Before we get to the nitty, and eventually the gritty, I´d like to inform you about trees. Disfrútelos.
I have been organizing a project to ´reforest´ the community of La Peña for the past two weeks. All has been going well, as far as I can tell, and by this time next week vamos a sembrar around 400 trees in my community. The community has been extremely supportive of the project and considering there are only 32 families I think that 400 trees is an accomplishment. Maybe this puts a perspective on the situation: it would cost $15 to buy 100 trees, and of the 32 families in my community we have raised enough money to buy 400. The school could use some serious sombras, and we are going to plant a whole lot of them at the fútbol cancha because every year more and more of it gets washed away with the rainy season. I´ll tell you in two years if it worked.
Each palito costs $.15 with the exception of coffee and cacao. There were about 20 different trees to choose from but, for all you botonists out there, the majority bought Marañon Azucaron, Anona, Paterna, and Pinos (my darling Pinos). I am ecstatic.
During the census I found that over half of the families in my communities do not have latrines. That´s not good. Especially during the dry season when there is no foliage. We´ll have to do something about that.
I finally entered my new house yesterday!
There is a red brick house that I will be moving into in June. It´s small, about the size of an oxcart, has no windows, a dirt floor, no latrine, and is currently being cared for by an assembly of bats, scorpions, and round brown things that could easily be mistaken for cow dung. We fumigated yesterday and got rid of the bats. Lets hope by the time we are putting in the cement for the floor that the scorpions have moved into their in-laws´ basement.
The god question.
First and foremost, I´m blaming this misstep on extreme hunger and facing down a large bowl of beans and an avocado. I never stood a chance.
During Wedneday´s mass I was back home with the profa (a woman the Minestry of Education ships in for 3 days a week to teach at the school), Niña Marta, and Jamilé looking at Guanaco the same way one does a socially acceptable morsel of food, or one of those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from Berkshire. I was simply minding my business thinking that the next person who came within 2 meters of me was losing a deltoid muscle in an effort to spurn world hunger. Then it came. A steaming bowl of fried beans, fresh queso, homemade chili water, and that damned avocado.
In an effort to spit beans everywhere I decided to ask the profa why she wasn´t attending the service at the church tonight. I actually couldn´t remember her ever going, and was curious if maybe I had in my midsts another impartial individual. Boy was I mistaken.
Act 3: Scene 16: Greg eats beans with a side of foot.
The scene: Rectangular table, profa at the short end, me on a long end, Niña Marta and Jamilé shuffling by bringing all sorts of goodies for us to eat.
ACTION!
Me: Profa, Buen Provecho. how are those beans? (I´ll translate for you)
Profa: Gracias, igual. Good. How are yours?
Me: Stupendous, thanks. You´re not gonna go to the church tonight?
P: No. I do not believe so.
Me: Oh, no? For what not?
P: It doesn´t please me. You will be going?
Me: No, it does not please me, either.
P: Did you go when you were living in the states?
Me: No, it wasn´t my culture.
P: Oh, but do you believe in God?
(Mouth full of beans and an incoming spoonful of a podiatrist´s dream)
Me: No
(Imagine a Zach Morris ´time out´ moment in the middle of the tropics. Imagine that damn scratching vinyl that brings an entire mob of people to attention. Food serving stopped, dogs hid their faces in the paws, an angel lost its wings, and my answer hung in the air in the exact same way that bricks do not.)
I spent the next hours feeling extraordinarily uncomfortable, about as uncomfortable as one can feel thousands of miles away from liberal Massachusetts, trying to explain myself in a language that I can barely tie my shoes in. From all angles and from all people who were showing up to the house after church I sweated out these answers and more...
I was never brought to church as a child and was never taught religion.
I cannot say that I would like to learn now. I think it may honestly be too late.
No, I do not thank god for a safe day before I go to sleep every night and I do not thank god for every morning that he provides me.
Yes, I think that the church is important to teach people to stay off drugs and be good people.
I was told I would have a hard time with this in El Salvador but I hope that La Peña can understand that this is an exchange in culture, not complete assimilation, and I am not trying to offend anyone.
I think that I have a good heart and have the same morals as someone who goes to church without ever having learned these lessons directly from the Bible.
Well, (backtracking to save my life) I do believe there is someone that is helping us people out but I do not know yet who it is and do not belong to a certain religion.
Please pick up your jaw, Niña Marta, I just found your tongue under my backpack.
All humour aside, I took this very seriously. Back in Washington DC before we were shipped out to San Vicente my friend Milton asked me what I would say if asked this question in my community. Naively I said I would tell them the truth: no, I do not believe in god and do not practice religion. He equated it to someone being in the United States saying that Hitler was in the right (not reich) 70 years ago. It is literally living in a community where 99.4% of people (in all of El Salvador) believe one thing and will go to the grave for it, and you being the only outcast. We agreed then, on February 2nd, that he was right, and that I must swallow my Pioneer Valley pride and avoid telling the truth at all costs for the sake of confianza.
