Kids

Not only is Nuria, my 4-year-old host sister/niece, the third-cutest little girl ever (see post: “finally, some content”), she has the excellent trait of hugging a lot. There are many types of Nuria hugs: the “gringo mio!” running hug when I get home, the lazy hammock hug, the spontaneous hug when I’m carrying her on my hip, and the screaming hug when she lets go of the rafter I’ve lifted her to and I catch her out of the air. You’d think it couldn’t get any better, but it does. Nuria is also excellent at not bothering me. When I’m reading or working on Spanish homework she’ll pass by and stick her tongue out or grab my arm briefly, then flounce along, adding the perfect dash of adorableness to my delicious moments of solitude.
Not bothering me is not a trait Nuria’s 8-year-old brother Dani aspires to attain. That is to say, Dani bothers me. He’s a sweet kid and I enjoy washing dishes with him, because he takes the job seriously and calms down. But his frequent hissing at me to get my attention while I’m trying to enjoy some peace and quiet me molesta. Both his parents live in the U.S. and I think this is stressful for him—he has trouble relating well with other kids and cries easily—so I have sympathy and try to give him good doses of healthy attention. But at the same time I’m trying to stamp out his damn hissing habit. It’s a hhssshhhtt! hhssshhtt! sound, jarring and penetrating. It would be a rude habit in the U.S., but it’s pretty common here. I’ve taken to telling him, “I have a name.”
Today we four trainees who live in Molineros went with our Spanish teacher Esmeralda to the school to chat with the principal and observe some classes. It’s a K-8 school, same ages in each grade as in the U.S. We picked our way through the recess madhouse in the courtyard to the principal’s office. She was very welcoming, and for 40 minutes painted a picture of a very organized school, and we again entered the courtyard, which still seemed to be full of hyper kids on recess. Sitting in on a 5th grade class I discovered that the noise level does not decrease after the bell rings to start classes, nor is there a dramatic decrease in the number of kids running around the courtyard. I could observe this well, since my class took place in the courtyard itself. The building is small, with ¾ height walls, so noise travels easily between classrooms and the courtyard. There are 120 students in the morning and 120 others in the afternoon. I can’t imagine teaching there. The teacher of the class I observed had to shout for 45 minutes, and catch what the kids mumbled back to her through the din. The subject matter was interesting, judging by what was on the board:
“God has put you on the earth so that you might guard and protect the natural beauties that he has made for you.
Discussion: Effects of human conduct on wildlife. Despite our carelessness, we still rely on important natural reserves that we should protect.”
And later:
“Hunting for the pleasure of killing.
Forest fires.
Deforestation of animal habitat.
Use of animals as pets.”
But I barely caught five words of the discussion. I was impressed by how collected the teacher seemed considering the circumstances.
Looking around the classroom I wanted so badly to take some portrait photos of the kids. Caught in moments of relaxation, I could see in the kids’ faces strong suggestions of the languid, slightly Moorish beauties of 19th century Spanish paintings, as well as the taciturn strength of gaze of the classic photos of Mayans. Fascinating faces telling the story of colonization. I may make it a project to take a bunch of portraits while I’m here.

Campo

Tomorrow morning I go with my host dad to the campo to put fertilizer on the bean plants. I’m a little apprehensive about working for a full morning with him, considering how much trouble I have understanding what he says. He mumbles his words something fierce, then gives a sly look with glinting eyes when he finishes a sentence. From the few phrases I’ve understood, I’ve figured out that this is because everything is a joke. When I told him I was supposed to work with him for half a day, he threatened to beat me with his belt if I didn’t work well; when I asked what time we would start the day, he said four in the morning; then there was some joke he thought was hilarious that involved him grabbing his nuts a lot and saying “bien macho! Bien macho!” and cackling. Wish me luck. I figure if there’s a complete vacuum of communication, I can just imitate this last joke of his and he’ll be satisfied that I get his humor. I suspect he’s dying for an audience beyond the little kids, his wife, and his wife’s daughter.

Don Daniel became somewhat more intelligible to me, mostly by way of determined repetitions of “¿Qué?” on my part. But being able or not being able to understand him was not a major consideration; my mind was on my poor aching lower back. Turns out to fertilize beans you have to walk with your hands very close to the ground, which might not be a big deal for 5′6″ Salvadorans who’ve been doing it for 50 years, but for a 6′0″ gringo…ouch. And to rub it in I didn’t have a hat. Anyway, I think it elated Don Daniel and his friend to have me working with them, mostly just so they could make fun of my early attempts at fertilizing. Although, judging by how insistent they were that I not miss a single plant, I not sure how funny their joke that half the plants in the first row I did wouldn’t grow–they need these beans.

Food

Last night I discovered that the coffee I drink in the morning isn’t made of coffee.  The coffee I drink in the morning is made of corn.  Although my host family grows coffee, they drink none of it; it is solely a cash crop.  “Bad for the nerves,” they say.  Instead they toast kernels of corn to a carbon black, mill them, add sugar (judging from the taste, my guess is one part corn-grounds to one part sugar), and brew in a large pot.  All ages drink the stuff.  I’m jealous of one of the other trainees, who told me that her host mom roasts fresh coffee beans in the toaster oven every morning to make her coffee.  Here I am among some of the world’s best coffee farms—there’s an entire tourist industry centered on Salvadoran coffee, I just read an article today—and I’m drinking sugary black corn juice.

