Volcano: Take Two

Group pic at the top

About a week ago I started off from my community with my youth group on our third adventure. We had planned on spending the night with the other two thirds of the group in a national park near by my site. But we had to adjust our plans as one of the other volunteers involved in the project said her kids could not get permission to travel so far and stay the night. This is not too surprising as her community is the farthest away from the park. I mean I was having some trouble getting permission from my kids' parents and we live close!

So we hmmed and we hawed thinking up other excursion ideas. Eventually we settled upon hiking Volcan Santa Ana, or Volcan Cerro Verde. It is the tallest volcano in the country and located in between Alex and my communities and Natalie's community. My kids were pretty devastated when I told them we would not be going to Monticristo National Park, and were slightly skeptical when I told them about the volcano hike.  But they are good sports and agreed to give it a shot.

We got the the park entrance early, not really knowing what to expect. We got there and paid the first of four entrance fees. Yes four. You have to pay to enter the park, then you must pay for your guide. Next you have to pay to enter onto a portion of private property that must be crossed to get to the top. And then you have to pay again, but by that point I stopped paying attention to why. We were accompanied by a park guide and a police officer leading the way and another set bringing up the rear. Hiking is known to bring out hiding robbers here in El Salvador, so it is best to go with armed escorts.

Kick Ass Youth Group

Not all of the kids from our three groups were in the best of shape, but they all made the 3 hour hike up to the top of the volcano. For that I am immensely proud of them. They could have quit, but they trudged through and made it all the way up. This hike was so much better than the volcano hike I did when I was in training in San Vicente, Volcan Chichontepec. I learned a lot about myself on that hike and I learned a lot about my kids on this hike. 

Awesome crater and sulfur lake at the top

My feet after the hike...

We made it to the top and the view was stellar. We were on the rim of a huge crater. There was a green, sulfur lake in the middle.  Lago De Coatepeque was visible in the distance. We snacked on chicken sandwiches and reveled in the beauty around us. This was meant to be the last big trip for my youth group, but they have really run with this project. I am more than happy to support these kids as long they are willing to participate. 

Alex, Natalie and I

We are already starting to plan a fourth trip, the one we had to cancel. Also we held the first of several movie night fundraisers at my house several nights ago. The kids have decided to raise money to buy trees and re-forest part of our community. We broke even and then some last night. Every little bit counts and my kids are proving that every day! 

La Dieta

Congratulations! Welcome home! You must be exhausted, I mean you did just give birth to a healthy, happy baby. That is hard work! I hear it is one of the most physically taxing events your body can go through. I mean you have just spent the last nine months carrying and nourishing another living being with your own body. Then after hours and hours of being in labor, in pain, you have pushed that small child out of your body and into the big scary world. That is heavy stuff right there. Might I offer you a cup of drinking chocolate? Some cheese? A tortilla?

Many women in El Salvador, especially those who live in the more rural areas, adhere to what is known as 'la dieta' (or the diet) after child birth. This is a very strict diet that consists of chocolate, cheese, tortillas and sometimes chicken. I am not kidding, this is a real thing. They must follow this diet for the first 40 days of their new babies life. And interestingly enough, if something goes wrong and the baby does not survive, the mother must still follow la dieta.

Most women in my community follow la dieta after child birth. It can be hard to see these wonderful happy babies and know that these mothers are not properly taking care of themselves. It is too easy imagine what kind of nutritional deficits these kids are starting out with. Women have told me that the chocolate is consumed to help bring the milk when the mother starts breast feeding. As for the other foods I do not really know what their significance is. I have heard la dieta is followed in order to control odor, but I think many of these women are just blindly following their traditions. Salvadorians can be quite superstitious.

It is very interesting to see women who believed in something like la dieta, but have since had their minds changed. For instance a woman in my community was told that she could not get pregnant while she was breast feeding. That turned out to be false, and now now she has two daughters 10 months apart. She no longer believes that superstition, but puts all of her faith behind la dieta. Many women here also wear red bands of fabric around their waist during pregnancy. They believe that this wards off the moon which can, during a full moon, cause your child to have birth defects. They believe that the moon 'eats' the part of the child that comes out deformed. Cleft lip, for example, is often blamed on the evils of the moon.  

