Caminata

Yesterday, despite my ever-present coughing and congestion, I went on a 4-hour hike with some members of my youth group. The main object of this hike was to visit the Chorreron, a waterfall in my community, and see all the damage done to the river by Hurricane Ida. After that, we went to a sort-of swimming pool. It's really a group of cement basins people can swim in.

The hike might have not taken so long had I not stopped so often to take pictures. And here they are (well, some of them...)The waterfall. If you look really hard, you can see mini-youth standing on top...A landslide...but not the worst one!
Yikes.
A prettier view.

In other news, I heard Sleigh Ride on the radio this morning -- yes, in El Salvador -- despite the fact that I spent a bit of yesterday's hike trying to explain snow. It's harder than you think!

So excited to come home in TWO DAYS!

Paz y amor.

Guess I didn't knock hard enough...

My first seven months of Peace Corps service were marked by constant illness. But since June, I had not had any medical problems, a fact I would reflect on with relief. Other volunteers were getting sick and I would continue living the healthy life. "I haven't been sick since June," I would tell people, smiling in disbelief and knocking on wood.

So I got back from the English teacher training we had at Lago Coatepeque, a beautiful lake in the crater of a volcano, ready to spend a full nine days in a row in my site (which I had definitely not been able to do since the beginning of November) and what happens? I wake up Saturday morning with a headache, diziness, nasal congestion and a fever of 100.5, a fever that continued unabated until yesterday.


Needless to say, Peace Corps had me come into the capital yesterday to get poked and prodded in a lab so they could figure out what was up. "We don't know what it is, but something's wrong," was their conclusion. Then I started feeling better yesterday, the fever went away and they concluded it was a virus of some sort. So now I head home, hopefully not to leave until I fly to the States Sunday, after which I hope to see as many of you gringos as possible!

Megan and her school's English teacher Jairo wading into the lake

Our bonfire

Paz, amor y nos vemos pronto!

Accion de Gracias

Let's go in chronological order...I passed my mid service medical exams this week with flying colors, except I apparently have an intestinal parasite that Peace Corps will not treat because ¨we have tried to treat it before and it doesn't go away.¨ Ummm...?

Thanksgiving was lots of fun. Peace Corps has a program where volunteers can sign up for Thanksgiving dinner with families who work for the U.S. Embassy, who usually have the money/resources/hired help to cook an actual Thanksgiving dinner...turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, pumpkin pie, the works. Much better than the chicken and $7 cranberry juice we had last year.

I went with two other volunteers to an amazing family. The husband had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, and the wife is South African and had just got back from a trip to Bangladesh on Tuesday, so we had plenty to talk about! They had a gorgeous high rise penthouse apartment that I will post pictures of, and had invited Salvadoran friends too, all very nice people. We stayed there until about 2 a.m. drinking, dancing and smoking hookah (they had spent a lot of time in the Middle East).

Next week I head to a beautiful lake in the crater of a volcano for three days for an English workshop with two teachers from my school. And in two weeks exactly I come HOME for three weeks of vacation! Life is good!A view of San Salvador from the penthouse apartment
Where we spent a lot of the night...

I also want to post some pictures of the damage done to my site by Hurricane Ida, in stark contrast to the prosperity seen here. It seems a little incongruous, but that is exactly how I felt on Thanksgiving. When asked what I was thankful for at the dinner table, I said I was thankful for the chance to be in a beautiful apartment eating a huge delicious meal, but for the first time I actually felt guilty about it as well. Even though the family we visited had lived in poorer conditions before, I still found it hard to reconcile their wealth with what I see in my village every day. Our Thanksgiving family deserved every privilege they had. I just wish that everyone else who deserves those priveleges could also have them.

Shutting up now...

A landslide on the way to my village
More landslide destruction
Actually in my village...more to come on Facebook.

Paz y amor.

I live in San Salvador

So I'm back in the city again for another week...mid-service medical evaluations Monday-Wednesday plus work to do for our Peace Corps theater group, a mysterious meeting with our Country Director (am I in trouble? No one will tell me!) a Thanksgiving dinner with a U.S. Embassy family and a project development training.

My life has gone pretty much back to normal -- I am helping a little bit with relief work, but for once I feel like the mayor's office and the NGOs that work in my municipality have stuff under control. All I've done so far is help to organize a census of damaged houses, crops etc. and be present at a lot of the aid distribution events. Other than that, I'm still involved in the same projects as before: wood-saving stoves, trainings and aid for the health dispensary, English teacher training, etc.

The purpose of this post was to upload more photos of landslides in my site, but my USB drive has a virus that is making that impossible. Will try to fix this.

Paz y amor.

No longer displaced

After being stuck out of my site for a week following Hurricane Ida, I finally set out for home Friday with a couple of days' supply of food and water for myself, and 16 pounds of corn flour and candles for my host family, who were running out of food.

Riding the bus to my site was quite an experience. The closer we got, the more landslides could be seen along the road, and we often had to stop and wait for machines that were clearing away mud to make space for us to pass.

Then we got to the bridge to my pueblo, which had been completely washed away. I was told the buses only went to that point, after which people were crossing the broken bridge on foot and walking about an hour to my village. When we arrived, a crew was repairing the bridge, and I prepared to get off the bus...but it kept going. We were going to cross! Everyone on the bus got excited, until the bus got stuck in a rut in the middle of the bridge. Back and forth, back and forth it moved, on the bridge which was basically still unsupported mud, and which curved so that it looked like the bus might plunge off it any minute.

The Salvadorans around me laughed and made little expressions of surprise, but I was panicking. I could feel all the blood rushing to my face and was literally biting my nails. Then the bus stopped trying to move and I was one of the first people off it.

I started the hike to my village carrying all that food and barely made it a half a mile before a truck from my community passed and the people offered me a ride. Thank God! As we were heading home, we saw the same bus...it had eventually crossed the bridge, which was fully fixed later that day.

As soon as I got home, I was pulled into food distribution efforts. An hour later, the electricity came back (while I was cleaning my fridge of the green slime that had built up during the week) and that night water started running again. The villagers had been told they might have to wait two more weeks for any of that to happen. But the day the gringa came back, everything started working again.

This proved a horrible coincidence for me, as our municipality is still suffering massive consequences -- about a thousand families lost their crops and 65 families were displaced and need new houses -- and people in my village are now looking at me to save them. One of my friends apparently told his mother, "At least Alia lives here. She'll take care of us." Which is a HUGE responsibility for someone who just came to teach classes, plant trees and conduct community cleanups.

Many of you have asked how you can help. I am waiting to hear about funding from USAID and at least one other NGO, but if that doesn't come through, I will set up a private fund and send instructions on how to donate. I'll keep you posted.

Here is the bus stuck on the bridge.
More photos to come, of the little landslides all over my municipality...

Paz y amor.

