Night at the Trapiche

February 28, 2008

Last night I did what I suggested I would at the end of the recent post “Dulce”: I spent the night at the trapiche with the workers.  One of them had told me a few days ago that they go to sleep at about eight o’clock, so I planned on showing up at six or seven to hang out for a little while and settle in.  But I was delayed, first by my friend Irvin (whose name I’ve repeatedly misspelled “Irwin,” which baffles him), who regularly comes over to seek my help with his gadgetry.  Sometimes he brings his GameBoy and has me translate the English in his role-playing games—the kind where you walk around and gather information from townsfolk before going out and fighting battles, or building levels or what have you.  I’m afraid I haven’t been much help with these, despite my adequate translations, because I only played Final Fantasy a couple of times and have no idea what the townsfolk are hinting at.  Other times Irvin brings his Razr phone and memory stick and has me transfer Japanese anime pictures or ringtones from one to the other using my computer’s Bluetooth capability.  I’d never used this computer for Bluetooth before moving to rural El Salvador.  Conversely, the people of my village had never used anything but the woods as a bathroom before the Peace Corps Volunteer preceding me did a latrine project six years ago.  Globalization never ceases to boggle the mind.

 

So Irvin came over at quarter of six to do some Bluetoothing, then I went to have pupusas at Teodulo’s store (my habit on the twice-weekly market days) at about six thirty.  All of Teodulo’s siblings besides the evangelical one were there (I hope to address this familial quirk in a future post), along with some others, all in a good mood and shooting the breeze.  I added to the general merriment when I told them about giving my number to a girl in town today who had said, quite sincerely, that she had some questions to ask me, which I imagined to be something about my work or what it’s like to be an American living here.  When I found out that the questions she had in mind were more along the lines of HOLA Q TAL COMO ESTAS, I realized my naïve mistake and started screening her subsequent calls.  The group was roaring in laughter at my foolishness/her forwardness as yet another call came in, which I had Teodulo answer to put her off the scent.  The conversation wended its way here and there afterwards, and I only ended up making it to the trapiche by 7:30, by which time it had been pitch dark and moonless for a while.

 

I arrived to the headlamp-lit sight of five hammocks closely slung by the big oven, which was still putting off some pleasant heat.  At least one was occupied by two people, an old man and (to forward a guess) his grandson.  Everyone was asleep.  I started hanging my hammock as quietly as I could, but the old man woke up and, being Salvadoran and therefore overly hospitable, immediately slipped on his pants and got up to give me a hand.  Within a minute or two everyone was back in bed, me included, like a bunch of sailors in an Aubrey-Maturin novel.  It was a windy night, so our hammocks even swayed in unison, as if by the roll of the waves.

 

By 2 AM or so the oxen and their masters were at work milling cane.  The heat of the oven had died down, and I was almost too cold to sleep, but not quite.  At 2:45 it was time to get the oven lit, so to be out of the way I had to move, between a couple of trees.  Once again the old man hung my hammock for me, between two trees up the hill.  I took a few pictures as he did.  The stars were brilliant.  Warmly re-wrapped in my blankets, lulled by low murmurs and the quiet creak of the trapiche and the wind in the trees, I fell back asleep. 

 

I woke back up just as the sky started to lighten at 5:45.  The day’s work was well underway.  I got up, took some more pictures, and wrapped dulce for a while (see the post “Dulce” for explanation), so as to feel like I wasn’t completely dead weight, despite sleeping through the first four hours of work.  It always delights the workers to see me doing this, especially now that I’m pretty good at it.  The radio delivered non sequitur traffic reports from San Salvador.

 

At 7:30 the skies were high and bright, and the night breezes had become day breezes.  I walked to the neighboring house where they’d promised me tamales for breakfast, ate them, helped their boy water the tomatoes and peppers, and went home for a spot of coffee, feeling vigorous.  I like the way I habitually start my days, but this was a capital way to alter the routine.

Some Conversational Quirks

As a Peace Corps Volunteer one of my main roles in the community is to walk around and greet people. I take this quite seriously, and never let a person pass without saying hi. Often I even have a short conversation. This delights some people to such an extent that it seems they’d be perfectly happy if that’s all I did here for two years. Anyway, I like to think that I’ve become quite expert in how one greets people in passing, in rural Salvadoran Spanish. A couple of examples to prove my expertise: it’s most common to say Adios to older people or someone on horseback, especially in the evening. Salú is most commonly directed at children and people one is familiar with. To add a little flourish to your buenas (short for buenas tardes or buenas noches), stress the second syllable—buenás—this is especially appropriate for male peers. Then there’s the informal, slangy ¿Qué ondas? which is apparently hugely surprising to hear from a gringo.