Some of these women are not very educated, but some are. It is hard to believe that so many people follow beliefs like la dieta in during this day and age. The world is so advanced, with so much information at our fingertips on the internet, that it is shameful to see so many women hurting themselves and their children in this way. Women get defensive if you try to even talk to them about alternatives to la dieta. They raised their children that way, their mothers raised them that way and their grandmothers raised their mothers that way. This is what they know, and change can be intimidating. 

Creepy Crawlers

This past weekend I decided that I wanted to re-arrange my house. I do not have a lot of furniture, so this is not actually that exciting. Mostly I wanted to move my guest bed 90 degrees so it was up against an adjacent wall. In order to do this I had to move a few items that were perched against said adjacent wall. This included a large teal bucket, the box my blender came in, a pair of shoes, a cesta and the enormous binder I created for GAD.

 Things were going fine until I moved the GAD binder. If only I had left the binder, well life would be worse that it is now, but I would not have have known that. Not sure which is worse. So I pick up the binder and I see a scorpion. At first I think it is dead. It is a black scorpion, but its back is brown. It looks like it is already dead and starting to decay. (It had been a while since I had picked the binder up, don't judge.) So I decide I will get a shoe and give it a good smack, just to make sure. You can never be too cautious about these things. Well apparently I was not cautious enough. I brought the shoe down hard, but not hard enough to kill the still very alive scorpion. But what I learned as soon as I lifted the sneaker up was unsettling to say the least. I was momentarily frozen and horrified as I watched baby scorpions flee off the back of the larger mama scorpion and into every crevice and corner of my house. As thin as a needle and as long as my pinky finger nail, I realized that they would be quite hard to find.

I tried to shake off my goosebumps as I figured I needed to at least finish off the mama scorpion. So I killed her and swept her outside. (Which is what I should have done in the first place, lesson learned.) I was able to kill about six or seven of the babies. But when researched later, I found out that scorpions can have up to 50 babies. Lets just think about that. Or not, it makes my skin crawl. I have moved on, but am wearing shoes in the house at all times.

Also in the past few days I have found two tarantulas at my house. The first Bella was playing with on the front porch. It was mostly dead, but I gave it a good stomp just to make sure. The second was a little more disconcerting, I found it in my shower. Now my shower is outside, but still, that is not what I want to find as I am going in to bathe. This one was very much alive, and I made my host sister Iviana kill it for me. It was hanging out in a corner and I knew that if I tried to kill it, more than likely it would involve screaming and the giant spider escaping. So I brought in an expert. Thank goodness for Iviana.

I cannot tell you why these creatures are choosing now, the end of my service, to flock to my house. I can just hope that some sort of creepy crawler bulletin has been sent out and I will not need to deal with more of these little guys. As for the baby scorpions, I have not seen any more in the past few days. Melida says that they will probably just die on their own because they were so small, and no longer have their mother for protection. I am putting Bella on task, get 'em girl! 

Two Things

1. So remember that post where I told you all about how I got Bella fixed? And remember how I said I did it so that I did not have to deal with having a dog in heat? If not you can read about that here. Well a crazy, bizarre event happened where she got her first heat anyways. Woah now you're saying, when you get a dog fixed doesn't the vet remove the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes? How is it possible that with out all of that equipment, she could be going through heat. The answer is simple. I have no idea. It should not be possible. But it happened, she had all of the symptoms. Including a myriad of male dogs waiting for her night and day outside of my house. Supposedly she cannot get pregnant, but this does not mean I wanted her to be accosted by male dogs at every moment of every day. So she stayed inside until her symptoms subsided. The only explanation I can think of is that she must have been weeks away from her first heat when I got her fixed, and the surgery confused her body so it just decided to go ahead as planned. I just hope that this is a one time event. Fingers crossed. 

2. My host mom, Melida, sent my host dad, Orlando, to town the other day with a grocery list. Melida needed Orlando to buy the ingredients to make pizza, as she had agreed to show another family near by how to make it. There are two hilarious parts to this story. The first being that on the list Melida put down that she wanted 'salsa', which is a word that is used for everything and anything that is sauce related. She expected him to come back with a pasta sauce, so imagine her surprise when he came home with a two pound bag of ketchup. *palm to forehead* This is not the first time Melida has made pizza, so Orlando should have known that ketchup was not the correct kind of 'salsa'. The situation was eventually remedied, thank goodness.