Homeward bound

This morning I managed to talk to my host mother on the phone -- a sister had taken her cell phone to a city with electricity and charged it, as there is still no electricity or running water in my entire municipality. The municipality is still cut off from vehicular transport, houses have washed away, they are drinking water that's basically mud and running out of food. They can leave the village walking and go to where food is sold, but that doesn't help them much, as at least two-thirds of my community are subsistence farmers and have never actually bought large quantities of food. They have always eaten the corn, beans, chickens, eggs and fruits from their own farms. And all those crops have been ruined by the hurricane.

I cannot write this post without shaking. We hear about poor people or disaster victims starving all the time, but these are people I know, whom I have lived with as family for a year.

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for my village and bringing enough food and water for a couple of days, including food for my host family. I'm mostly going to "assess the situation" -- to see exactly where and what kind of help is needed. Apparently some helicopters arrived with food yesterday, but did not bring that much. Most of the relief supplies are going to places that are even harder hit than mine.

So that's my life, and the lives of the damnificados, so different from just a week ago.

Paz y amor.

Damnificados

That is the Spanish word for "victims" -- specifically, I believe, referring to people who have lost their houses -- but I think the English cognate damned is actually more accurate. Aside from the death count which I last heard was 144, about 13,000 Salvadorans have lost their homes due to Hurricane Ida, which caused devastating floods and landslides Saturday and Sunday.

I am still evacuated in San Salvador, and the more I find out about my community, the worse the news gets. There is still no vehicular access, as both roads to my site are collapsed. In my municipality, 300 houses have been damaged or destroyed. There is no electricity or worse, water, or telephone connections. About 180 people have been evacuated from their houses and are living in schools. Four people died in a landslide in a village neighboring mine.

As I cannot communicate with my community, I don't know how badly people are suffering. Most people have stores of water that last a few days at least if water doesn't run. But if roads don't open soon and water systems aren't fixed, the situation could get much worse.

That's why some Peace Corps staff and former volunteers have set up a disaster relief fund. To donate to it, go to aidelsalvador.org. Much of the money will probably go to communities worse off than mine, but even that would be worthwhile. We are also waiting to hear whether we can get USAID money for relief efforts, which we would join them in implementing. And I might set up my own fund if what we get proves insufficient.

Not to be idle here in San Salvador, today a bunch of displaced volunteers helped TV stations and NGOs receive, sort and load food, clothes etc. to the victims. We bought them a bunch of soap.

My second year in the Peace Corps might turn into a disaster relief job rather than a small-scale community development job. Right now all my previous projects -- classes, gardens, community clean-ups, educational skits -- barely seem important next to the weight of what happened this weekend.

Paz y amor.

I am safe

from the widespread mudslides and flooding that have killed more than 120 people in El Salvador since Saturday. Here is the Washington Post story. I was at my group's one-year anniversary party in another part of the country when the hardest rains/destruction hit, although my community is in the part of the country most affected by the hurricane. I was ordered to come to San Salvador, the capital, which is safe and unaffected, and am being put up here until it is safe to return to my community. Three people have died in my town and many more in nearby towns. I don't think there were any mudslides in my community, just a lot of flooding. The storm is pretty much over and I will be able to go home once the roads are open. I will report more information when I have it; obviously am pressed for time right now.

Paz y amor.

Fin del año

Final exams ended last week and my frantic work at school is drawing to a close. From now until mid-January my life will be much more chill. I'm looking forward to much more time for non-school projects (wood-saving stove construction por fin, work with my village health dispensary and some youth group stuff, I hope) and probably more time spent reading in the hammock watching DVDs...I just hope I don't get bored! But I'm also coming home for three weeks from mid-December until right after the new year. Purchasing tickets today!

In other news, I planned a Halloween party with my youth group for Halloween, which was cancelled due to a last-minute Mass that everyone attended instead. I wasn't even surprised. That's pretty much the story of my life in El Salvador -- my projects being hijacked by the Catholic Church.

So we have postponed the Halloween party for today, November 4th, and the mood has of course already passed, but we'll see if people show.

Monday was also the Day of the Dead in El Salvador. I wrote about this last year -- how the Salvadorans go to put brightly colored paper flowers on the graves of their dead relatives, and some even repaint the graves and picnic on them and little kids usually end up breaking the crosses off, etc. I went with my host family to enflorar the graves of my host grandmother and three of my host mother's children -- two who died as babies and the schoolteacher who died in 2001 saving her students during the devastating earthquake. It's actually a happy occasion, not a solemn one; everyone was laughing and joking. My family is so huge that they didn't even recognize some of the names in the family plot.

Photo uploader isn't working today. Just as well, as there are some good ones I forgot to put on the USB...next time!

Paz y amor.

Don't you mean Mexico?

After more than a year in El Salvador, my laptop has died. It is refusing to turn on. Needless to say, I made several phone calls to tech support, and needless to say they were not helpful. But the worst part was not that they couldn't get my computer to work. The worst part was that none of the three agents I talked to knew what or where El Salvador is.

Seriously???

Every time I mentioned that I was in El Salvador, I was asked if I didn't mean a different country. "Oh, isn't that in Spain/Mexico/Texas?" I wasn't even polite to these people. I laughed in their faces (earpieces?) and said "No. It is a COUNTRY."

"Is that in South America?"

"CENTRAL AMERICA." "Jesus Christ," I even added, semi-under my breath, the third time I was asked to clarify. Which is funny because El Salvador means the Savior and therefore refers to Jesus Christ. But I wasn't trying to explain the origins of the name. I was trying to explain that this person was an idiot.

One woman (not the one I said "Jesus Christ" too) actually got offended and said bitingly, "Sorry. I'm not familiar with it." Wow, what a great comeback. "Sorry, I am embarassingly ignorant."

I understand that El Salvador is a small country that isn't in the news much. But am I too outraged here? I mean, it is close to the United States, there are a lot of Salvadoran immigrants in America, and shouldn't anyone with a high school education know at least which continent any given country is on?

Anyway. I brought the computer into the capital today and left it at a workshop. Keep your fingers crossed!

Paz y amor.

Becas becas becas

The school year is coming to an end, which means it's time to start prodding kids to apply for scholarships (becas) for next year...I just came back from San Salvador to turn in some applications for scholarships funded by a Peace Corps committee. But my leading candidate for a university scholarship just plain didn't do her application. I was a bit surprised, but I have witnessed an attitude towards education here that is cavalier at best. At home, it seems like so many people go to college without really caring about it because it's what's expected of them. So it shouldn't be so surprising that some kids here don't care to go to college -- except they're being offered a chance at a scholarship, and in my village the kids are so poor and a university education would do wonders for their future. They understand this, or at least they've been told it enough and can parrot it ("Quiero estudiar para salir adelante"/"I want to study to get ahead") but when it comes time to fill out the forms that would give them that shot? Nah.

At least two girls in the 9th grade filled out forms for high school scholarships. Keep your fingers crossed for them!

Paz y amor.

Off Probation

My readers (all both of them) might remember a couple of posts I wrote last month in which I stated that things were going badly here and I was thinking of coming home. Well, at that time, I had put myself on one-month probation. I told myself that if things didn't get better in a month, I would make a final decision. That month is over today, but I've realized for a while (a week maybe?) that I really don't want to leave yet.

