Proyectos!

I think it is past time I gave you all an update on all projects I am working on right now. It is funny how, during training, all of the volunteers we spoke to said that the first year of your service is a lot of down time. You don't have a lot of projects going on, and it is hard to see how you will ever accomplish anything. But during your second year, things pick up...very quickly. I did not really believe them. I got to site thinking I would immediately start projects and that they would all be a success right away. Well needless to say I was no exception to the warnings of previous volunteers. The first year had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at projects and a lot of hammock time.  Here we are, right now, at the front end of my second year and I feel swamped with projects. All of a sudden I am busy and it is actually a nice change of pace. So here we go, this is what I have going now and what I wish to accomplish before I close my service next March.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my community has terrible water conditions. The town council in the community is working on finding funding for a permanent, clean water solution. Because I will probably not be getting a replacement, I have ruled out applying to Engineers Without Boarders. My community has decided to fundraise independently to fund the project. A water project is a big endeavor and usually takes several years to complete. From buying a plot of land with a water source, to piping it down to the community and then getting it to everyone's houses a water project is tough. I am taking on a smaller project to help people out while the larger project gets underway, water filters. I have a filter and have not gotten sick because of the water. So I will be applying for a grant to help subsidize buying filters for those who need them the most.

A slightly larger project that I am excited about is going to be a nutrition based chicken project. I am going to set up a series of classes that people will have to attend in order to learn about egg laying chickens. Many families in my community are very poor. The most they can afford to eat is beans and tortillas. I am hopeful that this project will allow some families to supplement their diet with some protein. Now most of the people in my community have chickens, so at a minimum they already know the basics about chicken raising. But I am hoping these chickens will be treated better than the campo chickens that are running around the streets, eating whatever they please. These chickens will be required to live in a chicken coop, be vaccinated and will hopefully have a better chance of surviving than some random chicken in the street. I am also applying for a grant to help fund this project.

This is my host families kitchen.
They have two of the smaller fuel efficient stoves,
and yet you can see how black their walls are from smoke.
Just think of how much of that they breathed in...

Another project I am very excited about is a fuel efficient stove project. The volunteer I replaced did a stove project, but the stoves are small and you can only cook one food at a time. The stoves I am looking into are larger and have several places to cook. So you could be making tortillas, cooking beans  and making rice all at the same time. These stoves also have a chimney to pipe out the smoke. They do produce less smoke than a normal, wood burning, stove, but no smoke is better than a little. Also I really like these stoves as they are very sustainable. In order to have this kind of project I will need to find a couple of guys in the community that are willing to get trained in how to make them. They will then go house to house to construct each stove, will be paid for each stove they make.

I have also mentioned that I am a part of a Peace Corps committee called Gender and Development, or GAD. We have decided to hold a kids camp in September. The camp will be designed to educate kids on all of the possibilities they have. We will try to get rid of some strong gender stereotypes, like men have to work in the fields and women must stay home to take care of the kids and house. For example we want to have a panel of professional Salvadorians come and speak. Women who have college degrees, people who own businesses and policemen are some examples or people we might have sit on the panel. We will be adding in some HIV/AIDS education as well. The camp will be geared towards kids in high school, ones who are starting to make their life decisions and figure out what they want and what they can get out of life down here.

I have nine and a half months left, lets see what I can do with it!

Laying It On The Line

I pooped my pants. 

There you have it. I said it out loud. There may come a time in my life when I will regret this post, but for now, I think it serves as a good descriptor of my life down here. I do not mean to imply that I poop my pants all the time or anything. In fact this is a very rare occurrence. But it is a fact. Volunteers in El Salvador are very open with taking about our bowel movements, embarrassing or otherwise. I have also heard that almost every volunteer that serves here will, at some point in their service, poop their pants. That is not something they put in the job description, let me tell you.  

The morning Paige and I arrived at the the beach, Playa El Tunco, I started to have a small diarrhea  problem. I did not feel sick or anything, I just would get this overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom immediately. You all know the feeling, we have all been there. I do not know what brought this on, I cannot think of what I ate that would have me running for the john like a woman runs to a shoe sale. (I mean it is mango season, so it is possible that this was brought on by the extreme excess of mangos I have been eating. But that just sounds a little too plausible, if you know what I mean.)

