Merry Christmas!

A lot has happened in the past few weeks, here are a few of the more interesting details:

- I have now officially attended my first genuine Latin-American protest (technically I had been to one while I was at the national agricultural university for training, where the Ministry of Agriculture staff were protesting for better pay, but I only saw that one in passing, so it’s not going to count for now). Basically, this time of year, all the men of San Luis either work at the engineo, which is a processing plant for sugar cane, or they cut sugar cane for the cooperative. While working at the engineo (located one community over in La Magdalena, about a 45-minute walk from San Luis) is definitely the better job as the pay is better ($1.10/hr. vs. $5/day), it definitely is no dream job. Everyone works one of three 8-hour shifts (7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm, 11pm-7pm). Your shift changes every two weeks. You work 7 days a week. There are no holidays or sick days, not even for Christmas or New Years. Literally, for three months, the engineo never stops processing for a minute. Also, the engineo has always, for years, shorted workers on their pay-checks, which they know they can get away with since no one would dare complain, since there are thousands of workers cutting sugar cane who could replace them at any moment. This year, the workers of the engineo finally decided to unionize, deciding they had had enough of the bad working conditions and low pay (average pay at other engineos across the country is $2 or $3 more a day). While the right to unionize is very clearly stated in the Salvadoran Constitution, the owners and bosses of the engineo refused to allow the workers to unionize. Thus…protests. For two weeks all the men of my community spent all their time outside the walls of the engineo, often even sleeping there. However, this meant they were earning no money and that all the sugar cane that had been cut in anticipation of the opening of the enginio dried in the sun waiting to be processed and became completely worthless, ruining the crops of many farmers. Big problems—especially for people who don’t exactly have savings accounts to draw on in emergencies. Life in San Luis got pretty tenuous for a week or two there. Anyways, after two weeks, the national government finally stepped in and forced the engineo to recognize the union, so, for the last week, life in San Luis has gone back to normal. However, everyone is still pretty nervous about what exactly is going to happen whenever the union objects to something, which is bound to happen in a week when pay-checks will be given out and inevitably many will be given less than they actually earned. While Volunteers are prohibited from participating in political events (political party rallies, campaigns, and often protests) I didn’t really have a choice. Not only were the engineo workers protesting, but the sugar cane cutters were protesting too, since they couldn’t begin working until the cane they would be cutting could be processed. Anyways, to talk to any male in the community I had to go to the protests, which I wasn’t completely against anyways, as I thought they were pretty fun and exciting. For a few days I spent a few hours every afternoon just chilling with the men of San Luis and other surrounding communities eating coconuts, playing soccer, talking about soccer, thinking about soccer, and playing cards. I posted some pictures from the protests late last week.

- I’ve started moving farther forward with the planning of a few of my first larger projects. I’ve had meetings with multiple people in order to organize a youth reforestation campaign, but am currently on hold, since the director of the school for the coming school year, starting in January, is still up in the air. Until that is decided, I can not do much else, but I am still excited. It looks like I will be teaming up with the nearby environmentally-protected area and a local NGO called Agua y Arboles to coordinate a reforestation campaign through my environmental youth group and the local school. In addition to bi-weekly activities centered on the importance of the environment, every student in the school will be taught then able to practice gathering seeds, planting them in a nursery, and then later permanently transferring them into the ground. I’m also currently working on organizing and writing the grants for a hybrid chicken project (traditional Salvadoran chickens in San Luis lay 40 eggs/year; properly cared for hybrid chicken can lay up to 200 eggs/year) which would greatly aid the nutrition and income-gathering ability of many families and a soy bean project (I know…that one really sounds exciting!) which would familiarize the families of San Luis with a food and crop they are not familiar with and thus hesitant to plant, but which is both much healthier than the crops they currently grow and eat and better for soil conservation and crop diversification.