Well, Wednesday night I thought my community was different and they are not. Granted things were only extremely awkward for about 4 hours, but I was absolutely convinced that within this extremely Catholic community I had ruined my shot. I guess the upshot is that the truth has been told, the downside is that it never had to be. I couldn´t help but feel as if I offended my overly hospitable hosts but by morning everything was back to normal, if not better.
Oh, and I just got a call from Tito. He said the brown things are, in fact, cow dung but they are going to go halfies on rent with me so I shouldn´t be worried.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
El Censo... Do you have erectile dysfunction?
I´ve been doing house visits lately.
As a Rural Health and Sanitation (I don´t know who I fooled to convince them that I could teach people how to be more sanitary) volunteer you must conduct a census of your community. This is another way in which I have been other worldy fortunate in La Peña because there are less houses in my entire community than there are on School St in Hudson, or even Hobart in Amherst... does that give you an idea?
Although the census seems like a pain in the ass, it really is a hell of a time if you just remember to not take yourself too seriously.
I find that I am walking up to adobe houses without doors, fully equiped with my trademark backpack, a hefty pachinga of water, and a runt of a dog following rather skiddishly about 3 meters behind me, making every attempt to introduce myself to people that have already heard everything I have ever said in La Peña through the grapevine.
Each interraction unfolds relatively similarly. Lets watch...
Wearing my best wrinkled khakis (with appropriate paw prints on my lap from the beggar at dinner the night before) and my $1.99 pink collared shirt from the Salvation Army (yup, that one) I stroll up to a house full of women and children who try their hardest to act surprised that I am there. I stride gingerly toward the barking dogs making zero to less quick movements until their attention turns to Guanaco and they absolutely pommel him. I´m almost in.
I often wonder if the families know that they all have the same passwords to enter into their homes. I´ve been extraordinarily lucky with ´buenas tardes´ followed by a ´con permiso´ and I´m welcomed as if I were a long lost Gringo member of the family. Even an ýankee doodle´would throw any unwanted intruders for a loop, but I have been a serious beneficiary of homogenous passwords. Either I am tricking these wonderful people or they are, in fact, wonderful people and genuinely are embracing me. I still haven´t figured it out yet, but I´ve got a team on it.
Sweating profusely I am asked to sit down in a plastic chair put at exactly the wrong angle to be able to comfortably see anything going on around me. I proceed to ask how everyone is doing, if they´ve got time to humor me, and if they´d care to take a seat themselves. Most say bien, sí, and no, respectively. I proceed with this uncomfortable conversation telling them who I am (all they hear is ´Gringo´), why I am there (to change the world), and that this information, however intrusive it is (and it really is), va a ayudarme a conocer la comunidad. Mind you that the conversation is made exponentially more uncomfortable because my chair situation has me staring the back corner of a latrine with parrot poop falling on my crocs or am straining my neck at a 176 degree angle in order to see that the woman I am speaking with is too busy throwing rocks at chickens to notice that I am, in fact, fighting through all sorts of fecal matter to inquire about how many times she has had diarrea in the past 2 months. This is about the point when I start to take myself a lot less seriously.
The census couldn´t be more fun after that moment. I ask each family (I spare no one) about remesas (awkward), hand washing, teeth brushing, breasts, trash burning, chagas and dengue, and then we get to the serious stuff. ¨How much do you know about AIDS?,¨ ¨Who here decides how many children you are going to have?¨ - this is a fun one because the mother who has birthed 14 children says ¨nosotros dos, ambos¨ - ¨when did you last have a pap smear?¨ (and for the love of god who came up with the name ´pap smear?´ Furthurmore, who has the authority to keep it after all these years of those words struggling through grimaced lips? I call for a revolution!), and ¨Señor, do you have problems getting it up?¨
This is how I get to know the community. It really is a fun time. People here are extraordinarily shy because I am the first gringo that they´ve ever worked with but I think its a lot of fun to just dive in head first. Throw every family a ¨Hey, how are you?¨ and follow it up with the knockout blow ¨Do you two have problems in the sack?¨ Granted, the answers aren´t the same that they would give a licensed professional, but to me thats not the point.
The census has been helping me do two things: with questions like these it shows that I am here to work. I am going to ask the hard questions, I am going to show up at your doorstep whether you like it or not, and I am going to write down things about you that you definitely do not want me to write down. This census is a first for the people of my community and with questions like these any other conversation we could possibly have seem natural and easy.
The second thing it helps me do is be myself. I´m strange, I say stupid things, I do stupid things, and in large groups the masses tend to ostracize people like me. But when I show up at your doorstep my strangeness isn´t amplified, its made more personal. Our funny moments or slip ups in Spanish or miscommunications aren´t public fodder, they are inside jokes. These moments are no longer gossip between everybody about how it was weird when the gringo tripped over a stone walking past the church, these moments become ¨Míre pues! Se acuera cuando Gregorio nos dijo que no le gusta llevar pantelones! Que chiste, eso hombre!¨ In the process of the census I lose my lore and I gain a name, and these mishaps become moments shared and not moments seen.
