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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Flashback: Ethiopia: From Nazret to Addis, Part 2: Immigration Hell



I first published this post, Ethiopia: From Nazret to Addis, Part 2: Immigration Hell, in February 2011.

I'd like it to be known that I sure as heck don't believe my experience in a series of waiting rooms on a particular day in Addis Ababa in any way, by any stretch of the imagination, compares to that suffered by women, men, and children currently caught up in a web of arbitrary and capricious political theater. 

My story is simply a good tale to tell over dinner with a glass of wine.

Ethiopia: From Nazret to Addis, Part 2: Immigration Hell

Ah, the visa extension process. Forget everything the Ethiopian Embassy says on its U.S. website. A three-month visa at Bole Airport? Forget it! A three-month visa at the Immigration compound in Addis? Forget it!

Source: Ethiopian Embassy (US) website
 

[Note: I've sent an email to the Ethiopian Embassy in D.C. asking that it provide correct information on its website. I'll update the outcome in future.]

The extension process is a little like an old Twilight Zone episode where it turns out Hell is where one spends an eternity in a waiting room.

First, I climbed a wide cement staircase, noting two entrances to the compound: women on the left; men on the right. A woman guard at the top of the steps, when I asked where I needed to go to extend my visa, waved her baton, and said "end of the line." I explained, yes, that's fine, but I wanted to know about where to go for my visa extension. "I know. End of line." Yeah, OK. To the end of the line I went.

The women's line moved fairly quickly, and I met my friendly guard again, and she pointed me to the immediate left through the gate. There, an attendant logged my name, passport info, and a painstaking description of my camera into a large ledger. She took my camera, gave me a laminated card with a number on it, put a similar card in my camera case, and put it into a drawer. I understood that I'd use the card to reclaim my camera when I left the compound.

Next stop: Body pat-down.

Photo credit: Kigaliwire
Then to the adjacent glass building where I entered a largish waiting room with a table in the front of the room. Another waiting person obligingly gestured to me to take a seat. I asked "Do I take a number?" He said, no, there weren't many people at present, so shouldn't be a problem. In short order, I was called to the table, and a pleasant man gave me a form to complete, and instructed me to go outside the compound and have my passport pages photocopied (the page with my main info plus the one with the E. visa pasted onto it). I asked rather incredulously, "I go OUTSIDE the compound to get a photocopy. And then I bring it BACK?" Yup.

I left the compound (I realize now I likely left by the men's entrance. Oh well. No lightning struck.) I asked the woman guard where the photocopy place was, and that happy person gestured with her baton to a stone outbuilding immediately below her. I saw a clutch of humanity hovering round a barred window. I asked a man if he was in line for photocopies, and he said, yes, but then he said, no need to stand in line, just go to the window. So I presumed this was one of those dog-eat-dog situations where the assertive bird gets the worm (the early bird be damned). Then I learn, "no photocopy." Well, hell.

So I cast about for an alternative, feeling irritated with this stupid system, and tried to ask the male guard, whose first concern was that I NOT walk through the men's entrance, but once he understood my question, he pointed in a general direction to the left, where all I saw was a phone booth. So, to the air in a rather loud voice to anyone who might hear and know the answer, "Where is the photocopy? That guard over there [and I pointed to the woman guard] told me to the right, but there's no photocopy there!"

Thankfully, a man pointed me to the precise location, and said, "one birr" per copy, and then, "watch your bag."

Much appreciative, I walked down the rest of the steps, only to have one of the circling wolves glom on to me. "Do you know where the photocopy is?" "Do you have the $20 for the visa"? "Do you .....?" I curtly said I had all I needed and made my way to the copy store, with him glued to my side. While he stood at the doorway, I successfully negotiated the photocopy process and picked my way back through the wolf pack and back up the steps, through the women's entrance, through another body pat-down, and back into the glass building. I found a seat to wait my turn again.

Photo credit: Excel Math

I noted a woman, possible Ethiopian, at least in origin, and a large, Caucasian man, perhaps Italian, enter. The woman was rather sour-faced with an imperious air; the man smiled and mumbled. Both were in their 40s or 50s.

