I’ll try to recap my mini adventure from the past 4 days…keep in mind that we are a few weeks in-country, and Peace Corps sends you on a little voyage to go visit another volunteer. So together with my $20 (spread out over various parts of my backpack/body in case I get robbed), and a few bus route numbers, I start out from my lovely home here into the Western part of the country. 3 busses, 1 pickup truck and 5.5 hours later, I arrive at my destination, a little town in the Western part of the country and the 5th poorest municipality in El Salvador. The volunteer I was visiting was under the impression that we were to have a “campo” experience, and I was under the impression I would be staying with her, but I was wrong. So after visiting and meeting the mayor of the town, we start off to the countryside, where I’d be staying. So when I say countryside, I really mean death trap. For example, after we started our hike to the site, we curved off the beaten path, into the woods (where I could’ve never re-navigated), shimmied between lots of barbed wire posts, we passed cattle and fruit trees and then, there was a fairly rapid river ahead, but I was sure that we would be arriving at the house before the river, but I was wrong. Ahead of me, I saw a tree/log bridge that I was to cross before we got to the house. Talk about having a tough commute to work…eeek…but I am still around to write about it, so it was an experience to be sure.
The deathtrap commute isn’t even that interesting compared to my surroundings upon reaching my destination. I arrived to meet the lady of the house, a very corpulent, loud, interesting woman who was busy readying the crops that she sold at the market, which included swinging a very large knife while chatting me up (I was trying my best to understand, but lots of people lack proper dental hygiene here, and she was missing more than a few teeth, making it all the more difficult). The lady of the house was surrounded by 5 dogs, 50 or 60 chickens and 2 roosters, 5 other birds (who apparently sung beautifully, but I didn’t think they were singing so sweetly at 4 in the morning), 6 parakeets and a ton of vegetation and flowers and they gave me a tour of the all of the crops behind the house. I ate everything straight from the tree, and apparently grapes not only grow on vines, but on trees as well. I felt like I was such a country girl, but I don’t think they thought I was, even a little bit. When we got back from my tour, a chicken peed on my foot. For all of my brilliant city friends back there in the states, a chicken doesn’t start a nice flow of pee like you and I, but it all comes out in one quick, huge squirt, which makes it exceedingly difficult to actually move one’s foot. The house itself was divided into 2 rooms, with the kitchen and facilities all outside, and I slept in one of the rooms with 4 other girls, who were incredible. I can’t imagine someone in the US opening up their house for a night to a stranger who barely speaks the language and people here do it all the time for FREE, without a second thought. The people here are incredibly hospitable and generally fun to be around. El Salvador gets an especially bad reputation in the States because of the massive gang activity, just as we get a bad rep around the world for some badly handled US policies, but it’s so important to recognize the good, amazing people over the rest of the craziness.
After spending the following day and night with the volunteer and attending my first Quincineera party that evening (when I girl turns 15 here, there is a HUGE celebration, complete with a mass and her own personal lecture from the priest, and an awesome party afterwards) and seeing my first giant scorpion on the toilet, I left the following morning to meet my family at their daughter’s ranch, which was beautiful. I got to make pupusas (the famous food here), which are tortillas with myriad ingredients inside, naughty talk….so so good. They have an actual verb here, “tortillar” or to make tortillas, which is a lot more difficult in practice than in theory, I’m not domestically inclined in the first place, so you can imagine how beautiful my pupusa was. I’m totally and completely exhausted, which is the norm for me here…it’s a great way to feel every day, mainly because it’s the only way I can sleep through the roosters at 3 am.
The deathtrap commute isn’t even that interesting compared to my surroundings upon reaching my destination. I arrived to meet the lady of the house, a very corpulent, loud, interesting woman who was busy readying the crops that she sold at the market, which included swinging a very large knife while chatting me up (I was trying my best to understand, but lots of people lack proper dental hygiene here, and she was missing more than a few teeth, making it all the more difficult). The lady of the house was surrounded by 5 dogs, 50 or 60 chickens and 2 roosters, 5 other birds (who apparently sung beautifully, but I didn’t think they were singing so sweetly at 4 in the morning), 6 parakeets and a ton of vegetation and flowers and they gave me a tour of the all of the crops behind the house. I ate everything straight from the tree, and apparently grapes not only grow on vines, but on trees as well. I felt like I was such a country girl, but I don’t think they thought I was, even a little bit. When we got back from my tour, a chicken peed on my foot. For all of my brilliant city friends back there in the states, a chicken doesn’t start a nice flow of pee like you and I, but it all comes out in one quick, huge squirt, which makes it exceedingly difficult to actually move one’s foot. The house itself was divided into 2 rooms, with the kitchen and facilities all outside, and I slept in one of the rooms with 4 other girls, who were incredible. I can’t imagine someone in the US opening up their house for a night to a stranger who barely speaks the language and people here do it all the time for FREE, without a second thought. The people here are incredibly hospitable and generally fun to be around. El Salvador gets an especially bad reputation in the States because of the massive gang activity, just as we get a bad rep around the world for some badly handled US policies, but it’s so important to recognize the good, amazing people over the rest of the craziness.
After spending the following day and night with the volunteer and attending my first Quincineera party that evening (when I girl turns 15 here, there is a HUGE celebration, complete with a mass and her own personal lecture from the priest, and an awesome party afterwards) and seeing my first giant scorpion on the toilet, I left the following morning to meet my family at their daughter’s ranch, which was beautiful. I got to make pupusas (the famous food here), which are tortillas with myriad ingredients inside, naughty talk….so so good. They have an actual verb here, “tortillar” or to make tortillas, which is a lot more difficult in practice than in theory, I’m not domestically inclined in the first place, so you can imagine how beautiful my pupusa was. I’m totally and completely exhausted, which is the norm for me here…it’s a great way to feel every day, mainly because it’s the only way I can sleep through the roosters at 3 am.
0 comments:
Post a Comment