End of week 5 updates

Hi all – Just thought I'd check in before going away for a couple days (this weekend is my group's only “free weekend” during the ten weeks of training, so we're renting a house on the beach for two nights).

On the ankle front, I got some x-rays on Monday and the orthopedist concluded I have a “moderate to severe sprain”. I have to wear an air cast for four weeks, which isn't too much of a hassle, since it can be taken off when I bathe and sleep. The pain is pretty minimal – I just can't shoot hoops or go jogging for a while, which I had been doing regularly prior to the sprain.

Training this week was pretty low-key – the usual combination of Spanish classes and sessions on assessment tools and Peace Corps policies. We also had our first session on HIV/AIDS, of which Peace Corps El Salvador encourages its volunteers to raise awareness in their sites. In Spanish class on Wednesday, my class had one of our Community Contacts with the vice principal of the local school (who also happens to be Don Vidal, my host father), and we learned some interesting things about some of the challenges the country's education system faces. For instance, in some areas where the gang presence is particularly high (such as the capital), many teachers have to pay renta to their students who belong to gangs. The student might demand, for instance, $50 a month from the teacher (about a tenth of a typical teacher's salary), and threaten to harm the teacher's family if the money doesn't come through. Very tragic.

Next week we have Field-Based Training (FBT) from Tuesday to Friday. FBT is similar to Immersion Days, in that trainees stay in the site of a current volunteer, but as observing is to Immersion Days, doing is to FTB. We'll be expected to lead some activities that the volunteer has arranged, for instance. I'll be staying, along with two other trainees, with a volunteer named Rachel, whose site is very close to Cesar's, where I stayed for Immersion Days last week.

That's all I've got on El Salvador for now. I've been checking the news frequently for updates on Syria. What happened with Great Britain yesterday was a bit shocking (at least for someone with only a cursory understanding of British politics) – one moment the British were releasing documents to justify airstrikes, and the next (seemingly – remember, I have limited access to internet, so I can't follow developments minute-by-minute), they had ruled said airstrikes out after a vote in parliament. I feel weird about spending the weekend at a beach house at a time when my country could at any minute begin military strikes against another Middle Eastern country, but at the same time I realize it really makes no difference.

Immersion Days Debrief: Youth development, pyramid schemes, swollen ankles, and more

This afternoon I got back from Immersion Days, a component of training in which trainees spend three days shadowing a current volunteer in their site. I (along with Noah, another member of my training group) shadowed a Youth Development Volunteer named Cesar, who is a social worker by training and an all-around great guy. His site is located in the department of Santa Ana, in a caserio outside the city of Metapan. The caserio, which is called Buenos Aires, has about ninety houses and 300 people. Living with a family there and getting a sense of Cesar's day-to-day activities was very useful and enjoyable (despite my swollen ankle, which I'll get to later).

Noah experiencing "peak confusion"
 while playing with kids

On Thursday and Friday, Cesar, Noah and I spent a good amount of time at the local school (pictured), where much of Cesar's work takes place (naturally, as his focus is Youth Development). The school serves a little over seventy children from pre-K to ninth grade. Schools in El Salvador divide students between morning and afternoon sessions, so only about thirty to forty students are in school at any given time, which makes for a peaceful and quiet learning environment (the school in Siete de Marzo, by contrast, serves about 300 to 400 students at a time and is so loud that at times the children cannot hear the teacher). At Cesar's school, the younger students take the morning session and the older ones attend in the afternoon, as many of the older children spend mornings working in the fields that surround the caserio.

The school in Cesar's site

At the school, the three of us read to a group of six-year olds, led an English session with some eleven-year olds (we taught them parts of the body), and taught a group of high school students how to prepare a proper resume. The high school students all attend school only one day a week—Saturday—and work in the fields Monday through Friday. After ninth grade, students from Caserio Bueno Aires have the option to continue to attend a Monday-through-Friday school in the city center of Metapan, but almost none pursue this option, as transportation into Metapan is costly (about $1 each way, which would amount to $10 a week, a substantial amount for many rural families) and their families need them to work in the fields. Until a few years ago, they were not allowed to pursue the Saturdays-only option, but one of the Peace Corps volunteer that preceded Cesar convinced the local government to get rid of a requirement that Saturday students be at least eighteen years old. Even with the Saturday option, only a minority of Caserio Bueno Aires' teenagers choose to continue their educations beyond ninth grade. One of the teenagers at the resume-writing session told me that out of the twelve students his age in the community, only four were still in school.

