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2010-10-17T21:42:00.003-04:00

in the United States. And therefore closing this blog out. I could continue to blog about the American things that are surprising/hard to adjust to, but then this blog would last the rest of my life.

Thanks for reading!

Paz y amor.

Despedidas

2010-10-13T21:38:00.005-04:00

Left the village this morning for good. And it was a surreal experience.

First of all, since last Friday I have had 4 (4!) goodbye parties. One with the school, one with the community, one with the youth group and one with a random family who wanted to feed me pupusas. By this morning, I was all farewelled out, plus I was EXHAUSTED from barely having slept all week. My last week in site was burning hot and water became scarce all over the village, and I was so dehydrated that I found it hard to sleep. This made me actually kind of happy to leave my site for San Salvador, for a few days if not for good.

So this morning when I left some of the host family came to see me off. Even the dogs I adore came up to me and let me pet them (did they know?) Contrary to many volunteers, I left with dry eyes. I think I was too tired to comprehend what was going on.

My friend with a truck took me to San Salvador with all my suitcases, after a nice final lunch of shrimp on the beach. Now I'm in the capital enjoying air conditioning and wireless Internet. It's weird to think that I'm going home Saturday for good and not just for a two-week vacation.

So now I'm writing the list. The list that all Peace Corps volunteers write. And mine is probably the same as everybody else's. But here it is.

Things I will miss about El Salvador

Hammocks
Living my life surrounded by natural beauty
Living my life outside
Eating fruit off trees
Being fed and cared for by random neighbors
Not being glued to TV and the Internet
Having time to read for hours
Reggaeton and bachata music
Volunteer working hours (i.e. being able to ditch work and have fun whenever I want
Random people who know my name and hug me in the streets
Pupusas, tamales de elote, fried plantains, red beans and even tortillas
Working with cute children
Dedicating my life to helping others

Things I will not miss about El Salvador

Streets covered in animal poop
General dirtiness
Having to watch everything I eat and drink for contamination
Lack of cultural value for education
Lack of cultural value for hard work
Handout mentality
Scarcity of water
Lack of convenient transportation
Lack of discipline at home and in the schools that turns kids into rude little criminals
Cultural acceptance of bad or unjust situations (instead of the drive to change things)

In general, I think the good outweighs the bad.

Here are some pictures from my goodbye parties:

"Thank you Alia for having shared two years. Welcome Rebecca."

These kids gave me a sweet wooden pineapple with a picture of the school inside.

A band showed up at my community goodbye party and played music while everyone watched this slideshow of pictures from the past two years.

Paz y amor.

Perquín y pescado

2010-10-03T16:32:00.003-04:00

Just got back from a few days in Perquín, which was an ill-timed trip considering how much I have to do to wrap up my service...but was actually a good idea, as I didn't want to leave El Salvador without seeing this place, famous for its natural beauty and civil war history.

Tropical Storm whatever-it's-called-this-time (we had two in one week and I've stopped tracking names, since we've had like 15 since April) prevented us from hiking much, but we visited El Mozote, a neighborhood where 1,000 people were massacred during the war, and the civil war museum in town. We did climb a small (and slippery!) hill dotted with bomb holes, and the top afforded us a pretty good view of the surrounding hills and even parts of Honduras.

I can't believe I only have two weeks left. Sometimes I'm sad about it, but usually something happens to cheer me up about leaving before I get too down. For example, this morning my host family left a basket of fish in the shower. Thanks, fam, for lessening my close-of-service regrets.

Pictures from Perquín:

The wall comemmorating the El Mozote victims

American anti-war propaganda (the US government was funding and training the Salvadoran army, which committed atrocities such as the El Mozote massacre)
From the top of Cerro Perquín

Paz y amor.

Passing the torch

2010-09-19T16:05:00.003-04:00

My replacement volunteer arrived at my site two days ago. She is living with a family that I and the school director set her up with. Her name is Rebecca. She is a redhead so she will probably get more catcalls than me. Thank God.

Having the new volunteer in my site reminds me of when I came two years ago. The first day, she looked as overwhelmed as I felt then. And seeing the world through her eyes has made me realize how much my Spanish has improved and how much I've integrated into the community. Every time we passed someone on the street, I knew that person's name, who they were related to and some other bits of information. I remember going through the same thing two years ago, with Suzanne giving me everyone's life story, and thinking I would never learn as much about these people as she had.

Rebecca seems to love our site. As she should, because it is beautiful. Even compared to the rest of El Salvador. And her host mom is giving her fresh squeezed orange juice every day, which I don't even get.

Funny, I complain about my site a lot, but having Rebecca here makes me like it more. People who I stopped talking to very often have grown warm and interested again. I get invited to events and told to bring the new gringa.

This is my last full week in my site. I will be travelling nearly all of next week, then back and forth to San Salvador doing administrative stuff.

Sometimes I think about packing, or getting rid of my stuff, or my goodbye party...and every time, I decide to ignore these things until the last possible moment, because I just can't get my head around it.

Paz y amor.

Atrapada

2010-09-15T21:02:00.002-04:00

...in San Vicente, once more due to heavy rains.

"What had happened was" (PG County so soon!) I went into San Vicente to talk to the trainees about "moving in and getting around," as they swear in tomorrow and come to their sites Friday. Including my replacement, so I will have a compañera in my site for a month! Sweet.

Anyway, during our discussion it started to pour rain and the river in Guadalupe, a town my bus would pass through, rose to dangerous levels and no one could get through there. So I am stuck in a hotel in San Vicente without even a toothbrush to my name.

At least our bridge hasn't collapsed (hopefully?)

I am still shocked by news I've received that yet another one of our university scholarship girls is preggers. We as Peace Corps volunteers talk about family planning to these girls, but in one ear and out the other, I guess?

The job search continues and is making me anxious. So is the mouse in my house. I went to buy mouse poison and this is what transpired:

ME: Do you have mouse poison?
STORE MAN: Here it is (handing me a small bag).
ME: How do you use it?
MAN: It's granulated. Put it where the mouse is hiding, mix it with some food, like a banana or something.
ME: But I don't know where the mouse is right now.
MAN: Right now? The poor little mouse is sleeping, dreaming of the delicious poisoned food you are about to give him.

Not a very good poison salesman. And yes, I did feel horrible after this exchange.

Paz y amor.

What a week

2010-09-12T17:40:00.002-04:00

Rural village life here in El Salvador is generally isolated and peaceful, but this week's national emergency changed all that.

It started early in the week, when gang members, angered by a new anti-gang law, started posting flyers all over the country threatening to burn buses if they operated Wednesday through Friday. Few Salvadorans can afford cars and most depend on an extensive bus network that goes even into very rural areas. And gang crimes here are usually perpetrated on buses.

Anyway, this caused a 72-hour shutdown of the buses, making it impossible for much of the country to get to work or other necessary destinations. Of course my town's water pump broke during this strike, and the people from the water company were too scared to come fix it. Even though they come in company vehicles, people were scared that the gang threats would extend to any large vehicle, or even the passenger-laden pickup trucks that sometimes substitute for buses. Anyway, our water was out and I couldn't leave to go buy water or shower and do laundry in the capital. Thanks gangs.

Usually gang members board buses, rob all the people and bus's fare money from that day, and then evacuate the bus and burn it. The anti-gang law was proposed after a bus was burned in July with all the people still in it and the gang members posted to shoot escapers. 17 people were killed and more were wounded. That I did not blog about because I didn't want everyone worried about me. It happened at night in one of the most dangerous parts of the country, so there's no chance I or any other Peace Corps volunteer would have been in that situation. The only reason I'm writing about it now is that it's mentioned in that BBC link. Thanks BBC.

Still. I can't believe there wasn't already a law making it a crime to be a gang member. And when I think of this week I'm kind of glad my service is almost over!

In that vein, I finally wrapped up the stove project with a clausura meeting, complete with a huge cake. Glad that's out of my hair! I couldn't take pictures, though, because I was too busy actually running the meeting. Just one more project to finish, which will happen Thursday. And the new volunteer gets here the day after that!

Paz y amor.

Deme, deme

2010-09-06T16:09:00.003-04:00

Readers of this blog are probably sick by now of me complaining about "handout mentality" -- villagers coming up to me and demanding money and things they feel I am obligated to give them because I am from the United States.

Well, yesterday I was kind of forced to go to church, and the priest, whom I normally don't like because he's so oppressive, actually gave a sermon against that!

He said he saw people arriving at the mayor's office and demanding (not asking for) money for bus fare, etc., and it made him sick. "Let's not get used to acting that way," he said.

THANK GOD! (No pun intended.) I now like the priest again.

In other news, the comedor, like a cafeteria-style restaurant, in my town was robbed at gunpoint at about 1 p.m. last week. Luckily no one was there eating at the time, only the owners. But don't be scared for me, as now there is a permanent police presence in the town (there wasn't before.) It's sad that it took something like this for the police to do their jobs, though.

Paz y amor.

This is the end...

2010-09-03T13:32:00.002-04:00

I'm in San Salvador wrapping up three days of required medical appointments for Close of Service. I'm realizing I will be spending very little time in the village until I leave in October. We are constantly going to San Salvador for final interviews and administrative stuff, my job search brings me into town a lot to use the cyber cafes, and we are also planning some trips to the places we've always meant to go for the past two years, but have never got around to it.

In a way it's kind of nice -- I like leaving the village, meeting up with gringo friends, using the Internet. After two years I guess I haven't gone completely native! I have kind of been waiting for this part of my service, the part where I stop working and do whatever I want for a couple of months until I leave. There are still some projects to finish up in my site, but most of that will get done in the next two weeks.

I am medically fine and I guess it's time to go back to the village. Paz y amor.

Alia returns from El Salvador in need of a job!

2010-08-23T16:51:00.001-04:00

After two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador, I am coming home October 16. My immediate destination is my mother's house near D.C., but after that, I plan to move to wherever I get a job.