To defend myself, it wasn't just run-of-the-mill problems that made me want to leave. Sure, I'm bothered sometimes by my living conditions, some of the people in my site, and an overall lack of productivity. But I was in a serious relationship, and that gave me kind of a support system to deal with all the things I don't like about Peace Corps. I started wanting to leave when that relationship ended. I was experiencing everything anyone experiences during a painful breakup, plus I was bored and lonely in a rural village with way too much time to think about everything that was bad in my life.

That's all I'll say about that. This isn't someone's angsty high school LiveJournal, after all.

Luckily, some really good things have happened this month. And they are:

• The field trip I wrote about
• I solicited for some equipment for our health dispensario, and the grant was approved, thanks to Kids to Kids, an organization that donates money to benefit kids around the world. As part of this project, I'll be giving interactive basic health lessons to kids, plus our dispensario gets a fence, a nebulizer for all the respiratory infections we have, and a stove to make healthy food for visitors and events. Plus, I have been working with my community counterpart to present information we received from a Peace Corps health training to the volunteer promoters in my village.
• We started Saturday computer classes, which I supervise and three of my university friends (who are scholarship students doing this for service hours) teach.
• It's scholarship application season, and I've been working on getting three girls from my community high school or university scholarships.
• It looks like we might be able to start building eco-friendly stoves soon (wait till I start hitting all you gringos up for money!)
• I have officially taken over the Peace Corps travelling theater group, which keeps me busy with one of my greatest loves.
• We are FINALLY doing a trash and recycling campaign at school, with long-term plans to keep collecting bottles and cans, which we can sell to raise funds that we never have enough of.
• I found Raid Casa y Jardin in the supermarket, which I have successfully used to destroy the ants and crickets (yes, crickets) that were infesting my house. The crickets in particular were holed up in a hollow part of the window shutter right over my bed, and I couldn't sleep for a week straight. Until I poisoned them to death, with no regrets.
  
• I'm coming home for Christmas and the New Year if it's the last thing I do on this earth.

Paz y amor.

Another tragedy

Yesterday, I found out that yet another youth (in this case, a man probably not older than 25) died in the nearby town in a tragic accident. This guy was speeding downhill on a bicycle in the dark when he lost control and flew over a ledge, landing on a shingled roof below. The clay shingles pierced one of his lungs, and he died before he even got to the hospital.

What is is about El Salvador that makes so much stuff like this happen? A girl in my town already drowned at the beach; another boy in my friend's site was decapitated while thrown from the back of a pickup truck speeding around a curve. Are people just more careless here? Sure, there are so many deaths by car accident in the States, but I wouldn't be surprised if the overall percentage was higher here. A while ago I heard a news report about a driver in the city center of San Salvador who was driving recklessly and ran over some pedestrians...while they were on the sidewalk. And while the streets here aren't as chaotic as Bangladesh or Vietnam, I would still be scared to drive around in this country.

It just seems like so many of us in the Peace Corps are exposed to these freak accident tragedies at least once during our service here. Maybe it has something to do with poverty -- the town might have been poorly lit, leading to the cyclist's fall. Poor Salvadorans don't get swimming lessons, hence the drowned girl. And the kid was decapitated on a barbed-wire fence, which you mostly see in poor rural areas. And maybe American streets are more orderly because we've all been able to afford cars for decades. I don't know. Maybe poverty has nothing to do with it at all. Theories are welcome.

Paz y amor.

CENTA

Well, Friday, the long-awaited day finally arrived: the 7th, 8th and 9th grade field trip to CENTA (the national department of agriculture, basically) and ENA (the national agricultural university). I had come up with the trip and solicited the transportation, but luckily teachers, parents and the principal got really excited about it and helped me organize. So at 7 a.m. 90 kids, 10 parents and 5 teachers boarded two buses and off we went.

We got to CENTA at least an hour late because a landslide was blocking the highway (thank you, rainy season) but got to see a lot of cool stuff with members of the fruit program, which I picked since our site has so much fruit in it and one of CENTA's fruit guys is from our area. It was really hot outside, and one kid who hadn't eaten breakfast fainted, but was soon brought around and stuffed with bread. By the time we finished our tour of the ENA, at 3 p.m., teachers and students alike were saying things like, Ya no me aguanto! (I can't take it anymore!) But I think all of them were excited to get out of school for a day -- they NEVER get field trips here, and I remember in elementary school we would get field trips like once a month. Even the bus ride was a treat for them, as we drove several departments away and most of these kids have rarely been farther than the nearest city. A lot of kids spent the whole two-hour trip hanging out of the windows like dogs, watching the scenery pass by.

I, of course, was tired and headachy by the time I got home, but happy that something that I had planned for months was finally over -- and apparently a success.Chopping pineapple roots using a special guillotine (yes, that's what they call it.)
The rose garden. Of course kids started picking the specially bred roses...
A tilapia pond. Mmm...tilapia...

Paz y amor.

One Year Anniversary

Yesterday, Sept. 16, was the one-year anniversary of our arrival to El Salvador. Some people have been saying this year went by so fast, but I definitely feel that I've been here that long.

A lot has changed. I, formerly the D.C. bright-lights big-city girl, now live in a rural farm community and for the most part am used to it. I don't go out on Saturday nights, or really ever after dark. My projects involve building and growing things (NOT my area of expertise) instead of observing and writing things. I used to always be going a mile a minute and now I have a lot of time alone.

But, like I said in my earlier post, I really miss my old life, maybe too much. Thanks everyone for their advice on what I should do.

In a year, I don't feel I've achieved a ton, but that's actually OK -- the big stuff doesn't usually get done until a volunteer's second year. I have taught A LOT of English classes, some environmental classes, helped the youth group organize trips and fundraisers, helped the school with various events, gone to a few trainings. Tomorrow is our field trip with all of 7-9th grade to the national agricultural university and agrotechnology center, which has been months in the organizing, and we're about to start computer classes too. And I've just gone to a lot of village events and worked on projects with pending outcomes -- getting stoves built, getting scholarships for some high school and college students. And I've been put in charge of the Peace Corps traveling theater group. It sounds like a lot, or maybe it doesn't -- it doesn't to me because there's still so much time spent not doing much of anything. I've made a few friends in my community, but my best times have been with my fellow volunteer friends, in the capital or travelling around the country.

I guess we'll see what the second year holds. If I make it that far!

Paz y amor.

Happy Independence Day, Again

Tomorrow, Sept. 15, is the day El Salvador, and much of Latin America, celebrates its independence from Spain. But schools in rural areas were forced to celebrate this yesterday (probably so everyone could attend the urban celebrations tomorrow?) So my school put on a big parade and it was really exciting. For a school with next to nothing in terms of money and resources, they really pulled it together. The band (drums and trumpets) sounded good and the parade costumes (made by the director's wife) looked great.

I had not planned to march in this parade. Instead, I was standing in front of my house on Sunday morning in faded jeans, a soccer jersey and shower sandals snapping pictures as it marched by. Then my school director, the mayor and the asesora departamental (think county superintendent of schools) passed by, dressed to the nines, and literally dragged the raggedy gringa into the limelight with them. Thanks guys.

