discussing the merits of the local supermarket…

“Why don’t ‘they’ have a properly equipped hardware section?” one fellow asked the others.

“I know what you mean, I was looking for 1¼ inch screws the other day, and do you think I could find them?” answered his buddy.

They continued to criticize the way the store was stocked, how poorly it was run, and then went on to complain how “hardly anyone speaks English”. My Yucatecan husband was not amused, and when we got into the car, he exploded,

“Who do those guys think they are? To start with most people who shop at that store don’t ever have need for 1¼ inch screws; they have workmen who buy them… at a hardware store! Secondly, we are on the metric system here, and thirdly, we speak Spanish in “this” country!”

I don’t think the men had any idea that they were being offensive, but Jorge would have nothing to do with them after that – ever, ever, ever!

Neither are Yucatecans at all interested in hearing about how products / services / schools / government / etc. “are better run back home”. I’ve known women who claim even Jello is “not as good” here! I’ve had it pointed out to me that Yucatecans themselves will often comment about inadequacies they encounter, but that’s different… It’s OK to berate your own culture and way of doing things, but you don’t like to hear outsiders do so. We can draw a parallel with this and how we feel about our families. We can criticize them all we want and do so very vocally but if anyone else does – watch out!

It is best to keep our opinions to ourselves when we are in the presence of Yucatecan friends and acquaintances. But sometimes, this is unavoidable; how can we state what we feel without coming across as rude? Let’s go back to the case of the fellow who needed 1¼ inch screws. Instead of criticizing the store (which was interpreted as a badmouthing the whole culture!) it would be better to ask,

“Hey, I tried to buy 1¼ inch screws the other day; the store I went to didn’t have them… where can I go?”

This may sound like taking things to ridiculous limits, but the sensitivity is there, and you have to work around it.

I’ve heard newcomers speak hotly and loudly about so many situations and circumstances they don’t understand and often they preface their complaint with,

“What’s the matter with these people / this country / this government …?”

Once I attended a concert that was quite late getting started… An English voice beside me exclaimed,

“Why can’t anything here ever start on time?”

All the Yucatecans in the vicinity had very offended looks on their faces; I was most uncomfortable, and the English-speaker was poised to continue with his commentary…

“Remember, lots of people here understand English; be careful what you say!” I whispered to him. To his credit, he kept quiet after that.

It’s also a good idea to refrain from speaking English loudly in public. Try not to call out at full volume when you see a friend down the isle of the grocery store. Neither should you laugh uproariously because those around will not understand the joke and could conclude you’re laughing at them. Yucatecans are not used to boisterous North American ways and after all, we are in their country…

Once in a while, you will probably encounter a Yucatecan with very strong opinions about “your” country. I have had this experience and I usually cut the comments off by saying,

“Let’s not confuse the politics with the people!”

This usually softens the attack, but if it doesn’t, I continue,

“As a foreigner here, I am not permitted to make political statements; I don’t want to create controversy, so let’s talk about something else.”

The bottom line is, that as transplants in Yucatan, we have to adjust our yardstick to the status-quo in Merida, and avoid making direct criticisms of everything that is not satisfactory to us. We need to include people and be sensitive to their needs. We need to be tolerant of what we encounter around us and save our evaluations until we are in the privacy of our own homes. This isn’t always easy, but if you can manage to adopt this behavior, you will be considered muy educado – well mannered. People will warm up to you and treat you with the same respect you’ve shown them.

Editor’s Note: Joanna van der Gracht de Rosado is a writer from Vancouver, Canada who has been living in Merida, Yucatan for over 30 years. She is the author of Tomando Agua de Pozo (Taking Water from the Well), which recounts many of her experiences assimilating in Mexico. You can read her Yucatan Living interview here and visit her blog here.

We are rhythmically chanting this verse inside a Temazcal (prehispanic steam bath) at Na’Lu’um (Maya for Mother Earth) just outside Mérida while sweat pours from our open pores and runs down our drenched skin.  As we chant we each play an ancient instrument: the drum, the sticks (claves), the conch, or a pair of decorated gourds filled with dry seeds. 

