Dec. 11, 2007
Hello Everyone,
It embarrasses me that I haven't written you all for some time now –hope you'll accept my apologies. I'm mostly writing to let you know that I haven't died, become a goat-shepherding hermit, forgotten how to speak English, or joined a band of revolutionaries and headed forthe hills, as some of you have suggested. I'm here, healthy and happy and thinking about you all. To fill you in on what I've been doing, here are a few events and scraps of what I can recall over the past (gasp) 5 months of being incomunicado.
The rainy season stopped here just a little while ago, but before it did, a "hurricane" blew through town. This windy, rainy event lasted no more than one hour but had the whole community marveling about how fast the clouds were whooshing by and how their homes might not stand up against such bluster. Before it came, I was on my way to the cancha for soccer practice, when I was stopped by Nina Menche and Don Lolo, parents of maybe my favorite set of kids here. They asked if I wanted to eat with them and, not wanting to be impolite, I ditched my soccer plans and sat down at the table for a plateful of pupusas and homemade salsa.
Halfway into my third bean pupusa, the winds started howling and the rains came down in sideways sheets. Don Lolo hurriedly grabbed ash from the cocina and made large crosses in the dirt in front of thehouse. He then ran back inside, grabbed a 1 lb bag of salt, and hurried outside to throw pinches of it against the wind. After five or six tosses, he headed over to the pila and made little salt crosses on theedge of the washbasin. Lolo's neighbor and younger brother, Rigo, was blowing on his snale horn, a conch shell-like object, either heralding the hurricane or wishing it away. Rigo's toot-tooting every other minute added an eerie quality to an already scary storm.
All of these actions are what Lolo called "secrets from the old days," presumably handed down from their indigenous predecessors and mixed with Spanish Catholicism, with the intention of warding off the hurricane. Lolo is a reasonable, pragmatic man, one who has traveled around El Salvador, wise in the ways of the world, or at least the country. Which is why I was a bit surprised to find him trying to convince me of salt's power to halt hurricanes. But who am I to say it didn't? The hurricane stopped abruptly and the Lolo remained convinced that he could alter weather patterns with his salt-and-ash trick. I'll leave the weather to the weatherman.
Not too long ago, I woke up to sounds of my favorite, testicle-free goat making sickly, deathbed bleating noises. The poor guy had been kicked by a donkey who had gotten loose in the early morning (sadly – to me anyway – the village has only one donkey, who honks his donkeyhonk every hour on the hour). Not sure why the donkey kicked this poor little guy, but he ended up breaking my goat's neck and twisting it 90 degrees out of shape (I say my goat because I feel like he is a part of me, having eaten his nether regions). As he sat there wailing, I hoped someone would come along and kill him out of kindness. But when I came back four hours later after teaching my morning classes, he was still there, in an even sorrier state. I ate my lunch as he slowly expired, honestly oblivious to his suffering. I think living here has made me a more callous person, at least with respect to animals. I have even started to kick the mangy, stray dogs and throw rocks at them – best defense is a good offense, right?
Anyway, my goat ended up passing on sometime that afternoon, and my culinary experience with goats came full circle, as I dined on the goat whose balls I had eaten only a few short months before. Like the goat "huevos", the goat meat made a less-than-pleasant meal, but mainly because my host mother, although an incredibly nice old lady, struggles in the kitchen. The meat tasted like old frying pan, but at least the horrible bleating had stopped.
So it could be that I haven't written you in awhile because nothing weirdly spectacular has happened to me in such a long time. And this could be because I'm now so accustomed to life here that all the craziness seems normal. I have now reached a state of such contentedness, such assimilation here in the community that leaving it seems a strange idea. To illustrate how comfortable and integrated I feel here, I'll tell you about my first encounter with the famed and feared gang members here in El Salvador.
I was hanging out at a friend's daughter's quinceaniera (15th birthday party), enjoying my plate of chicken, when I received a tap on the shoulder. I knew everyone at the party, but I didn't know this kid, who began to rapidly ask me for a quarter. When, bewildered, I said Ididn't have one, he asked for a dollar. My friends told me not to give him anything, and he walked away angry. Five minutes later, a fat guy with a big 18 tattooed on his stomach (the 18th street gang is apparently the most violent gang here, and that's saying a lot) approached me and said, "Hey man, I sent that other guy over here to take your money, because, you know, Gringos always have money. But I didn't know you worked here in the community. Everyone here says you live here and not to mess with you, so I wanted to come over and personally ask your pardon." Oddly, after talking with this scary person, I felt that all my work here had paid off, that I was now worth standing up to a gang member in the eyes of the people here, that I really belonged to my community.
Work-wise, I've been spending most of my days in the literacy program that my friend Dany and I started here in the school. We've seen some major progress lately, as many of the kids we started with who could not read at all (some as old as 12) are now reading fluidly. This new skill has stoked their interest in books, which has led me to make the first moves to start up a small library here in El Pital. Sadly, nobody here reads for pleasure – no newspapers, books or magazines. And I sincerely believe that incorporating books and reading into the culture here will drastically change this community for the better. Not only will it increase reading ability and mentally sharpen the kids here, but it will also open them up to new worlds and exercise their imaginations. Which will hopefully lead them to think about their future and their lives outside of the context of subsistence farming, and to pursue the educational opportunities that exist here (and they do exist) in favor of packing it up and making the dangerous trip north.
Apart from the success we've seen with the literacy project, my favorite part of teaching there is my first grade class. We've got 15 little ones, full of energy and excited to be working with Benja (we even have our own handshakes). The best part: NONE of them have their front teeth. It's a classroom full of smiling, bright-eyed and toothless little kids who whistle when they say their S's. There are few things that make me smile as much as these little guys.
A little while ago, we received a hugely generous donation of over 30 computers from my favorite former employers at Keesal Young & Logan. Amazingly, the computers traveled the thousands of miles of high seas from Los Angeles to San Salvador without a scrape. Some are in use at the moment, but I´m now in the infant stages of planning construction of a large computer center for the school. There is no end to the benefits that a computer center in this rural community will bring. In the short term, programs teaching English, math, reading, science and problem solving will used by all students, and will provide a different learning approach to those who don´t do well under the current pedagogic system (which is dismal). In addition to improving scholastic performance in all students, I am confident that computer knowledge will one day provide jobs for these kids. Seven huge corporations, including Dell, have set up call centers in San Salvador, and are constantly contacting my boss to see if there are any capable Salvadoran youth out there looking for work in this burgeoning tech industry. And if these kids find work due to their computer knowledge or general academic ability, it will stem the flow of immigrants heading to El Norte, meaning less broken families here and slowing the brain drain that is currently plaguing this country, at least in the campo. Lots of work to do!
I'm also steadily busy with my Jovenes En Accion. Not quite a year after forming, our group of 20 kids has now sold over 1,200 cards and made over $4,500 (thanks to you all, of course). A third of our profits have gone to community service projects and events, such as buying gift baskets for the poorest widows in the community, providing trashcans for the soccer field, financing a Mother's Day luncheon and paying the hospital fees of an injured group member. We've put another third toward field trips to exotic locales, to show the kids the natural beauty that exists in their own country. The final third always goes to the artists themselves, with the stipulation that they save half of that third with the community-run micro-credit bank (also run by my friend Dany). Through this alliance with the bank, we have now set up 20 savings accounts for the kids in the group, and they have collectively saved a little over $450, learning about interest and the importance of saving for their future in the process. Without these kids, my life here would be far less interesting.
I hope to catch up with you all and share more stories when I'm back in the states briefly for Christmas, but if I somehow don't get the chance, I'd love to hear from you via email. What's going on out there in Gringolandia? Again, sorry for not writing in so long – my New Year's resolution is to write more. And to stop eating goat parts.
Love,
Benja
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
When The Rains Came...
June 11, 2007
Hi Everybody,
Hope this letter finds everyone happy and in the throes of summertime in the good ole U S of A. Here, we´re getting ready for the rainy season, which is a busy and exciting time in El Pital. On Friday, as Dany and I were giving our usual afternoon literacy/remedial math class, the skies opened up, sending us the year´s first real dousing of rain. The rain has been a long time coming, and has been the subject of much debate lately. People here wait for the first rains of the season to plant their corn and beans, which will sustain them for the rest of the year. However, if the rains don't come in May or early June, the crop won't be developed enough by the time the rains stop, usually in September or October. If there are no ears of corn on your maiz plants by the time the rains stop, you and your family are out of luck, and tortillas. And if you plant before the rains come, your seeds will obviously die for lack of water.
The planting itself is an intense, 6-10 day process of spraying pesticide, weeding, and finally planting the seeds. Once the earth is softened by the first rains, family groups head for the hills and stab the earth in neat rows, using a spiky tool called a chusa to dig a 1- 2 inch hole. Two seeds are then expertly tossed into the small hole, which is covered up with your foot as you take small, measured steps from one end of your field ("milpa") to the next. On Saturday, I saddled up the horses and set out with my four host brothers to our family milpa, and I sowed seeds with the best of them. And as it turns out, I´m not very good at it. Though, to be fair, I was only using one hand/arm, as the day before I sliced off part of my finger pad while peeling potatoes with the new peeler my mom sent me. That's a quality peeler.
As I lagged far behind the others while plodding slowly through the field, awkwardly sowing my seeds, I marveled at the concentration, coordination, and brute strength it requires to sow corn by hand. By the time the women arrived with lunch at noon, having carried our chicken-soup, tortillas, and tamarindo fresco up the hill on a half-hour hike, I was beat. Broken blisters lined my hands and sweat drenched my shirt as the sun beat down. This humbling experience not only made me more appreciative of the work these men and women do day in and day out, but also of the tortillas that I take for granted and so often cram down my throat with little pleasure. I´ve started to enjoy these little corn pancakes once again.
Ok, back to the damp literacy classroom. As the rain fell in giant drops, I stared up in awe, first at the intensity of the rain, and then at the fact that here I was in very rural El Salvador, in an open classroom (the walls are half cement, half chain-link fence) that felt more like an ocean-going vessel with the spray on my face and the water we were taking in. Moments like these, where I feel like I suddenly wake up from the dream my life seems to be here, aren't frequent. But when the do occur, they come with a startling clarity, like a sleeping foot being shaken awake, pins and needles. I thought of how very different my life is here, and then of how very different lives in general are here. How many kids in the states have to worry about their notebooks getting wet during class due to the wind blowing the rain through the chain-link? But I also thought about the strong connection with nature among the people here, and that having to deal with weather inside your classroom, as well as being able to marvel at it and watch it from your desk, though a bit distracting, can be a beautiful thing. As the winds were swirling around us in the classroom, flecks of rain hitting us now and then in the face, I took a quick look around the classroom and saw only excited eyes, all in awe of the power of the storm. A lesson in itself, maybe, and one that they receive every year, reminding them that nature is far bigger than they are, and that they and their crop-sowing parents depend on its whims for their survival.
Lately, I've been incredibly homesick for San Francisco. Suddenly or gradually, day-in and day-out, fragments of words, smells, sights and things still unknown to me conspire here to remind me of the places, sights, smells, restaurants, FOOD, and people that I left behind in San Francisco. Not to say that the rest of you aren't constantly on my mind, but the city by the bay seems to hold particular sway over me right now. I do miss that place. But I'm not sure I could trade the daily craziness, the humor and absurdity of everyday goings-on, laughing out loud with the 4 little girls next door, and the genuine warmth that people show me here to go back to San Francisco right now. Or maybe I could - my mind changes by the minute. I shared this thought with my Peace Corps friend Greg the other day: Having had this experience, are we forever doomed to straddle the divide between Latin America and the States? Will the grass always be greener where we are not? I´m not sure I will ever be in one place without intensely missing the other.
I promised you all awhile ago that I would tell you a little bit about what I'll be doing work-wise in the next few months to come. Sorry for the short form, but here´s the list:
· Teaching English classes to adults and high-school kids 2 nights a week
· Advising and teaching the teachers various participatory learning strategies in the English classes taught in the school
·Working with Dany, a local NGO worker and all-around community all-star, in the literacy/remedial math program
·Working with my Environmental Youth Group to give talks and demonstrations on organic fertilizer, preventing Dengue fever, reforestation, recycling and other environmental themes.
·Soliciting 3,000 trees from an NGO here to reforest our hillsides and protect our water resources.
·Continuing with the Jovenes En Accion (the card makers/small business youth group). In the future, I plan on giving the group a series of classes titled "Negocios Exitosos" (successful businesses), on the basics of starting and running small businesses. After these classes, the kids will choose a micro-business to start ( i.e. making and selling hand cremes, buying a blender and making smoothies) and then form groups based on their choices. Each group will receive $20 or $30 to start up (from the card profits), and we'll see how successful they can be.
·Working with friends in the states to get 30 or so computers donated to the school
·Building a computer center for the school
·Eventually revamping the water system here, with the help and sage advice of my dad
·Planning for my opus, which is to build a high-school to serve the students in the community and surrounding communities, who have proven themselves to be chomping at the bit for more education and more opportunities.
Also, since I last wrote, I took a vacation with my family to Costa Rica. It was an amazing trip, and I can´t really do it justice in an email. But I will say that Costa Rica was mind-bogglingly beautiful, and I was grateful for the chance to see where my sister had learned, lived and worked, and thought it incredible to see parts of the country through her eyes. After the trip, the whole group came back to El Salvador and holed up in my little corner of the country for three days. The experience was beyond intense, as my two worlds collided for the first time. Actually, it was more of a beautiful meshing than a collision, as the community rolled out the red carpet for my family, and my family dealt with everything new and unfamiliar with poise and fearlessness. I was so proud of everyone, and when they left, I felt that the goodbyes were much more difficult than those said when I left the US for El Salvador in September. To this day, every day, my family is talked about and asked about by everyone in the community.
Thanks for bearing with me on another long-winded email from The Savior. I don't get many opportunities to speak English, so when I get going, its hard to stop. I also apologize for not getting back to many of you who have responded to my emails. I love the responses, and laugh aloud and think about them (and you all) a lot. I promise to be better about replies in the future. Also, pictures will be forthcoming the next time I make it to the e-cafe. Until then, take care of yourselves, and enjoy the summatime!
--Benjamin
Hi Everybody,
Hope this letter finds everyone happy and in the throes of summertime in the good ole U S of A. Here, we´re getting ready for the rainy season, which is a busy and exciting time in El Pital. On Friday, as Dany and I were giving our usual afternoon literacy/remedial math class, the skies opened up, sending us the year´s first real dousing of rain. The rain has been a long time coming, and has been the subject of much debate lately. People here wait for the first rains of the season to plant their corn and beans, which will sustain them for the rest of the year. However, if the rains don't come in May or early June, the crop won't be developed enough by the time the rains stop, usually in September or October. If there are no ears of corn on your maiz plants by the time the rains stop, you and your family are out of luck, and tortillas. And if you plant before the rains come, your seeds will obviously die for lack of water.
The planting itself is an intense, 6-10 day process of spraying pesticide, weeding, and finally planting the seeds. Once the earth is softened by the first rains, family groups head for the hills and stab the earth in neat rows, using a spiky tool called a chusa to dig a 1- 2 inch hole. Two seeds are then expertly tossed into the small hole, which is covered up with your foot as you take small, measured steps from one end of your field ("milpa") to the next. On Saturday, I saddled up the horses and set out with my four host brothers to our family milpa, and I sowed seeds with the best of them. And as it turns out, I´m not very good at it. Though, to be fair, I was only using one hand/arm, as the day before I sliced off part of my finger pad while peeling potatoes with the new peeler my mom sent me. That's a quality peeler.
