Semana Santa (aka Holy Week) Adventures

This will be my second blog in as many weeks and I’m starting to feel like some sort of a writing machine—I haven’t had this much to say in my entire 9 months (that’s right—9 whole months!—easily the fastest 9 months of my life—I have absolutely no idea where the time has gone) in El Salvador. However, in truth, the current rash of blog posts has more to do with the fact that I’ve recently been on a bit of a yerba-mate (a traditional Argentinean tea which certainly packs a caffeinated punch and makes me much more likely to stay up late writing a blog post versus my previous routine of falling asleep reading in my hammock by 7 pm) binge than anything else. However, there have been a few notable and blog-worthy events pass by during the last week which I’ll try to illustrate for ya’ll:

- Up to this past week, my time in El Salvador had been anything but spiritual, at least in the traditional religious sense. Due to the fact that 90% of the people in my community are Evangelical Christians and follow religious rules that would easily classify them as fringe, Bible-thumpin’ crazies in the States (no coffee, soda, music, soccer, school past 6^th grade, dancing, shorts, tattoos, long hair, or facial hair combined with a nightly dose of church including chanting in tongues and holy fainting spells) and that someone calling themselves a “Jew” may be even more foreign to them than an alien, or well, an American who decided to live in their community for two years. Anyways, to escape the prospect of daily lectures informing me that I’m destined to eternal burning hell, I’ve chosen to take the easy road, and just tell them I’m Christian, but Peace Corps doesn’t allow me to go to Church a lot, so I just pray in my house at night when they’re not around. In turn (not that I was too devoutly Jewish before my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer), Jewish customs and traditions certainly are playing no part in my life in El Salvador. That was until last week, when the Jewish holiday of Passover came around and I was invited by the Jewish community of San Salvador to come in to the capitol for a night and partake in the festivities. Not really knowing what to expect and figuring if nothing else I’d come out of the night with an interesting story, I accepted the invitation. First, with a group of just 3 or 4 other Jewish Volunteers, I headed to a quick, 30-minute service at the Jewish synagogue. Before that night, I had no idea there was a synagogue in San Salvador and figured if there was one, it would be a pretty tiny affair, but while it certainly wasn’t large, the synagogue was surprisingly nice and the congregation boasts a membership of about 100 families, which pleasantly had me surprised. Apparently, basically all of El Salvador’s Jews originate from families that originally fled Europe around the early or mid-1900’s and for some reason ended up in Central America. I even managed to recognize a few of the prayers and did my best to hum along, though silently enough to avoid embarrassing myself with the singing ability I never had. It was a wholly unexpected comfort to be able to follow along in a Hebrew-language service in a Spanish-speaking country—an experience I never thought would come out of my Jewish roots. After the service, I was introduced to the family who had volunteered to house me for the night and instantly took a liking to them. Next came the actual Seder, which was completely different from any Seder I’d attended in the States. The rabbi, who I had previously met before the service, is a young Argentinean who had just moved to El Salvador from Cuba and is definitely the coolest rabbi I’ve ever met (not that he has the toughest competition in the world to win that honor). The Seder, which took place in the main ballroom of the Hilton hotel, featured the Israeli ambassador and his family and the chief-of-staff from the US Embassy and his family but was still small enough to feel comfortable with only about 50 people sitting at a large circular table, a projector featuring YouTube clips, a slide show, and music videos to keep the Seder from evolving into a marathon test of your patience while just praying for the food to finally be served and forgetting all about the actual religious importance of the holiday, and plenty of activities for the young kids. With its entertaining and young spirit, great food, and the traditional abundance of wine, my Salvadoran Seder certainly took the cake for most enjoyable of my life.

- While I may have been busy celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover, the past week was actually Semana Santa, or Holy Week, which is celebrated throughout all of Central America. No one goes to work all week and Salvadoran families traditionally feast on fish, relax, and head to the beach. I decided to take the opportunity to climb a few volcanoes I’d wanted to hike, so after hiking Volcano Santa Ana the first weekend of Semana Santa, I went to work on Volcano El Chingo this past Friday. Volcano El Chingo is located right by my community and had been looming over my life, seemingly daring me to attempt an ascent, for my first 7 months in San Luis. Volcano El Chingo is unique because one half of the volcano is in El Salvador and the other half is in Guatemala. The border literally runs right across the middle of the volcano and crater. Despite not being as tall, the hike up Volcano El Chingo certainly proved more challenging than my earlier hike up Volcano Santa Ana. It is much less accessible, its sides are much steeper, and it is much less frequented by hikers, combining to drastically increase the difficulty of the trails. However, the climb was well worth it, and the crater provided the opportunity to straddle the border with one foot in each country, drink in dramatic views, and even play some impromptu soccer against other visitors for an hour or two on a soccer field that has been cut out of the forest in the middle of the crater. But just like any other Salvadoran adventure, it could never go completely smoothly. Upon our descent, the skies opened and it began to pour, meaning the 5-hour return hike turned into a muddy and wet scramble from house to house that ended with me returning to my front porch covered by multiple layers of mud, shivering and soaking wet, well after the sun had set and the rest of San Luis had gone to sleep.

- It seems, in every blog I post, I end up including something about the food I’ve recently been eating, and this blog will be no different. In what has turned into one of the sadder events of my time in El Salvador, the harvest of mangoes from one of the trees in front of my house came to a end last week, meaning my diet has taken a drastic change. For the last 6 weeks, I was literally eating at least 4 or 5 mangoes every day. The treasured tree is located directly in front of my house and is absolutely huge, consistently supplying me with an extravagant diet of to-die-for mangoes for over a month. However, all is not lost—my other mango tree, located behind my house, has still-green mangoes that look to be ripe in about a month and I am eagerly awaiting their time. Changing the tone of the food update from delicious to gag-inducing, I also want to continue to chronicle my early morning struggles with fish that I began to describe in my last blog post. Fish is considered the traditional food of Semana Santa, and in the belief that fish “can start the day with luck,” the first 5 mornings of the past week I was greeted with fish soup for breakfast. While marginally tasty and acceptable the Monday morning, by Thursday and Friday, I was subtlety passing spoonfuls of the soup under the table to the chickens and dogs of the house. I normally like the fish I’m served in El Salvador, but this week the fish included in the soup was different—dried, heavily-salted, and pungent, to say the least—instead of fresh and grilled. Not, at least for me, the ideal way to start a morning.

- I have recently become a member of a basketball team in the local league in Chalchuapa, the closest town to my community. While I enjoy soccer and practice twice a week and have games or tournaments nearly every Sunday with my community’s team, I’d long been dying for a sport I’m a little more familiar with. After having talked to a Salvadoran staff member of Peace Corps who happens to live in Chalchuapa, I jumped at the opportunity to begin to play with his team. We have practice every Wednesday and a game every Saturday, which fits around my soccer schedule perfectly, and gives me an opportunity to play a sport I enjoy a little bit more than soccer. The name of the team is the Nuggets (nearly all of the teams in the league feature NBA-team names), but the name is affectionately pronounced “Noooo-gets” (as in that stuff inside your 3 Musketeers bar). We have the semi-finals of our current tournament next Saturday and hopefully will continue our strong championship push.

- The next two weeks will be a real change of pace for me, as I’ll be spending a lot more time than normal outside of San Luis and around other Volunteers. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week I will be at a training event about project design and management then the next week I will be going to the National Agricultural University for a full week of technical agricultural and environmental training. I’m looking forward to hopefully picking up some new skills during the trainings and exchanging ideas with other Volunteers that I can then incorporate into my work in San Luis.