Marching in a Salvadoran parade is an exercise in patience. It took us an hour to cover the microscopic distance between my house and the school -- done in slow, mincing steps and long motionless pauses. Luckily this gave me lots of time for pictures:An unfortunate biker tries to wend his way throughArriving at schoolKindergarteners are cute.

Speaking of patience, I am also going through a really rough patch in the Peace Corps right now and started thinking last weekend about coming home. When I joined the Peace Corps, my biggest concern was that two years would be too long for me to be missing my friends, the reporter's life I loved so much, family etc. I told myself I would definitely stick out the first year and then see how I felt. Well, now I'm coming up on a year in country, a ton of my friends who went on one-year abroad programs are coming home, and although a lot of this year has been great, right now life is extremely frustrating. So I'm doing what I did after my grandmother died, the only other time I've felt like bailing...I'm giving it a month and then deciding. If I feel better, I'll stay; but if I don't, I could spend a miserable year waiting for things to turn around, or I could come home feeling good about living in El Salvador for a year and contributing to my village in a few small ways.

Thoughts would be appreciated. Paz y amor.

The 9/11 Post

I didn't get on the Internet today intending to write about 9/11, although I did remember that today was the anniversary. But then I saw so much in the news, and on Facebook...God help me, I jumped on the band wagon.

My life is currently flooded with patriotism, because today is El Salvador day at my village school, in anticipation of the Independence Day festivities Sept. 15. But in a teachers' meeting to plan El Salvador day, even the Salvadoran teachers remembered the date as "cuando las torres se cayeron" (when the towers fell.)

First, about Obama's proposal to turn today into a day of service: as a Peace Corps volunteer, my opinion might be obvious, but I love it. It doesn't cheapen the mourning -- people can still remember their loved ones and honor their memories by contributing. Wouldn't that be what the NYC firefighters and the passengers on United 93 wanted?

Second, I'll join the throngs of people who are posting on the Internet where they were when they found out: I was in the new wing of Eleanor Roosevelt High School, waiting outside the door of Ms. Burr's Spanish class for homeroom to start. A friend came up to me and told me what had happened, and I laughed because I thought it was a joke. Then I thought it was an incredibly strange freak accident, and we really need better commercial pilots. Only when we all sat down and watched the news in my next class, World History, did I realize it was a terrorist attack.

Thirdly, I couldn't believe this story in The Washington Post about high school juniors who don't remember 9/11 and have to learn about it in history class. God, do I feel old.

This week I attended a training on child and maternal health in El Salvador with my community counterpart, who is a volunteer health promoter in my village. It was crazy to hear some of the myths Salvadorans believe about pregnancy, like that boys are only born during the full moon or that if you have a premature baby, it means you can't get pregnant again, or that you should never have your baby in a hospital because they do the epistomy afterwards (they do it at the right time here, it's just that the mother doesn't feel it until afterwards.) Some of these myths, as you can imagine, can hurt the mother and baby.

I wanted to put up some photos I've taken recently, but this computer hates me (a computer in a Salvadoran cyber cafe, not working? Never!) Next time, maybe.

Paz y amor.

Some stats that make me feel lucky...

From the Peace Corps/El Salvador Women and Youth Development Committee:

While basic public education is free and high school matriculation is also paid for by the Salvadoran government, families still must pay for school uniforms, books, transportation to and from class, as well as bear the burden of funding extracurricular activities. Many rural families, earning an average of $4 per day, struggle to put food on the table, making it even more difficult to provide for their children`s education. No student loans are available through the government.

Furthermore, the gap between rich and poor citizens, within both developed and developing nations, is growing, according to the UNDP 2007 report. While the richest two percent of the world's adult population owns more than half of global household wealth, over a billion people worldwide in 2007 had an income equivalent of a dollar a day or less (UNDP Report 2007). Thus, for more than a billion people worldwide, education has become a privilege instead of an inherent right.

Of Salvadoran youth,
• 48% aged 15-24 attend school
• 88% of those who study belong to the upper-class
• 40% say they are optimistic for a better future
• 50% live on a disposable income of less than $2/day

On graduation rates:
• 36% of Salvadoran youth who are studying finish 9th grade
• Only 12.6% will graduate from high school
• 1.26% of those will study in college
• 0.013% will graduate from college
• 25% of all Americans have a Bachelor’s degree

Of the 52% of Salvadoran youth aged 15-24 who are not studying at any level,
• Some work as farm hands picking coffee, cutting sugarcane, and growing corn for $5 per day
• Some work 12-hour days in clothing factories for $50 per week
• Some work as maids in wealthy households far from their families for $4 per day
• 42% of youth currently seek jobs
• Only 36% of youth say they are confident they will find a job

*Source: 2005 Government youth survey from the National Secretary of the Youth, La Prensa Gráfica

For these reasons, a group of Peace Corps volunteers formed a committee with local nonprofit organizations to provide scholarships to poor, rural Salvadoran girls who without outside assistance would discontinue their studies. This scholarship program, called Mujeres y Jovenes en Desarrollo (or Women and Youth Development) not only provides the means for girls with the aptitude and desire to continue their studies, but also provides them with technical training that compliments their studies (under themes such as leadership development, women's empowerment, equality, and community development).

Northamerican friends and neighbors along with Salvadoran businesses donate each year. We sincerely thank those who have donated already this year, as we have met our current goal of raising $2400 by Labor Day.

We will be continuing to accept donations in order to award an increasing number of scholars for the 2010 school year.

---

I always complain about how hard it is to afford higher education in the States, but obviously the situation here is far worse. It's so sad to see, as I see in my community, talented and motivated youth who will not go to the university because of money alone. My family couldn't even afford state school for me, but luckily scholarships are widely available in the States and I benefited from a ton of them. Salvadoran youth don't have the same good fortune. I am pushing one of the girls in this community to apply for this scholarship; she is one of the hardest workers I've ever met and will not go to the university without financial aid.

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

In other news, we swear in the new volunteers tomorrow, so it's party time! I also officially take over the Peace Corps/El Salvador theater group tomorrow.

Paz y amor!

Dress Success

I don't really have any news to report since 2 days ago. My life is not very big right now. The ant invasion in my house has calmed down slightly.

We swear in the new group of environmental volunteers on Friday and I had nothing to wear, so I went dress shopping. I knew the clothing store people would try to rip me off as soon as they saw my blue eyes, and so they did. For some reason that still really offends me. Even on the bus ride to the city, the fare collectors sometimes try to shortchange me. Just a nickel or so, but I always notice and call them out on it. It's just a nickel, people, it's not even worth dishonesty! And it's not that they're bad at math. They know exactly what they're doing.

After arguing with the bus fare collector and some people at a clothing store, I was tired of people trying to extort me. Luckily, I went to a big chain store with fixed prices and found a dress, jewelry and make-up for $8.50 total! Sometimes I complain about living in a Third World country, but you gotta love Third World prices.