As I lagged far behind the others while plodding slowly through the field, awkwardly sowing my seeds, I marveled at the concentration, coordination, and brute strength it requires to sow corn by hand. By the time the women arrived with lunch at noon, having carried our chicken-soup, tortillas, and tamarindo fresco up the hill on a half-hour hike, I was beat. Broken blisters lined my hands and sweat drenched my shirt as the sun beat down. This humbling experience not only made me more appreciative of the work these men and women do day in and day out, but also of the tortillas that I take for granted and so often cram down my throat with little pleasure. I´ve started to enjoy these little corn pancakes once again.
Ok, back to the damp literacy classroom. As the rain fell in giant drops, I stared up in awe, first at the intensity of the rain, and then at the fact that here I was in very rural El Salvador, in an open classroom (the walls are half cement, half chain-link fence) that felt more like an ocean-going vessel with the spray on my face and the water we were taking in. Moments like these, where I feel like I suddenly wake up from the dream my life seems to be here, aren't frequent. But when the do occur, they come with a startling clarity, like a sleeping foot being shaken awake, pins and needles. I thought of how very different my life is here, and then of how very different lives in general are here. How many kids in the states have to worry about their notebooks getting wet during class due to the wind blowing the rain through the chain-link? But I also thought about the strong connection with nature among the people here, and that having to deal with weather inside your classroom, as well as being able to marvel at it and watch it from your desk, though a bit distracting, can be a beautiful thing. As the winds were swirling around us in the classroom, flecks of rain hitting us now and then in the face, I took a quick look around the classroom and saw only excited eyes, all in awe of the power of the storm. A lesson in itself, maybe, and one that they receive every year, reminding them that nature is far bigger than they are, and that they and their crop-sowing parents depend on its whims for their survival.
Lately, I've been incredibly homesick for San Francisco. Suddenly or gradually, day-in and day-out, fragments of words, smells, sights and things still unknown to me conspire here to remind me of the places, sights, smells, restaurants, FOOD, and people that I left behind in San Francisco. Not to say that the rest of you aren't constantly on my mind, but the city by the bay seems to hold particular sway over me right now. I do miss that place. But I'm not sure I could trade the daily craziness, the humor and absurdity of everyday goings-on, laughing out loud with the 4 little girls next door, and the genuine warmth that people show me here to go back to San Francisco right now. Or maybe I could - my mind changes by the minute. I shared this thought with my Peace Corps friend Greg the other day: Having had this experience, are we forever doomed to straddle the divide between Latin America and the States? Will the grass always be greener where we are not? I´m not sure I will ever be in one place without intensely missing the other.
I promised you all awhile ago that I would tell you a little bit about what I'll be doing work-wise in the next few months to come. Sorry for the short form, but here´s the list:
· Teaching English classes to adults and high-school kids 2 nights a week
· Advising and teaching the teachers various participatory learning strategies in the English classes taught in the school
·Working with Dany, a local NGO worker and all-around community all-star, in the literacy/remedial math program
·Working with my Environmental Youth Group to give talks and demonstrations on organic fertilizer, preventing Dengue fever, reforestation, recycling and other environmental themes.
·Soliciting 3,000 trees from an NGO here to reforest our hillsides and protect our water resources.
·Continuing with the Jovenes En Accion (the card makers/small business youth group). In the future, I plan on giving the group a series of classes titled "Negocios Exitosos" (successful businesses), on the basics of starting and running small businesses. After these classes, the kids will choose a micro-business to start ( i.e. making and selling hand cremes, buying a blender and making smoothies) and then form groups based on their choices. Each group will receive $20 or $30 to start up (from the card profits), and we'll see how successful they can be.
·Working with friends in the states to get 30 or so computers donated to the school
·Building a computer center for the school
·Eventually revamping the water system here, with the help and sage advice of my dad
·Planning for my opus, which is to build a high-school to serve the students in the community and surrounding communities, who have proven themselves to be chomping at the bit for more education and more opportunities.
Also, since I last wrote, I took a vacation with my family to Costa Rica. It was an amazing trip, and I can´t really do it justice in an email. But I will say that Costa Rica was mind-bogglingly beautiful, and I was grateful for the chance to see where my sister had learned, lived and worked, and thought it incredible to see parts of the country through her eyes. After the trip, the whole group came back to El Salvador and holed up in my little corner of the country for three days. The experience was beyond intense, as my two worlds collided for the first time. Actually, it was more of a beautiful meshing than a collision, as the community rolled out the red carpet for my family, and my family dealt with everything new and unfamiliar with poise and fearlessness. I was so proud of everyone, and when they left, I felt that the goodbyes were much more difficult than those said when I left the US for El Salvador in September. To this day, every day, my family is talked about and asked about by everyone in the community.
Thanks for bearing with me on another long-winded email from The Savior. I don't get many opportunities to speak English, so when I get going, its hard to stop. I also apologize for not getting back to many of you who have responded to my emails. I love the responses, and laugh aloud and think about them (and you all) a lot. I promise to be better about replies in the future. Also, pictures will be forthcoming the next time I make it to the e-cafe. Until then, take care of yourselves, and enjoy the summatime!
--Benjamin
Caballero
May 11, 2007
Hi Everybody,
I feel like I just fired off the my last email full of mutilated goat private parts, but it's been almost two months now. Time has been flying by, and I can hardly believe that I've been here for over 8 months.
Let's see, what's new? On Cinco de Mayo, I bought a horse and named her Mamacita. She's a big, beautiful, well-mannered, brown and white horse, and she loves to run. I'd been thinking about buying a caballo for a long time, and was finally convinced the other day after I mounted El Morro, my neighbor's black stallion. I had been invited to ride with my three host brothers and a few others to a farm about 18 km away to look at some baby cows that they were thinking about buying. I always jump at the opportunity to ride horses here, even though this time I was told that I had to dress up, i.e. put on a shirt (I never wear shirts) and don a hat (cowboy up!).
Don Bene, my neighbor who lent me his horse, saddled up El Morro and told me that just a week ago, El Morro bucked and threw off Don Bene's wife, Nina Emerita, breaking her wrist. Having close to zero experience riding horses, I took a deep breath, and got on anyway. As soon as my feet dug into the stirrups, El Morro started to buck, and the more I yanked on his bridle, the angrier he seemed to get. We rode out of El Pital and down the hills until we reached the sugar cane fields, where there is a straight, flat dirt road that lasts for about 3 km. As soon as we reached level ground, El Morro took off into a gallop, building up speed and breaking into a full run. During the first five minutes I was sure that I would fall off and break my cowboy-hatted head, and I had all kinds of visions of being dragged along the dirt road by my big, black horse, just like in the movies. But I eventually learned to loosen my body and adapt to the motion of a horse at full speed, and I was hooked. I left the others far behind as El Morro and I charged through the countryside, villagers scattering at the sight of us and wondering (I imagine) why a strange gringo would be hollering and yelping and streaking through their community on a peaceful Saturday afternoon.
It's funny how opportunities like my ride with El Morro pop up at every now and then, how seemingly boring days suddenly transform into harrowing adventures by simply saying yes to an invitation. I have so much more to tell you, so many more details about my life and work here, but it'll have to wait until next time (gotta catch the bus). I think about you all at night, when I sit in my house, listening to the thousands of bugs create an eerie, pre-historic buzz outside my window, watching the trails of ants coming and going, coming and going, taking huge junebugs and other detritus out of my house and back to their little ant-nest (I don't even have to sweep anymore thanks to these little garbage men). I've got some interesting things (work-related) coming up in the next few months, so stay tuned... I promise I'll get better about sending these emails out with more frequency.
Ciudense,
Ben
P.S. I just sent of the next batch of greeting cards to the US (about 350 cards in all). I'll be sending off a photogallery with some pictures of the artists, among other things (unfortunatly, didn't get any photos of the cards before they left). The kids still love the work, and I'm sure that you all will love the next batch - they're beautiful! Just let my mom know ( sbwms5@cox.net) and she'll hook you up while supplies last (although she'll be out of the country, visiting me and my sister until May 27).
Hi Everybody,
I feel like I just fired off the my last email full of mutilated goat private parts, but it's been almost two months now. Time has been flying by, and I can hardly believe that I've been here for over 8 months.
Let's see, what's new? On Cinco de Mayo, I bought a horse and named her Mamacita. She's a big, beautiful, well-mannered, brown and white horse, and she loves to run. I'd been thinking about buying a caballo for a long time, and was finally convinced the other day after I mounted El Morro, my neighbor's black stallion. I had been invited to ride with my three host brothers and a few others to a farm about 18 km away to look at some baby cows that they were thinking about buying. I always jump at the opportunity to ride horses here, even though this time I was told that I had to dress up, i.e. put on a shirt (I never wear shirts) and don a hat (cowboy up!).
Don Bene, my neighbor who lent me his horse, saddled up El Morro and told me that just a week ago, El Morro bucked and threw off Don Bene's wife, Nina Emerita, breaking her wrist. Having close to zero experience riding horses, I took a deep breath, and got on anyway. As soon as my feet dug into the stirrups, El Morro started to buck, and the more I yanked on his bridle, the angrier he seemed to get. We rode out of El Pital and down the hills until we reached the sugar cane fields, where there is a straight, flat dirt road that lasts for about 3 km. As soon as we reached level ground, El Morro took off into a gallop, building up speed and breaking into a full run. During the first five minutes I was sure that I would fall off and break my cowboy-hatted head, and I had all kinds of visions of being dragged along the dirt road by my big, black horse, just like in the movies. But I eventually learned to loosen my body and adapt to the motion of a horse at full speed, and I was hooked. I left the others far behind as El Morro and I charged through the countryside, villagers scattering at the sight of us and wondering (I imagine) why a strange gringo would be hollering and yelping and streaking through their community on a peaceful Saturday afternoon.
It's funny how opportunities like my ride with El Morro pop up at every now and then, how seemingly boring days suddenly transform into harrowing adventures by simply saying yes to an invitation. I have so much more to tell you, so many more details about my life and work here, but it'll have to wait until next time (gotta catch the bus). I think about you all at night, when I sit in my house, listening to the thousands of bugs create an eerie, pre-historic buzz outside my window, watching the trails of ants coming and going, coming and going, taking huge junebugs and other detritus out of my house and back to their little ant-nest (I don't even have to sweep anymore thanks to these little garbage men). I've got some interesting things (work-related) coming up in the next few months, so stay tuned... I promise I'll get better about sending these emails out with more frequency.
Ciudense,
Ben
P.S. I just sent of the next batch of greeting cards to the US (about 350 cards in all). I'll be sending off a photogallery with some pictures of the artists, among other things (unfortunatly, didn't get any photos of the cards before they left). The kids still love the work, and I'm sure that you all will love the next batch - they're beautiful! Just let my mom know ( sbwms5@cox.net) and she'll hook you up while supplies last (although she'll be out of the country, visiting me and my sister until May 27).
Ouch
Mar. 24, 2007
Ok, here's a quick story. The other day, as we were working on the greeting cards, a gust of wind came up and knocked a few freshly painted cards onto the patio. I was in the middle of sending my friend a text message, and reached for the flying cards. I didn't catch a single one, and in the process, dumped my phone into a large bucket of blue paint. It was fully submerged in the bucket, and I was sure it was ruined. After washing it off and taking it apart, my friend told me I should reinstall the chip or something, which would require digging around in one of my luggage bags for an old receipt, which contains some secret PIN apparently necessary to the process. I still don't really understand what he said.
Anyway, I was fishing around in my bag, looking for this piece of paper, when all of the sudden, POW!, extreme pain shot through my hand. Finally, I thought, my first scorpion bite. I ran to show my host dad, Don Victor, and he mumbled something unintelligible, like he always does to me (we're not exactly best buddies). I could feel the venom crawling up my arm, until it reached my armpit, where it stayed, along with the pain. My tongue started to feel a little numb, too. So I moved on from my odd host father and showed the sting to Nina Genia, my adoring host mother. She told me that we needed to hunt that thing down and kill it before it has babies. So, with the entire rest of the family looking on, we emptied out my three bags (in which I've been hiding and hoarding things I haven't wanted to share, things that, after this incident, are no longer secret nor horded. Good thing I had already taken out my bottle of scotch). The scorpion emerged after a few shakes of the bag, and I killed it with my flip flop in a moment of sweet revenge. I then reenacted the moment of the sting for your viewing pleasure, in the attached photos. We ended up finding two more little scorpions in various parts of the house. I'm scared to crawl in my bed. China says I have scorpions because I'm a cochino (pig) and I don't sweep my house correctly. I tend to agree with her.
So now I have a scorpion sting, a blue phone that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and a story to tell. The pain has faded and my hand is almost back to normal. Hope all's well in Los United.
-Benja
Ok, here's a quick story. The other day, as we were working on the greeting cards, a gust of wind came up and knocked a few freshly painted cards onto the patio. I was in the middle of sending my friend a text message, and reached for the flying cards. I didn't catch a single one, and in the process, dumped my phone into a large bucket of blue paint. It was fully submerged in the bucket, and I was sure it was ruined. After washing it off and taking it apart, my friend told me I should reinstall the chip or something, which would require digging around in one of my luggage bags for an old receipt, which contains some secret PIN apparently necessary to the process. I still don't really understand what he said.
Anyway, I was fishing around in my bag, looking for this piece of paper, when all of the sudden, POW!, extreme pain shot through my hand. Finally, I thought, my first scorpion bite. I ran to show my host dad, Don Victor, and he mumbled something unintelligible, like he always does to me (we're not exactly best buddies). I could feel the venom crawling up my arm, until it reached my armpit, where it stayed, along with the pain. My tongue started to feel a little numb, too. So I moved on from my odd host father and showed the sting to Nina Genia, my adoring host mother. She told me that we needed to hunt that thing down and kill it before it has babies. So, with the entire rest of the family looking on, we emptied out my three bags (in which I've been hiding and hoarding things I haven't wanted to share, things that, after this incident, are no longer secret nor horded. Good thing I had already taken out my bottle of scotch). The scorpion emerged after a few shakes of the bag, and I killed it with my flip flop in a moment of sweet revenge. I then reenacted the moment of the sting for your viewing pleasure, in the attached photos. We ended up finding two more little scorpions in various parts of the house. I'm scared to crawl in my bed. China says I have scorpions because I'm a cochino (pig) and I don't sweep my house correctly. I tend to agree with her.
So now I have a scorpion sting, a blue phone that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and a story to tell. The pain has faded and my hand is almost back to normal. Hope all's well in Los United.
-Benja
Having a Ball(s)
Mar. 17, 2007
Hi everyone,
Just a quick disclaimer about this email and the photos that follow – you might want to read it and view them after you eat. Sorry in advance!
Yesterday evening, after a somewhat painful day of teaching and getting nowhere working with kids with learning disabilities, I returned to my house amid the excitement a goat castration in progress. Nain and Onan called for me to come and watch, and although I really wanted to see this (just to say I did), my stomach hurt and I felt a little dizzy at the thought of cutting off a goat´s testicles. Seems like it might hurt.
