Crime and publishment

I'm at a ciber cafe in the city of Zacatecoluca and it was a bitch to get here! I came to go to the bank and run some errands, and the buses are running off schedule because the main route that goes to Zacate from the capital is on strike, which affects every other bus that goes to Zacate as they try to pick up the slack, I guess.

The reason for the strike? One of the bus drivers was recently killed by gang members. Bus drivers and cobradores (men who walk up and down the aisles collecting money) have really dangerous jobs because they often get extorted for all the money collected on the bus that day. Every now and then one of them gets killed and the rest of them strike to protest the violence.

Another one of my current plans has been derailed by violence: the theater group I run was going to perform in another volunteer's site this week, but that has been postponed because there was just a mass shooting there which killed 7 people.

To reassure everyone that I am not in danger, I never ride the bus at night which is when all the gang activity goes down, and the previously-mentioned massacre seems to be gang-on-gang violence that occurred by a river far away from anyone's house. Peace Corps is good about taking care of our security needs.

Finally...do you all remember the blog post I wrote after Michael Jackson died? Well, that was published in the Peace Corps/El Salvador newsletter, and then one of the higher-ups from Peace Corps/Costa Rica came for a visit and brought the newsletter back to show the volunteers that edit the Costa Rica newsletter. They ended up emailing me for permission to reprint the Michael Jackson article. I'm a famous international journalist after all!

Paz y amor.