Así es.
Yeah I know, I can’t believe I’m writing either.
I feel bad it’s been so long. It’s been brought to my attention in recent weeks that some of you besides my mom actually read this thing. To you who read, I say, first, thanks for liking, and second I say: what’s wrong with you? JUST KIDDING. I’m so happy that some of you all are actually enjoying my entries, and I apologize for not writing for, oh, three months. I should show you love more than that, because I miss you more than the quantity of entries suggests.
In true style and before proceeding with this entry I must offer excuses. My explanations for why I suck:
1) So my first excuse has to do with my laptop. Which is actually Denise’s old lap top that she so kindly gifted me (well actually it was a trade…. I got a 2004 Dell and she got my 2008 Vaio… clearly of equal value. I guess I technically gifted her). So when she gave me the Dell, it was missing a C key. This obviously gave me have laugh attacks as I thought back to when Scott’s enter key on his old Dell didn’t work for like three years and he had to make everything he wrote one biiiiiiiiiig long paragraph. What is with these Dells, I ask you? Ni modo, I was thankful that it wasn’t the enter key and adjusted to having to hit with great preciseness and force the silver circle where the C key used to be (I just did it… it was annoying, but I handled it).
So yeah, the C key has nothing to do with my not writing. The problem was the space bar that fell off a few months ago (or maybe I permanently extracted it trying to chase bug that crawled under it….you decide). I think a lack of space bar might beat Meinke’s enter key-less life. Luckily, with great preciseness and force, the little silver circle under the space bar works. But you can imagine the great discouragement from writing it causes me, since I now have to type at the same speed as my Dad, who just discovered what “the google” is a year ago.
2) Reason number two is less complicated: I am a lazy individual. In the past few months I have been enjoying reading on average a book every two weeks(feel free to send me recommendations….and then send me the actual book since I probably cant find it here), buying dollar dvds and bachata albums at the mercado, and avoiding all sorts of reflection about changes in myself, my life here, or in the life I left behind in the states. That’s all there really is to it.
So finally, an entry! I decided to do something a little different this time, and base my entries around photos I took. For those who read this thing, I hope it’s worth the wait.
The Adventure!
A while back my bichos and I decided to take a hike to the top of a mountain close to our town. The mountain is pretty famous throughout Chalatenango because it was a refuge for a lot of people displaced from their communities during the war. My town included; when the armed forces started dropping bombs on the town and people were being rounded up and massacred, many people fled for the top of this mountain. Even though its remoteness made it a safer alternative to staying in town, it was still pretty dangerous. People spent most of their times in tatus, which more or less are large, damp, dark tunnels that they dug in the ground. My counterpart spent a year living up there before eventually moving to a refugee camp in Honduras. She told me that at one point the bombing was so bad that she and her family had to stay crouched in a tatu for a week. When she came out, her legs didn’t work for days. The mountain was also a broadcast spot for the rebel radio. Today you can go up there, enter the tatus where people used to live, and check out the radio broadcast wires (is that what theyre called?) shooting up through the pine trees.
For the bichos who’ve been up to the mountain a bunch of times, the trip was a good way to act like 13 year old boys (which, as in the states, involves spitting, farting, swearing and… that’s about it) without mom nagging them over their shoulder. But they also got a kick out of telling me all about the importance of the mountain during the war. Obviously they were born after the war ended, but it was clear their parents had passed on the stories of the unbelievably hard life they were living for 20 years.
I had a great time all around, but my favorite part was going in the tatus. As an individual who slept during earth science, I didn’t really factor in how much it would suck to live in a hole in the ground until I got in one. Besides being dark as shit, it was so humid that it was hard to breathe. I can’t even fathom how people could live in the darkness of these holes for weeks on end, with bombs going on overhead. Especially for children, it must have been terrifying. It was like being buried alive.
The trip was SO fun that we’re trying to plan a “sleepover” in some of the cabins that are in the park. Or if all else fails, we’ll sleep in the gigantic oven that is in the middle of the park. Why is there a giant oven? I do not know.
Below is a photo of the bichos on the hike up. The darker photo is us inside a tatu that was used as the medical clinic during the war.
Porque esta triste?
This is a photo of my friend Areli’s family. Her sister Lorena wanted to snap some family shots for a project that she is doing in the university. Like pretty much all Salvadorans, Areli’s family values the “serious shot”… which I like to refer to as the “who died?” shot. Smiling, for some reason, is super taboo. This was a lucky shot. Below that is a photo of the my town; Areli has a great view of it from her house
Bamboozled (lame title, can’t think of another)
A twomonthish ago the environmental committee in my town took a trip to Santa Ana to check out some alternative farming projects going on out there. The guy in the photo is the owner of this land, who with the help of Millenium Challenge Corporation has made some updates to his land. For example, the white tube things you see in this photo is a translucent fabric that covers his plants to protect them from bugs (obviously without pesticides). You can’t really see it in this picture, but he’s also installed a series of tubes that run along the crops and serve as a gravity-fed irrigation system for his plants. He also was trained in how to grow and make artisans with bamboo. His house is filled with bamboo shelves, beds, etc that are of super good quality and that he made for basically no money. Sounds good to me. And everyone from my town who participated in the trip thought it sounded good, too, and now wants some super cool agricultural projects in our town.
