Being bugged

Not much new to report, other than the fact that I'm being kept up night by HUGE insects that look like this (cribbed from Google Images as I haven't managed to take my own shot of one of these...I'm usually too busy running and screaming)
I would say that is about actual size. They are called chicharras and they either fly noisily around my room or, more commonly, land on my roof at night and hop around. My roof is corrugated sheet metal, so this sounds like there are large chickens or something on my roof. Sometimes they make loud insect noises like those old WeatherBugs too.

Equally annoying was the man who came up to me this morning and, without a word of introduction or pleasantries, asked me how my economic situation was and do I have a lot of money? As you probably know, I (and most volunteers) already have big problems with people in the community who think we are a. filthy rich and b. going to give them all our money and food and possessions. But I couldn't believe this guy. For the first time I was very blunt and said, I don't want to discuss that, it's private. Then I just looked away until he left.

I should probably run, as I have an all day teachers' meeting to get to. I think those are boring in every country and now have more respect for my old grade school teachers who had to suffer through the same thing. Albeit in air conditioning...

I will try not to complain about everything in my next post. Paz y amor.

Arriba con las selecciones

Well, that was quite the game. At one point in the second half, the US actually trailed 2-0, but then came back to tie the game 2-2. Unfortunately (Jess) I couldn't take any pictures because cameras weren't permitted inside the stadium...nor were pens, actually. FIFA really does crack down.

No safety concerns to report, except a little bit of beer dumped on me every time El Salvador scored and the fans threw their cups into the air.

TONS of fun to watch, and of course the stadium was large and filled with noise and craziness. It was no Real Madrid game but it was still a spectacle.

Paz y amor.

Futbol frenzy

I'm in the capital for the US vs. El Salvador soccer game and the city, or at least what I've seen of it so far, is going nuts. They're all decked out in Salvadoran soccer jerseys, which are royal blue. I'm wearing a blue polo shirt just to be safe.

Dear Father, thank you for your Bangladeshi heritage and my resulting dark hair and skin. When I wear sunglasses to hide my blue eyes, no one thinks I am a gringa. I would feel safer for this if it weren't for the fact that soon I will meet up with a bunch of pale, pale volunteers.

The people in my site who knew I was going to the game kept teasing me, saying "Estados Unidos pierden," or that the States will lose. But then they smile sadly and say they know we will win because the Salvadorans are so very small. I tried to console my school director by saying that small people run faster. This, he thought, was a great joke.

The past few days at my site had been hard because the schoolkids have been extra annoying, trashing my porch with even greater frequency and deliberately throwing little seeds and things at my house even after I told them, then yelled at them, then threatened them to stop. Plus a random increase in piropos, or the catcalls and things we all get. I, being from DC, had been used to them and they never really bothered me. But people recently have tried to touch me or say things that are so vulgar I won't write them here. It got to the point where I was walking around my village, my own home, with my teeth constantly gritted.

Honestly, all this bothered me enough that I began to wonder why I don't just go home. I gave up all my comforts, my family and friends, all to help this one community. And this is the respect I get? I don't expect to be worshipped and I don't even really want to be treated like a higher being, but I would appreciate being able to walk around without constantly feeling the need to scream. I am here for two whole years, after all.

But then there are days like yesterday, when kids came by for help with homework and invited me to play on their school soccer team. And mornings like this in town, when I got to chat with a bunch of my favorite kids and my school director, and a woman I know from the mayor's office, and the cybercafe lady who invited me inside to watch part of "Lord of the Rings" while I waited for the bus. Sometimes I think people really know me and like me here. And sometimes I really love my site.

Also, a new volunteer is coming to work in the mayor's office the Monday after next. I'm so stoked to have a companera I'll probably have to tone it down a little so I don't come off like Patty Simcox from "Grease": "Oh my God, we're going to be life-long friends!"

