Friday, November 25, 2005--The Sounds of Oaxaca

I imagine that the residents of Oaxaca don't think about its vocabulary of special sounds, but many visitors find them very striking.

The first one we hear every day is "Agua, el agua, el auuugua" echoing into our apartment from the street. It's the cry of the water vendors, trucking and toting heavy garafones (5-gallon jugs) of purified water throughout the city. One of the job requirements must be a voice that can penetrate walls and be heard a block away.

Oaxaca's water system is antiquated at best. The city suffers from a chronic water shortage, so each neighborhood only receives piped-in water every four days or so. Every house or building has a large tinaco (water tank) on its roof, and usually an underground reservoir as well, to try to store enough water to last until the next delivery. Hotels and restaurants frequently run out of water, which means that they have to buy water from la pipa, huge trucks that cruise the city selling water for human use at a very high cost. And even a slight leak can empty a house's tinaco in a few hours. That's what happened to us, just before a party.

Naturally we ran out of water, and had to buy it from la pipa, just as friends arrived for a party

Since water is only piped to a given neighborhood every few days, during the intervening time the mains are not pressurized, and water from the soil can seep into them wherever they are cracked or broken. As a result, even though the water that enters the distribution system is purified, it's polluted by the time it arrives at people's homes.

As a result, it's definitely not safe to drink or cook with tap water, at least without boiling it for fifteen minutes or using chemicals to disinfect it.

Instead, most people, visitors and residents alike, drink and cook with bottled water.

Hence the daily water vendors, and their cry of "Agua, el agua, el aguuuua!."

Oaxaca does not have a system of pipes to distribute fuel for cooking or heating. Instead, every house has one or two tanks of LP gas. When one runs out, you can call for a replacement, which usually arrives surprisingly promptly. Or, you can just listen for one of the gas trucks that constantly cruise the streets. They use two distinctive sounds to let you know they're near your house, one sensible and the other slightly humorous.

All the gas trucks drag heavy chains that clink and clank along the pavement. At first I thought this was just to make a distinctive noise, but then I realized that the chains prevent static electricity from building up and possibly sparking an explosion. The clinking and clanking are handy, but secondary.

Just to make sure they are heard, the trucks also have horns that make a sound like a sick cow. I don't know who first decided that there was a link between the kind of gas that you cook your food with and the kind of gas that a cow produces, but someone did, and it stuck.

So, whenever you hear chains clattering along the streets, and moaning cows, you know gas is at hand.

A third distinctive sound is heard only at night--a piercing, steamboat-sized whistle. It's deafening if you happen to be close to the source. These penetrating whistles come from handcarts loaded with steamed platanos machos, large bananas, for sale. The carts all have boilers that generate steam to let everyone within blocks know that the delicious platanos with cream or sugar are waiting for them.

There are more special sounds of Oaxaca, for example the tinkle-tinkle-tinkle sound made by a particular kind of vendor, usually in the late afternoon or early evening. But you might want to track them down on your own.

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