- This past Saturday I was in San Salvador with a mountain of other Volunteers for the annual soccer game between Peace Corps and JICA (basically, the Japanese version of Peace Corps). We played in the national stadium, Estadio Cuscatlan, which was one of the coolest things I’ve done as a Volunteer. Unlike the soccer fields in my community where I am used to playing there is actually real grass and lines and other soccer standards like that which made it infinitely more fun. However, I also realized how obscenely large a FIFA regulation-size field is—not only was I gasping for air after about 15 minutes but my respect for professional soccer players increased ten-fold.

- I will be embarking on my first international vacation since arriving in El Salvador to begin the 2011. While I still plan on getting to all the countries of Central America during my two years, due to the busy nature of training and my first few months in site, I have yet to make it out of the country. From January 2^nd to 8^th, I will be in Honduras, where I am meeting up with some George Washington University friends (still current students who will be there with a GW Alternative Winter Break trip) somewhere near San Pedro Sula, then meeting up with another GW friend who has graduated and is working in Honduras and probably going to Copan and Lago Yojoa.

- Over this past weekend, while in San Salvador, I went to a live music venue that is quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the country to see a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band (maybe not a dream concert, but the pickings are slim down here). While the band was pretty good, actually sounded a lot like the Chili Peppers (despite having two lead singers, both of whom were girls), and real fun, it was pretty obvious they had no idea what the meanings of the words they were singing were. Altogether, an awesome, but weird, experience.

- Two nights ago, there was a total lunar eclipse which was visible in all of Central America between 2:30 and 3am. I heard about it on the radio while eating lunch and spent a healthy chunk of the afternoon trying to find a Salvadoran who was willing to wake up and check it out with me. They all thought I was nuts. I ended up climbing out of my mosquito net at 2:30 anyways, hanging my hammock outside, and sitting alone in the cold for 30 minutes waiting for something cool to happen. I was under the impression lunar eclipses were interesting. Not so. Maybe I just missed something and should of paid more attention in my freshmen year Astronomy class, but I think the Salvos were right on this one

- There are two huge mango trees in front of my house. While the mangos will not be ready for about six more weeks, I tried counting how many I had coming today. I got to 200 before completing the first tree. My mango trees are definitely in the running for my favorite aspect of my new house.

More Pictures...

A visit to my nearby protected area. I am planning a reforestation project with them to start in January.

My official Salvadoran stamp/seal in action. Mad props to a trendy new budding graphic designer, Nina Feldman, out of Seattle.

My first Salvadoran protest!

Visiting a Potential Water Project in Another Community and a Few Cute Kids Along the Way...

My New Digs!

the first two pictures are of the back second room...still not much going on back there. the other pictures are all of the front room-the one i actually live in.

pictures of the outside to come soon...i took these last night and it was too dark to take outside shots then left before the sun rose this morning so i didn´t have time

The Last Few Weeks

Sorry for the extended halt to my blogging and updating—it has been quite the hectic and unexpected past few weeks. However, this really just means I’ve got more than ever to pack into one blog entry. From two packed weeks of training, to a quick trip back to the States, to a big move into a house of my own here in San Luis, I’ve still hardly had time to catch my breath and process everything that has happened.

First, in early November, I returned to my original training community, San Esteban Catarina, for a few days of more advanced Spanish training designed to answer any questions that may have arisen through our first six weeks in our site. This was followed with a week of technical training. Since my original host family had gone to the States, I was placed with a new family, but my luck had remained. While my home during my first training session was undoubtedly the nicest house all of San Esteban and is quite luxurious even by American standards, my new host family had what is possibly the second nicest home in the entire pueblo. During my week of training in San Vicente that focused on the more technical aspects of life as a Volunteer, my group of Sustainable Agriculture Volunteers took daily trips to sites of current Volunteers to see and learn from the projects they are currently involved in. A favorite of mine was a chicken project in which the Volunteer had received a $2,500 grant to cover the costs of 30 hybrid chickens along with all the food, vaccines, and chicken coop materials his group of 25 women would need for the first 6 months with their chickens. Currently Salvadorans raise chickens in a much easier, but much less productive manner, and do not use hybrid chickens, which require quite a bit more work, but can supply more meat and three or four times as many eggs. I definitely am planning on trying to get this type of project going in my community and can not wait to get a chicken coop of my own cranking out eggs in front of my new house. Not only is it a project that will increase the amount of protein in the diets of the people of San Luis and provide another source of income, I figure my time in Peace Corps will definitely be better than any other to finally have my own chicken coop and learn all about chickens.

