Superplush (part 2)

Why the Title
Two years ago a few friends spent New Years in West Virginia with me at my parents’ sangha’s retreat center, which features an extremely well padded green carpet.  It was so sumptuous, in fact, that we saw no reason to use the beds or chairs, instead lolling about on the floor as frost gathered on the windows.  The carpet attained rock star status among us, becoming known as “the Super Plush Carpet” and receiving frequent acclamation even months later.

During my trip home the phrase “super plush” reentered my lexicon.  After spending the night with a sock over my eyes on a magazine table in Dulles I met my brother and his family for the drive to the wedding in North Carolina.  I stared out the window, taking in all the space!  Route 29, through the heart of Virginia, has almost constant settlement along its berms, but it’s not like the constant settlement of El Salvador.  The wide lawns in front, treed hillsides behind, and ample distance between the houses on Route 29 gave off such a different impression from El Salvador, where the landscape and the houses always seem about to topple on one another.  I didn’t feel severely culture shocked, since this Virginian landscape was such a familiar one; I just noticed how super plush it felt.

I didn’t stop noticing how super plush so many parts of the U.S. experience are for the whole trip.  Other things that made me mutter to myself wow, this is super plush!:
Riding around in comfortable cars with good suspension on smooth roads.
Drinking water from the tap (especially in NYC, knowing how high-quality it is).
Putting my toilet paper in the toilet (not a few times I looked around for the TP wastebasket and, noting its absence, wondered at the poor bathroom maintenance).
Effortlessly overhearing nearby conversation (truly super plush to so easily understand those around you!).
Breakfast at the Zen retreat in West Virginia: 3 types of bread, bagels, 4 types of yogurt, homemade granola, 3 types of cereal, butter, margarine, 3 types of jam…mmm.
Almost every house I saw (glass windows, stone steps, big garages…).
Large, stainless steel, whirring, grinding, bubbling coffee machines in Brooklyn coffee shops.
Sandwiches in NYC.

…and the list could go on.  The only thing I notably did NOT find super plush about my trip was the lack of a cell phone, which is something I always have and always has service in El Salvador.  But of course my friends had all gotten new cell phones that flip open in crazy ways and display photos, or touchscreen iPods you can watch YouTube videos on, pretty much blowing my mind with their super plushness.

I used the touchscreen iPod to catch up on some YouTube videos I hadn’t gotten to see yet (limited internet café time in El Salvador mainly being used for more important things like email, news, and wikipedia): Obama girl, and the hakas of various rugby teams and the Trinity High football team from Texas.  Obama girl was pretty lame, and I’m surprised it got so much attention (and I say this as a guy who has a big crush on Obama).  But the hakas are awesome.  If you don’t know what a haka is, just search for it on YouTube.  I’m rooting for an appearance of a haka in the third season of Friday Night Lights, my favorite high school melodrama TV show.

Zen and Why the Other Title
During my time in El Salvador, my zazen (sitting meditation) practice has gotten more regular than it’s ever been since I started sitting in high school.  This is not to say that it has advanced.  There are stories of masters like Hui-Neng, the Sixth Zen Patriarch, an uneducated woodcutter who suddenly gained enlightenment upon hearing someone chanting the Diamond Sutra.  But there are also plenty of stories slightly more like mine, of monks who spent many years of devoted practice on the cushion before gaining so much as a glimmer of realization.  The lack of improvement in my zazen hasn’t bothered me unduly, partly because I’m content to put in the effort each day, and partly because zen practice is properly done with the aid of a teacher, and I don’t have one.

This is why it was so wonderful to attend part of my parents’ sangha’s fall retreat at Saranam, the home of the famous Super Plush Carpet, with their teacher.  His delicately delivered dharma talks and dokusan (private interview) with me gave me so much insight into the nature of zen practice that I feel I could spend the next year (or lifetime) working on what he talked about.  Also, sitting with a group of devoted practitioners was extremely helpful.  I’ve come back “home” to El Salvador with a good measure of liveliness and devotion infused into my practice.

Speaking of zen and my trip home gives me an excuse to explain this blog’s title a bit.  It comes from a quote by a Chinese master: “Speaking too much about zen is like looking for fish tracks in a dry riverbed.”  The purpose of zen practice is not something that one can convey an understanding of by explaining it.  Only through direct experience can we come to know the true nature of our self and all things.

I thought this sentiment could also describe—albeit in a shallower sense—the effort of writing a blog about my experience, state of mind, and activities as a PCV.  I had read a few books about the country before coming down here, and one impression I got was that facts sort of slip through one’s fingers in El Salvador, like soup through a fork.  For example, from 1981 to 1994 seemingly no one in the world knew whether 1,000 people had died at El Mozote or not!  It’s always to someone’s benefit to not be certain about something (in that case the Reagan and Salvadoran administrations’ benefits), and what I’d read suggested to me that obfuscation was more common in this culture.  This impression has been borne out in my experience here.  I have been frustrated many times by peoples’ willful tendency to ignore facts when it suits them to do so.