I was asked to hold the head down while they did the deed. Avoiding the bucking horns and snapping teeth as best I could, I wrapped one hand around the goat´s neck and forced the other hand between the horns for maximum leverage. To squeeze a goat's mouth shut while he's screaming that old man scream and sticking out his helpless little goat tongue requires some degree of heartlessness, which I was surprised to find in myself. I actually started to laugh, and couldn't stop. Here was this poor, wailing goat, a visceral reminder of how weird and different my life is now from the one I used to have in the States. How many times in my life have I gotten home from work only to watch a middle-aged woman use a razor blade to slice open a goat's scrotum (which is quite large, FYI) and tear out the huevos (and I mean tear– those things are attached to something in there!)? Niña Blanca, the unflinching ball surgeon, used no anaesthetic. I felt terrible for that little cabro, but in 5 minutes, he was up and walking around as if nothing had happened.
Oh, I almost forgot. As if watching that weren't enough, Caren (my 12 year-old neighbor) then took the nads and washed them off in the pila. I started to think about why she'd be doing that when all of the sudden, she threwthe goat testicle at me. It bounced off of my stomach and onto the ground, leaving drops of blood and a smudge of scrotum slime. She laughed, along with everyone else. Turns out she was washing them because Nina Genia would be preparing sauteed goat balls for dinner, with a little bit of tomato. I wrote a haiku to commemorate the meal:
Sizzling, glistening
As they fried on the wood stove.
Delicious goat balls.
Really, the weren't that delicious. Imagine that. The meat was soft and gelatinous, and tasted like livestock. And I kept imagining all of the little, future goats I was eating. Definitely not one of my more enjoyable dinners here, but I was able to stuff it down quickly and sneak a few bits to Oso the dog. Wonder how many times he's eaten goat testicles? Oh – another funny moment: Nain told me from across the dinner table, with a straight face, that he prefers cow balls. They're saltier, he says. I had to laugh.
I feel like I only write when I've eaten a bad meal or mutilated a goat, or both in this case. It's really not all I do here, I promise. My weeks are packed with activities, some more enjoyable than others. We're still making cards, which were a success thanks to you all, and I'm slowly trying to hand over all of the responsibility to the kids involved. We moved our card factory to the house of the Jovenes en Accion president, Brenda. My role is shrinking, and the kids are willingly taking on the bulk of work I used to do. It's working really well so far.
I'm also co-teaching several English classes in the school (with teachers who don't have any English training) and one adult night class twice a week. The classes in the school are discouraging, because the Ministry of Education only gives us 1 hour each week for English. The kids just don't retain anything, the professors have no English skills (what happens in the communities where Peace Corps Volunteers don't live? Just imagine teaching a Spanish class having taken no Spanish classes, ever) and the pace is excruciatingly slow. The adult class, on the other hand, is fantastic. Everyone in the class really wants to be there, and it's got a rowdy, participatory vibe to it. I love that class, even though someone threw a rock at my head (twice, and hit me both times) from outside the classroom last Thursday. Didn´t like that part so much. Nevertheless, it´s one of the highlights of my week. Even though I try to live in the moment and not think about my friends leaving for the States, it sorta makes me sad to think that everyone's reason for being there is their shared goal of heading north in the future. Odd that, as an employee of the US Government, I'm preparing people for life after they illegally cross that government's border.
You'll see in the photos that I've been doing some hard labor down here, too. My friend Olvin is building a house for himself, and we've been busy making the 800 adobe bricks that the job will require. It's amazing to think that these houses are built entirely from the earth: we put dirt and fine rocks into a pile, throw water on it, mix it with our feet as if we were squashing grapes, and then form it into bricks. The bricks dry in the sun over a period of a few days, after which we'll stack them up and use more mud mixture to stick them together. It's basically a free house!
This time of year, almost all of the men in El Pital and the surrounding communities are involved in what they call the Safra, or the harvesting and processing of sugar cane. There are those who cut the sugar cane, those who collect it and put it into trucks, and those who work at the processing plant down the road. My brother Nain wakes up nearly every day at 4:30 to "rosar cana" (I think it translates as ´raze cane¨…ha.), which means that he walks or rides his horse to a recently-burned sugar cane field, cuts it down with his machete, and stacks it into piles for the collectors. I've been a few times before (to gain macho points, which are crucial here), and I was asked to go again on Sunday to help Nain make his four bucks. We hopped on our horses at 5 amand headed out in the moonlight toward the cane field, my machete strapped to the back of my saddle. Nain gave me the only saddle, so he ended up riding bareback, holding his machete in his hand like a Mongolian raider. We did our allotted work in about 2 hours, as the sun was coming up. I think I came out of it with 10 blisters on my right hand from my machete, and they were popping as I was still working, which really hurt. Silly gringo with his delicate hands.
Aside from that, I've started helping Dany, a Pitalian friend of mine, get his learning center up and running. Our job is to help the kids at the bottom of the rung in El Pital's elementary and junior high school. This means helping kids with severe learning disabilities and, often, behavioral problems. The time spent in this classroom is definitely the most challenging, heart-breaking, and discouraging work that I do here. I start to wonder if this country will ever move forward when I'm working with a group of 6 th graders who can't and don't want to recite the alphabet (much less read), and dealing with parents who could care less about their illiterate kids.
It's frustrating work, and it often gets me down until I step out of the classroom and walk back to my house. Along the way, I usually decide to pick up some fresh bread at the new women's bread-making co-op at Nina Anita's house. As I stroll through town, I have to stop every five minutes to chat with someone for another five or ten. But all of my friends – Don Lolo, Sein, Remberto, Niña Menche, Edwin, Oto, Jane and Gladys – live on this route, so I don't mind the chats. In between stopping and talking, little kids shout out my name from every direction. I think fast and shout their names back at them, getting a smile in return. Another twenty little kids will undoubtedly come up to me and give me five, and sometimes an elaborate handshake. It makes me feel like a movie star.
Well, that does it for this email. Keep in touch, and remember: when someone offers you huevos de cabro, it´s probably best to politely decline.
Adios,
Benjamín
Hi everyone,
Just a quick disclaimer about this email and the photos that follow – you might want to read it and view them after you eat. Sorry in advance!
Yesterday evening, after a somewhat painful day of teaching and getting nowhere working with kids with learning disabilities, I returned to my house amid the excitement a goat castration in progress. Nain and Onan called for me to come and watch, and although I really wanted to see this (just to say I did), my stomach hurt and I felt a little dizzy at the thought of cutting off a goat´s testicles. Seems like it might hurt.
I was asked to hold the head down while they did the deed. Avoiding the bucking horns and snapping teeth as best I could, I wrapped one hand around the goat´s neck and forced the other hand between the horns for maximum leverage. To squeeze a goat's mouth shut while he's screaming that old man scream and sticking out his helpless little goat tongue requires some degree of heartlessness, which I was surprised to find in myself. I actually started to laugh, and couldn't stop. Here was this poor, wailing goat, a visceral reminder of how weird and different my life is now from the one I used to have in the States. How many times in my life have I gotten home from work only to watch a middle-aged woman use a razor blade to slice open a goat's scrotum (which is quite large, FYI) and tear out the huevos (and I mean tear– those things are attached to something in there!)? Niña Blanca, the unflinching ball surgeon, used no anaesthetic. I felt terrible for that little cabro, but in 5 minutes, he was up and walking around as if nothing had happened.
Oh, I almost forgot. As if watching that weren't enough, Caren (my 12 year-old neighbor) then took the nads and washed them off in the pila. I started to think about why she'd be doing that when all of the sudden, she threwthe goat testicle at me. It bounced off of my stomach and onto the ground, leaving drops of blood and a smudge of scrotum slime. She laughed, along with everyone else. Turns out she was washing them because Nina Genia would be preparing sauteed goat balls for dinner, with a little bit of tomato. I wrote a haiku to commemorate the meal:
Sizzling, glistening
As they fried on the wood stove.
Delicious goat balls.
Really, the weren't that delicious. Imagine that. The meat was soft and gelatinous, and tasted like livestock. And I kept imagining all of the little, future goats I was eating. Definitely not one of my more enjoyable dinners here, but I was able to stuff it down quickly and sneak a few bits to Oso the dog. Wonder how many times he's eaten goat testicles? Oh – another funny moment: Nain told me from across the dinner table, with a straight face, that he prefers cow balls. They're saltier, he says. I had to laugh.
I feel like I only write when I've eaten a bad meal or mutilated a goat, or both in this case. It's really not all I do here, I promise. My weeks are packed with activities, some more enjoyable than others. We're still making cards, which were a success thanks to you all, and I'm slowly trying to hand over all of the responsibility to the kids involved. We moved our card factory to the house of the Jovenes en Accion president, Brenda. My role is shrinking, and the kids are willingly taking on the bulk of work I used to do. It's working really well so far.
I'm also co-teaching several English classes in the school (with teachers who don't have any English training) and one adult night class twice a week. The classes in the school are discouraging, because the Ministry of Education only gives us 1 hour each week for English. The kids just don't retain anything, the professors have no English skills (what happens in the communities where Peace Corps Volunteers don't live? Just imagine teaching a Spanish class having taken no Spanish classes, ever) and the pace is excruciatingly slow. The adult class, on the other hand, is fantastic. Everyone in the class really wants to be there, and it's got a rowdy, participatory vibe to it. I love that class, even though someone threw a rock at my head (twice, and hit me both times) from outside the classroom last Thursday. Didn´t like that part so much. Nevertheless, it´s one of the highlights of my week. Even though I try to live in the moment and not think about my friends leaving for the States, it sorta makes me sad to think that everyone's reason for being there is their shared goal of heading north in the future. Odd that, as an employee of the US Government, I'm preparing people for life after they illegally cross that government's border.
You'll see in the photos that I've been doing some hard labor down here, too. My friend Olvin is building a house for himself, and we've been busy making the 800 adobe bricks that the job will require. It's amazing to think that these houses are built entirely from the earth: we put dirt and fine rocks into a pile, throw water on it, mix it with our feet as if we were squashing grapes, and then form it into bricks. The bricks dry in the sun over a period of a few days, after which we'll stack them up and use more mud mixture to stick them together. It's basically a free house!
This time of year, almost all of the men in El Pital and the surrounding communities are involved in what they call the Safra, or the harvesting and processing of sugar cane. There are those who cut the sugar cane, those who collect it and put it into trucks, and those who work at the processing plant down the road. My brother Nain wakes up nearly every day at 4:30 to "rosar cana" (I think it translates as ´raze cane¨…ha.), which means that he walks or rides his horse to a recently-burned sugar cane field, cuts it down with his machete, and stacks it into piles for the collectors. I've been a few times before (to gain macho points, which are crucial here), and I was asked to go again on Sunday to help Nain make his four bucks. We hopped on our horses at 5 amand headed out in the moonlight toward the cane field, my machete strapped to the back of my saddle. Nain gave me the only saddle, so he ended up riding bareback, holding his machete in his hand like a Mongolian raider. We did our allotted work in about 2 hours, as the sun was coming up. I think I came out of it with 10 blisters on my right hand from my machete, and they were popping as I was still working, which really hurt. Silly gringo with his delicate hands.
Aside from that, I've started helping Dany, a Pitalian friend of mine, get his learning center up and running. Our job is to help the kids at the bottom of the rung in El Pital's elementary and junior high school. This means helping kids with severe learning disabilities and, often, behavioral problems. The time spent in this classroom is definitely the most challenging, heart-breaking, and discouraging work that I do here. I start to wonder if this country will ever move forward when I'm working with a group of 6 th graders who can't and don't want to recite the alphabet (much less read), and dealing with parents who could care less about their illiterate kids.
It's frustrating work, and it often gets me down until I step out of the classroom and walk back to my house. Along the way, I usually decide to pick up some fresh bread at the new women's bread-making co-op at Nina Anita's house. As I stroll through town, I have to stop every five minutes to chat with someone for another five or ten. But all of my friends – Don Lolo, Sein, Remberto, Niña Menche, Edwin, Oto, Jane and Gladys – live on this route, so I don't mind the chats. In between stopping and talking, little kids shout out my name from every direction. I think fast and shout their names back at them, getting a smile in return. Another twenty little kids will undoubtedly come up to me and give me five, and sometimes an elaborate handshake. It makes me feel like a movie star.
Well, that does it for this email. Keep in touch, and remember: when someone offers you huevos de cabro, it´s probably best to politely decline.
Adios,
Benjamín
A´Huntin´ and A´Fishin´ in the Campo
Feb. 27, 2007
Hi All,
It´s been relatively uneventful down here since my last email. Leche´s horn is still on my roof because it smells really bad, and the other one sits happily atop his head, making an already funny-looking animal look even sillier. We´ve been working away on the greeting cards, and I´m happy to announce that we´ve sent the first shipment of 248 to the States today. I´ll be sending some pictures of the cards and the process shortly. The quality varies quite a bit (in my opinion), but I hope that you´ll find something worthwhile and unique in each one. If you´re interested, please send an email to my mom, Mary ( sbwms5@cox.net), and she´ll set you up (thanks mom). We´re already working on the next batch, so if you don´t get your orders this time around, be comforted that the second round will be even better, as the kids now have practiced hands.
Aside from making cards, I´ve basically been following my friends and host family around in their adventures. Just the other day, I went fishing with China and her parents in the canals that run through the cane fields. Actually, they don´t really run much at all this time of year because it hasn´t rained for months, and the canals are more like stagnant pools of cloudy, smelly water. As you´ll see in the photos, Nain used an actual fishing net, while the rest of us used a grain sack to trap the little minnows, called Bute. As soon as I stepped into the lukewarm ditchwater, my stomach did a little dance, and a voice in my head sarcastically anticipated the delicious fried bute soup we would undoubtedly eat later on that night. But if I´ve learned anything here, I´ve learned to ignore that little voice and power through whatever awful meal or awkward experience lies ahead.
As Ceci and I slowly dragged the grain sack through the nasty sludge, we picked up all sorts of animals - butes, polliwogs (yum), water-cockroaches (huge!), and weird, centipede-like creatures, which really got me excited about walking barefoot along the muddy canal bottom. We picked out everything but the bute and threw the catch up on the riverbank, where China and Mariela would pick out the little minnows in the sand and throw them into the pot that we brought with us. China actually found a few crabs underneath the rocks in the mud, and we threw those into the bute pot for an added delicacy later on that night. As personally (and privately) disgusted as I was with the fishing scene (I´m a germaphobe, but I´m slowly overcoming it here), it was refreshing to watch these kids happily and excitedly sloshing around in the mud and filthy water, grabbing at crabs and minnows, talking about the delicious soup that they would later make. For better or worse, the kids here in the campo lead lives without boundaries and without much parental concern or guidance; because of this, they are very active, very self-sufficient, and they have a distinct awareness of and connection with the food they eat, unlike many of their American counterparts.
I also had the good fortune to go hunting the other night with my friend Jose. I don´t think Jose knows my name, as he refers to me only as ¨FRIENDS!¨ (he´s got a volume control issue, and is always yelling). I was winding down the evening on my porch, playing Uno with the neighbor girls, when I heard ¨FRIENDS! LET´S GO HUNTING!¨. I didn´t really want to go, as it had been a long day, but I knew that I couldn´t turn down an offer like this. I cancelled the Uno game (thank god - it was approaching the hour mark already), put on my shoes, and headed up to Jose´s house on the top of the hill. We got his 4 dogs ready, filled our water bottles, and sharpened the machete. We would be hunting for Cuzuco, which is apparently like a cross between a tortoise and an armadillo, but runs really fast. Who knows? We then set off into the hills where a surprisingly bright half-moon guided us along the trail. We heard all sorts of strange animal sounds, mostly birds, coming from the trees and surrounding brush, some of which sounded exactly like the loogie-hawking sounds that used to emanate from my old apartment complex in Chinatown. It brought me back to San Francisco for a moment.