Time to go grab some lunch. Wendy's or Pizza Hut. Missing America has given me horrible eating habits every time I come to the capital. As I remember, I refused to eat fast food most of the time in the States...now I count the days until I can have some.

Paz y amor.

Le ha tocado lavar en la calle!

My outdoor sink is fixed, and water now runs in it nearly all the time. This is a huge and wonderful event. Now I can wash my dishes and clothes a foot from my house, instead of down a hill surrounded by kindergartners whose classroom is behind the big family sink I used to use. The only flip side is that my outdoor sink is very close to, and highly visible from, the main road. So close that when my counterpart saw me washing clothes yesterday, she burst out laughing and crowed, "Le ha tocado lavar en la calle!" ("You have to wash your clothes in the street!") Then she and her daughters came back and decided to have a long chat with me while I was washing my underwear. Awk-ward... As if my privacy isn't being invaded enough, there is also a running joke in my host family that I'm going to bathe up there in full view of everyone. Not gonna happen, y'all. My working pila is part of a village-wide project to bring more running water to more houses. Some houses in my village almost never have water during this, the dry season. But now that situation has been improved if not fixed completely. The project was funded by the municipal mayor's office, so I can't be mad at the mayor anymore for screwing me over. That's right. We were counting on her to provide our school with two buses so we could take grades 1-3 to the zoo. The zoo had already agreed to get us in for free and provide a guide and all the teachers were really excited about the trip (they hadn't told the students yet, thank God, except one who told her 6th-grade class they were definitely going even though a) it wasn't confirmed b) 6th grade wasn't invited and c) she told them we were going yesterday. But of course this teacher passed the whole thing off as my excursion, so I had to deal with the disappointed 6th-graders running up to me in the streets.) Anyway. The mayor said she would let us know last Friday if our solicitud was approved, and when no one had called by yesterday I suspected the worst. So I called her and when the first words out of her mouth were, "fíjese que..." I knew it was all over. Peace Corps volunteers have a special loathing relationship with fíjese que. It loosely means, "Look, the thing is," and it is the beginning of every sentence uttered by every person in any position to help us out. After that, it hardly matters what lame reasons they have for not giving their time and/or resources. Half the time it's just lame excuses anyway. But like I said, I can't get too mad when I think about the water in my pila. We can always postpone the trip and try to do it later with Peace Corps money. The federal government agency for agricultural technology is being way more helpful. I spent basically 8 hours on buses today just to meet with one of their engineers, and he is going to help me set up an orange and pineapple nursery for our school. And by help, I mean he is going to come to my site and train the parents and older kids himself. It's up to me to work with the parents to get the land and materials, to plan the logistics of the training and to help the kids actually plant the seeds. But I really have no idea how to set up or maintain a nursery, so this will be a huge help. The first meeting in about a year of our community development organization's board of directors is tomorrow. I called the meeting to see if they wanted to do any work at all anymore. I am betting the answer is no, and no one will come, even though I will clean my house and buy them all soda. Paz y amor.

A scattering of random thoughts

Everyone is buying tickets home for Christmas now, March 24, before they get too expensive. I know my family won't be able to get it together until October at least, and by then tickets will cost roughly $2 million. So it might be another depressing Christmas in El Salvador while all my friends are home.

I made the mistake of watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy last night -- it comes on the Sony Channel on hotel cable here. It was from the new season, and I hadn't watched any episodes since last season's finale. So I ask, what the hell is going on??? Denny coming back to life? You all are probably laughing at me because you have seen many episodes after this. Just don't tell me, I'll wait for the DVDs.

I am going to the United States vs. El Salvador soccer game here on Saturday. Should be a good time. But I have to root for El Salvador or I will be beat up and/or doused with bottles of urine.

Paz y amor.

A la playa?

Saturday's youth group meeting was a laugh and a half.

Although the encargado, the guy in charge, did nothing to support our dance and actually threw a mini-fit against it, he decided he should get to decide where our profits go, and he wanted to...drumroll...donate it to the church.

