Well that was interesting

As I try for the thousandth time to upload pics using a slow Net cafe computer, I figured I'd write about Christmas here.

Christmas in El Salvador is December 24. A volunteer I know wrote "Navidad" on her calendar on December 25 and was told by Salvadorans to change it because it was wrong. But nothing much happens until the evening of the 24. During the day, everyone works. I personally spent all that morning washing my clothes by hand.

At night is when the fun begins. And by fun, I mean 5-hour church vigil. In hte week leading up to Christmas, I had gone from dreading this to mildly interested. After all, my community counterpart/host family member was going to sing, and the church is the nice big one with the pineapple on top, and I was curious. Plus, sitting through church here (something I do whenever I am invited so I don't offend people) is kind of relaxing. I just zone the priest out and plan the next day in my head or something.

Before church, I was invited to another family's house to eat panes rellenos, or big sandwiches stuffed with warm chicken and vegetables. They were delicious. I had been told we were going to church afterwards, but at the last minute, no one went. I was actually kind of nervous because I had told the whole family I would go but didn't want to walk the 30 minutes alone in the dark. So it was that I accidentally missed 5-hour church.

Instead, I went to a dance. Going dancing here is not as much fun as it sounds because 1) all the dances are the same, 2) I can barely dance to any of them, and 3) I have to stay sober. Luckily, the dance was next door to my house, so I was able to duck out after 2 hours, no harm no foul. Tonight there is another dance much farther away...we'll see if I go to that one.

Real Christmas, the next day, was even more fun and even more strange. I woke up and finally opened the seriously great packages from my mom, which included a less great student loan statement (I'm sorry you're bankrupt, Citibank, but stop pretending I didn't send you that deferment form!) and the fall issue of TERP magazine, which I was suprised to find I was in. Look for the photo of the journalism school groundbreaking. I did NOT sign up for that to follow me here.

Then I washed clothes by hand for two more hours. Ah, Peace Corps.

During the day, I was annoyed by children running in and begging for my gifts, so I eventually had to hide them. Then the dance committee man to whom I lent the community center key came over drunk and babbling about said key. A member of the family had to kick him out of my house. Finally, I got the key back, ate a lovely chicken dinner with the family and watched the community Christmas pageant for the thousandth time when it came to our house. The pageant people have invited me to come with them on their little tours every day for a week, and I could never figure out why they were so disappointed that I only went twice. Until I remembered all the random people I don't even know begging for me to take their pictures and then asking me when they will get to hold a copy in their hands. In short, I am the town digital camera, and everyone expects me to print all the photos even though they're 55 cents a pop, which is a fortune here. And when I don't show up to an event, there are no photos. This makes me very popular and very irritated.

I feel like a terrible person when I complain that people just want my things all the time: my money (yes, I have been asked for loans already), my Christmas presents, my photographs, my food, the fuel-saving stoves I am actually trying to build for the community but can't do overnight. I always thought I was a generous person at heart, but one time I gave two of the family's kids chocolate and now there are children at my house AT ALL TIMES begging for candy. This is just one example for the if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie mentality I encounter every day here. It's made me go the other way and instinctively not give anything away, ever. And isn't the Peace Corps supposed to make me a better person?

I don't mean to sound too negative, because I really have had a great week. So I'm going to shut up now and give you some photos, because it didn't work on Facebook after all and it will not cost me 55 cents.

This is Hernan, the youth group president, and his sister Maricela as we go on the impromptu hike/camping trip I mentioned earlier.

Here are Will, Megan and Nick in front of the pineapple church in my pueblo. See the pineapple? See? Isn't that funny??


One of many photos of the Christmas pageant that featured pyrotechnics for the Devil and lots of off-key singing.

More to come on Facebook when computers work in the city of Zacatecoluca. Paz, amor y prospero año nuevo a todos.

Feliz Navidad

to everyone. This is probably the last time I'll blog until after Christmas, so just throwing that out there.

I am finally feeling in the Christmas spirit, something that back home usually starts for me in October. But I'm here in the capital again today (what a site-negligent volunteer I am!) celebrating with some friends. So far it has just involved eating a lot of junk food, buying rum and using the Internet. Thank God for the holidays.

The city is packed, unsurprisingly -- it's the last Saturday before Christmas. The bus to the mall took 45 minutes, the mall was chaos, and I was so happy. In my rural site, Christmas is much more religious than commercial. It was nice to get a taste of commercialism and see Santa Claus and a big Christmas tree in a mall, and every store decorated with sales. I am officially too materialistic for Peace Corps.

We might see a movie here tonight for the first time. I have no idea what movies even exist anymore. My dear friend Emily back home pointed out to me that it's Oscar season. I miss rushing to see all the indie flicks and Best Picture nominees so I can enter Oscar pools. Although Emily always wins them ;-)

The restaurant where I ate breakfast today had the American Saturday morning cartoons. A Christmas Mickey Mouse show and a Christmas Tom & Jerry. I don't even think I had ever seen them in English. But everything is funnier in Spanish. It was funny because the morals of the episodes were that Christmas is about kindness and generosity. But here, Christmas isn't about those things. It's just about Jesus.

So that's my Christmas in the city. In a week or so you'll hear all about my Christmas in the country.

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.

Kidnapped?

The following story is typical to the Peace Corps.

Yesterday, I was finally eating a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup in the comfort of my home when Maricela, one of the youth in my community, dropped by and asked if I was free to hike down to the river "tomorrow."

No, I said, I have to go to the capital tomorrow.

What about tonight? she asked.

Sure, I said, I can go tonight.

I met up with Hernan, her brother, and their friend Anibal at 3:30 p.m. and we started walking. On the way, we stopped by Hernan and Maricela's house.

When will you be back? their dad asked.

