Last Saturday I had my very first official women´s group meeting where I taught a group of 8 women from my community how to monederos (or change purses) out of plastic chip bags. Trash is a major problem everywhere in the world and no less so in my site. People either throw trash onto the ground or they collect it and burn it. Recycling is basically unheard of although there are some NGOs in my pueblo that are trying to focus on environmental education and recycling programs in the schools. So since there are tons of chip bags of every color imaginable, it makes it super easy for people to do recycled art. Recycled art is my new passion. It´s easy, cheap or free to make since you can basically pick your materials off the street and it´s great for the environment. I have made a couple of change purses and one clutch (women´s big wallet) out of churro bags as we call them here and everyone I have showed them to wants to buy one. So hopefully my women´s group will also be able to sell all the monederos we make. My womens group is small, about 8 women altogether and sometimes they bring their kids as well. They started off the group wanting to start a savings account of sorts and it has turned into a twice monthly get together for them to have some time away from their husbands and do fun things together. They are of all ages, one women being almost 80 years old and another member is a younger girl, probably no older than 18 with a kid of her own. They also save a lot of money over the year, putting in about $1 every 15 days and they don’t touch the money until the year is over. The first meeting I went to, just as a guest, they were splitting up the funds for the year and each woman had saved over $20. They also have an emergency fund that they put $.20 into every meeting which they can use if someone in the community or in their group gets sick, etc. They are a really fun group to hang out with. They love to joke around and make things together. The monederos were a big hit and the next meeting we will be putting together a gift basket that we are selling raffle tickets for for Valentine´s Day in order to raise enough money to buy materials to make shampoo next. It felt really awesome to be able to teach them how to do something so basic and fun so that they can make more money for their group and eventually for each other as well. I can´t wait to make shampoo with them and start selling it in the community. Later we will be making jewelry at one meeting and bread at the next. Usually I enjoy hanging out with younger kids, youth and in the states I have a lot of guy friends. Being in El Salvador has been the first time that I have really spent so much quality time with women and it´s actually really fun. When they are just together in their own little group, they open up a lot more and you get to see them more as the individuals they are instead of their husband´s wives, as society tends to define all women here (in my community) from the time they are born.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Little Things that Keep you from Pushing the ET Button
During Peace Corps service there are a lot of ups and downs. For example, just dealing with cultural differences can really make you long for the organized, reliable system we have back in the states. The biggest challenge for me has been adjusting to the concept of El Salvador time and the Dios Permite statement.
The El Salvador time is usually gringo time mas half an hour to an hour and a half (say the meeting was scheduled to happen at 1. That means you need to stick around to start your meeting until at least 1:30 but 2 is better). I am not trying to say that this happens only in El Salvador because it doesn’t, and there are times when I am ¨running late¨ and then don’t have to stress because I will arrive on time no matter what time I actually get there. The other phrase that I love here is Si dios permite which basically means, God Willing. This is used all the time for any engagement that requires a commitment. This is a sort of safety net to have just in case something comes up and you can´t make it to a meeting, etc. OR sometimes it is used just in case you don’t actually want to go to something as well. I hope I never use this phrase and it makes me want to grind my teeth every time I hear it.
BUT it is also helping me realize that as a people, United Stateseans are very very hung up on time. The clock controls our everyday activities and we are constantly trying to run around trying to do everything at the exact time it needs to be done. In this respect, I respect the El Salvadorean hora and I am coming to enjoy it and the way of life here much more than that in the states where you constantly have to be checking the time. Sometimes I don’t even know what day of the week it is, let alone what time. I think I am in for a rude awakening when I get back to the states in two years….
So like I was saying in the beginning, it’s the little things you have to focus on to keep going during Peace Corps. Sometimes its noticing how amazingly beautiful all the views are here on my walks around my community. Other times it is hanging out with my best friend (who happens to be 3 years old) and getting her to do our ¨secret handshake.¨ But every day I am able to find at least a couple things that make me stop and say ¨wow I can´t believe I get to live here for two some years¨ and ¨how crazy lucky I am to be here and have this experience.¨ This gets me through the 5 am wakeup call by the roosters, the constant mosquito bites and acne, the smell of burning trash, and other little things that can really tick me off when I am down. SO if you are thinking about joining Peace Corps, just know that you really need to hang on to the moments that take your breath away so you don’t ET (Early Termination) when you feel like you just can´t take it any longer.