Never the less, I did not think much about this. I have been extraordinarily health during my time down here. (With the exception of my food poisoning induced hospital stay.) (Knock on wood.) Sometimes diarrhea happens, but as I was still feeling fine, I just changed my bathroom habits slightly and carried on with my day.

*At this point I should clarify something that will become important shortly. The hostel we stayed at, was pretty nice for the 10 bucks a night we were paying. The only major down side is that the rooms do not have private bathrooms. There are several communal bathrooms located outside, but close to the rooms.*

Paige and I had a lovely, relaxed morning getting breakfast and laying out at the beach. When we got back  to the room, we decided to take a nap. Paige left the room for a moment and I had just stepped out of my swim suit. As I am trying to find something to put on for my nap, I get the urge. So there I am standing naked in my room trying to find something, anything to put on so I can make it to the bathroom. Underwear on, shorts on, bra on. I leave the room, only to realize I am not wearing a shirt. I run back into the room grab a shirt. It is half way on as I am standing in the doorway on my way out when it happens.

I, all of a sudden, have no control. I now have to waddle in my soiled shorts to the bathroom. On my way there I pass Paige on her way back to the room. She gives me a quizzical look as clearly something is wrong with me, but she does not say anything. I clean my self up in the communal bathroom and head back to the room. I am pretty sure Paige will never let me forget that this happened.

A few days later when Paige and I are visiting her family friends in the capital, I did a couple loads of laundry. I will argue that there is nothing better feeling than a towel just out of the dryer. This is even more true when you do not have ready access to a washer and dryer. I may have gotten a little carried away in my snuggling and fawning over a soft, warm towel. The family could not get over how happy I was. I cannot explain it, but I was more embarrassed over the attention I got over the clean towel than I was when I pooped my pants. Thanks a lot Peace Corps. I doubt I will ever fully integrate back into American society.

Ed Note: Paige, Sarah and Alex Girl all ended up getting diarrhea too. None of them admitted to pooping their pants.

Paige In The Savior

Paige came! I am going to use this as an excuse for not writing for so long. (Even though she was here for less than two weeks.) I will new give you a brief re-cap of her trip. Paige got in on the Thursday before Easter. We hung out in my site for 5 days. A very brave feat for most, but Paige is a champ and has spent some time working at a clinic in Honduras, so she knows what it's all about. I showed Paige all around my community. 

One of our most important stops was to visit the Mango Man. He and his wife are some of the kindest people in my community. They always seem so excited when I stop by. The Mango Man and his wife are about 75 years old. They have been together since they were 13 and married for over 50 years! The reason I call him the Mango Man is that he has over 13 species of mango trees on his property, and over 20 mango trees. Whenever I visit him during mango season, he always sends me home with a bag brimming with mangos. More mangos than I could ever eat. Mango season is great. (Side note- my host dad, Orlando, cut down a mango the other day that weighed 2.5 pounds!) So, we visited the Mango Man. While we were there, we came upon these strange plants in his yard. We asked him what they were called and he pulled one down, peeled off the skin and told us that it is used to exfoliate. He grows loofas in his yard! 

Another fun thing about the Mango Man is that he is totally ripped. I do not think I have ever seen anyone who's muscles are that visible. I mean, look at this guy ------------->








Another highlight of the trip was Easter Sunday. My host family invited us to attend a 4 am procession, followed by mass. Now, since I have lived here for over a year, I kind of assumed that we would be a part of the procession. Parades where people watch are not very common, usually everyone participates. So we get up at 3:30 am and head into the pueblo. By 4:30 everyone is ready to go. A set of people are carrying a statue of Jesus. We start walking the streets of Metapan, all the while a woman speaking into a microphone is instructing the procession when to sing and chant.

At some point the woman tells the crowd to watch out for the angel. All of a sudden a swarm of children come running up to the Jesus statue with a statue of an angel. They press them together as though they are hugging or blessing each other. Honestly we could not figure out what was going on. My host mom did not know and neither did anyone else we asked. By the end of the route, the angel had done this approach and hug routine about 7 times. Clearly it has importance, too bad everyone that got up at 4am to see it has no idea why.

For lunch we went over to my counterpart/ community health promotor/ friend's house. Orlando, Melida, their four girls, Paige and I woke our selves up from a lovely (and necessary) mid-morning nap and headed over. Salvador is recently married, but we never see his wife, so Melida and I always give him hell about it. I am pretty sure this is what prompted the Easter lunch invitation.