And for that I will continue to ask each grown man that I stumble upon how much trouble, if any, they are having producing baby #15.
As a Rural Health and Sanitation (I don´t know who I fooled to convince them that I could teach people how to be more sanitary) volunteer you must conduct a census of your community. This is another way in which I have been other worldy fortunate in La Peña because there are less houses in my entire community than there are on School St in Hudson, or even Hobart in Amherst... does that give you an idea?
Although the census seems like a pain in the ass, it really is a hell of a time if you just remember to not take yourself too seriously.
I find that I am walking up to adobe houses without doors, fully equiped with my trademark backpack, a hefty pachinga of water, and a runt of a dog following rather skiddishly about 3 meters behind me, making every attempt to introduce myself to people that have already heard everything I have ever said in La Peña through the grapevine.
Each interraction unfolds relatively similarly. Lets watch...
Wearing my best wrinkled khakis (with appropriate paw prints on my lap from the beggar at dinner the night before) and my $1.99 pink collared shirt from the Salvation Army (yup, that one) I stroll up to a house full of women and children who try their hardest to act surprised that I am there. I stride gingerly toward the barking dogs making zero to less quick movements until their attention turns to Guanaco and they absolutely pommel him. I´m almost in.
I often wonder if the families know that they all have the same passwords to enter into their homes. I´ve been extraordinarily lucky with ´buenas tardes´ followed by a ´con permiso´ and I´m welcomed as if I were a long lost Gringo member of the family. Even an ýankee doodle´would throw any unwanted intruders for a loop, but I have been a serious beneficiary of homogenous passwords. Either I am tricking these wonderful people or they are, in fact, wonderful people and genuinely are embracing me. I still haven´t figured it out yet, but I´ve got a team on it.
Sweating profusely I am asked to sit down in a plastic chair put at exactly the wrong angle to be able to comfortably see anything going on around me. I proceed to ask how everyone is doing, if they´ve got time to humor me, and if they´d care to take a seat themselves. Most say bien, sí, and no, respectively. I proceed with this uncomfortable conversation telling them who I am (all they hear is ´Gringo´), why I am there (to change the world), and that this information, however intrusive it is (and it really is), va a ayudarme a conocer la comunidad. Mind you that the conversation is made exponentially more uncomfortable because my chair situation has me staring the back corner of a latrine with parrot poop falling on my crocs or am straining my neck at a 176 degree angle in order to see that the woman I am speaking with is too busy throwing rocks at chickens to notice that I am, in fact, fighting through all sorts of fecal matter to inquire about how many times she has had diarrea in the past 2 months. This is about the point when I start to take myself a lot less seriously.
The census couldn´t be more fun after that moment. I ask each family (I spare no one) about remesas (awkward), hand washing, teeth brushing, breasts, trash burning, chagas and dengue, and then we get to the serious stuff. ¨How much do you know about AIDS?,¨ ¨Who here decides how many children you are going to have?¨ - this is a fun one because the mother who has birthed 14 children says ¨nosotros dos, ambos¨ - ¨when did you last have a pap smear?¨ (and for the love of god who came up with the name ´pap smear?´ Furthurmore, who has the authority to keep it after all these years of those words struggling through grimaced lips? I call for a revolution!), and ¨Señor, do you have problems getting it up?¨
This is how I get to know the community. It really is a fun time. People here are extraordinarily shy because I am the first gringo that they´ve ever worked with but I think its a lot of fun to just dive in head first. Throw every family a ¨Hey, how are you?¨ and follow it up with the knockout blow ¨Do you two have problems in the sack?¨ Granted, the answers aren´t the same that they would give a licensed professional, but to me thats not the point.
The census has been helping me do two things: with questions like these it shows that I am here to work. I am going to ask the hard questions, I am going to show up at your doorstep whether you like it or not, and I am going to write down things about you that you definitely do not want me to write down. This census is a first for the people of my community and with questions like these any other conversation we could possibly have seem natural and easy.
The second thing it helps me do is be myself. I´m strange, I say stupid things, I do stupid things, and in large groups the masses tend to ostracize people like me. But when I show up at your doorstep my strangeness isn´t amplified, its made more personal. Our funny moments or slip ups in Spanish or miscommunications aren´t public fodder, they are inside jokes. These moments are no longer gossip between everybody about how it was weird when the gringo tripped over a stone walking past the church, these moments become ¨Míre pues! Se acuera cuando Gregorio nos dijo que no le gusta llevar pantelones! Que chiste, eso hombre!¨ In the process of the census I lose my lore and I gain a name, and these mishaps become moments shared and not moments seen.
