Un Día En La Vida

20:36/09/3/2009 Verapaz, El Salvador

Peace Corps Training: midway point

1. A day in the life— part: 1 early mornings

5:30-5:35ish.... "Where the hell am I?"
I never remember…….. the roosters relentlessly crowing in the distance is a hint, but regardless I awake with the suddenness of a sweet bee sting, mentally dislodged….and completely untethered to my new reality.

“Where is my bed & why am I on a cot?”...and so on…..

It’s like in the movie Memento, where the main character has repetitive amnesia so he tattoos necessary information ie his name, location, etc… on various parts of his body.

My tattoo would read:

" Your name is Brian, you are somewhere in El Salvador, working for the peace corps, and you are probably really hungry."


5:36.....My host brother Aldo steps into my room, feed bucket and egg basket in hand. Now, technically are not supposed to help with the chores(we have busy days in training and the host families receive ample pay for hosting us here) but since my presence in their home here means Aldo is resigned to sleep in the hammock outside…..I feel a certain debt him, and I always offer to help him with his morning chore….an offer which is always accepted.

It's surprisingly cold here in the mornings. If the wind is blowing from the south the air smells of passion fruit due(mango, papaya, and orange groves), if it blows from the east it smells like a wet fart (the river of open sewage that divides Verapaz from Tepetitan).....this initial whiff serves as a "better than good" prognosticator of just how your day will unfold.

Aldo is the closest to my age(he is 24), the most inquisitive about America, and damn chatty in the morning. Our early morning chats usually(always) center around his
favorite topic: American women or gringas....

"Telle meh sobre de AHMERUCHAN girls", he loves blonds

"Aldo" I say, " I promise there is nothing interesting to say about American
Women at 5:40 in the morning, lets talk about…… breakfast"

I finish pelting the half awake/alive chickens with seed look up at the looming volcano in the distance and pray that we won’t be Pompeii(which I assume is the hope of everyone who lives in the shadow of a volcano)

I spend the rest of our time together trying to remember how to say," I hate fried eggs" in Espanol.

6:30…. Breakfast the most important meal of the day and here in El Salvador completely joyless. Its eggs. Its always eggs. The Tuesday after next it will be eggs. Dinner that night will be eggs. Such is life on a chicken farm (Eat the eggs sell the chicken)….Scrambled, fried, over easy, whatever…. 50 days later you break out in a cold sweat when you hear them hit the saucer pan…..

Coping method: I close my eyes and try to imagine I am eating anything else….this works 20% of the time every time.

7:30....I take the 518 bus out of Verapaz to the training center in San Vicente(50 minutes.) The bus's paint job and lettering resembles the magical "mystery bus" yet no one here has really heard of The Beatles, or irony. We traverse through the Salvadorian countryside on our the magical mystery bus in low gear-through miles of cane fields, over sand roads, coconut groves, through the bustling scanty towns, swerving to avoid chickens, diseased chuchos(dogs) and the occasional stray goat, bumping and humming through the ruts.

The land between Verapaz and San Vicente prime for farming...the locals use the bus system as a means to get to the fields or to bring their goods to….On the bus: the farmers -regardless of their crop- carry decorated cane knives on their person at all times….and the women, carry, bushels of avocados, fresh bread, and chickens cages all at once and all balanced securely on the irrespective heads …its freaking amazing. The men carry the knives and the women are the real heroes of the country.

More to come…..

Other:

2. Questions: Some of you asked why I was teaching sex ed and not designing a school etc… right now we are just focusing on broad basic community related activities…..As a generic priming, so we can get used to organizing community projects…. It also helps us build confidence with the community…which is very important in a Latin American community…”Confiance” is everything. The golden rule in the PC is that before people will want to know what you know, they have to know that you know what they know.(sounds dumb but makes sense trust me)

Spanish is improving...quickly.....but sometimes its frustrating being a 28 year old man with a college education and speaking at a 1st grade level...but hey its easy to be humble when everyone is laughing at/with you:)

3. I had my Immersion week last week, where I shadow an established volunteer. Her post was located one the Salv-Honduran boarder, in a town called Perquin. In the civil war Perquin was the Guerilla strong hold. Today the town’s economy is based on tourism stemming from a new war museum. It’s weird though imagine going to a US civil war museum 15 years after the Appomattox Court House. Our guide was a former Frente (rebel) general…. The first exhibit in the war museum is a missile with a polished lettering that reads Fort Benning, Ga. …he was a nice guy considering my country secretly helped the other side.
4. Next week is a huge week here….The most important election in El Salvadors history. You can read more on it here, but it could get pretty crazy here. Keep me in your thoughts.

I’ll have more when I get it☺

Love and Light

-b