Our host brother dressed up as the President for a parade. Here he is with his brother (age 18) and mother. This made for an interesting misunderstanding; we thought the actual President was going to be in town.
Our host brother with his cousin. This is their favorite pasttime.
Erick as a cobrador, the person who collects fares on the pickups.
Pictures from our weekend at the beach (in the departamento La Libertad):
Since our last entry:
We’ve continued working with kids at the school, swinging cumas (curved machetes) to remove the overgrown weeds at the school. We will soon get together to paint rocks to line the school’s entrance. This project is all about the students having a voice. They suggested possible projects and then voted on which one we would do. Student groups are the norm in the States, but here the students are not accustomed to having a voice and making decisions for themselves. They really feel proud of all of their work, which is great to see!
We have continued to have our language and culture classes. The subjunctive approaches. Puchica!
We took a hike (on Bruce’s birthday!) to an abandoned hacienda down the dirt road. Before the war, this was the house of the wealthy landowner in the community. There was an enormous tree that can only be described as Tolkein-esque.
We each taught a 7th grade English class.
We filled out our absentee ballots.
The host family’s cow gave birth.
The Phillies made it to the World Series for the first time since Bruce’s childhood abruptly ended with Joe Carter’s homerun in Game 6 back in ’93.
El Salvador’s soccer team, La Selección, has also been winning.
Our host family bought a washing machine. This was a huge surprise, as we haven’t heard of anyone in the area having one.
We’ve been interviewing people for our “contacto comunitario” assignments. Small businesses: comedor (restaurant), tienda (little store), molino (mill), and agroservicio (farm product store); San Vicente’s university; the Ingenio (a sugar processing plant…the source of water and jobs for the people who live nearby…we got to wear hard hats on our tour).
Our host family vaccinated all their roosters and hens. It was an afternoon full of catching all the birds. We were useless observers. We occasionally served as barriers because the birds didn´t know of our uselessness.
We enjoyed our free weekend by spending a night away at a beach near La Libertad. The water was great. The beach was a mixture of black sand and stones. When the waves retreated, the sound of the moving stones was just like that of a rain stick.
We went to “las ruedas.” Rueda de Chicago is the phrase for Ferris wheel. So we went to “the wheels.” It’s an October tradition in San Vicente. A haunted house. A carousel. Our 4-year-old host brother loved every minute.
While writing this journal entry, I discovered a mountain of ants in one of my backpacks. My plan was to give a box of Mike and Ike’s (Lehigh Valley, represent!) to our next host family. The ants’ plan was to eat that candy.
--------------------
Seriously…
We enjoy updating this site. However, the limitations of an online journal should be noted. Because the site is public, it becomes a lowest common denominator of sorts. In our offline, paper-based journals, we can write with more detail and honesty. These are both traits of worthwhile writing, but in a public forum, they respectively invite boredom to the casual reader and potential mistrust from the host country nationals.
These limitations are worth mentioning if only to communicate that it’s not all smiling kids with kittens and sunsets at the beach. There are uglier things that don’t make for natural photo ops or nice stories for home. Children in El Salvador obviously don’t have as many opportunities as children in the States. Emigration to the U.S. is huge. Teenage pregnancy is extremely common. There is malnutrition and disease. There are gangs. It’s sad that questions such as, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” are not common. It’s sadder that the answers don’t come easy.
El Salvador y Los Estados Unidos
There are millions of Salvadorans living in the States. They send remittances home that make up 15-20% of El Salvador’s currency. They have their relatives visit and show them around their city. The U.S. is emulated back in El Salvador. Hannah Montana, the poster girl of Disney pop cultural imperialism, offers a glittery smile from the t-shirts of countless rural Salvadoran youths.
To be a gringo in El Salvador is to get a great deal of attention. Many people here want to move to the States. Some have an unfortunate inferiority complex about El Salvador. So they don’t quite understand what we’re doing here. However, as gringos, we have automatic star power. It’s easy for us as Peace Corps Trainees (students with a learning curve on one hand, the U.S. government on the other) to get an audience of local politicians, captains of industry, etc.
Of course, there is also the legacy of the long and bloody civil war that was largely funded by the U.S. government. We don’t mean for this to be a political forum, so we’ll leave it to you to look up the details. Suffice it to say, some Salvadorans are suspicious of the intentions of volunteers (not as common a concept to begin with) from the U.S. government.
That being said, we are optimistic about the opportunity to work toward positive, sustainable (albeit small-scale) development in one community. The people of El Salvador are warm and hospitable. The youth are awesome. It’s great having so much support from family back home in the U.S. Culture shock, with its highs and lows, is often compared to a rollercoaster. Some days have been incredibly difficult. But what do most folks say after riding a rollercoaster? They say, “that was incredible.”
Events coming up in the next two weeks:
-a “personal flag” activity with the kids at our school
-two presentations at the training center
-Día de Los Muertos
-the U.S. Presidential election
-site assignment (on November 6, we will find out our permanent site for the two years)