This small example of intra-cultural variation in gastronomic preference is representative of Salvadoran cuisine as a whole.  It varies widely, from family to family and day to day.  When all the trainees go to San Vicente for technical training sessions our host mothers pack us lunch, and I look forward all morning to the unveiling.  Everyone has tortillas wrapped up in a little cotton cloth, of course, but beyond that there’s no telling.  Salads with strange tropical fruits (some of which are delicious, others distinctly not), little sausages, meatballs, hunks of chicken, rice prepared in various ways, fried dough with cream inside, hard-boiled eggs, black beans, fried tortilla-and-egg mixture, French fries, and the list goes on.  It doesn’t seem like there are as many pupusas on a daily basis as you might expect, but even so it’s still a big cultural touchstone.  My host brother and his cousins have changed the words to the Don Omar song I mentioned in the last post to: “Uno, dos, tres, héchame cuatro pupusas de frijol y loroco!” which means, “One, two, three, make me four pupusas of beans and loroco.”  Loroco is a green flower with a very distinctive smell and taste.  It’s the national flower, and it’s delicious in pupusas.

Finally, some content!

I’ve been here since Tuesday without getting a chance to send any word back to the U.S. besides the most basic “I’m alive!” email.  The Peace Corps certainly does not make it easy for us trainees to do much of anything besides immerse ourselves in the language and the culture.

 

I’m writing this in my room in Molineros, a tiny cantón, in the house of María Cruz Durán, affectionately Mama Cruz, with “winter” rains pattering on the corrugated metal roof.  “Summer” arrives in October, and the calming sound of rain on the roof for an hour or two a day will disappear until March or April.  I’ve been in the country for four nights, the first two in the hotel in San Vicente, the last two here.  I already feel at home with my host family.  When I arrived I shook hands with Mama Cruz, then turned to see a 4-year-old girl sprinting towards me with her arms spread wide for a hug.  They are a welcoming people from an early age onwards, apparently.  The girl, Nuria, is the third-cutest little girl I’ve ever seen in my life (next to my nieces), and I constantly get a kick out of her antics.  She’s constantly calling me bicho or bichito (slang for “boy” and “little boy”), sticking her tongue out at me, and holding my hand.  There is also an 8-year-old boy, Daniel, who’s usually sweet but can get a little forceful with the pinching and hitting.  The Frisbee I brought is a good distraction.  He calls me gringo, as do most of the people in the village.  The word carries none of the stigma here in El Salvador that it does in México or other parts of Latin America.  In fact, it seems like it’s said almost fondly—“our gringo.”  I wish there were something I could call all of them back, since there are way too many names to learn, many of them strange to my ears (Eulalia, Edit, Ociel), but it probably wouldn’t do much good to shout Salvadoreño at people like they shout gringo at me. Both kids are Mama Cruz’s grandchildren.  Daniel’s parents live outside Washington D.C. and Nuria’s dad lives in Los Angeles.  (Her mom lives here, and apparently the bed I’m using was hers until I arrived.  I don’t know where she sleeps).  Pretty much every family here has several relatives in the U.S.

 

Mama Cruz feeds me the most delicious food.  There are lots of tortillas and rice and beans, as you would expect, but they are of the delicious variety, and there’s a ton of other foods besides.  Today I had fish for lunch, and an omelette with tomato and loroco, a distinctive-tasting flower, for breakfast.  Yesterday it was a delicious soup with tons of veggies, rice, potatoes, and tortilla for dinner, a mix of potatoes, rice, and chicken for lunch (carefully packed for me in Tupperware by Mama Cruz), and I can’t remember breakfast.  That was a long time ago.  Everything is spiced well (but not too spicy), if a little salty. 

 

The first two nights in country the 29 trainees spent together, living it up before splitting off into our various communities.  There was a bar in the hotel (yes, the only hotel in San Vicente—probably a big reason the training center is there), but the PC trainers had suggested that women not drink there.  They could have the men bring beers back to the rooms instead.  Women rarely drink in public here because they’re seen as promiscuous and disreputable if they do.  However, the bar’s only entrance was through the hotel and it was practically empty when we arrived, so we all, men and women, spent a couple of hours playing pool and speaking English until late, despite our exhaustion from getting up at 3:30 AM.  The next night was more wholesome, involving mostly impromptu ballroom dance lessons and iPod DJing in the hotel mezzanine.  And lots of laughter.  On the whole we haven’t been doing much to assuage the reputation of Americans here as an extremely loud people.  Besides the night after swearing-in, those were probably our last two together as a group. 

 

They were certainly our last nights as a group of 29, since one of us left during the third day here.  Sadly enough for me, she was the only other West Virginian in the group.  I wonder if any more will go home.  Everyone seems to be doing pretty well at the moment.

