Meeting Families

In training, it seems like you are always living and meeting with new families. I now have much better skills at dealing with integrating into the families here, and well as ways to be polite. For instance, my most recent new family was very religious. After dinner and some conversation time the entire family (myself included) would meet and begin to go through a whole series of prayers. My poor Spanish (especially in this area of vocabulary) was not adequate to really fathom the content and context of the various prayers. Some were fixed and unchanging, while others could be amended. It was about an hour or more long, with roughly two thirds being performed while kneeling on the cement floor.

After that, one of the kids (4 of these, ranging from about 6 to 13, two girls, two boys) would read a passage from the Bible. They were proceeding in order and were still in Genesis (but had obviously read much of the rest many times before). After finishing, they would each have a chance to interpret that section themselves. Everyone participated. The first night I was skipped, but the next two nights I was asked to contribute. This was very difficult because the Bible is not written in the simple tenses and grammar that I understand well. In addition, answering should be using more complicated sentences with lots of “would haves” and “could haves”. They were very forgiving though, and it was “vale la pena”.

It was very interesting to me how I immediately appeared in their prayers, along with my co-workers who all met my family as well. By the second night, due to our conversations they knew all about Katie, and the rest of my family. So, of course that nights prayer included special prayers for Katie to be safe while she was away from me, and for my family to be understanding of my decision to come here and help the people of El Salvador, and that they and their dogs would be happy and healthy. Also that my Dad’s knee would heal quickly. All in all, a very moving experience.

This family was living in a fairly remote section of El Salvador, in a house with no electricity (candlelight for prayers, and meals). Yet they kept up with current world events better than many Americans with cable TV and high speed internet. They used a battery powered radio to get their news, and also to keep up on the soccer league in Spain (they were fans of Barcelona, and therefore didn’t like Madrid). We had very good conversations on the war in Iraq, my vocabulary is better in this area because I have discussed it quite a bit. El Salvador is one of the few countries who still have troops there to support the US.

Field Based Training --Jon

So, I just got back from spending three and a half days over at Aaron’s site (see links at left). I went with 4 other trainees, a Spanish teacher and a staff member. It was basically to get a good idea of how a volunteer functions in a community, and do to some real work and learn some different technical skills.

It was a lot of fun. The first day we just met our new families, and looked around the community. Also we took some time to work on a charla that we would give a few days later. The next day was the hardest, we worked to build several “acequias” which are fairly deep trenches running horizontal to the slope that has a level bottom to increase the infiltration of water into the soil, and also slows and captures the sediment from the sheet flows. This type of work reminded me of fire crew work, which made me approach it that way. I tried to get the trainees to work in a progressive manner as a team… only with moderate success.

The “finca” that we were working on was growing mainly oranges. We also built fruit fly traps to help protect the crop. Here, you harvest the oranges when they are still green (they are a variety that actually seems ripe and tastes good that way), if you wait until they ripen more, the fruit flies will have ruined most of the crop. The fly traps are fairly simple. You make them out of plastic bottles (of which there are all too many here) by cutting openings in the sides and putting orange juice in the bottom of the bottle as an attractant. The flies fly into the opening, hit the other side of the bottle, and fall and drown. The usual method includes adding urine to the juice to kill the flies in case they try to crawl out.

One of the bigger lessons during this exercise was learning about how to find the right kinds of landowners to work with. The farmer who had the oranges was a good example, he was slowly doing a lot of innovative things to the property. One reason was that he actually owned his land, therefore would see the results of labor that takes several years to produce changes. Many of the farmers here have to rent their land, and therefore do not see the value of any invested work beyond this years crop. Also farmers who have barely enough land to feed their family are not willing to take risks, so the more “spare” land a farmer has, the more willing he might be to try something new. A lot of my “work” during the first few months out on site will be to try to identify these types of people to focus my future projects on.

The Charla!

Charlas are the mainstay of the Peace Corps in El Salvador. They (in different guises) are probably the mainstay of the PC everywhere. It is basically a talk. The standards are using multiple learning styles, meaning that you use posters for those visual folks, “dinamicas” for those active learners, and of course actually say something for those that need that. What that means for us, is that we get to spend part of our days…. Coloring! How cool is that! At 44 I have finally found a job where I can spend all day coloring posters to help explain environmental concepts!

I’m explaining all of this because Katie and I just finished our first big test here in El Salvador. This morning we gave our first Charla. Katie had the second grade, and I had the third graders. We both gave talks on basura (trash). It is a huge problem here, with all sorts of infrastructure needed as well as trying to overcome the culture. My talk focused on the nature of organic versus inorganic, what that has to do with decomposition, and how that plays into contamination and accumulation of hazardous materials… sounds heavy written out like that, but it really boiled down to a couple of games with either tape, or popping balloons!

