Women

I have been on the move, in one way or another, for what seems like too long.

I met Nora at the airport right before an enormous storm named Agatha decided to tear her pretty little way through western El Salvador and Guatamala. We arrived in Playa Tunco and never came close to stepping foot in the swollen ocean because of the storm. The waves were enormous and there were slim to no moments without rain. We made due with what we had, however, which was Jon Michael, KC, two Dans, and a Jessica, some pasta, a Police coverband, and the new word plorgan. Despite the rain it was the best weekend I could have ever been surprised with in my life even though I spent the weekend piggy-backing Nora through the flooded streets of Tunco because she didn´t want to get wet.
-Let´s take a vote... Does chivalry die with me? Yes ( ) No ( )-
I am going to say, in my very humble opinion, that chivalry does in fact die with me because technically I saved her life. Hurricane Agatha killed 11 people in El Salvador, over 80 in Guatemala, and 4 in Honduras. It could have been 12 if it wasn´t for my quick thinking heroics and amphibious footwear.

I think I owed her the piggy-backs, though. An off-the-cuff 3 day visit from Panama was unbelievable. It kinda sucked when all my Peace Corps friends said they liked her more and wished that she was in our group, but I think thats the response I get everytime I introduce her to my friends.

But now back to the whole volunteer thing going on down here.

I am currently in the midsts of my technical training back in San Vicente learning about worm composting, rabbit projects, latrines, making your own shampoo and cologne to start a microbusiness, gardening, NGO´s in the area, Stove Projects, and all sorts of resources in order to make me the best volunteer I can be.

By the time I left La Peña I had held meetings with the ADESCO, the women of the community, and the men of the community to scope out the ideas for projects when I get back in late June. Holding separate meetings in essential in Latin American communities where women are culturally subjugated to men and often have too much pena to even speak in front of their husbands. Knowing that women´s and men´s interests are vastly different, I insisted on having all three meetings entirely separate. The lives of the two genders could not possibly be more contrasting so naturally their loyalties to projects will be very, very unique.

Allowing the community to speak first is always genuinely breathtaking, and since I´ve become such a big fan of writing out dialogues between myself and the community I guess I´ll just stick with what works.

I present to you The Taming of the Shrewd Men of La Peña.
Greg: Good afternoon, horseriders.
(or knights or gentlemen, but I like to think of the word caballero very literally)
Generic La Peña Man: Goodday, mate!
Greg: (Skipping the small talk) So now that I have met all of the people here in La Peña, finished the census, and spoken with every family about what projects are most important to the community and should be approached first, what do you guys think?
GLPM: The cancha is far and away the most important thing. Every winter more and more of our precious stomping grounds is washed away by the heavy rains that get caught in these here mountains.
(Unison, if not a bunch of incoherent mumblings, ensues agreeing that the cancha is the be all, end all of La Peña´s issues)

Character Greg allows this verbal hot potato to go on for the better part of 25 minutes before he says, to the shock and awe of all men at the meeting:

Greg: As you all know, during the census I discovered that out of 33 houses here in La Peña only 7 have latrines. The rest of your families hacer pupu behind some other family´s mango tree or in the favorite grazing area of your largest cow, Negrita. On top of this, not one house in this community has potable water and the last time I asked where the water does come from the answer I received was ¨de las nubes.¨ Now do not get me wrong, I drink the same yellow water that falls off Don Santos´ roof into the guacal but don´t you think that maybe we should think of those long stretches of summer when it doesn´t rain for months? Furthermore, as a Rural Health and Sanitation Volunteer, I have to say that tackling these tasks are of some importance to the general salud of the community.
GLPM: You´re absolutely right. It is not healthy to drink rain water off the roof like we have been doing, and I think I am getting pretty sick of the Battle Shits competitions I have been losing to Negrita. It´s not healthy to live this way, especially when the cancha is eroding away...

Cut

And so it goes. We speak in circles of the cancha for as long as they can manage to prolong it, and then I try my hardests to make them realize that the taste of the rain water isn´t necessarily a good thing and that it does matter whether we are stepping on human shit or cow shit or chicken shit. We should not be stepping on human shit, is pretty much what it comes down to.

Now to my community´s full credit they have been living their entire lives this way - drinking rain water and pooping in the quebrada - and are probably thinking that they can do it for few more years without running into any serious issues. They are also right that with every rainy season the cancha at the top of the mountain erodes poco a poco. I get it. Fútbol or bust, right? But isn´t potable, if not dependable, water a natural human right? They would prefer to talk about the lack of space for their corner kicks than their children being able to build houses with running water. To each their own...maybe?

