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