This would be lovely if the church had helped us at all.

Even the adults who work with the group quickly jumped all over the encargado, saying that the people who did all the work for the dance should control the profits. And, of course, the others who worked on the dance had stayed away from the meeting to avoid the encargado's wrath. So it wasn't long before a dozen pairs of eyes were all fixed on me.

"Alia," they said, "what do you want to do with the money?"

"Well, I really think we should discuss it with the others who organized the dance," I said. "We could plan something like an excursion, maybe to the beach or something."

That clearly wasn't vague enough. You could almost hear them screaming "yaaaayyy" like the Flanders twins on "The Simpsons."

"We're going to the beeeeach!!!"

Of course, last time there was a beach trip, everyone got in trouble for drinking, so I might not want to have my name attached to this.

After the meeting, I hung out with a bunch of kids I really like from the group, and they explained that the encargado always wants to donate money to the church so the church council will think better of him.

A few days ago I was telling everyone that I didn't want to be another youth group encargado, that it was their group and I was just here to help them design projects and do enviro stuff. Now I'm at odds with the guy in charge and everyone seems to be backing me.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

I've got a great feeling about my friend Kali being here though. She's Salvadoran and we were friends and hallmates in college. Now she has a job down here and we can storm this country together! How randomly awesome is that?

Paz y amor.

A bit of faith restored

So you know that dance I've been complaining about? The one my youth group threw together two days in advance, with much infighting, which I was convinced no one would attend?

It was a smash success. We actually made a good chunk of money from it, which we can use for an excursion to the beach. The casa comunal, where the dance was held, was full, everyone had fun, there were no security incidents, the police showed up to prowl around even though we were sure they wouldn't, I actually had fun taking money at the door, stayed up till 2 and danced a bit.

The funny thing was, we did it all without the support of the (somewhat worthless) guy who is officially in charge of the group. He was mad about our decision to go forward with the dance before. Now that it went over so well, we'll see what he says at the meeting today.

This has taught me a valuable lesson: not to underestimate our youth group. We had a couple of failed projects before which made me think there was no way we could pull this dance off. But there are a few delightful youth who really get things done, and I know now to trust and support them and everything will turn out beautifully.

Someone's daughter Yesenia, who lives in the United States, sent a big display of lights to the church that night to celebrate the end of fiestas patronales. My Spanish speakers, see if you can spot the mistake here. Yep, saluda is spelled wrong, and God knows how much poor Yesenia spent on this.

Que bonito, the people said when they saw the display, even when I laughingly pointed out the embarrassing mistake. None of them majored in print journalism, I can tell.

Here is a picture of the sweets that kept me fed all week. Along with the pupusas and pasteles, or fried spiced corn flour filled with mashed potatoes, I didn't really cook at all during fiestas patronales.Paz y amor.

Funes! Funes! Funes!

Presidential elections have come and gone, and the left is in power in El Salvador for the first time...ever.

The winner was announced Sunday night, while most of my community was outside my house running from young men wearing fake bulls made out of something -- chicken wire? -- and throwing firecrackers everywhere, including on my porch. So I guess you could say I experienced election day violence.

But really, I was surprised at how calm everything was. At first I thought that was just because my site is mostly right-wing and very tranquilo, and nothing crazy would happen there. The only (rather hilarious) demonstration I saw was late Sunday night, when all was quiet and I was brushing my teeth, and a pickup sped by with one solitary man in the bed screaming "Funes! Funes! Funes!" at the top of his lungs.

I've learned there weren't big problems pretty much anywhere, and I'm very glad that a country most foreigners know as the site of a brutal civil war can keep its cool when "the party of the guerillas" finally wins the presidency.

I'm not allowed to express a political preference, and honestly, I don't know enough about Salvadoran politics to have one. But I will say that, for me, a lot about this election is pleasantly surprising. The right-wing party completely controls the media and ran attack ads on TV and the radio literally four times a minute ever since I got here in September. In the face of that, I didn't think there's any way the FMLN, the liberals, could win, whether they deserved to or not. Especially because we tend to think of Salvadorans as not politically sophisticated, and they, especially the ones in my site, seemed to take attack ads at face value.