The dogs dispersed in every direction, sniffing around for a cuzuco hole and returning every 10 minutes or so to check in with their master as we ambled along the trail. Mixed in among the animal sounds were the heavy beats of Reggaeton from a dance in nearby La Magdalena and the off-key singing from an Evangelical church down in the ravine. We ended up hiking for a good 2 hours until we returned to El Pital, where the town was quiet and everyone was asleep. Although we didn´t find and decapitate a cuzuco, it was still a great night. I got to see the hills of El Pital covered in moonlight. Far away from my chatty neighbors and the clatter of village life, I seemed to float above the town, my head clear now and far away from everything.
Yesterday, as I was hanging out with Josue and Edwin, my two best friends in the community, I received some bad news. After the sugar cane harvest ends in March, both will be heading for El Norte. I will lose the two people I get along with best to the dream of a job in the States. They´re heading up without a coyote, which means they´ll be traveling through Guatemala and Mexico by themselves, a dangerous trek. They´ll cross the border in Juarez, across from El Paso, by ¨sneaking around the fence¨. As much as I´ve tried to talk them out of making the trip, it´s hard to dissuade someone from at least attempting to go to the States to make 25 times what you´d make in El Salvador. And as bad as coyotes are, at least they know the way. I hope these guys make it, or at least make it back to El Pital safely. I sort of wish I could go with them, just to see what the journey is like. Maybe next year.
Ok, that´s it. Thanks for all your emails - I love hearing about life back in the States, or wherever you are.
Until next time,
Benjamín
Hi All,
It´s been relatively uneventful down here since my last email. Leche´s horn is still on my roof because it smells really bad, and the other one sits happily atop his head, making an already funny-looking animal look even sillier. We´ve been working away on the greeting cards, and I´m happy to announce that we´ve sent the first shipment of 248 to the States today. I´ll be sending some pictures of the cards and the process shortly. The quality varies quite a bit (in my opinion), but I hope that you´ll find something worthwhile and unique in each one. If you´re interested, please send an email to my mom, Mary ( sbwms5@cox.net), and she´ll set you up (thanks mom). We´re already working on the next batch, so if you don´t get your orders this time around, be comforted that the second round will be even better, as the kids now have practiced hands.
Aside from making cards, I´ve basically been following my friends and host family around in their adventures. Just the other day, I went fishing with China and her parents in the canals that run through the cane fields. Actually, they don´t really run much at all this time of year because it hasn´t rained for months, and the canals are more like stagnant pools of cloudy, smelly water. As you´ll see in the photos, Nain used an actual fishing net, while the rest of us used a grain sack to trap the little minnows, called Bute. As soon as I stepped into the lukewarm ditchwater, my stomach did a little dance, and a voice in my head sarcastically anticipated the delicious fried bute soup we would undoubtedly eat later on that night. But if I´ve learned anything here, I´ve learned to ignore that little voice and power through whatever awful meal or awkward experience lies ahead.
As Ceci and I slowly dragged the grain sack through the nasty sludge, we picked up all sorts of animals - butes, polliwogs (yum), water-cockroaches (huge!), and weird, centipede-like creatures, which really got me excited about walking barefoot along the muddy canal bottom. We picked out everything but the bute and threw the catch up on the riverbank, where China and Mariela would pick out the little minnows in the sand and throw them into the pot that we brought with us. China actually found a few crabs underneath the rocks in the mud, and we threw those into the bute pot for an added delicacy later on that night. As personally (and privately) disgusted as I was with the fishing scene (I´m a germaphobe, but I´m slowly overcoming it here), it was refreshing to watch these kids happily and excitedly sloshing around in the mud and filthy water, grabbing at crabs and minnows, talking about the delicious soup that they would later make. For better or worse, the kids here in the campo lead lives without boundaries and without much parental concern or guidance; because of this, they are very active, very self-sufficient, and they have a distinct awareness of and connection with the food they eat, unlike many of their American counterparts.
I also had the good fortune to go hunting the other night with my friend Jose. I don´t think Jose knows my name, as he refers to me only as ¨FRIENDS!¨ (he´s got a volume control issue, and is always yelling). I was winding down the evening on my porch, playing Uno with the neighbor girls, when I heard ¨FRIENDS! LET´S GO HUNTING!¨. I didn´t really want to go, as it had been a long day, but I knew that I couldn´t turn down an offer like this. I cancelled the Uno game (thank god - it was approaching the hour mark already), put on my shoes, and headed up to Jose´s house on the top of the hill. We got his 4 dogs ready, filled our water bottles, and sharpened the machete. We would be hunting for Cuzuco, which is apparently like a cross between a tortoise and an armadillo, but runs really fast. Who knows? We then set off into the hills where a surprisingly bright half-moon guided us along the trail. We heard all sorts of strange animal sounds, mostly birds, coming from the trees and surrounding brush, some of which sounded exactly like the loogie-hawking sounds that used to emanate from my old apartment complex in Chinatown. It brought me back to San Francisco for a moment.
The dogs dispersed in every direction, sniffing around for a cuzuco hole and returning every 10 minutes or so to check in with their master as we ambled along the trail. Mixed in among the animal sounds were the heavy beats of Reggaeton from a dance in nearby La Magdalena and the off-key singing from an Evangelical church down in the ravine. We ended up hiking for a good 2 hours until we returned to El Pital, where the town was quiet and everyone was asleep. Although we didn´t find and decapitate a cuzuco, it was still a great night. I got to see the hills of El Pital covered in moonlight. Far away from my chatty neighbors and the clatter of village life, I seemed to float above the town, my head clear now and far away from everything.
Yesterday, as I was hanging out with Josue and Edwin, my two best friends in the community, I received some bad news. After the sugar cane harvest ends in March, both will be heading for El Norte. I will lose the two people I get along with best to the dream of a job in the States. They´re heading up without a coyote, which means they´ll be traveling through Guatemala and Mexico by themselves, a dangerous trek. They´ll cross the border in Juarez, across from El Paso, by ¨sneaking around the fence¨. As much as I´ve tried to talk them out of making the trip, it´s hard to dissuade someone from at least attempting to go to the States to make 25 times what you´d make in El Salvador. And as bad as coyotes are, at least they know the way. I hope these guys make it, or at least make it back to El Pital safely. I sort of wish I could go with them, just to see what the journey is like. Maybe next year.
Ok, that´s it. Thanks for all your emails - I love hearing about life back in the States, or wherever you are.
Until next time,
Benjamín
Leche
Feb. 6, 2007
Hi Everyone,
All here is hot, dry and dusty, and some interesting things have happened to me in the time that's passed since my last email. Yesterday, for example, was unforgettable. I went with my host brother and landlord, Josue, to lead his cows to the stream to drink. We walked there with China (my 6 year-old best friend), taking our time, talking about how crazy Josue's ex-girlfriend was (China agreed), picking baby mangoes and guamas (a huge bean-like fruit with little white edible seeds inside) along the way. Mango season isn't until March, so now the mangoes are really bitter and taste terribly, but the people here love to eat them with a little bit of chili and salt. Anyway, we led Josue's cows (and other random cows) to water and gave them old, dry corn plants to eat, then found his two horses that were waiting for us up by the stream. We mounted the horses bareback, and took off into the Salvadoran countryside, ambling along in the stifling heat. I was shirtless, in shorts and flip-flops, loving every minute of the ride. We could see the Volcano El Chingo in the distance, and rode around in the hills overlooking the sugarcane fields. During the ride, I contemplated buying a horse myself. Apparently, one can buy a horse and saddle here for $200, and have the satisfaction of a trotting into town whenever the need to use the internet café arises. But they're a lot of work, so we'll see how far this idea takes me. At one point during the ride, Josue whipped out his cell phone and made a call, trotting along as he chatted with his friend, and I imagined his doppelganger coasting along the LA freeway, talking on a similar phone, only using a different form of transportation. See? We're really not all that different.
When we got back to the family compound, I made myself some beans and eggs, cranked up The Clash on my little iPod stereo, and ate lunch on my patio overlooking my large host mom taking a bucket shower, topless as usual. Appetizing. Before I could take more than a few bites, I heard what I thought to be the tormented, deep moans of an old man in tremendous pain. I hurried to the source of the sound, and realized that it was only my neighbor, Leche the white goat, screaming in his cage. Goats, or at least the goats we have here, sound startlingly like humans. Baby goats sound like babies crying, and old goats sound like old men screaming. This goat had somehow partially ripped off his horn, and the horn was now dangling from his head, blood dripping into his eyes. My host brother Onan came running to the scene (Leche belongs to him), and as soon as he arrived, the goat escaped from the damaged cage. Once out, Leche ran around like an angry wasp, running into my house and all around the yard before we could catch it. Once Onan wrestled the goat to the ground and got it under control with his boot on its neck, he yelled, "Benja - grab the machete! We need to cut his horn off!" I wasn't prepared for this at all, but I knew that if I did it, I could tell the story later. So I grabbed the machete (which was far too big for the job), and without hesitating, sliced off Leche´s horn from his head. The goat then proceeded to wail like an old man dying a horrific death. Blood spurted out from the horn hole in a thin stream, all over my arms and legs. The poor little guy writhed around with incredible force and escaped Onan's grasp, galloping off in every direction and squirting its bloody squirt gun everywhere it went. I now have a nice coating of goat DNA on my patio. I just stood there in my dusty yard with a bloody machete in one hand and a recently severed goat's horn in the other, watching the goat self-destruct, relishing the adrenaline of de-horning a screaming animal. Onan had to catch it again and put lime (the chemical, not the fruit) in its wound "so that it'll heal" (I have my doubts). Don't worry – they tell me that the goat will be fine. I'm now drying the goat's horn on my roof, and I hope to think up some fun way to use it in the future. Any ideas?
Onan brings me to another thought: I live in the Old Testament down here. The families are huge and they all intermarry. Everyone has goats and cows, and your net worth is still measured in those terms. It's hot and dusty, like the Promised Land. And the gender roles don't seem to have changed for the last 2,000 years. My host brothers are Samuel, Nain, Onan, and Josue (and here I am, a Benjamin). In the Bible, Onan is actually the name of the first person chastised by God for touching his privates without a good reason, the one who first "spilt his seed on the ground." I sort of want to tell him that he's named after the first documented masturbator, but I'm sure he'll come across it in one of the bible study classes that he frequents.
Aside from riding horses and tormenting Leche, I've been busy doing Peace Corps-y things too. Last week, I was asked to translate at an eye clinic put on by one of the Salvadoran NGOs specializing in rural health. They bring about 20 American doctors, nurses and technicians down to perform surgeries on cataracts, crossed eyes, and pterigions (where skin grows over the pupil), and to provide rural people with badly needed eyeglasses. I spent the days translating between patient and doctor, and even had the opportunity to spend a day in the operating room, dressed in scrubs, mask and doctor-hat. I watched as patients with only local anaesthetic had their eyes cut open and operated on, trying to translate, although in the OR the patients were mostly moaning.
We were served three meals a day and were given free beer (!) at night while we hung out with the doctors and their staff. We put in 12 hour days, but they flew by, as we were all instantly gratified by the fact that people came to the clinic unable to see, and left seeing clearly that same day, whether by glasses or surgery. I have a confession to make: I didn't bother to correct people when they called me Senor Doctor and blessed me and thanked me for restoring their vision. I just let it ride. Seriously though, the eye campaign was the most fulfilling thing I've done so far in my time here, and I hope to find more opportunities like it in the future. Plus, I got to keep my scrubs, so everyone here in El Pital thinks I went away for three days and came back a doctor, which makes me even cooler in the eyes of the two little girls who constantly adorn my patio.
I celebrated my birthday on Sunday, and I finally experienced completely genuine feelings of friendship with the people that I live with here in El Pital. Before, I was always suspicious that people liked me because of my camera, or because I would buy them tamales or pupusas, or because I can do card tricks and speak English. But on Saturday night, as I was eating pupusas with my host family in the front yard, enjoying the cool evening breeze, three teens from my youth group stopped by the house. They told me that they needed me to take some pictures of some greeting cards they had made while I was gone at the eye clinic (we're still chugging away on those cards, by the way – they look great). So I agreed, and when I got to the school, all of the lights came on, and the kids from the youth group (about 30) greeted me with a huge surprise birthday party. They had decorated the classroom, brought in a stereo system, and taken the hour-long bus ride to Chalchuapa to buy cakes and soda. I was absolutely stunned. They had done all of this without adult assistance, and it no doubt required a lot of effort and planning. I thanked them profusely, cut the cake, put on my birthday hat and tie, had cake smashed in my face (tradition here), and we all danced to cumbia, salsa, merengue and reggaeton music for hours. I even did the worm, and the crowd went wild.
So things have been different for me here after that party. I finally feel like I can let down my guard a little bit and be myself. My Spanish level has improved such that I can be funny for reasons other than my bad pronunciation. Where the frequent 2 hour visiting sessions with various families used to be painfully awkward and filled with uncomfortable silences, the time flies now, and I actually enjoy myself. Lately, I find myself just being, absorbing everything here and doing as my neighbors do. I'm resisting less, and letting the people, the culture, the weather, the way of life – everything that is El Pital – seep into me.
If you're still reading, thanks for bearing with me. I feel like I've monopolized this conversation for the last few months. I haven't been a very good listener lately. How are YOU doing? Let me know, if you have the time and inclination.
Adios,
Benjamin
Hi Everyone,
All here is hot, dry and dusty, and some interesting things have happened to me in the time that's passed since my last email. Yesterday, for example, was unforgettable. I went with my host brother and landlord, Josue, to lead his cows to the stream to drink. We walked there with China (my 6 year-old best friend), taking our time, talking about how crazy Josue's ex-girlfriend was (China agreed), picking baby mangoes and guamas (a huge bean-like fruit with little white edible seeds inside) along the way. Mango season isn't until March, so now the mangoes are really bitter and taste terribly, but the people here love to eat them with a little bit of chili and salt. Anyway, we led Josue's cows (and other random cows) to water and gave them old, dry corn plants to eat, then found his two horses that were waiting for us up by the stream. We mounted the horses bareback, and took off into the Salvadoran countryside, ambling along in the stifling heat. I was shirtless, in shorts and flip-flops, loving every minute of the ride. We could see the Volcano El Chingo in the distance, and rode around in the hills overlooking the sugarcane fields. During the ride, I contemplated buying a horse myself. Apparently, one can buy a horse and saddle here for $200, and have the satisfaction of a trotting into town whenever the need to use the internet café arises. But they're a lot of work, so we'll see how far this idea takes me. At one point during the ride, Josue whipped out his cell phone and made a call, trotting along as he chatted with his friend, and I imagined his doppelganger coasting along the LA freeway, talking on a similar phone, only using a different form of transportation. See? We're really not all that different.