Tomorrow, Hernan said.

My mouth dropped open. How could they forget to tell me an all-important sentence like, Hey, we're spending the night?

I can't do this, I said. I have to be on a bus at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Eventually I was convinced to continue with them and book it out of there at first light. I had no toothbrush or change of clothes, but I was more worried about things like, where will we sleep? And, will it be cold? I had to call my host family and tell them that this wasn't the quick hike I thought it would be. I resisted saying I had been kidnapped, please send money.

We hiked down to the river, a pretty easy 45 minutes except for the crossing where there was no bridge or stones (Hernan ended up carrying me across.) When we got to our campsite, which was on land owned by Anibal's family, we cooked corn, bananas and other vegetables that were growing nearby (boiled bananas are the best food ever.) Everyone had planned on bathing in the river, but only Maricela ended up doing so because it was pitch dark.

In answer to my sleeping question, we slept in hammocks and yes, it was cold. It was so cold that I couldn't sleep at all. At 12:30 a.m. I left my hammock and decided to sleep on a corn sack on the ground near the fire. Maricela, cold as well, ended up spooning me.

At some point, about a dozen mosquitos bit me through my pants, but other than that and the cold, it was actually a fun night.

I set my alarm for 5 a.m. the next day. When it went off, it was still dark, so we slept a half hour more. Then I made everybody get up, even though it was still dark, because I wanted to basically run back up the hill to my house. But then hora salvadorena, the endless dallying and disregard for time, came into play. I tried to chivvy people along without being a Nazi but nearly lost it when the boys started picking corn instead of putting out the fire. On the hike back uphill, I nearly left them all behind.

After the fastest bucket bath ever, I made it to the capital. Still a little shell shocked, but alive and surprised at my own patience and flexibility. (Peace Corps Volunteers, sorry for repeating the mantra.)

Here is a long-awaited picture of my site. It's actually my host family's finca, or the land where they grow coffee and oranges and pineapples.

Paz y amor. Send your love.

Recuperation

Mystery solved: I had pneumonia. I spent an entire week in a hotel in San Salvador eating soup once a day. While in the hotel, I made the mistake of watching "A Christmas Story," burst into tears when I saw the snow, and continued feeling homesick for roughly two weeks. Reinforcing my theory that I only get homesick when I'm physically ill in another country. It didn't help that all I wanted for a week was tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwhich, neither of which exist here.

It still sucks a little to think of missing Christmas in America: the parties (especially the Cheverly caroling one) and the glitzy mall displays and Christmas music. The possibility of snow in D.C. and the reality of snow in New England. Hot apple cider, spiced rum, sugar cookies, even the Salvation Army people with those annoying bells. And of course, my family and our tradition of opening presents in the morning and seeing movies in the afternoon. Everyone celebrates Christmas here in a more religious, less commercialized way (processions and midnight mass and fireworks on the 24th) but I totally miss the commercialization.

People keep asking how I got pneumonia in a tropical country. I had never had it in my life, and even among Peace Corps volunteers here it's not that common. All I can think of is I had a cold for a week and I guess it just got worse and worse until my lung got infected. After antibiotics, I feel a lot better, although my chest still hurts when I exercise (which I'm not supposed to be doing yet, but my site is a steep 30-minute hike from town so I really have no choice, do I?) I keep going to the doctor in the capital like every 10 days. At least it's an excuse to go to the capital, I guess.

The pneumonia really set me back, though. I had about a thousand emails and no food because I couldn't get to town to take care of groceries and the Internet. I missed an environmental camp and a couple of activities with the youth group in town. And I spent three hectic days preparing for a briefing with my program director that I should have been working on for weeks. It all came together in the end, although now he wants me to re-form the community development organization that fell apart due to in-fighting between neighborhoods. Needless to say, that seems a bit overwhelming, especially right now that I don't really know anyone in the community...we'll see what happens.

What else is new? I bought a fridge two weeks ago and it was finally delivered, so now I can save leftovers and buy things like yogurt! Yesterday I randomly ran into a guy from the Association of Pineapple Producers of El Salvador, and he showed me the organization's huge expanse of fields and crops. I might work with them to make pineapple jams and things (mmm.) I'm starting to work on a project the previous volunteer left, where we build fuel-efficient stoves for the community...everyone here uses wood-burning stoves and sometimes they have to walk for like 3 hours to get the wood. These new stoves cook fast and burn less wood, saving time and trees. The whole community is in love with them so I'm trying to learn all I can about how to build and fund them.

My bout of homesickness is over now that I'm working and back in the swing of things. We'll see how I feel on December 25, but I'm looking forward to Christmas Salvie-style.

Pictures are failing to upload. So what else is new.

Paz y amor. Send me a line.

First major illness

I had heard that there are some volunteers who never get sick in two years, or at least not sick enough to come into the medical office in the capital. My stomach toughened by Bangladesh, my immune system proving its greatness as everyone around me caught cold and I ran around unscathed, I began to fantasize that I could be one of those volunteers.

But how could I have forgotten? I have this thing for visiting foreign hospitals everywhere (think Spain) or at least getting sick in other countries (Italy, Bangladesh.) So two nights ago, after a week of a bad cold, I woke up with a fever and painful muscle spasms down my right side.

The next day, guess where I was? Yep, in the hospital in San Salvador. Getting there was a 4-hour journey involving two bus rides and a cab trip in sweltering heat. After being loaded up with three different medications, I was sent to a hotel for the night, where I promptly slept for 15 hours.

Today, I'm still running a fever, high blood pressure and an upset stomach. So it looks like a visit to the testing lab for me, plus another night in a San Sal hotel. At least it gets English TV channels and the water is a lukewarm shower instead of a freezing cold bucket bath.

This is meant to make you all feel better about getting sick in America.