February!

Since my two-week vacation to end 2010 and start 2011, I’ve been laying low in San Luis, not really leaving my site at all and focusing on getting some new projects started. However, despite the fact that my travels have ended, life has become no more routine and remained just as unpredictable every day. It has been awhile since the last time I posted anything, so here is my best effort at trying to summarize some of the more newsworthy items of the last month and half:

- Tomorrow I will be participating in my first-ever half-marathon. If any of you want sign-up and catch a last minute flight to come down and run with me, here is the link: www.maratonyoamoes.com. And if your only scared of the distance, there is also an 11K (a quarter-marathon) option. I’m sure to need all the support I can get. While I did start preparing three or four weeks ago, during the dry season in El Salvador the roads around my community are seemingly just paths of loose dust waiting ready to fly up and literally blind you in the slightest wind or hint of footsteps. Thus, my only real option has been to run laps around the definitely way-smaller than regulation soccer field near my house. This, undoubtedly, is not the best way to prepare for a 13.1 mile adventure. I’ve just been running for time, one day 90 minutes, another day 75, or maybe when I’m feeling lazy only 45. While I do know that I usually complete about 60 laps in 90 minutes, I have absolutely no idea how far I’m actually running…we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

- Despite that fact that my Spanish really has come around to the point that I only rarely don’t understand what someone is saying and I virtually always can express any idea I want to, there are still a few cultural issues I struggle with. Foremost is the backtone I somehow purchased for my cell phone. Whenever anyone calls me, instead of hearing a ringing until I answer, they are treated to a very sexual Shakira song. Salvadorans, specifically some of the people I have been working with in the Ministry of Agriculture and my neighbors in San Luis, find it absolutely hysterical and never get their fill of letting me know how feminine—not an issue to be taken lightly to Salvadorans—my backtone is. I still have absolutely no idea how I managed to buy the backtone and I certainly can’t figure out how to change it; I’m just praying it’s a purchase that will expire after a month and this chapter of my Salvadoran “acculturation” will quickly pass.

- In past weeks I was focusing more on organizing some larger, long-term grants and projects, but this week I spent my time on slightly more immediately tangible projects, which has been a nice change. I have started the painting of a large map of the community which will be hung near the entrance to San Luis. I also organized the next round of shampoo, which my women’s group will be making in the coming week. The shampoo has proven to be tremendously popular and the group is growing along with our shampoo’s fan club. People from both a Salvadoran NGO and the Ministry of Agriculture will be coming to our next two meetings to learn how to make the shampoo. While demand for the aloe vera flavor was high and it sold very quickly, the success of the strawberry was a little more limited, so we’ll be trying out vanilla instead of the strawberry for our second round of shampoo. I’m also exploring the ideas of having labels printed and soliciting a place in the market to sell the shampoo on a much larger and more official scale, but so far the women in my group have been very hesitant to sell anything in the market—that is a cultural issue I’m going to have to find a way around if I want to expand the group to that level. I also have spent some time organizing a training session for the local sugar cane cooperative at the national agricultural university in late March, for once the sugar cane harvest has ended, about newer varieties of sugar cane and ways the cooperative, which has been using the same varieties for years, can improve their production.

- It seems my experiences with Salvadoran food will never settle down. Every few weeks I start to think I have finally seen it all, when out of nowhere comes some new “specialty” to challenge my attitude towards what I am willing to put in my mouth. This drama continued earlier this week, when I was served two fish-head pupusas for dinner. Pupusas are a Salvadoran staple which I had previously embraced whole-heartedly. They are basically thin corn tortillas filled with a pocket of true goodness in the middle which can consist of a wide range of options—cheese, beans, squash, jalapeños, chicken, laroco or chipilin (two very flavorful Salvadoran flowers). Fish-head pupusas, however, were something I had never heard of or seen. While I managed to eat the pupusas, and they really didn’t taste close to bad as they looked, I went to sleep with dreams of nothing more than a comfortable Salvadoran breakfast in the morning—then woke up to fish head soup. However, life has improved. No fish heads have been seen since Tuesday morning.