Presently, the pleasant official called me back up to the table, jotted some notes on my form, and instructed me to go to Room 77. Next building.

I walked to the next building and found Room 77, encountering a lot of people sitting on chairs and a bench outside the room. Clueless, I raised my eyebrows in a universal Ethiopian sign that can mean: "Hello!" or "I see you and acknowledge your presence" or to wait staff, "Please come here." Or in this case, "What do I do now?"

The same kind man who helped me out in the glass building indicated I should just take a seat, which I did, trusting that the process would be revealed to me. At first glance, though, there was no apparent system for people getting to the next immigration official in an orderly fashion. But soon I saw there was a woman in charge of tending us sheep, keeping us moving from one seat to the next, when, as a lucky petitioner came before an official, s/he created an opening at the "head" of the chair line. How quickly we became trained to the system.

When I finally got into Room 77, that imperious woman and her mumbling, smiling companion waltzed straight into the room! She walked right into the middle of the room and the large mumbling man plopped himself into a chair! The chair I was to sit in, as a matter of fact! I told him, basically, "Hey! All of those people out there (gesturing to the corridor) have been waiting a long time! They're in front of you!" He just smiled and mumbled at me ineffectually as if to say, "Gosh, I'm just doing what I'm told. What can I do?" I made a similar comment to the woman that I'd made to the man, and she just looked at me unblinkingly, without apology or movement.

Photo from Manchas: Espectador emancipado
Anyway, it was presently my turn at one of the official's desks, where a behemoth CRT monitor served as an excellent barrier between me, one of the unwashed, and her, the official. And that damned imperious woman attempted to inject her business in front of me, at which I presented her with another raised brow, Ethiopian-style, this time meaning, "what the hell do you think you're doing?" Same response from her as she'd given me before.

The official talked on the phone, looked at the monitor, looked at my passport, repeated the above, then said, "Inside!" Fortunately, I had observed another official give the same command to another petitioner, so I knew this meant, "Go inside the draped area next to me so I can take your picture." So I hopped to it. I walked inside and sat on the chair in front of the camera, just as I heard her disembodied voice command, "Sit down." I looked up at the camera, and I heard the same disembodied voice say, "Down." So I obediently lowered my chin. Snap. I figured it was OK to emerge from the draped area and sit again by her desk. She informed me that new regulations meant I could only extend my visa for 30 days at a time. Because my departure date is March 23, this would require me to go through this laborious bureaucratic process again just for two days extra time in Ethiopia. Not to mention having to pay another $20 for the privilege. I tried to explain this to the official, but she was immovable from the policy. She told me to proceed to Room 78.

And so I went. Fortunately, only a handful of people was there. Being now broken in to the ways of immigration, I slid into the appropriate chair and moved into one closer to the "head" as each person before me was processed and moved out. When it became my turn, I explained again about the mere two extra days over 30 that I needed on my extension. The official appeared empathetic, but expressed powerlessness. Luckily, another petitioner (I think a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Ethiopia) helped me out, saying basically, "Wow, this makes no sense!" He suggested I go to a manager who would have the authority to exercise flexibility. To Room 80 I went!

By this time, I had a headache. From the shortage of caffeine thus far today, the return to some altitude, the bureaucratic web I was in, or all of the above, I don't know.
Daoist Hell: Feudal Government. Photo credit: This Trolleybus Goes East

I entered Room 80, where I encountered a number of seated men,and an unoccupied executive desk. I sat in an empty spot on a couch by the wall, and attempted to gain a sense for the process in this room. Gleaning no hints from the men, I asked generally, "Will the manager return"? Yes. Good. I continued to wait. When the manager did enter the room, the men in the two couches immediately in front of the desk stood up, ready to make their petitions. Once one left, a man from "my" couch moved to one of these couches. OK. I've got the hang of it now. I watched the other petitioners closely to get an idea of how I I should best present my case. In fairly short order, I made my own way to a couch in front of the desk, and awaited my turn.