Our guía, Roberto Garcia, leads us in our quest to experience the therapeutic and spiritual purifications of an Aztec/Mayan sweat bath or Temazcal.  The name comes from two Nahuatl words: temas which means bath and calli meaning house.

Shaped like an igloo and low to the ground (you cannot stand up inside), the Temazcal represents the womb of Mother Earth.  We are returning to the womb to be reborn, refreshed and detoxified.  Before entering, we drink a juice of chaya, cucumber and carrot for energy.   A few hours prior to our session, we have eaten only a light lunch.

The area surrounding the Temazcal is blessed with incense in the four cosmic directions: north, south, east, west, which also represent the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire.  Roberto asks our names.  With our eyes closed and arms held out to our sides, he invokes our names while performing a ritual of cleanliness and dedication as he passes a bouquet of chamomile (for tranquillity) around and over us, seeking to release our toxins and renew our spirit.   

We wear simple, loose clothing, although the original baths were taken in the nude.  We will experience two, and not the four doors, of the Temazcal.  Our two sessions are expected to last between 30 and 45 minutes depending on our comfort.

Following the pre-ceremony, we are ready to enter the womb of Mother Earth through the small, low opening oriented towards the south, “the pathway of the dead”, which begins with birth and ends with death.  This symbolizes the duality of life: mother and father, hot and cold, good and evil, left and right, birth and death.  As soon as we are born, we begin our journey towards death.

As we each kneel at the opening, we are instructed to utter In Láak’ Kech to greet and welcome the brotherhood of man as we merge into one.  We bow reverently to our Earth Mother and then say A Láak’ Kin to seal the greeting.  These two phrases are used each time one of us wishes to speak inside the Temazcal: the first one to ask permission to speak, the second granting that permission. 

Inside the womb, we must move clockwise in a circle, left to right, following the movement of the planet system around the sun.  Each of us sits on a towel with a sprig of basil (for circulatory powers) lying on the top-left side of the towel.  Beside Roberto lies a wooden serpent-carved staff of Kukulcan representing the four elements: earth, water, wind and fire that will keep us safe while we are together in the chamber. The musical instruments are near us.  A bouquet of rosemary and thyme hangs from the top of the Temazcal below the small opening on the roof.

A ceremony prepares the lava rocks that have been heated in a separate fireplace facing east where our Father, the sun, rises.   Their placement in the center well of the chamber symbolizes the moment of conception within the womb.  As each red hot rock is lowered into the center space, we are asked to use a piece of hardened copal tree resin and draw a cross to denote the four directions of the universe and the four elements of life.  Pails of herbal water are placed near the hot rocks to produce the steam.

Finally, the door is closed and the hole in the top of the structure is sealed.  We are in complete darkness and, after the hissing of water, we feel the high heat emanating from the hot lava rocks.

We now begin our journey of rebirth.  

Roberto welcomes us into the womb of Mother Earth and asks our reasons for coming.  While we sweat, it is his job to gauge the heat of the bath and our comfort level.   It is our job to look within ourselves for spiritual cleanliness while the sweating removes our physical toxins. 

Picking up the instruments, we chant and sing; we also practise deep breathing. Sometimes we kneel, sometimes we lie in the fetal position, all the while we sweat profusely.  We take our chamomile bouquet and begin rubbing the herb over our entire bodies, beginning with the left leg and foot, to help remove our toxins.

Without us realizing the passage of 45 minutes, Roberto suddenly instructs us to call for the opening of the door.  As the cool night air slowly enters the chamber we are invited to eat slices of orange.  We do not leave the Temazcal session, but during the break, we receive additional lava rocks inducing the same respectful ceremony. 

Again the door and top are sealed and we are plunged into darkness once more, ready to continue our sweat bath.

When the second door session ends – after approximately 30 minutes – we exit the womb in the same clockwise direction we entered.  Crawling backwards out of the chamber, we are greeted by attendants who encircle us with white, fluffy towels.  We can take a cool dip in a non-chlorinated pool or a cool shower, bearing in mind our pores are open, and remain so, for at least an hour.  It is wise we do not get chilled or take ‘aires’ or drafts during this time.