The El Salvador time is usually gringo time mas half an hour to an hour and a half (say the meeting was scheduled to happen at 1. That means you need to stick around to start your meeting until at least 1:30 but 2 is better). I am not trying to say that this happens only in El Salvador because it doesn’t, and there are times when I am ¨running late¨ and then don’t have to stress because I will arrive on time no matter what time I actually get there. The other phrase that I love here is Si dios permite which basically means, God Willing. This is used all the time for any engagement that requires a commitment. This is a sort of safety net to have just in case something comes up and you can´t make it to a meeting, etc. OR sometimes it is used just in case you don’t actually want to go to something as well. I hope I never use this phrase and it makes me want to grind my teeth every time I hear it.
BUT it is also helping me realize that as a people, United Stateseans are very very hung up on time. The clock controls our everyday activities and we are constantly trying to run around trying to do everything at the exact time it needs to be done. In this respect, I respect the El Salvadorean hora and I am coming to enjoy it and the way of life here much more than that in the states where you constantly have to be checking the time. Sometimes I don’t even know what day of the week it is, let alone what time. I think I am in for a rude awakening when I get back to the states in two years….
So like I was saying in the beginning, it’s the little things you have to focus on to keep going during Peace Corps. Sometimes its noticing how amazingly beautiful all the views are here on my walks around my community. Other times it is hanging out with my best friend (who happens to be 3 years old) and getting her to do our ¨secret handshake.¨ But every day I am able to find at least a couple things that make me stop and say ¨wow I can´t believe I get to live here for two some years¨ and ¨how crazy lucky I am to be here and have this experience.¨ This gets me through the 5 am wakeup call by the roosters, the constant mosquito bites and acne, the smell of burning trash, and other little things that can really tick me off when I am down. SO if you are thinking about joining Peace Corps, just know that you really need to hang on to the moments that take your breath away so you don’t ET (Early Termination) when you feel like you just can´t take it any longer.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Dia en la Vida, Ode to a Pila
So I realized the other day that I haven´t written a whole lot about what life is actually like here in El Salvador, or at least what my daily routines are. So here we go:
I wake up about 6:30 to 7am every day to the sound of those horrible roosters crowing, a Peace Corps volunteer´s worst nightmare. There are some volunteers who were vegetarians when they came to El Salvador but they are leaving the country as proud chicken eaters for this and many other reasons. Chickens here are not like they are in the states at the tiny family farms and petting zoos. They are dirty, loud creatures that like to eat, poo and make a lot of noise. The only thing I remotely like about them is the fact that they have to sleep in high places at night and thus climb our one pine tree in my front yard…But I digress…
After waking up I feed my 3 cats which if I didn’t feed them they would probably still be living off tortillas like most domesticated animals here do although I am not quite sure how. They wait outside my door every morning and start to meow when they hear me undoing the locks to open the door. Then my host grandma/mom (she´s old and a grandmotherly figure so I really just saw she´s my grandma) asks me if I want her to heat me up a tortilla, which is Salvi code for do you want to have breakfast, because it is a literal sin to eat a meal without a tortilla. Even spaghetti has to be eaten with a tortilla. When I say yes, she brings out my holey (because she uses a twig to heat it over our wood fire), old, burnt tortilla (which I actually do like because it´s crispy) and my corn coffee. Yes, corn coffee. Even though I am surrounded by coffee plantations I drink ¨coffee¨ made from ground up toasted corn. Saying it´s coffee is like says tobacco leaves soaked in hot water is black tea. But it´s ok.