That's where you journalist friends and professors come in. I've started looking for jobs on the Internet but wondered if you have any leads -- contacts, job bank recommendations or postings you've seen that you could pass on? I'm already trolling through the UMD j-school's job bank as well as journalismjobs.com, but of course more resources are always welcome.

I've pretty much decided against looking in newspapers because of the job insecurity there. I am looking more at nonprofit journalism -- publications from organizations with focuses I like/have experience in. Examples are the environment, education (I was an environmental education volunteer here, so I mostly taught environmental classes and did projects in a school) and diversity, international or Latin American issues.

But I'm also not too picky. I know the economy is terrible and beggars can't be choosers. I might have to resort to office work at Peace Corps HQ in DC for awhile, and any journalism job would be better than that.

Even if you've got no job tips advice for me, let's meet up if you're ever in the DC area!

See you in October!

Paz y amor.

Wrapping it up

2010-08-15T16:41:00.004-04:00

Our close of service conference is this Wednesday through Friday. I can't believe how fast it's come! At the conference I will pick my flight date and let you all know when I have it.

Ideally, we're not supposed to be doing much work after our COS conference, just preparing to go home. I was planning to have all my project finished by then, but of course my community has been dragging its feet/not doing anything at all to finish these projects with me, so I will probably still have to work on the school vegetable nursery, the health dispensary and the stove projects.

A new volunteer is coming to replace me in mid-September and I'll probably also be orienting him/her for about a month before I leave. But I will have a lot more time for departure preparations, online job searching, and most importantly, in-country travel and fun.

We are apparently in the middle of another tropical storm. I can't remember many days since May when we have NOT been in the middle of a tropical storm. I washed my clothes Tuesday and they are still not dry. I am wearing damp jeans.

Coming home to my mother's dryer is so close...

Here are some pictures from Nicaragua!At the border. Later a bee landed on the lip of that Fresca can and I almost drank it, but Will grabbed the can on its way to my mouth and the bee fell in and drowned. I had been really happy to find a Fresca and was disappointed that I couldn't drink it. I believe I actually said, "I hate Nicaragua!"That dark blob on the branch is a monkey!We couldn't go to the top of the Volcán Concepción on the Isla de Ometepe because it had already spewed smoke 13 times this year. This is Will, our hiking guide and a German girl named Marian at the highest point we could go to. The water in the distance is Lake Managua.Volcán ConcepciónThe silhouette of the revolutionary Augusto C. Sandino where he was shot by a firing squad overlooking Managua in 1934 (not 1956 as I recently said -- that was the dictator Somoza, sorry). I can't believe that in all the material I've read about Sandino, no one ever mentioned he was 50 feet tall.Some 6,000-year-old human, deer and raccoon footprints were found in the mud near Lake Managua.

Paz y amor.

How transportation compromised my vacation

2010-08-07T13:05:00.003-04:00

So I'm back in El Salvador and it's good to be home. This vacation really left me with the impression that El Salvador is not set up for tourism at all, even compared to Nicaragua, which is not exactly what most people would call a hot tourist destination. But there was one problem with the second half of our trip, and that was transportation.

First, we needed to take a ferry to the (gorgeous!) Isla de Ometepe, which ended up leaving earlier than we were told it would, so we had to wait for the next one. That delay, plus rainy weather, cancelled our beach trip that day. The volcano hike the next day was wonderful but exhausting because at the last minute our guide decided to take us on a cow path down the mountain, which was a difficult 4-hour descent, instead of the normal way. But all the resulting soreness was worth it for the beautiful views.

When it came time to leave the island, the ferry we were going to take had broken, so we had to wait another two hours, completely ruining the chances of getting to the Masaya volcano early enough to hike it. Instead we spent a relaxing night in Granada, watched the new Karate Kid and ate at a really nice restaurant that served amazing chicken parmesan.

The next day we went to Managua, where we saw some really cool things, including a huge silhouette of Agosto Sandino where he was killed by a firing squad, some human and animal footprints from 6,000 years ago, and a lot of old animal bones (mastodons and the like) at the national museum.

Yesterday we finally left Nicaragua on a 2:30 a.m. bus, which broke down on the border with Honduras. They tried to fix the bus for about 3 hours before calling for another bus to pick us all up, which took another four hours. Luckily we were stranded next to a restaurant and a bar, and by the time the new bus came to pick us up, I had made friends with some Mexicans who used to live in Silver Spring and spoke perfect English, I was a more experienced pool player and rather tipsy.

We finally got to San Salvador at about 9 p.m., where we ate some pizza and immediately fell asleep. I'm finally on my way back home now. It'll be hard to go back to village life after this awesome vacation!

Paz y amor.

Nicaragua!

2010-08-02T17:59:00.003-04:00

Although I've been living in El Salvador for the past two years, I never really felt like a traveller...until now.

That's because I've mostly been living and working in the same village and only taking the occasional weekend trip to other places in the country, which are usually just my friends' places or San Salvador.

I forgot how much I loved hostel-hopping and sightseeing until this week, vacationing in Nicaragua with a friend.

So far we have spent one very sketchy night in Managua, toured the colonial cities of León and Granada, and have gone "volcano surfing" -- which is where you climb a volcano and ride a board down the steep gravelly slope. Fortunately we were sitting down. It's more like "volcano sledding."

Today we are on a beautiful island in Lake Managua and tomorrow we are climbing a really big volcano on this island...but we can't go all the way to the top because it's too active right now. Should I be scared?

The rest of our trip will involve a night hike on a volcano where you can actually see the lava and go through caves, and then a trip back to Managua where we might actually get the chance to do some sightseeing -- first priority is seeing the silhouette of Sandino where he was shot to death by a firing squad in 1956.

Can't do Nicaragua photos for you right now, and unfortunately both of us had our camera batteries die during volcano surfing, so there are no pics of that anyway. Watch this space!

Paz y amor.

Just when I thought

2010-07-24T11:51:00.002-04:00

that I had a few free days to devote myself entirely to the care and maintenance of our school vegetable garden, I caught a monster cold and spent the past few days curled up in bed, alternately sweating and shivering.

To be fair, I probably got this cold from working in the garden during a tropical storm, heedless of the rain.

But it's hard to stay healthy when even your blankets and sheets are constantly damp from all the moisture in the air and mold is even growing on the walls of your house and it NEVER STOPS RAINING.

This rainy season has been one of the wettest in recent years, even according to the Salvies. And my site is one of the rainiest in all of El Salvador.

It turns out there will be a new volunteer in my site but he/she (probably she) will not be able to live in my house because the host family wants to open a store in that house. So now I have to find a new house for this person. I have a few leads. Hopefully these houses don't also turn into small ponds every time it rains.

So now I only have a couple of afternoons to work on this garden project, and then Wednesday I go to Nicaragua. I feel guilty for not getting more work done, but what could I do? I was sick.

Maybe the next volunteer will be more productive. I can practically hear the villagers thinking that every time they ask when "the new one" is going to arrive. Maybe she will be nicer, maybe she will give things away for free and not expect us to do so much work. Well, maybe.

I can't believe how little time we have left...

Paz y amor.

So that's were all our old hand grenades went...

2010-07-17T12:07:00.003-04:00

... to Mexico.

After the 4th of July, I realized something: I've only got about 3 months left in country. I had been pushing happily along, not realizing my departure was nearing, until a bunch of newer volunteers at our 4th-of-July party kept coming up to me with comments like, "Wow, you're going home soon!"

"No I'm not!" I kept saying, before pausing to think. "Holy shit, I am!"

It's true. In 11 days I leave for a 11-day Nicaragua vacation, then a week after I get back is our Close of Service conference, and after that I spend two months not working much and planning to come home. (Hard core job search!) So even though I don't leave until October, I'm wrapping up projects now. It's a strange feeling.

Earlier this month, we finally got around to planting cucumber and radish seeds with the school. If everything goes right, they should be ready for harvest in a few weeks. But thanks to heavy rains and foraging goats, their chances of survival are low.
Planting cucumbersPlanting radishes

Paz y amor.

Happy 3rd of July!

2010-07-05T11:13:00.002-04:00

Even in El Salvador, the 4th of July is a big deal...for Peace Corps Volunteers, that is. We celebrated on Saturday, though, so we could have a soccer tournament between each volunteer program...Rural Health, as always, won, and my program, Sustainable Agriculture/Environmental Education, tied for 2nd place with Youth Development. Sound dorky enough for you?

Quote of the game, after a YD volunteer was bowled over: "And Carl's up! He will live to develop youth another day!"

After the game, there was a party at the Sheraton (which is a really ritzy hotel here) hosted by a society of American expats, and then another much less expensive one at the San Sal hostel that is basically the Peace Corps hangout. There were hamburgers, hot dogs and even a chocolate cake (very rare here!) with an American flag on it, which said "Happy Birthday America," and to which we sang the national anthem before we ate.

All in all, of course, a very good weekend.AG/EE 2008-2010 girls!
The guys. Except Will, who managed to be excluded from every picture.

Pepinos y rábanos

2010-07-02T11:36:00.004-04:00

It looks like my school is finally pulling through and I might be a successful volunteer after all! My school principal and some people from CENTA, the government agency for agricultural technology, finally agreed to teach a bunch of my kids how to plant radishes and cucumbers. Thank God. This is something my principal has been expecting me to handle, but of course I know nothing about planting vegetables, although as an environmental education volunteer I supposedly should. The activity is on Wednesday and if all goes well we will have a successful project! And if not, at least I did everything I could do to start a school garden and cannot be accused of shirking my duties as an environmental educator.