Once we cool and return to normal, we sit beneath a clear night sky in which floats a crescent moon surrounded by bright stars and enjoy a fresh fruit cocktail, a drink of rice, soya and chocolate, and finally a delicious vegetable soup prepared without condiments. 

The Temazcal is reputed for its positive health benefits.  Research from Dr. Horacio Rojas Alba, Instituto Mexicano de Medicinas Tradicionales Tlahuilli A.C., attests to this theory.

He reports that overheating of the body (during the bath, the body temperature may reach 40 C /104 F) produces a series of reactions: it stimulates both the superficial and the deep blood circulation, accelerates the frequency of heartbeats, as well as increases their force, calls into action the mechanisms of thermal regulation, activates the metabolism, and promotes sweating. All of these effects produce a great internal movement of energy and liquids, somewhat similar to the way in which strenuous exercise does, bringing increased circulation to all the muscles, organs and tissues. While all sweat baths produce these effects, the Temazcal, because of the way it works and the precision with which it can be regulated by the healer in charge of the bath, controls these body reactions to high heat to maximize the curative effects.

The high heat and high humidity, taken together, produce their healing effects, basically through reducing or impeding the body’s mechanism for cooling itself.  The heat, higher than normal body temperature, induces sweating; the high humidity inhibits the evaporation of the sweat, the chief method through which the body normally cools itself. Blood circulation is therefore increased, sweating is increased, and the elimination of toxins is maximized. It is said that every liter of sweat lost in the Temazcal is equivalent to a full day’s work by the kidneys!

My husband and I are convinced of the Temazcal’s physical and spiritual benefits and are ready for another close encounter with the sweat bath.

Directions from Merida:
To get to Na’ Lu’um, turn off the Mérida pereferico at the Cancun exit on highway 180.  Then take the Mayapan exit onto the Carretera Merida-Chetumal to Km 22.9.  The Temazcal is performed Tuesday and Saturday.

The bride and her bridesmaids were outside the church, giggling and getting in line. Each bridesmaid wore a dress of matching material, but each one was a different style to compliment the figure and height of that particular woman, a local tradition that we know many bridesmaids back in the United States would be happy to adopt. Our bride, a bright, educated Yucatecan woman marrying a local businessman, stopped for a moment on the arm of her tuxedo’d father, adjusted her dress and smiled as she walked confidently down the aisle… the picture of a modern Mexican beauty.

The mass was in Spanish, making it diffcult for us to understand. The singing was good and live, but the singers were hidden from us. The bride and groom were also unseen for much of the ceremony, sitting down in front. Two priests who had never been married talked about how to have a successful marriage, and the congregation dutifully dropped coins in the baskets when the sermon was finished (as did we…).

The sermon gave us a lot of time to look around at the people in the pews. Sitting right in front of us was an even younger example of a modern Mexican woman, a beautiful twenty-something with shiny black hair in a complicated updo, wearing a sleeveless long gown. Her novio stood beside her, hair gelled to a jaunty perfection that added a slight whiff of rebellion to his suit and tie. When they looked around, as they sometimes did, we could see the faces of handsome, dark-eyed youth, with an air of something we thought young people just didn’t have anymore: innocence. With our eyes closed, our imaginations placed them in a Mexican calendar painting… she dressed in a long skirt holding a basket of fruit, he astride a horse and smiling, both of them enlightened by a Mexican sunset. They were so quintissentially Mexican and so beautiful… they brought tears to our eyes.

With a blast of joyous music, we awakened from our Mexican fantasy as the bride and groom walked back down the aisle. Outside, a few greetings were exchanged and then everyone agreed: let’s go to the party!

The party, it turns out, was spectacular and gave the impression of sparing no expense. Maybe 100 people went to the church ceremony, but probably 500 people attended the party. It was held at a local hacienda, San Antonio Cucul, complete with valet parking service, dramatic lighting in the casa principal, and sweet-smelling flowers strategically placed around the entrance. After going quickly through a traditional receiving line with bride, groom and their parents, we walked down stone steps out of the casa and into the garden, which had been transformed into a major venue.