The other great part of that story is that on the piece of paper Melida gave Orlando she wrote two lists. The first list was the things she needed for pizza. The second list was titled 'Other things I need'. Under that heading it listed: 5 big kisses, two secrete glances and 10 cuddles. Adorable right? Orlando was Melida's only serious boyfriend and they wrote to each other when Orlando was living in the States. He left the US to come back and marry her. They have been married about 14 years and have 4 daughters. So where is the hilarious part? He asked one of their daughters, in all seriousness, where he could buy the items listed on the second list. I can just imagine him trying to go to the market and asking all of the stands where he could buy 5 big kisses. Thankfully he read the list before he left for town.

Happy Veteran's Day everyone!

Si Dios Le Permite

Death in El Salvador is, unfortunately common place. The Civil War that started it all started in 1979 and lasted until 1992. Upwards of 80,000 people died. Remember that El Salvador is roughly the size of Massachusetts. So consider if Massachusetts went to war within its self. Here is a brief history of the civil war that took place here:

 In 1980, El Salvador's civil war officially began.  The US government-supported Salvadoran military targeted anyone they suspected of supporting social and economic reform. Over the ensuing twelve years, thousands of victims died.  Some of the most notable were Archbishop Oscar Romero (shot to death 1980), four US church workers (raped and murdered 1980) and six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter (shot to death at home 1989).  The military death squads wiped-out entire villages believed to be assisting the guerrilla efforts.  In 1981, the military killed over 1,000 people in the village of El Mozote. (As a reference my community has about 850 people in it.)  The first reports of the attacks were denied by both El Salvador, but after the mass graves were uncovered, it was hard to deny what had taken place.

 The opposing side was lead by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of five left-wing guerrilla groups. As the military defended their stand of killing any alleged rebels, the FMLN also worked to blow-up bridges, cut power lines, destroy coffee plantations and anything else to damage the economy that supported the government.  The FMLN murdered and kidnapped government officials.  The war eventually came to an end in 1990 with the establishment of a new civilian police force, some constitutional amendments and FMLN's was to be allowed to function as a political party in the nation's democratic process. The Peace Accords were not actually signed though until 1992.

During the Civil War here, many Salvadorians sought refuge in the United States. In order to protect themselves from violent gangs in the US, these guerrilla trained Salvadorans created a little gang called MS-13, you may have heard of them. They are quite violent and deal in all of the shady things you would expect them to deal in. As you would expect these violent gang members eventually started to get deported back to El Salvador where they pick thing right back up. There are now several gangs down here, M-13 being one of them. Since the war and then later the development of these gangs, El Salvador has known a lot of death. A few months ago El Salvador was ecstatic to announce its first murder free day in years. This was epic. However although the murder rate here seems to be going down, most people just assume that the murders are still happening, they are just going unreported. 

Ok, so that was a lot of history (most of which was gotten from Wikipedia), but I wanted to make sure you all understood a bit of the background of El Salvador's violent history. I also want to say that El Salvador is full of lovely people. Please do not get the wrong idea about this country, they have just been given the crap end of the stick too many times. Many Salvadorans are so used to this culture of people they love dying that they have developed sayings that are hard to ignore. The most prevalent saying being 'si Dios le permite', meaning 'if God allows it'. If you invite someone to a meeting or to dinner etc, many will respond with 'si Dios le permite'. Basically it is like saying if I don't die before then, I will go. That is some heavy stuff. I will also say that it can also be used as an excuse to get out of doing something or going somewhere, and that is just annoying.

Last Friday was the Day of the Dead in Central America. I went with my host family to a cemetery in the community above mine. We cleaned off and decorated the graves of my host mom, Melida's, father and grandmother. Her father asked to have pine needles sprinkled on his grave every year, so we did that on both of the graves and then decorated the tombstones with multicolored plastic flowers. The graveyard was full of people when we got there, all doing the same thing. There is no groundskeeper for the cemetery's down here, so it can get a bit sloppy looking if the families do not come and keep the area in order. Another interesting fact I learned while there was that you must pay the mayor's office every 5 years to keep your family interred. If you do not pay, they apparently have the right to come in and dig up the body of the family that did not pay so the spot can be used by someone else... Rough stuff right there. There was also a short mass in the cemetery. I was surprised to see that everyone I came across was generally in a happy, social mood. This was not a time for grieving over lost loved ones, it was a time to celebrate their lives and re-connect with friends. 