Meanwhile, damned if that woman and her mumbling man didn't show up in Room 80! Jesus!

When it came my turn in front of the manager, I attempted to dazzle him with my tiny bit of Amharic, a dash of obsequiousness, and a pretty smile. Of course, as an experienced problem solver who deals with plaintive petitions all day and every day, he wasn't fooled for one moment. At first, he took the hard policy line, but as I pointed out my flight itinerary and appealed to his reason, he took my passport and left the room. I followed, but quickly lost him, thinking he went down the hall to Room 77, but not finding him there, I retraced my steps and encountered a woman in the corridor (a fellow traveler "in the rooms" this afternoon) who gestured toward an entirely new room. I entered that room, where I found the manager, still holding my passport, engaged in a lively discussion with a sturdy woman official in uniform. He completed the discussion, left the room, and I followed him like a duckling back into his office. He wrote a note on my paperwork, told me he approved a visa extension of 35 days, and told me to go to Room 77. Thank you, thank you!

I walked briskly back to Room 77, found my appropriate place in line, and commenced to waiting again. When I saw a couple who had been in Room 80 bypass the seated queue and enter directly into Room 77, I ventured the same, showing my note to the "sheep herder." Merciless in her sense of order, she directed me back to my place in line.

In this go-round for Room 77, I sat next to a Sudanese man. We came to a tentative philosophical agreement that Life is About Waiting. He suggested the two of us swap passports. A Rwandese man on my other side had questions about replacing a woman's visa (presumably his wife's). I asked the Sudanese man to save my seat while I walked the Rwandese man to the glass building where one gets the form (before getting the photocopies), but we found it closed, so we returned to our places in line outside Room 77. I allowed as how there is a tiny chance I might go to Rwanda in July. Sadly, this man probably was unable to complete his business today, as an immigration official seemed pretty insistent the woman needed to present herself in person, even though the man stressed that she was very sick.

[We meet in these bureaucratic halls and our lives connect for moments, each with our little sagas, but then, like molecules, we bounce off again, never to know how things end up for others.]

Finally, I got back into Room 77, and holy hell! That imperious woman and the smiling mumbler marched right into the room again! I gave her a hostile look, which slid off her customary unblinking, stolid stare. I got to the same immigration official I had before. She perused my stuff and eventually instructed me back to Room 78 for payment.

For the second time, I entered Room 78, and took my place after the Sudanese man, who preceded me. We chatted again, practicing how to say "no problem" in Amharic (chiggray-yellum, sort of). We watched one of the officials insert a $20 bill into a machine that seemed to check it for suitable crispness. (Ethiopian officialdom does not like worn dollars.) Looked like this one was rejected.

In time, I sit again by the immigration official. I paid my money, she kept my passport (!), and told me to return Monday afternoon (at 4:00 p.m.!) to pick it up.

I left the building and stopped at the pat-down vestibule to retrieve my camera. The attendant got it out of the drawer, carefully checked the camera, the reclaim card she'd placed in the bag, the reclaim card I gave to her, and the ledger entry, then returned my camera to me. In a friendly way, she repeated my first and middle names, and we exchanged thanks and goodbyes.

I left the Immigration compound, walked down the steps and into the thick of the wolves, all eager to sell me something. As I negotiated a taxi fare, twice someone touched my butt about where my faux rear pocket is. OK, the first time could have been inadvertent, but the second time it happened, I exclaimed, "Hey!"

The taxi took me back to the Ankober, where I relaxed, although I still suffered that headache. Later, I went out for a take-away pizza and bottled water.

When I asked for napkins to take with me, the waitress helpfully told me that in Amharic, this was "soft." Ah, so now I know "soft" can mean napkin, kleenex, or toilet paper. I'm glad to add this bit to my little repertoire of Amharic knowledge.

I was happy to end the long day in a spacious room, cool air coming through the window, water in the flush toilet, and the BBC and familiar American shows on the television. I went to bed, I think at 7:30!