- One consistent goal of mine as a Volunteer is to help and support the natural forest reserve, Area Natural Protegida La Magdalena, located near my site. I often make visits there and have helped organize many of their conservation and environmental education activities and efforts in and around San Luis. I just received a $500 grant I had successfully applied for to help them pay for a composting latrine in their newly-constructed camping area. Since the camping area borders a river which is the source of water for many nearby communities, including mine, and, being a national forest reserve, they inherently are much more environmentally-conscious than just about any Salvadoran, they did not want to construct the traditional pit latrine, which would invariably lead to contamination of the river. However, the costs of a composting latrine, which instead of leaking and contaminating the environment will produce fertilizer and compost, are much higher. Thus, the $500 grant. Here is a link to the webpage of the organization which has supplied the money and a further description of my project, including a few pictures: http://appropriateprojects.com/node/548.

- A few weeks ago, near the starting of November, I spent a few days in the city of Santa Ana, working with a team of American doctors who were in El Salvador for a medical mission. They were supplying free eye operations to poor, rural Salvadorans, including a few from my community. However, they didn’t speak Spanish, so they needed someone to translate. This meant I spent 4 days staying in a nice hotel, taking warm showers, and eating good food while just asking Salvadorans basic questions like “have you eaten today?,” “are you allergic to any medications?,” (the answer was always no…most of these people had never even properly visited a doctor’s office) or “do you want cookies?” (after the surgeries had been completed, of course). Other go-to phrases were, “don’t blink,” “she is about to put that needle in your arm,” “come back for a check-up tomorrow morning,” and “take one of these pills every 6 hours.” While basic and mindless, it was actually important and made many surgeries, the majority of which were cataracts, possible. I also got a great opportunity to observe surgeries and surgeons in action, which I’d never really experienced before. And while I’m still sure I’ll never become a Grey’s Anatomy or House fanatic, I do now understand why hospital shows are such a hit—it was a pretty fun and interesting environment. The surgeons were also incredibly insightful, repeatedly letting me peer through their microscopes during the surgeries in order to see all the amazing little cuts and incisions they literally do in the eyeball. Additionally, working as the only link between American doctors and the Salvadoran culture gave me multiple opportunities to have some good, old-fashioned fun. One day during the lunch break between surgeries (each doctor was averaging about 12 operations a day and we were working from 7 am to 8 pm every day) a Salvadoran women selling cups of milk and rice (known as arroz con leche, a traditional Salvadoran snack, usually has some cinnamon and vanilla too). A few naïve nurses asked me what she was selling. A little exasperated from their helplessness after days of translating even the most basic conversations, I sarcastically told them it was iguana milk. They didn’t catch the sarcasm. Immediately very curious, I just went with it, figuring the truth would shortly become obvious, telling them it was a Salvadoran specialty only found in western El Salvador and that it would be extremely rude to the woman and the culture if they didn’t drink at least one cup. Not wanting to offend anyone, but still very hesitantly, each quickly forced down a cup of the “iguana milk.” Apparently the familiar taste of milk or cinnamon didn’t dawn on them. After a few more minutes of richly illustrated, and sarcastic, details from me, they scurried off to find the leader of the medical mission trip to request a side trip on their last day in the country, a free day, to one of the local “iguana farms” I had told them about. I don’t know what happened after that, but I do know I left Santa Ana two days later and they were still waiting for the “iguana milk” lady to return so they could have me ask her questions about the “painstaking process” of milking iguanas, of which I had only been able to provide the most basic details.

- I hate to end this blog entry on a down note, but I do wish to accurately reflect all of my life in El Salvador, and therefore, want to include the tragedy and sadness, alongside my laughs and adventures, to truly express the entire experience of life in poor and rural El Salvador. Two days ago, a baby in my community died. She was only five days old. Her mother, who is only 17, went into labor and gave birth after only 5 months of pregnancy and is still very sick and remains dangerously near death herself. They are all members of one of the poorest families in San Luis—a family even other residents of San Luis would consider poor, which is saying quite a bit. I lived in the United States for 22 years before moving to El Salvador—in all that time I attended just 2 funerals. I’ve lived in El Salvador for 7 months tomorrow and have already attended 3 more.