Before you yell at me, these were not sweatshop prices. This stuff was imported from the States. I have no idea why it was so cheap but I'm not complaining. Plus, I ran into some of my host family while I was shopping there. I officially shop where the Salvadorans shop, and that makes me assimilated or whatever.

You can yell at me, however, for laughing at these Flight of the Conchords lyrics every time they come up on my iTunes (shout outs to my brother for giving me the CD):

They're turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers
But what's the real cost, cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got little kid slaves making them
What are your overheads?

Paz y amor.

Ants Marching

Ants are ruining my life. This week my house has been overrun with them, and I spend a good deal of time cursing at them, stomping on them, getting bitten by them, or taking a broom and sweeping them away when there are too many to kill all at once.

These are not ants like the ones in Washington. The ants I'm used to climb along your skin in a friendly, ticklish manner and are kind of cute. But Salvadoran ants are tiny and mean. They bite, and bite hard, causing itchy boils that pop and are just generally gross.

Why the sudden infestation? No clue. It might have something to do with my boyfriend visiting all week, meaning twice as many crumbs on the floor etc. After the first few days of Ant Hell, it became a catastrophe whenever a Cheerio or a grain of sugar wound up on the floor. Immediate ant party. I don't understand how married couples in the Peace Corps manage to live together and keep a clean house.

Despite the ants, having my boyfriend here was a Good Thing. Time passes so much faster when you have someone to constantly spend it with...

Current community activities include classes on species competition and habitat destruction for 7th to 9th graders, applying for a grant to get some things for the rundown health dispensary, getting some school computers fixed and of course the everlasting ecofriendly stove project.

Paz y amor!

Down with expectations

Yesterday, I went to a Salvadoran wedding and today I went to a birthday party. Both those things sound pretty awesome, but, as is often the case with events completely out of one's own culture, they were less fun in real life. I also went to a two hour missionary meeting yesterday. I thought that would be horrible, but it was actually fun. Go figure.

Don't get me wrong, there were good things about the wedding and party. Yesterday's bride was a sweet girl and a friend of mine in the community, and she was beautiful and the food was good. Although it would have been better without the dead bugs in my rice and Fresca. The wedding also entailed sitting through an hour of Mass (never fun) and sitting bored at a table afterwards because you don't feel like dancing although creepy old men keep asking you to. And of course there was no alcohol in sight to make the awkwardness go away. So I left as early as possible without being rude.

Then came the missionary meeting, which I had already said I would not attend due to the wedding. But when I got home early from the wedding, to my house which is unfortunately right next door to the church, I was roped into going. Background: a missionary group has taken over our Saturday youth group meetings this month, focusing them entirely on Catholocism and making them even more awkward for me. The worst part, I thought beforehand, is that instead of just tuning out of the Bible talk, I would actually have to participate in the missionary meetings because they had filled them with games and activities. I had horrible visions of being called on to explain what God means to me, why social liberals are going to hell, etc. But fortunately I just had to clap along to some religious songs, play some nonreligious games and explain why drugs are bad. There was a group that had to explain why abortion is bad. Luckily I was not assigned to it. Then we had soda and sweet bread. I got a piece with another dead bug attached. Is this some kind of a cruel joke?

That brings us to the birthday party today. It was for Suzanne, the previous volunteer who is here visiting, and a lot of other kids who were born in August. A lot of it was just sitting around waiting for things to happen...for the people to show up with the food, for things to be served, for the dancing to start or stop, etc. Those were the awkward patches, but most of the guests were members of my host family, so at least I knew everyone and it was fun overall.

Replacing a volunteer is hard when, as in my community, that volunteer is constantly praised and the new volunteer (me) is frequently compared to the previous one. But having Suzanne here has been nice because she's made me realize I'm not a horrible person for hating dances or not being able to spend a whole day with Salvadorans without getting bored or annoyed. Because it turns out so many of our problems and frustrations are the same.

Here are some wedding pictures:I didn't catch the kiss, my camera's shutter speed is too unreliable...this is just before. The bride's name is Alba and the girl is Carlos.
The first dance, complete with confetti

And here are some birthday photos...Suzanne and the kids, one of whom is a piñata.
Mmm cake.

Paz y amor!

The slacking continues

Yesterday I was supposed to go to school and reprogram all the projects (tangerine tree nursery, field trip to agricultural university) that I couldn't do because school was, and extracurricula activities are still, suspended due to the swine flu pandemic here. I also needed to plan for a fuel-efficient stove project meeting this Friday and get the mayor's office started on publicizing scholarships for high school and college students.

But I was invited on a trip to the beach. So I went.

Sometimes Peace Corps is awesome. That would never fly at an American job...

The beach was great, it was clean, almost empty and also had a pretty cool water park attached to it. We ate seafood for lunch at a good (but expensive) food place. It was fun to be like a tourist and made me look forward to vacationing in other parts of Central America (Guate and Nica in 2010!) But I also realized that part of the reason I like El Salvador so much is that I live here, and I'm not just on vacation. The beach was great, but I can dive into the waves and eat shrimp on a deck with bamboo and palm fronds anywhere in Latin America. What makes El Salvador unique is the experience of living in a "real" non-touristy Salvadoran community and integrating into their daily lives.

Beach pics when they are sent to me (the batteries in my camera died, boo.)

Paz y amor.

Pueblos Vivos 2009

All this month, El Salvador is having a tourism campaign/competition involving 56 towns/districts. One of them, Santa Maria Ostuma, is mine. The way it works is, Salvadorans are supposed to visit these places and vote for their favorite one. But even though the country is so small, only the rich can really travel farther than their own department. So I don't think my tiny town has a shot in hell of winning. But the mayor thinks different. She's had banners saying "VOTE FOR SANTA MARIA OSTUMA" hung as far as half an hour away and is holding festivals every Sunday until the competition ends-- yesterday was the Corn Festival, next Sunday is Dance, another one is Culture and I don't know what else is coming up. But that's kind of cheating in my opinion, because it's not like we normally would have had these events...

Either way, it should make my life a little more interesting.

In other news, the volunteer who used to be in my site comes to visit for a week starting today. It should be fun to get her perspective on things that have happened since she left...

Also, our Saturday youth group meetings have been taken over this month by missionaries who are making the meetings 2 hours long and EVEN MORE about Jesus. I can barely even stand our normal 45-minute sermons. I wish there were Unitarians in El Salvador...

Paz y amor.

Agostinas

Well, the first week of August is wrapping up, and with that my vacation. Pretty much the whole country had off this week, and I used the time to visit my boyfriend for a couple of days and then my friend Meredith at the beach where she lives. Yes, lives. She is in the Peace Corps, but she lucked out and got to live in a beachside mansion with a pool and some pretty sweet cooking equipment, so a bunch of us headed over there for a good time. Although her house is huge and nice, her community jokes that the people who built it were drunk, because there are some pretty important oversights. The stairwell floats in midair without surrounding walls or railings, making us all afraid we would fall off, especially in wet sandals after a few drinks. And there are no lights in the bathroom, lots of leaky spots when it rains, etc.