It amazes me how resilient this culture is. These people have been knocked down again and again, yet they keep moving forward the best they can.  I do not have any photos because I was unsure if it would be appropriate. Looking back I am sure it would have been fine, but I was not trying to be the crazy gringa in the cemetery taking pictures of everything.

Madness... In A Good Way

Rawr.

What do you get when you mix 30 kids, 3 chaperones, a broken down car, a zoo and and one of the most dangerous cities on earth? Madness, that's what. I woke up yesterday, after sleeping 12 hours straight, feeling like I got hit by a train. It is stressful being in charge of other people's children.

A lot of cotton candy was involved in this day.

This was the second excursion that my youth group went on. I met my kids at 6am and we walked up to the entrance of the community to meet the Alex with his kids and bus we hired to take us to San Salvador to go to the Zoo. After we picked up lunch for 35 people we hit the road. It is about a two hour drive to San Salvador. As we were arriving into the city, Natalie (the third volunteer involved in this project) called and told us that she and her kids were 30 minutes outside the city but were stuck in terrible traffic AND their transport had broken down. Poor girl, she has had such terrible luck with transport during this project. On our first excursion to the beach, the transport she had arranged canceled the night before the trip. She ended up finding new transport, but now on this second trip her transport broke down. So I took 22 kids to the Zoo and Alex went with our bus driver to go find Natalie and her kids.

Tired kids after the scavenger hunt.

I set down some guidelines for the kids. Pretty straight forward stuff, do not talk to strangers, do not leave the Zoo, do not touch or feed any of the animals etc. We had created an informational scavenger hunt for the kids to complete, but I did not want to start it without Natalie's kids, so I gave the kids that were with me an hour of free time to explore the Zoo. Luckily Alex was able to find Natalie and her kids pretty quickly. When they got to the Zoo, we broke the kids up into groups of three (one from each community) sent them off to complete the scavenger hunt. We gave them two hours to find the answers to 40 questions. A lot of the answers could be found by simply reading the plaques in front of each animal. But some of the more complicated or strange questions you had to examine the animals or ask Zoo staff for the answer. Example: How many toes does an ostrich have? What kind of food does a hippo eat? When looking at birds, which gender tends to be more colorful? We also told the kids that they needed to put the scientific name of each animal with each answer, that way we could ensure that they had actually visited the animals. I think the kids really enjoyed this part of the trip.

This was also there...

Castle and slide

After the Zoo, we gathered around and ate our lunch. We then headed to a small natural history museum, where we learned all about the topographical, animal and sedimentary history of El Salvador. There were lots of stuffed animals, fossils and maps for everyone to get a good sense of what our guide was talking about. Our guide was very well informed and kept the kids engaged, which might be a miracle since it was around 2:30 at this point and everyone was starting to fade. After our museum tour we headed over to this really cool park that was on the same property. We gave the kids an hour or so to blow off any extra steam they might have had. There as a really awesome slide that was connected to a castle type house. All of the kids loved it. And of course I had to take my own turn on the slide just to see what it was all about. Pretty awesome.

Oh yeah we did matching shirts!

We headed home around 4, which was a little later than we had wanted to get on the road, but the kids were having such a good time that it was hard to pull them away. We ended up hitting some traffic and did not actually make it home until 6:30. Parents were starting to get worried at that point, but we all made it back in one piece. Oh and Natalie's transport driver was able to get the car fixed while we were at the Zoo, so she was able to make it home safely as well. When we got to our community I asked my kids if they were exhausted and they replied that they were not tired, but were still having fun from the trip. I am going to count this as a success, even with the AM craziness. Two trips down, one to go!

One last thing: RAINY SEASON HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN DECLARED OVER. Halleluiah people, halleluiah. 

Facts Of My Current Life

1. I just used Fabreeze as perfume. Rainy season is upon us and it is not doing any favors for my clothes. Mildew is not a smell that suits me.

2. This is the current state of my shoes...

3. I was discussing dating prospects with another volunteer the other day. We both agreed that proximity to us is our current most attractive aspect in a guy. I realize how ridiculous this is, but it is where we are at right now.

4. I have 100 bottles of home made shampoo sitting on the floor of my house waiting to be labeled and sold. That is a lot of shampoo. The honey flavor makes my hair look fantastic.