Two hurricanes, Alex and some other one, just finished dumping a ton of rain on El Salvador and I am officially sick of the rainy season. Yes, two hurricanes AT THE SAME TIME. The storms ruined Pineapplefest, which I had been looking forward to all year. Water doesn't leak onto my bed, but even my sheets and blankets are damp from so much moisture in the air.
At least this is panning out to be a fun month. Tomorrow we have an Independence Day soccer tournament and several parties in San Salvador. Then at the end of the month I head to Nicaragua with a friend. Then my brother might come visit in August (maybe?) and a few days after he leaves we have our Close of Service conference and I will officially stop all major work and prepare to come home, probably in October.
I definitely have enough work to keep me busy until then, as we're still building stoves and trying to finish this project with the health dispensary.
In other news, the kid I wrote about, Luis, who was studying dentistry and lost his scholarship, went illegally to the United States last week. We had actually given him another chance with the scholarship, so he could have stayed here and studied, but the opportunity came to go mojado and he took it. It's sad to think he could have been a dentist here but instead will probably work construction or something there. I hope everything works out for him and that maybe I can meet him up in the States.

Here's a pic of the feria I went to with the interim ambassador...guess which one he is...

This is the biggest pineapple ever, at our Feria de la Piña one week later.
Paz y amor.

Feliz Día del Maestro

2010-06-22T18:17:00.002-04:00

Today is teachers' day, which means that schools are closed. I really do applaud the thought -- give hard-working, undervalued teachers a day off -- but in all honesty, most teachers here cancel classes por gusto (whenever they feel like it) anyway, so this holiday is really just hurting the students even more. My particular school has turned the holiday into "teachers' three days," never mind the random holiday they took last week, so you get the picture...

Sunday was the Feria Agropecuaria Robert Blau, the agricultural festival named after the interim U.S. ambassador (Obama hasn't appointed a new one since his inauguration) in a town near mine. This town, San Pedro Nonualco, has had Peace Corps volunteers since 1962, the year after Kennedy founded the Peace Corps. Of course El Salvador didn't have volunteers from 1980-1992 during the civil war, but barring that, there has always been a volunteer in San Pedro. So the morning of the fair was taken up with speeches about how much Peace Corps and the United States government in general has benefitted San Pedro. Normally I get annoyed when people here idealize the United States, because they're often far off the mark, but this was nice because the Peace Corps has actually made visible improvements in San Pedro. But the speeches were also a reminder that tangible improvement takes decades of work, not just a couple of years.

Anyway. The downside of not having internet on my own computer is that sometimes I forget to bring my camera memory card to the cyber café. So I'll try to get some pictures of the festival for you guys Saturday?

Paz y amor.

Fotos por fin

2010-06-19T12:47:00.005-04:00

Finally received my long-lost camera back from a friend, whose house I left it at! So I have some theater group fotos for you.

Our environmental skit in cool, beautiful and artistic La Palma went very well. Since then I have been making some headway on a lombriculture project with the school, but I have resigned myself to only doing it with a few grades because school is interrupted so frequently here for things like soccer games, and the teachers take the day off whenever they feel like it, which is a lot of the time. So a school system that already faces a devastated lack of resources is worsened by laziness.

Tomorrow I am going to a fruit festival in the nearby town of San Pedro Nonualco. The fair is named after the U.S. Ambassador (my Peace Corps boss, who is from San Pedro, had a hand in that). So I and three other volunteers from the area get to go hang out with the ambassador all day and eat delicious fruit. Not bad!
"La Vida de Basura" in San Vicente"El Lorax" in the village of El Tejar"La Vida de Basura" in La Palma

Paz y amor.

Scholarship stories

2010-06-12T12:51:00.002-04:00

Everyone thinks they know why it's hard for youth in this country to succeed. They don't have money to go to the university. Give them money, a scholarship, problem solved.

Except not.

Take these stories from my community:

Luis started studying dentistry at the national university on a scholarship that is supposed to pay for tuition, transportation and materials. But dentristry is an expensive major to have, and his textbooks are more costly than those of the other students, plus the university makes him buy his own dentistry equipment, which costs upward of $1,000. The scholarship doesn't pay for all that, so Luis doesn't have the materials he needs. Nor does he have family in San Salvador, like the other students, to stay with, so he gets up every morning at 3 a.m. to travel to the university from the village, and doesn't return until about 6 p.m. His eyes are always bloodshot; he never sleeps. He's taking hard courses at the university, courses like chemistry, which he was never introduced to in the useless village schools. Luis lives with a family that's not his and does housework for them to pick up a little extra cash. But he and the family start to fight and the personal issues distract him, bring his grades down. Finally, he loses the scholarship.

Veronica gets a scholarship to study at a private university, and is thinking of studying business administration, or maybe getting a teaching certificate. She has always been one of the most motivated youth in the village, but her mother doesn't let her stay active with the youth group and wants her to maintain the household and take care of her younger siblings rather than continue her education. Vero starts at the university nevertheless, but there is a problem with her birth certificate; someone screwed up and the last names are incorrect. Vero is told she will have to pay hundreds of dollars for a lawyer to fix it, money her family doesn't have. They can have it done for a notary for much less, but that will take 9 months. So Vero drops out, planning to start again next year after the notary fixes her birth certificate. But because of the clerical error, she can't work either, so she hangs around the village with nothing to do but spend time with her boyfriend. In about a month she is pregnant.

It takes so much more than $1,000 or $1,500 a year for these deserving kids to succeed. What they need are universities that are more willing to reach out and help students with no financial resources. What they need are elementary and high schools that prepare them better, demand more from them. What they need are supportive families and a culture that holds education in higher regard. But they don't have that, and Peace Corps volunteers and scholarship donors can't give that to them. I wish we could.

Paz y amor.

Vindicated?

2010-06-09T13:04:00.003-04:00

For most of my 19 months in site (19 months!) I have frequently complained about laziness, disorganization and a generally terrible work ethic in my village, even among the teachers and principal at the school, where I am assigned to do the majority of my work.

A couple of months ago, the time came to decide whether my site should get a replacement volunteer, someone to take over my work after I leave. I was undecided, because my experience overall has been a positive one, but I did not think a site that was so unwilling to collaborate deserved a new volunteer when there are plenty of sites where that volunteer could be more sucessful.

In the end, I solicited for a replacement, thinking that the problems in my site exist all over the country and I probably was just being overly sensitive, overly critical.

So yesterday my boss came to visit me and my school director, who is my official counterpart, and my director forgot about the meeting and went to another town. This did not surprise me but it infuriated my boss, who I don't think ever understood the extent of my problems in site when I explained it to him the first few times. Now my site might not get a new volunteer after all because it's finally become clear to him how hard it is to accomplish anything in that environment, which he said was in fact worse than many of the other places he had visited.

I have the same mixed feelings about this that I described before -- I love my site and think anyone could live happily there. They would just have to resign themselves to not getting much done and dealing with the community's expectations that the volunteer is supposed to give handouts and do projects without any help or investment from them. The lifestyle is fun and the people are friendly and nice; the work part sucks.

My boss and I also discussed an aspect of Salvadoran culture we see quite often: Salvadorans don't often honor meetings and commitments, and they make no apologies for it. My director never once told us he was sorry for missing the meeting; he just explained that he was called to another meeting and had forgotten about ours. When I set up the meeting with him in the first place, I had to explain to him that he was making a firm commitment to that date and time, and even then he kept saying, "If I can, if nothing else comes up." He tells me all the time that he is committed to working with the Peace Corps and will do everything possible to get a replacement volunteer. But if those things include attending a short but mandatory and important meeting, forget about it.

The same thing happened after the stove project meetings. People showed up at my house and explained why they couldn't go to the meeting, explanations that were usually ridiculous, like having to run an errand that they could have done at another time. Sometimes they said they just forgot, but they didn't see that as something to feel bad about or apologize for. And then they wanted all the information and materials that I had given out at the meeting, and I had to go over everything over and over again for the irresponsible people who showed up at my house in droves.

When my boss brought this up to the teachers (he had to; I as the gringa didn't want to be the one to criticize their culture, but he's Salvadoran so he can get away with it) they just shrugged and said, Asì somos (that's the way we are.) I don't believe in blaming poor people for their own poverty, but when people aren't willing to invest even a little bit of their time, I don't feel the need to go to great lengths trying to help them.

So there might not be another volunteer in San Josè Carrizal. And the more I think about it, the more I'm okay with that.

Paz y amor.

Hurricanes and other drama

2010-06-05T15:40:00.002-04:00

Yes, hurricane Agatha hit here and the bridge out of my town washed out yet again. In a situation similar to Hurricane Ida, no one could leave my town to go sell their fruit or buy food and other necessary items, and the stores in our town were running out of stock because they couldn't go get things from the big city or have merchandise delivered...

I personally ran out of food and water very fast because the hurricane hit the day I was planning on going grocery shopping. So I basically already had nothing anyway. I spent a couple of days begging my host family to feed me and feeling bad because they were running out of food too.

When Hurricane Ida hit, I wasn't in my site and therefore couldn't go back to it. I spent a cushy all-expenses-paid week in San Salvador. This time I was in my village and couldn't get out of it. It had been raining nonstop all week, but I knew something worse was afoot when I woke up in the middle of the night Saturday and my house was flooded wall to wall.

Nothing important was damaged, and this time families in my village didn't lose their crops to landslides either. So we have that to be thankful for. And I finally managed to get a ride to the supermarket in a pickup truck that was skinny enough to cross the half-washed-away bridge.

I did manage to leave my site again Wednesday on the only bus that doesn't have to cross that bridge. Since then, I have been in the eastern part of the country directing and performing in environmental and sexual health skits. It's been super fun but this computer doesn't have a memory card reader so I can't put up pictures for you. Next time!

Paz y amor.

Buses and worms and stoves, oh my

2010-05-23T13:25:00.004-04:00

Yesterday at about 1:3o p.m. I took a bus from San Salvador to Santa Maria Ostuma, my pueblo, from where my village is a 20-30 minute hike.