And for that I will continue to ask each grown man that I stumble upon how much trouble, if any, they are having producing baby #15.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Our 51 Seconds of Swearing In
This is the 51 seconds they devoted to the United States Peace Corps on the news here in El Salvador. I was sitting nowhere in sight and quite possibly wasn´t even there at all because I spent most of my time harassing people for hot dogs and cheese doodles.
Oh, there were cheeseburgers, too.
Later in the night everyone from our training class was given superlatives. Megan got ¨Biggest security risk,¨ Sam got ¨Most likely to receive remesas,¨ Paul got ¨Most likely to impregnate a Salvadoran girl and then leave her,¨ Jordan (our quintessential UVA girl) got ¨Most likely to wear white linen to pick up poop.¨ My problem is that I must give off a funny vibe. I got ¨Most likely to ET (Early Terminate) and become a surfer.¨ Early Termination is when someone decides to leave their community early for whatever personal reason they may have. The thing about Early Termination is that here the staff also uses it when they want to get you the hell out (for whatever reason, drugs, guns, motorcycles) and stop pretending you´re in the Peace Corps. They give you the option to Early Terminate so you can still receive your benefits (and tell your daddy that you chose to leave) but technically, dropping it´s fancy name, you´ve been fired.
The uncomfortable thing is that I´ve been told more than once by more than 7 (so, 8) people that if anyone I am going to be ETed first. The thing is I have two daunting tasks ahead of me now... I gotta get kicked out and I still don´t know how to surf.
Oh, there were cheeseburgers, too.
Later in the night everyone from our training class was given superlatives. Megan got ¨Biggest security risk,¨ Sam got ¨Most likely to receive remesas,¨ Paul got ¨Most likely to impregnate a Salvadoran girl and then leave her,¨ Jordan (our quintessential UVA girl) got ¨Most likely to wear white linen to pick up poop.¨ My problem is that I must give off a funny vibe. I got ¨Most likely to ET (Early Terminate) and become a surfer.¨ Early Termination is when someone decides to leave their community early for whatever personal reason they may have. The thing about Early Termination is that here the staff also uses it when they want to get you the hell out (for whatever reason, drugs, guns, motorcycles) and stop pretending you´re in the Peace Corps. They give you the option to Early Terminate so you can still receive your benefits (and tell your daddy that you chose to leave) but technically, dropping it´s fancy name, you´ve been fired.
The uncomfortable thing is that I´ve been told more than once by more than 7 (so, 8) people that if anyone I am going to be ETed first. The thing is I have two daunting tasks ahead of me now... I gotta get kicked out and I still don´t know how to surf.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Niña Bonita
We´ve all got songs that remind us of the good times, right? We can all relate to how the Venga Boys makes us think of doing the bunny hop in JFK Middle School. I mean who wasn´t bouncing around like a sidways rabbit when those quacks (gender, anyone?) were screaming ¨BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!¨ I can´t hear Electric Feel by MGMT, Sweet Child o Mine by GNR, or the number one club hit ¨I Love You (You Love Me)¨ by Barney ft the Purple Dinosaur Band without being immediately teleported to the times when those songs meant something to me and ruled my eardrums.
Well I´ve got a new one and I´d like to share it with you. But before I do so I will explain to you exactly how often this song invades my private space...
There have been about 12 mornings in the past 10 weeks that I haven´t woken up to ¨OOO WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW.¨ I don´t remember the last time I had a meal without singing ¨yo nací para ti y tú también para mi!¨ to a 4 year old girl while spitting enough tortillas on the ground to feed the three dogs of the house. It´s so bad that I regularly slip up and call my host mother ¨mi dulce princesa¨ (she has 7 kids and is happily married to a man that can actually speak her language fluently). So bad I once spent $4.36 saldo just looking to put the damn song as my Salvadoran cellphone backtone. (For the record I am still without. I´m just trying to share the experience.) I sleep to this song, I use the latrine to this song, I walk to this song, and am currently typing this blog to the song. If you don´t understand the lyrics, don´t sweat it... I didn´t either the first time I fell in love with it. I know you will, too. Just make sure you listen to it while you´re doing everything that you do all day and you´ll start to realize you have a theme song. Like the Jeffersons.
ENJOY...The taste of Salvadoran Radio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMknaRGpm5I
I think the full acceptance into the community has begun and I am livid... They started allowing me to retrieve the misled soccer balls that fly ever-so-woefully off the mountain side. Before yesterday I would make extraordinarily convincing attempts to start running down the mountain and under the barbed wire before someone would inevitably stop me and tell me that they would bite that bullet instead. The same old song and dance would ensue with me making very well practiced (and facetious) steps down the mountain before those quick footed buggers (accidentally) overtook me and went crashing through the zacate in pursuit of the pelota. This, as they say, was the life.
Yesterday I made three excursions down the mountain for four different balls and I have never in my life been so exhausted. It took me no less than 25 minutes to retrieve one ball and begin my off balance trip skyward when I looked up and saw another flying over the barbed wire and soaring so elegantly over my head and down the mountain to the exact same place the other had made its peace.
