Some views from Toreras

Bashful about the dearth of photographs in my blog, here are a half-dozen taken along my route to the bus stop.

Pena, cohetes, and more pena

(I actually composed this post on January 1, but alas, I haven't been able to post it until today due to my lack of a decent internet connection.)

Hi all, and happy New Year –

I don't have many new developments to report, other than an ADESCO meeting which I'll discuss in a moment. Mostly I've been continuing with house visits and participating in my community's modest holiday traditions. For Christmas (celebrated on the 24^th of December; the 25^th is just a day of rest), most households (the women of most households, that is) either make tamales or panes con pollo, which are quite tasty chicken sandwiches with cabbage, beets, potatoes and sauce. In the evening, one house in my site hosted a party, the highlight of which was a Christian music sing-along led by a predicador that must have lasted at least two hours. Other than the predicador's opportunistic diatribe against family planning and abortion, it was a pretty charming occasion. Cohetes, or firecrackers, were also a feature of the Christmas party.

New Years' was celebrated similarly, minus the sing-alongs and espousals of social conservatism.

The end-of-the-year ADESCO Asamblea General on Monday was illuminating but not all that surprising. Asamblea Generales are supposed to be monthly gatherings wherein the ADESCO's directiva (executive board) updates the community at large about its activities, solicits feedback from community members, and proposes items on which the community votes. This ADESCO, however, employs a dollar-a-month membership fee, which effectively shrinks the “community at large” to “community members willing to part with $12 a year in exchange for the right to participate in community decision-making” (remember that in communities as poor as Toreras, $12 is not a nominal sum). A testament to the idiocy of this policy is that, while Toreras has a population of slightly over 200 (a majority of whom are adults), there are 28 fee-paying members of the ADESCO (four of whom are technically from the neighboring community of La Guacamaya, which does not have its own ADESCO). I'm not contending that lifting the membership fee would unleash a sudden surge of community activism, but the financial commitment undoubtedly excludes some families and sends the toxic message that the ability to participate in community decisions is a privilege to be purchased with cash rather than a right inherent to membership in that community. The membership fee has the additional consequence of allowing the directiva the latitude to be complacent when it comes to organizing fundraising activities, contributing to the organization's overall malaise and depriving the community of fun events that contribute positively to the ADESCO's image and promote community morale. (Morale-boosting efforts are crucial in a community with zero employment and population loss of 4-6% a year due to out-migration.)

In all, about twenty ADESCO members showed up to Monday's meeting, held at the school in Toreras. One of the agenda items was an end-of-the-year financial report by the treasurer. When Don Crisanto, the president and my host father, called on the treasurer to present the report (which had already been written word-for-word on a whiteboard), the treasurer succumbed to pena. No one English word corresponds directly to the Spanish pena, at least as PCVs in El Salvador encounter it; pena is some kind of hybrid between embarrassment, skyness, shame, and petrification, and renders children and adults alike unable to speak or otherwise participate in group activities when called on to do so. So the treasurer, a 28 year-old man (we'll call him Juan) who in one-on-one conversation is quite gregarious, just sat silently, unresponsive to Crisanto's prodding until the backup treasurer reluctantly stood up to struggle through the report (he is mostly illiterate and had difficulty reading the whiteboard).

Situations like this require the utmost sensitivity from PCVs; while from a gringo lens it seems preposterous, even reprehensible, that a two-minute financial report would render catatonic an adult elected to serve as the treasurer of an organization, one must consider the advantages that entrenched poverty denied Juan. Unlike many young Americans, Juan didn't grow up with organized activities like sports and debate through which to learn leadership, nor did he have access to an education of a high enough quality to develop skills and confidence in areas such as public speaking and presentation-making. His willingness to take on a job like treasurer is a step out of his comfort zone and should be commended.

After the meeting, I walked home with Juan, who had returned to his normal sociable self. “I'm just a farmer, but it's been so great getting to be treasurer and learning how to work in the ADESCO,” he remarked. As PCVs we can't lose sight of how important these rare leadership opportunities are to some people, even if they appear to be struggling with the demands of leadership and organization.

Apart from the ongoing process of integrating into my community and laying the groundwork for my eventual work projects, my current fixation with The West Wing has over the past month proved an impediment to my reading. Fortunately I only have a little more than one season left, at which point I'll be able to take on a more ambitious reading regimen. That being said, I haven't completely left my literary appetite un-satiated, having just finished William Easterly's The White Man's Burden, and recently starting Peddling Prosperity, one of Paul Krugman's earlier books, on the intersection of economic thought and politics, and Democratizing Innovation by MIT economist Eric von Hippel. I've also been flipping through A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman, part of the Hope Yao Book Club.

I also have figured out how to get modest results out of my internet modem here. Doing so requires me to stray about a hundred yards from my house to a path covered in horse poop, which boasts the strongest Honduran cellular signal in Toreras. For now this tradition seems worth it to be able to load Teagan Goddard's Political Wire and a dozen or so articles from the New York Times' mobile site (both sites are nicely optimized for lethargic, cross-border internet connections).