At 6:30 p.m. another bus left from San Sal to Ostuma. Somewhere along the way, some gang members got on the bus and killed the cobrador, the guy who walks around collecting money, calling out stops, helping people get on and off, etc. They probably killed him in order to take all the money the bus had collected that day. Of course the bus was full of people who witnessed the cobrador being shot.

Of course none of the buses between Ostuma and San Sal are running today. The drivers and cobradors are afraid. Passengers are afraid.

This incident actually doesn't make me feel any less safe because I always travel in bright daylight and shootings like this always happen at night. Plus no passengers were harmed. Cobradors get killed all over the country; this didn't even make the news. But I wonder what it was like for the people on the bus yesterday. How many gang members were there? Could they tell what was about to happen or did it go really fast? What did the cobrador do after he was shot? I'm assuming the bus headed for the nearest hospital. But did the cobrador die first? Did the passengers see him die?

Thank God my village is really tranquilo. The big excitement there is all the stoves I'm building. We're finishing up this week. The project has taken over my life. Every afternoon we build 3-5 stoves. It's really fun actually, and the people are really grateful and give us food, and we talk about all the village news. Most of the families that signed up for stoves I didn't know very well, but now I see them on the street and remember who they are, where they live, etc. Which is nice although I only have 5 months left for this information to be useful.

4 stoves being made at once
The recipients, pleased despite their stern faces.

Some kittens. Just because.

The unfortunate thing is that building all these stoves has left me basically no time to work on the lombriculture project I was planning with the school. I was hoping to have given all my worms away by now because I'm getting sick of the big box of earthworms in my house. But I haven't had the chance, so I've been feeding these worms for weeks. Luckily one stove family gave me a bunch of bananas that rotted before I could eat them all. My worms are going to have a lot of potassium...

It's cool, breezy and rainy these days. I love it. Also the Peace Corps med office gave me vitamins with appetite enhancers and now I eat like a pig.

Paz y amor.

Some things never change

2010-05-13T12:35:00.002-04:00

A year and a half into my service, I thought I was finally done complaining about the something-for-nothing handout mentality my villagers seem to have, especially when it comes to me. They had learned how I feel, I supposed -- the requests for money and pretty much any material possession they see me with had long since stopped.

There are two big exceptions. One is the schoolteachers, who should know better since I have repeatedly told them I make exactly as much money as they do. But whenever we try to do a school project, they insist I donate all the necessary materials (construction paper for every child, costumes for class skits, many large sheets of poster paper) even though those are things the school or the children can easily provide for themselves. They have actually called me stingy to my face when I refuse to spend my personal monthly stipend on materials for the school.

The other exception, which I am currently living daily, is with the stove project (Suzanne, if you are reading this, I bet some of these stories will sound familiar!) Ever since the materials to build the stoves arrived, and especially since the meeting Tuesday where I started giving them out, people have been dropping by my house in droves asking me for a stove, even though they never came to any of the multiple meetings we had to sign up for the project. When I tell them we only have enough materials for the people who actually came to one of four meetings we had (not too much to ask!), they sometimes get upset. One woman actually yelled at me while I was in the middle of giving out materials to families who were actually responsible enough to attend one meeting. I was talking to the responsible families, and this angry old woman kept interrupting, screaming and grabbing my arm, saying, "I thought I was going to be able to get something out of you while you were here!" and insisting she deserved a stove because more than a year ago she loaned me a document which I immediately copied and returned to her (??) I literally had to fight back the urge to slap her in the face.

I have actually told people: these stoves are not giveaways. They are going to people who actually collaborated by attending meetings and providing some materials. But these people seem to think, even as my service ends and I have spent nearly two years trying to teach them otherwise, that my role here is to just show up and start handing crap out to everyone who comes to my house.

It's weeks like this that I'm actually happy I only have 5 months left.

Paz y amor.

Girls Leading Our World

2010-05-10T11:15:00.005-04:00

That was the name of the camp we did this weekend, and it was a good time. A bunch of volunteers brought 13- to 16-year-old girls to the same place we always have camps -- a bunch of cabins on a beautiful lake in the crater of a volcano. I brought three girls from my community.
The overall theme of the camp was leadership and teaching the girls life skills they would need -- including sex ed, which was even more awkward and hilarious than middle school sex ed in the States. There were also really good presentations on money management, domestic violence, goal setting, resume and job interviewing skills, etc. etc. I led a session about keeping a journal, some teamwork games, some roleplays about sex and relationship issues, and some more roleplays about combating traditional gender prejudice to get an education and a job.

And of course, we had time to swim in the lake!

Some camp pictures...The girls from my community playing one of the teamwork games
The journaling session
Gabi and Fatima slogging through the mud at the bottom of the lake

I'm glad the camp is over so I can take a breath -- I got home yesterday just in time for dinner and immediately passed out, considering my girls kept waking me up at 5 a.m. I will NOT miss the early-to-rise culture here! But I can't take too deep a breath -- tomorrow we finally start building the eco-friendly stoves, and I'm trying to juggle a school vegetable garden project on top of that.

Paz y amor!

And on to the next thing

2010-04-27T12:10:00.002-04:00

Earth Day is over, for which oh, be joyful. Our performance of The Lorax went well despite some last-minute setbacks. Such as three of our Salvadoran child actors not showing up until the last minute, while I was frantically trying to recruit shy replacements from the crowd. Talk about a panic attack!

But no major disasters occurred, the students did their dramas and songs, and I gave out prizes for the winners of our recycling contest and our Earth Day drawing contest. Done!

But I don't get to rest just yet...today I have to run all over the village again in a last-ditch attempt to sign teenage girls up for our leadership camp next month, since today is the deadline and I only have one confirmed girl.

So I'm kicking myself off the computer now. Paz y amor!

A MENOS QUE...

2010-04-25T18:38:00.002-04:00

So our Earth Day celebration is tomorrow and I can't wait for it to be over! But things are finally coming together and it looks like we should have a lot of good plays to present, including the all-volunteer production of El Lorax I mentioned.

I'm exhausted and busy as hell these days and don't even have weekends free to chill or go run errands, because after Earth Day we have a girls' leadership camp to deal with, and of course the stove project is still going. We're also going to start our school vegetable gardens. Etc, etc, etc...

At least the world map is finally finished. Varnish and all! Pictures to come.

It has also been really hot! Teetering on the edge of the rainy season is the worst, because we get the heat and the extreme humidity without the cool rain. I can't wait for the rainy season to come for real (it should happen in a week or so.)

Paz y amor.

Dia de la Tierra

2010-04-19T13:18:00.006-04:00

Earth Day's coming up. Ever worked in retail during the holiday season, or at a newspaper during some kind of emergency? I have done both things and I feel the same way now.

For Earth Day, I suggested to my school director that I bring my Peace Corps theater group to perform The Lorax (which we are doing and which I am super excited for! I am the Once-ler.) Then they told me that they wanted 7th, 8th and 9th grade to do environmental dramas as well. I said great, picked out themes for each class's drama, gave the teachers information sheets about their topic and talked to the kids. But I made it clear at our Earth Day meeting that the teachers would be in charge of writing and rehearsing the plays with their students as well as costumes, etc.

So then of course my director demanded that I spend every day this week in school working on these four skits with the kids, when I have a pile of other things to do and really can only be there POSSIBLY one day. When I told him that, he kept insisting and hinting that I wasn't doing enough for them. Meaning, I wasn't doing their job along with my own.

I'm not even surprised by this kind of stuff anymore. We'll see what happens on Earth Day...

The world map is almost finished...I just have to slap the varnish on it so it doesn't fall off the wall! Then I will post a pic of it. But in the meantime, here are some pics of spring break...

The clock tower in San Vicente, destroyed in the 2001 earthquake and just recently repaired.

El Cuco BeachA bunch of apparently starving cows in my friend Nick's village that just stood there staring at each other for a REALLY LONG TIME.

Paz y amor.

What?!

2010-04-12T13:04:00.002-04:00

Have I really not blogged in almost a month??? Me, who used to blog once or twice a week??? This blows my mind.

Well, at least I haven't written for a good reason -- I've been super busy! The world map is almost finished and I am constantly covered in paint. The troubles with getting it painted were puro El Salvador -- even though it's still the dry season, it rained several days last week, causing everyone to freak out and think it would rain this weekend. I wanted to find out for sure by seeing a weather forecast, but I have to ride the bus into town for the Internet or a newspaper, and the bus had broken down for days. So I decided not to take the chance, and we didn't paint on Saturday. But then it didn't rain Friday or Saturday and everyone decided the brief rainy period was over (apparently it often rains for about a week a month before the rainy season actually starts). So some of the youth group told me they would help me paint starting bright and early Sunday.

Of course they showed up and basically did nothing -- just ate ice cream and complained about how hot it was while I painted with some random guy who walked in off the street to help us. We all went home for lunch and they never came back, leaving me to paint most of the afternoon by myself. The youth leader did finally come back near the end of the day to help me finish up, though, and without all of their help this project would have taken much longer. I still have some finishing touches to do. All in all, it was a good birthday (yes, I spent my 24th birthday painting a map on a school and went home happy.)

Other things going on: still buying materials for the stove project, planning an Earth Day celebration in the school, preparing for a girls' leadership camp, generally falling apart with so much work to do!

Thank God I took some time out for a good spring break vacation. The first few days of it I spent drawing the map, of course, but after that I went to the beach, visited friends and hung out in the capital.

I was going to put up pictures of this vacation but this computer freaks out whenever I try. Maybe next time, at a different cyber cafe?

Paz y amor.

Fiestas patronales, round 2 (or 4)

2010-03-19T12:23:00.003-04:00

Well, the weeklong festival honoring the patron saint of my village, San Jose (Saint Joseph) ended last night at God knows what hour, and I am officially sleep deprived. Wait, you say, weren't you just celebrating fiestas patronales in late January/early February? Well, yes, but that was for the whole municipality, whose patroness is the Virgin Mary.