Mer thinks the Salvadorans, newly rich from American money, saw a picture of a nice house in a magazine and tried to reproduce it without really knowing how. Given what I know about remesa (remittance) Salvadorans, I wouldn't be surprised. In general, I would never complain about a house like hers, but I was happy to get home after a week, clean my house, wash my clothes and get my life back in order.

Both of those trips also involved long bus rides, and the ride back from my boyfriend's site contains a good stretch down a steep mountain. I started to feel nauseous during that and, 8 hours later, threw up upon arriving to my house. Buses here drive crazily and roads are really rocky, so bus sickness is common. Another added cost of vacation, I suppose.

School starts again tomorrow, as does a visit from the previous volunteer in my site. Back to the grind.

Here are some pictures from last week when we made atol (that corn drink) with the Peace Corps trainee.
Even the boys helped shuck...Once more with Dana, the trainee who made me nostalgic for last SeptemberStraining boiled corn juice

That's all for now. Paz y amor! And DC, I read about your "heat wave." Enjoy your little taste of my life, only now imagine it without air conditioning.

Immersion Day Hostess

With my own Immersion Days as a trainee fresh in my mind, I signed up to host an Environmental Ed volunteer-in-training for a weekend to give her a taste of volunteer life. It's really made me realize how far I've come since I arrived here last September -- how I've learned my way around, become able to predict what Salvadorans will do and how they will feel, and grown more patient, laid-back and accepting of the difficulty of life here.

We did have our youth group activity yesterday, and it took all day. In the morning we hiked to the river to pick corn, and hiked back in stifling heat. Then the youth group kids came over in the pouring rain and shucked all the corn on my porch -- total chaos. Then we broke in to the church (the guy with the key didn't show up) and made a sweet drink from the corn with cinnamon and sugar. We also boiled some -- mmm fresh corn on the cob. We didn't finish all this until 6 p.m. As the trainee, Dana, pointed out, it's strange to think that we could spend all day making corn on the cob and a pot of corn juice. But that's life here.

Now we're grocery shopping in the city and this afternoon we're going back to my site to pick fruit and have a youth group meeting.

I took tons of fun pictures of Corn Day yesterday but forgot to load them on my memory stick. Next time!

Paz y amor.

Que suerte!

I complain a lot about rural village life, and there are things about it that I will not miss...dirtiness and poop in the streets, rabid dogs everywhere, religious fatalism and narrow mindedness, and just the smallness of it. I don't think it's charming that everyone knows everyone else and their exact whereabouts every single day. I think it's annoying. I love city life and I loved my gargantuan university because I like anonymity. I like being surrounded by diverse people and having my choice of who to grow close to and spend time with.

But the nice thing about village life is that every time I have some problem, the people who can help me with it are right there, sometimes even unexpectedly.

Take yesterday. I returned from San Salvador with heavy boxes containing an air mattress and an electric fan, as preparation for the Peace Corps trainee who arrives at my site today to get a taste of volunteer life (the heat never bothered me enough to get a fan for myself, but other people complain about it when they visit...wusses.) The boxes were not an issue, as I was going to take the 4 p.m. bus up the hill to my site. That bus decided not to run yesterday and I had to hike the hill (NOTE: this always happens when I am sick or carrying something heavy.) So I'm struggling along when along comes Roberto, one of the leaders of the youth group, who offers to carry a box.

Saved! I was doubly lucky because Roberto (or Chobert, as his Salvadoran nickname goes) was one of the people I wanted to talk to about keeping my trainee entertained this weekend now that schools are closed. So I got my stuff lugged home AND we made plans to have a youth group cooking activity tomorrow. Score!

In other news, the woman in my village who always pesters me for money just quit her job for the 2nd time, because her boss got mad at her for running a personal errand that took all day when she should have been working. For someone who really needs the money, she sure does quit jobs for the wrong reasons. I have met a lot of fantastic, hardworking Salvadorans, and this woman does work hard bringing up her children and at her fomer job, but I have also met way too many who expect money for nothing. I wonder how this woman thinks she's going to get by without her job, and then I realize she'll start asking me for loans again. Which, by now, I feel no guilt in refusing. Stay tuned...

For the first time in my life, I am missing my family's summer week on the lake in New England. I'm not completely heartbroken about it, I was bound to miss out sometime, but it's still strange to think about. I'll miss next year too, and probably go through New England lake withdrawal, which will involve diving into the coldest water in El Salvador and trying to find Sam Adams (ha!) and some way to barbecue something. Anything.

Paz y amor.

Swine Flu Vacation

The first 6 months in site for almost every Peace Corps volunteer are characterized by inactivity and occasional feelings of boredom or downright guilt for being so lazy and worthless, even though it's usually not the volunteer's fault they can't get much done (they're still not settled in, they haven't yet reached the point where they can solicit funds). That period for me had lasted until this month, when I got really busy and, consequentially, really happy. Projects I had been trying to get done for a while were finally coming through (a 7-9th grade excursion, a nursery for tangerine trees, computer classes, etc.) Then, when I was finally feeling accomplished, school was cancelled for 2 weeks and further extracurricular activities suspended for a month, rendering me pretty useless during that time period. Until the suspension is lifted, I am back to feeling like I just hang out in El Salvador and do nothing.

Why the suspension? Swine flu has reached epic proportions here. New cases are popping up everywhere, including one child who died in a town near my site. So I guess cancelling school is justified, but it's still annoying.

It's even worse that the new group of Environmental Education trainees are here and they're supposed to visit us this weekend to see "all the work we do."

I guess I shouldn't be complaining -- after all, I do get a 2 week vacation, and there are beach plans in the works...

Here are some of my Salvadoran students happily (OK, grudgingly) doing the work I assigned them...

These kids had to put the drawings in order to depict the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle. They actually understood!

Paz y amor.

Corpus Christi

is not just a place in Texas, apparently.


It is also the word for a celebration which, at least in our village, involves creating huge altars to Jesus Christ, visiting the houses where the altars are, eating bread and coffee and tamales and listening to music, waking up the next morning and decorating the streets in white and yellow and multicolored flags, nearly passing out in the heat during Mass, and then a procession to the altars AGAIN, which I skipped because I was dehydrated and not Catholic, goddammit.


It is really hot where I live right now. As hot as it was during the hottest months of the year. I just looked us up on weather.com and it is somewhere in the range of 95 degrees with 70 percent humidity. But that is right now, at 4 pm -- I'm sure it was over 100 earlier.


Next week involves a lot of teaching environmental classes, a meeting about the citrus fruit nursery we are STILL trying to start, and a visit from the new Peace Corps environmental education trainees, who are visiting my site because it is the closest one to the training center. So now I have to pretend I've actually done some tangible work since I got here. We're all going to plant trees together, as if I plant trees on the street all the time.


Last week I went to a funeral for a retired professor who died suddenly of a heart attack. During a church trip to the beach last weekend, another girl my age almost drowned and is still in the hospital in critical condition. I didn't know the girl but the whole town and village are freaking out. It is really horrible to think about.


Here are some pictures from decorating the street this morning:

The youth group hanging the streamers

The balloons match my house! And most houses in the village, because all the earthquake houses the EU built are yellow.