When we got back to the family compound, I made myself some beans and eggs, cranked up The Clash on my little iPod stereo, and ate lunch on my patio overlooking my large host mom taking a bucket shower, topless as usual. Appetizing. Before I could take more than a few bites, I heard what I thought to be the tormented, deep moans of an old man in tremendous pain. I hurried to the source of the sound, and realized that it was only my neighbor, Leche the white goat, screaming in his cage. Goats, or at least the goats we have here, sound startlingly like humans. Baby goats sound like babies crying, and old goats sound like old men screaming. This goat had somehow partially ripped off his horn, and the horn was now dangling from his head, blood dripping into his eyes. My host brother Onan came running to the scene (Leche belongs to him), and as soon as he arrived, the goat escaped from the damaged cage. Once out, Leche ran around like an angry wasp, running into my house and all around the yard before we could catch it. Once Onan wrestled the goat to the ground and got it under control with his boot on its neck, he yelled, "Benja - grab the machete! We need to cut his horn off!" I wasn't prepared for this at all, but I knew that if I did it, I could tell the story later. So I grabbed the machete (which was far too big for the job), and without hesitating, sliced off Leche´s horn from his head. The goat then proceeded to wail like an old man dying a horrific death. Blood spurted out from the horn hole in a thin stream, all over my arms and legs. The poor little guy writhed around with incredible force and escaped Onan's grasp, galloping off in every direction and squirting its bloody squirt gun everywhere it went. I now have a nice coating of goat DNA on my patio. I just stood there in my dusty yard with a bloody machete in one hand and a recently severed goat's horn in the other, watching the goat self-destruct, relishing the adrenaline of de-horning a screaming animal. Onan had to catch it again and put lime (the chemical, not the fruit) in its wound "so that it'll heal" (I have my doubts). Don't worry – they tell me that the goat will be fine. I'm now drying the goat's horn on my roof, and I hope to think up some fun way to use it in the future. Any ideas?
Onan brings me to another thought: I live in the Old Testament down here. The families are huge and they all intermarry. Everyone has goats and cows, and your net worth is still measured in those terms. It's hot and dusty, like the Promised Land. And the gender roles don't seem to have changed for the last 2,000 years. My host brothers are Samuel, Nain, Onan, and Josue (and here I am, a Benjamin). In the Bible, Onan is actually the name of the first person chastised by God for touching his privates without a good reason, the one who first "spilt his seed on the ground." I sort of want to tell him that he's named after the first documented masturbator, but I'm sure he'll come across it in one of the bible study classes that he frequents.
Aside from riding horses and tormenting Leche, I've been busy doing Peace Corps-y things too. Last week, I was asked to translate at an eye clinic put on by one of the Salvadoran NGOs specializing in rural health. They bring about 20 American doctors, nurses and technicians down to perform surgeries on cataracts, crossed eyes, and pterigions (where skin grows over the pupil), and to provide rural people with badly needed eyeglasses. I spent the days translating between patient and doctor, and even had the opportunity to spend a day in the operating room, dressed in scrubs, mask and doctor-hat. I watched as patients with only local anaesthetic had their eyes cut open and operated on, trying to translate, although in the OR the patients were mostly moaning.
We were served three meals a day and were given free beer (!) at night while we hung out with the doctors and their staff. We put in 12 hour days, but they flew by, as we were all instantly gratified by the fact that people came to the clinic unable to see, and left seeing clearly that same day, whether by glasses or surgery. I have a confession to make: I didn't bother to correct people when they called me Senor Doctor and blessed me and thanked me for restoring their vision. I just let it ride. Seriously though, the eye campaign was the most fulfilling thing I've done so far in my time here, and I hope to find more opportunities like it in the future. Plus, I got to keep my scrubs, so everyone here in El Pital thinks I went away for three days and came back a doctor, which makes me even cooler in the eyes of the two little girls who constantly adorn my patio.
I celebrated my birthday on Sunday, and I finally experienced completely genuine feelings of friendship with the people that I live with here in El Pital. Before, I was always suspicious that people liked me because of my camera, or because I would buy them tamales or pupusas, or because I can do card tricks and speak English. But on Saturday night, as I was eating pupusas with my host family in the front yard, enjoying the cool evening breeze, three teens from my youth group stopped by the house. They told me that they needed me to take some pictures of some greeting cards they had made while I was gone at the eye clinic (we're still chugging away on those cards, by the way – they look great). So I agreed, and when I got to the school, all of the lights came on, and the kids from the youth group (about 30) greeted me with a huge surprise birthday party. They had decorated the classroom, brought in a stereo system, and taken the hour-long bus ride to Chalchuapa to buy cakes and soda. I was absolutely stunned. They had done all of this without adult assistance, and it no doubt required a lot of effort and planning. I thanked them profusely, cut the cake, put on my birthday hat and tie, had cake smashed in my face (tradition here), and we all danced to cumbia, salsa, merengue and reggaeton music for hours. I even did the worm, and the crowd went wild.
So things have been different for me here after that party. I finally feel like I can let down my guard a little bit and be myself. My Spanish level has improved such that I can be funny for reasons other than my bad pronunciation. Where the frequent 2 hour visiting sessions with various families used to be painfully awkward and filled with uncomfortable silences, the time flies now, and I actually enjoy myself. Lately, I find myself just being, absorbing everything here and doing as my neighbors do. I'm resisting less, and letting the people, the culture, the weather, the way of life – everything that is El Pital – seep into me.
If you're still reading, thanks for bearing with me. I feel like I've monopolized this conversation for the last few months. I haven't been a very good listener lately. How are YOU doing? Let me know, if you have the time and inclination.
Adios,
Benjamin
El Pital: First Impressions
11/18/06
Hi Everyone,
I just got back into San Vicente after spending a few days in El Pital, and I´ve got a lot to write about. This site seems like the perfect fit for me, in so many ways.
On Monday morning, I headed out from the capital to Chalchuapa, the semi-large town where I´ll have to go to get supplies and use the internet from El Pital. Currently, the ruling party in Chalchuapa is the FMLN (the leftist-guerilla-force-turned-political-party), and now I understand their reputation for outstanding local government. There is not a single piece of trash to be found on the streets (a rarity here), the townspeople hang out in a beautiful, pristine central park, crime is low, and all the buildings newly painted. I´m not sure how they FMLN would run the country here, but it´s possible that we´ll find out in the next presidential election, as they´re gaining a lot of ground lately.
On the bus to El Pital, I became a little nervous about the aesthetics of my new site. The bus huffed and puffed its way through a narrow maze of 12 foot high sugar cane fields, and all was dusty and hot. It felt more like I was in the Central Valley of California than in El Salvador, but as soon as we started climbing in elevation, I began to feel better. When I arrived in El Pital, I was struck by the abundance of flowers of every color - even roses. In my experience here, the cultivation of plants is largely practical, but it´s clear that in El Pital, flowers are grown for pleasure.
When I got off the bus and headed into the school, I found a group of about 20 people waiting for me, cake and soda slowly warming in the afternoon heat. My counterpart, Don Isaac, introduced me to everyone there, and I gave a little speech introducing myself and my aspirations for the community. I was then informed that they had had problems deciding where I would eat because so many people wanted to cook for me. So they made a meal schedule for me, with each meal at a different house. This was really touching, but also a little intimidating, because with each meal I would have to discuss my intentions and win the trust of the family. Sort of like having 9 first meals with your girlfriend´s parents. To end the meeting, everyone came up to me individually and gave me a hug, which felt great after a month and a half of zero human contact.
After the meeting, Don Isaac and I made our way to my new house on the property of Don Victor and his wife, Niña Eugenia. They´re a couple in their late 60s with about 4 goats, innumerable chickens, rabbits, kittens, a dog named Oso, 10 kids and 30 grandkids, most of whom live on or near their property. I´ll be staying in a little house, all my own, although privacy is almost out of the question. As in San Antonio, I have a constant trail of little kids following my every move, hanging out in my house and sheparding me from one place to another. Some of them have even started to call me Tio Benjamin. I really do feel like I´m a part of their family already, which, as you know, is quite different than my first experience here.
I couldn´t stop thinking about the difference between this family and my family in San Antonio. In San Antonio, Miguel, my favorite host brother, often says, ¨Hemos sufrido¨ (we have suffered). Miguel is my age, with a wife and two kids (one of whom is not his). He works nights in San Salvador as a vigilante, armed with a shotgun in a shady section of the capital, guarding someone else´s business. For me, he has been the chronicler of the family´s history, and the one who speaks with me most frankly. Hemos sufrido not only speaks, in a nutshell, of what has happened to the family over the last few years, but also of the general tone of this family´s life, and the pall of death and dying that still hangs over that house. We have suffered, we are suffering. This is evident day and night in many ways, from Niña Antonia´s nervous, post-traumatic tremors, to the glazed, saddened looks that will suddenly appear on the faces of the three parent-less kids in the house, to the baby´s strangulated cries and labored breathing throughout the night. I am about to enter a different world.
Back to El Pital . . . This is one of several cooperativas here in El Salvador, which arose from the agricultural reform in the early 1980s. According to my hosts, land was taken from the wealthy coffee plantation owner and divided up among the campesinos who had worked on that land. El Pital was built from the ground up. All of the citizens pitched in and formed a cooperativa in which the huge sugarcane fields and cafetales (coffee fields) are owned by everyone. Once picked and processed, the profits are divided among each family in the cooperativa. Poco a poco, as they say here, things grew and grew until they were able to purchase bigger and better machinery for planting, picking and processing. Now everyone works in the fields and lives, relatively comfortably, off of the shared profits from the cooperativa. They´ve also banded together and, without governmental aid, built a water system derived from a spring in the mountain, meaning that no one pays water bills. This also is a very safe community. One can walk around at any hour without any kind of threat. And there is no police force in El Pital because, as far as I can tell, everyone is related to each other. There seem to be 4 major family groups who have intermarried, and now there is really no distinguishing. I asked about the politics here, thinking that everyone would be hard core FMLN supporters, but everyone I spoke with told me they were apolitical, that neither party comes through on its promises, and that if you want to get anything done here, you have to do it yourself, which they have clearly done well.
I´m running out of time and space, so here are a few more observations:
--They have a program where one family is given their choice of 6 goats, 6 chickens or 6 rabbits. When those 6 produce 6 more offspring, that family gives those 6 to another family, and so on. This works beautifully, and it´s free.
--It seems like part of country life entails bathing in front of everyone. We have a pila (a large tub of probably-not-potable water) that fills every other day from the faucet. This happens to be in the front yard, so bathing in boxers, and in front of everyone (Look at the funny Gringo bathe himself!), is the norm. This means those hard-to-reach areas are even harder to reach. Unless you´re my 65 year old host mom, in which case you´re bathing topless. In the front yard. Yikes!
--I can hear the stream when I lay in bed at night
--Many of the kids who have passed 9th grade (which is rare in itself) have no other option but to take their high school classes once a week on Saturday, in the Bachillerato A Distancia program. Teachers come in on Saturday to teach a class, and the kids do independent study during the week. Needless to say, this isn´t working, and the kids are getting restless, which means more potential to slide into less-than-wholesome activities. One of my main goals here is to solicit funds and facilitate the building of a Bachillerato (high school) in El Pital. Not sure if it´ll be possible, but I´m going to try.
--I think I´ll get a kitten or two to keep away the rats
Thanks for bearing with me on that one. It´s really hard to believe that 2 months ago, I living a different life in the states. I feel like I´m dreaming much of the time, possibly because I was snatched out of a such a comfortable life so suddenly and thrown into the deep end of this life. I wish you all could be here to see it.
Adios,
Benjamín
Hi Everyone,
I just got back into San Vicente after spending a few days in El Pital, and I´ve got a lot to write about. This site seems like the perfect fit for me, in so many ways.
On Monday morning, I headed out from the capital to Chalchuapa, the semi-large town where I´ll have to go to get supplies and use the internet from El Pital. Currently, the ruling party in Chalchuapa is the FMLN (the leftist-guerilla-force-turned-political-party), and now I understand their reputation for outstanding local government. There is not a single piece of trash to be found on the streets (a rarity here), the townspeople hang out in a beautiful, pristine central park, crime is low, and all the buildings newly painted. I´m not sure how they FMLN would run the country here, but it´s possible that we´ll find out in the next presidential election, as they´re gaining a lot of ground lately.
On the bus to El Pital, I became a little nervous about the aesthetics of my new site. The bus huffed and puffed its way through a narrow maze of 12 foot high sugar cane fields, and all was dusty and hot. It felt more like I was in the Central Valley of California than in El Salvador, but as soon as we started climbing in elevation, I began to feel better. When I arrived in El Pital, I was struck by the abundance of flowers of every color - even roses. In my experience here, the cultivation of plants is largely practical, but it´s clear that in El Pital, flowers are grown for pleasure.
When I got off the bus and headed into the school, I found a group of about 20 people waiting for me, cake and soda slowly warming in the afternoon heat. My counterpart, Don Isaac, introduced me to everyone there, and I gave a little speech introducing myself and my aspirations for the community. I was then informed that they had had problems deciding where I would eat because so many people wanted to cook for me. So they made a meal schedule for me, with each meal at a different house. This was really touching, but also a little intimidating, because with each meal I would have to discuss my intentions and win the trust of the family. Sort of like having 9 first meals with your girlfriend´s parents. To end the meeting, everyone came up to me individually and gave me a hug, which felt great after a month and a half of zero human contact.
After the meeting, Don Isaac and I made our way to my new house on the property of Don Victor and his wife, Niña Eugenia. They´re a couple in their late 60s with about 4 goats, innumerable chickens, rabbits, kittens, a dog named Oso, 10 kids and 30 grandkids, most of whom live on or near their property. I´ll be staying in a little house, all my own, although privacy is almost out of the question. As in San Antonio, I have a constant trail of little kids following my every move, hanging out in my house and sheparding me from one place to another. Some of them have even started to call me Tio Benjamin. I really do feel like I´m a part of their family already, which, as you know, is quite different than my first experience here.
I couldn´t stop thinking about the difference between this family and my family in San Antonio. In San Antonio, Miguel, my favorite host brother, often says, ¨Hemos sufrido¨ (we have suffered). Miguel is my age, with a wife and two kids (one of whom is not his). He works nights in San Salvador as a vigilante, armed with a shotgun in a shady section of the capital, guarding someone else´s business. For me, he has been the chronicler of the family´s history, and the one who speaks with me most frankly. Hemos sufrido not only speaks, in a nutshell, of what has happened to the family over the last few years, but also of the general tone of this family´s life, and the pall of death and dying that still hangs over that house. We have suffered, we are suffering. This is evident day and night in many ways, from Niña Antonia´s nervous, post-traumatic tremors, to the glazed, saddened looks that will suddenly appear on the faces of the three parent-less kids in the house, to the baby´s strangulated cries and labored breathing throughout the night. I am about to enter a different world.
Back to El Pital . . . This is one of several cooperativas here in El Salvador, which arose from the agricultural reform in the early 1980s. According to my hosts, land was taken from the wealthy coffee plantation owner and divided up among the campesinos who had worked on that land. El Pital was built from the ground up. All of the citizens pitched in and formed a cooperativa in which the huge sugarcane fields and cafetales (coffee fields) are owned by everyone. Once picked and processed, the profits are divided among each family in the cooperativa. Poco a poco, as they say here, things grew and grew until they were able to purchase bigger and better machinery for planting, picking and processing. Now everyone works in the fields and lives, relatively comfortably, off of the shared profits from the cooperativa. They´ve also banded together and, without governmental aid, built a water system derived from a spring in the mountain, meaning that no one pays water bills. This also is a very safe community. One can walk around at any hour without any kind of threat. And there is no police force in El Pital because, as far as I can tell, everyone is related to each other. There seem to be 4 major family groups who have intermarried, and now there is really no distinguishing. I asked about the politics here, thinking that everyone would be hard core FMLN supporters, but everyone I spoke with told me they were apolitical, that neither party comes through on its promises, and that if you want to get anything done here, you have to do it yourself, which they have clearly done well.