Then if it isn’t freezing and I have no immediate work to do I go and shower. Now showers here are not like the fancy shmanzy showers people have in the states or in Europe; I get to shower using a large sink and a bucket (thus the term used frequently in Peace Corps ¨bucket bath or shower¨). I dip my bucket into the large sink known here as a pila and then dump that water on my head. You fill the pila up with a faucet that sticks out over it and you have to twist the knob just right so it doesn’t squirt all over the place and get you, your towel and shower tote sopping wet. As risqué as this may sound, I and many volunteers actually prefer the bucket bath because when it is really cold here and raining as it is from about June to November, it´s nice to be able to take a breather between ice cold dumpings of water on your body. A regular shower would probably shock your body and give you brain freeze. I do have to admit though, on hot days there is nothing like a good, cold bucket bath to make you feel sane again.
I would like to take this time to give a sort of ode to the pila if you will bear with me for a moment. The pila here is probably the best invention since Coca cola and electricity (yes, in that order). The pila can come in many shapes and sizes from being a huge water tank that a whole community uses to a small sink-like thing that I use for my bucket showers. I have a pila for showering and then a different pila which is bigger for washing clothes and dishes. The bigger pila is like having a large, cement tub with really high sides and which is in between two slabs of concrete where you can scrub things by hand like clothes, sheets and god forbid, sleeping bags. That’s right, I wash all my clothes by hand and I´m proud of it. It´s actually kind of relaxing and I kind of look forward to having a nice load of dirty clothes to scrub and then throw on an old electrical wire to dry in the sun. I think that when I do move back to the states I will have a pila made for me for my house because I really can´t imagine living without one. And they´re super ecofriendly! It´s like a clothes washer and a dishwasher all in one and uses zero electricity and it´s meditative. I really don’t know why more people don’t have them.
After bathing or washing my clothes or sweeping and mopping my room (yes mom, I know you´re shocked) if school is in session, I usually make the five minute walk to school which usually takes me twice as long because I have to stop and say hi to everyone on the way. This is another thing I love about El Salvador, everyone loves to greet one another and it´s actually kind of rude if you pass someone without saying hello here. At the school I so far have just observed the teachers and done little ice breakers with the kids to get to know them better. Soon I will hopefully be teaching English and computer classes, and doing some art and environmental projects. I can´t wait for school to start in January because right now I don’t have that much to do. During vacation I usually just do house visits which are exactly like they sound: I go up to people´s front doors and they let me into their home and then we talk for at least 20 min about the weather, the harvest, their family, my family, religion, and the fact that I am not married yet and why is that? Then we go on to talk about the future: me with the work I´ll be doing in the schools and they telling me that I am going to marry an El Salvadorean and stay here forever. Then they give me free food (awesome) and I go on to the next house and the whole process is repeated. I seriously am not joking when I say I LOVE house visits. They´re like a confidence booster wrapped up with love in the form of food.
In the afternoon I have ¨gringa¨ time which can be nap time, reading or resting in the hammock, but either way its time just for me. Then I chill with my host family until dinner and then we (all 6 of us) watch our two favorite telenovelas (Llena de Amor and Soy tu Dueña) until it´s time for bed around 9pm. And that’s one day in a nutshell until I wake up to do it all over again!
I wake up about 6:30 to 7am every day to the sound of those horrible roosters crowing, a Peace Corps volunteer´s worst nightmare. There are some volunteers who were vegetarians when they came to El Salvador but they are leaving the country as proud chicken eaters for this and many other reasons. Chickens here are not like they are in the states at the tiny family farms and petting zoos. They are dirty, loud creatures that like to eat, poo and make a lot of noise. The only thing I remotely like about them is the fact that they have to sleep in high places at night and thus climb our one pine tree in my front yard…But I digress…
After waking up I feed my 3 cats which if I didn’t feed them they would probably still be living off tortillas like most domesticated animals here do although I am not quite sure how. They wait outside my door every morning and start to meow when they hear me undoing the locks to open the door. Then my host grandma/mom (she´s old and a grandmotherly figure so I really just saw she´s my grandma) asks me if I want her to heat me up a tortilla, which is Salvi code for do you want to have breakfast, because it is a literal sin to eat a meal without a tortilla. Even spaghetti has to be eaten with a tortilla. When I say yes, she brings out my holey (because she uses a twig to heat it over our wood fire), old, burnt tortilla (which I actually do like because it´s crispy) and my corn coffee. Yes, corn coffee. Even though I am surrounded by coffee plantations I drink ¨coffee¨ made from ground up toasted corn. Saying it´s coffee is like says tobacco leaves soaked in hot water is black tea. But it´s ok.