And, of course, my own experience here is inherently unique and untranslatable.  I’m frequently frustrated by the questions What do I write? and What can I say?  Visiting the States and getting the opportunity to describe firsthand my Salvadoran life showed me even more than writing the blog that I won’t be able to capture it.  I told some good stories, showed some good pictures, and gave my family and friends an idea of what it’s like to live here.  But, just like in the zen tradition, where one can find many good stories, illustrations, and an abstract idea of what it’s all about, talking about it will never approach the thing itself.  So the title “Fish Tracks in a Dry Riverbed” is intended to point to the futility of writing about this experience, especially in this place where even the simplest facts are hard to pin down.  This blog is something, but it is far from the thing itself.

With this in mind I often don’t write about the seemingly most pertinent things, to the great frustration of people who want to know what I actually do, what my days are like.  Instead, I write about what captures me at certain moments.  A pastiche.  It’s more fun that way, for both of us.  Who wants to read a staid, linear account of someone’s two years in Peace Corps?  Well, I’m sure my parents would be happy to, but I’d rather keep things less self-involved, more varied.  Not that going on and on about why I titled my blog thus and so is going to do that.  So let’s move on.

Superplush: My Visit Home (part 1)

Lo and behold, it turns out that Peace Corps Volunteers don’t just fall off the edge of the earth for two years, coming back tanned, tough-stomached, and bemused by our strange North American customs. Just as Thoreau in his famous isolation sometimes saw fit to take Sunday dinner at his mother’s or Emerson’s house, some PCVs pop in during the middle of their service. These days Thoreau’s social butterfly habits are almost as well known as his solitude, but most people still have a foggy idea that Peace Corps doesn’t permit its volunteers to come back to the States until their time is up. Even I hadn’t seriously considered going home until I did it, even though many if not most of my PCV friends already had, some of them more than once. But when my closest cousin got engaged and set the wedding date for October, I knew a visit just had to happen.

Congratulations, Molly and Logan!! You are beautiful! Good luck with the Russian!

The Transition

I bought a plane ticket, my anticipation snowballed, and all of the sudden I was walking out of customs at Dulles airport. The receiving line was crowded with expectant Salvadorans waiting for other passengers from my flight, some of them bemused by me in my Salvadoran national team jersey. Ha! I thought, welcome to the States—you’re still an out-of-context gringo! I headed for the bathroom, about 50 feet past the crowd of Salvadorans. At that distance from them I was aware of suddenly being a very much in-context English-speaking white guy, which felt confusing. A reticent member of the crowd was hanging back, leaning on the wall by the bathroom. He looked like a construction worker who’d cleaned himself up for the first time in a while, and he held a bunch of flowers in his hand. I wondered how long it’d been since he’d seen whomever he was waiting for, sure that my 13 months away from my loved ones paled in comparison. I wanted to say something. I probably would have in El Salvador, but now I was all off-balance. What would he think of me trying to talk to him? What would I say, here, anyway? 50 feet into the States, and already everything was different. I felt a little excited to be here, but certainly not relieved. And this shy construction worker with his woeful bouquet gave me a pang of nostalgia for El Salvador, already.

Bad days, good days, eyes and forays

9/29/08

Hello, it’s pouring. The space in front of my front porch has filled with water, almost to the point of overflowing onto the tiles. The cascade pouring through the hole in my roof above the pila (water basin) filled it in record time. I’m so glad I have plastic up under the roof tiles; otherwise everything in the house would be soaked. As it is only the middle of the house receives a fine spray through the tiles, where there’s no plastic underneath. It makes walking from my desk to my bed slightly bracing.

In other news, things are well. After a terrible couple of days at the end of last week, I had a great weekend with Niña Candy at a conference on gender organized by volunteers, and a great first day back in the community, which I’d sort of dreaded. Here’s the scoop: I had long ago asked Don Gilmer, the school director, if I could use the school building for the eye campaign I’ve arranged to come to the community. He was loathe to agree, since suspending classes for a day means the teachers have to come in on a Saturday or holiday to make up. But he referred me to the president of the school board, Don Pipo (Teodulo’s brother), for the final word. It turned out Don Pipo didn’t give the final word; he told me the organization running the eye campaign, FUDEM, needed to solicit the use of the school from the departmental office. I dutifully requested that FUDEM write a letter, went by their San Salvador office to pick it up, and hand-delivered it to Gotera. The response the next day, last Tuesday, from the departmental director was a firm No. I wheedled on the phone to no avail, receiving only a barrage of sugar-coated bureaucratic mumbo jumbo in return.

That left me scrambling Tuesday afternoon to find a place for the seven doctors that would be arriving in a little over a week prepared to examine 200-300 pairs of eyes and sell discounted glasses. The best alternative was Don Chepe’s house: right next door to the school and big enough to handle the crowd. (He also happens to be my landlord, a nice guy, and a recent convert to the AA gospel—the days in May when he drunkenly looped his arms around my neck and babbled that he wouldn’t touch my stuff if I moved into his other house are distant memories.) Unfortunately, Don Chepe was away working in his cornfield, a 3 ½ hour bus ride away, and his wife didn’t know when he’d be back. This afternoon? Tomorrow? Day after?