Two huge tents were set up on either side of what looked like a living room area on the grass, complete with couches, chairs, tables and a huge table with the cake and hundreds of other sweet delicacies. In front of all this, a stage was set up complete with concert lighting and sound equipment, and the musical instruments waiting for an entire live band.

People swarmed in and sat down at the table, served by more waiters than you might see in all of downtown on a Saturday night. No need was left unattended. Drinks were on the house… and not just champagne. Anything you wanted. There was a menu on the table that outlined the entradas, the dinner, the midnite snack and breakfast. The food and drink just kept coming, and when it started to slow, the liqueur cart was set up to serve tequila, Xtabentun, Bailey’s and the like.

But first, the sound of Queen’s "Somebody to Love" blasted from the stage, fireworks exploded above, and the bride and groom entered the main seating area in triumph. They visited their friends and family at the tables for awhile, then made it to the stage for their first dance. The Carpenters sang ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’, the perennial favorite, and the happy couple danced and sang to each other, while at least three professional photographers snapped and taped and circled. The crowd watched dreamily, oohing and aahing when more fireworks lit the stage, the music changed to something more uptempo (a song in Spanish) and the couple continued their dance and continued singing to each other. The next song was played during the traditional Father-Daughter dance, and then the live band came out and everyone joined in.

We learned that wedding traditions here are pretty much the same as ours… the father-daughter dance, the reception line, the toasts, the tossing of the bouquet. Massive amounts of photos are taken, including photos of groups of family and friends, often in proximity to the wedding cake before it is cut. There might even be a photo taken of the bride and groom cutting the cake, but the bride and groom feeding each other is not a local tradition.

According to our sources, the traditions didn’t used to so closely mimic the United States. Even algo nuevo, algo viejo, algo usado, algo azul )(’something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue’) is now a tradition here in Yucatan. We learned that there is a local tradition to play a practical joke on the groom… anything from throwing the groom into the pool (if there is one), throwing him up in the air repeatedly, or undressing him in the men’s bathroom, and then sending the bride in to get him dressed again. We did not witness any of this… maybe we left a little too early (at midnite).

If this had been a more modest wedding, we might have seen some other local traditions like pinning money for the honeymoon on the veil of the bride as she visited your table, or putting coins into the shoe of the groom as it was passed around among guests at the reception. We would have gone also to the church wedding where the father of the bride walked her down the aisle and gave her away, and we would probably have retired to a family home where the food served was made by friends and family.

But a modest wedding this was not. After eating a multi-course meal and downing uncountable mojitos and sodas, after wedding cake and cookies and coffee and after-dinner drinks, we finally took our leave of the festivities. From what we could tell, the party was just beginning. The dancefloor was crowded with the bouncing, dancing, arms-in-the-air exuberance of beautiful young people, including our Mexican calendar girl, now changed into a mini-dress for the occasion. Non-dancing adults and young children lounged around the tables, holding loud conversations that could barely be heard above the music. We didn’t see the bouquet-tossing, we didn’t hear the toasts and we didn’t partake of either the midnight home-baked-bread-and-cheeses buffet, nor the breakfast that was on the menu at the table, planned for about 4 am.

We took our leave early, thrilled to have been invited to such a joyful affair where two smart and accomplished people seemed so happy to be together. We were sure that our table, which had politely spoken English the entire time we were there, would happily revert back to Spanish now that we were gone. As we walked down the driveway to our waiting car, we were reminded that no matter where they take place, weddings affirm the spirit of love and family. We felt enveloped by that spirit here in our Merida home and with our new family of friends.

The bride and groom took off, we hear, for a multi-city tour of the United States, including Vegas of course. They’ll be back soon, and we look forward to watching them grow into their relationship as we join the chorus of friends and family that will start asking, "So, when are you going to have a baby?"

*****

Hacienda San Antonio Cucul’s website

Another visit to a local ritual, the Quinceaños, Mayan-style

We entered the cathedral with the usual sense of relief as we stepped from the hot Merida sun into the cool stone darkness of the church. We had called ahead so we were met just inside the huge wooden doors by Jim, who led us through a small wooden door we had never noticed before, and up a seemingly-endless circular staircase to the organ loft. There was a bit of delicious excitement in climbing up… the excitement of going to the attic where treasures are stored, to a hidden chamber or a secret hideaway.