Long story short, I turned around, got the other ball and fell hard on my head climbing over the barbed wire to get back on the field. I still scored 4 goals, suckers. You can´t tucker me out!
HOLY HELL! No joke, this girls cell phone just started ringing next to me... Niña Bonita. I seriously hope that helps prove my point.
Naturally the conversation started like this ¨Halo. va pues!¨and ended like this ¨va. va. vaya. vaya pues. vaya. pues sí. vaya pues.¨
This place is stereotypical 1950´s in the United States. Imagine Grease with a Latin American twist. Men carry small pocket sized mirrors around and share them in public, constantly checking to make sure that their hair is in perfect position. That alone is funny enough, but they craziest part about it is this...
I live in a town of 170 people. There are no more than these 170 people without a serious walk of about 45 minutes. They see the same people all day everyday but after working their asses off in the fields, cutting trees down with machetes, they go home, shower, put at least 4 OZ of the best hair gel money can buy in their well kept black locks, stroll over to the nearest (and only) tienda in town and sit around doing pull ups, arm wrestling, and listening to Niña Bonita with the rest of the well styled boys of the town. There aren´t women around, there aren´t cameras, and there isn´t even a 1% chance of seeing someone that anyone is trying to impress but they, without fail, will sit around in small circles combing their hair in the reflections of mirrors about the size of a modest coffee table coaster.
(That said... They look infinitely better than I look at every single moment of every day. If they are looking to impress anyone I would call that a rather disappointing victory...they´ve impressed a male gringo.)
The women work entirely too hard to be concerned about their looks all day, by the way. So its a crazy reverse role here that I still not used to. The men are overly vain and concerned about their appearance and the women just work their asses off all day and probably haven´t seen since before last Sunday´s church service.
Through the help of a 17 year old aptly named Salvador and my host father Don Santos I have finally obtained my machete. It´s beautiful. Now I just gotta find some trees that need cutting down and I´ll put it to good use.
Perdimos, también. Real Madrid lost rather pathetically to Barcelona this past Saturday in the clasico. Thats a huge deal around here. The country is almost perfectly divided into Barca and Madrid camps. I swear to god these teams ruin marriages and make parents disown their children. Pick the wrong side during the clasico and you´re likely to be booed out of your own house and sleeping in the hammock.
I slept on the hammock Saturday night.
I´m craving a stupid ass story from home. Who cares to share?
Well I´ve got a new one and I´d like to share it with you. But before I do so I will explain to you exactly how often this song invades my private space...
There have been about 12 mornings in the past 10 weeks that I haven´t woken up to ¨OOO WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW.¨ I don´t remember the last time I had a meal without singing ¨yo nací para ti y tú también para mi!¨ to a 4 year old girl while spitting enough tortillas on the ground to feed the three dogs of the house. It´s so bad that I regularly slip up and call my host mother ¨mi dulce princesa¨ (she has 7 kids and is happily married to a man that can actually speak her language fluently). So bad I once spent $4.36 saldo just looking to put the damn song as my Salvadoran cellphone backtone. (For the record I am still without. I´m just trying to share the experience.) I sleep to this song, I use the latrine to this song, I walk to this song, and am currently typing this blog to the song. If you don´t understand the lyrics, don´t sweat it... I didn´t either the first time I fell in love with it. I know you will, too. Just make sure you listen to it while you´re doing everything that you do all day and you´ll start to realize you have a theme song. Like the Jeffersons.
ENJOY...The taste of Salvadoran Radio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMknaRGpm5I
I think the full acceptance into the community has begun and I am livid... They started allowing me to retrieve the misled soccer balls that fly ever-so-woefully off the mountain side. Before yesterday I would make extraordinarily convincing attempts to start running down the mountain and under the barbed wire before someone would inevitably stop me and tell me that they would bite that bullet instead. The same old song and dance would ensue with me making very well practiced (and facetious) steps down the mountain before those quick footed buggers (accidentally) overtook me and went crashing through the zacate in pursuit of the pelota. This, as they say, was the life.
Yesterday I made three excursions down the mountain for four different balls and I have never in my life been so exhausted. It took me no less than 25 minutes to retrieve one ball and begin my off balance trip skyward when I looked up and saw another flying over the barbed wire and soaring so elegantly over my head and down the mountain to the exact same place the other had made its peace.
Long story short, I turned around, got the other ball and fell hard on my head climbing over the barbed wire to get back on the field. I still scored 4 goals, suckers. You can´t tucker me out!
HOLY HELL! No joke, this girls cell phone just started ringing next to me... Niña Bonita. I seriously hope that helps prove my point.
Naturally the conversation started like this ¨Halo. va pues!¨and ended like this ¨va. va. vaya. vaya pues. vaya. pues sí. vaya pues.¨
This place is stereotypical 1950´s in the United States. Imagine Grease with a Latin American twist. Men carry small pocket sized mirrors around and share them in public, constantly checking to make sure that their hair is in perfect position. That alone is funny enough, but they craziest part about it is this...