Of course all of this is using our stellar Spanish! The real benefit of surviving this whole event, is realizing that your Spanish, while you may not be too happy with it, is adequate for some exchange of information with 3rd graders! Woo hoo! No, really, it does give you more confidence in your ability to be useful here.

One last thing. We were back home with a couple of the kids that didn’t attend school that day (another story), and I brought out a couple of balloons for the kids to play with. One of the kids, a girl about 10 years old, and I were playing with the balloon, just bouncing it back and forth in various ways… we passed over a half hour that way, and it was a lot of fun! How does that happen? Nowhere in the US would a single balloon provide entertainment to a 10 year old, yet alone a 44 year old. It can down here though, and that is yet another cool thing about this job.

Next up. Katie and I will be heading out to Field Based Training. This event is similar to the immersion days, except that you are in groups of 4, have a staff person, a Spanish instructor…and you actually do work. I guess the sameness is that you get to head out to another volunteers site. I’m heading to Aaron’s site (the same one that Katie went to during immersion). Katie is heading to Kate’s site up near the Honduran border. It means that we will be away from our families and the training center for four days. Should be fun.

Weather!

So, for the many of you who are not paying any attention to the weather here in El Salvador, I thought I’d give you a brief idea of what’s going on. We are currently in invierno, or winter, which means the rainy season. Verano should start soon, by mid November at the latest. The thing that provoked my blog entry on this subject is that we have the most killer lightning pretty much every evening right now! Multiple forks extending all across the sky, frequent enough that trying to catch a picture of them is not impossible (I will try again soon). The thunder that follows is frequently quite impressive as well.

I think that during our entire time down here so far, only one 24 hour period has been lightning free, or rain free. The rain pretty much is limited to the evening or night, with very few rain showers during the day. So far we have only once been briefly caught in the rain. For the most part the showers are violent, but over fairly quickly, so you just have to wait somewhere for a short while at worst.

The only thing you really notice during the rain showers is that conversation is almost impossible due to the sound of the rain hitting the roofs (which in the post 2001 earthquake construction, seems to be mostly made of a thick fiberglass). When you dodge into someplace to escape the rain, it can be fun trying to explain anything, or just having small talk, especially in our poor Spanish!

It will be weird to see how our world will change with the ceasing of the rain… that’s what happens fairly soon, verano is no rain at all until around May. What is fresh and verdant now, will be dusty and dead looking all to soon.

Immersion Days Part 2 (Katie)

I went to Aaron’s site in San Pedro Nonualco (link on the side) so I had an easy 2-hour ride with only one bus change. Aaron met Marcus and I on time to take us to our Immersion houses. The house he had set up for Marcus cancelled due to a family illness, therefore Aaron had to scramble at the last minute to find him a house, which ended up being closer to me than the PC likes but we managed not to see each other during our stay.

The family was beautiful I stayed with an older couple, their youngest daughter and one of their granddaughters. He is very active in the community and was very proud of his certificates, which he showed me first thing upon arriving. The granddaughter was shy so I showed her a kid’s book we have in Spanish and she read the whole thing by the time I left. They took me around the neighborhood and introduced me to three other families where I was questioned and compared to other volunteers. My favorite was Aaron has better Spanish than you……. the other was Aaron eats everything and when I brought this to Aaron’s attention he said I do not think I have eaten at their house? Anyway they were extremely nice and I had my own bedroom, a nice latrine, and a private pila for showering.

How I met my lunch….. 930am I walk out to the Kitchen (separate but very close to the house) and start asking my immersion day mom questions about the trees, weather, what the boiling water for oh Lunch ok… that’s a pretty chicken I like the color, where are you taking her? My mom says something in Spanish (Yo no se) and points to the sky….. I am thinking am I thinking what I think I am thinking….. she walks towards the kitchen with the chicken and starts to do something to the chicken. I politely excused myself, and made haste for my room and did not come out until I was sure she was in the pot. She was a tough bird but she made really good soup. Anyway it happened to me again today…. I really need to stop paying attention to the chickens.

Saturday Aaron spoiled us (Marcus & I) by taking us to the Beach for the day it was a very relaxing day. Then we went to a meeting at 630pm with school directors and our jefe (boss) for Ag4/EE. They were discussing the rules of some scholarship money and how best to interview the students following the guidelines. Their Spanish was very clear which made it easier for me to follow. After we got back to Aarons we watched The Sentinal on Aaron’s computer to finish the day. The trip back was uneventful on Sunday and I was happy to be back in my host community.

Immersion Days -part 1-

So, the concept behind immersion days is to get a feel for what it is like to be a full volunteer… the sense of being out there on your own, no one to speak English too, and having to rely on whatever Spanish you have acquired up to that point. They have a volunteer find a family for you to stay with near that volunteer’s community, and you just stay with them for a few days, after which you meet back up with the volunteer and spend a night hanging with them.