Time to get to work

Hi all –

It's been a while since I last put up a post. I don't particularly have an excuse other than it seems only natural that the more “transitioned” I feel in my new life in El Salvador, the less often I'll feel compelled to take to my blog to babble about how shocking my new surroundings are; things I found noteworthy four months ago have become commonplace. That being said, I intend to average two posts a month for the duration of my service, so this last month has been an aberration as far as the frequency of my posting goes.

On Saturday I returned from my site after concluding Pre-Service Training 2 (PST-2), three weeks of additional training back in Nuevo Cuscatlan, where I spent my initial ten-week training period. It was nice to reunite with my old host family—the Garcias—there, as well as the other volunteers in my training group. Despite the diversity of our sites in terms of the degree of community organization, proximity to services and employment, and level of human development, we're all weathering similar challenges of integration and inter-cultural navigation. During PST-2 I also had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving at the home of a nice American embassy family.

The training we received in PST-2 was much more project-oriented than the initial round, and having received it, I feel much more targeted toward concrete goals in addition to the more abstract notions of gaining confianza and achieving integration in my community. My top two priorities for at least the next six months will be forming a women's association in Toreras and improving the ADESCO (Asocación de Desarrollo Comunal).

The women in Toreras seldom leave their homes and participate minimally in the ADESCO (Toreras' only organization) and other activities promoting development in the community. Many if not most rural communities in El Salvador have some form of women's group, many of which function as income-generating cooperatives that make and sell crafts or food items. Others serve more as community councils that take on community problems, organize social events, and solicit trainings and other forms of support from NGOs and government. Not only are these groups able to realize concrete accomplishments, but they contribute to an overall sense of empowerment among the women who participate (and probably even those who don't), challenging the machista attitude that relegates women to domestic duties and discourages them from participating actively in community decision-making. If Toreras is to confront its most pressing development challenges—employment opportunities, education levels, sanitation and potable water, a decent road—it's going to need female leadership.

Assuming I'm able to successfully assemble a women's association, I'm somewhat impartial as to the form the group ultimately takes. To me, the most important thing is to provide a space for women to learn leadership skills and to express their desires for and concerns regarding the community, thereby building much-lacking self-esteem and showing their daughters (and sons, for that matter) that women serve important functions outside the home. Such a group could spur a culture of female leadership in heavily male-dominated Toreras, which would benefit the community indefinitely and immeasurably. Forming the group will be a slow process—and for at least the first few months, I will very much be running the show—but hopefully by the time my two years are up I'll have put together an organization with the necessary structure, systems, and skills to sustain itself without the support of a PCV. I'm anticipating plenty of challenges, but I've been heartened by some encouraging conversations I've had in the last few days with women and men alike.

As for the ADESCO, it is lacking in pretty much every attribute a representative organization should possess. The executive board's communication with its constituency (the community) is minimal, it lacks strategic thinking and leadership, its officers don't know nor follow its by-laws, and enthusiasm for its purported mission is low. Crisanto, my host father and the ADESCO president, badly wants greater community buy-in and participation, yet seems at a loss for ways to encourage them. There's a lot of work to be done to return the ADESCO to an energetic and well-regarded community organization (I learned from Chris, the first PCV to serve here, that the ADESCO has clearly seen better days), but given the overall good nature of its members, I think I should be able to give it a shot in the arm while engendering habits that will help ensure its proper functioning beyond the term of my service.

Ending on a light note, I gave my host mom here a jar of strawberry jam as a gift upon my return from PST-2. Two day later, she approached me with the empty jar and gleefully told me how much she enjoyed the mermelada. Surprised by how quickly the jam disappeared, I asked her what she ate it with. Bread?...Tortilla? She shot me a puzzled look. I'm assuming she at least used a spoon...

Toreras.edu

(Written on Wednesday, Nov 13 but just posting it today.)

With just ten days left until I return to Nuevo Cuscatlan for PST-II (a second round of training ending December 14), a rhythm hasn't particularly set in for me in Toreras, and I don't think it will for a while. Some days are full of activities—house visits, community meetings, social gatherings, and time spent at the school—while others are mostly devoid of structure. For instance, today Crisanto and I were supposed to meet at 9am with some officials who work for INSAFORP, a Salvadoran GO that offers free vocational training. It's now past noon and they haven't yet shown up at the house. There's still a chance they'll come—Salvadorans are admittedly not a punctual people—but tardando over three hours is uncharacteristic even in this culture. If they indeed don't come, I won't have anything on my agenda until 4pm, when I'll head down to the cancha to play soccer with some local guys (I am abysmal at soccer but they guys are painstakingly polite about it). In many Peace Corps sites I'd be able to fill these gaps in my day by heading to communal spaces—a comedor (informal restaurant), a church courtyard, or any other centrally-located place where people gather at all hours—to strike up conversations with locals and score some confianza points, but in my site no such spaces exist. This is largely a function of the geographical sparsity of Toreras' population, though I can't help but wonder if a centrally-located communal space did exist, if people would gather there in an if you build it, they will come fashion.

