Festival Cultural

the park fountain


returning from a tree planting at the local springs


Poetry is big in El Salvador. La Casa de la Cultura regularly holds poetry nights. With a local NGO, we helped plan a Festival Cultural during the fiestas. Community members came to declamar—-recite poetry, often memorized and always delivered in a sweeping, dramatic manner.


On the walls behind this performer are a few of the posters from the photography exhibit component of the festival. The themes for the pictures were traditional life of the pueblo and recent projects of the NGO.


another poetry enthusiast


posing with the queen of the fiestas patronales, who came to the Festival Cultural


The festival continued with music. At first, karaoke. Bruce sang Let It Be and, to woo the crowd, proudly announced all the town facts he has learned thus far: 1) it is the capital of the world, 2) it is a little branch of heaven, 3) it is the only place visible from the moon, 4) it is the only place where the Beatles gave a concert (in the gazebo). Our beloved amigo Gerardo has drilled this into our heads. Then, three bands played. The final group played folkloric music.


The talented group played Salvadoran songs (El Torito Pinto is the most famous), but also enough music from South America to earn the label andino (as in The Andes).


The Savior of the World, from our bedroom


So we have seen our first fiestas patronales. It is probable that the town spent too much money. The queens all paid a good deal in dresses, that much is certain. The town also played hosts to famous musical acts Platinum, Marito Rivera Band, Los Hermanos Flores, and Los Guaraguao (a Venezuelan band that penned the famous revolutionary anthem Casas de Cartón, Houses of Cardboard). And yet, these fiestas lift the spirit of the pueblo. People told us long in advance that se pone alegre during the fiestas. So basically, things get happy.

Perquín and the "Marathon"

Here we are with our host mother at a fiesta rosa (celebration for a quinceañera, 15 year old girl). We are also joined in this picture by Colleen, an excellent trainee who spent three days in our site for her Immersion Days. She spent her nights with one of our favorite families, went to her first fiesta rosa, and joined us on an excursion we took with our community to Perquín, Morazan-—hot spot during the civil war and home to a great museum.


Rocket launchers at el Museo de la Revolución Salvadoreña in Perquín. Ex-guerrilla fighters serve as guides in this museum about the civil war (1980-1992). We saw craters left by bombs. We crawled through war-era tunnels. The experience was heavy. You, the reader, might find it interesting (and disturbing) to read up on the war--including the role of the US.


parts of planes from the war


Atop Cerro de Perquín. That’s Honduras in the background.


Kelly on a bridge at the reconstructed guerrilla camp


After Perquín, we went to a small village called Mozote. In December of 1981, the Salvadoran armed forces massacred all inhabitants: men, women, and children. There was one survivor, a woman who died a few years ago. Behind the silhouetted family in this picture, there are plaques with the names of over a thousand victims.


The Garden of the Innocents is next to these church walls that celebrate the children’s arrival in heaven.


Before returning home, we made a final stop at Río Sapo. We ate, swam, and enjoyed the views.


Our almost-two-mile “marathon.” There were bands playing. There were prizes. It was great. Some people cheated.


A friend of ours won second place in the women’s category.

Fiestas Patronales

Salvadoran communities all have fiestas patronales, a week-or-so to celebrate the patron saint. Our pueblo’s patron is not quite a saint; he is Salvador del Mundo himself (The Savior of the World, Jesus). We share him with the capital. We got here in November; and since that time, we’ve been hearing about the August festivities on a regular basis. It’s the highpoint of the year. Lots of folks come home from San Salvador, the US, Canada, Australia to visit their families. There are rides. There is pizza. There is live music every night, both on the dance floor and in the streets. Each neighborhood has one day and a committee prepares months in advance. There was a picture of us in the fiestas patronales magazine, as well as the new banner in the mayor’s office.


It was all kicked off by a parade. In this picture, Salvadoran folklore myth El Cipitío (pointy hat) walks next to Minnie Mouse.


Yep.


A strange, mystical man scares our little friend Roberto with a Bill Clinton mask. Check out the stilts in the background.


parade spurs


It’s good to be the mayor.


Each neighborhood (and some institutions, the Red Cross, the Green Cross, the market) selects a queen: Vanessa the First, and so on. They compete as candidates to be the queen of the fiestas patronales for the whole town. During the parade, each one rides on top of a truck or van. Throngs of her neighborhood supporters surround her. Some rock t-shirts or carry signs to promote her. Kids bang on drums and blow horns. The queen throws candy, bags of drinking water, etc. She smiles and waves like the royalty that she temporarily is.


Look out!


Supporters from one barrio (neighborhood) support their queen.


It plays out like most beauty pageants. There was formal wear. There were skimpy dresses. There was dancing. We even had near-celebrity status judges, all from out of town to avoid a biased decision. One judge was from Bailando por un Sueño (Dancing for a Dream, a popular Salvadoran reality show). The backdrop on the stage in this picture is a copy of the famous Monument to the Revolution in San Salvador. We would argue that it doesn’t quite fit here. At the bottom of this picture, there is a banner to promote a “marathon” (any race, in this case about 3 kilometers) that we organized with the mayor’s office to raise money for a project to bring used computers to the rural schools.


This picture was taken early in the competition. The candidates are introducing themselves. All the ladies are shaking their hips in unison.

Junio y Julio

Perhaps the greatest West Nottingham Academy reunion ever held in El Salvador. Bruce taught history for two years at the same school where the Costa Rican mother/ wife of these good folks teaches Spanish. The sons were students of ours (Kelly was a substitute for three months). The family drove from Maryland to Costa Rica, stopping at points of interest along the way. And thus, they momentously became our first visitors from alla (over there=the US) and enjoyed their first ever pupusas. They spent a night on their way down in June and another on their way back up in August.