If you count the festivities last year, this is my fourth and last turn through fiestas patronales. And it was the most fun, because now I know more people and have closer relationships with people in the community. It used to be that I would force myself to spend long stretches of time with Salvadorans. Now I do it willingly and happily.

The other result of a long time in country is that I no longer feel guilty about skipping the events I'm not interested in, like the hours-long prayers and Masses in honor of San Jose, in favor of the ones I am interested in, like riding Ferris wheels and attending dances. Probably because by now I know that my friends in the community don't care that I never go to Mass, and I don't care for anyone who would judge me about it. And I'm OK with that and no longer fear being ostracized from the community for it.

Also, on Monday I was finally the victim of a robbery that actually screwed me over a little. While getting off a crowded bus, someone snuck my wallet out of my bookbag. Luckily this was done right in front of my bank, so I immediately went in and cancelled my card. I did lose $50 in cash, though, and my driver's license. About a year ago, when $40 was taken from my house, I was crying and furious. This time I just shrugged it off. Maybe I've become more acostumbrada, but it's also because I knew this time I was in a dangerous city (containing the only nearby bank and supermarket, so I have no choice but to frequent it.) My region is getting worse when it comes to crime -- when I called the Peace Corps safety officer to report the incident, she was like, "You again?" But I still always feel safe in my village and nearby area (the robbery last year was inevitable because I had stupidly left my wallet by an open window, and even then the robber kindly took the cash and left me the wallet with all the bank and ID cards.) As an added benefit, when I turn in the police report to Peace Corps, they will reimburse me 80 percent of the money stolen.

We continue buying materials for the stove project and wrapping up the recycling contest. Last week's environmental camp was a smashing success despite the fact that one of my kids vomited the whole way home due to eating a ton and then spending hours on the bus. I was terrified his mom would be enraged that I brought him back from camp sick as a dog, but she basically laughed it off. They're used to vomiting here.

Here's a picture of the kids I brought to the camp, plus my 22-year-old host sister Sonia, who I brought to help me supervise said kids (the one to the far right is the one who got sick). No, Salvadorans don't smile in pictures. I don't have many other good pictures of the camp, even though it was on a crater lake, because my camera ran out of batteries :( Rechargables are flaky!

Paz y amor.

The reckoning has, in fact, come

2010-03-08T11:28:00.003-05:00

And I am busier than I have ever been in El Salvador, with the aforementioned projects. The environmental camp is coming up this weekend and I'm super excited, despite having pretty much no time to prepare for it. I still have to prepare my activities for the camp, finish arranging transportation and snacks, turn in paperwork, etc. etc. If this were still January, I would have had everything arranged weeks ago, but it is March and I am SWAMPED! Unexpected things keep popping up to take up even more of my time, like a visit to my site from some Peace Corps/Nicaragua officials and my Regional Leader (a 3rd-year volunteer who's like a coordinator for the rest of us in our region.)

Hopefully, after I get through this camp and the environmental drawing contest hosted by the U.S. Embassy (the deadline is a week after the camp) I will have time to breathe...but then, I am still working on the world map, which has to be finished before the rains come in April/May. With all this going on, I tried to push the stove project back -- after all, that has no time frame attached to it -- but my community members won't have it. I guess they feel they've waited too long for the stoves already. So some of them are buying materials without me this week.

Two days ago, I went to my friend Gabi's site to give their community a presentation about the stoves we build. Because bus schedules are crazy, we ended up in the area hours before the demonstration was scheduled to start. So I went to visit the family I lived with during training, as they're nearby. I was a bit nervous about this because I was with my stove counterpart, whom I don't particularly like. But as I found out, if you want to get a Salvadoran woman to talk with you freely and openly, bring another Salvadoran woman to the conversation. My training host mom and my stove counterpart got along famously, despite my counterpart taking potshots at me whenever she could (about what I eat, who in the community I talk to, etc. etc.) But she talked a lot about the political rivalries of our village, and who is on what side...I always noticed that certain people (my counterpart and my host family, my host family and our neighbors) didn't like each other, but I didn't really know why. And now I know it's because my host family supports the current mayor and priest (who basically work together) while a bunch of others hate the mayor and support the opposition.

We finally distributed the corn and beans that my friend Megan's community donated to us. More than 51 families benefited from the donations.

Paz y amor.

A reckoning is gonna come

2010-02-22T11:28:00.002-05:00

...for these last posts where I've been complaining that I haven't been doing anything. The money for the stove project just came in, the materials for the world map project will come any day, we're still in the middle of our recycling competition and our corn and beans distribution project, I'm way behind on my part of organizing the environmental camp, and it's time to look ahead to other camps, a vegetable-planting project, etc. etc.

It's nice to be busy and to start every day with a long list of things to do, but some of these things are time-sensitive and have to be finished soon, so now it's crunch time. Which is why I spent January trying to start work on all of these projects, but my community just wasn't having it. It's kind of annoying being pressed for time now when I was just so bored and trying to avoid everything piling up all at once...

Time to run off and hand out corn and beans!

Paz y amor.

Alia Gets Robbed By MS-13

2010-02-17T16:01:00.002-05:00

SCENE: On a bus on the way to San Salvador. ALIA dozes in a seat, unable to really sleep because of the blaring regueton music.

The bus stops and lets on a clean-cut, well-dressed GANG MEMBER, who immediately sits down next to ALIA. The following dialouge is all Spanish.

GANG MEMBER (speaking slowly and quickly, rather indecipherable over the music): I am from MS-13...mumble mumble give me money...mumble mumble kiss.

ALIA (prepared to do anything but not really understanding): What?

GANG MEMBER (no longer mentioning gangs or money): I am going to kiss you. Like you're my girlfriend.

ALIA (now convinced she is hearing wrong): Huh? (turns to look with terrified dinner-plate eyes at the COBRADOR, the guy who collects money on the bus. COBRADOR comes over.)

COBRADOR: Is everything all right here? Is he making you uncomfortable?

ALIA (ascertaining that GANG MEMBER has no gun but unsure about a knife. Consciously keeping the same terrified gaze as a hint): Um...no...everything's fine.

COBRADOR: Ok, then! (leaves.)

GANG MEMBER: I'm getting off the bus in Comalapa.

(ALIA is silent, pretending not to understand Spanish.)

GANG MEMBER: Hey, if you take the Autopista highway, you could get to San Salvador faster.

(ALIA, confused at the random travel advice, is still silent.)

GANG MEMBER: Ok, give me a dollar.

ALIA (looking confused): I don't understand.

GANG MEMBER: MONEY!

(ALIA pulls a dollar out of her bookbag and hands it to GANG MEMBER).

GANG MEMBER (grabs Alia's boobs): MORE!

(ALIA'S HERO, a random man sitting behind her, stands up suddenly and pulls a knife, which he holds to GANG MEMBER's back.)

ALIA'S HERO: This guy is a gang member! He's trying to take money from this girl! Get him off the bus!

(ALL THE PASSENGERS explode into exclamations, screams, a woman starts crying. ALIA just kind of blinks. It's pretty early in the morning. GANG MEMBER is escorted off the bus and can be seen boarding another bus.)

ALIA: Hey, he's getting on that bus! Shouldn't they be warned? Call the police?

(EVERYONE shrugs.)

Pretty much the best gang robbery story I've heard, much less experienced.

In other news, another Peace Corps volunteer and her community members came today with corn and beans for my village. We gave them breakfast, oranges and pineapples, and fun was had by all. I'll be excited to sort and donate the food to needy families, if I can keep the village council guy from just giving it to his friends.

Also we are having a community cleanup tomorrow, for which the mayor's office said they would donate face masks, as the dust in our village is making everyone sick. But today they pretended they knew nothing about that promise and the whole thing looks about ready to fall apart, because the principal doesn't want to do the cleanup, which we have planned forever, without the masks. So I'm off to yell at people now. Seriously, I'm sick of this kind of thing.

Paz y amor.

Valentine's Day and food giveaway

2010-02-15T17:16:00.004-05:00

Like every other country in the world with an economy, El Salvador celebrates Valentine's Day. When I first got here, I was happy to find out V-day was called "Dia del amor y la amistad" -- Love And Friendship Day. I always had a problem with Valentine's Day in the States, whether or not I was single, because it commercializes love and is just another excuse to make Hallmark some money. But Friendship Day sounds promising, and cheap too. You don't have to buy your friends things on Friendship Day, I reasoned, you just have to hang out with them.

But my host aunt soured me on Valentine's Day, even here. Some background: I am renting a house that she will inherit, but technically it's not even hers yet and I pay the money to her mother. She, however, has decided that this means she can use my porch whenever she feels like it. On Dia de los Muertos (November 1) she woke me up at 5:30 a.m. to hawk flowers from my porch, and I was super pissed but said nothing because I figured it was just one day out of the year. That day, she at least asked permission, although she knew very well I couldn't stand there and tell her no, even if I was actually bothered by her screeching "FLORES!" right outside before the sun even rose. Which of course I was.

So imagine my surprise when I came home on Saturday to find a Valentine's Day store operating from my porch. "I invaded your space!" my host aunt said brightly, with a big smile. This was even worse than November because a) I hate Valentine's Day commercialization and b) it is much hotter now than it was in November, and I had to stay in my hot house with the metal roof instead of lying in my cool hammock on the porch. In an attempt to cool down, I opened all the windows in my house, which meant that everyone who came to buy anything also stared at me reading, or listening to music, or whatever. And the stuff she was selling was pure crap, and all the writing was English too, which made me mad that Love and Friendship Day is losing its honorability to American commercialization. The Alia's Porch Valentine's Day store lasted for two days straight. And she didn't even ask this time.