 

My Spanish is coming back/coming along pretty well, gracias a Dios y a Señor Martín (my high school Spanish teacher).  I have to ask people to repeat things a lot, but I can get across most of the things I want to say, and they understand my accent.  I’m learning to drop my S’s, slur my G’s, make V’s and B’s sound the same, and use a little slang; after a few months I’ll probably sound bien Salvadoreño.  We’ve had a few short Spanish classes, but they start in earnest on Monday, from 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM two or three times a week.  I’ve been mentally exhausted after the two hour classes, so I can’t  imagine what it’ll be like after full days.  I’ll probably be going to bed at 8 (it’s tough to stay up far past that anyway—see two paragraphs down).  The classes are really good, though.  They’re all taught by Salvadoran women who don’t know much or any English.  In mine I’m the most advanced student, and it’s really good for me to have to explain in Spanish what certain words mean to my classmates, only rarely resorting to English. 

 

The poverty is pretty in-your-face here—trash everywhere, crumbling infrastructure, super-skinny dogs, etc.—but even so many people seem to have TVs and DVD players.  My family even has a nice sound system, a microwave, a toaster oven, and a shower.  Strangely enough, the shower may be the most surprising of these amenities.  Most people shower with buckets from a water reservoir, and always at least once a day. 

 

It gets dark at around 6 or 6:30 (partly because we’re two hours behind the East Coast even though we’re due south of Central time), and I have trouble staying up past 9.  Which means that I get up around 5:30.  Everyone else, of course, is already bustling, and the roosters have been trying to get me up since about 2:40 AM.  This morning I was still in bed at 5:45, when little Daniel started blasting Don Omar, king of reggaeton, on the sound system.  He was happy to hear that I know the song “Conteo” (thanks, Jeremy), and now that’s kind of my official song among the boys of the village.  At least some of the lyrics are easy—uno, dos, tres, quatro…  I hear the same reggaeton and cumbia here that I heard in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, but I like it better here.  The bus that picked us up at the airport sported a flaming paint job, shark fin on the roof, and impressive speaker system blasting cumbia and remixes of American pop songs from the eighties to Latin beats, and I loved the festive feeling the music imparted to the whole experience.  It was a great way to enter the country.  Let’s hope the positivity I’ve been feeling since then continues, or at least returns after the bad days that I know must come at some point.

 

Yesterday we went to visit Melissa, a current volunteer, and planted some trees on the land of a farmer she knows well.  He grows all kinds of stuff—corn, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, sugarcane, fruit trees, peppers, fish, and rabbits.  Many campesinos just grow corn and beans for subsistence.  I don’t quite understand where all the rice comes from.  We visited Melissa’s house and chatted about her life there.  I now believe what they told us about the radical difference between training and volunteership.  Our schedule is pretty packed now, but in December we’re going to be cast out on our own, sink or swim.  There are resources, of course, at the PC offices and various NGOs, but judging from what Melissa said we’ll pretty much be flying solo.  There’s a lot to learn before that happens.

 

Wow, it’s really pouring now.  There’s so much more to say about the training staff, riding in the back of picos (pickups) on windy roads, the gorgeous gorgeous volcanoes, the strange and beautiful greenery everywhere, and everything else, but this is bastante for now.  My love to everyone!

the launchpad

Staging is happening now (following nomination and placement, preceding training and volunteering), in a hotel in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. I’m on lunch break. The conference room we’re using contains unnecessary quantities of molding and faux-crystal light fixtures, and a gaudy carpet that does its best to distract from the proceedings. This is good. It is an aspect of the United States I will be happy to bid farewell to when we leave for the airport tomorrow morning (at 4:30).

The sessions have been more entertaining than I expected.  Lots of drawing stick figures with scented magic markers, preparing skits, and general ballyhoo.  This day and a half in the hotel serves to acclimate us to the idea that what we’ve been preparing for for so many months is ACTUALLY HAPPENING, and to let us get comfortable with our co-trainees. There are 29 of us. I like what I’ve seen so far from the group.  They’ve taken to the ballyhoo quickly.  They are game.

Later.  Just got back from RFK stadium.  I went with several of the other trainees to a Nationals game.  We arrived during the second inning, which meant we missed the pre-game ceremony honoring the Peace Corps.  !!!!  Flags of the 138 countries the PC has sent volunteers to were carried around the field, and the director of the PC threw the first pitch (which went over the plate!  way to rep!)  Hugely unfortunate to miss the festivities, but it was super fun to see a baseball game hours before leaving for El Sal.  And we got to chat with several PC admins, who are glowingly good folks.

It hasn’t sunk in yet.  The fact that I’ll be in El Salvador in 14 hours, that is.  This seems impossible on the one hand, and just fine on the other.  The fact remains that I’ll be there.

That’s it for now. Got to start somewhere. Here is my mailing address, not the same one I gave to some folks:

PCT Gabriel Rogers

Cuerpo de Paz ~ El Salvador

Correo Nacional

Centro de Gobierno

Apartado Postal #1947

San Salvador, El Salvador, Central America