Which brings me to my next point… we are getting a super cool project! Since I got here, my counterpart and I have been trying to recruit people to participate in a bamboo artisan workshop, coincidentally, also with Millenium Challenge Coorporation. After seeing the cool bamboo stuff in Santa Ana, more people were interested in the taller, and spread word to others in our town and surrounding communities about the opportunity. Before the trip to Santa Ana we had trouble filling the 25 solicitudes necessary to hold the workshop. Soon after the trip we had more than 40 filled. MCC held a meeting in our town a few weeks later to give those who wanted to participate a more in-depth explanation of what the workshop would consist. What we realized is that the workshop is actually more of a long term agricultural development project. It begins with training in how to grow bamboo. Afterwards MCC gives the farmers bamboo seeds to plant. Meanwhile, MCC is also helping them to find local markets where they can sell the bamboo. Apparently bamboo is popular not only for furniture, but also for constructing houses, and the guys at MCC have faith that there are strong local markets where the farmers can sell the bamboo that they grow at good prices. And of course, MCC will also be training participants in how to make artisans, if they would like to go that route. The whole process will last five years.
To me the workshop sounds really cool. What I like most about it is that we have participants of both sexes and of all ages. In several cases, participants have asked if their sons can participate. They figure that bamboo could be a crop that makes a difference in the income of their kids, who are also headed down the road to be farmers. I like the idea that the effects of this project could have lasting positive effects on the families that participate. I know most of the agricultores who are in the workshop, and they are extremely responsible and motivated people. I have faith that if this project can work, they will make it work. But of course there are many uncertainties. As with all projects intended to “develop”… we will see what happens.
My Sweet 15
The past month, I returned to San Vicente for the first time since leaving Peace Corps training six months before. The purpose was to attend the quinceañera of my old host sister, Karina (quinceanera = bat mitzvah/sweet sixteen + Latino style). I won’t lie, I was sort of dreading going back; I look at training as a time when my every move was being controlled, when I didn’t have a space of my own or any sort of privacy. Basically it was gringo hell. Once I got to my town in Chalatenango, I felt a hundred times better; no more schedules set by Peace Corps. My new host family was much more respectful of this alien concept of “alone time”. When I got my own place life became even more amazing; pooping in a hole in the ground was worth it (my casa has a latrine, host family had toilet) if it meant having the option to not interact with people for a whole day, to use electricity without feeling guilty and not having to schedule my showers around other people. I’ve been in El Salvador for nine months (I could’ve birthed a baby in that time!….but I’m very glad I didn’t), and feel like I’ve become much more resilient. For the most part, I’ve come to enjoy the interruptions that people make in my everyday life (por ejemplo, needing help with English homework at 9pm, surprise appearances at my house at all hours, silly chain text messages received at 12 midnight, etc). Still, I am and always will be a cold gringa who wants to be left the fuck alone when she want to be left the fuck alone. And on those days, I praise all things holy (like peanut butter, apples, spinach, tiled floors) that I have my own place.
But I digress, per usual. The point is, all the necessary and unnecessary adjustments I had to make during my first two months in El Salvador were not something I wanted to revisit. But I went, because I promised Karina I would, and also because I was hoping to meet Karina’s dad, who has been in the states for 11 years and apparently was coming back for the celebration.
I knew it would be weird to be back. But the weirdness had a different root than I had originally expected. While six months couldn’t make me forget how much I didn’t like training, it was sufficient time for me to temporarily forget how much damn money my old host family has! The ceremony was extremely extravagant; they invited 140 people, had a discomovil (cool dj set up with tent, fake smoke, strobe lights, goofy sparkly party favor hats… the works), and a ridiculous thousand tier cake. To pull something like this quince off in my site, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE would have to pool their money. The party was pretty cool; the dj played all my fav reggaeton music, and all the pubescent-aged children dancing awkwardly reminded me of the wonders of the Bat Mitzvah years. Beautiful, it was.
I strongly believe money is for enjoying. And it makes me really happy when I see families who are sacrificing family members to the United States are at least reaping some financial benefits from the big hole they have in their family. Still, the quince was hard to watch because it reminded me of issues I had with the family when I lived with them: all they do is enjoy the money. And that’s the impression I get from most in their community who are remittance-rich. No real investments in education or saving are going on for the future. Like many Americans, many newly wealthy Salvadorans seem to have a problem grasping the concept of planning and saving. The only planning that my host mom has done for the future of her kids is make plans to send them to the states, despite the fact that the money could be used to help secure them a healthy future and good education and job in El Salvador. When I first arrived in the town, I looked around, saw the nice houses, paved roads, nice clothes, and though “wow, this place is so… well, developed”. But then I got to know the town and my host family, viewed how terribly they spell, saw their teeth going to shit at age 25, and realize that money has not necessarily helped people make better decisions.
I want to stress that not everyone here has this terrible understanding of money. One of my host brothers in my site has worked in Canada several times, every time he gets kicked out making the trek across Mexico once again. He finally secured enough money to build himself a house, and he started a construction business here in El Salvador. While they have less remesas rolling in, more people in my site understand the shortfalls of this money that magically appears in the bank. Why? Maybe it has to do with the extreme uncertainty they’ve dealt with in their lives for pretty much ever. Maybe if there was more money coming in, maybe I’d see a discomovil on the main square every weekend as the numerous teenagers celebrated their quince. A ver.
I forgot to mention: after spending thousands on the party, Karina’s dad couldn’t get a visa to come.