Here in El Salvador, there is no concept of renters' rights. Other volunteers have similar stories -- their landlords enter their houses and steal things, or decide to hold church services there while the volunteer is away, or throw random parties in the house while the volunteer is home. We (rightfully, dammit!) have the idea that because we are paying a good deal of money to live in these houses, we have a right to the space even though the place isn't legally ours. For some reason, though, Salvadorans don't see it that way.

In happier news, my community is getting a big donation of corn and beans from another volunteer's community! For Peace Corps volunteers, giveaway projects are always tricky because one a volunteer does one, they are forever branded as a rich American who will give anything away for the asking, and the Peace Corps gets a reputation as a giveaway organization, even though we're really supposed to work with community leaders on projects and are basically prohibited from bringing in money or things without a certain amount of community investment. But this project is Salvadorans donating to other Salvadorans, which makes it special (and amazing!) My volunteer friend was approached by community members who said they wanted to donate to Hurricane Ida victims, and they wanted her help raising money and identifying a needy community. In the end, my community was picked, and I will spend a few happy days this week organizing a corn and beans giveaway!

Paz y amor.

Fijese que

2010-02-13T11:57:00.002-05:00

I might have already written a post about this, but it's been dominating my life lately so I'll talk about it again. It is pretty much impossible to get work done in a community where everyone keeps coming up with excuses not to do anything at all. I realized lately that for every project I do here, I basically have to do all the work myself, when I'm supposed to be working WITH the community. Sometimes I can't even do something myself because I need help from someone else in the form of transport, financial aid, etc., and they say they'll help but every day they say, "Let's do it tomorrow." I've even gotten frustrated and put my foot down, saying, "But you always say tomorrow/next week/etc," and still they find a way to put things off. It's like they're trying to make my life miserable.

A Peace Corps higher-up from Nicaragua is coming to visit my community soon to talk about "non-formal environmental education" -- that is, environmental education that doesn't take place in schools. My boss picked my community for her to come see because we have a youth group and a committee for the wood-saving stove project, which would both be examples of non-formal education if either of them actually organized or did work. My boss knows that neither of these groups are actually functional, but they are possibly the best he's got. I think other environmental education volunteers have the same problems with community organization as I do, since we are assigned to schools and not communities. But it is still impossible to get anything done at the school without the support of outside members of the community, which I do not have, or the support of the principal, which I don't really have either. My principal doesn't outright veto my projects, but he makes it very difficult for me to do anything by never being around and never providing the help he says he will.

So this director from Nicaragua will probably come and no one from my community will come to the meeting, or maybe like two people will and they won't really be able to talk about the projects we've worked on because we've barely been able to do anything. Can't wait!

Hopefully I will feel more positive the next time I write...

Paz y amor.

Crime and publishment

2010-02-07T12:42:00.002-05:00

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.

Picking up the pace

2010-02-06T11:00:00.004-05:00

February is here and thank GOD it looks like I finally have stuff to do. I'm just about to leave San Salvador after a meeting we had to plan a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camp. I'm really excited for this camp, as it will teach teenage girls about leadership, goal setting and even some much-needed sex ed.

Now that the school is less busy with uniforms and back-to-school administrative stuff, I have more of an opportunity to do work there as well. And fiestas patronales are finally over, which means other people are finally willing to get some work done as well.

Here's a picture I took at one of the entradas during our fiestas patronales...it was at my school director's house, which he totally did up.

Here is a really cool rock at Playa Tunco, where we went to say goodbye to one of our group members (I've been bad with photos lately, sorry)

Paz y amor.

Many parties and still no running water

2010-01-31T17:09:00.002-05:00

Just got back from Playa Tunco, one of the most famous beaches in El Salvador. There we had a goodbye party for one of our group who is going home early because his wife (who was also here with him but is already back in the States) is pregnant! Of course everyone is sad to see this awesome couple go, but of all the reasons to leave Peace Corps early, that has to be one of the best.

Tunco is a really cool beach. We couldn't go out too far into the water, though, because the current is crazy strong. It's really popular for Peace Corps volunteers and tourists and we ran into one of my friends there who is an ex-volunteer. Unlike American beaches, Tunco lets you drink on the sand all day, and at night there was a bonfire and a drum circle.

I also got to shower twice, which was a huge relief since there is still no water in my site. Earlier this week my host family told me the big water pump for the entire municipality had broken completely that the utility will have to install an entirely new one, which they say will take a month. So I have a long month ahead of me, probably full of leaving site to shower and wash clothes in San Salvador, at nearby volunteers' houses or even at my boss's country house, conveniently located near my village. The latter option might be awkward but it's actually the most convenient for me...

My town is in the middle of our patron saint festival. Thursday night a friend from a nearby site came and we went to an alborada, where they set off fireworks and teenagers run around inside toritos, which are shaped like bulls and spray fireworks into the crowd, which screams and runs. Some sparks actually burned my neck and face during the alborada, and I got pushed around a lot, but there's no permanent damage.

I wanted to upload some pictures of the fiestas patronales, but this computer won't have it. Maybe next time.

Paz y amor.

No cae agua

2010-01-22T12:47:00.002-05:00

Every so often, a pipe or the town water pump breaks and no one in the village has running water for a few days. It's usually not that big a deal because water doesn't run 24/7 anyway and everyone has big cisterns to store lots of water for the times when it's not running. But this time we've gone a week without water and I finally had to escape to San Salvador just to take a shower (I am not publishing how long it's been since my last shower.)

I'm also spending the day organizing props for the Peace Corps/El Salvador theater group that I'm in charge of. Which makes me happy because at least it's one productive thing I've done in a long time. This has been a very boring month. I planned to hit the ground running on a bunch of new projects as soon as I got back from vacation, but everything I'm working on has been pushed back to February, as I might have mentioned earlier. So much for trying to space projects out. If all this stuff does actually happen in February, my head just might explode.

Yesterday my boss came to my site and met with me for our routine one-year site visit. Peace Corps volunteers enjoy a stunning lack of supervision, which is mostly fun, but I realized yesterday that I really do need to interact with my boss sometimes. It was nice to get recommendations about problems I'm having in my site and to put things in perspective -- I complained of boredom and my community's lack of willingness to work and was comforted (I guess) by his reassurance that this is par for the course. At least I personally am not doing anything wrong.

I will conclude with Emily's gem of a quote (for more gems, see my Facebook or just talk to the girl):
"i can't believe conan put a horse in a mink snuggie when there are places without running water
i am disullusioned now"

Paz y amor.

Temblores y teatro

2010-01-18T10:51:00.002-05:00

Right before I started writing this post, I felt a strong tremor here in San Pedro Nonualco, El Salvador. It always starts the same way, with the ground moving slowly, slightly, almost undetectably, like when you're lying in a hammock and you're not even sure whether it's still swinging.

Then it started to get stronger and everyone started looking up and around. With one final jerk, it ended.

As soon as it was over, we turned on the news and found out that the tremor registered 5.8 on the Richter scale in Guatemala near the border of El Salvador. As far as I know there's been no damage, but this literally just happened and any damage might not have been reported.

El Salvador has always been prone to earthquakes, including two huge ones in 2001 that devastated the entire region I live in. As if the memory of those quakes isn't terrifying enough, what happened in Haiti six days ago is all over the news here too. One tremor and people get really paranoid. And I have to say I feel the same way.

The other day some people in my village formed an emergency committee to coordinate rescue efforts whenever a disaster happens. I live next door to the community center where the meeting was happening, walked into it and thus was sworn in as a member of the committee. It was formed as a reaction not only to the earthquake in Haiti but to the disaster we suffered in November as a result of Hurricane Ida. Of course I think the emergency committee is a good idea, but we're mostly forming it because no one wants to form a permanent legal village council, which I have been pushing since I got here and which would be proactive rather than reactive. It's typical of my site to write off work and organization until it's necessary for some temporary goal.

In terms of post-Ida aid, what my village really needs is food donations, but those are actually being provided for the next three months by an NGO here. I'll be meeting with some people hopefully this week to see if there's anything more I can do, but I don't want to start my own private fund if the NGOs are giving us everything we need.

In other news, the theater group I run is kicking it into high gear with educational performances scheduled throughout the country in the next three months. Which makes me feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile here, because projects in my site keep getting pushed back. I'm playing the waiting game with the three major projects I'm working on right now: a community clean-up with the school, the fuel-efficient stove project and another project where we paint a map of the world on one of the school's exterior walls.

Miss everyone at home. Paz y amor!

I'm COLD!!!

2010-01-07T10:20:00.002-05:00

And I'm in El Salvador!

How is this happening???

Everyone says that October and November are the coldest months in El Salvador, but it's Jan. 7 and I'm colder than I've ever been in my site. There must be some kind of cold front coming through. I just read in The Washington Post that things might get icy even in the South today, and temperatures in Iowa are supposed to hit -52 (!!!) so we must be sharing the same winds or something...

I should really stop being such a baby, because I'm guessing the temps this morning were in the 50s. Not the -50s.

In other news, being back is good and I'm starting a lot of fun new projects (notably the stove one). The work year has already started for teachers and classes start next week, so I should be getting busy pretty soon. It does feel weird to not be constantly talking to friends and not to have plans every night, and my sleep schedule is STILL off...at home I went to bed at like 2 a.m. every night and usually slept until 11, so I'm having trouble getting up really early and as a result I've been exhausted 24/7 since I got back.

Miss you all! Paz y amor!

Adios America, otra vez

2010-01-01T19:05:00.002-05:00

These past three weeks at home have been nothing short of magical. I head back to El Salvador at 3:30 a.m. tomorrow, leaving from Reagan National Airport, which is a HUGE deja vu...our training group flew into ES for the first time from National at 3 a.m. more than 15 months ago.

There were so many great things about this vacation: seeing all my friends, going out in D.C., hanging out at home with TV and Internet in 18 inches of snow. And it's really put my experiences in the Peace Corps in perspective. Sometimes it's really tough, but I will come back to America in November that much stronger, and I will always my have fantastic friends here, and hopefully a job that I love.