Then if it isn’t freezing and I have no immediate work to do I go and shower. Now showers here are not like the fancy shmanzy showers people have in the states or in Europe; I get to shower using a large sink and a bucket (thus the term used frequently in Peace Corps ¨bucket bath or shower¨). I dip my bucket into the large sink known here as a pila and then dump that water on my head. You fill the pila up with a faucet that sticks out over it and you have to twist the knob just right so it doesn’t squirt all over the place and get you, your towel and shower tote sopping wet. As risqué as this may sound, I and many volunteers actually prefer the bucket bath because when it is really cold here and raining as it is from about June to November, it´s nice to be able to take a breather between ice cold dumpings of water on your body. A regular shower would probably shock your body and give you brain freeze. I do have to admit though, on hot days there is nothing like a good, cold bucket bath to make you feel sane again.
I would like to take this time to give a sort of ode to the pila if you will bear with me for a moment. The pila here is probably the best invention since Coca cola and electricity (yes, in that order). The pila can come in many shapes and sizes from being a huge water tank that a whole community uses to a small sink-like thing that I use for my bucket showers. I have a pila for showering and then a different pila which is bigger for washing clothes and dishes. The bigger pila is like having a large, cement tub with really high sides and which is in between two slabs of concrete where you can scrub things by hand like clothes, sheets and god forbid, sleeping bags. That’s right, I wash all my clothes by hand and I´m proud of it. It´s actually kind of relaxing and I kind of look forward to having a nice load of dirty clothes to scrub and then throw on an old electrical wire to dry in the sun. I think that when I do move back to the states I will have a pila made for me for my house because I really can´t imagine living without one. And they´re super ecofriendly! It´s like a clothes washer and a dishwasher all in one and uses zero electricity and it´s meditative. I really don’t know why more people don’t have them.
After bathing or washing my clothes or sweeping and mopping my room (yes mom, I know you´re shocked) if school is in session, I usually make the five minute walk to school which usually takes me twice as long because I have to stop and say hi to everyone on the way. This is another thing I love about El Salvador, everyone loves to greet one another and it´s actually kind of rude if you pass someone without saying hello here. At the school I so far have just observed the teachers and done little ice breakers with the kids to get to know them better. Soon I will hopefully be teaching English and computer classes, and doing some art and environmental projects. I can´t wait for school to start in January because right now I don’t have that much to do. During vacation I usually just do house visits which are exactly like they sound: I go up to people´s front doors and they let me into their home and then we talk for at least 20 min about the weather, the harvest, their family, my family, religion, and the fact that I am not married yet and why is that? Then we go on to talk about the future: me with the work I´ll be doing in the schools and they telling me that I am going to marry an El Salvadorean and stay here forever. Then they give me free food (awesome) and I go on to the next house and the whole process is repeated. I seriously am not joking when I say I LOVE house visits. They´re like a confidence booster wrapped up with love in the form of food.
In the afternoon I have ¨gringa¨ time which can be nap time, reading or resting in the hammock, but either way its time just for me. Then I chill with my host family until dinner and then we (all 6 of us) watch our two favorite telenovelas (Llena de Amor and Soy tu Dueña) until it´s time for bed around 9pm. And that’s one day in a nutshell until I wake up to do it all over again!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Beauty of a Hot Bath
So PST2 (training session part 2 of Peace Corps) ended last week and it was a stress filled (in a good way) week. We learned a lot of technical things to bring back to our sites but I also felt really overwhelmed and maybe my Spanish has regressed a little. It definitely gave me a new spring of energy and confidence about some projects in my community. It was also great to go back to my site afterwards and be really happy to be back. I am starting to feel like my community is more and more like my home. I actually missed my host family and the sounds of the campo. I even missed the stating the obvious conversations that we have in the campo every day.