5. Lest you think I am complaining about my life, my bangs have grown out! I no longer have to deal with them! Yay! And it only took nine months.

6. I went flower shopping a couple of weeks ago and bought some really beautiful flowers that are now hanging on my porch. Heaven forbid I could plant something in the ground that is not protected by a yard of chicken wire. Chickens eating everything in site is a definite downside of chick rearing.





7. I just had this super awesome dress made. 

Pay no mind to my hair please.

8. I found okra in the market yesterday! I repeat OKRA! Nom.

9. I am getting ready for my next excursion with my youth group. We are going to the Zoo and an environmental museum in San Salvador next Saturday. The kids seem pretty excited about going to the zoo, this will be all of their first trips to the zoo and to the capital.

10. I officially have less than five months left of my Peace Corps service... Where did the time go? I feel like yesterday I was leaving my Mom in the Panama City Beach airport to head off to staging and now I am thinking about what is next. Crazy

Giant Chihuahua or Miniature Doberman?

It has been four months since Bella came into my life. We are still getting along swimmingly. She has gotten so adorable! She is now all vaccinated up and loving life.

This was right after she came to live with me.

This was a couple of weeks ago, she has grown so much!

In my biggest Bella news, I just got  her fixed. She she has been such a trooper. There is a vet in my pueblo, so the plan was to get her fixed there. I made the appointment a couple of weeks before hand, but the day before her surgery I stopped by just to make sure everything was kosher for the next day. As it turns out they had run out of anesthesia... What kind of vet's office runs out of anesthesia you ask? The kind you do not want to be taking your dog to, that's what kind. Unfortunately I was having a freak out at this time about Bella getting pregnant because I think she is around the right age to get her first heat. I do not really wish to deal with puppies or with dogs in heat. So I called my good friend Neri and he found a recommendation for a good vet in the city of Santa Ana. 

Everything worked out great until I got her home from the surgery. The vet's office had not given me a cone to put around Bella's neck. So the morning after I brought her home, I noticed that one of her stitches had been pulled out. By that afternoon another one was missing. That is when my freak out started. I called my Dad who was super great and tried to coach me through some 9th grade geometry on how to make my own cone from an old cardboard box I had in the house. I failed. Totally my fault, geometry never was my thing. I should also mention that it was especially hot and humid that day and we had not had water running in about a week. I could not go into town to see if the vet there had a cone because I could not leave Bella alone for fear she would pull more stitches out. I could not bathe and cool off because there was no water. I could not control anything. It was after the failed cone attempt that the crying started. 

Poor Bella with a cone.

Not knowing what else to do, I called Neri and immediately broke down into tears again. I think that freaked him out as I am pretty sure crying girls do not call him very often. Also even if they do, I would bet that it is almost never about their dog. Any who, Neri saved the day again and brought me a cone from the vet's office. Bella was hesitant about the cone at first, but after a couple of days she became quite attached. She even growled at me when I tried to clean it. 

She looks like a vacuum when she eats with her cone on

All of her stitches are now out and she is healing quite nicely. I do not know how she is going to adapt to living outside again though. She has been quite spoiled with sleeping on the bed since her surgery. And yes I did wrap her in an ace bandage held together with barrettes, thank you for asking!

Spoiled pup!

Typical Day At The Office

Learning the dos and don'ts of turtle releasing

 The fog was thick and the full moon hung low in the sky as the 25 of us pulled away from the entrance of my community. Alex Boy brought his 13 kids, I had my nine, plus the driver on loan from the mayor's office. We were on our way to starting an adventure these kids would probably remember for the rest of their lives.

About two months ago I got together with two other volunteers, Alex Boy and Natalie, and we decided we wanted to do a joint project that included youth in our respective communities and was based on the environment. What we came up with was an environment based youth group. In each of our communities we have started youth groups that meet once a week, but there is a slight twist. We have planned three trips where all three of the communities will unite and participate in activities together. We applied for a grant to help fund everything, and just recently received the money to get the ball rolling.

 Bucket of baby sea turtles!

After several weeks of youth group meetings we had the first trip this past Saturday. Us three volunteers took 35 kids to the beach to release baby sea turtles. None of the kids in my youth group had ever been to the beach before. Since the beach is such a big part of American culture, it is hard to imagine a childhood without sand and waves. Needless to say my kids were blown away by every aspect of the beach, from the hotness of the sand to the immensity of the water.   

