Remember Me?

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