Monday, January 30, 2017

El Paso: The Paranormal, Part 2: Movement


Belly dancer at Viva La Llorona, Wigwam Museum, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.


September 2016

Part 1 looked at the art of La Llorona at the Wigwam Museum, operated by the Paso del Norte Paranormal Society.

For Part 2, I present to you dance and music from the event participants.

First up is a belly dancer.

Belly dancer at Viva La Llorona, Wigwam Museum, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.


I created a movie out of the stills I took of the belly dancer's performance, then added creative-commons music by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road. I'm unhappy that I didn't capture the dancer's name so I could credit her. Ditto for the other performers.



A young, young band performed. The lead guitarist had good presence and a pulled-together persona. He looks like he has a vision for his future. 


Band member at Viva La Llorona, Wigwam Museum, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.

 
A taste below:




For the modern dancer below, I created another movie from my collection of stills, using creative-commons music from Art of Escapism.




One of her stills:

Dancer at Viva La Llorona, Wigwam Museum, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.



The gentleman on the left in this photo below is, I believe, one of the principles of the Wigwam Museum.

Band member at Viva La Llorona, Wigwam Museum, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.

I like how you can see the audience in the mirror in the bottom left.

Band member at Viva La Llorona, Wigwam Museum, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.





Sunday, January 29, 2017

El Paso: Standing Up: Men for Choice?!


Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.


I was dumbfounded.


An upcoming event in November had popped up on my social radar screen. An event called Men for Choice.

Maria y Yahvi at Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.


Holy pissaroni! Back in Missouri and Louisiana, one barely whispered the word abortion, looking from side to side in the process to see who was in earshot, said states having been hijacked by ultra-conservatives trapped in the Three Bs paradigm (babies, bullets, and the Bible) drawn by the political grandparents of our current power structure. (This was NOT the case in Missouri in the 80s and early 90s, when there were multitudes of Republican and Democratic women who publicly espoused reproductive rights.)

In El Paso, not only are there women talking LOUDLY and OFTEN about reproductive rights, there's even enough traction for there to be an event called Men for Choice!

El Paso! Who'd have thought!?

Maria y Yahvi at Men for Choice event, West Fund. El Paso, Texas. November 2016.


Folk musicians, Maria y Yahvi, shared new, old, traditional, and regional songs in English and Spanish, using a range of instruments.

Below, they sing a bilingual version of Woody Guthrie's This is Your Land:



This land was made for you and me. 

It felt good to be here.

And I got this:



West Fund was the organization behind the event. I had no idea there was an organization that helped people so directly with their reproductive needs.



Saturday, January 28, 2017

Mexico: Juárez: First Date: Going and Coming



Here, I explained you've got to have two quarters to enter Juárez and then one quarter to return to El Paso.

You've also got to have a passport or other documentation that will let you back into the United States.

I just realized that when you walk in to Juárez from El Paso, no one stops you to see if you're American versus, say, Canadian, Nigerian, Romanian, or Korean. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I never saw it happen.

Benjamin Alire Saenz, my literary cultural interpreter for El Paso, wrote about the fluidity between El Paso and Juárez. 

From Carry Me Like Water (1995): 
Driving down Interstate 10, Jake took the Juárez exit. He took his eyes off the road for a moment and stared down at Concordia Cemetery, the dead disturbed now by a freeway the locals called the spaghetti bowl. As the freeway curbed around, Juárez was straight ahead. It was so easy to get there, just get in the car, take an exit - Mexico - so easy, he thought. 
... He remembered how, sick as he was in his last days, Joaquin had been obsessed with denouncing the only two countries he'd ever known, ever lived in. "I hate Mexico," he mumbled. "I hate the United States. I hate - "

"What?" Eddie asked Jake. 