The winners of the Ajedrez Increíble (Incredible Chess!) competition. A teacher at the school does some mean calligraphy, so we anticlimactically held this brief ceremony days after the competition to allow the teacher time to fancifully write the kids’ names.


We helped organize this charla on home and school gardens.


We brought four leaders from our community (representing the mayor’s office, the health clinic, the local environmental NGO, and a school) to a three-day workshop on Project Design and Management. It was funded by USAID, run by Peace Corps El Salvador, and held at a posh resort on the Costa del Sol. Topics included citizen participation, leadership, community mapping, identification of community strengths/ weaknesses/ opportunities/ threats, objectives, budgets, action plans, evaluations, and grant applications. Our community focused on possible projects to promote tourism, such as the development of an ecological park.


We planted trees outside one of the schools. But we needed to protect the young, vulnerable trees from horses, drunks, etc. So beforehand, we walked a mile to a forested area where we had been granted permission to cut down bamboo stalks. Seventh and eighth grade eco club kids cut down the tall bamboo and made a fun competition of cutting them into stakes (fewest whacks of a machete wins).


This young man is the president of our eco club. But in light of the situation in Honduras, some of the other kids have been joking about a golpe de estado (coup d’etat). They say this president doesn’t do much. Hence, this propaganda that shows him working.


Girls are usually more hesitant to participate in physical tasks, be they sports or tree plantings. It is constantly a priority of ours to hassle them until they join in.


The newest Peace Corps Youth Development and Sustainable Agriculture/ Environmental Education group is currently in training. Both groups have now visited us in our site. Here, some of the new "Youthies" try out their magic wands during a game day we organized with the fourth graders.


A few weeks before we left on our trip to the States, Kelly saw a scorpion in our closet. I was already asleep. We decided to put masking tape around the door to form a seal and kill him in the morning. We searched thoroughly but found nothing. Over a month later, I got out of the shower, opened the closet, and chose a shirt. He was inside that shirt. As I put my left arm through the sleeve, he hitched a ride on my hand. He got me with his tail (and I think also his pincher). I threw him to the floor. I was barefoot, so he was able to make a getaway. He ran under the dresser. From there, he could have easily slipped under the door to the room of our host mother. The initial pain was no worse than a bee sting. I yelled to Kelly. Then the scorpion emerged from his hiding spot and I killed him with Kelly’s sneaker. I started the treatment I had memorized in training: scrub the infected area, apply Hydrocortisone cream, and take Benadryl capsules. Within a short while, my mouth went numb. I headed out with Kelly and Gerardo to hand out invitations for a meeting. We were to visit all the schools. After chatting with the director at the first school, I stood up, walked outside, and sat down. My legs had gone numb. I went home and rested. My arms went numb. The local advice poured in: bite a stick, eat brown sugar, rub the guts of the scorpion on the bite. My body was asleep all day. My hand was still numb the next day and the pain lasted another two days.


Bruce the Hobbit. The morning of the scorpion bite, he had to lean on the walls on his walk to the bathroom. He then graduated to this stick. Kelly thinks he bears a striking resemblance to a man known as “Joe, the Wizard from the Northeast”--a homeless and slightly crazy man who wandered the banks of Delaware´s Christina River and was full of crazy tales for all the rowers during regattas.

Women & Youth Development

An awesome friend of ours recently asked if there was something she could do to support a project down here. In our pueblo, we don´t have any projects that need support right now. And we might choose not to ever go that route.

But Kelly is a member of WYD, Women and Youth Development, on a national level. They give scholarships to girls living in poverty and exceeding academically. The link is below. Donating online is possible. No pressure. Thanks for taking interest!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=519-122

Eco Club to the Rescue

Last Friday, we took an eco club down to the tree nursery of the local NGO. We selected fruit trees to plant at the Cultural House. But we took a nice ping pong break.


This guy here runs the NGO. We needed to pick out trees to plant at the Cultural House. But all the kids kept asking if they could have plants for their houses. He kept caving in. Top-notch guy.


on the way back up the hill to plant the trees


Believe it or not, this young man in front is the president of the eco club. All his friends call him Pupusa. His family owns a pupuseria. They sell pupusas (the national food, corn-based tortilla filled with cheese and served with tomato sauce and pickled cabbage).


Eat your heart out.


We stopped for a water break on the way to plant the trees. This picture is worth posting because Bruce looks like he´s dying from the heat.


fun with tree planting


A friend (and English student of ours) took us to a lake on the other side of San Miguel. It was beautiful.


The volcano emerges from the clouds.


This is our friend. He´s pretending to jetski. Really nice guy.

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NOTES

*El Salvador swore in its new President on June 1. Mauricio Funes. First leftwing leader in the country´s history. From a poli sci perspective, it´s fascinating to be here these days.

*La Seleccion, the national soccer team, won a big game against Mexico. But then we lost to Honduras. A World Cup 2010 berth is looking very slim.

*There was a decent-sized earthquake near Roatan, Honduras recently. It was the fourth temblor that we have felt here.

*Bruce lost his cell phone on a bus headed back from the capital. Pickpocket? Loose pants pockets? We don´t know.

*We just connected a UK company with a local coffee cooperative. They might do some sweet business together.

*We´re working with the mayor´s office and the town´s NGO to bring second-hand computers down here from an NGO in the States. The computers would be for the schools in the rural areas of our municipality. We have planned a marathon (well, a race of a few miles at least) for July.

*Next week we are taking four community leaders to a workshop on project design and management. It´s a three day-long workshop run by Peace Corps. It´s also at the beach. Nice.

*We´re really excited for our quickly approaching trip to the States. We miss everyone back home. Also shout outs to recent graduates Roger, Tim, and Maria!