Maybe Mauricio Funes really is bad for El Salvador. But I'm glad that the Salvadorans who support him proved me wrong and didn't succumb to a media blitz. And I'm happy that, for once, the party that has all the money and controls all the media didn't win. Because that doesn't even happen in the USA, the supposed model for every good democracy.

The right-wingers in my site are nervous because the FMLN has never governed and they don't know what will happen. I see the sense in that. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.

In other news, the dance my youth group wanted to have is going on after all, and it's tonight. The group decided this at 2 a.m. Saturday night and didn't inform me until Monday night. Which basically gave us a day to prepare. This is apparently standard Salvadoran practice. Now we'll see how many people show up. I myself am taking tickets at the door so I don't have to dance to cumbia music, which bores me, especially since I'm terrible at the steps.

So times are still interesting. Paz y amor.

Vota Asi

This week, my friends, has been pretty insane.

Super historic presidential elections are tomorrow. According to pundits and journalists (who are always right) the left wing political party that was once the guerilla force waging civil war might actually stand a chance of winning. All the Peace Corps is on stand fast mode, which means we can't leave our sites until two days after the election because of the possibility of violence. I came to town because it's so close I can walk there, so I didn't count it as leaving. Although I didn't feel like walking so I took the bus. Ha.

Here's a pretty good CNN article describing the electoral situation (thanks, Addie).

Because of elections, both major political parties have been holding rallies right outside my house because it's smack in the middle of my village. They have also flyered my house even though the local campaigners know I can't vote.

This week is also fiestas patronales, or the patron saint festival, in my village, which is named after Saint Joseph. So almost every day there have been entradas, or house parties where sweet bread and drinks are served and everyone donates money or flowers to the church. My youth group is having one this afternoon. There is also Mass every day (I have managed to avoid it but will go Sunday when my counterpart sings with the choir) after which there is always an alborada, or tons of fireworks set off in front of the church. And tonight there is a big dance which I will try to enjoy without drinking while everyone else gets wasted.

In true Salvadoran fashion, the mayor never even brought our solicitud before the council, so we don't have funds the dance the youth group was going to have Wednesday. I'm actually a little relieved, because my work at the school has reached unprecedented heights.

Monday morning, as I was in my pajamas washing dishes in the big outdoor sink, the school director walked up to me.

The English teacher had her baby, he said. Would I mind teaching English every afternoon for three months?

He actually asked me if I could help the new English teacher he hired, who does not actually know English. That way, me teaching the class is legal. But it has led to me teaching English pretty much on my own every afternoon. And if I ever need to miss a day, I have to translate a bunch of textbook activities for the teacher to give to the students, although she will not know if they're answering correctly.

Pair this with the Saturday English classes I teach, and English has become a large portion of my life. I can't complain, though. After all, I wanted that to be my Peace Corps job in the first place. And I only teach grades 7 through 9, which are my favorite ages.

Here are some pics of fiestas patronales:
The procession to the church after an entradaThe church with all the donated flowersThe right wing political rally that materialized outside my house
Setting off fireworks

Paz y amor!

Adentro Cojutepeque

First, you will be happy to know that the rest of my classes since that first disaster have gone swimmingly. I teach some more next week.

I would now like to name my Real Salvadoran Heroes, and those are my two host mothers, Esperanza and Margarita (Margarita is actually Esperanza's daughter but both are like mothers to me.) Every Friday at 3 am they hop in the back of a truck with huge bags of citrus fruits to go sell them in a market an hour and a half away, in a city called Cojutepeque. Esperanza actually does the same thing several more times a week, only she usually goes to a much smaller and closer town. It is worth mentioning that Esperanza is in her sixties and that these two women, with huge families to care for, don't have time for a nap during the day when they get back from market at 11 am.

