Public Speaking...in Spanish...

Standard in El Salvador’s Peace Corps program is the Asamblea General, which every Volunteer has in their community at some point during their first month or two. It serves as an opportunity for the new Volunteer to once again introduce himself to the community, summarize what they have learned and observed in the community in their first few weeks, and announce their ideas and plans for their two years of service. Invited to the events are whoever is relevant to the announcements—in communities larger than mine, this usually means all the government officials, NGO officials, school directors, community leaders, etc. In San Luis, none of those people really exist, so basically, everyone and anyone was invited.

My Asamblea General was yesterday and had about 85 or 90 attendees. This included 65 men (who are the only people whose presence is actually formally recorded), many women as well, countless children, and a few dogs and chickens to top it all off. Additionally, two or three officials from the closest offices of CENTA (a branch of the Ministry of Agriculture) dropped by. It ended up turning into quite the social event, as during the talks, which took place inside a classroom at the local school, soccer games for the children broke out in the school yard and numerous vendors made brisk business selling everything from oranges to mattresses (the mattresses confused me too, I’m fairly positive no one bought one, and the guy selling them definitely didn’t live here).

The Asamblea General also served to once again remind me of some other large cultural differences between El Salvador and the States. For example, knowing the event was supposed to actually begin at 2 pm (the time and date is set by the Peace Corps offices because Peace Corps staff attend as well), I printed on the invitation and told everyone in San Luis it was actually set to start at 12:30 pm (Salvadorans are consistently late…very late…and always). I showed up at 2:15 pm thinking there would be at least a good size crowd. The event ended up starting a little after 3 pm. Multiple San Luisans commented to me, afterwards, about how well-run and prompt the event was.

Additionally, it served as quite the test of my Spanish. I ended up speaking about my time here so far, all that I have learned, and all that I intend to do in my two years for about 15 or 20 minutes. Not only was it, by far, the largest crowd of people I have ever spoken in front of, but it was also completely in Spanish. Making it even more interesting, I’m pretty sure the reason many of the people attended was out of pure curiosity—it still shocks most members of the community that a gringo can not only speak Spanish but can live in their community for more than a few days without fleeing back to the comfort of the States. I didn’t really prepare any remarks because I knew if I had anything written down I would end up getting nervous and just directly reading it off the paper, but all ended up going well—I didn’t even get any outbursts of giggles, the tell-tale sign of Spanish mistakes.

The projects I described range from short-term to long-term, complete necessity to simple quality-of-life projects, agriculture work to rural health work to youth development and environmental education work. This is fairly typical—although my program is specifically geared towards agriculture and farmers, all Volunteers end up having projects across basically every sphere of development work. I will begin my work in November with the construction of latrines. About 40% of the families here have no latrines or broken ones, which is absolutely awful for water quality, soil quality, health, and really basically anything else you can name. Especially since the whole town is on a slope, everything eventually runs downhill and into the river…so if you don’t have a latrine…well, you can figure out what happens. I’m also going to begin with organizing a new environmental youth group for the coming school year and creating a complete, in-depth map of the community, which currently does not exist. The timing of the beginning of when I will begin my work is difficult, because it falls right at the beginning of the corn and bean harvest and the end of the school year, so a lot of my work, especially with farmers and the school, will be pushed back until February. In time, I also plan to organize farmers into groups which can then purchase larger amounts of agricultural products at lower prices, increase the presence of new, more sustainable crops (such as tomatoes, okra, yucca, chiles, radishes, and cucumbers), and work to bring solar-powered lights to the one road that runs through the middle of the community and to the houses without electricity. Additionally, I have already begun a girl’s soccer team and bi-weekly events to teach farmers how to make organic fertilizers and pesticides. While these are just the main projects I have decided to focus on for now, this plan will undoubtedly change quite a few times and I will also constantly be aiding in organization with a few local organizations and institutions and whatever other issues or problems inevitably arise in San Luis on a weekly basis.

However, now that I have finally completed my Asamblea General, the first milestone and goal of any new Volunteer, the work isn’t set to slow down. I will be attending a two-day training event today and tomorrow with the Ministry of Health (I accepted the invitation but forgot to ask what type of training it was—I’m really hoping its not anything too medical, I definitely don’t want to be playing with needles and stuff), my first tournament with my girl’s soccer team on Saturday (promises to be interesting—the girls are quite the motley crew, ranging in age from 10 to 27 and including two mother-daughter duos), and a trip across the country to a beach community on Sunday with the men’s soccer team for another tournament (this one I’ll be playing in, not coaching, thankfully).