Paige learned how to make pupusas. She was slightly self conscious about her pupusas not being up to par. Everyone tried to convince her that her pupusas were fantastic, but I could tell she was not buying it. The great thing about pupusas is that it is very imperfect, there is really no wrong way to form a pupusa. (The same cannot be said for tortillas. Those are a science and if they are not the perfect thickness and round shape they will be fed to the dogs. Not that I know that from experience or anything...) Paige's pupusas were great and we had fun at lunch.

One of my host sisters, Katherine, taught Paige a hand game. It goes 'En la calle ocho esta un chucho muerto. El que diga ocho el se lo comio'. So it means 'On 8th street, there is a dead dog. Who ever says 8, has to eat it'. haha Then you each take turns alternating number. I say one, you say two, I say three, you say four. The object of the game is to not say the number 8, or whatever number you you choose between 1 and 9. So you count up skipping all numbers with 8 in them, like 18, 28, 38, all of the 80's, etc. If you forget and say a number with 8 in it, you have to eat the dead dog. It is kind of morbid, but I have heard some worse ones. haha

After several days in the campo, Paige broke down and did some laundry. (PS Girls hair is crazy long right now!) Not super exciting, but I thought it would be good to document her doing her laundry by hand.

Paige and I sitting on my front steps before our trip to the beach.

Ok so due to a miscommunication, my host family got the date of my birthday and the date of our beach departure mixed up. When I told my host mom we were leaving for the beach she had a minor freak. Apparently Joelle's old community decided they wanted to come down to my community on my birthday and sing to me. (Do you all remember when Carolyn and I did that for Joelle's birthday?) Well since I was going to be at the beach on the day they had planned to come down and sing, I had to figure out who was planning in and call it off. Luckily that was not too hard. I feel so lucky that people down here care about me so much.

Any who, we got up on my birthday and had a fantastic breakfast of french press coffee and freshly picked peached with a friend. After that we headed to the beach. Oh the beach, how I love it. Paige indulged in her first post-lent potato chips.







After we arrived at the beach, Paige insisted she have a picture taken sitting on these rocks. Oh man. It was struggle city for her to get out there. Fully clothed. Also about half way out she remembered that she had a money belt on with her passport in it. I did not know this and just sat there watching her struggle and fall and eventually make it out to the rock. She did finally make it, but while she was attempting to make it out there, among the rocks and waves, this kid just strides on out, plays for a while and then as Paige is making her way back, offers to help her. She made it back, soaked, but she got the picture, and that is all that matters right?

 

Our last days together we spent visiting some family friends of hers in the capital. We showed Paige around the fancy parts of the capital and later we all attended mass. I had accumulated a lot of clothes that needed to be washed at the beach and I asked if I could wash my clothes in their pila The family has a washer and dryer, I cannot tell you how elated I was when they offered to let me use them instead of the pila. There is just not much better than a towel straight from the dryer. 

Paige bought her ticket to come down here months ago and it seemed like it would never be time for her to come down. But here we are, in May and she has come and gone. I think the trip did both of us good.

Mango flower!!!

(As an aside, my bangs are out of control. I am rocking the combover look these days. It is not pretty, not pretty at all.)

Paige!

Paige is going to be in my community in less than four days. WHAT? I guess that means I need to do some laundry. And dishes. And clean. And grocery shop. And figure out how to get her from the airport in the one city in the country that I am not allowed visit. Actually the last one is the only one I have figured out. I did get permission to hire a driver to go to pick me up in Metapan and drive to the airport to pick Paige up and then drive us back to Metapan. Oh goody, right? Since the new PC rules, I am not allowed to take public transportation to the capital, San Salvador. Actually I am not even allowed to go to San Salvador unless it is for a medical reason or I get special permission. I did get special permission. Don't worry PC droids that read my blog, I have been permitted to fetch my friend from the airport. I just have to pay 10 times what public transportation would cost. I suppose that is what you pay for safety, right? I will go ahead and agree with that statement as I have no other choice in the matter.

Even though traveling will be a bit of a hassle, I am excited for her visit. Melida came over yesterday and was asking me about our plans. I told her Paige would be arriving on Thursday. I have a feeling Melida is planning something mischievous, but I cannot even begin to imagine what that would be. She did tell me that mass would be starting at 4AM on Easter with a parade through Metapan. So Paige if you read this get ready!