He still hadn’t returned by Thursday afternoon, when another frustration arose. Niña Candy and I were set to leave the next morning for the three-day gender conference. Over the previous month I had been repeatedly inviting the teachers, the school director, and the school board members; Candy was the only enthusiastic invitee—the other two who were going to come backed out (unfortunately practically no one in my community is given to doing things outside the norm or beyond the bare minimum). Now, barely 12 hours before our departure, Don Pipo rolls up to the school demanding to see a signed, stamped note of permission from the departmental office before he’ll let Niña Candy cancel her Friday classes. I could not believe his gall. He’d known about this for a month and had given his tacit permission. I’d already told him that the departmental director had also given her explicit permission for any teachers to miss a day to attend. Now, even after Candy had told her students there’d be no class tomorrow, and they’d all gone home, he comes in demanding an official note? He kept holding the agenda for the conference that I’d printed out to show to the teachers in front of my nose, unnecessarily explaining to me that it was an agenda, not a signed, stamped note. I came pretty close to yelling at him.

And so I left the next morning, fretting over the uncertain location for next Thursday’s eye campaign and worried for Candy, who’d accompanied me without clear permission from Don Pipo. Thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about my community: nobody wants to collaborate on anything worthwhile, they ruin things with their need to exercise control over situations and other people, they don’t like me and don’t want to do anything with me…and on and on.

It was a relief to rendezvous in San Miguel with the other volunteers and the community members they’d brought, everyone in high spirits about going to the beach for the three-day conference. I’d escaped my problems, at least until Sunday afternoon. We relaxed with coffee and bilingual talk about politics (apropos of the debate that was probably going to go on that night, barring a McCain no-show) while we waited for everyone to show up. Then we crowded into two camiones, trucks meant to carry livestock or firewood but that just as frequently transport soccer teams, church groups, and (now) groups of Salvadoran schoolteachers and gringo volunteers. The ride to the beach was almost two hours of sun, wind, good views, and shouted Spanish.

The conference was fantastic. All the participants, from the 19- or 20-year-old girls Suzanne brought to the old lady Dave brought and the old guy Missy brought, jumped into all the activities and discussions with gusto. We had some interesting conversations about gender roles and their flexibility or not in this culture, the rights of women, attributing blame in cases of sexual assaults, and that sort of thing. The few homophobic and machista comments that were uttered somehow didn’t lead to confrontations or unsavory agreement among the Salvadorans. We did lots of dinámicas (icebreakers/games), resulting in much hilarity. Everyone seemed to make new friends. We didn’t separate into groups of gringos and Salvos as much as I feared; it was fun to talk in Spanish all weekend, especially with educated people who are easier to talk to. We swam in the calm, lukewarm ocean at night, swishing our arms around to disturb the luminescent microorganisms that look like underwater fireflies. Some of us went on a boat ride and enjoyed gorgeous clouds and a dip in deep water.

When the time came to leave on Sunday Niña Candy talked a lot about how much she wanted to stay. I was glad she had such a good time. We chatted the entire bus ride, retelling jokes from the night before and riding out the energy of the conference. Both of us were a little nervous about confronting Don Pipo, and I was additionally worried about Don Chepe turning down my request to use his house for the eye campaign. But we didn’t let it bother us too much. When we got to town she went to the 3 PM mass and I went to my friends’ comedor to watch the Italian classic, Inter vs. Milan, and celebrate Ronaldinho’s first goal with his new team.

Maybe Candy’s piety on Sunday paid off, because everything turned out well. Don Pipo was mysteriously much calmer and more amenable than I’d expected, and Don Chepe gave me an enthusiastic yes. Moreover, Don Gilmer the school director seemed excited to use some of the activities from the gender conference in the school and with the parents. All this success made me feel great. I walked around chatting cheerfully with people and enjoying the feeling of being here. Hopefully the good luck lasts through Thursday, and lots of people show up for the eye campaign.

Happy 187th Birthday!

9/15/08

This morning, the morning of El Salvador’s Independence Day, I found myself in a parade.  I was helping manage the kids of my school (grades K-9) through the long, sunny parade route.  Many of them are about half my height, so I stuck out like an ungainly weed as I moved up and down the lines nudging kids into place and making sure they raised their pompoms when Don Luís whistled. 

 

In front of the ranks I was managing went our three “Red Cross” girls in paper nurse hats carrying water jugs, our six dancers in indigenous garb, our adorable little pompom girls in yellow Bo Peep-ish outfits, our three baton twirlers, our band, and our flag guard.  The sharp, handmade costumes that came out of nowhere at the last minute really did the trick.  Our school made a good showing.  The band even played better than in their rehearsals, which I’ve been enduring for the last six weeks.  I think they may have won best band over the high schoolers.

