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