We're Talking Smurfs, Part 2

Very tiny orange flowers





Enjoying the beauty of the lake (text messaging)





Monsignor Romero





The central park in Alegria





This one's for Michelle, Dexter and Bella.





Hen on our roof- not our hen, a lost hen





Stray cat on our roof- there are sometimes a few cats, and they like to fight





Oranges for juicing





El Cipitillo- a mythical creature who steals corn and bananas from farmers





Christmas in El Salvador, no wait, this is from a calendar of images from Pennsylvania



Christmas and New Year`s in The Savior

Here in El Salvador, Christmas Eve (Noche Buena) is celebrated more than Christmas Day. We attended a parade of Pastorelas (kids dressed as shepherds, angels, Mary, Joseph, kings, etc.); they walked through the town singing some pretty catchy Christmas tunes. Our favorite of the Christmas songs here is called “Burrito de Belén.” In the song, a kid is singing to his donkey telling it to hurry up “¡apurate!” so they can get to Bethlehem to see Jesus. It’s complete with a “tuqui tuqui tuqui tuqui, tuqui tuqui tuqui ta” which is, of course, the sound a donkey makes as it runs. Anyway, there are other great Christmas songs here too, and after the parade there were two concerts of these songs. A mass followed with more of these songs. It’s not uncommon here to applaud for baby Jesus. A few times during mass, the priest would say, “let’s have a big round of applause for baby Jesus!” and the whole congregation would clap like crazy. The same thing happened during the parade last month for the Virgin of Guadalupe. . . “Let’s have a round of applause for the Virgin!”

Most people here set up a manger scene or “nacimiento” in their houses. Some of them are basic, but many of them are quite elaborate and not limited to the main characters of the typical manger scene. We’re talking Smurfs. We’re talking Barbie, Wizard of Oz, El Cipitillo (see photo), etc. It’s sort of an opportunity to showcase whatever you have. And it’s not irreverent if everything you showcase is worshiping Jesus. We saw one very nice manger scene that was quite elaborate. One level down from the manger, on another table, was a winter village complete with several snow-covered houses with little lights inside, and lots of little figurines of people sledding, skating, etc. The owner told us that his plan is to build another table, lower than the second one, to have a scene from the magical world, with figurines from Disney’s Snow White, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Pinocchio.

New Year's Eve is a family affair here. A 9pm mass follows and precedes family dinners, and cohetes (fireworks) ring in the new year throughout the night. The cohetes are not colorful or controlled as they are back in the States. The cohetes here are more like small bombs, it´s all about the noise. Burns are apparently not uncommon, though we haven´t heard of any accidents in our community. We ate dinner with a nearby family on New Year´s Eve. The house used to be an Inn of sorts and the owner still has a guestbook from the year 1928. It was really interesting to see what kinds of people were staying in our town so long ago. Many people from Turkey came for commercial reasons. There were travelers, photographers, journalists, and missionaries from countries such as Ireland, France, Brazil, Palestine, Germany, Switzerland, and neighboring Central American countries. The couple´s 17 year old son was eager to tell us all about the guestbook and several photo albums as well. After we left, we were observing how in the States, a 17 year old would probably prefer to be out with his friends on New Year`s Eve, rather than with his parents and grandmother and some foreigners talking about the history of his home. Maybe this has more to do with the smallness of the town rather than El Salvador in general.


Work

We have completed our community diagnostic and have drafted a work plan for our time here. We are going to have two ecological clubs in the schools, a “periodismo” club that will include art, poetry, interviews, articles about community events, and the like (hopefully with a publication every three months), a chess club (with giant pieces, not unlike those in Harry Potter), an English club for kids and another for teachers, festivals, hikes, sex education, recycling/ composting programs, and so on. The vacation (longest of the year, essentially their summer vacation) is drawing to a close for the students. For us Peace Corps folk, the first four months were more than anything about adjustment, language and cultural training, practice, and integration into our community (“building relationships”). Even though we were sworn in as Volunteers in mid-November, we will be completely finished with training soon. And by the end of this month, we will be doing a good deal of “actual work.” For real.