I live in a town of 170 people. There are no more than these 170 people without a serious walk of about 45 minutes. They see the same people all day everyday but after working their asses off in the fields, cutting trees down with machetes, they go home, shower, put at least 4 OZ of the best hair gel money can buy in their well kept black locks, stroll over to the nearest (and only) tienda in town and sit around doing pull ups, arm wrestling, and listening to Niña Bonita with the rest of the well styled boys of the town. There aren´t women around, there aren´t cameras, and there isn´t even a 1% chance of seeing someone that anyone is trying to impress but they, without fail, will sit around in small circles combing their hair in the reflections of mirrors about the size of a modest coffee table coaster.
(That said... They look infinitely better than I look at every single moment of every day. If they are looking to impress anyone I would call that a rather disappointing victory...they´ve impressed a male gringo.)
The women work entirely too hard to be concerned about their looks all day, by the way. So its a crazy reverse role here that I still not used to. The men are overly vain and concerned about their appearance and the women just work their asses off all day and probably haven´t seen since before last Sunday´s church service.
Through the help of a 17 year old aptly named Salvador and my host father Don Santos I have finally obtained my machete. It´s beautiful. Now I just gotta find some trees that need cutting down and I´ll put it to good use.
Perdimos, también. Real Madrid lost rather pathetically to Barcelona this past Saturday in the clasico. Thats a huge deal around here. The country is almost perfectly divided into Barca and Madrid camps. I swear to god these teams ruin marriages and make parents disown their children. Pick the wrong side during the clasico and you´re likely to be booed out of your own house and sleeping in the hammock.
I slept on the hammock Saturday night.
I´m craving a stupid ass story from home. Who cares to share?
Monday, April 5, 2010
Questions from home
These are questions that I am fielding at the very moment on our beloved (damn near Holy) Facebook chat. This installment is kinda from the horse´s mouth. Please understand that these questions are a far cry from verbatim and that I may have embelished more than my fair share of silly ass interpretations of your (rather surprisingly) valid questions.
Disclaimer: I do not often use Facebook chat, in fact I think that I frequented the circus more often, but it was, in fact, a phenomenal tool to catch up with you weirdos.
So, Greg, what are you doing in La Peña?
Well, little Jimmy, I am just hanging out. For these next few months I guess all that is really asked of me is to not only get to know my community but to let them get to know me. In this culture its all about confianza - people here have a lot of pena - and without them trusting you it is almost impossible to get anything worthwhile accomplished. So for the moment I am living with a family in a back room of the house. I´ve got a bed, my maleta, and a dog...not much else. For these few months I do exactly as the people of La Peña do. When they milk cows, I learn as quickly as I possibly can to milk cows. When they go to the Rio Lempa for some bañando, me baño, tambien, when they are playing futbol, I run my lily white ass all around that soccer field with as much zeal as I can possibly muster. My job at this moment is to gain the trust of my community. I want to share an extraorinarily corny quote, but priceless and invaluably true nonetheless, from a former volunteer: ¨Your community will not want to know what you know until they know that you know what they know.¨ My job right now is to work my ass off trying to learn what it is that they know so that when it comes time for me to share whatever knowledge or skills I can with my community they will be receptive y, tal vez, van a venir con gusto y ganas.
Why the hell can´t you spell anything correctly?
Oh, Suzy, you little jerk face. I can´t spell things correctly because for one, I am not as smart as I let on. Number two, these keyboards are just different enough from the ones in the states that I can make mistakes and not even notice. So maybe I am a little too careless on facebook chat, but give me a break, won´t you? Why don´t you try pushing ¨AltGr¨ and then the 2 button to get your fancy little @ sign, or having your ? be next to the zero and see how easy that is to grow accustomed to! I hate you!
Tell me some food things, Gregory.
Well, Cassina (as if it´d be anyone else), I eat beans. Every meal of everyday there are bowls of beans. To compliment the beans they give me tortillas. To compliment tortillas they give me rice. Those three make up my overly health concious diet. I get cheese, too, which is really nice because its made from the milk that we get in the mornings so its always really, really fresh. I do not eat beef. I eat chicken once a week. I eat fish once a month. Where is the BJ´s or Sam´s Club when you need ten dozen eggs?!
On top of that, Cassina, cooking here is very difficult because every single meal (desayuno, refrigerio, almuerzo, cena) is all cooked over open flame with real wood. Cooking in the woods is just as simple as cooking in the kitchen. Nothing is easy in the kitchen and everything takes forever.
On that note, I´ve tried making tortillas and pupusas. They are the closest things to impossible since Dan Jenks saying nice things.
So, Corm on the Cob, what do you mean by projects?