 

The parade route was long and sunny.  The Red Cross girls were indispensable.  Some of the smaller kids looked at me and slumped their shoulders in exhaustion, but kept on with no more complaint than that.  We reached the center of town, circled the block, and stopped in front of the church.  The band faced the church and kneeled down, continuing to play their instruments.  Then we marched into the middle of the park to present ourselves to the gazebo where the mayor and other dignitaries sat. 

 

Hundreds of people lined the parade route.  It moved so slow that I feel like the kids parading and the crowd mostly just listlessly stared at each other as the various bands thundered away.  Mothers, brothers, and sisters stayed even with their family members, periodically offering drinks or a moment of shade under an umbrella.  In the park, when we finally dispersed into the crowd, I got poked by numerous umbrella spokes.  There are people who are of such a height that they don’t face this problem, but I am not one of them.

 

After sandwiches and apple juice courtesy of the mayor, our girls in indigenous dresses did a dance in the park in which they swung around little comales (pottery plates for cooking tortillas) with little paper tortillas taped to them.  They were adorable.  In fact, despite what I say about the listless staring, the parade was a beautiful spectacle.  Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, though this is not something Salvadorans are particularly skilled at showing in mixed groups (i.e. groups that aren’t a soccer team in the back of a truck).  I loved seeing the whole town out, dressed up, and engaged in the event.  It felt good to see a friend here and there I could wave my pompom at and smile. 

 

Next year I think I’ll practice with the band so I can march in a sharp uniform myself.  Maybe I’ll manage to make even more of a spectacle of myself than I did marching among the first graders.

Espresso, books, and the return of Don Tomás

September 1, 2008

It’s the first of September and I woke up this morning to light rain and dense fog, which has since lifted, but it’s still gray and sprinkly. I’ve had three cups of coffee, not because of the weather, but because I got a new coffee apparatus from Samantha and Christopher yesterday. They’ve been busy moving out of their house in town; they’ll spend their last two weeks here with a friend, then their first two weeks in New Orleans with her mom before moving into their apartment. A month’s gap between rents.

So they’ve been trying to give me everything in their house. As someone who sees some sort of use in most things, I’ve accepted most of it. Fridge, table, nightstand, 50 books, teapot, spices, leftover pasta and bbq sauce…etc. etc…and a stovetop espresso maker.

These little screw-together silver espresso makers have such panache, I’ve always wanted one. So, once I’d woken up with my normal morning cup of drip coffee, I had to test the new paraphernalia out with the two different coffees I currently have, and now I’m wired on a gray day.

My library is looking good. A mosaic of colors and titles, the spines speaking of all the good stuff inside, companions in my solitary house. 71 unread titles.

The noise the fridge makes when it kicks on is a new presence in the house. I’ve made it a mindfulness bell. Pause, come to the present moment. Put some ice in your glass of water.

I’ve been getting more and more comfortable with the neighbors, where I’ve been going for most dinners these past 2½ months. The household comprises 5, more or less. Fermina, who’s maybe 55, her daughter María and María’s 9-year-old son Josué, a 16-year-old granddaughter, and a 6-year-old grandson whose parents are in the U.S. María’s husband Israel, who’s from a nearby village, often spends the night, arriving late and leaving early—when María isn’t on duty as a nurse in San Miguel, that is. A typically mish-mash Salvadoran household. I get on well with all of them. We joke and watch Pooh cartoons and talk about other people in the community and it makes me feel good.

Recently Fermina has been ill. She spends most of the day in bed and talks to me about how she’s going to die soon and I’ll come to her wake and drink coffee and eat sweet bread. Friends and family often come to sit by her bed and sing hymns (although I haven’t seen her mother, a feisty old lady who lives on the other side of the hill and talks my ear off anytime I go visit her). And just a few days ago Fermina’s husband Tomás came back from Miami.

Now I never expected to meet Don Tomás. The last time he visited was 18 years ago, and he never communicates with his wife. He didn’t even bother to tell her he was coming this time—he just called Israel to come pick him up. I guess he’d heard Fermina was sick and felt he should visit, despite being totally estranged.

And since he’s been here I haven’t seen him or Fermina say one word to each other. While he was out one evening Fermina complained to me, in her smiling, fatalistic way, about how he hadn’t been able to bring one person from the family over to the U.S., while another close relative—a woman, at that—had paid the way for four others. My conversations with Don Tomás have mostly revolved around his work in Miami and the weather. Night before last when I was over we hardly spoke; he was wrapped like a cocoon in the hammock in the living room, a silent lump that everyone just walked around. I’m curious about how awkward it is for them, or what they’re feeling. Salvadorans are so amazing at taking everything in stride. Imagine, an estranged husband/father/grandfather showing up after 18 years and occupying your living room hammock! What else to do but carry on with things as normal.

