Last Monday I left home with a duffle bag, about 80 bucks, and a pretty girl. By the time I got back this past Monday I was broke, alone, and carrying nothing but a bag full of clothes almost as dirty as the ones I was wearing. I was exhausted and I was a mess. Thankfully I left my door unlocked for the week, the dirty dishes all over the place, the bed unmade, and found the inside of my house to be absolutely swamped in dead leaves that crept in through the holes in my roof. It was good to be home.
Its been a rough week over here in the brick house in La Peña, but thanks to some Puppy Chow and a few melted Snickers from America I have been weathering the storm.
For the week that I have been home there have been doing nightly posadas at different houses within the community. A posada is essentially a church service performed in a new house within the community every night and they play and sing songs for the La Navidad. Here is a video of Alfredo y los Chamaquitos.
Christmas is, for all intents and purposes, celebrated on the 24th of December here in La Peña. This is the story of Christmas 2010.
I crawled out of bed on Christmas Eve, still very aware of the obvious lack of levity within my four brick walls, with a poorly thought up list of distractions. I skipped coffee and breakfast and by 7 AM I was cursing every ant that has ever been hungry in its life. I haven’t got a very large wardrobe down here so I was extremely perturbed to find that some rogue insects found their way to my Biggs AP Chemistry T Shirt and chowed down. Gluttons. By 7:13 AM I was cursing mold for finally pounding my Amherst Rotary Club T Shirt into submission. RIP to two of my favorites. You’ve both served me well. To be honest I wouldn’t be terribly upset to be haunted by T Shirts of Christmas Past at this point. I’m running low on my stock from the Amherst Salvation Army. (That was not a plug. Please do not send me T Shirts. Seriously. I don’t care how many Target gift cards you got this holiday season.)
Niña Chepa had invited me to eat Christmas dinner at her house around ‘la hora de almuerzo’ so I showed up a little after the point of starvation. I didn’t really know what to expect so I dressed up nicely (it was Christmas after all), and strolled up her little dirt hill ready to eat whatever was to be put in front of me. I had totally forgotten about the pig. Man, you should have seen this damn pig.
I guess the story is that Niña Chepa and Don Andres have six kids still living with them in their house. Every single day you would see a different combination of the six kids going door to door in the community looking for suero by the gallon to give to their pig.
Side Note: For those fortunate enough not to know what suero is, it is the very last liquid form that a cows milk can have. First they leave the cows milk out for a day and the cream will rise to the top. Then they skim all the cream off and store it. That cream is delectable. Next they put a combination of entirely too much salt and a little pill inside the remaining milk so that the milk will curd. After about 12 hours that milk will have curded and you can sift out all the curded cheese with a dirty rag and squeeze all the juices out. That cheese is delectable, too, believe it or not. What’s left at the bottom of the bucket of milk is suero, a thoroughly abused liquid meant only for ruthless teenage pranks and fattening up pigs.
With the help of hundreds of gallons of said suero the pig, at 7 months old, was about 170 pounds of the fattest, most agile animal-athlete you could ever possibly imagine. Like a swine version of Chris Farley.
When I walked up there was an enormous pot of boiling pig fat over an open flame, father and son tending it nicely, both pretending like they were being useful. The first thing I was offered was a half full cup of clear liquid and I didn’t turn it down. We talked shit about Barcelona, coached Real Madrid through the rest of the Champions League, smoked a cigarette or two, and played guitar for a few hours before it was time to eat.
Around 3 Christmas dinner was served as a very tall glass of the bitterest vodka on the market, two tortillas, a few very tasty pieces of pork meat, and as much fried pig fat as I could fit in my stomach. We took it all down with a glass of Salva Cola and laid back to talk more shit about Barcelona.
We set off fireworks for about 36 straight hours in Jesus’ honor and I went to bed happy.
This is Tio Chepe lighting off cuetes at midnight.
Christmas dinner.
Melissita lighting off her propio fireworks.
Now that’s the way to celebrate the holidays.
Other noteworthy volados.
It’s the dry season. It hasn’t rained in about a two months and it won’t rain again until about April.
I have lost two of my beautiful chickens to disappearance. I think maybe a ‘gato de monte’ or a snake may have selected them as the weakest of the pack. Either way, I have put them on milk cartons from here to Zacatecaluca in hopes of getting a phone call.
Halloween was an absolute blast. We had bobbing for apples, pan dulce on a string, three legged races, all sorts of candy, and a water balloon toss. These are some of the photos.
I went to help translate for a group of engineers from University of Minnesota and I hope to never ever meet such incompetent people again in my life.
Nora and I spent Thanksgiving with an Embassy family in the capital. We drank beer, had spiced wine, ate turkey (turkey with bacon on it, by the way), mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, and had real cheese for an appetizer. What a damn treat. Good people, too. Who woulda thunk that the United States Embassy could produce genuinely good people?
La Peña and myself have been very, very fortunate. About a month after submitting our Engineers Without Borders application for latrines and a running water project we were adopted by George Washington University. This is incredible for a litany of reasons. Most volunteers have to wait for about 6 to 12 months to be adopted by a chapter and we, very luckily, only had to wait one month. On top of that we were accepted by a chapter that has experience here in El Salvador doing water projects. Just last year they raised close to $100,000 dollars with the help of Rotary International to put toward an enormous water project in my friend Sean Cox’s site in Santa Clara, San Miguel. They are an experienced chapter, they are from DC, and they are apparently very, very good at raising money to help us out. Our community is significantly smaller than Santa Clara (there are only 33 houses in my community) so we shouldn’t need that much money or be that much of a pain in the ass (pardon my French).
If all goes as planned the engineers and their professional mentors should be here in March to get things under way.
Rotary Club is an incredible institution. You may know that the Rotary Club of Hudson donated close to $600 dollars to help me provide efficient stoves for my community back in the summer. Well, Rotary Club International has an incredible Matching Gift policy that states they will match any and all single donations above $10,000 by a local Rotary Club.
So how can you help? If you know an extremely rich Rotary Club (anywhere in the country is fine) that has the ability to help out a lowly Peace Corps Volunteer with some larger than life projects to benefit some very humble people here in El Salvador please send me an e-mail at gregcormier17@gmail.com.
New photos on facebook. Aren't I so technologically capable?
