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