Travels West

August 14, 2008

It’s been an atypical week.  Let me give you an idea: I’ve: eaten a French-Salvadoran fusion dinner in the company of a spunky 15-year-old French girl, drunk water straight from a stream, talked about carpentry in Spanish with a young Belgian couple, had a bellyflop contest across a lake from the highest volcano in the country, connected with a real live Scot from clan Campbell (my ancestors’ clan), discussed anthropology A-levels with a Brit who grew up in Denmark, slept with a cat owned by a Salvadoran hippie and his Dutch girlfriend, met several high-ranking members of the Ministry of the Environment, been told by a Bavarian that I could pass for a Swabian*, and seen a baby jaguar feeding from a milk bottle in a rural family’s house.

Eclectic, no?  Traveling around the west of El Salvador proved it to be a far cry from the east.

The trip was a way to link up two events in the west—a soccer game in El Balsamar, Sonsonate and an environmental festival in El Congo, Santa Ana—without having to go all the way home to Morazán.  Plus, I hadn’t been to Sonsonate or Ahuachapán and had lots of ganas to see the Ruta de las Flores and Parque Nacional El Imposible.  These are, respectively, the most developed tourist area and the most well-preserved forest in the country.

Spending the night in San Salvador with several other easterners on their way to the soccer game, I met a Watson Fellow who’d just arrived in the country.  I’ll call him Watson.  He’s a Harvey Mudd structural engineering nerd, planning to study the structural damage of recent earthquakes in El Sal, Perú, Japan, and India.  Being a Watson Fellow and all, Watson had nothing in particular to do, so he decided to tag along to the soccer game, and then with me on my travels.  It was nice to have someone along.  I especially enjoyed seeing his reactions to his first Latin American and first developing country, and to the Salvadoran ways of doing things.  He also amused me in nerdy ways—teaching me about digital cameras and putting words to the problem the damn straws here have: local buckling.

San Sal was crazy because of the Agostinos festival, El Salvador’s huge annual deal.  Carnival rides, music, greasy food, and unrelenting commerce had taken over the city.  I encountered a couple of friends in a bar, to which they’d resorted when a bike race screwed up the bus routes and kept them from a meeting in the Peace Corps office.  It was about 12:30 pm and they were quite drunk.  That evening I went with them to see “The Dark Knight.”  By that time they were regretting their midday Pilseners.  I snuck a can of mixed fruit into the movie in the seat of my pants.  Heath Ledger as the Joker totally blew my mind, and it was even better while slurping down pineapple chunks in heavy syrup.

The soccer game at El Balsamar took place on a gorgeous field against a good-natured team called Arco Iris (“rainbow”).  As usual, it was scorching and we were not in excellent shape and they beat us handily.  Gluttons for punishment, we are, always looking forward to these matches that are always the same.  The good news: a hike to a 70-meter waterfall and some nice rock pools.  I stacked stones just as I always have in my West Virginia rivers.  That night, exhausted, those of us who stayed enjoyed a delightful bilingual candlelit dinner with our host and a friend of hers from the community.  No matter where I am, who the good people are, or what the good food is, I always feel holistically good during this type of meal.

The thunder that night was the most intense thunder I’ve ever heard in my life.

Finally, the Ruta de las Flores, the only attraction in El Salvador with its own signs pointing the way from the airport.  The Ruta is a series of five towns in the coffee-growing highlands of Sonsonate and Ahuachapán.  Their setting is incredible, bookended on the east by the volcanic triumvirate of Izalco, Cerro Verde, and Santa Ana, and on the west by Parque Nacional El Imposible.  All of them sit on the high-rising folds of the Cordillera Apaneca Ilamatepec; Apaneca itself is the second-highest town in the country.

Visiting the Ruta de las Flores was very Goldilocks and the Three Bears for me.  First I arrived in Juayúa, where Watson, the RPCV PCRV** from Gotera, and I met the PCV who lives in Juayúa for a tour.  Results: too big, too accustomed to tourists.  Next Watson and I passed through Apaneca: too small, not enough to do.  And finally we arrived in Ataco: just right!

Concepción de Ataco sits in a gentle swale on the way down from the crest of the Cordillera to the departmental capital of Ahuachapán.  We stayed in a beautiful hostel run by Alejandro, a young, dreadlocked Salvadoran guy, and his Dutch girlfriend Jikke (the Alepac).  She met him while backpacking through Central America and stayed.  They instantly made me feel like I was at home.  They had a spastic cat, Rufina, which they called a “gatonejo” (gato+conejo=cat+rabbit) because its short little tail made it look like a rabbit from behind.

We ate the oddest, most delicious meal at El Botón, a restaurant run by a bald, bustling French guy.  The food was the tastiest I’ve eaten in a long time—no offense to tortillas and beans, which I love with all my heart.  We ended up spending most of our time there chatting with the French guy’s 15-year-old redhead daughter, whom we’d just seen in the Alepac getting her flaming tresses dreaded.  She was just as spunky as Rufina.  She sat crosslegged on a stool, chain smoking and complaining of the uptight airline employees in Miami who sat vigil in her hotel room when her flight was cancelled.  They were horrified when she asked them for cigarettes.