On Friday evening, after we finished at the school and headed toward the church, a central landmark in the tiny community, we stumbled upon a presentation in the church courtyard being given by three men and a woman in business dress. Cesar knew vaguely of a planned presentation by some medical salespeople, so we joined the gathering to listen in. To make a long story short, the salespeople were pitching a pyramid scheme based on some “100% natural” pharmaceuticals that promised to work such miracles as cure migraines, alleviate all colon-related problems, and “kill 90% of cancer cells in the body”. In promising up to $2000 a month to the dozen-or-so community members in attendance, the salespeople repeatedly invoked God, making religious appeals to convince their audience to partake in the scam. Several of the locals seemed interested in the program and requested more information. It was a sickening spectacle, compounded (from the perspective of the three Americans in attendance) by the fact that the company operating the pyramid scheme was an American firm, a tidbit that the salespeople invoked to legitimate the company. Cesar plans to talk to warn the people who expressed interest not to partake in the program, but the reality is that most rural communities in El Salvador don't have a Cesar. While many people here are discerning and will identify crooks without a nudge from an outsider, others are very vulnerable to succumbing to sales tactics designed to take advantage of poor, uneducated people.

Pasteles

After the pyramid scheme pitch ended, it was dinnertime and the three of us stumbled to the other side of the courtyard where every Friday, women make and sell pasteles. Noah and I, who had spent the day under the impression that we would be having desserts for dinner (as pastel, 99% of the time, means “cake”), were surprised to discover that pasteles are actually delicious, deep-fried dumplings filled with beans or potatoes (pictured). They went for $0.05 apiece; I ate 20, and Noah, 25. As we waited for our food, we made fliers to advertise an English club and a charla about the origins of everyday emotions, two of the projects Cesar is developing.

On Saturday, Cesar, Noah and I rode on the back of a truck (I'm sure my mom just cringed reading that, but sometimes the back of a truck is the only way to get around...sorry mom) into Metapan so that Cesar could run some errands and show us around town. Metapan is a bustling little city of about 60,000 (at least according to Wikipedia) with lots of shops, markets, and some attractions like a soccer stadium and some ornate churches. There we met some other PCVs and their Immersion Day trainees at a chic little bakery that offers free Wifi (and is thus frequented by PCVs). After absorbing a sufficient amount of internet, we walked around town, had a nice lunch at a comedor, and, after splitting from the rest of the group, Cesar, Noah and I finagled our way (with permission) onto the top of the roof of the largest Cathedral in town (also the town's highest building), where we took in the view of the city.

We then returned to Caserio Buenos Aires in the back of another truck (which happened to be that of the guy who let us onto the top of the church), and rested for an hour at Cesar's house. At three, we embarked on a hike with some local men, with the goal of climbing the highest hill in the area and building a fire there in which to cook elotes (corn on the cob). The hike got off to a great start, with us weaving our way through corn fields and up narrow hill trails. At one fairly nondescript juncture, I took a step on some rocky ground, rolled my ankle and tumbled to the ground, probably letting out an expletive or two. My ankle hurt badly at first but the adrenaline quickly eased the pain and, as we were just ten minutes from the top (or so I was promised), I decided to continue with the hike. About forty minutes later (in El Salvador, “diez minutos” rarely amount to sixty-seconds-times-ten), we reached the top of the highest point in, and the three gringos lounged on some rocks while our generous local guides built a fire and cooked elotes, which they served with some limes they collected from a nearby tree.