I have to say I got fairly lucky, and though I was pretty immersed, I had it easy in most ways. The volunteer I was assigned to was Laura (blog linked to the left). She lives in Apaneca, which is the first place I got lucky. It is a beautiful area, part of “La ruta de las flores”. It is coffee county, high up for the best coffee, which means it is quite a bit cooler than most of the rest of the country. The family that Laura had set me up with was extremely nice, and quite a bit different than my regular host family. They worked for the “dueño” of the land they lived on, taking very good care of some really nice and well trained horses. Don Jaime was the dueño, and he had big plans for the land around the house. They were busy building a new office near the arena, and had future plans for a hotel and restaurant.

Don Jaime seemed to be very respected, and considered very humble and nice by everyone that I spoke with. I liked him a lot, for one thing his Spanish was much clearer…I could understand almost everything that he said. He felt better if I stayed at his place, so he gave me a key to his office area. It was a very nice set up! I had a nice comfortable bed, and my own bathroom with a flush toilet and hot shower. The set up was that I would eat my meals, and spend time with the one family, and then go across the highway to go to my room to rest or sleep. So far from having a tougher assignment during immersion, it was the best “space” I have had since I have arrived in the country.

It still provided me with a lot of insight into the country. For instance, because the coffee country is so important, and the coffee fincas are owned by richer landowners who have larger plots of land. There are no “milpas” in this area at all. Milpas are the staple of much of the rest of the county. They are small farms that are planted with maize and then beans. They provide both the income, but more importantly the subsistence for a family, or several. In the land of coffee there is no room for these types of farm, all of the land is coffee. This means that though there is good work (and pay) for the 4 months of the year that you can harvest the coffee, you have nothing to live off of the rest of the year, and you have to buy all of your food. This tends to make the poor people of these areas that much poorer.

I will go into a bit more in the next installment. Also, I hope to get Katie to write about her experiences as they were quite a bit different from mine. The good thing is, we both enjoyed ourselves, and feel that much more comfortable about living here for the next two years.

Caballos y Volcans

Saturday we got to witness our first fiesta, or at least a community event. It was a horse race. When it was first described to me I got that horses would race and the riders would try to hit something, and if they did, a niña or mujer would give them a present. That is more or less what actually occurred. There was a rope, strung between two poles across the street. From it hung 14 leather straps each with a metal ring. The rings were less than a inch in diameter, and the straps were designed to release from the rope. The riders would line up about 70 meters back, and then race one at a time towards the rings. As they picked up speed, they would drop one hand from the reigns and draw (usually from their mouth) a short stick about the size and shape of a large pencil. They would aim this at one of the rings and if they hit the target, they would pull free the ring and its strap.

This was not an easy feat, you could tell these were very good riders, with very well disciplined horses, and still they only succeeded about 1 in 10 attempts. A fun aspect was that when a successful rider would return with his ring, he would get a present from usually a young girl, sometimes an older girl, and the grandmas had their fun too. It didn’t happen often, but a rider was allowed to request a kiss. The shouts of “beso” from the crowd if they thought it was a good pairing created some funny moments. Our mom made sure that Katie took a present (some money in a nice pouch), which she ended up giving to Don Tive one of the sons of our mom (he is around 35 and has three kids). He didn’t request a kiss from Katie. It was a nice time to spend with our family, many of our niñas gave presents away to the riders. At the end, the rider who had the most presents won some extra cash as well.

On Sunday, we joined up with our whole Peace Corps trainee group and climbed the big Volcano that dominates our area, Chinchontepec. It was an easy climb in many ways. There is a “road” almost the whole way, but much of the road is very steep, not something you could drive up, and the last bit is a steep slippery trail. The reason it becomes a tough hike is that there is a steep continuous pitch for about 4 to 5 hours of straight hiking, then you turn around and have to worry about slipping more as you descend for 3 hours. It’s a tough day, and it’s not like we have really been doing much physical activity for the last 3 weeks or so.

Still it was worthwhile. The views were nice, though of course clouds dominated the top. It was also good to be physically tired… it has been mostly mentally exhausting the rest of our time here. This week is our “immersion days”, where we each go off to a community and stay with a family by ourselves for two nights, then meet with a nearby PCV and spend the final night with them. We leave on Thursday and return on Sunday. Next update sometime next week, thanks for reading!

Host Family

It’s Thursday night and we head into San Vicente tomorrow, so I’m going to try to write something for my brief internet opportunity. Today we spent here in San Isidro with our family and the Spanish teacher. Class was good, but I’m at a point where my ability to speak has gone backwards. I now have more verbs and grammar, but that means instead of talking, I’m constantly thinking about a better way to say what I mean. I know that we are both improving, but it’ll never feel fast enough.