"Nothing, I was just talking to myself ... It's funny to live in a town where the other half of it is in another country."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Luz] thought of moving to El Paso - she could move there any time she wanted - it was her home, her country. Her mother had chosen her nationality for her. She had waited until she was about to deliver, then walked into a clinic. She had been born a U.S. citizen in an ambulance on the way to the county hospital. She wondered why she had to choose between Juárez and El Paso ... She could not relinquish her Juárez because her family had lived in this ragged city for generations; it was her blood, her history, her inheritance; but she could not relinquish El Paso because it was the piece of dirt her mother had bequeathed to her; it, too, was her blood; it, too, was her history ... she knew what everyone in Juárez knew, knew that El Paso belonged to them, belonged to the border, would never be like the rest of America because their faces were printed on its land as if it were a page in a book that could never be ton out by any known power, not by God, not by the Border Patrol, not by the president of either country, not by the purists who wanted to define Americans as something organic, as if they were indigenous plants ... Luz laughed. El Paso was hers and ... she would not relinquish it to any gringo or any Chicana - who was not intelligent enough to acknowledge that she was entitled to it poverty and its riches.


When I crossed back over to El Paso from Juárez on my first foray into Mexico, the United States greeted me with: a rainbow, twists of barbed wire, and two plastic trash bags.

Between Mexico and the US, November 2016.


Relevant posts



Friday, January 27, 2017

El Paso: November Moons


November evening, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.


Although the scene is so prosaic - a Payless Kids store - there's something about the November light glow, with a crisp white moon disk above, that spills a little magic on the corner of this downtown El Paso street.


November evening, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.


Just three minutes after the top photo came this one with the rainbow.

On a different November night, in my neighborhood, a full moon shared her grandosity with her kingdom.

November evening, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.



Thursday, January 26, 2017

El Paso: The Thanksgiving Parade, Part 3: Moving


El Paso Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas.


A few years ago, when I started posting marching bands and other parade units onto my Youtube channel, I noticed that members of these units found them and, presumably, enjoyed them. I have come to see these videos as a service, especially to high school students.

In the Riverside High School video below, I smile each time I watch the local news crew march alongside, starting around 0:38:




The movies are a moving snapshot of a moment in the students' lives that they can view as often as they wish, even some day showing their future beloveds.

I laugh out loud every time I watch this Ysleta High School video - at 0:25:



Of course, many parents also shot videos, but if their parents are like most casual photographers, those videos might be looked at a few times on the parents' phones - and maybe a Facebook post - but otherwise, I suspect they slip silently into a virtual shoe box in a corner of a dim closet.

How can I not share the El Paso High School Drum Corps warm up here:



And, gosh, isn't it kinda cool when someone other than your family films you? I mean, your family has to like you.


Here's Andress High School Marching Band, with a bit of drum work that turns my head, literally:





In this post, I highlight only a few of the 2016 El Paso Thanksgiving Parade videos. But if you cannot get enough of hometown parades, no worries, there are 27 of them (!) over here.




Wednesday, January 25, 2017

El Paso: The Thanksgiving Parade, Part 2: The People


El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.

I took tons of photos of the El Paso Thanksgiving Parade, but I've tossed all of them except those in which people are the centers.

Danza de San Juan. El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.

 
There's something special when a person looks straight at me and, forever caught by the camera, there is that wide smile or the model-pose or a slip of a smile or a contemplative, steady gaze or a simple, frank acknowledgement from one person to another. A namaste.


El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.

Every time I look up at the girl on the right, in her sunshine-y shirt, I can't help but smile back. Then I look at the little girl on the left, next to the boy, and I look steadily into her eyes and I wonder about her spirit within.

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.

There's something Rockwellian about the photo below, a mom, maybe, taking a picture of her daughter, who's engrossed in what's on her phone. Maybe a text from a boy she's crushing on. The anchoring of place(s): El Paso. Anthony. The USA. Space.

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.


Then below is the real and the pretend, and the present moment awaiting the future one, the look to the distance, off to the side, a man perhaps thinking, wondering, planning, remembering.

Lucha libre. El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.


And below are three playlets on one stage, each unfolding simultaneously, a medley:

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.


El Paso's mayor. Pausing. The mountain citizen in the back. Baptism.


El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.


