The Past Month in El Salvador

Along with 6 or 7 other Peace Corps Volunteers in Western El Salvador, I helped organize a weekend-long youth leadership retreat for teenage girls from each of our communities. Each of us brought 4 or 5 girls between the ages of 13 and 18 to three days of discussions and trainings on sexual education, family and career planning, leadership, and self-confidence—all issues that teenage girls are otherwise never exposed to in rural Salvadoran communities. After months of planning, the camp went of without a hitch this past weekend, and was judged a complete success by all who participated.

Above, me and the four girls from my community, San Luis, who came with me to the camp. Below, another Peace Corps Volunteer helping lead a jewelry-making session.

Above, a group photo at the hotel where we ran and organized the entire camp. We took the girls to a hotel high in the mountains, farther from home than they had ever been, and all thoroughly enjoyed getting to see a new part of the country and staying in a nice hotel (in addition to any benefits that came from the actual training sessions, it was also the first time any of the girls had actually take a shower). Below, a few shots from the diploma ceremony with ended the weekend.

From December to March, my community is completely consumed by the sugar cane harvest. Surrounded by thousands of acres of sugar cane and located very close to a sugar mill, the sugar cane harvest is responsible for all employment in the area for these 3 or 4 months.

Harvesting sugar cane is never easy work, but it is made much easier by burning the sugar fields before harvesting them. Burning sugar cane has many negative environmental consequences, and while parts of El Salvador are currently passing legislation outlawing this burning, for now, the only regulation in the San Luis area is that the burning must be done at night. Burning the sugar cane eliminates all the leafy outer-growth of the plant (while the actual cane, which is filled with what will later be processed into sugar, doesn’t burn because of its inner humidity and hard exterior), making the cutting much less taxing, the work at least a little bit cooler, as a breeze can then penetrate the sugar cane, and eliminates the small cuts that plague workers from the sharp edges of the sugar cane leaves.

When fields of sugar cane are burned, all the animal life inside the patch of sugar cane come running out, making for great hunting opportunities for anyone willing to spend a few hours late at night waiting for said animals. While the rabbits are tasty, you’ll also have all types of rats, mice, frogs, opossums, and raccoons come shooting out of the cane. With a few friends of mine, we even found a turtle a few months ago—although, quite sadly, the turtle did not beat the hare and win this race. Unable to out-sprint the flames, we found him quite bar-b-que’d and my friends went ahead and made a soup out of him.

A few nights ago I went with a few friends to help burn their patch of sugar cane and watch as they waited, with slingshots loaded and ready, for all sorts of fleeing animal-life. Being one of the last times I’d be burning sugar cane with them, I decided to snap a few pictures and even take a video.