Getting ready to hand out the sea turtles!

We were collaborating on this project with an NGO called FUNZEL. This organization has seven beaches in El Salvador where they work to protect baby sea turtles. They were so helpful with our project. We did apply and receive grant money to help with the costs of this project, but it would have been almost impossible for this part of the project to have been as successful as it was without this NGO. They set us up with a member of the beach community where we were who collaborates with FUNZEL. This guy was awesome, he let us completely take over his beach front house, bathrooms, kitchen and pool.  Also the NGO did not charge us to participate. Usually they charge something like $5 a person for the experience (which if I were doing this on my own would be totally worth it), but since they know about the work Peace Corps does and since we agreed to have the kids do a trash clean up, we were not charged.  

Juan with a baby turtle

The NGO brought about 100 one day old sea turtles for us to release. We stood behind a rope in the sand and freed our little turtles to take their chances in the wild. As they clambered off towards their future I could not help but think what a tough life it will be for the little nuggets. Most of them will not make it. Many will be eaten by another animal, while some will be killed through more human methods such as pollution.

After we released the sea turtles, the kids broke into teams and we held a little competition to see who could collect the most trash on the beach. It was very impressive how motivated the kids got with the promise of a prize for the winner. We were able to collect a ton of trash, maybe the equivalent of ten of the big black trash bags.
 
After the trash pick up we headed down the beach a bit to visit a protected turtle nest. These eggs are guarded 24 hours a day by a guard hired by the NGO. Turtle egg theft is huge in El Salvador because there is a huge market of people who sell them for consumption. NGOs like FUNZEL are staging massive campaigns all over the country to promote the protection of these eggs. But unfortunately it is still common, a quick tour into just about any street market in El Salvador and you will surly find turtle eggs for sale.
  

The line we stood behind to release the turtles

 For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon the kids had free time to explore the beach and take advantage of the house/ pool that was generously being lent to us.

All alone in the great wide ocean

It was great to see the kids getting to know and working with people from other communities. It is our, the volunteers', hope that these kids will come away from this experience not only with more knowledge of their environment, but with some new experiences and lasting friendships. Our groups will continue to meet every week in our own communities, until our next excursion in late October. We will be headed to the Zoo in San Salvador next. Can't wait!   

Francisco and Ivania (my host sister) experiencing the beach for the first time

Trash clean up!

German (pronounced Herman) and Juan with their collected trash

It was a great day for the kids, but kind of stressful for the volunteers

My awesome youth group!

Pig.

Don't look at me like that

As the pig slowly bled out, Alex Girl and I sipped our coffee and contemplated our mortality. We woke up just before four am to the screaming of my alarm and what turned out to be the screaming of my host family’s pig. The sounds erupting from next door were enough to convince anyone that the pig must have known it’s end was eminent. If you are lucky enough to have never been anywhere near a pig, let me explain something. Pigs are very skittish creatures, always in fear. Perhaps this has been genetically ingrained into their DNA, because they inherently know that they are delicious.  If you approach a pig it may just snort and turn away, but try to touch it and things quickly get out of hand. Even if you are just moving the creature from one place to another, it will make such screaming noises as you have never heard. I could be wrong, but that is not what I remember Wilber sounding like in Charlotte’s Web.

The other white meat

I have watched grown men spend the greater part of an afternoon unsuccessfully trying to capture a pig gone rogue. Pigs are crafty and surprisingly mobile. Movies make pigs out to seem as though they are innocent bystanders in the farm life ecosystem. I do not believe this for a second. You can tell just by looking into their eyes that they are trying to (usually unsuccessfully) hatch some kind of plot. Speaking of their eyes, pig eyes give me the heebie-jeebies. They look a little too much like human eyes. It is unnerving.

So far it may sound as though I have something against these animals, but that is far from the truth, really I just don’t want to ever have to look them in the eye. Perhaps it is my own guilt, my own knowing of what is to become of these animals that makes it so difficult for me to look them in the eye. But seeing as I do not have the same troubles with cows or chickens, I find it hard to believe that that is the reason. I will have to contemplate this more.