I´m running out of time and space, so here are a few more observations:
--They have a program where one family is given their choice of 6 goats, 6 chickens or 6 rabbits. When those 6 produce 6 more offspring, that family gives those 6 to another family, and so on. This works beautifully, and it´s free.
--It seems like part of country life entails bathing in front of everyone. We have a pila (a large tub of probably-not-potable water) that fills every other day from the faucet. This happens to be in the front yard, so bathing in boxers, and in front of everyone (Look at the funny Gringo bathe himself!), is the norm. This means those hard-to-reach areas are even harder to reach. Unless you´re my 65 year old host mom, in which case you´re bathing topless. In the front yard. Yikes!
--I can hear the stream when I lay in bed at night
--Many of the kids who have passed 9th grade (which is rare in itself) have no other option but to take their high school classes once a week on Saturday, in the Bachillerato A Distancia program. Teachers come in on Saturday to teach a class, and the kids do independent study during the week. Needless to say, this isn´t working, and the kids are getting restless, which means more potential to slide into less-than-wholesome activities. One of my main goals here is to solicit funds and facilitate the building of a Bachillerato (high school) in El Pital. Not sure if it´ll be possible, but I´m going to try.
--I think I´ll get a kitten or two to keep away the rats
Thanks for bearing with me on that one. It´s really hard to believe that 2 months ago, I living a different life in the states. I feel like I´m dreaming much of the time, possibly because I was snatched out of a such a comfortable life so suddenly and thrown into the deep end of this life. I wish you all could be here to see it.
Adios,
Benjamín
The Opossum Capital of Centroamerica
Dec. 18, 2006
Hi All,
I can´t believe it´s been nearly a month since my last email. Time speeds by at times, and then slows to a crawl at others, but this last month has been a whirlwind. After saying goodbye to all of my fellow trainees, I arrived in my site at sunset on Dec. 1. I spent the next few days arranging my house, picking up a little stove and a mini-refrigerator in Chalchuapa, the nearest town of any size, about 1.5 hrs away by bus. I bought the fridge with my host mom, Niña Genia, which was probably a bad move, because now I suspect that everyone in town thinks I´m rich. Which I am, relatively, but it´s not a great first impression to make.
Oh - I found something worse than chicken anus. I ate possum the other day! Actually, it´s called tacuasin, but if you look it up, you´ll find that it looks like a cross between a possum and an armadillo. Anyway, just as I was about to make food for myself, I got the invitation from the fam that they had just prepared lunch, and they´d like me to join. In these first few crucial months, I was not about to turn anything down, especially when someone takes it upon themselves to share what food they have with me.
But it requires a lot of effort these days to accept Niña Genia´s invitations to eat, which are abundant. As lovable as she is (she really is one of the sweetest old ladies in the world), Niña Genia can´t cook to save her life. With each meal, I crunch my way through egg shells, dust, and teflon from the pan with a smile. But, feigning gratefulness as best as I could, I lumbered down to their kitchen and abandoned my plans to make grit-free beans and eggs with tomatoes and onions, with a little boiled coffee to top it off.
When I arrived, the kitchen was filled with smoke and the smell of roasted animal meat. The smoke is a mainstay, as everyone cooks here with firewood and an open flame (hence the rapid deforestation). It´s a miracle that every mother in every family is not stricken with some sort of respiratory disease. The smell of animal meat was less than appetizing - definitely nowhere close to tri-tip or anything that could be considered mouth-watering. I sat down, and was immediately served with beans and what appeared to be a charred cat´s hind leg. When they told me it was tacuasin, I smiled and said, ¨Thanks - it sounds delicious! Can you describe it to me?¨ They told me it was something like a cat, and that uncle Noel had shot it last night. I remember thinking that I had heard something akin to gunshots in the night, but wrote it off as the firecrackers that kids are constantly playing with here. I´m eating a cat, I thought. Lovely.
I tried to get through it, but I just couldn´t hack it. Chicken parts, I can deal with. Chickens are so ugly, aren´t they? Constantly pecking around on the ground in a mindless search for food. Whenever I see a chicken walking its chicken walk, it always seems to me that a single phrase is constantly repeating itself in their little chicken heads. ¨Where are my arms? Where are my arms?¨ they seem to be thinking. Next time you see one, think of this and let me know. This might not be funny to any of you out there, but when you see chickens every day, when they come into your house at all hours and chill and poop on your porch, it´s hilarious. Anyway, that all sounds a little crazy, and it might well be, because I´ve had something close to a 102 degree fever for the last 3 days. It´s getting better though, so I´m not as worried as I once was.
Anyway, the point is that chickens are so ugly that they deserve to be eaten. Cats are a different story. And so, under the impression that the tacuasin I was eating was a cat, I just couldn´t finish it. It was super greasy, very sinewy and bony. Luckily, Oso the dog was standing right there, ready to eat anything thrown his way. With a deft toss while no one was looking, I fed Oso what remained of the hind leg, and he crunched it down, thin bones and all, in a few seconds.
It wasn´t until I called my parents the next day that I learned tacuasin is more like a possum. I was kind of let down, actually, because eating a cat is a much better story. But a eating a possum is pretty cool too. One more thing we have in common now, Dad. Unfortunately, when asked how I liked it, I said it was was absolutely wonderful, so I´ll probably be getting more tacuasin next time uncle noel decides to go out shooting. In fact, he invited me to go out shooting with him last Saturday night. He said there are all kinds of weird things to shoot, some of which are probably endangered, just a guess. He listed off about 15 animals whose names I had never before heard. Regrettably, I ended up coming down with my fever just then, and couldn´t go a-possum huntin´ with uncle Noel, but hopefully he´ll make me another offer.
So that´s just one little snippet of life here in El Pital. So far, there have been major ups, and major downs. I never thought it would be so difficult to live by myself in a foreign country. Generally, I don´t mind being alone, and I like experiencing the oddities and wonders of any culture unfamiliar to me. The tough thing about what I´m doing here, is that my reputation means everything, and people here in this small community of 700 love to gossip. Which means I have to be on for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and all in Spanish. I can´t slip up, be perceived as anti-social, make an offending remark, drink alcohol, dislike a meal, appear as though I´m not enjoying myself, or be anything less than a perfectly polite, non-cultural-imperialist, Peace Corps volunteer at all times. And this is the hard part, because this means a complete lack of freedom to be oneself. But I have full faith that this will only get better after these first few months, as I gain more trust within the community, slowly shed the unoffending, painfully polite veneer, and let people see me for who I am.
And there are also moments, strange, seemingly meaningless moments, when I am filled with so much love for this place and the people in it that I become absolutely certain that this is the right thing for me to be doing at this time. My best friend here so far is a 6 year old girl named Yulissa. Everyone calls her China, apparently because her eyes are somewhat slanted. If you have an Asiatic look to you, you are China or Chino. If your skin is dark, you are Negra or Negro. May sound un-PC, but there is no malice in these names here. Anyway, China and will sit on my porch eating cookies and playing dominoes for hours at a time. She sweeps my house and porch, without prompting and apparently because she likes to, and I´ll usually give her half of whatever it is I cook. I think that, being the youngest in a large family, she´s a little neglected, and loves the attention I give her. And since I speak what must sound like first-grade Spanish, we communicate on just about the same level. Anyway, one of these moments of complete clarity happened this morning, as I was getting ready to leave for Chalchuapa. I was standing on my front porch, shaving with a bowl of icy cold water. China and Xiomara, her sister, were sweeping my house, and I had coffee boiling and platanos frying. As I stood there shaving, gazing out at the mountains, banana trees, and adobe houses all visible from my house, the sun finally peaked over the hill and hit me in my face. At this moment, with my two improbable friends helping me out, the smells of breakfast cooking, and the sun hitting me after a chilly night, I felt completely content. I´m still not sure why. These moments come and go at really strange times.
What else am I doing? I´ve been filling my days going house to house, meeting new people, participating in an arts and crafts class now and then. I made bread in an adobe oven with about 10 older ladies the other day, which was a great way to ingratiate myself. I´ve also been working with an established youth group off and on, going on hikes and performing mini-dramas and dances. I´d love to get the ball rolling on some of the bigger projects, like the high school or the casa comunal, but it sounds like I´ll have to wait a little while before the PC will give me the tools I need to accomplish these things.
Thanks so much for all of your emails. I can´t tell you how much I appreciate hearing from all of you, especially now that I´m so isolated. I apologize that I haven´t been able to respond individually to so many of you, but I promise - that will come with time. I´ll be in Chalchuapa once a week from now on, and hope to have more time here in the internet cafe.
Happy holidays,
Benjamín
Hi All,
I can´t believe it´s been nearly a month since my last email. Time speeds by at times, and then slows to a crawl at others, but this last month has been a whirlwind. After saying goodbye to all of my fellow trainees, I arrived in my site at sunset on Dec. 1. I spent the next few days arranging my house, picking up a little stove and a mini-refrigerator in Chalchuapa, the nearest town of any size, about 1.5 hrs away by bus. I bought the fridge with my host mom, Niña Genia, which was probably a bad move, because now I suspect that everyone in town thinks I´m rich. Which I am, relatively, but it´s not a great first impression to make.
Oh - I found something worse than chicken anus. I ate possum the other day! Actually, it´s called tacuasin, but if you look it up, you´ll find that it looks like a cross between a possum and an armadillo. Anyway, just as I was about to make food for myself, I got the invitation from the fam that they had just prepared lunch, and they´d like me to join. In these first few crucial months, I was not about to turn anything down, especially when someone takes it upon themselves to share what food they have with me.
But it requires a lot of effort these days to accept Niña Genia´s invitations to eat, which are abundant. As lovable as she is (she really is one of the sweetest old ladies in the world), Niña Genia can´t cook to save her life. With each meal, I crunch my way through egg shells, dust, and teflon from the pan with a smile. But, feigning gratefulness as best as I could, I lumbered down to their kitchen and abandoned my plans to make grit-free beans and eggs with tomatoes and onions, with a little boiled coffee to top it off.
When I arrived, the kitchen was filled with smoke and the smell of roasted animal meat. The smoke is a mainstay, as everyone cooks here with firewood and an open flame (hence the rapid deforestation). It´s a miracle that every mother in every family is not stricken with some sort of respiratory disease. The smell of animal meat was less than appetizing - definitely nowhere close to tri-tip or anything that could be considered mouth-watering. I sat down, and was immediately served with beans and what appeared to be a charred cat´s hind leg. When they told me it was tacuasin, I smiled and said, ¨Thanks - it sounds delicious! Can you describe it to me?¨ They told me it was something like a cat, and that uncle Noel had shot it last night. I remember thinking that I had heard something akin to gunshots in the night, but wrote it off as the firecrackers that kids are constantly playing with here. I´m eating a cat, I thought. Lovely.
I tried to get through it, but I just couldn´t hack it. Chicken parts, I can deal with. Chickens are so ugly, aren´t they? Constantly pecking around on the ground in a mindless search for food. Whenever I see a chicken walking its chicken walk, it always seems to me that a single phrase is constantly repeating itself in their little chicken heads. ¨Where are my arms? Where are my arms?¨ they seem to be thinking. Next time you see one, think of this and let me know. This might not be funny to any of you out there, but when you see chickens every day, when they come into your house at all hours and chill and poop on your porch, it´s hilarious. Anyway, that all sounds a little crazy, and it might well be, because I´ve had something close to a 102 degree fever for the last 3 days. It´s getting better though, so I´m not as worried as I once was.
Anyway, the point is that chickens are so ugly that they deserve to be eaten. Cats are a different story. And so, under the impression that the tacuasin I was eating was a cat, I just couldn´t finish it. It was super greasy, very sinewy and bony. Luckily, Oso the dog was standing right there, ready to eat anything thrown his way. With a deft toss while no one was looking, I fed Oso what remained of the hind leg, and he crunched it down, thin bones and all, in a few seconds.
It wasn´t until I called my parents the next day that I learned tacuasin is more like a possum. I was kind of let down, actually, because eating a cat is a much better story. But a eating a possum is pretty cool too. One more thing we have in common now, Dad. Unfortunately, when asked how I liked it, I said it was was absolutely wonderful, so I´ll probably be getting more tacuasin next time uncle noel decides to go out shooting. In fact, he invited me to go out shooting with him last Saturday night. He said there are all kinds of weird things to shoot, some of which are probably endangered, just a guess. He listed off about 15 animals whose names I had never before heard. Regrettably, I ended up coming down with my fever just then, and couldn´t go a-possum huntin´ with uncle Noel, but hopefully he´ll make me another offer.
So that´s just one little snippet of life here in El Pital. So far, there have been major ups, and major downs. I never thought it would be so difficult to live by myself in a foreign country. Generally, I don´t mind being alone, and I like experiencing the oddities and wonders of any culture unfamiliar to me. The tough thing about what I´m doing here, is that my reputation means everything, and people here in this small community of 700 love to gossip. Which means I have to be on for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and all in Spanish. I can´t slip up, be perceived as anti-social, make an offending remark, drink alcohol, dislike a meal, appear as though I´m not enjoying myself, or be anything less than a perfectly polite, non-cultural-imperialist, Peace Corps volunteer at all times. And this is the hard part, because this means a complete lack of freedom to be oneself. But I have full faith that this will only get better after these first few months, as I gain more trust within the community, slowly shed the unoffending, painfully polite veneer, and let people see me for who I am.
And there are also moments, strange, seemingly meaningless moments, when I am filled with so much love for this place and the people in it that I become absolutely certain that this is the right thing for me to be doing at this time. My best friend here so far is a 6 year old girl named Yulissa. Everyone calls her China, apparently because her eyes are somewhat slanted. If you have an Asiatic look to you, you are China or Chino. If your skin is dark, you are Negra or Negro. May sound un-PC, but there is no malice in these names here. Anyway, China and will sit on my porch eating cookies and playing dominoes for hours at a time. She sweeps my house and porch, without prompting and apparently because she likes to, and I´ll usually give her half of whatever it is I cook. I think that, being the youngest in a large family, she´s a little neglected, and loves the attention I give her. And since I speak what must sound like first-grade Spanish, we communicate on just about the same level. Anyway, one of these moments of complete clarity happened this morning, as I was getting ready to leave for Chalchuapa. I was standing on my front porch, shaving with a bowl of icy cold water. China and Xiomara, her sister, were sweeping my house, and I had coffee boiling and platanos frying. As I stood there shaving, gazing out at the mountains, banana trees, and adobe houses all visible from my house, the sun finally peaked over the hill and hit me in my face. At this moment, with my two improbable friends helping me out, the smells of breakfast cooking, and the sun hitting me after a chilly night, I felt completely content. I´m still not sure why. These moments come and go at really strange times.