The next day I had a meeting with the women...myself and about 50 of La Peña´s best. The women did a significantly better job of being practical in the large scheme of things. Actually, they not only surprised me but infused in me such excitement about working with the women in the community that I felt like I was wasting time coming back to San Vicente for training. I wanted so badly to just start right in and spend every day working with the women of La Peña. They brought up that water and latrines are without question the most important projects and should be started in on immediately. Their next project was cocinas. This is a whole different beast unto itself. I mean absolutely no jokes in writing this out, rather, this is literally the horario of my host mother, Niña Marta, every single day.

5 AM. Wake up to make sure that all the food is cooked for the men before they go out to work the fields at 6. Tortillar, calentar los frijolles y cafe.
6 AM. Ordeñar the cows.
7 AM. Get the little kids to school.
8 AM. Get those cranky kids to school, finally.
9 AM. Tortillar y cocinar lunch for the men that are working in the fields.
10:30 AM. Hop on the mule, fully equipped with the lunch you have been cooking for the past two hours, and bring the men their lunches in the fields. This could take hours.
12 or 1. Return home, clean all the plates you brought to the men. Eat.
2 PM. Begin cooking dinner.
5 PM. Set dinner for all the men, making sure to bring them everything they demand while eating. Mamí, traigame una cuchilla. Mamí, café. Mamí, deme un tomate. Traígamela. Deme eso.
7 PM. Eat and clean up.
8 PM. Get the little kids to bed.
9 PM. Sleep.

Cocinas are the lives of these women. I think people, especially strong, independent women reading this, will have a hard time understanding that the inside of a cocina is the life of a married mother. It is the men´s duty to work their asses off all day in the fields and to bring home food. It is the woman´s duty to prepare it. Women make upwards of 200 tortillas a day. 8 people in my house. 3 meals a day. 6 or 7 tortillas per meal. Plus the dogs only eat tortillas. Imagine making 200 tortillas a day working over an open campfire.

If you can grasp that that schedule is a 7 day a week, 52 week a year horario then you will understand how important it is to women to have a more efficient, healthier place in which to do their work. That is what the cocina project is. The stoves we will hopefully raise enough money to buy for the families of the town burn the firewood more efficiently and cut down smoke by like 90 percent. This will greatly improve the quality of living of the women who have the opportunities to cook with it. We will still be burning wood, but a lot less of it and the women will be enhaling 90% less smoke.

The really catching part of the meeting was toward the end when I asked if they had any other ideas for projects and Niña Josephina responded ¨salud de la mujer.¨ With the full understanding that they could only be taught about the intracacies of women´s health by a 22 year old History major. The place exploded with ´si´ and ´uh huh´ and all women agreed it was of utter importance. The first miracle here is that these women were comfortable enough around me to speak up that this was important. The second, and infinitely more important miracle, is that they trust me, a weird new guy in town, to hold these rather taboo charlas and teach them all that I can about head to toe women´s health.
My jaw dropped. Not that women´s health is my particular specialty, or that I even have an immense interest in the subject, but the fact that these women came to this meeting with ganas, me han conocido, and decided with animation that it was important blew me away. They took the initiative. They want to know. They dropped all pena and brought this to my door step and that zeal alone gets me so excited to start this weekly project that I look forward to it the most. The enthusiasm and passion alone put away all shame I had and have me reading every and all resources on the subject. I can´t wait to start.

Look, you can say that the men came to the meeting with the same ganas to do a project to save their precious cancha, and they did, but do you understand how hard it must be for a 50 year old woman with 8 children to look a 22 year old stranger in the face in front of 50 people and say ¨I would like for you to teach me what tampons are. I want you to teach me about hormones. I want to know about condoms, breast cancer, cervical cancer, HIV, and how I can protect myself because I really just do not know.¨

This blew me away and continues to make me feel a small sense of pride that either I have some of the most progressive and animated women in the country in La Peña, or that I somehow won some small amount of confianza in my two short months in site. Either way, the women put their best foot forward in the face of shame and I had better bring my A game to match.


PS.
One of these days I am going to start personal profiles for my favorite people of the community. If I do one a week with a short funny story, a photo, and some likes and dislikes (not unlike the Dating Game, I guess) I could probably do close to 100 of my community members before I am out of here. That said, there is no way I will have the ganas to do one a week for two years so please do not hold your pretty little breath. What I am saying is that you people at home can start to put faces to names, names to stories, stories to not having heard from me for months, and maybe start to get a better picture of my community.