Stepping out onto the spacious balcony, the first thing that struck us was the view. It is one thing to be on the ground in the Cathedral, looking up at the stone arches several stories above you. It is another story to be nestled up under those arches. We were greeted with a different sense of wonder, being up near the ceiling, looking down what seemed to be a very long way to the pews and altar where multi-colored tiny little people were attending mass. From our perch, we were able to appreciate the arches and stone ornaments in a way we hadn’t been able to from down below and it took us awhile to stop staring.

Once we got over the vertigo and giddiness of being so near heaven, we looked around us and were met with what looked like a workshop. Tubes and wood and tools were everywhere. And at two benches sat Tom Cotner from Oklahoma, working on a carpentry project and John Hendriksen of Boston, working on a series of aluminum tubes. After waving hello, they continued their work while Jim told us more about the organ that towered above and behind us, reaching up to the very top of the cathedral ceiling.

The organ was manufactured in Germany and installed by an organ builder from Mexico City in 1937 after an earlier organ had been destroyed during the Mexican Revolution. (The organ loft was not an original part of the cathedral, but had itself been built in 1903.) Everything about the original organ… the pipes, the wood… all came from Germany. Without attention and in the climate of Yucatan, these did not fare well over time, and by the 1970’s, the organ was in terrible condition. The Cathedral offices went looking for someone to repair the organ and found Jimmy Williams, a man from New Orleans, who came in the early 1980’s and made major reparations, including building a new console and adding electronics. After the initial repair, a group from New Orleans came every year as volunteers to continue maintenance and repair. And though Jimmy Williams died ten years ago, the two gentleman working the day we were there were an extension of that original team.

Have you ever met an organ repairman? Did you know there is an American Institute of Organ Builders? Do you know how an organ works? This was all new to us, so we had to start at the beginning.

First of all, an organ like the one in Merida’s Cathedral is not one piece. It is a series of pipes, both metal and wooden, held together by a wooden structure, fed by an air blower and controlled by a console whose keys and pedals control the flow of air by way of a complex set of magnets and other electronic components. The loft is a large, apartment-sized space with the console nearest the front of the church close to the balcony. The rows and rows of pipes, some of which are strictly ornamental, are set up behind the console, with plenty of room to walk around between them. The part of the organ that holds the pipes, shutters and air mechanisms is so big, you can walk around inside of it, and, escorted carefully by Tom, we did. Being inside the organ is like being backstage at a theatre… dirty, dusty and not quite as elegant as what is out front.

All this wood and metal and mystery has to actually work together. Until the invention of the telephone switchboard, the pipe organ was the most complicated manmade machine on the planet. There are a lot of moving parts and, at the risk of simplification, each note has to be precisely tuned by placing the right sized and shaped hole in the correctly sized and shaped pipe. Every single note on the organ has a separate pipe, and each of those pipes must first be created, and then it must be tuned and then it must be installed. In the case of Merida’s organ, there are approximately 1800 pipes, with space to add more. Every pipe organ is unique, built and fitted into its own space and, over time, personalized to its environment.

The biggest pipe in Merida’s organ is 16 feet tall (almost two stories!) and the smallest creates a note so high it is just within the range of the human ear (15,000 cycles per second). All the pipes in an organ sit lightly (no, they are not secured in place but simply set into holes so that they can be easily removed for maintenance) in wooden frames. In some cases they are surrounded by louvered doors, called swell shutters, that are controlled by the organist and can move open or closed to affect the intensity of the sound. The blower, which looks like a big box with a pump attached to it, sits to one side, with flexible pipes running out of it that snake through the structure, delivering the blasts of air which magically turn into beautiful music.

For the last few years, Merida’s organ had gone unmaintained due to lack of funds. This year, the city came up with the money to bring Tom and John here and to house them for the two weeks that they worked on the organ. Neither of them, however, were paid for the painstaking and exacting work that they performed each day that they were here. In fact, such is their dedication to their craft that they actually spent some of their own money on materials and supplies.