What else am I doing? I´ve been filling my days going house to house, meeting new people, participating in an arts and crafts class now and then. I made bread in an adobe oven with about 10 older ladies the other day, which was a great way to ingratiate myself. I´ve also been working with an established youth group off and on, going on hikes and performing mini-dramas and dances. I´d love to get the ball rolling on some of the bigger projects, like the high school or the casa comunal, but it sounds like I´ll have to wait a little while before the PC will give me the tools I need to accomplish these things.
Thanks so much for all of your emails. I can´t tell you how much I appreciate hearing from all of you, especially now that I´m so isolated. I apologize that I haven´t been able to respond individually to so many of you, but I promise - that will come with time. I´ll be in Chalchuapa once a week from now on, and hope to have more time here in the internet cafe.
Happy holidays,
Benjamín
More News From El Salvador
Oct. 16, 2006
Hi All,
Wow, I can´t believe it´s been over two weeks since the last email. Thanks for all of the replies, and apologies for being out of touch for so long. I just arrived back in San Vicente from the western-most departamento of Ahuachapan, where I spent 3 days with another family near Cara Sucia (¨Dirty Face¨) in a caserio (the smallest municipal unit, usually ranging in size from 2 to 1000 people) called Los Violantes. The purpose of these three days is to ¨shadow¨ a family in rural El Salvador, to absorb their customs, language, and of course, food.
I set out for Los Violantes at 6am on Thursday, looking forward to the 5.5 hour solo journey by bus to the other side of the country. Things were starting to get to me here, with training all day and Spanish classes (and the general awkwardness of being a semi-permanent guest in someone´s house) at night. I still savor those 30 minutes I have to myself before I go to sleep each night, when I read in bed and think about what´s to come. I was happy to be getting out of town for awhile.
The bus ride to Ahuachapan was gorgeous. We climbed over the mountains and down into the bustling, not-so-pretty capital of San Salvador. I changed buses there and headed toward Ahuachapan in a colorful bus, blasting colorful reggaeton music for the duration of the trip. One of my favorite things about El Salvador is the music on the buses - makes public transportation in the US seem so boring! Only 15 minutes out of smoggy San Salvador, we were again surrounded by beautiful scenery. There were tropical fruit trees everywhere - cashew trees, mangoes, coconuts, guayabas, and others - mixed in among creeping vines and huge plane trees (i think). El Salvador is supposedly the most deforested country in Central America, but it sure doesn´t appear that way.
When I arrived in Los Violantes, I was greeted by Carly, a PC Volunteer working in Agro-forestry who had been there for about a year. She showed me around town and introduced me to Adelaida, a guardabosque (forest guard) at Parque El Impossible, El Salvador´s only national park. I was going to spend the next few days with Adelaida´s family for my Immersion Day assignment. I completely lucked out.
Upon leaving Carly´s house, I followed Adelaida for a half-hour to get to my new digs. We walked along several dirt roads, passing cows, horses and people on bikes. At one point we had to ford a muddy river, which had grown considerably with the afternoon rain. I remember thinking to myself, as I was hoisting my backpack over my head, that this was what I had had in mind when I thought about volunteering in Central America. The sun was about to set, the temperature was hot and humid, and I was in the middle of a river, finally alone in the backwoods of El Salvador. It was perfect.
Prior to meeting them, Carly let me know that my temporary host family was one of the poorest in town, and that whatever i decided to pay them at the end of my stay would help them out enormously. And she wasn´t kidding. The family lived in a one-room adobe house with a dirt floor and no potable water. Adelaida´s youngest daughter is a deceptively hefty 2 year-old girl who won´t eat anything because she has parasites. But Adelaida, her mother, and her three kids (again - no men around!) showed me the best time I´ve had so far in El Salvador. When we arrived at the house, Adelaida´s 9 year-old son Enrique took over the tour guide duties, and showed me around the neighborhood, pointing out plants, fruit, birds, lizards and bugs that were all foreign to me. After a phenomenal dinner of eggs and beans and some real coffee (not the instant stuff that everyone here makes), we chatted for awhile and turned in. They of course slept in hammocks so that I could have the biggest bed in the house. The hospitality here is like none other. Oh, and when all the lights went out, the ceiling suddenly lit up with about 20 lightening bugs, and it was like sleeping under the stars.
The next day, Adelaida took me on one of her patrols with her boss, Juan. We got up early, donned rubber boots and machetes, and set out for the rain forest of El Impossible. We slogged and hacked through the thick jungle, seeing huge butterflies, a wide variety of giant spiders and bunches of tropical fruit. Adelaida and Juan guard against poachers, who mainly go after iguana and caiman (a crocodile-like reptile), and occasionally machorros (a prehistoric-looking fish found only in W. El Sal and Guatemala). Unfortunately, we didn´t see any of those animals (or poachers), but the walk itself was incredibly beautiful. I chatted for awhile with Juan back at their office about immigration and relations between the US and El Salvador. He told me that his 16 year-old son had successfully made the journey and now worked in construction in Virginia. I couldn´t believe that someone so young would make such a treacherous journey by himself. And I still can´t get over the $6,000 price of admission into the United States. Six grand in El Salvador would feed a family for 2 years. It doesn´t seem worth the risk to me. Juan also posed an interesting question: why are there poor people in the US when my son can go there with nothing, no language skills, and work and make a living? I didn´t have a good answer for him. We also talked about the level of poverty in the US. I found myself telling him that poor people (the working poor) in the US usually have housing, usually have a car, usually have food to feed their families, and usually don´t have to worry about potable water sources. I felt embarrassed saying this to a man who makes $140 per month and lives in a mud hut.
When we got back to the house, the skies opened up and I saw the Salvadoran rainy season in full effect. But due to the incredible heat, the kids and i stayed outside and played futbol in the mud. I also taught them how to run and skate on the slippery, muddy clay, sort of like skating in your socks on a hardwood floor. They loved it, and we all got muddy from head to toe.
On my last day, I left Adelaida´s family at 6am and went to Carly´s house to meet up with a few other volunteers. Enrique cried when I left, which made me realize what a difference a few days of attention and interaction with a little guy can make. I really connected with that family, and didn´t want to leave myself. When I met up with the 3 other volunteers, we hopped on borrowed bikes and started pedaling up the long road toward the waterfall in El Impossible. We stopped in San Francisco Mendoza to buy some homemade cheese and tortillas to snack on up at the waterfall. Like everything else here, the cheese has about a kilo of salt per serving, but we were hungry, so it didn´t matter. We dropped our bikes off at some lady´s house at the trail head, and hiked about 30 minutes through more rain forest. When I finally arrived at the waterfall, drenched in sweat and mud, I saw the tropical paradise that I had pictured in my head since I was little. The water gushed into a clear pool from 25 feet above, surrounded by creeping vines and big mangrove trees. Below the waterfall, the creek veered in sharp angles underneath the rain forest canopy. We swam for awhile, and I finally felt cool and clean after three weeks of intense heat. We took naps on the rocks, then woke up and hiked back to our bikes. I hope I´m stationed somewhere out west.
This email is getting really long! I´m going to shorten things up and say that I had a great time in Ahuachapan, that I´m a little bummed to be back in San Vicente with it´s rigorous and slightly boring training schedule, but excited to go out to my permanent site in a few weeks. I´ve been healthy so far, with only one day of minor stomach problems. And I never made it to the witchdoctor with my host sister because our ride fell through at midnight the night before leaving. How anti-climactic! Hopefully I´ll have another chance to go. That´s all I have for now. If you´ve read this far, thanks, and send me an email if you think of it.
Thinking of you all in Centroamérica,
Benjamín
Hi All,
Wow, I can´t believe it´s been over two weeks since the last email. Thanks for all of the replies, and apologies for being out of touch for so long. I just arrived back in San Vicente from the western-most departamento of Ahuachapan, where I spent 3 days with another family near Cara Sucia (¨Dirty Face¨) in a caserio (the smallest municipal unit, usually ranging in size from 2 to 1000 people) called Los Violantes. The purpose of these three days is to ¨shadow¨ a family in rural El Salvador, to absorb their customs, language, and of course, food.
I set out for Los Violantes at 6am on Thursday, looking forward to the 5.5 hour solo journey by bus to the other side of the country. Things were starting to get to me here, with training all day and Spanish classes (and the general awkwardness of being a semi-permanent guest in someone´s house) at night. I still savor those 30 minutes I have to myself before I go to sleep each night, when I read in bed and think about what´s to come. I was happy to be getting out of town for awhile.
The bus ride to Ahuachapan was gorgeous. We climbed over the mountains and down into the bustling, not-so-pretty capital of San Salvador. I changed buses there and headed toward Ahuachapan in a colorful bus, blasting colorful reggaeton music for the duration of the trip. One of my favorite things about El Salvador is the music on the buses - makes public transportation in the US seem so boring! Only 15 minutes out of smoggy San Salvador, we were again surrounded by beautiful scenery. There were tropical fruit trees everywhere - cashew trees, mangoes, coconuts, guayabas, and others - mixed in among creeping vines and huge plane trees (i think). El Salvador is supposedly the most deforested country in Central America, but it sure doesn´t appear that way.
When I arrived in Los Violantes, I was greeted by Carly, a PC Volunteer working in Agro-forestry who had been there for about a year. She showed me around town and introduced me to Adelaida, a guardabosque (forest guard) at Parque El Impossible, El Salvador´s only national park. I was going to spend the next few days with Adelaida´s family for my Immersion Day assignment. I completely lucked out.
Upon leaving Carly´s house, I followed Adelaida for a half-hour to get to my new digs. We walked along several dirt roads, passing cows, horses and people on bikes. At one point we had to ford a muddy river, which had grown considerably with the afternoon rain. I remember thinking to myself, as I was hoisting my backpack over my head, that this was what I had had in mind when I thought about volunteering in Central America. The sun was about to set, the temperature was hot and humid, and I was in the middle of a river, finally alone in the backwoods of El Salvador. It was perfect.
Prior to meeting them, Carly let me know that my temporary host family was one of the poorest in town, and that whatever i decided to pay them at the end of my stay would help them out enormously. And she wasn´t kidding. The family lived in a one-room adobe house with a dirt floor and no potable water. Adelaida´s youngest daughter is a deceptively hefty 2 year-old girl who won´t eat anything because she has parasites. But Adelaida, her mother, and her three kids (again - no men around!) showed me the best time I´ve had so far in El Salvador. When we arrived at the house, Adelaida´s 9 year-old son Enrique took over the tour guide duties, and showed me around the neighborhood, pointing out plants, fruit, birds, lizards and bugs that were all foreign to me. After a phenomenal dinner of eggs and beans and some real coffee (not the instant stuff that everyone here makes), we chatted for awhile and turned in. They of course slept in hammocks so that I could have the biggest bed in the house. The hospitality here is like none other. Oh, and when all the lights went out, the ceiling suddenly lit up with about 20 lightening bugs, and it was like sleeping under the stars.
The next day, Adelaida took me on one of her patrols with her boss, Juan. We got up early, donned rubber boots and machetes, and set out for the rain forest of El Impossible. We slogged and hacked through the thick jungle, seeing huge butterflies, a wide variety of giant spiders and bunches of tropical fruit. Adelaida and Juan guard against poachers, who mainly go after iguana and caiman (a crocodile-like reptile), and occasionally machorros (a prehistoric-looking fish found only in W. El Sal and Guatemala). Unfortunately, we didn´t see any of those animals (or poachers), but the walk itself was incredibly beautiful. I chatted for awhile with Juan back at their office about immigration and relations between the US and El Salvador. He told me that his 16 year-old son had successfully made the journey and now worked in construction in Virginia. I couldn´t believe that someone so young would make such a treacherous journey by himself. And I still can´t get over the $6,000 price of admission into the United States. Six grand in El Salvador would feed a family for 2 years. It doesn´t seem worth the risk to me. Juan also posed an interesting question: why are there poor people in the US when my son can go there with nothing, no language skills, and work and make a living? I didn´t have a good answer for him. We also talked about the level of poverty in the US. I found myself telling him that poor people (the working poor) in the US usually have housing, usually have a car, usually have food to feed their families, and usually don´t have to worry about potable water sources. I felt embarrassed saying this to a man who makes $140 per month and lives in a mud hut.
When we got back to the house, the skies opened up and I saw the Salvadoran rainy season in full effect. But due to the incredible heat, the kids and i stayed outside and played futbol in the mud. I also taught them how to run and skate on the slippery, muddy clay, sort of like skating in your socks on a hardwood floor. They loved it, and we all got muddy from head to toe.
On my last day, I left Adelaida´s family at 6am and went to Carly´s house to meet up with a few other volunteers. Enrique cried when I left, which made me realize what a difference a few days of attention and interaction with a little guy can make. I really connected with that family, and didn´t want to leave myself. When I met up with the 3 other volunteers, we hopped on borrowed bikes and started pedaling up the long road toward the waterfall in El Impossible. We stopped in San Francisco Mendoza to buy some homemade cheese and tortillas to snack on up at the waterfall. Like everything else here, the cheese has about a kilo of salt per serving, but we were hungry, so it didn´t matter. We dropped our bikes off at some lady´s house at the trail head, and hiked about 30 minutes through more rain forest. When I finally arrived at the waterfall, drenched in sweat and mud, I saw the tropical paradise that I had pictured in my head since I was little. The water gushed into a clear pool from 25 feet above, surrounded by creeping vines and big mangrove trees. Below the waterfall, the creek veered in sharp angles underneath the rain forest canopy. We swam for awhile, and I finally felt cool and clean after three weeks of intense heat. We took naps on the rocks, then woke up and hiked back to our bikes. I hope I´m stationed somewhere out west.
This email is getting really long! I´m going to shorten things up and say that I had a great time in Ahuachapan, that I´m a little bummed to be back in San Vicente with it´s rigorous and slightly boring training schedule, but excited to go out to my permanent site in a few weeks. I´ve been healthy so far, with only one day of minor stomach problems. And I never made it to the witchdoctor with my host sister because our ride fell through at midnight the night before leaving. How anti-climactic! Hopefully I´ll have another chance to go. That´s all I have for now. If you´ve read this far, thanks, and send me an email if you think of it.
Thinking of you all in Centroamérica,
Benjamín
Got My Site...
Nov. 10, 2006
Hi All,
It´s been a little while since my last email, as I´ve been off the grid and working mainly in my host community. I´ve been spending my days speaking spanish, hanging out with my host family, and doing a variety of projects in the community. The latest project, which we still have yet to finish, is painting a giant world map on the wall of the local school. The kids are all involved in the painting and drawing process, and hopefully they´ll get a little geography lesson in the process.
Last weekend, about 20 of us volunteers splurged and went over to the beach in La Libertad. We spent about 24 hours lounging around on the black sand beach, under coconut palms, sleeping in hammocks, eating great food and (gasp) drinking a few beers. It felt a world away from our normal Peace Corps routine, and it was a much needed break.
This time, I don´t have any stories about chicken unmentionables, but I did want to write to tell you all a little bit about where I´ll be for the next 2 years. I found out on Tuesday that I´ll be stationed in a little country town of 700 people called El Pital, near La Magdalena, near Chalchuapa, in the department of Santa Ana. I´ll be doing a variety of things, from facilitating projects with the local community development committee, obtaining computers and building a computer lab, starting up a youth group, and teaching English on the side. I´m very happy about the variety of possibilities in this site. It´s also very rural - about 10 km from the nearest paved road - which makes me happy too. However, I hear there are chinches there (little bugs that burrow into your skin and poison your blood), so I´ll have to be extra diligent with my bug-machete.