After our little snack, we headed back down the hill toward the caserio at a much more slower pace than we ascended, as my injury was beginning to catch up with me and I had to walk very gingerly. As a result of my sluggishness, we didn't get back until after dark, but fortunately the ever-prepared Noah brought his headlamp so we could see where we were going. In purely medical terms, I shouldn't have continued with the hike after rolling my ankle (something I knew at the very moment of the incident), but the experience of reaching the top and victoriously eating some deliciously fresh corn with a good group of guys well outweighed any consequent exacerbation of my injury (sorry again mom, I know you just cringed again).

A beautiful view from our house in Caserio Buenos Aires

Noah and I returned to our host family's house around 7:30 (about an hour after the sun goes down, and quite late by Salvadoran standards) and our extremely kind host mother, Graciela, proceeded to fuss over my ankle, applying camphor cream and holding an ice pack to it, and serving me pupusas while I sat in a hammock with my leg elevated. Then we went to bed around 8:30.

This morning, Noah and I had to catch the Peace Corps microbus in Metapan at 9am, so naturally we caught a ride with the milkman. The lechero, as he is called in Spanish, drives his truck through the caserio, stopping on average at every third or fourth house to collect milk produced by that family's cows (Or goats? I'm not really sure). His system is remarkably efficient; a member of each milk-producing family waits for the lechero truck in front of their house and quickly pours the goods into large plastic vats that sit in the bed of the truck. Once the lechero has collected milk from all participating households in the caserio, he zips off to town to convert the milk to cash (and, with the extra space in the back of his trucks, carries passengers from the caserio into town for $1). Noah and I are not entirely sure how the system of payment works (for example, how does the lechero fairly allocate money to each family, as every family contributes a different amount of milk?), but perhaps details like this will become more clear the more time we spend in El Salvador. Whatever the fine details of the system, our experience in the back of the lechero truck showed us an impressive example of community members working together to generate income.

And those were my Immersion Days. My host family here in Siete de Marzo killed one of their chickens for me this morning so they could greet me with fresh chicken soup when I got home. It's good to be back!

Immersion Days

Tomorrow through Sunday morning I'll be taking part in "Immersion Days", a component of Peace Corps training in which trainees spend a few days shadowing a PCV in their site. I'll be spending my Immersion Days with a Youth Development Volunteer named Cesar, whose site is a caserio outside the city of Metapan, in Santa Ana department. He is about six months into his service, which is right about the time PCVs are expected to launch the projects they intend to undertake for the rest of their time in-site (at least in Peace Corps El Salvador, the first six months or so are usually dedicated to conducting a community assessment and confianza-building, and maybe initiating a couple small projects, like English classes, geared at getting to know people in the community). On Cesar's agenda over the next couple days are activities such as a couple basketball practices with youth and an English class, also for youth. It'll be interesting to experience life in Cesar's site and ask about the challenges he has faced so far and the strategies that have worked for him in gaining his community's trust. Observing his situation won't be a perfect window into my life seven months down the road, as all communities vary with respect to resources and needs, and because his focus is Youth Development and mine is Community Economic Development, but I expect my three days in his site to be illuminating. I'll be sure to blog my observations when I get back.

In other news, I'm very curious to see what President Obama has to say tomorrow about making higher education more accessible, though I think I'll have to wait until Sunday to have the requisite internet access...

Museo de Antropologia, Festival de Maiz, AJAM...

On Saturday my training group visited the Museo Nacional de Antropologia David Guzman Museum, whose collections mostly focus on Salvadoran history, with an emphasis on economic history. It also has a powerful exhibit featuring photographs of impoverished families in their homes all over Latin America (see photo below).

Sunday was the Festival de Maiz (Corn Festival), an annual celebration of the years' corn harvest, which is organized by the Catholic church. The event at the center of the festival is a competition to crown a new town Reina de Maiz (Corn Queen). Girls representing different local institutions—schools, churches, and neighborhoods, for example—compete by raising money from family and neighbors. At the crowning ceremony, they all wear dresses made entirely of corn (presumably made by their moms, aunts, sisters, etc.). Some of the dresses were pretty unbelievable (see photo below; yes, one of the dresses is designed to resemble a mermaid).