So when they first asked me to come with them one Friday to Cojute, I balked at the idea of getting up at 1:30 am, but just for a minute. After all, if these two women could do this every week, certainly I, 22 and in the prime of my life, could do it once. And I did want to see Cojute and see what these women had to do for a living.

In true Salvadoran fashion, I was misinformed about the time the truck would come and ended up waking up an hour earlier than I had to. It was FREEZING COLD and continued that way all morning. Whoever thinks El Salvador is always warm is sadly mistaken. We finally got to market at 5 a.m. and all the selling was done by 7. The women don't actually walk around hawking their wares, I learned. They sell their tons of fruit to the vendors who actually have stalls and do the reselling. So they make a crapload of money (like $50, actually, which is not really enough even here) and celebrate by eating pupusas and buying stuff at the market until it's time to head home.

All in all, it was a fun experience to go with them, but I did end up passing out at home after it was all over. Not sure if I'll be back some other Friday.

I did take some pictures of the market but of course my memory stick is not with me. You'll get those later.

First meeting of English class today, and my boyfriend's coming to visit again. Since grocery shopping is a daylong affair here, I of course have not had time to go lately and have nothing to feed him. Wonder how this will pan out.

Paz y amor.

I am about to pay my electricity bill

It is $2.98.

Take that, Americans.

I gave my first lesson on the water cycle to a 6th grade class yesterday. As background...I had only given classes in training before, except for one day when I babysat 4th grade while their teacher went into labor. But my last training lesson went so well that my program director called me a natural teacher. I began to dream of getting a teaching certificate when I come back to the States, if the journalism industry is still crumbling, which seems...likely.

So I went into this lesson confident yet well prepared, thinking I had two hours at most. After all, the science period on the schedule said 3:55 to 6 pm. And I knew school ended at an arbitrary hour that is generally earlier than 6, but I figured I would only need an hour.

The first thing I asked the kids to do was write down what they knew about the water cycle and I would call on a couple of them to read their answers. Of course, no one volunteered, but I expected that. I had already made it clear that I would be choosing at random if that happened.

So I did. But every kid I asked to read just stared at me as if I were speaking another language. And I know for a fact that I was speaking correct Spanish. So I did what everyone says to do: was patient and persistent, because if I gave in, the kids would think they could just refuse to do what I say every time.

But whole minutes passed where I kept asking the same kids to read what they had written. And they just stared. And then I began to get pissed off. I know they are capable of reading what they wrote, and I saw them all completing the assignment. And I'm the teacher, and I'm asking them to do it. So why were they staring at me with those irritating looks of dumb surprise?

Okay, okay, Salvadoran kids are just shy, I told myself, and moved on to the lecture and then the activity. I had posted seven stations around the room, each of them a different place in the water cycle: cloud, ocean, plant, stream, etc. Each station was an envelope with little sheets of paper inside that held different directions, and the kids were supposed to be water molecules following the directions. For example, the cloud could say, You fall as rain into the ocean, or You become fog and land as a droplet on a plant...whatever. It was meant to show the complexity of the water cycle.

The kids went to their stations, as I told them, and then they started ripping my drawings and envelopes off the walls (why would they think they were supposed to do that??) Instead of putting the little pieces of paper back in the envelopes like I told them to, they were running around with fistfuls of them from all different places. And a crowd of kids holding the pieces of paper quickly formed around me wondering what to do. And this is a class that actually can read.

In the middle of this chaos, the bell rang, half an hour into class. I tried to finish up the activity real quick, but they all grabbed brooms and started sweeping the classroom. I didn't even get any help from the teacher in quieting them down so I could speak a few words of closure. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION, I screamed somewhat sarcastically over the din, and fled.

I repeat this activity this afternoon with the other 6th grade class. I will definitely have to change it around a little, and hope it turns out better.

So much for my teaching certificate.

Paz y amor.