Now that I’ve proven my mettle, I’d like to mention two very common habits of conversation in passing.

1) Person A: ¿Cómo estamos? (How are we?)

Person B: Pues, aquí. (Well, I’m here.)

This is almost always the response to any question along the lines of How’s it going?, What’s up?, How are you?—to such an extent that when someone says muy bien or tranquilo it almost takes me aback. These uncommon responses also make me happy because they’re so much more committal (less non-committal, that is) than just saying, “I’m here.” But day by day I’m getting used to the pues, aquí that used to madden me so. Observing other people’s responses to this phrase, I see them sagely nodding their heads, as if to say, “Ain’t that the way of it. Aren’t we all. I know how you mean.” They’ll often also say “Ahh,” as if the other person has just said something quite wise and philosophical. So I’ve taken to using it myself from time to time, although normally I stick to bien or muy tranquilo.

2) This is generally said after the initial greeting, by way of saying something else.

¿Anda paseando? or ¿A pasear? (Going walking?)

This phrase used to frustrate me just as much, because it’s a way of asking what someone is doing without asking what someone is doing. Just judging by how often this phrase is used one might thing that rural Salvadorans are a Thoreauvian society of contemplative walkers. But this is not the case—if someone is walking somewhere you can be sure it’s to accomplish something specific, like go to town for groceries or visit an aunt. But the question ¿Anda paseando? is not looking for a specific response—it is simply looking for an affirmation (Sí, a pasear), which is then met with the same sage nod I mentioned in (1). A pasear is also a frequent response to the question What’s up?, and seems perfectly acceptable. In the U.S. this make me suspicious—What do they have to hide? I would ask myself. But here it’s just what you say.

Both of the above habits strike me for their conversation-killing quality. Neither leads anywhere at all. But killed conversations are common here, and people seem perfectly comfortable sitting in silence for a few minutes before continuing. It still makes me a little nervous, but I’m getting used to it.

IST

This past week I attended my first “In Service Training” back at the training center in San Vicente. Also known as “Reconnect,” this three-day event got everyone from my training group back together to share stories, brush up our Spanish, and do a few technical workshops whose importance is a lot more apparent now that we’ve been volunteers for a while. It also gave me an excuse to visit my host family from training. I spent the first night with them. It was just like old times: Mama Cruz hugged me a lot and complained about her back pain, I watched 8 year old Daniel and 4 year old Nuria swing crazily on the hammocks (which always reminds me that that’s how I broke my arm when I was 7), ate some beans and tortillas, put up with Don Daniel’s wisecracks about the homosexuals I’ve been fraternizing with, and fell asleep in a hammock at an absurdly early hour. Good to maintain those connections!

Highlights of In Service Training included:

-Realizing how much better the pupusas are at my favorite San Vicente pupusería than in my site (really a lowlight, since I only go to San V. once in a blue moon).

-Learning how to strike a match on a matchbox with one hand, WITHOUT burning myself.

-El Zachador’s description of his work situation: his counterpart at the school refuses to work with him because he refuses to marry her 15-year-old daughter. That poor guy always gets the piece of fish with bones in it. (My school counterpart also has a 15-year-old daughter, who is very pretty, and once asked me in a significant tone if I was married, but happily there is no pressure from the mom to marry her.)

Dulce

February 8, 2008

When I arrived in Morazán at the beginning of December, I asked a lot of people what sort of work the men were currently engaged in.  Most of the women I asked said something like, “Not much.”  And most of the men said, “Oh, this and that.  Feeding the cows and pigs.  Some people are building houses while it’s dry.  The work really starts when we plant corn in May.”  May?! I thought, that’s five months away.  But then a gleam would appear in their eyes and they would go on to say, “But just you wait until the trapiche starts milling in February.  You’re gonna love it!”