Today in Spanish class we had one of our six “Community Contact” (basically interviews with people in our training communities representing different aspects of life, like business, education, etc.), this one with the president of the local ADESCO (neighborhood council). He was very gracious and thoughtful, but seemed to have little desire to address the partisanship that has placed the council in a state of total paralysis. Any leader of a representative organization needs to commit to building bridges between factions. Elections for a new board will be held September 14, and I'm going to do my best to attend that meeting to get a sense of where the local ADESCO might be heading under new leadership.

Starting Thursday we'll be spending three “immersion days” in rural towns, where we'll each live with a family and shadow a current PCV located in that town. The purpose of the exercise is to introduce us to a Peace Corps site and the daily activities of a Peace Corps volunteer. The volunteers we'll be shadowing are part of the Youth Development program, as there are currently no COED (Community Organization and Economic Development) volunteers in the country (Peace Corps' presence in El Salvador was scaled back significantly due to security concerns in 2012, so at present there are only 25 PCVs in country, all of whom are Youth Development). I'll be sure to blog about my “immersion days” experiences after the fact.

On another note, I'm very eager to see if tomorrow's launch of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) marks the start of a quiet revolution in the American news appetite that favors a return to serious, sober journalism. I don't think it'll effect any rapid or radical changes in many Americans' habits, but I'm optimistic it'll pressure the other cable networks to produce more meaningful stories, creating sort of a ripple effect throughout the major cable networks. I'm also excited that AJAM has established bureaus in cities that are at times overlooked by the current players. As a Californian I'm sensitive to the media's East Coast-centric tendencies, and I think AJAM's decision to invest in high-quality bureaus throughout the country will bring to light important events and issues that otherwise would not have made national headlines. As of now, I refuse to join the skeptics who think only the already media-savvy will watch the new network and the rest of American society will stick to their talking heads.

That's all for now! 

Caserio visit and other end-of-week 3 thoughts

Yesterday my training group visited a nearby caserio (rural community) called El Pino to get a sense of what life can be like in more remote parts El Salvador. As I've mentioned in previous posts, my training community of Siete de Marzo is significantly more developed than the community I'll be working in after training (which as of now is yet to be determined), so the caserio visit was an important introduction to rural life. Upon arrival, we stopped in front of a house to speak with the Vice President of the local Asociacion de Desarrolla Comunal (ADESCO). ADESCOs are neighborhood councils consisting of volunteers that, ideally, advocate for the community before the alcaldia (the municipal government) and coordinate projects to improve life in the community (these can pertain to issues like access to potable water, illiteracy, after school activities for youth, etc.). As we have recently learned as part of our training (we had a dedicated session on ADESCOs, as we'll all be working with the local ADESCO in our work sites), ADESCOs throughout El Salvador vary greatly in organization, professionalism, and effectiveness. Many are hampered by partisan politics, adult illiteracy, lack of attention from the alcaldia, and many other deficiencies, while others quite effectively bring about change in their communities. The ADESCO leader we spoke to today indicated that the ADESCO in his community has a good relationship with the local government, but sometimes struggles to maximize its influence due to time constraints. He was a young university student, which is rare for an ADESCO leader, who tend to be fifty or older. That's all for now on ADESCOs, but I'll certainly blog about them more once I've reached my work site and acquainted myself with the ADESCO there.

After meeting with the young man, we followed a muddy path down to some natural springs (pictured) where people collect their water every day. The water is fairly clean, only needing to be boiled to be made safe to drink. None of the houses in the caserio have running water. Next, our group split in two and each half walked around the neighborhood visiting people in their homes and asking them questions about their lives. As intrusive as that sounds, there is something about the people here that made it feel perfectly natural to simply show up at a house, explain who you are, and ask a series of questions on issues like community participation, security, and employment. I'm fortunate that people can be so approachable here, as my first few months in my site will largely be spent going door-to-door, introducing myself to the local people, and gathering information about the community through interviews.