Between the French guy and his daughter; Jikke; and the people from Germany and Belgium I was to meet in the next few days, all of whom spoke better Spanish than English, I heard a lot of funny European accents in Spanish.  The redheaded girl got riled up when I poked fun at her pronunciation of caro.  An expert, the Salvadoran waitress, had to be called in to put the matter to rest.

Just up from the hostel, workers were restoring a small, strange-looking church.  It seems like the 2001 earthquake did special damage to the churches in this region, because they’re all being restored, while everything else looks fine.  Or perhaps it just takes longer to fix them up; a worker in Apaneca’s church told me the restoration was going slowly because of lack of funds.  The large church on Ataco’s central square looks recently restored, with a shiny wooden ceiling and modern light fixtures.

I saw most of the town on an early morning walk, before Watson got up.  There are craft shops, cafés with good decor, a contemporary art gallery, and pretty flower gardens, but it’s not so cutesy that it doesn’t feel like El Salvador.  Most places were closed as I walked past.  In the park in the center of town a man was mowing the grass with a weedwhacker.  The only other person out and about was a lanky fellow reading the paper on a bench, his bicycle leaned up next to him.  I asked him where he’d gotten it; he pointed down the street and said, “right down there…but here, I’ll sell you mine and go get another one for myself.”  Bemused, I dug around in my pocket for 50 cents, but found only a dollar bill.  “Do you have change?”  “No, but I can bring it to you…where will you be?”  I was suspicious of this scheme, but my morningtime cheeriness and his seeming good will got the better of me.  I gave him the dollar and told him I’d be at the café round the corner.

He turned out to be a man of his word, bringing me the change as I watched Olympic judo over eggs, beans, and coffee.  The honesty of this gangly early bird cemented my affection for Ataco.

In Tacuba, on the other side of Ahuachapán (which turned out to be a much nicer departmental capital than Sonsonate), we met another hip Salvadoran guy and his European girlfriend.  Watson and I had called Manolo the day before to schedule a hike in El Imposible.  Manolo is described in the Lonely Planet as “single-handedly” turning Tacuba into a worthwhile eco-tourism destination.  He bustled around gathering waterbottles and ham sandwiches while we chatted with the girlfriend—this one a German schoolteacher who’d met Manolo last summer.  He later told us fondly of visiting Scandinavia with her during the intervening school year, and also recounted the detailed story of why Rottweiler—her hometown—is named Rottweiler.  She seemed not to have heard the story, but made little comment.

Manolo hadn’t done this particular hike for a couple of years, and it seemed like he was being guided by the other guide, whom we met at the trailhead.  When I asked him why he selected this particular trail for the day, he only said, “craziness.”  The first twenty minutes were through a coffee finca, then we plunged steeply down on a specious trail for what seemed like hours.  The flora was like nothing I’ve seen in El Salvador—this place truly is a preserve.  When we reached the stream at the bottom Manolo wordlessly disappeared upstream for a while.  When he came back we discovered he’d been collecting river snails for that night’s dinner.  He claimed this was one of the few places they could still be found in the country, that they’re indicators of the purest water, and furthermore that he may be the only person left in the country who still eats them.  Alejandro later scoffed at this.

We bathed in the stream, ate a mountain of ham sandwiches, and climbed almost as steeply back up by a different route.  Sightings of a wild turkey and a lizard, both endangered species, on the way back up.  And at the end of the hike we sighted a baby jaguar…being fed milk from a bottle in the house where we were waiting for Manolo’s dad to arrive in the car.  It was vaguely reminiscent of Wolverine, with tufts off the sides of its face and a wild demeanor.  The men had found it while working in the coffee finca.  I remain unclear on why they took it in.  I’d be afraid of its mother coming knocking.  Or what it’ll do to the chickens after a few more bottles of milk.

We made it back to Ataco by dark, weary and satisfied from our long hike.  A pair of guests had arrived, she from Brisbane, he from Glasgow.  They were taking their time about doing Central America, but even so hadn’t yet learned much Spanish.  He managed to be almost bilingually incomprehensible to me, due to his thick-as-wool Scottish accent.  With effort I managed to hold up my end of a conversation about our common clan, clan Campbell.  We watched a pirated copy of “The Dark Knight”—my second time, and well worth it.  She, a big Batman fan, could hardly contain her delight throughout.

The next day Watson and I passed back through Juayúa.  It was the correct day, Saturday, and the gastronomic fair was in force.  It could just have been the incredible torta of carne al pastor or the best orange juice ever I had, but for some reason I liked Juayúa a lot better this time.  We visited the Alepac’s counterpart hostel (the Anáhuac), run by, you guessed it, a Salvadoran guy and his European girlfriend.  There we met a band of merry travelers, including the Bavarian who thought I looked Swabian, the English girl who’d grown up in Denmark, and two American RPCVs.  They were easily amused as well as amusing, which made me like them.  We hooked up with them again two days later at Lago Coatepeque.