Three Texas lawmen.

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.


The affable, home town newsies.


El Paso Thanksgiving Parade. Texas, November 2016.


A slide show here:

El Paso Thanksgiving Parade 2016

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

El Paso: The 915


"I'm from the city of the 915 ..." proclaims Khalid in his song, American Teen.




New Mexicans identify with the zia.

For Louisianans, it's the fleur-de-lis.




For El Pasoans --> it's "the 915." .... Well, at least one of its personalities is the 915.

915 is the El Paso area code. The story I heard was that back in the day, a larger chunk of Texas had the 915 area code, but these days, only El Paso has this area code. Hence, it became a numeric brand for El Paso.


At Tricky Falls, a downtown concert venue, at a concert, an attendee was asked by a band member where she's from and she said," "915." And he said, "What?" And someone had to translate: "El Paso. She's from El Paso."

The only reason I already knew was because the guy at the food truck in front of the Wigwam Museum one night told me about it.


Rebel Grill food truck in front of the Ghosts915 Paranormal Society, El Paso, Texas. September 2016.

He also told me about the "spaghetti bowl" and the chucos. But those are stories for another day.

I live in the 915.




Monday, January 23, 2017

Mexico: Juárez: First Date: Murals

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


On my way back to the border crossing, I passed through a vast, largely empty plaza. It had the look of a place that had been razed and that was in the process - currently suspended - of being formed into a park.

On one side were what I presumed to be the remains of the old neighborhood, bedraggled but still standing, and on the other side, the back walls of businesses that fronted Avenida Benito Juárez. 

On those walls were loud, splashy, wowza murals. A feast. 

 
Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Within a parking lot and in another niche were other murals, grittier and darker. 

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.




I wonder about that empty overall hung up on the barbed wire barrier in the mural above. Is that just a fateful place and position where an abandoned garment got thrown or blown? Or is it an intentional artistic statement of a struggle? Whether chance or deliberate, it speaks.




Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


And with the above mural - an empty-eyed skull capped by an empty-eyed hull of a structure.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

El Paso: The [Insert Corporate Sponsor Here] Parade, Part 1


Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

El Paso has a huge parade on Thanksgiving. Under normal circumstances, I would call it El Paso's Thanksgiving Parade, but that's not what it is. Although, to be fair, it's not what it's not, either.

The official name is the First Light Federal Credit Union Sun Bowl Parade [Brought to You on Thanksgiving Day, oh right, and in El Paso].  Sometimes called the Sun Bowl Parade for short, even though the Sun Bowl is a month after the parade.

The above caused me no end of consternation when I arrived, trying to find the connection between the Sun Bowl (which actually occurs in December), and the Parade Not Called Thanksgiving But Which Happens on Thanksgiving. Because I intended to go, I wanted to be sure to go on the right date and the right place.

Once I got things sorted, I was ready to go! And it was a marvel to be within walking distance of such a huge event (some sources say a quarter of a million people attend the parade), so no parking logistics to worry about.

Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.


It was a big parade, so I'm going to roll it out over several posts.

Below a video of one of the opening units:



Henceforward, I'll refer to it as the El Paso Thanksgiving Parade, as it should be. 


Thanksgiving Parade 2016, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.











Saturday, January 21, 2017

Mexico: Juárez: First Date: Horses


I've been to locations that featured art themes with:



With Juárez, I add horses.

Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


The artsy fiberglass herd stood in the promenade in front of the Museum of the Revolution of the Border (neé Aduana Fronteriza when first the building was constructed).


Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

If I were a more museum-y kinda gal, I would have scrutinized the provenance of each horse and been able to share same with you. But I'm not, so all I've got are the photos.

Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


But there's this for information seekers.


Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


According to the article linked above, the horses are stallions. Please. Normally, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about this specificity, but I'm writing this post after my experience at the Fountain Theater and during the early days of an era in which my head of state can boast about how he grasps women's groins without their prior consent, with impunity. This is why I don't read the fine print of exhibits. I had been happy just thinking "horses."

Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.



Horse art, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.