I also had an interesting conversation with the women's rights promoter of the alcaldia, who accompanied us on the caserio visit. Her main job is to meet with women throughout Nuevo Cuscatlan (of which Siete de Marzo and El Pino, among other neighborhoods, belong) and educate them about their rights regarding domestic violence, which is all too common here. She also organizes women's committees throughout the municipality, and helps women establish cooperatives and small businesses. I asked her how the men in town respond to the important work she does, and she responded that unfortunately almost all men are hostile to her activities (she estimated that about ten in a hundred men are sympathetic to the cause of female empowerment). I asked whether the younger generation of men are any more supportive than older men, but she bleakly replied, “Igual”. This is extremely sad, but represents any area where I could make a difference in my work community (such as by working to strengthen women's group and working with men to get them on board).

In other news, I'm becoming more and more cognizant of the toll partisanship takes on El Salvador. There are two main political parties here: the leftist FMLN, which emerged from the guerrillas in the civil war, and the right-wing ARENA party. Animosity between each party's faithful runs high and can result in crippling deadlock. When I asked my host mother about the state of the ADESCO in Siete de Marzo, she explained that it's currently inoperative because its leaders belong to the rival party of the mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan. She also indicated that when the current mayor took office last year, a significant portion of city staff quit their jobs, refusing to work under a mayor of the opposing party. I don't know how common it happens that civil servants quit when the executive's office changes parties, but if it is widespread, it would represent a huge threat to the development of a professional and apolitical civil service in El Salvador. The more I learn about partisanship in the El Salvador context, the more I'll blog about. You'll notice I'm not yet making comparisons between partisanship in El Salvador and partisanship in the United States, as I don't know enough about the former, and am hesitant to hastily arrive at comparisons given the widely different contexts in which American and Salvadoran politics take place.

That's all for now on El Salvador. Conditions have deteriorated further in Egypt since my last post, and it's heartbreaking to read stories about the needless bloodshed taking place there. On a brighter note, I was pleased to read this week of some accountability for abuses on Wall Street, with the indictment of two JPMorgan Chase employees involved in the “London Whale” case. Also the news geek in me is very excited for Tuesday's launch of Al Jazeera America.

Gotta go -- today I'm visiting an anthropology museum in the capital, and tomorrow I'll be attending the Festival de Maiz here in Nuevo. Have a great weekend!

End of Week 2 musings

I've been here two a half weeks now, so I thought I'd discuss some of the observations I've made so far. I'm reluctant at this point to make many sweeping generalizations about “Salvadoran culture” (having been here for so little time, and having only lived in one community, with one family, etc.), nor did I come here to judge El Salvador through my Gringo specs, but it'll be helpful to me to hash out some of my initial observations so in a few months I can look back and see if and how my thinking has changed. If any observations I mention in this post come across as broad generalizations, understand that each carries the qualification of being based on my limited time in the country.

I'll start with a simple yet important observation to note, which is that the people I've interacted with here are extremely kind, generous, and friendly. A stroll down the street in my host community is a cacophony of Buenos dias!/Buenas tardes!, Que le vaya bien!, or simply Buenas!. It seems like nearly every member of my Peace Corps group has been struck by the generosity of their host families (and some are correspondingly overwhelmed by the size of the food portions this generosity sometimes begets). The good nature of the people here contributes hugely to our collective feeling of safety and security in this country whose chronic violence grabs so many international headlines. Not only are our host communities quick to dole out a warm Buenos dias!, but they look out for the safety and wellbeing of their neighborhood Gringos.

Other general observations (and probably unsurprising if you're familiar with Central America) are that people tend to have large and close (both socially and physically) extended families (an exception to the physical proximity being the large number of Salvadorans living in the U.S.), gender roles are fairly pronounced, and church attendance is very high (though plenty of people attend church on days other than Sunday, which surprised me). A couple observations that bother me are that children here spend too much time in front of the television and not enough time reading, and that sugar intake—through soft drinks and heavily-sugared coffee and fruit juice—is higher than my Northern California sensibilities are comfortable with. Of course these problems are complex—relating to factors not limited to literacy/education levels, lack of access to reading materials, and lack of access to potable water—but are certainly among some of the issues that are on my mind as I begin to think about what kind of ways I might be able to help my eventual work community.