Meow-Meow wants some pork

By the time Alex and I had risen from bed, made some coffee and tossed on some clothes, my host dad (Orlando) and his cousin (Ariel) had the pig in a makeshift rope harness in the front yard. Ariel tested the sharpness of the recently honed kitchen knife on his thumb as Orlando pulled over an old semi truck tire that would be used as a makeshift butcher’s block. Alex and I stood in the peanut gallery, close enough to see what was going on but far enough away to not be in anyone’s way. As we were watching the two men position the pig so Orlando was sitting on top of it, I told Alex about the revealing new information I had recently learned about Ariel. According to my host mom, Ariel loves to kill. He is blood thirsty, so whenever someone needs something killed, Ariel is the one they call. Unwanted puppies? Check. Cute fluffy rabbits? Check. Pig ready for dinner? Super check. I felt as though I had gained an entirely new view of Ariel, who comes across as a friendly, though introverted kind of guy.

The knife was ready, and so were the men. So the carotid artery was found and the pig was killed. It took about twenty minuets for the pig to completely bleed out, and it put up a hell of a struggle trying to save it’s own life. But in the end, as it seized one last time, Orlando confirmed the pig’s inevitable death.

Pork- It's what's for dinner

My host family purchased the pig from someone who told them that it was pregnant. They do not have a lot, so it was a good investment. Unfortunately after waiting almost nine months, and no adorable litter of piglets popped out they decided it was time to eat her. Orlando took this opportunity to invite anyone who had ever paid him a favor for dinner. Many people came and went though out the afternoon, eating and drinking, joking around and discussing this year’s corn crop.  This is where Orlando is in his element. He loves being the one that is providing the good time and good food.

The day wound down as the afternoon rains arrived. I am not sure I have ever seen my Salvadoran family as content as they were that afternoon. It always amazes me when something as simple as a pig can boost the self worth of a family and bring together a community.

Combatting Litter, One Chip Bag at a Time

Alex Boy teaching us the ways of chip bag wallets

Salvadorans have a junk food addiction. Much like in the States, chips and soda are not only common here, they are a huge problem that lead to diabetes, gastritis and obesity. The chips down here are almost exclusively made by a company called Diana. So if you want chips, people here will ask if they can have some Diana's. Alternatively they are called churros. You can buy a bag of Diana's for as little as 10 cents at any tienda in the country. There are probably about 50 flavors, and that is not an exaggeration. The other thing about Diana's is that each bag comes with about 5 chips in it. I mean, for 10 cents what do you really expect? So people will eat 5, 6, 7 or more bags in a sitting because it does not seem like they are eating very much. But of course, it adds up.

A small sampling of the variety of chips we have down here

Another issue with Diana's is that because they are so cheap, people with very little money will buy Diana's and try to fill up on them. This is a dangerous road to go down. We all know the empty fullness that chips can leave us with. And lets not even get started on the severe lack of nutritional value they have. I mean imagine letting your child eat chips for dinner every night. Often people down here do not consider what kind of health problems this could lead to down the road. Or maybe they do know, but they just do not care.

Ivania being a hand model for me

Enough though about the downside of chip eating. When Alex Boy, a volunteer who lives up the road from me (and should not be confused with Alex Girl), came for my Fiestas Patronales my host mom saw his chip bag wallet and was obsessed. Melida was even more obsessed when she learned that Alex had made the bag himself. He promised to teach us both to make them. So fast forward a couple of months and Melida, her daughters and myself are obsessed with making these wallets and bags and coin purses. Whenever we are out walking somewhere we always are scouring the roads for discarded chip bags. They are everywhere because Salvadorians, for the most part, love to litter. So we take advantage of the terrible ways of the country (excessive chip eating, littering) and collect the bags. Sometimes we only find one or two, but other times we come home with 50.

Once the bags are collected, we clean them and cut them into strips. They are then folded with a same sized strip of paper inside and connected to a chain of similarly folded strips. Once the chain is the length you want the bag to be, you connect the two ends to make a ring. Then you start again. When the bag reaches the desired height you stop and sew the rings together, close it at the bottom and attach a zipper. 

These bags are very inexpensive to make, but other volunteers that have community members make and sell them for a pretty nice profit. The bags go for anywhere between $5 and $10, depending on size. They can be custom ordered by size and color preference (mulit-colored, only one type of chip bag, silver). We are now taking orders!

Please note the left hand only nail polish. This is so her teachers won't see that she has her nails are illegally painted when they are saying their version of the pledge of allegiance

The beginnings of a line

A few completed rings

What it will look like once it is sewn together :)