We did have a very nice conversation with our “madre” today…. Actually she is more of our abuelita. Anyway, we were helping her take the dried maize off the cob to eventually make the masa for the tortillas, it’s a good job to have conversations… it takes time, but not so much concentration. We talked to her about the crops they grow in the area (the standard is a field of maize and beans, with maybe some tomatoes), the prices of food they need to buy (like onions, potatoes, ect…), as well as water supply. It was good, we understood most of her answers, and our questions made sense to her. Progress will be counted in these small steps.

The family we live with is fairly large. We still have not understood all of the relationships (mainly due to our Spanish, and it is complicated), but for the most part it consists of a grandmother and grandfather, two daughters (who spend most of their time working with the grandmother, so we know them very well), 3 sons (they live in the family compound, but we don’t see them as much, just their kids), then all of the grandchildren (roughly 15 or more). It is really a great time playing with all of the younger kids! At least two more sons have gone to the states, one is in Maryland, the other (if I understood correctly) they have not heard from, so don’t know if he made it our not. Neither of the daughters has a husband that lives with her, we know that one went to the states as well, not sure about the other. Lots of families here in El Salvador are dealing with that. I think that at least some of the kids actually have both parents in the states and are living with an aunt, but they say she is their mother, and this is part of the confusion.

When you talk to the principals at the schools they talk about the many students who have both parents in the states, and they only stay until the ninth grade, and then take off themselves if they have save the money. It makes for a very different society.

This week we made a trip to San Salvador to learn our way around (safely). It was pretty typical, surreal with malls and dominos pizza. It will mostly be a place to avoid except for fairly cheap first run movies (English with Spanish subtitals). Evidently though, most volunteers end up going there about once a month or so. Mainly to work and talk with various NGO’s or GO’s, so I’m sure we will go there occasionally.

This Sunday, instead of attending church (yes, we have to do that here), we will be climbing a volcano with most of the other volunteers. It is supposed to take about 5 hours to climb up, and three hours to climb down. Should be a good days work, I’m looking forward to seeing how all of the other volunteers fair. Hasta luego!

First In Country Post

Well, being the first blog entry in country, I feel like I should have something dramatic to say. The truth is that the most useful thing is for me to go through some of the mundane details so that you have an idea of what we are currently going through.

We have been in country almost two weeks now, and it feels like much more because we have done so much. It has been a very full two weeks of training, that started just shortly after we got off the plane. We spent the first two nights in a hotel in San Vicente… more or less like many of the hotels we have stayed in while traveling Central America. For most of our group it wasn’t too much of a shock, they are a pretty worldly group even though they are young by my seasoned standards.

After the first two days we moved in with our families. We are scattered around in the smaller communities near San Vicente. There are usually four trainees per community, so Katie and I have two other trainees in our community, and there are actually another four trainee is a community within walking distance. Our family is great! We have roughly 10 ninos attached to our extended family all living in casas around a central area. So, Katie and I had lots of kids to play with upon arrival…. Which is nice, because they don’t require long conversations in our pitiful Spanish!

So a “typical” day (and really every day is quite different) runs more or less as follows:
Wake up around 5:30am… with Roosters starting about 2am, and going on and off from there it took us awhile to adjust to be able to sleep in till 5:30! Then we go and have our bucket showers, cold water of course. The smaller plastic buckets are called “guacales” here, and the washbasin is a “pila”. The pila where we take our showers is actually fairly nice and mostly private compared to many of the trainees. We have a very nice pig that lives nearby, and a Mott-mott (bird) that checks in on us as we bathe.

After bathing we eat breakfast around 6:15. It is usually a couple of hard rolls (soft inside) of bread with either frijoles or crema inside, and some hot drink, either coffee, chocolate, or milk. At 7am we walk to the bus for our ride to San Vicente. We only go to San Vicente about 3 days a week, on 3 others our Spanish teacher comes to our community and spends the day there working with the four of us till about 5pm. On the days we go to San Vicente the days are split into about 4 even parts, two before lunch and two after. These sessions cover a range of subjects from technical skills like lombriculture and composting, to medicine (all of the things we can get and how to avoid them), and basic concepts of development, or Salvadorean culture, ect…. Also we typically have Spanish during these days as well.

We finish around 5pm…. So far we have gone long every time. By the time we catch our bus back to our community, we get “home around 6pm or so, and it is already getting dark (closer to the equator remember!). About 6 to 6:30 sometime we eat dinner. All of the food has been very good, and really a pretty good variety as well. The only thing I have noticed is that the tortillas, which come with every meal expect breakfast, have become more of a chore to eat over time. They are very good, fresh and warm, but it is still a lot of corn masa to put down every day. They are very thick here, probably a quarter inch or more… very filling!

Well, that’s long enough for one entry. Next time I’ll catch you up more with our family and community time. I hope to make entries about once a week, that should work during this training period most of the time. Hasta Luego.