At the end of my last trip to the States, I didn't want to go back to El Salvador. Thankfully, I don't feel that way now. I'm really excited to go back and finish up a million projects I've been planning. While I've been here, the Peace Corps approved my rather expensive proposal to build 50 fuel-efficient stoves in my community! I'm super stoked about that especially. But I am dreading the relative loneliness of the Peace Corps. The hardest thing about being there is no longer the dirt and bugs and lack of amenities. The hardest thing is not being surrounded daily by good friends.

We'll see what happens. I've also been compiling a list in my mind of things I found strange upon returning to America:

EVERYONE has an iPhone or a BlackBerry now. When I left, only rich and important people had them. Now I wouldn't be surprised to see a homeless guy on the street with one.
I used to be a guru of pop culture knowledge. Now I don't know what any of these TV shows or who any of these pop stars are. The most ridiculous one is Justin Bieber, the latest in a long line of prepubescent boy singers I thought were girls the first time I heard them on the radio.
Speaking of the radio, I sometimes complain about the lack of variety in the Salvadoran radio repertoire...but America is much worse. I swear it's worse even than when I left. The local top 40 station (Hot 99.5, for you DC natives) literally plays the same 5 songs over and over.
THINGS COST SO MUCH! The money I spend on a coffee or a beer could feed me for a whole day in El Salvador.
A ton of new restaraunts opened up in DC.
Almost everyone I know is now engaged or married. WTF.

And a few things that were surprisingly the same...

I remembered how to drive and how to get everywhere in DC and Maryland.
I fell very quickly into my old news-junkie ways and was discussing news, the funny articles of the day and media industry gossip as soon as I got home.
The people I worked with at the college paper still get together and gossip endlessly...thank God! Same with my high school friends.
I apparently cannot go home for a single break without hanging out at the Barnes & Noble where I used to work. I actually tried to avoid it this time and ended up there three times.

My next post will be from El Salvador! Paz y amor!

Caminata

2009-12-11T17:04:00.006-05:00

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...

2009-12-08T12:01:00.004-05:00

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

2009-11-29T16:31:00.008-05:00

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

2009-11-24T09:17:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-17T12:18:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-12T11:21:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-10T13:28:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-09T15:52:00.001-05:00

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

2009-11-04T10:48:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-10-21T14:11:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-15T18:14:00.002-04:00

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

2009-10-12T11:25:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-24T14:03:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-21T12:00:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-17T11:36:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-14T18:09:00.005-04:00

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

2009-09-11T13:19:00.003-04:00

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...

2009-09-03T11:54:00.002-04:00

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

2009-08-29T13:37:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-27T11:09:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-16T17:52:00.008-04:00

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

2009-08-12T12:13:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-10T11:19:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-09T17:52:00.005-04:00

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

2009-08-01T11:45:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-07-30T17:59:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-28T15:18:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-12T18:04:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-06T13:30:00.005-04:00

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!

2009-07-05T14:11:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-27T12:53:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-22T15:46:00.005-04:00

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

2009-06-20T12:33:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-14T15:38:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-07T17:58:00.006-04:00

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

2009-05-31T11:51:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-05-29T12:21:00.003-04:00

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

2009-05-28T11:25:00.002-04:00

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

2009-05-26T16:08:00.002-04:00

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

2009-05-23T12:29:00.004-04:00

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.

Bank of Alia

2009-05-17T13:52:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I was working away in my house, planning a party for my Saturday English students who are "graduating" next week (woohoo free Saturdays!) when a woman from my community came by who is my semi-friend. I say "semi" because she is sweet enough but cannot stop asking me for money, directly or indirectly. I have lent her a dollar here, five dollars there, and she has always paid me back, but this time I was blown right out of the water.

"My (alcoholic) husband isn't working right now and we have to plant corn this week," she said. "Can I borrow $30 for fertilizer?"

30 dollars?! That's a lot of money in the States, never mind here, and my Peace Corps salary would make you all laugh. And it might be all right, since I know she would, slowly, pay me back, but this has already gone far enough. Next she'll be asking me for $50. She has already asked me for the shoes off my feet and the food in my house.

I don't mean to sound insensitive to poor people, really I don't. But although things are hard for this woman, she is not starving. She and her family have got by for years before there was a gringa in the community. And I can't turn my head and give them more money while the husband lies around and drinks away what the wife earns. At some point this woman has to fix the root of the problem.

She's not the only person who has come by asking me for things either. A lot of the time it's people I barely know and who, I have learned from experience, will not pay me back. I can't have word getting around that I just hand out money to anyone who wants it. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we're here to combat the handout mentality in favor of capacity-building, which is something I strongly believe in personally as well. It might not help the poor villagers in the extremely short-term, but they will have a strong economic foundation for the future if they focus on learning new skills and using them to get jobs or make money. And I'm here to teach some of those skills (English, computers) and help the community do projects for their collective economic benefit, but I myself am not a microfinance enterprise.

So I'm going to go back to the village today and tell this woman that I can't lend her any more than $10, and she will still have to pay me back. Insensitive bitch that I am.

Paz y amor.

Happy Mother's Day?

2009-05-14T11:34:00.005-04:00

It is time for my school to celebrate Mother's Day!

12 days after the fact...

That's right, the principal didn't have the time or inclination to plan an event that would actually coincide with the holiday, so we are planning one now for almost two weeks later. I guess this doesn't seem weird to anyone else. But to me, it's like forgetting about, say, Halloween and then trick or treating on November 12, to the confusion of your neighbors who by now have no more candy. At some point you have to recognize that a holiday has passed you by.

Of course, I was dragged into the preparations at the last minute. It always happens that way. One minute I'm on the porch talking to my host family, the next minute my school director comes by and drags me into a "secret, important meeting" that is starting that very minute. So here I am at the cybercafe looking up poems and images to put on the invitations that we are giving to all the mothers, which I have been put in charge of as the only computer literate teacher. Apparently these mothers will come to school in the morning May 22 for snacks, raffles, dances and a poem.

The poem is to be recited by me following a confusing exchange with the principal.

PRINCIPAL: Maybe your mother can write a poem for us.
ME: My mom? Why?
PRINCIPAL: Is she going to come? Can she write a poem?
ME: No, she won't be coming...wait, are you saying you want ME to write a poem, or my mom?
PRINCIPAL: Oh, I just remembered. Your mom isn't a writer. The last volunteer had writer mom...
ME: Well, I'm a writer! I write the news! But maybe I could just look up a poem on the Internet...

So not only do I get compared to or mistaken for the previous volunteer pretty much daily, now her mother has become my mother.

Anyway, thank God for the Net. I found a lovely Spanish poem written by an actual poet, and that will be read to my school's mothers on May 22. Twelve days late.

Here are some of my host family at the beach a couple of weeks ago:
During training we hiked through a cloud forest to a view of Lago Coatepeque, a famous crater lake. There was fog EVERYWHERE and my camera died soon after this unremarkable shot...
Paz y amor.

English and preoccupations

2009-05-11T13:42:00.002-04:00

The English language is taking over my life. I am still supposed to be teaching it every day, but I am begging off yet again four days this week because of other compromisos, or other things I had already agreed to do. I feel only slightly bad about this -- after all, I never did agree to help out with English class every day. That is what my principal initially wanted, but I only agreed to come "as often as I could." Which is turning out to be not very often at all...

Ironically enough, Thursday is one of the days I am skipping out, to go help others with the English language. I am translating for Habitat for Humanity that day and I'm super excited.

Today I got on the computer and found out that one of my favorite editors and mentors left The Baltimore Sun for public relations. This guy used to basically run the show at The Sun and is the last person I expected to leave. Which, coupled with some recent conversations with Peace Corps friends, has me thinking a lot about the future.

I knew when I left for the Peace Corps that I was doing the right thing, as there are no job opportunities in journalism, the field I studied for four years. But I hoped things would improve by the time I came back. Now that doesn't look likely and I am directionless once more.

My friend Sara wrote this article for the Wall Street Journal describing the screwed-over plight of recent grads like me. And my friend Erin wrote a blog post that eerily describes my exact sentiments. Except for one: while I certainly want to continue traveling, I'm too panicked about financial security to hare off again as soon as I get out of the Peace Corps. I'm much more likely to go back to the States and nail down a steady job first, if I can, or -- dun dun dunnn -- go back to school?

Last Sunday I went to the beach with my youth group and some members of the community, and then I spent a week in training with the other ag/environmental volunteers. Pictures to come the next time I score a cooperative computer.

Paz y amor.

I bless the rains

2009-05-02T11:21:00.005-04:00

Rainy season has begun and God, I love it. The weather has suddenly become infinitely more pleasant, and I love the sound of driving rain on my corrugated tin roof (and sometimes I like the excuse not to go anywhere). It's true -- if it's raining, or the Salvies think it's going to rain, they'll stay home and refuse to show up to meetings or anything. I remember that from training but it has yet to affect my work here.

Yesterday was Labor Day here, as in the rest of the world except the United States, of course. It's funny, El Salvador has a ton of traditions that they constantly observe but can give no reasons for. For example, yesterday a bunch of kids dressed up in weird costumes, as old people, devils or sad clowns, and danced in front of the church. When I asked why they did that, people just shrugged and said, "It's tradition." Nor did they know the story behind May 1 and why it's international Labor Day -- Haymarket Square and all that. I had to explain the history to my host family, who were wondering why so many people demonstrate in San Sal every May 1.

Swine flu is dominating the news here too -- I don't have a TV but I listen to a lot of radio reports about "gripe porcina" (pork cold?) although there are no cases reported in El Salvador as yet. Peace Corps is inundating us with emails about it, though.