And a week later, here I am, back in the capital for the celebration of Thanksgiving. A lot of the volunteers (myself included of course) are staying with embassy families for the holiday and so far we have been having a great time. I am staying with my friends Anna and David with a great family. The wife is actual a RPCV ((Returned Peace Corps Vol) from Africa and we have been having a great time talking and exchanging stories. They made us a fabulous lunch of spinach salad and we just had lasagna for dinner with warm apple pie and vanilla hagendas ice cream! I definitely ate way too much but it was so worth it. They even have a dog that the wife brought back with her from Africa. That makes me think that I should definitely adopt that puppy that my neighbor is saving for me!
The best part of the night, so far at least, has been the bathtub. They have a jacuzzi tub in their embassy house and I soaked away about two months of dirt and grim and it was AMAZING!! Thats one of the things I have missed the most about the states: soaking in a hot bath while reading a book. Tomorrow we will be hanging out at the embassy, swimming, and then joining some other embassy families for a good ol fashioned American Thanksgiving dinner! SO excited!
And a week later, here I am, back in the capital for the celebration of Thanksgiving. A lot of the volunteers (myself included of course) are staying with embassy families for the holiday and so far we have been having a great time. I am staying with my friends Anna and David with a great family. The wife is actual a RPCV ((Returned Peace Corps Vol) from Africa and we have been having a great time talking and exchanging stories. They made us a fabulous lunch of spinach salad and we just had lasagna for dinner with warm apple pie and vanilla hagendas ice cream! I definitely ate way too much but it was so worth it. They even have a dog that the wife brought back with her from Africa. That makes me think that I should definitely adopt that puppy that my neighbor is saving for me!
The best part of the night, so far at least, has been the bathtub. They have a jacuzzi tub in their embassy house and I soaked away about two months of dirt and grim and it was AMAZING!! Thats one of the things I have missed the most about the states: soaking in a hot bath while reading a book. Tomorrow we will be hanging out at the embassy, swimming, and then joining some other embassy families for a good ol fashioned American Thanksgiving dinner! SO excited!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Back in Black
Hey everyone! So sorry to have kind of fallen off the face of the earth but I have been kind of busy. My new site is awesome. I am really enjoying living in the campo in the mountains with my host family, chickens, dogs, cats, and a horse. I have already had tons of fun at the school and have just arrived in the capital, San Salvador, to hang out with some friends before starting training (second round). But before I go into that, what have I been up to that has made me so busy? Well...
I have had a lot of meetings to get started on a couple of projects in the community. Who knows if any of them will actually work out but what we are hoping to do is: 1) build three more classrooms for my school so that kids can go to school up to 9th grade and 2) buy land for a cancha (soccer field).
The first project is really needed in the community because as of right now the kid in my community can only afford to go to school up to 6th grade. The nearest school is about 5 min bus ride away or a half an hour walk. The problem with taking the bus is that the kids have to pay about 70 cents a day for a round trip. This might not seem like a lot to people in the states but when youre family only makes about $100 a month, its a huge expense, especially if the parents are sending more than one kid to school (the average family here is about 3 to 4 kids!). Also, the nearby schools dont have enough room to accept the kids from my community so a lot of kids, especially girls, are made to stay home after 6th grade, do household work and then get pregnant and start families without any higher education opportunities.
The second project is equally important. A cancha is the central meeting spot and play center for any community here. It is where all recreational activities happen from festivals to soccer games. My kids right now play on the highway which is extremely dangerous but they have no other option. The only problem is that land is very expensive and soccer fields are big! I am currently working with community members on project planning skills and how to write grants so hopefully we will have some success with this project as well. It would be an incredibly great resource for the community, especially since El Salvador has one of the highest crime rates in Central America and I want to keep my kids from joining gangs.
Other than getting our foot in the door with projects I have been going to festivals including day of the dead celebrations which were awesome. Its like a huge party where people decorate the gravesites of loved ones and get together with their living members of the family. I wish we had something like that in the states. I also participated in a youth festival in my pueblo, a cancer awareness walk, and went swimming in the river! So far I love love love my site and living in the campo in El Salvador.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Did you know that chickens can climb trees?