After a week of visiting the projects of other Volunteers, I spent a week at ENA (Escuela Nacional de Agricultura—El Salvador’s agricultural university) where I learned a ton more about plenty of cool and helpful new topics—composting, fruit trees, forest trees (reforestation projects), hydroponics, bee-keeping, vegetable gardens, tree-grafting, pesticide management, and organic fertilizers.

Next came a quick trip back to the States. I ended up being really surprised how quickly I missed El Salvador, especially the rural life and people of San Luis to which I had apparently quickly become very accustomed and comfortable. While the comforts of being home certainly were nice and I would not trade anything for the time with family and friends, it left me realizing I’d gotten a lot more used to El Salvador that I thought, that I’d never really felt normal back in the States, and how much I had been enjoying my time here in El Salvador.

I returned to El Salvador just before Thanksgiving. The next few days were a true whirlwind. I traveled across the country, moved most of my stuff into my new house, traveled back across the country to San Salvador, discovered the $9 all-you-can-drink-champagne and all-you-can-eat-appetizer deal at the Sheraton, played football and swam with Embassy employees at the US Embassy (I’d almost put this place up against Versailles in terms of size and beauty), and enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with an Embassy family that was made much tastier just by the fact that it took place in a country where all I’d eaten for a few months was tortillas, eggs, and beans. Additionally, two friends and I had been invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with a couple who had actually met while doing Peace Corps is Eastern Europe from 1998 to 2000 and were absolutely great hosts (they had served in Eastern Europe with a friend of mine from Washington who I worked with on Capitol Hill).

Following Thanksgiving, I quickly trekked back to my site finished making the move into my new house. While it doesn’t have water, my community had actually done some work to it while I was gone, cementing the front porch (which had previously just had a dirt floor) and giving it a fresh layer or paint. It has two rooms, which automatically makes it bigger than most of the homes here in San Luis, along with a great location in the middle of San Luis right across from the biggest church and next to the home of the health promoter and the only store. While I’ll have to wait till the rainy season to see how many leaks the roof currently has (I’m counting on quite a few…it may lack any windows, but I don’t lack for daylight during the day due to quite a few unintentional “sunlights”), my walls (made of mud) are at least a foot thick (don’t worry Mom—the Salvadorans repeatedly show me how thick my walls are and tell me that means I’m very safe.) Also, though I know the house had bats when I first moved in, I have yet to have any real run-ins with them. Despite all this, I really am loving the freedom the new house allows me, especially late at night and early in the morning, since I can finally have a little bit of time to myself when I’m not always being watched and/or stared at. So far, the house contains two hammocks, my bed, tomato crates I hung from the rafters to serve as bookshelves, three plastic chairs, another bookshelf I fashioned out of planks of wood and adobe bricks, and a wooden table. While I still have a little bit of work to do, I already completely feel at home here. I’ll try to get some pictures up as soon as I can.

Life back in San Luis has also even gotten even more exciting now that I’ve really been able to start my projects. Before my second round of training it was impossible to start anything permanent since I was going to be leaving for almost a month, but now that I’m here for the long haul, my work has really started and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve suddenly become much busier than I ever imagined, leaving my house to go get breakfast a little after 6 am and often not returning till after 6 or 7 pm. In my next blog I’ll try to include a lot more about the kind of work and projects I’ve been starting.

Thanks again for putting up with the occasional long breaks in between blog entries, hopefully I’ll be able to keep them a little more consistent from here on out.

A Visit to a Fruit Plantation, a Pineapple-Themed Catholic Church, and Lago Coatepeque