Tom Cotner plays the organ beautifully but was reluctant to pull out all the stops (an expression that actually refers to the pipe organ) so as not to disturb the mass going on down below. He explained to us that on this trip, he had come to repair a series of swell shutters and other parts of the wooden structure that had been eaten away by termites. They had fifteen new shutters shipped from Pennsylvania which he had already installed. He had repaired the pedalboard where it had been sticking, and he was in the process of repairing various and sundry wooden pieces that had also been eaten by termites during the last few years of neglect. When we met him, he had also already repaired the organ’s console, replacing the magnets and other mysterious-to-us workings behind the panel, allowing many of the organ keys and pedals to work again. Apparently, over the last few years, the poor organist has been playing with fewer and fewer instruments at her disposal.

The other onsite repairman, John Hendricksen, spent his entire two weeks tuning old and new pipes… a process called "voicing" the pipes. This is an art, learned not at school but from years of apprenticeship and hard work. John, originally from Holland, told us that he began learning organ building in the Dutch/German style in Europe. When he moved to the United States, he learned more working for the famous Aeolian Skinner Organ Company (we had never heard of it either…), a now-defunct business that appears to have been responsible for the American Classic organ style (which, according to their website, "changed the course of organ-building forever"). Aeolian Skinner installed organs throughout the world, in private homes of the wealthy and in churches like Grace Church in San Francisco and the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City (the entire list is on their website, cited below). For the past 53 years, he has been perfecting his craft in churches, concert halls and theatres. He told us that the only way to learn organ building is to apprentice with a master and to train constantly, but nowadays there are few people that want to get into the business.

John also told us that the organ pipes are made of lead, tin or zinc or some combination. There are some wooden pipes as well. The metal pipes must be made from metal that has cured for at least six months. After the metal is rolled into pipes, they must be tapered and the openings must be made very precisely to create just the right tone. While he was here on this trip, John was repairing and tuning some of our organ’s existing pipes, replacing others, and installing a flight of new ones. This appeared to be very delicate and tedious work and, it seemed to us, more an art than a science.

The two organ repairmen are gone now, leaving behind them an organ that works better but is not totally repaired. Merida’s organ is one of two in all of Southern Mexico and one of the largest in the country, and it has a value of $600,000 to $800,000 USD. It is played for five daily masses and seven on Sunday. There are only two people in Merida who are qualified and allowed to play the organ: Maria de Jesus, who learned at the School of Sacred Music in Morelia, and Jim Smiley, who learned to play an organ 30 years ago and who has picked it up again since moving to Merida. Maria plays for the religious ceremonies, and Jim is a guest organist for the Christmas and New Year’s programs. He will probably be one of the players for any secular performances that they plan for the future.

And what about the future of this organ? According to Jim, the organ needs another $50,000 USD worth of repairs and additional pipes to bring it to its full range of capabilities. Though the organ is owned by the state, the Catholic Church must approve any fund-raising plans and any activities associated with it. WIth their blessing, Jim and Maria have begun to hold weekly Organ Tours on Mondays (from 9 am to 11 am… meet at the Cathedral entrance). The tours are free but donations are accepted and much needed. In the future, they hope to hold a few secular organ concerts, but in the meantime, the organ can be heard during any mass. English mass is now being held every Sunday (this started in February 2010) at 9 am, so if you are so inclined, you can go listen to the organ and understand what the priest is saying all at the same time.

It seems to us that such a magnificent instrument should not go unappreciated, should not be allowed to deteriorate and should be attended, nurtured and played to bring beauty and pleasure to all of us who live within earshot. Jim and Maria have plans to start a student program and an apprenticeship to teach organ playing and maybe also organ repair. They hope to solicit donations from local corporations and are in the process of putting together a non-profit foundation for support of the organ. Jim has three secular concerts planned for the coming year featuring guest organists.