PICTURES!!!

Above are a few shots from my Asemblea General.

Below are a few picturess from a workshop I had where I taught a few farmers in the community to make an organic pesticide from only ash, soap, water, and a few other cheap and easy ingredients.




Below are a few pictures from when we cleared a corn field after a harvest. Next week we´ll be planting sugar cane in the same field.

Earthquakes and Hurricanes

A few notes and stories from my past few weeks:

1. Last week we were hit by two earthquakes and two hurricanes. It literally didn’t stop raining for a week and at points it felt like the earth was never going to stop shaking either. For someone who’d never felt an earthquake, it was all pretty exciting, but all the rain definitely had all the farmers (that means everyone) worried about their plants rotting due to the massive amounts of standing water.

1b. Fast-forward a week. It hasn’t rained and I haven’t even seen a cloud in 4 or 5 days. They are now talking about it being the “drought” of the century. The bean plants can only make it a few more days without rain before they lose them all. Thanks change pretty quickly around here.

2. For the most part, the people here only bathe once every week or two and definitely wear the same thing for at least three or four days…minimum. This has quickly become one of my favorite aspects of life here.

3. I expect to easily shatter Cal Ripken’s Iron Man record within my two years here. I have now had beans, tortillas, and eggs 28 meals in a row…and counting. In the morning the beans are mashed, lunch features hot bean soup, and dinner is consistently accompanied by cold bean soup. The eggs are always scrambled…every once in awhile with tomatoes or peppers. The tortillas are, well, always tortillas. Also, once every few days I get a hot dog. For some reason though, I’m not really tired of it. It is kind of refreshing to know exactly what you are always going to eat, and honestly, it is all so fresh that it never gets old…at least not yet.

4. Before El Salvador, I definitely thought the last thing I would ever become was a coffee-drinker. I never liked the taste and I never wanted to be one of those people that has to have coffee every morning. That has certainly all gone out the window. They seem to be incredibly insistent on serving me a cup of coffee with every meal, no matter how many times in the first week I tried to politely tell them I wasn’t really a coffee drinker, but now I have just kind of given in. I still don’t really like coffee with dinner, but lunch I can tolerate, and I’m actually starting to kind of like it with breakfast.

5. My days have basically all been taken up with conducting house visits. I have now visited about 60 families (have about 25 or 30 more to go) and have truly enjoyed getting to know all that the people of San Luis La Magdalena have to offer. I have been tricked into eating a chile pepper that had tears pouring from my eyes for well over 10 minutes (everyone in town heard about that story in a matter of hours…I now have to re-live it at every new house I visit), been forced to take my jeans off so that the grandmother could patch them while I continued the conversation in my boxers, been fed both breakfast and lunch in the span of one two-hour house visit, faked understanding more stories than I can count, eaten some of the strangest fruits Central America has to offer, looked at pictures of easily over 200 weddings, births, and birthdays, taught one man how to calculate the total area of his parcel of beans and corn (his family had apparently been staring at a piece of paper with the measurements of all the different sides and angles for two days, not knowing what to do next), and been asked how soon I want to find a Salvadoran girlfriend an average of twice per visit. In addition to all the memorable experiences, memories, and fun my house visits have proven to be, they are also invaluable for me in starting my service here as I can now much better identify areas the community needs help with, identify who I should include in certain types of projects, and can now count on having the trust and friendship of the majority of the people who live here.

6. Although the vast majority of the corn is harvested here in November and December, I have helped out with early harvests twice this past week. It is pretty fun, a great way to spend a morning outdoors, and returning to the house by noon having already put in at least 7 hours of work is a great excuse for simply relaxing in a hammock the rest of the day. However, much like my house visits, it has been one place I have done a lot of cultural learning the awkward way. When harvesting corn, Salvadorans clear patches in random spots of the field with machetes, then while harvesting corn from all over the field, toss each ear into the cleared areas. Obviously, with fields full of men, this is bound to turn into some sort of hooliganism. Here, it usually evolves into never-ending games of dodge-ball played with ears of corn. Due to the fact that Salvadorans all really only play soccer and therefore never really get much practice throwing things, corn ends up flying everywhere. These games of dodge-ball also have quite a few unspoken rules that were definitely never communicated to me, most of which I have already learned the hard way…like after I hit the preacher of the church, who I now know is completely off-limits, with an abnormally large ear of corn straight to the gut.

Pictures from the Corn Harvests