The El Congo environment parade put my municipio to shame.  For Earth Day the water cooperative in my town put together a little event with performances from schoolkids, but most of it was 13-year-olds dancing provocatively to ranchera music.  In El Congo there were students dressed in entire outfits made of junk food bags, pop tops, and bottle caps.  There were hundreds of colorful signs telling onlookers to protect the environment.  There was a really well done skit involving an intelligent dialogue between a woodcutter and a tree.  There were bands.  There was, dare I say, enthusiasm!  I’m so jealous.

We about ruined our voices by yelling “La Bamba” with our own altered lyrics to everyone along the parade route.  Then we performed “The Lorax” and the trash play (which we’d rehearsed exhaustively with many Pilseners the night before) before a million school kids, the mayor, the president of the Environmental Fund of El Salvador (FONAES), and various other luminaries.  Watson enthusiastically played the role of a tree that gets cut down in “The Lorax.”  Chadd, Zach, Janet, and Bis performed their lyric-adapted Daddy Yankee and Ricky Martin songs to much acclaim.  The super-charismatic president of FONAES gave a rousing speech and later shook us all by the hand and endured our rabid questions for him on the part of our schools.  Not one but two refrigerios were provided.  This was the grandest-scale event I’ve participated in here.  It made me feel so hopeful, but also a little despondent about the comparative disorganization and apathy of my area of the country.

A relaxing evening and bellyflop contest in the warm waters of Coatepeque rounded out my tour of the west.  I wished Watson well in his journeys in San Salvador and high-tailed it back home to endure the typical comment: “I thought you’d gone back to the States.”  It always semi-offends me—do they really expect me to abandon them at the drop of a hat like that?  But I think it’s the way they leave and come back from the States, too.  Just a few weeks ago my neighbor, who I talk with several times a day, told me her son just got back from many years in the States that day (not deported).  I thought, How did I not know he was coming?  This would be such a highly-anticipated event in the States.  But there wasn’t even a celebration.  He got up the next morning, walked past my house, and milked the cows, as if he’d never been gone.  I guess that’s just the way they do.

*Swabia is in southern Germany, where apparently the people look like me.  It also happens to be a region frequently made fun of by Bavarians, Austrians, and the Swiss.  I wonder whether Swabia jokes or West Virginia jokes are funnier?
**Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Peace Corps Response Volunteer

Intimations of Immortality

August 4, 2008

A thunderstorm just rolled through, leaving chilly air in its wake.  It’s probably about 60ºF.  (I haven’t mastered Celcius yet; people don’t really talk about temperature here.  If it’s not hot, it’s “fresco,” and that’s as in-depth as it gets.)  It’s cold enough for my sweatshirt, which I sometimes wear in the evening, but never yet at 3:30 PM.  In your face, NYC friends.  I may live south of Arizona, south of the Mexican deserts, south of the Tropic of Cancer, but I’m nice and cool in my $30/month house while you’re sweltering in your $1000/month rat hole.

I’m eating peanut butter and jelly on a spoon, getting ready to leave tomorrow morning to go out west.  The Agostinos vacation started on Friday, and since then I haven’t had any work to do.  I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out how cows keep getting in my yard, or letting cows into my yard to mow it while I kick back with a book by the pila, where I can shoo them away from the soap (they LOVE soap); hiking a nearby cerro (pics on facebook and flickr); cleaning; watching the Venture Brothers; doing crosswords; transplanting my lettuce seedlings, which I think will die from spindliness in our nigh-daily thunderstorms; sitting a lot; and playing with the PhotoStitch application on the computer.  That’s the current picture of Gabriel’s idleness.

Oh, and I’ve also been copying Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood onto squares of paper to post on the wall in sort of a Mondrian pattern.  The Intimations Ode has been one of my favorite poems since I studied it in a class five years ago.  I was on exchange at Middlebury College, partly so I could get in the classroom with the legendary professor John Elder.  I enrolled in two of his classes, one being “Wordsworth and Basho.”

We spent a long time on the Intimations Ode in that class, and I felt we could have spent much longer.  Our discussions often revolved around the idea that in the process of loss one can gain a penetrating perspective into the nature of things that is perhaps even more worthwhile than what has been lost.  This idea captivated me and has led me to read the Intimations Ode and some other poems of Wordsworth’s over and over.  Over time I’ve come to see a lot of similarities with the Zen path.  A preoccupation with seeing into the true nature of the mind, as well as the simple things of the world; glimpses of the absolute that do not yet signal a full understanding of it; and importance placed on silence and stillness are all aspects of both Wordsworth’s poetry and the Zen path.  I like this parallel, not least because in his context and influences Wordsworth would appear to be anything but a Zen artist.

So anyway, I’m going to work on memorizing the Intimations Ode.  There are some blah sections, but at its best the language is irresistibly enchanting.  I have the first 18 lines down—only 190 to go!