Despite everything strange about my host family, I´ve grown to be quite close to all of them. I´m really going to miss the craziness of that house, and the friendships I´ve formed with them all. I also just learned that 6 year-old Ingrid, one of the three orphan kids, will be adopted by her cousins in the US, separating her from her 2 brothers for a long time, possibly for good. It will no doubt provide her with a better life, and far more opportunities than the dismal ones she has here, but it makes a family that has lived through so much even sadder. Hopefully, it will be for the best.
Anyway, that´s all the time I have for now. I´ll try to write as often as possible, and in the meantime, know that I´m thinking of you all and enjoying your replies and comments.
Adios,
Benjamín
Hi All,
It´s been a little while since my last email, as I´ve been off the grid and working mainly in my host community. I´ve been spending my days speaking spanish, hanging out with my host family, and doing a variety of projects in the community. The latest project, which we still have yet to finish, is painting a giant world map on the wall of the local school. The kids are all involved in the painting and drawing process, and hopefully they´ll get a little geography lesson in the process.
Last weekend, about 20 of us volunteers splurged and went over to the beach in La Libertad. We spent about 24 hours lounging around on the black sand beach, under coconut palms, sleeping in hammocks, eating great food and (gasp) drinking a few beers. It felt a world away from our normal Peace Corps routine, and it was a much needed break.
This time, I don´t have any stories about chicken unmentionables, but I did want to write to tell you all a little bit about where I´ll be for the next 2 years. I found out on Tuesday that I´ll be stationed in a little country town of 700 people called El Pital, near La Magdalena, near Chalchuapa, in the department of Santa Ana. I´ll be doing a variety of things, from facilitating projects with the local community development committee, obtaining computers and building a computer lab, starting up a youth group, and teaching English on the side. I´m very happy about the variety of possibilities in this site. It´s also very rural - about 10 km from the nearest paved road - which makes me happy too. However, I hear there are chinches there (little bugs that burrow into your skin and poison your blood), so I´ll have to be extra diligent with my bug-machete.
Despite everything strange about my host family, I´ve grown to be quite close to all of them. I´m really going to miss the craziness of that house, and the friendships I´ve formed with them all. I also just learned that 6 year-old Ingrid, one of the three orphan kids, will be adopted by her cousins in the US, separating her from her 2 brothers for a long time, possibly for good. It will no doubt provide her with a better life, and far more opportunities than the dismal ones she has here, but it makes a family that has lived through so much even sadder. Hopefully, it will be for the best.
Anyway, that´s all the time I have for now. I´ll try to write as often as possible, and in the meantime, know that I´m thinking of you all and enjoying your replies and comments.
Adios,
Benjamín
Chickenbutt Soup
Oct. 24, 2006
Hi Everyone,
This is going to be a shorter email, but I had to get this story out before I forgot about it. On Sunday, I made chicken soup with my family, from scratch. Really, from scratch. First, we had to catch the chicken in our yard. So Memo and Luis (my two ¨nephews¨, 9 and 11) and I ran around the yard, chasing after this chicken in the mud, slipping and diving occasionally. Finally, Luis cornered the gallina next to a cactus-like plant, and I was able to grab it by its two legs. It didn´t struggle much, but maybe it would have if it had known what would happen next.
I took the chicken to the outdoor patio in the back of the house where we have our cocina, which is the spanish word for kitchen. In El Salvador, however, it refers to the outdoor, wood fired stove you have in the back of your house. Niña Antonia (my host-mom) was there waiting to show me how to kill a chicken. She went through the motions, and after feeling sufficiently ready to do the deed, I grabbed the chicken by the neck, and flung it around wildly like a Pete Townsend guitar windmill. After a few revolutions, its neck was broken and the mission was accomplished. I then hung it upside down, head flopping loosely about, until it stopped flapping its wings and died. What a weird feeling. I mean, I´ve killed and eaten plenty of fish in my time, but this was something different.
We then threw the chicken into some boiling water for a few minutes to loosen the feathers. I ended up plucking all the feathers out myself, which was really gross. After plucking, I stuck the chicken´s feet over the wood fire for a few minutes to remove the callouses so that we could eat the feet without fear of disease. Ew, again. After roasting the feet and peeling the dead skin away like a garlic peel, we began to clean out the insides of this poor little gallina. We ended up keeping everything, and using it in the soup. All the organs, the feet, and even, yes, even the butthole! Niña Antonia showed me how to clean the chicken butthole in order to eat it. First, you have to get rid of all the poop, and then you have to cut out the hard skin that protects the chicken from the stomach acids. And then you have yourself a ready-to-cook, sumptuous chicken butthole.
Anyway, the soup was pretty decent, but I for the first time here in ES, I had to refuse food. I just could not eat the liver that ended up in my bowl. It tasted like metal, and it reminded me of the bait we used to use while catfishing. Nasty. Luckily, they kept the feet, heart, and butthole out of my bowl. It was pretty funny to see my host sister going to town on all of those unsavory parts though.
So that´s my story about making chicken(butthole) soup, from the ground up. Nothing much else to report, except that we got another rooster to mate with our chickens, who happen to live high up in our cashew (Marañon) tree. The rooster apparently didn´t feel like gettin´ it on right away, and when he didn´t, my family yelled all kinds of epithets at it to try to inspire it. Everyone, from my 6 year old niece to my 64 year old host mom, was yelling homosexual epithets and emasculating insults at this poor chicken. It was hilarious. Oh, and I went to a piñata, or birthday party, for a 2 year old, in which there was a dancing contest. About 7 girls, ranging in age from 6 to 10, got up in front of everyone to dance to some reggaeton beats. Now, I´m definitely no prude, but I was shocked - these girls danced like they were straight out of a Snoop Dogg video. Inappropriate!! But all the adults were cheering them on. I wanted to go home, take a shower and wash that image out of my brain. If I had a shower, that is.
Ok, more to come. Hope you all are well,
Benjamín
Hi Everyone,
This is going to be a shorter email, but I had to get this story out before I forgot about it. On Sunday, I made chicken soup with my family, from scratch. Really, from scratch. First, we had to catch the chicken in our yard. So Memo and Luis (my two ¨nephews¨, 9 and 11) and I ran around the yard, chasing after this chicken in the mud, slipping and diving occasionally. Finally, Luis cornered the gallina next to a cactus-like plant, and I was able to grab it by its two legs. It didn´t struggle much, but maybe it would have if it had known what would happen next.
I took the chicken to the outdoor patio in the back of the house where we have our cocina, which is the spanish word for kitchen. In El Salvador, however, it refers to the outdoor, wood fired stove you have in the back of your house. Niña Antonia (my host-mom) was there waiting to show me how to kill a chicken. She went through the motions, and after feeling sufficiently ready to do the deed, I grabbed the chicken by the neck, and flung it around wildly like a Pete Townsend guitar windmill. After a few revolutions, its neck was broken and the mission was accomplished. I then hung it upside down, head flopping loosely about, until it stopped flapping its wings and died. What a weird feeling. I mean, I´ve killed and eaten plenty of fish in my time, but this was something different.
We then threw the chicken into some boiling water for a few minutes to loosen the feathers. I ended up plucking all the feathers out myself, which was really gross. After plucking, I stuck the chicken´s feet over the wood fire for a few minutes to remove the callouses so that we could eat the feet without fear of disease. Ew, again. After roasting the feet and peeling the dead skin away like a garlic peel, we began to clean out the insides of this poor little gallina. We ended up keeping everything, and using it in the soup. All the organs, the feet, and even, yes, even the butthole! Niña Antonia showed me how to clean the chicken butthole in order to eat it. First, you have to get rid of all the poop, and then you have to cut out the hard skin that protects the chicken from the stomach acids. And then you have yourself a ready-to-cook, sumptuous chicken butthole.
Anyway, the soup was pretty decent, but I for the first time here in ES, I had to refuse food. I just could not eat the liver that ended up in my bowl. It tasted like metal, and it reminded me of the bait we used to use while catfishing. Nasty. Luckily, they kept the feet, heart, and butthole out of my bowl. It was pretty funny to see my host sister going to town on all of those unsavory parts though.
So that´s my story about making chicken(butthole) soup, from the ground up. Nothing much else to report, except that we got another rooster to mate with our chickens, who happen to live high up in our cashew (Marañon) tree. The rooster apparently didn´t feel like gettin´ it on right away, and when he didn´t, my family yelled all kinds of epithets at it to try to inspire it. Everyone, from my 6 year old niece to my 64 year old host mom, was yelling homosexual epithets and emasculating insults at this poor chicken. It was hilarious. Oh, and I went to a piñata, or birthday party, for a 2 year old, in which there was a dancing contest. About 7 girls, ranging in age from 6 to 10, got up in front of everyone to dance to some reggaeton beats. Now, I´m definitely no prude, but I was shocked - these girls danced like they were straight out of a Snoop Dogg video. Inappropriate!! But all the adults were cheering them on. I wanted to go home, take a shower and wash that image out of my brain. If I had a shower, that is.
Ok, more to come. Hope you all are well,
Benjamín
El Pulgarcito de America
Oct. 2, 2006
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the delay in writing to you all, but my schedule´s been pretty tight lately. I´ve been spending 2-3 days a week in San Vicente (the town of about 30,000 people and 1 internet cafe) and the other days in my home canton (small, small town) of San Antonio de Caminos, passing time with my family, receiving Spanish lessons, and visiting schools and community centers to observe.
El Salvador is unlike anything I could have ever imagined. The level of poverty here is indescribable, something that can only be understood by living among it, which I am doing now with my host family. Arriving that first night, speaking Spanish like a kindergartner, was something I´ll never forget. I happened to arrive during the 9th day of the rosary said in honor of my host family´s dead father. He died about 5 years ago, but they were commemorating his death with song and prayer and food. I, however, was asked to eat alone in my room, because there weren´t enough chairs, and because I assume that it was a pretty personal thing for them to go through. After this was all over, I came out of my room and tried to speak with my host family. They weren´t the most engaging bunch at first, and we found ourselves with an abundance of awkward silences, particularly with so much death in the air. I didn´t know then, but there are three kids living in the house who were orphaned when their father, suspecting his wife of cheating, shot her and then himself, killing them both. This guy would have been my host brother. Lots of violence here. My host sister, it turns out, has a baby that was born with severe cerebral and pulmonary problems. He´s 1 year old, and it´s certain that he won´t live to see 2. So, you can imagine that I didn´t get the typically chipper welcome that we´re used to in the US.
But all that aside, I live with some great people. My host sisters and their kids took me on a walk up to the Volcano (Chichontepec - the ´big boob´) last Sunday, which was incredible. We hiked about 12 km round trip, and gathered a bunch of food for that night´s dinner. Being the last night of their father´s rosary (the 12th night), it was tamale feast time. So we picked tomatoes, peppers, jocotes (can´t really describe it but to say that they´re grainy and bitter fruits), granadias (guava-like), and guineos (bananas). After all of that, we used machetes to strip the banana trees of their leaves, lay them out horizontally on the ground, and wrap them up in bundles to be used later to wrap the tamales. I ended up carrying about 30 lbs of banana leaves all the way down the volcano. The kids still call me ¨burro¨.
The lack of men here is one of the more disturbing aspects my salvadoran experience thus far. As I understand it, this stems from 2 things: machismo and El Norte. Everywhere you look, there are single mothers (incredibly young - avg age of virginity loss in ES is 13!!). In my family, the fathers are either dead, in the US, have other families, or just didn´t take responsibility. It appears that all of the best and brightest men in ES leave to make the long trek to the US. Billions of dollars are sent back to ES from the US, so much so that the national currency of ES is the dollar, which makes currency exchange easy. When you combine this ´brain drain´ with the fact that men have license to do what they please (rape is commonplace and ignored, or blamed on the woman; men with multiple families are all over the place), you find entire street blocks of families without males above age 12. Pretty bleak.
Ok, that´s all I´ve got. Oh wait - I just remembered that i´m going to the curandero (witchdoctor) tomorrow with my host sister to see if he can cure her sick baby. i´m not holding out much hope, but i´m looking forward to the experience nonetheless. It´s a long trek, so we´re leaving at 4am (the roosters and dogs and bugs will all be making their noises anyway).
Adios,
Benjamín
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the delay in writing to you all, but my schedule´s been pretty tight lately. I´ve been spending 2-3 days a week in San Vicente (the town of about 30,000 people and 1 internet cafe) and the other days in my home canton (small, small town) of San Antonio de Caminos, passing time with my family, receiving Spanish lessons, and visiting schools and community centers to observe.
El Salvador is unlike anything I could have ever imagined. The level of poverty here is indescribable, something that can only be understood by living among it, which I am doing now with my host family. Arriving that first night, speaking Spanish like a kindergartner, was something I´ll never forget. I happened to arrive during the 9th day of the rosary said in honor of my host family´s dead father. He died about 5 years ago, but they were commemorating his death with song and prayer and food. I, however, was asked to eat alone in my room, because there weren´t enough chairs, and because I assume that it was a pretty personal thing for them to go through. After this was all over, I came out of my room and tried to speak with my host family. They weren´t the most engaging bunch at first, and we found ourselves with an abundance of awkward silences, particularly with so much death in the air. I didn´t know then, but there are three kids living in the house who were orphaned when their father, suspecting his wife of cheating, shot her and then himself, killing them both. This guy would have been my host brother. Lots of violence here. My host sister, it turns out, has a baby that was born with severe cerebral and pulmonary problems. He´s 1 year old, and it´s certain that he won´t live to see 2. So, you can imagine that I didn´t get the typically chipper welcome that we´re used to in the US.
But all that aside, I live with some great people. My host sisters and their kids took me on a walk up to the Volcano (Chichontepec - the ´big boob´) last Sunday, which was incredible. We hiked about 12 km round trip, and gathered a bunch of food for that night´s dinner. Being the last night of their father´s rosary (the 12th night), it was tamale feast time. So we picked tomatoes, peppers, jocotes (can´t really describe it but to say that they´re grainy and bitter fruits), granadias (guava-like), and guineos (bananas). After all of that, we used machetes to strip the banana trees of their leaves, lay them out horizontally on the ground, and wrap them up in bundles to be used later to wrap the tamales. I ended up carrying about 30 lbs of banana leaves all the way down the volcano. The kids still call me ¨burro¨.
The lack of men here is one of the more disturbing aspects my salvadoran experience thus far. As I understand it, this stems from 2 things: machismo and El Norte. Everywhere you look, there are single mothers (incredibly young - avg age of virginity loss in ES is 13!!). In my family, the fathers are either dead, in the US, have other families, or just didn´t take responsibility. It appears that all of the best and brightest men in ES leave to make the long trek to the US. Billions of dollars are sent back to ES from the US, so much so that the national currency of ES is the dollar, which makes currency exchange easy. When you combine this ´brain drain´ with the fact that men have license to do what they please (rape is commonplace and ignored, or blamed on the woman; men with multiple families are all over the place), you find entire street blocks of families without males above age 12. Pretty bleak.
Ok, that´s all I´ve got. Oh wait - I just remembered that i´m going to the curandero (witchdoctor) tomorrow with my host sister to see if he can cure her sick baby. i´m not holding out much hope, but i´m looking forward to the experience nonetheless. It´s a long trek, so we´re leaving at 4am (the roosters and dogs and bugs will all be making their noises anyway).
Adios,
Benjamín
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