5 Feet of Rain and a Big Dead Snake

Nearing the end of my second rainy season in El Salvador, I thought I had seen the best of what tropical rain storms had to give—then came last week. I’ve made it through multiple earthquakes and hurricanes during my 16 months in El Salvador, but the rain storms that hit El Salvador between the 12^th and 19^th of October definitely set the bar a little higher for the constant barrage of natural disasters that make Central America such a lively place.

In 8 days, we got 1.5 meters of rain. That’s about 5 feet—58 inches to be a bit more exact. El Salvador’s average annual rainfall is 1.8 meters, and we had already hit that mark for the year, even before the most recent rains. Across El Salvador, and most of Central America, that meant problems (with aquifers already full and soil unable to hold anymore water) such as severe flooding and landslides. The most recent numbers I’ve seen for El Salvador 34 dead, over 56,000 evacuated from their homes and in shelters, and over 1,000,00 affected, all in a country the size of Massachusetts.

The good news, at least for me and my community, San Luis, is that we are relatively high and very hilly, meaning we were in much less danger. The majority of the really bad damage in El Salvador was in low-lying areas near rivers and in the coastal zones. While crops were damaged, San Luis came out on the better end of that situation as well. While 45% of the national corn crop and 60% of the bean harvest are estimated lost, San Luis’s losses were much less, and will be more than made up for by the now much higher prices for basic grains. Farmers in my community, in a strange twist, will now end up making more money from their crop, since although they will have a little less to sell they will be selling it at much higher prices.

During my week of torrential rain, I basically went into hibernation mode, with absolutely no desire or need to leave my house. In all, I ate Oreos, watched about 10 movies (Machete and Resevoir Dogs are new favorites and I was pleasantly reminded why I used to like Shawshank Redemption so much), ate more Oreos, read 5 books, finished all 10 1-hour episodes of a World War II documentary (Band of Brothers), then ate more Oreos. It literally would rain for 12 hours straight, drizzle for an hour or two, then go right back to downpour-status…nd I relaxed in my hammock through all of it. While the first 3 or 4 days were actually kind of nice and I very quickly learned to enjoy the forced period of relaxation, the last 3 days certainly got a bit painful and found me playing a lot more Solitaire than I ever though I’d play, at least before my post-retirement days.

The only serious damage to San Luis was the effect of the rain’s runoff on the road. There is just one road in San Luis, and although it was hardly passable in anything but a pickup before, it became difficult to even walk by the end of the deluge. So I convinced the nearby sugar cane processing factory to donate the use of one of its heavy tractors and the sugar cane cooperative to lend us three of their large trucks on Saturday, and all the men of the community came out to “repair” the road. My plan got off to a rough start when one man started trimming overgrown roadside weeds with a Weed Whacker the sugar plant had also loaned me for the day. Little did I know, no one in San Luis had ever seen a Weed Whacker before. Also, little did I know, apparently Weed Whackers are very interesting to those who have never seen them before. Everything was delayed an hour and a half (on top of the normal Salvadoran two-hour delay just because people are always very late) while everyone watched the Weed Whacker make quick work of the overgrown grasses then one man, still drunk from the night before, joke about cutting his beard with the spinning plastic, then end up having to go home early with quite a few mean bruises across face.

In the end, however, the day was highly successful, and San Luis’s road is once again passable. Some pictures of the day’s work are included below, along with a picture of a giant snake me and a kid from my community killed during a quick break in the rain. He took it home and his Mom cooked it up for dinner; I really wanted to go over and at least try a bite or two, but by that time it had once again started pouring rain and I decided again roasted snake and in favor of my hammock.

Lizard for Lunch?

Yesterday I was walking back to my community from the nearby sugar cane cooperative, about a 20-minute trek through fields of sugar cane, when a friend of mine, Victor Ramirez, passed by in his truck and offered to give me a ride back to my house.

Halfway home, he spied a lizard crossing the road and quickly turned off the truck, whipped out his sling shot, alertly, quickly, and silently leaped out of the truck to find a rock, then in one smooth movement sent the rock hurtling toward the lizard, still ambivalently sunning itself in the middle of the road.

It was a direct hit to the head of the lizard, stunning it long enough for Victor to tie it up, still alive, to bring home and later have his wife cook for lunch. Though this lizard was definitely on the small end of what I’ve seen Salvadorans eat, Victor claimed the small ones have tastier meat.

Salvadorans usually eat lizard meat fried in a pan with oil and chunks of tomato with a mix of spices. It definitely doesn’t taste like chicken…or fish, or pork, or anything else. I don’t know how to describe the taste—I guess you’ll just have to try it for yourself.

Stoves, Fish, and Puppies

Getting ready for the trip back to my site from Sonsonate, where the stove factory is located. We had to make two trips to get all 75 stoves back, with another trip scheduled in a few weeks to pick up an oven and three larger versions of the stoves meant for three nearby schools.



A few shots from inside the stove factory. The stoves are very durable, need 70% less firewood than normal, and drastically cut down on smoke.




Took a group of nine farmers from my community to a training in Izalco to learn about raising fish. Right now the farmers are working on constructing their fish tanks and in about a month our first shipment of baby fish will be arriving. Each farmer with be raising about 80 tilapia.



These tanks are much larger than the ones we'll be using...they fit over a thousand fish each...but it is the same general idea.


Perhaps my favorite part of the training--lunch. I don't think any of us had ever eaten so much fish!


My original host family, where I still eat at least one or two meals every day, just had some puppies born. They're are not yet even a week old. I figured if nothing else, at least these pictures would make the blog a little cuter...