If you want to help preserve Merida’s organ, please contact Jim Smiley at MondoChuck [at] aol [dot] com or come to one of the organ tours on Mondays. As we were preparing this article, we realized that none of our photos of the organ as a whole entity were good enough to publish, so we’re hoping that if you want to see that, you will make a point of going on the tour! No picture can really communicate the feeling of standing before such a grand instrument in all its glory. Whether you go on the tour or not, stay tuned (pun intended!) for more information on the organ and organ concerts here on Yucatanliving.com!

*****

Want to know more about how a pipe organ works?

Want to know the origin of the phrase "pull out all the stops"?

The website of the American Institute of Organ Builders

The archival website of the Aeolian Skinner Organ Company

Like organ music a lot? Public Radio has a station devoted to organ music called Pipedreams

How many organs are there in Mexico? This supposedly comprehensive website claims there are four, and Merida is not listed. This website claims there are seventeen, but again, no mention of Merida. While this website catalogs the 30,000 organs (!) that are known to be installed in the United Kingdom.

And lastly, the world’s Top 20 Largest Pipe Organs (Merida doesn’t even come close…), and topping the list, an organ with 28,765 pipes at Macy’s Department Store in Philadelphia.

While staying at a nearby pueblo, I heard about a special Maya holy man who was a healer and source for spiritual purification.  I needed his services, so I set out to have a session with him.  A taxi driver took me to his small, unpretentious Maya home because finding his place on my own in a maze of winding roads would have been difficult, if not impossible. 

When I first met Juan de la Cruz Pech of Temozón, I was struck by his gentleness, calmness and the sparkling friendliness in his brown eyes.  They seemed wise and able to take me in all at once, looking into and through me.  An elderly Maya woman wearing a blue embroidered huipile (traditional dress) was his first patient.  She was suffering from arthritis and I watched as he treated her with his hands, herbs and melodic chanting.

Then it was my turn.  He asked my name, writing it down.  Gently, he took my hands, turning them palm side up, studying them and asked in Spanish: “Dolor”?  (Pain?)  I shook my head and explained in rudimentary Spanish I was seeking contentment, inner peace, a release from stress.  He nodded.  Then he carefully lifted my hands again and felt my pulse, not in the manner of a western medic. Instead, he was holding his fingers firmly on the veins of my wrist, listening intently to my inner workings.  With a captivating, reassuring smile, he nodded again.

Collecting a sprig of herbs (I detected the fragrance of basil), he began his ritual.  Lightly, he tapped my forehead, the top of my head, back of my neck and shoulders, down my arms to my hands, down my legs to my feet waving away disharmony with the bouquet.  At the same time he was chanting in Maya in a soothing, sweet tone.  Incense drifted in all directions.  I stared at his altar of fresh flowers that held images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, along with unlikely items like a watch and a clock; I felt a rush of blood flush my face. 

For fifteen to twenty minutes, the gentle elder touched, tapped, patted, and laid his hands upon me, especially around my head and neck.  At times he deftly, delicately applied herbal salves and indistinguishable potions, one from a small seashell.  This time I could smell pine.  Finally, he led me to a hammock in which to lie down and relax while he dabbed a herbal solution in my eyes.

I’m still not sure whether it was all in my mind, but at the end of my session, I was grateful to the soothing Mayan healer for his gift of inner peace and relaxation that lasted at least three days ….until it was time to re-enter the rat race again. Despite the onset of modern life, I still can recall the sense of oneness with nature and an acceptance that all was well and there was no reason for stress.

My husband, Norm, was also repurified. A skeptic at heart—he has a technical background—he was completely taken by Juan. His repurification differed from mine and he says that although he was trying to analyze the intonations and offerings Juan administered (he was made to drink an unknown liquid), he fell completely under the healer’s spell and says he’s never felt more relaxed, and yet at the same time, alert. This feeling lasted about three days as well. During the session, Norm says he felt blood coming to his head and his heartbeat quickened, which surprised him but didn’t last long.

We both left Juan de la Cruz Pech very respectful of his gentleness, his humility, and his gift.

Editor’s Note: Heather Rath writes occasionally while she is wintering in Progreso, Yucatan. She can be reached at heatherintransit [at] hotmail [dot] com.