Names

August 4, 2008

For a long time I’ve wanted to post a list of Salvadoran names.  Most of these are common Latin American names, just not as common as José, Carlos, or Pedro.  A few (Khrisstian, Christman) are pure invention.  I heard that they passed a law a few years ago to control what you can name your kid, in response to a disturbing trend of parents naming their kids after TV ads, chip wrappers, and whatever else took their fancy.  I’m slightly disappointed, considering how amusing it might have been to try to learn the students’ names at school, but it’s probably a good thing.  On the list I’ve included the common nickname (ex: Gabriel – Gabo) where applicable.  I hope some of my readers are as tickled by words and names as I am.

hombres
Crecencio – Chencho
Joaquín – Quincho
José – Chepe
Benjamin – Mincho
Gumersindo – Chindo
Francisco – Chico
Eulalio – Lalo
Salvador – Salva
Ángel – Lito
Porfirio – Pipo
Misael – Misa
Henrique – Kike
Wenceslau
Moisés
Ociel
Obed
Abilio
Tiodulo
Teofilo
Tránsito
Evangelista
Nevelio
Sabino
Bernabé
Archimedes
Natividad
Krisstian

mujeres
Erica – Kika
Isabel – Chava
Eulalia – Lala
Azucena – Chena
Bertila
Fermina
Petrona
Edit
Luz
Paz
Yessenia
Yesica
Estefani
Christman

oso pooh and rural water systems

August 3, 2008

For the past couple weeks I’ve been interviewing people in the community about our water system, which needs an overhaul in order to adequately serve the approximately 500 people who benefit from it.  The spring is on a mountain about 5 km away.  The water is stored there in a tank, from whence it flows down through a neighboring community and then the first section of my village before climbing back up the hill to where I live.  The problem is that the users in the valley use up lots of water, leaving too little to have the force to climb up the hill to where I and about half of my community live.

 

The proposals include building a tank on my hill to store water and distribute from here instead of directly from the source, and installing measuring devices on all the taps so that users will pay per according to how much they use rather than a flat monthly rate.  Both of these are good ideas, and I’ve taken it as my job to help the community water committee decide what to do.  Unfortunately the water committee never meets to discuss these things.  Instead everyone scrapes by, hauling water from faraway streams when they have to, and complaining. 

 

An additional frustration is that I never seem to be able to get all the information I need.  Despite various interviews in which I thought I’d asked all the pertinent questions, I just learned while eating dinner at my neighbor’s house the other night that the mayor is planning on connecting the new water system he’s installing nearby to our community—all the way to the school, which is near me on top of the hill.  How did no one think to mention this to me before?  Arrgh!

 

Casually learning important information is one of the many benefits of eating my dinners with my neighbors.  In the month and a half since I started eating there I’ve learned a bunch about the history of the community, who’s related to whom (which would challenge even John Nash or my mother, who’s an ace at retaining the names and family tree connections of every single third cousin), and community politics.  All in a relaxed atmosphere that involved much joking.  And much watching of Winnie the Pooh (familiarly referred to as “Oso Pooh,” and his friend “Buho,” Owl) with the little kids.  I love my dinnertimes. 

community meeting

August 1, 2008

4:16 PM  Just arriving back at the house from a community meeting called by the community development organization (ADESCO).  The crickety insects and mourning doves (or their equivalent) are just starting up.  The house, which gets pretty bright inside during the day with the doors and window open and cracks between the roof tiles, is already dim, though the daylight outside is still strong.  The distant rumblings of thunder have started.  For the past few days the rain has been arriving after dark. 

 

I love having community meetings, even when only 25 or 30 people show up (there are 125 houses in the community).  People who generally don’t interact hash things out in front of the rest, and the suffocatingly inconsequential nature of 99% of everyday conversation evaporates.  People state their opinions, always first saying, “I’m going to state my opinion.”  There is confusion about the agenda.  Usually some old lady takes on the role of heckler, to the flusterment of the ADESCO president and the amusement of everyone else.  Sometimes a drunk guy wanders in and stands behind the person speaking, trying to interject his own sodden opinion.

 

I also love them because my Spanish is generally better when I’m speaking in front of a crowd of people than it is in scattered short conversations.  And because, for the few moments of the meeting, people actually seem interested in taking an active role in the community’s advancement.  Normally they’re fatalistic and enervating—difficult for an extrovert like me.  During the meetings I adopt my professional role, speak with vim and conviction, and feed off the hopeful energy I help to create.  My reward is seeing eyes light up with possibility, and receiving overly earnest handshakes after adjourning. 

 

Today the eyes lighting up may themselves benefit from what they were lighting up about.  It looks like I’ve arranged to bring an eye campaign, with free consultations and cheap or free glasses, to come to the community in September.  Informing the community of this, I was taken aback by how excitedly they reacted.  I finally hit the nail on the head, I guess.  I’ve talked about a million project ideas to them before, never getting this positive a reaction.  A good moment of appreciation in a job that’s frequently thankless.