Well if it isn´t the Barnacle, doing all sorts of barnacling on the World Wide Web. AJ, projects can be anything from building a new Casa Comunal, to teaching people to wash their hands after they use the loo. I could start the worlds first backflip team and bring in Witzie as the special guest, international superstar, to hold a camp for a week if I thought that it would, in any way, help the community members of La Peña. Ultimately, my job is to find out what my people need, get them to actually say it out loud, then see who is actually interested in helping me accomplish it. I will hold meetings to feel out what are some large projects (like training and hiring a health promotor for La Peña), and will have other smaller projects as well such as teaching English and holding sanitation charlas.
If they want a backflip team, I got Witzie on speed dial, if he can´t make it I´ll settle for a handspring team and I´m bringing in the big guns for that one: Kid Cement as head coach and the Worm and Jack Barber for examples of what not to do.
I guess that´s really it as far as question fielding goes. Got bored of it really quickly.
Eventually, once I learned how to remember things, I wasn´t bored at all.
-Albert Camus The Stranger (The Outsider)
Last week my counterpart, a man by the name of Alfredo, asked me if I wanted to help him retrieve his cow from the mountains so that he could bring it to a place with better water. ¨Hell ya!¨ I said, immediately regretting saying that (because he doesn´t speak English and all my excitement was lost in the lack of translation) and followed quickly and rather sullenly with a ¨Sí, hombre.¨
At about 7 AM we set off for the mountains, he with his machete, me with a terribly goofy smile. By about 8 AM Alfredo was pointing to some trees that seemed like just a few meters up the mountain (in reality was an hour later) explaining to me that the clima was much more fresca allí and that there were a lot of pine trees. ¨Wow,¨ I thought in my immediate excitement ¨pine trees! Holy shit, I know what he just said to me!¨ (I embellish my lack of understanding of this language for you, the readers.)
I mean, let´s face it, most of you who are reading this have grown up your whole lives around pine trees. You spend literally a dozen hours of every day year round with the smell, the aura of pine trees encumbering every one of your five senses. From home there are a few things I miss besides great company and they are: Celtics, mashed potatos, memory foam mattress pad, and the last slice of pizza. Now I understand that I have not been gone for long, barely over two months, but I cannot explain the feeling of nostalgia that coursed through every vein in my body, firing every nerve in the system, pulling what some call dimples (I call wrinkles) into their rightful place to the right and left of the largest smile I´ve ever employed when the scent of pine trees swept over me. There wasn´t one single memory that I was thinking of, and yet there wasn´t one single memory that escaped me. Alfredo, if even for a second, disappeared, lost in the midst of Amherst, cold winters, Meme´s cooking, the Nut House, growing up slowly, family, friendships and relationships cultivated over the past 22 years in the presence of easily one of the most underrated yet distinct ambiences I´ve ever chanced upon. For a moment I was eating at the Bar Lunch, riding bikes around the rotary, jumping into Puffer´s Pond, and walking into Boyden as the sun set at 4 PM. Home.
Slowly but surely Alfredo, the personification of my new home, pulled me from my reverie, took strong note of my elation and flightiness, and without saying a word took two ambitous and altruistic hacks at the nearest of my stimulants with his machete and gifted me a piece Hudson, a piece of Fitchburg, of Amherst, a smell that reminds me of every person who ran through my head for what felt like hours that day. It seemed like forever, and to be honest was probably less than a second. I didn´t faint, I didn´t cry, I didn´t lose my lunch, but I did put together a few moments of clarity, a few moments of genuine comfort, and let myself get lost in whatever it was that ran rampant in my mind that day.
There are very few ´things´ I sincerely miss back home, but you can add pine trees to the list.
Disclaimer: I do not often use Facebook chat, in fact I think that I frequented the circus more often, but it was, in fact, a phenomenal tool to catch up with you weirdos.
So, Greg, what are you doing in La Peña?
Well, little Jimmy, I am just hanging out. For these next few months I guess all that is really asked of me is to not only get to know my community but to let them get to know me. In this culture its all about confianza - people here have a lot of pena - and without them trusting you it is almost impossible to get anything worthwhile accomplished. So for the moment I am living with a family in a back room of the house. I´ve got a bed, my maleta, and a dog...not much else. For these few months I do exactly as the people of La Peña do. When they milk cows, I learn as quickly as I possibly can to milk cows. When they go to the Rio Lempa for some bañando, me baño, tambien, when they are playing futbol, I run my lily white ass all around that soccer field with as much zeal as I can possibly muster. My job at this moment is to gain the trust of my community. I want to share an extraorinarily corny quote, but priceless and invaluably true nonetheless, from a former volunteer: ¨Your community will not want to know what you know until they know that you know what they know.¨ My job right now is to work my ass off trying to learn what it is that they know so that when it comes time for me to share whatever knowledge or skills I can with my community they will be receptive y, tal vez, van a venir con gusto y ganas.
Why the hell can´t you spell anything correctly?