Paz y amor.

The renovated school

Finally, some pics of the inauguration ceremony...

The 4 new classrooms, freshly painted

It's a school ceremony, so of course there will be kids dancing in these dresses...
The ambassador of Japan, which financed most of the construction

Planting a maquilishat (the national tree of El Salvador)

Paz y amor.

Happy Fourth!

Yesterday my youth group had a big convention with the youth group from a nearby town. And today they are going hiking.

I was not there for any of this. Why? Because it was Independence Day, and all the Peace Corps volunteers had a soccer tournament (the ag/environmental volunteers won 2nd place) and fun parties in the capital.

I should feel guilty for choosing my American friends over my site, but I don't, because I'm sure the Salvies understand...after all, everything shuts down and there are huge parties on their independence day (September 15, the day before we got here actually.)

In other news, everyone has been following the coup d'etat in Honduras, but it has not affected our safety in any way here. Swine flu cases have been increasing, closing down schools in and near the capital, but my school is not affected. One 9-year-old boy died of swine flu after being treated 4 times for pneumonia; the doctors and hospital involved are being investigated for negligence.

I might be going to the movie theater for the first time since September, in order to see...Transformers!

Have to run, pictures later...

Conversations

with various Salvadorans about the death of Michael Jackson:

Thursday night, my host mother Esperanza calls out to me from her porch as I am walking back from the latrine, ignorant of the news.

ESPERANZA: Were you just in your house crying for Michael Jackson?
ME: ...no...why should I cry for Michael Jackson? He's crazy.
ESPERANZA: He's dead.
ME: No. I don't believe you.
ESPERANZA: He died of a heart attack.
ME: But he was still young...really?
ESPERANZA: Here, we'll turn on the news right now. I thought you were in your house crying.

We watch the news.

ESPERANZA: Aren't you going to cry?

Some time later...

ESPERANZA: I mean, Michael Jackson, everyone in the world knows him. And he is so rich. So very rich. So rich he even went to the moon.
ME: Huh?
ESPERANZA: Michael Jackson. He went to the moon.
ME: What? No. No singer has ever gone to the moon. Not even Lance Bass...
ESPERANZA: But they said it on the news, that he walked on the moon.
ME: What? Do you mean...the Moon Walk?
ESPERANZA: Right. When he walked on the moon. He even has property on the moon.

After my lengthy explanation, the host family is finally set straight.

ALL, REPEATEDLY: Dance! Dance like Michael Jackson did on TV!
ME, REPEATEDLY: I can't! I don't even think it's possible on a concrete porch in sandals!

The next morning...

ESPERANZA: Were you scared by the ghost of Michael Jackson last night?
ME: Huh?
ESPERANZA: You don't worry that Michael Jackson will haunt you?
ME: No. I don't believe in ghosts. Plus, why would Michael Jackson haunt me? He doesn't know me.
ESPERANZA: You don't believe in ghosts? But what would you do if someone died and then you saw them in the street?
ME: I wouldn't see them. They would be dead.
ESPERANZA: I think Michael Jackson is haunting you.
ME: Why? Because I am the only gringa here?
ESPERANZA: .....

Text messages from a high school student named Anderson in my site

Hi! I am in pain, my favorite artist died.

I have cried oceans like you have no idea I am very sad.

I am watching an appreciation they're doing I think the best one has died.

Do you know, I like the songs EARS SONG, BILLIEAN, USA OF AFRICA and TRILLER.

***
Paz, amor y RIP Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett, and more importantly the Metro Red Line victims, one of whom was a Salvadoran immigrant and has therefore been on the news here.

Trapped

Today I came to San Salvador to find out why I have been sick to my stomach for the past two weeks. But the Peace Corps doctors and the Salvadoran lab techs couldn't crack the case, so I have been forced to spend the night in San Salvador. This is normally not bad -- I get a paid hotel room with hot showers and at least some TV channels in English -- but I did not come prepared for an overnight visit and have a pile of things to do at my site. And if all the labs come back negative again tomorrow, the whole trip will probably have been for nothing.

At least I am getting the chance to put up some photos.

My host family at the Feria de la Pina

This t-shirt spotted on the street in my site. The guy's brother apparently goes to Maryland. Terps represent!

My friend Matt distorting the beautiful view of Parque Nacional El Imposible

Paz, amor y SALUD.

Enfermedades

So I'm still sick to my stomach, have weird skin breakouts probably caused by the fact that it's the rainy season and our clothes never dry, and my muscles have continued seizing up a week after that killer hike. I woke up this morning and immediately took 4 different pills. Needless to say, living in El Salvador is not fun right now.

It's really amazing how being sick can color everything you're doing and make you question your reasons for being here at all. I just keep thinking, why would anyone want to live in a country that their body continuously rejects? I am physically being told to go home.

The good thing is that all the symptoms of all of these problems are minor, so I have generally been able to keep working and keep busy, although everything gets done slower and sometimes I have to force myself to just lie down.

Our first stove project meeting was yesterday, and tons of people showed up and signed up to participate, which means that they listened to a lesson about how fuel-efficient stoves benefit the environment and their health, and they will provide either money or some of the materials to build the stoves in their houses. I hope to provide the more expensive materials and labor costs through grant money, and if USAID doesn't have enough I will probably be soliciting you, the gringos. Be prepared.

We did just get some USAID money to take some of the school kids on a field trip to see agricultural projects, despite the fact that the kids are rude, horrible and completely undeserving of any joy (school is still in my house and they leave Wednesday, thank God! Maybe I will finally like children again.)

The rain has also slowed down work considerably. For example, my invitation elves (students who have to do community service for their scholarship program) and I still haven't passed out all of the invitations to the stove project meetings because it keeps pouring rain right when we've decided to go walking around the community. Plus, I made a ton of lovely posters to describe each stove model the families get to choose from, and then the rain ruined them -- when it rains really hard, the water floods my house. There is still a small pond under my bed.

I forgot to bring hike and pineapple fair pictures. Sorry!

Paz y amor.

Feria de la Piña

Today is our town's annual Pineapple Fair, which is apparently famous nationwide, but I didn't realize exactly how famous until I got here...and saw tourists from all over the country and food food vendors ripping them off, especially the rich ones from San Sal. And me and my Volunteer friend, seeing as we are gringas.

There are probably about 6 TV stations here, including Telemundo, whose cameraman was unobtrusively filming me...too bad I was wearing a stained t shirt and basically didn't care about my appearance at all when I got dressed this morning.

Vendors are selling pineapples and any possible food or drink made from them, including chicha, a strong pineapple liqour, pastries and pineapplesauce. I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of don't want a pineapple for a while.

Other highlights of this week have included unexplained stomach troubles and a beautiful hike through a national park that was so unexpectedly difficult that I have been taking painkillers for the past few days just to regain my ability to walk.

Pictures of the fair and the hike to come.

Paz y amor.

La bolsa decepcionada

Well folks, I'm back onstage. Well, really more like ongrass.