Contributing to the quietness in Toreras at the moment is that school is out for the year as of last week. The Salvadoran school year ends in early November and begins in early January, which is pretty logical if you ask me. At this point, there's some uncertainty about the fate of the Toreras' little school. I guess this as as good a segue as any to provide a brief overview of education in my site:

Toreras has a three-classroom, pabularia-through-sixth-grade school located centrally enough that few children need to walk more than an hour to arrive (this is a feat in my site). Currently it has 43 registered students (though only 20-25 regularly attend class) and two teachers. One teacher handles parbularia (essentially pre-K) through second grade, while the other (who doubles as the school director) teaches third through sixth grades (yes, this means the third and sixth grades, for example, are taught concurrently in the same classroom). The school day lasts from 8am to noon, though it sometimes doesn't start on time, as children consistently arrive late. Also, class is often cancelled, because the teachers consistently have mandatory Ministry of Education (MINED) meetings or trainings to attend. When only one of the teachers has a MINED commitment on a particular day, the other takes in that teacher's students and teaches all the kids at once. However, when both have commitments, they simply cancel school, as substitute teachers are non-existent in rural El Salvador. This happens far too often. In fact, since I've arrived in Toreras, school has been cancelled at least once every week, usually more. One week, class was cancelled three out of the five days. The cancellations contribute to the school's horrendous attendance rate, as students are regularly unsure whether they have class on any given morning, and the teachers have no way of efficiently communicating this information to the families.

Public schools in El Salvador have miniscule budgets, so aside from desks, chairs, whiteboards, whiteboard markers, and aging MINED-issued textbooks, the Toreras school has little in the way of instructional materials. Teachers often improvise classroom activities with discarded newspapers, which, with a little creativity, can make surprisingly compelling classroom tools.

The uncertainly about the future stems from the fact that next year, the number of registered students at Toreras will drop to 38, the result of which is likely to be the axing of one teaching position. The one teacher (at this point it is unclear whether this person will be one of the current teachers or someone new altogether) will likely teach the younger half of students in the morning (8am-12pm) and the older kids in the afternoon (1pm-5pm). It's unclear whether this situation is any better or worse than the status quo. If, like this year, the one teacher has regular MINED commitments during the week, we can expect school to be cancelled even more than it was this year, as the teacher won't have a colleague to take over his or her students on these days. However, perhaps splitting the little kids and the older kids between the morning and the afternoon will help students focus and lead to better learning. On the other hand, asking the older students to walk to school at the hottest hour of the day has the potential to depress attendance even further. I could go on and on this handing and other handing, so we'll just have to wait and see how well the new system works, assuming MINED puts it in place. In any event, low school attendance is one issue I'm eager to try to address in my site. It won't be easy, due to the attitudes of many parents (and grandparents, in the case of those children whose parents have immigrated to the U.S.) and the ever-onerous geography of the community, but it's clearly one of the community's gravest deficiencies. I'll blog about it in more detail once I have studied it further.

If you're wondering, beyond sixth grade, students from Toreras have the option of going to schools in nearby Carpintero or Lajitas for seventh through ninth grades (they'll generally go to whichever school is closer to their house). Almost all students who bother to finish sixth grade continue on to complete ninth as well. For the equivalent of high school (called bachillerato, which includes tenth through twelfth grades), students from Toreras essentially only have the option of studying a distancia, a program that involves attending class on Saturdays only, as the only Monday-through-Friday bachillerato program in the municipality is located in downtown Polorós, requiring a $1 bus ride each way to come and go. While some families can afford $10 a week to transport their teenager to class (though many cannot), few students or families can reconcile the time commitment. To come and go, a Torereño would have to leave the house every morning around 4:45am to board the 5:30am bus in the neighboring village in order to arrive at school by the time class starts at 7am. After class lets out at 4pm (the bachillerato school day is substantially longer than that of ninth grade and below), he or she would have to take the 5:15pm bus back toward Toreras, arriving home at approximately 7pm (the exact time would depend on the distance between the student's house and the bus stop). A 4:45am to 7pm school day is a tough sell to families that are tight-knit and often depend on their teenagers for domestic (females) and agricultural (males) labor. Thus, the Saturday-only program is the only palatable way for Torereños to complete their secondary educations, though still many call it quits after ninth grade.

So there's the education situation in my site, in a nutshell. The above description doesn't channel this sentiment whatsoever, but despite the challenges, the school in Toreras is a very happy place. The children that show up are generally gleeful and get along with each other (they're practically all cousins, if not siblings, after all), and the two teachers care about their learning.

That's enough about education, for now. In the coming days, I'll be continuing with confianza-building by going to a couple of rezos (events honoring people who have recently passed away), a soccer tournament, and the annual fair in Lajitas, which people in Toreras seem to be looking forward to. On Monday I went swimming in the nearby river with some of the local kids, which was a lot of fun. And last week I was seated at the mesa de honor (table of honor) at two separate graduations, which I found amusing as someone who just turned 22. I even got to hand out some of the diplomas.