Oh, Suzy, you little jerk face. I can´t spell things correctly because for one, I am not as smart as I let on. Number two, these keyboards are just different enough from the ones in the states that I can make mistakes and not even notice. So maybe I am a little too careless on facebook chat, but give me a break, won´t you? Why don´t you try pushing ¨AltGr¨ and then the 2 button to get your fancy little @ sign, or having your ? be next to the zero and see how easy that is to grow accustomed to! I hate you!
Tell me some food things, Gregory.
Well, Cassina (as if it´d be anyone else), I eat beans. Every meal of everyday there are bowls of beans. To compliment the beans they give me tortillas. To compliment tortillas they give me rice. Those three make up my overly health concious diet. I get cheese, too, which is really nice because its made from the milk that we get in the mornings so its always really, really fresh. I do not eat beef. I eat chicken once a week. I eat fish once a month. Where is the BJ´s or Sam´s Club when you need ten dozen eggs?!
On top of that, Cassina, cooking here is very difficult because every single meal (desayuno, refrigerio, almuerzo, cena) is all cooked over open flame with real wood. Cooking in the woods is just as simple as cooking in the kitchen. Nothing is easy in the kitchen and everything takes forever.
On that note, I´ve tried making tortillas and pupusas. They are the closest things to impossible since Dan Jenks saying nice things.
So, Corm on the Cob, what do you mean by projects?
Well if it isn´t the Barnacle, doing all sorts of barnacling on the World Wide Web. AJ, projects can be anything from building a new Casa Comunal, to teaching people to wash their hands after they use the loo. I could start the worlds first backflip team and bring in Witzie as the special guest, international superstar, to hold a camp for a week if I thought that it would, in any way, help the community members of La Peña. Ultimately, my job is to find out what my people need, get them to actually say it out loud, then see who is actually interested in helping me accomplish it. I will hold meetings to feel out what are some large projects (like training and hiring a health promotor for La Peña), and will have other smaller projects as well such as teaching English and holding sanitation charlas.
If they want a backflip team, I got Witzie on speed dial, if he can´t make it I´ll settle for a handspring team and I´m bringing in the big guns for that one: Kid Cement as head coach and the Worm and Jack Barber for examples of what not to do.
I guess that´s really it as far as question fielding goes. Got bored of it really quickly.
Eventually, once I learned how to remember things, I wasn´t bored at all.
-Albert Camus The Stranger (The Outsider)
Last week my counterpart, a man by the name of Alfredo, asked me if I wanted to help him retrieve his cow from the mountains so that he could bring it to a place with better water. ¨Hell ya!¨ I said, immediately regretting saying that (because he doesn´t speak English and all my excitement was lost in the lack of translation) and followed quickly and rather sullenly with a ¨Sí, hombre.¨
At about 7 AM we set off for the mountains, he with his machete, me with a terribly goofy smile. By about 8 AM Alfredo was pointing to some trees that seemed like just a few meters up the mountain (in reality was an hour later) explaining to me that the clima was much more fresca allí and that there were a lot of pine trees. ¨Wow,¨ I thought in my immediate excitement ¨pine trees! Holy shit, I know what he just said to me!¨ (I embellish my lack of understanding of this language for you, the readers.)
I mean, let´s face it, most of you who are reading this have grown up your whole lives around pine trees. You spend literally a dozen hours of every day year round with the smell, the aura of pine trees encumbering every one of your five senses. From home there are a few things I miss besides great company and they are: Celtics, mashed potatos, memory foam mattress pad, and the last slice of pizza. Now I understand that I have not been gone for long, barely over two months, but I cannot explain the feeling of nostalgia that coursed through every vein in my body, firing every nerve in the system, pulling what some call dimples (I call wrinkles) into their rightful place to the right and left of the largest smile I´ve ever employed when the scent of pine trees swept over me. There wasn´t one single memory that I was thinking of, and yet there wasn´t one single memory that escaped me. Alfredo, if even for a second, disappeared, lost in the midst of Amherst, cold winters, Meme´s cooking, the Nut House, growing up slowly, family, friendships and relationships cultivated over the past 22 years in the presence of easily one of the most underrated yet distinct ambiences I´ve ever chanced upon. For a moment I was eating at the Bar Lunch, riding bikes around the rotary, jumping into Puffer´s Pond, and walking into Boyden as the sun set at 4 PM. Home.
Slowly but surely Alfredo, the personification of my new home, pulled me from my reverie, took strong note of my elation and flightiness, and without saying a word took two ambitous and altruistic hacks at the nearest of my stimulants with his machete and gifted me a piece Hudson, a piece of Fitchburg, of Amherst, a smell that reminds me of every person who ran through my head for what felt like hours that day. It seemed like forever, and to be honest was probably less than a second. I didn´t faint, I didn´t cry, I didn´t lose my lunch, but I did put together a few moments of clarity, a few moments of genuine comfort, and let myself get lost in whatever it was that ran rampant in my mind that day.
There are very few ´things´ I sincerely miss back home, but you can add pine trees to the list.
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