Massacres, tractors, thankful not to be in the boonies.

Imagine this. Around 1,000 people are killed by government soldiers. Men, women, children, babies. Everyone in town is brutally massacred. Then the government says it didn’t happen. But there are 1,000 people missing and photos of the mass graves exist.
Crazy? Couldn’t happen? Right?!?

This week I visited a town called El Mozote a few miles from my site where just such a massacre occurred. During the civil war here, from 1981-1992 , the U.S. backed Salvadoran government soldiers massacred an entire town as a part of their “scorched earth policy”. The Salvadoran army flat out denied that it happened and the U.S. was eventually forced to admit that it maybe, well, could’ve possibly, sorta happened. Only one woman survived while she hid and had to watch her children, husband and neighbors be executed. Crazy.

There is a mini-monument here to the people who were killed (although the number of people killed is still disputed). It was a pretty somber experience because on these plaques you see things like: Moises Claros, Eugenia Claros and 5 children, dead, and similar plaques of entire families who were murdered. Disheartening, depressing, heartbreaking, but all the while amazing. The people here are resilient. My town was the capital of the guerilla forces and my pueblo, along with the entire department were the most affected areas during the war. The Peace Accords were signed in 1992, and the area has a long way to go, particularly in the schools where I have been spending a majority of my time.

So, after the sadness that is El Mozote I went to visit another volunteer, a Rural Health volunteer. That means he’s RURAL. I had to take a pretty sweet downhill 30-minute hike to get to his site from El Mozote (beautiful views, I’ve included photos). There are roads, just no transportation. WHEW. Obviously I was excited to get there and didn’t let the fact that a downhill arrival would mean an uphill return, not fun. Jimbo, the volunteer who I visited, requested a special bio in my blog. Height: six-two Weight, when he doesn’t have amoebas and parasites: 170-180 lbs. Devastating handsome. Voted as his Peace Corps Superlative: Most likely to be Don Juan of both Peace Corps Volunteers and Salvadoran women (big honor, right?!).

So, I arrived to his house where there was a giant tractor that broke in his front yard. To date, there are no plans to remove the tractor. Jimbo, the surly, manly man he is, has purchased a machete to cut through the undergrowth on the way to and from his site. Machetes are common here, almost every man carries his machete, around town, on the pick up trucks (the main mode of transport here) and for various agricultural endeavors.
I thought I would wield a machete on top of the tractor, because, hey, when will I ever take a photo with a machete on top of a broken tractor? Every day is an adventure in Peace Corps.

Also, I have been asked out by a 17 year old kid. Awkward. He came up to visit me to get help with his English homework, and was apparently expecting some Chemistry. I let him down easy, don’t worry.

Oh, and for my weekend adventure, I got parasites.

Oh, and I went to church because a few people from town invited me. It was three hours. Jesus Christ! He’s serious business.

Color me red. or yellow. or both?

So in my last entry I quoted a little inspiration from Gabriel Garcia Marquez about how the real joys to life are about climbing the mountain, not being on the top. So, I’ll recount one of those “joys” this past week in my classes.
I was teaching my kindergarten class, and everyone seemed pretty excited about learning my song with the exception of Katherine and Javier. Katherine, who is quite the character, decided that she was bored, and kept chatting with herself about being bored, on repeat (apparently kindergartners haven’t learned the skill of keeping that inner dialogue inside). She then marched to the front of the classroom and decided she would wave the yardstick around wildly. Javier, who has a behavioral problem as it is, decided that he would like to wave that stick around as well. Fighting ensued, Javier cried, Katherine marched back to her seat defiantly. I took it all very personally and took the morning as a complete failure. HOWEVER, and this is a big however, which is why I put it in all caps, just as I was walking along the road at dinner time, thinking about my participation with the kids, and if it is benefiting them in any sort of capacity, I heard one of my kids yelling “Lila, Lila!” I turn around and he starts singing the song that I had taught this morning, and he had taught his 3-year-old brother as well… WOOP WOOP, someone learned something today. I also taught them the “high five” in class that day.
As my hodgepodge entries usually go, one story will not tie in nicely with another, because A. I’m not that great of a writer and B. The weirdest things happen to me, making my life, ergo, my blog, a mishmash, random assortment of stories. I was using the Internet last week, and met some gringos in town, a Dutchman and Englishman. We all had dinner together, travel stories started and although I cannot share most of them on my family friendly blog, I will share a good one. We’ll do this Quentin Tarantino style. It ended by the Englishman eating a giant beetle.
So we were having a delicious meal when the Englishman told us how, while in Thailand, he tried fried cockroaches on the street. Whilst in a Thai bar, there was a pretty considerable sized, rather exotic bug on the bar. Everyone started betting him beers if he ate it. I do understand that those who travel often find themselves in a precarious financial situation, and apparently desperate times called for, well, eating a bug at a Thai bar. His quotation was the following, “You know how all meat pretty much tastes like chicken? Well, pretty much all bugs taste like cockroaches.” So, at the end of the night, the Dutchman bet him a dollar to eat the horned beetle on the ground at our feet. He popped it into his mouth. Crunch, crunch, “Tastes like cockroach”.
As well, I went to the capital this weekend to go get a shot (fun), though it ended up being a very interesting, lovely weekend. However, upon my return to my site, 2/3 of my building was painted bright red. My 1/3 was left its original yellow. Since the elections are coming up here, the opposing political party in my town rented the space beside me. The setup is as follows, one giant room, sectioned off by thin plywood, the political rallies taking place on the other side. Therefore, I will be hearing everything that goes on, and have to endure the new, red harshness of my once uniformly painted area. But hey, if I thought I was lucky to have a yellow building so I’d never forget where I lived, now I really won’t be able to miss it. Bright side.
I’ve included some really bad self-portraits that I took this morning with my newly colored building.