The trapiche is the mill used to extract the juice from sugarcane, which is then processed into lumps of dulce, an unrefined mocha-colored sugar mostly used to make coffee disgustingly sweet.  The trapiche in my village, owned by one Don Natividad (whom I met in December—see the post “Fortuity,” from Dec. 28^th, 4^th and 5^th paragraphs, for notes on our first conversation), started operations last Friday.  The workers sleep in hammocks next to it, waking at one in the morning and keeping things humming along until five in the afternoon—in the campo overtime is added onto the front of a day’s work.  The cane must all be milled before it starts to dry out; the window is about four or five weeks.  A sixteen hour day, starting at one AM, sounds pretty tough, but it turns out it’s really not too bad.  The reason people said in December that I would love it is, I think, because they love it.  And they love it because it’s pleasant work.

The trapiche in my village is TV-sized, made of red-painted cast iron.  It’s beautiful.  Raised letters on its side advertise its manufacturer: Chattanooga Plow Works, Tennessee.  I assume its original purpose was to mill sorghum for molasses, something I once saw done in eastern Tennessee.  Supporting the trapiche are four stout posts sunk six feet into the ground.  Inside are three cylinders, one big, two smaller, mounted vertically.  The large cylinder’s axle emerges from the top of the mill’s housing, where it is anchored in the middle of a giant log, shaped like a slingshot with one arm cut off.  The remaining arm reaches down toward the ground, where a team of oxen is tethered to it.  They pull the log round and round, turning the cylinder, which crushes the cane in between itself and the other two.  Flattened ribbons of cane emerge from the other side.  These are thrown back in the field or woven into mats to use in other steps of the process.  The juice runs out—lots of it!—into a barrel, .  A man stands in the middle with a pile of cane feeding it into the mill’s maw.  I did this for a while.  I was almost too tall, and had to watch out for the log coming round overhead, like a boom on a big sailing ship.  Sugarcane makes your hands intensely, thickly dirty, but it washes off easily and leaves your skin feeling silky.

Don Natividad sports a sort of moustache that has always baffled me—where the top half is shaved, leaving a narrow strip hugging the upper lip.  He wears an expensive watch, flies to the U.S. every month to visit his children, and has a chauffer.  He is the Salvadoran version of a feudal lord.  The vehicle his chauffer chauffers is a giant truck best used for hauling firewood or rocks.  That is a Salvadoran lord’s vehicle.

I found out what a Salvadoran lord’s attitude is, too, as Don Natividad showed me around yesterday.  He was extremely gracious with me as he steered me around the milling area, showed me his beautifully furnished three-story house in town, and directed his chauffer around town doing errands.  But with the chauffer, the servant in his house, and the lady who made us lunch, he was curt.  He joked with the workers at the trapiche and showed off his shoptalk, but maintained a distinct distance. He wandered off frequently to make or take cell phone calls.  He got his hands dirty, but made sure his importance and wealth was apparent.

After the juice comes out of the mill, it is poured into one of three big metal urns built into a concrete-and-rock structure.  Underneath the structure is a big space for the fire.  It gets incredibly hot by the openings for the firewood, but the structure absorbs and directs the heat so well to the urns that standing on the other side of it is quite comfortable.  After boiling for a while in one, the juice is strained of impurities and transferred to the next urn, then the next.  A rich, sugary steam rises up.  By the time the juice gets to the final urn, much of the water has boiled off.  It has attained a syrupy texture.  The bubbles rising up make volcano shapes that remain for a moment.  It is transferred to an independent metal urn to cool for a while as it is vigorously stirred.  Then it is poured into the mold, a big 20’ x 14” x 6” board with lots of holes bored in it.  Each hole is about 4” across and 5” deep.  It takes the miel (literally honey), the soft syrupy stuff, 20 minutes or so to cool into its hard, mocha-colored final form.  The dulce is knocked out of the mold, and pairs of the cylinders are wrapped in cornhusks.  A pair sells for a dollar.

I tried my hand at each stage of the process, except for pouring the miel into the mold—that looked like it took some expertise, and I may have hurt relations with my community had I spilled it.  The quick, beautiful technique for wrapping and tying the cornhusks around the dulce fascinated me, and I eventually got pretty good at it.  Indeed, all the steps were pleasant to do, and I could see why people like this work (and said I’d love it too).  It’s not difficult, there’s not too much dust or smoke, it all occurs in shade.  There are a bunch of different tasks, so you can switch around and not get bored doing the same thing all day.  And at night you get to sleep out in hammocks with your buddies, “feeling the weight of the night,” as Don Natividad said to me.  I think I’m going to spend a night myself at the trapiche soon.