A couple of days ago I did my first performance with Gringuísimo, a group of Peace Corps volunteers who visit different sites in the country and do skits about the environment, AIDS, etc. We did a skit called "La Vida de Basura" (the life of trash) at one volunteer's school and I played the role of Bolsa Decepcionada. I thought that meant Deceiving Bag (wouldn't you?) but turns out it means Disappointed Bag...good thing I double checked that before I learned my lines. I had a long and tragic monolouge where I cried and cried after I learned I couldn't be recycled (I was a plastic grocery bag.) It was one of the most fun things I've done here and I will probably do it again next week. Plus, our performance was near the touristy city of Suchitoto, where there is a lot of artisan stuff and a huge lake, so we hit that up afterwards.

The Fiesta de Flores y Fruta (fruit and flower festival) is now over after lasting the entire month of May. The last day was June 1, the same day our new leftist president, Mauricio Funes, was inaugurated. Apparently Hillary Clinton spoke at that ceremony, and although I was listening on the radio, I must have missed that...

That day was huge in our community, and not even because of the inauguration. People from all over brought huge palanquins of pineapples and coconuts to the church and gave the fruit away or sold it. I ate one and a half pineapples that day and had no room for dinner and enough fruit to last me the rest of the week. Our youth group also did a ring toss, people sold all kinds of food and danced in front of the church in costumes...the dancers were, unsurprisingly, drunk. All in all, a very good day.

On the downside, I have been forced to teach English every day because we lost the temporary English teacher, who was there until the permanent one comes back from maternity leave. This would not be a problem if it were my only job here, but I have other projects going on and trips planned and the kids are little devils (I swear to God Salvadorans do not teach these kids basic manners) and don't care at all about school and I'm not supposed to be alone with them anyway, as I'm not a legal teacher. I am supposed to help out or direct class with the real teacher in the room. In homage to my insistence on this rule, the principal shows up to supervise my English classes, waits until I say, "Good afternoon," and the kids repeat it, and then he promptly leaves forever. The classes, incidentally, are an hour and a half.

Is it any surprise that I have planned to be absent all next week? He breaks his promises and I'll break mine.

Here are some fotos for you...
My current dietA palancaIsabelle as the Chica OrgánicaLake Suchitlan

Paz y amor.

Limpieza

Earlier in the week, one of the youth group leaders told me they were organizing a street cleanup for the dance we had yesterday, which was on the street (in the pouring rain.) On such short notice and with a heavy teaching schedule, I didn't have time to contribute to the organization of this cleanup, so I decided to just show up and see how my community runs its cleaning campaigns.

The results were at once funny and horrifying. About a dozen women walked down the street with brooms, sweeping dust, leaves and trash into little piles on the sides of the street. Then a group of boys came behind with shovels and wheelbarrows to collect these piles and dump them in random people's yards.

There is no trash collection in my village; both I and the previous volunteer have spoken with the mayor of our municipio about it, and she has flat-out refused to collect trash anywhere outside the bigger town of Santa Maria Ostuma. So I bring a bag of trash to the town occasionally on the bus to dump it in a trash can there. I'm sure the villagers think I'm crazy for this.

Their preferred solution is to either leave trash on the street or burn it. But a great deal of this trash is plastic potato-chip bags and bottles. They don't realize that burning this stuff releases toxic fumes (as if the horrible smell alone didn't tell them) and think that throwing it on the ground is OK because it is "compost."

Friday, as people told me over and over that plastic soda bottles would fertilize their soil, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Because really, it's not these people's fault. Up until 25 or 30 years ago, there were no plastics in El Salvador and all the trash was organic -- people drank out of coconut shells, food came wrapped in banana leaves, etc. People could throw anything on the ground and it would, in fact, decompose and provide nutrients to the soil. When plastics came, no one explained to these people that they just couldn't do the same thing.

Still, most of El Salvador has absolutely no trash management system whatsoever, making it almost impossible to do the most important part of my job as an environmental volunteer. Until the Salvadoran government does something to change this, we Peace Corps volunteers are powerless to keep the trash from building up in our streets, a problem which is so bad that it's one of the first things foreigners notice about this country.

I miss trash cans and littering fines.

Paz y amor.

Stand fast!

All the Peace Corps is on "stand fast" mode, meaning we can't leave our sites for security reasons, because the new president Mauricio Funes is being inaugurated Monday. He is the first president in 20 years that is not from the conservative ARENA party. Instead he is FMLN, the political party made up of the former guerillas in El Salvador's 12-year civil war. This sounds like a recipe for violence but really it's not, as the election was completely peaceful and there have not been any indications of backlash.

So I am breaking standfast mode by being at this cyber, but I didn't get the text message about it till I was already here. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure I won't be attacked.

Paz y amor.

Terremoto hondureno

I woke up at 2:48 am last night to pounding rain on my corrugated metal roof, which if you don't know sounds like lots of little explosions. At first I thought that was what had woken me, but then my bed shook and I felt the ground swaying back and forth...

Not the first tremor I've felt there, but then I found out it was actually this 7.1 earthquake, which toppled homes in Honduras and Belize and has killed at least 2 people so far.

I don't mean to be alarmist, but I do think about earthquakes a lot...the area I live in was completely destroyed by one in 2001, and I live in an "earthquake house" that was built by the European Union to replace one of the many that crumbled back then.

If I were Stephen Colbert I would put earthquakes on notice.

Paz y amor.

El crisis

I liked this article I read today on washingtonpost.com, but one thing seemed to be missing. I have been seeing the same thing here: people who went to the United States to make money and a better life for themselves and their families returned to El Salvador after the economy took a dive. I know a couple of people personally who did that. But their stories are even more compelling to me because many of them risked their lives to immigrate illegally, all for nothing, and they will have to go through the same thing again if they decide to go back to the States once the economy improves. So I wished the article had addressed Latin American immigrants. I had actually thought since months ago that the returning immigrants would be a good news story, so maybe I still have a future in journalism ;)

Here is a photo from our English class graduation!

Paz y amor.

Graduation day

Today my Saturday English class is graduating, and I couldn't be prouder of them. It's often frustrating to try to teach Salvadoran children, as half of them just don't care. Even for the ones that do, school is only ever half a day and is frequently cancelled, so even the older students have shockingly low literacy and comprehension levels.

These kids, though, have come voluntarily on Saturdays because they want to learn, and have done a great job studying and remembering everything they've been taught. I honestly think of them as my only real success in this site so far.

Yesterday was our belated Mothers' Day celebration. When I got there, rumors were flying around that I was going to do a choreographed dance in front of all the moms. "No! No! No!" I kept saying, and then I demanded to know who started this rumor. The principal readily admitted it was him, even though he knew no such thing would happen. One more failed attempt to throw the gringa into the spotlight.

Highlights of this week also include writing letters to my friend Meaghan's 5th grade class in Glen Burnie and getting left behind by a funeral procession (I was supposed to go, but they passed by my house so silently I didn't even notice! Only in El Salvador.)

Here is what the community center looked like on Mothers' Day.
I was in charge of this display.
Paz y amor.