Here are some shots from yesterday:
The drummers tapping out the beatI never figured out which of the village boys were in these costumes...That one in the corn sack was the agressor and kept fighting people.

Paz y amor.

Security incident!

2009-04-29T13:10:00.005-04:00

Yep, I had my first (and hopefully only) one. Last Friday, I was working at the plastic table in the main room of my house, which I put under a window for the sunlight. Sitting next to me on the table was my wallet, which I had just used to buy something from the store across the street.

Suddenly, some of the youth group paid a visit, and I ran out to entertain and make posters with them on my porch, leaving the window open. I didn't think twice because I was still in sight range and I didn't realize my wallet was still on the table...

Meanwhile, it was getting dark, and the usual loafing and drunk teenagers and men began showing up to hang out outside my house (which is right in the center of town and therefore a popular hangout spot.) The youth group and I, distracted by our posters, didn't notice when one of them reached through my window and took the wallet...

A half hour later, I came back inside, closed up the house and started to make dinner. I went to bed that night not knowing my wallet was gone. At about 10:30 the next morning, some kids from my English class found it lying outside next to the window. All the money inside it -- $40, which is a good deal here -- was gone, but thank God the bank cards were still inside. You can't really use plastic anywhere in my rural site, so the thief probably didn't even care for them.

Although I got off lucky, and leaving things on that table by the open window is stupid and will never be repeated, the whole thing did make me upset and disappointed. Peace Corps volunteers give up a lot to move to places where life is hard and our only goal is to improve the communities we live in. And my robber would have had to be someone from the community. Talk about not feeling welcome, even after 6 months.

Granted, a lot of other community members have been very sympathetic, as have the Peace Corps people I had to report this to. The security officer came out to visit my house and make sure everything was OK, the nurse called to make sure I hadn't been hurt physically or too scarred emotionally, and the director of all Peace Corps El Salvador even called to chat about it. It felt a bit like overkill for a $40 robbery in which no one was harmed and which does not impede my safety in the long run, but it's nice to know these things are taken seriously.

The day I found out I was robbed was not a good day overall, I have to admit. We were supposed to have the first meeting of the community development organization that my counterpart and I have been devoting our energies to over the past month, and only 2 people showed up. People in the community have been shaking their heads sadly at me as I try to organize, informing me that the community just doesn't like to work or make commitments. It's one thing to try and fail because of all the hardships in your life, but it's another thing entirely to just say "No," flat-out. If the community isn't going to work with me, how can they expect me to help them?

English and environmental classes, thank God, are my bright spots. I have a captive audience of kids who are happy and tell me I'm awesome as long as we play lots of games in class. Our school nursery project, however, is failing because no parents have volunteered to donate land and materials...

The youth group is also good right now. We organized a beach trip for Sunday. Maybe I'll just say, "Screw you, old people" and spend two years working with kids and youth.

Here are some pictures of the school Earth Day celebration, where we decorated the community center with environmental drawings and played environmental games...
The principal started it off by rambling a lotDecorandoNiña Roxana's awesome craft thing and my less awesome poster

Paz y amor.

Hot Hot Heat

2009-04-14T15:31:00.003-04:00

It is really hot in El Salvador. I don't have a thermometer and of course no one uses Fahrenheit here, so I never know the temperature, but weather.com is claiming 102 degrees where I am. And of course I am walking around in jeans, shorts being taboo here. Luckily, the rainy season is coming next month and then hopefully things will cool down. But for now, I am battling another bladder infection born of dehydration, derailing my plans to do any work today.

I actually got sick at my friend's site, which is way hotter than mine, and all the wine we drank probably didn't help matters. I started heading back to my house yesterday, couldn't stand it and got off the bus half an hour later in the big city of San Miguel, where I spent the day in the hospital and the night in a hotel. Thank God for antibiotics, because I feel much better now and am posting this from another city on my way home today.

I have had some disease every single month since I got to site. After each one, I learn a little more about how to take care of my health and decide I won't get sick again for the next year and a half. This time I hope it's true, as the hot season is almost over. Even though I chug water, it's hard to avoid getting dehydrated when we can't drink any of the running water here. So if I only get sick again next March and April, I will consider my service a success.

But now I have to hustle back to my site and do a ton of work. The week after next will be hectic, with Earth Day, a big meeting to plan our school's vivero, or orange and pineapple nursery, and the first meeting of our community development organization. My daily English classes have started again as well. It would have been easier if I could have gotten some work done during Semana Santa, but even the people who stayed in the village refused to do any work during "vacation week." So now I have to try to recover while running around in the 102-degree sun.

My birthday was fun anyway (see wine reference above.) Will came and we watched a ton of DVDs and picked a ton of oranges to take to my friend Megan's site the next day. At her place, we were treated to chocolate banana bread and lemon cookies (yum!) as well as real food like pasta and pierogies. Although it's conveniently close to a big city, which is something I always wanted, Megan's site is super hot and dusty and literally made me ill, which made me appreciate the site I have even more.

I have hit a milestone. I used to get sick and want to go home to the States. Now I get sick and want to go home to Canton San Jose Carrizal, Santa Maria Ostuma, La Paz, El Salvador.

Paz y amor.

Semana Santa

2009-04-09T17:59:00.002-04:00

Well folks, it's my favorite time of year in every Hispanic Catholic country. Semana Santa, or Holy Week.

Easter in the States was always a fun time, especially because half the time it fell on my birthday. There was the candy, the easter egg hunts, the complete absence of any religious obligation...

Not so this year. I am about to attend a two hour Mass today and might be talked into more religious events all morning and night tomorrow. Saturday, not Sunday, is Easter here, and they celebrate with a 5 hour church vigil lasting until midnight. This I am trying my damnedest to get out of, as it is my birthday, my boyfriend is coming that day and we are getting up at roughly 5 am the next day to go on a trip.

From what I can tell, the next few days will offer an endless supply of Masses and processions. I hope they're not like the ones in Spain, where everyone dressed up just like the KKK and marched slowly to mournful music. Creepy as hell.

Some of this I don't actually mind going to, as I have nothing else to do. No one is working this week and my Saturday class has been cancelled, so I am getting no work done either.

Pictures to come of the holy madness. Paz y amor.

Adios, Steph, y gracias

2009-04-06T13:26:00.006-04:00

Last weekend I went to La Palma, an artisan town in the north near my boyfriend's site, for a despedida, or a goodbye party for Steph Kraemer, who directs the youth development volunteers in El Salvador. Although I'm not a youthie, Steph helped a lot of us ag-for/environmental ed volunteers out during training, so a group of us showed up too.

The whole thing was fun -- Will and I hiked the highest mountain in the country beforehand (we started from a village near the top) although both of us had done it before. Then the party involved a big dinner at the school in La Palma where a married youthie couple from our group teach. Afterwards there was dancing, and then we all went back to our hotel, which was really a bunch of little cabins and a restaurant, to drink and hang out.

A lot of Salvadorans that Steph used to live and work with were at the party, and they read poems for her and sang songs and made speeches and cried. It was amazing to see how much love Steph got after being here for five years. Then again, she is always telling us to stay in our sites, to make our communities the center of our experience, to get out there in the community and "get loved." Some volunteers, myself included, find it hard to resist the temptation to escape every couple of weeks and hang out with other gringos, or to shut ourselves in our houses with books and DVDs when nothing else is going on. But Steph is a fantastic reminder of why it pays to give a little more of yourself.

Then I got back and met the new volunteer in my town, and saw myself through the eyes of a new volunteer -- my own eyes 5 months ago. She's having the same problems I had at the start, but now I'm settled into a house that I like, I have good relationships (if not deep and meaningful friendships) with a lot of people in my community, I know my way around my site and a lot of the country, I have meaningful work and more patience with inconvenience and discomfort. That last realization came at an opportune time -- although the weekend was fun, I was constantly frustrated by things like screwed-up bus schedules and the failure of any Salvadoran to provide change for a $10 (having a $5 bill or higher is like having no money at all here)

I wish I could tell the new volunteer that she'll be fine, but if someone had told me that during my overwhelming first week 5 months ago, I wouldn't have believed them because it's the kind of thing that anyone would say to you. She, like me, will have to get through the next couple of months and find out for herself that it's not such a challenge, that, like Steph says, if you put a little love into El Salvador, it will give you back even more.

From Steph's goodbye letter:

"I love Peace Corps because I believe that it does a great job of putting some fire under our gringo asses. It forces us to realize just how privileged we are. It moves us away from our slick, cool, convenient cars and shoves us into rickety, sweaty, cramped buses. It strips us of all the gringo efficiency and flings us into chaos. Plopped right down with la gente, we befriend the desperate wife whose husband won’t let her leave the house to participate in the women’s group; we go with our neighbor to the local health clinic and watch her baby die for lack of quality care and basic medicines; we watch young girls curl their shoulders over their stomachs when asked to give an opinion in class and we watch our local mayor steal and no one do a damn thing about it. And we get pissed. And we start asking-- how did things end up this way? And we get determined and start wondering--what can we do about it?

I fear that when Peace Corps is over and we leave El Salvador, the fire under our asses will dim. When suddenly shielded again by nice cars, air-conditioned office buildings, and gates around our communities, I worry that our sense of urgency to do something about it will fade. When stuck in a cubicle, in a routine, back in a bubble of privilege, I dread that our determination will wane."

I worry about that too, especially when I think about how much time I spend missing and longing for all those cushy comforts I used to have. So I'm going to try to remember this, and remember that letter, and stay determined.

Steph (right) dancing with Emily, a youthie from our group

Being bugged

2009-03-31T11:28:00.003-04:00

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

2009-03-29T12:25:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-28T14:36:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-03-26T18:32:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-24T12:07:00.002-04:00

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?

2009-03-23T17:15:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-21T11:59:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-03-18T12:37:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-14T11:40:00.007-04:00

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

2009-03-07T10:14:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-03T11:24:00.002-05:00

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.