I finally made it to my site in Ahuachapan! I think I am probably the envy of my group since I live in tropical paradise :). But in all seriousness: I am in a little farming community right near a little pueblo and about an hour to 45 min from the nearest Super Selectos. I live with a little abuelita, her husband, their son and their son's wife. And there's also the wife's mother who lives with us as well. They are the sweetest abuelo and abuela I could have asked for. I get along really well with the son and daughter as they are younger, about 30, and I have already played Battleship, Cribbage and UNO with them. They are helping me learn a lot of caliche and get the "lay of the land" in the community. My community is also super organized which makes everything a lot easier, especially since I showed up with a cast on my leg (which I JUST got off yesterday and it feels amazing! But more about that later). As such I have spent a lot of time observing, people watching and animal watching. This is how I found out that chickens are actually really adept tree climbers!
So while I have been trying to hobble to the nearest houses, the community has really rallied together and set up numerous reuniones so that I would be able to meet people in the community and visa versa. Already I have met leaders of the community, all the teachers and children in the school (the school director brought the entire school to my house :) ) and I have gone to misa and culto (culto is evangelical mass and if you've never been to one, I will take you. Its an experience).
The campo language was a little hard to get around at first but now I have become a little more fluent. Simply put: it is stating the obvious and affirming it. For example: I was washing my clothes yesterday next to my abuelita when she turned to me and said: "You are washing your clothes!" to which the only response could be, "yes, yes I am". It is hilarious and frustrating at times but I have come to love it and now I can say "ya estuvo" which means it is "done" and when asked how's its going, I now respond in the tradicional "por aqui" which loosely translates to "about, around, by here." I love my community and my host family and have already been involved in several cultural activities, one of which was killing a chicken yesterday. I felt that since I eat chicken almost every day and it comes fresh from my front yard/patio/whereever the chickens feel like grazing, that I should tke a moment to experience the whole process of how my food is made. So I watched my host sister select the fattest chicken, tie it upside down to a tree and slit its throat. Sorry if this is too graphic but that is how its done in El Sal which I think frankly is more humane than in the states. The only thing I would say is that it took THIS particular chicken a llooonnng time to die. But without going into details of it flopping around on the ground because we thought it was dead and thus cut it down from the tree, I watched a chicken killing. Then I helped to clean all the feathers off and cut it up into bits for soup. It was delicious.
So while I have been trying to hobble to the nearest houses, the community has really rallied together and set up numerous reuniones so that I would be able to meet people in the community and visa versa. Already I have met leaders of the community, all the teachers and children in the school (the school director brought the entire school to my house :) ) and I have gone to misa and culto (culto is evangelical mass and if you've never been to one, I will take you. Its an experience).
The campo language was a little hard to get around at first but now I have become a little more fluent. Simply put: it is stating the obvious and affirming it. For example: I was washing my clothes yesterday next to my abuelita when she turned to me and said: "You are washing your clothes!" to which the only response could be, "yes, yes I am". It is hilarious and frustrating at times but I have come to love it and now I can say "ya estuvo" which means it is "done" and when asked how's its going, I now respond in the tradicional "por aqui" which loosely translates to "about, around, by here." I love my community and my host family and have already been involved in several cultural activities, one of which was killing a chicken yesterday. I felt that since I eat chicken almost every day and it comes fresh from my front yard/patio/whereever the chickens feel like grazing, that I should tke a moment to experience the whole process of how my food is made. So I watched my host sister select the fattest chicken, tie it upside down to a tree and slit its throat. Sorry if this is too graphic but that is how its done in El Sal which I think frankly is more humane than in the states. The only thing I would say is that it took THIS particular chicken a llooonnng time to die. But without going into details of it flopping around on the ground because we thought it was dead and thus cut it down from the tree, I watched a chicken killing. Then I helped to clean all the feathers off and cut it up into bits for soup. It was delicious.
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