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