I am also excited for Paige to see my community as I have already promised to marry her to a friend of a guy in my community. What's that you say? You are outraged that I would promise my friend to a complete stranger? What can I say, it was either me or her. He did say he was a *really* hard worker. I want to believe him. He just wants a visa, and he did promise to stay with his new American wife for all of her life. What more could you want?

We will also be going to the beach for a few days. I am taking vacation and could not be more thrilled. I am hoping several of my PC friends that are still here will make it down to the beach with us. We will be headed down on my birthday, (Still time to get my birthday packages out people!), and leaving five days later. I cannot wait! I love the beach.

I have known Paige basically since we were born. Our Dads went to high school together, and as they kept in touch over the years, so did Paige and I. When my family moved to Virginia, we moved in about 5 houses down from Paige. We have had our ups and downs like any true friendship, but we have always prevailed. Paige is a rock in my life, and I cannot wait for her to see and be a part of my life down here in El Salvador!

Cheers to Paige's inevitable Salvadorian marriage and our exciting two weeks together. Pictures and stories to come!

365 Days And Counting

It's official people. I have been living in my little community in El Salvador, The Savior, for one whole year. It is crazy how time slips away. Almost every volunteer I have spoken to says that the second year flies by. And I believe it. I feel like I blinked and the last 14 months passed by. I went through two months of training, my census, more training, I got chickens and a dog, my family visited, I tried out a women's group, I had an embassy Thanksgiving, I went home for the holidays, I basked in the glory of the dry season, I enjoyed the beginning of my second mango season, I watched many of my friends leave the country early, saw Peace Corps totally restructure its program and now I am here. One year in. My bosses are visiting me tomorrow for my 'year in site visit'. It is hard to believe that this time last year I was just arriving to my community, figuring everything out. It is actually a little scary when I think about it. In 11 months and 3 weeks I am going to go back to Florida. Then what? I will be 25 and jobless. It might seem silly, but 25 seems like such a huge milestone. My Dad always says that your 20s are for doing everything you can. Do everything, go everywhere, see it all. Game on.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programing:
Sometimes I am overwhelmed by how nice people in my community are. The other day I returned from a couple days in the capital. While I was away there was a heavy rain storm. (A storm that has left an absurd amount of humidity and don't even get me started on the fact that it is supposed to be the dry season right now.) This rain storm eroded a bunch of dirt from my downward sloped front yard and made a mud block in front of my gate. So when I returned I was unable to enter through my gate. As I approached my gate and came to this realization a neighbor of mine was out. I commented to him on my inability to enter, but decided to just walk around to my host families house. Our yards are connected, so it is not a problem. I got to my house and put my bags down. Then I heard something so I went out on my porch and saw my neighbor, who had seen me unable to enter through my gate, digging out the blocked area. It only took him a few minutes to clear the area, but it meant so much to me. If he had not cleared it I would have probably avoided clearing it for at least a week and just used my host families entrance any time I needed to leave. It's the little things.

Speaking of little things, when I was in San Salvador this week I stopped at the grocery store. The grocery stores are way fancier in the capital and have a larger variety of goods. I had not planned on buying anything specific, but when I came across a bag of brussel sprouts I could not say no. I truly believe my Mom must be the best mom ever because everyone in my family loves brussel sprouts. So I bought them and had them for dinner tonight. It was fantastic. (I also purchased two Dr Peppers. Also fantastic.)

A couple of weeks ago were the elections for mayor here in El Salvador. The elections were all over the country, and due to past unrest during election time, Peace Corps put its volunteers on standfast for a few days while the elections took place. There are five main political parties (ARENA, FMLN, GANA, PDC, and PCN). There were signs for each party littering the streets of every city, pueblo, canton and casarillo. Most signs consisted of a photo of the person running and the name of the party with a huge X through it. For the longest time I thought each of the signs had been vandalized by someone who disliked that party. But I did think it was strange that these ne'er-do-wells took the time to X out every single sign in the county. But what do I know about Salvadorian politics? Maybe this is a problem that comes up every year. I eventually figured out that the X through the party name is how voting is conducted. Voting is still conducted on paper down here. So when you get your ballot you mark your vote with an X through the party you are voting for. Too confusing for me.

Baby pig! We named him Pumpkin. 

Neri, Joelle and I at a new restaurant in Metapan.
(Please ignore my terrible bangs.)