I attended a community meeting yesterday convened by some social work students from a nearby university. The students had completed community assessments of several of Nuevo Cuscatlan's colonias (neighborhoods, essentially), to gather basic statistics (head count, education level, etc.) and assess community needs (such as through surveys and community mapping). The studies they had done were almost precisely what I'll be doing in my first couple months as a PCV: assessing community resources, weaknesses, and needs with information gathered from those who know the community best—its residents.

Not surprisingly, many of the top concerns of local residents, according to the university students, pertained to physical assets like potable water and roads. However, many residents placed low levels of community organization high on their list of concerns. Considering that promoting community organization will be one of my main priorities in my work site, it was heartening to see that (at least here in Nuevo) there is an indigenous appetite for stronger community organization. I was also struck by the high illiteracy rate (24%) in my colonia of Siete de Marzo. I suppose the fact that both of my host parents are teachers biased my expectations somewhat, but independent of that, I reckoned that a community as safe, developed (with respect to transportation, water and electrical infrastructure, sturdiness of homes, etc.), and close to the capital would have a fairly low rate of illiteracy. That a place as secure as Siete de Marzo would have illiteracy as high as 24% suggests that my work site, which will likely be located in one El Salvador's three poorest departments (San Miguel, Morazan, or La Union), will likely suffer from very widespread illiteracy (both a challenge and an opportunity for a PCV). This points to a wider point that I can't lose sight of during my ten-week training program: as much as I am learning from living in Siete de Marzo, I can't allow the knowledge acquired here to unduly prejudice the mindset I bring with me to my yet-unknown worksite.

That's all the El Salvador musing I'll be doing for today. On a personal note, I'm very happy to have regular internet access in my training community (I have a USB modem that is reliable and fairly inexpensive) so I can access email and news every day. I've been thinking a lot of late about the sale of the Washington Post and its implications for the news industry (though, like many, I'm not sure whether to feel positively about it or not), and am very concerned about recent events in Egypt. I'm a bit nervous about the prospect of not having regular internet access in my work site, but such a possibility comes with the territory (in a literal sense, as certain parts of the country simply lack the communication infrastructure). In general, I'm doing very well—getting plenty of exercise, improving my Spanish slowly but surely, and always looking forward to the next adventure.

Mi casa

For those of you wondering what my living situation looks like, below are some photos of the house I'm living in for the ten weeks of training. It's made out of cement blocks, so it's very sturdy, and has a tin roof that keeps the rain out (in general, there's at least one downpour a night during the rainy reason, which spans from May to November), three bedrooms (one for the parents, one shared by Josue and Gabi, and my room), a bathroom, a kitchen/dining room, a living/TV room, and a washroom that contains the pila. Another thing to mention is that we're located at an elevation of about 900 meters, which makes a huge difference in terms of sparing us the extreme heat common in low-lying areas of the country. It's toasty here during the day, but it cools off significantly in the evening, so sleeping comfortably is no problem.

Enjoy!

Front (including Aslan's tail):

The pila (the blue area on the right is always full of water [not for drinking], and the area on the left is for washing dishes/hands, brushing teeth, etc.):

My bedroom:

Kitchen/dining room (the bathroom door is in the background, just below the bananas):

La Familia Garcia

I've been pretty lousy about taking photos since getting to El Salvador a week and a half ago, but fortunately my host mother loves to take photos, and I was able to upload some from her camera.

This one is of me and my host mother, Lidia, right before my first experience eating pupusas, the national dish of El Salvador (they're delicious).

Here I'm with Lidia and my host brother, Josue, inside the concha in the park in central Nuevo Cuscatlan (and yes, I'm wearing pants that turn into shorts, a godsend for Peace Corps volunteers in tropical countries around the world). 

And lastly, this is me with Josue and my host father, Vidal, at the beach in the port city of La Libertad, where we went this afternoon after church.

Unfortunately I don't yet have a photo with my host sister, Gabi, but I'll be sure to post one before my time here in “Nuevo” is up.