January Vignettes

I realize I haven’t actually written much lately, but in the post I’ve compiled a number of anecdotes, observations, etc. from this month.

1/15/11

The old volunteer from my site, Patty, came to visit last week.  After a few hours of knowing her, I realized that I was a miserable volunteer who wasn’t doing right by her community.

Well, those first intense feelings passed, but I did come to several realizations.  First of all, I realized that I had pena every bit as bad as any Salvadoran.  I’ve been so nervous about my language skills that, after my initial visits for the health census, I’ve stopped visiting people.  Which is silly, because that is of course the best way to improve my Spanish.  Second, I realized that I spend most of my spare time indoors with the doors closed (what can I say, I don’t want the chickens wandering in).  Unfortunately, Salvadorans aren’t used to closed doors here.  If there’s someone home (and in El Salvador, where extended families live together, there’s almost always someone home), they leave their doors wide open.  I’m worried that my closed door has led them to believe that I’m hiding myself in my house, and don’t want to be disturbed.  Which isn’t true at all.  They may stop and chat with me if they can see me, but they just don’t feel comfortable knocking on someone’s door.

To remedy this, I’ve bought a new hammock from Niña Rosa, who lives down the street.  I now spend my the majority of my free time outside in my new hammock.  My front door is still closed (damn chickens!) but I’m on the outside of it, so it’s okay.  Now I’m much more visible, and people stop and chat with me all the time.  Which is awesome.

On the downside, people now know exactly just how much time I spend in my hammock, which is vaguely embarrassing.  Because it doesn’t matter what I’m doing – reading, using my computer, making posters, eating – if I’m in my hammock, they pass me and say, “¿Descansando?”  Resting?  And there’s really no use to trying to explain to them that no, I realize it looks like I’m sitting on my behind doing nothing, but honestly, I’m working on writing a grant for the healthy cooking classes I want to do, or I’m writing a report on the HIV/AIDS charla we did last month.  I think their idea of work is physical – working in the fields, scrubbing clothes, cooking, washing floors, cleaning frijoles – and sitting in the hammock, computer or no, is not working. 

Oh well, at least I’m a more visible lazy volunteer now.  J

1/19/11

I spent the afternoon with my friend Delmi at the river.  She has 8 siblings and over 20 nieces and nephews (when I asked her the exact number, she was a little unsure).  We walked down with three of her sisters, four of her nieces, and four of her nephews.  Two of them are still infants, and spent most of the time nursing or sleeping on the blankets their mothers brought.  The rest quickly stripped down to their underwear and leaped into the water which, thanks to the shade of the trees, was still cool despite the heat of summer.  After an initial dunking, her nephews spotted a green mango tree, and used branches to knock down the fruit.  The girls leapt after the mangos as they fell into the water, catching them before they could be carried downstream.  When they couldn’t get any more out of the lower branches, they found a fifteen-foot-long bamboo branch, and started whacking at the higher branches.  They each presented me with at least one, so I peeled them and munched on the acidic fruits until my teeth ached.  We also ate papaya and oranges that they had brought with them.  While the kids played, Delmi and her sisters and I sat on the rocks and took turns wading out midstream to wash using the guacal and soap we brought.  We passed around the babies, and I played “this little piggy” on their toes, which they seemed to enjoy, despite the English words.  Like any group of women, we talked about men, husbands, and boyfriends.  Alright, complained would certainly be the more appropriate verb in that sentence..  As usual, they were a little incredulous that I don’t have a boyfriend, even in the States.  I cracked them up when I tried to explain to them that I had been seeing someone, but we broke up before I left (hey, a girl’s gotta say something to protect her rep), because instead of saying that we broke up (rompí la relación) I said that I broke him (le rompí).  They thought that was pretty funny.  They thought it was even funnier when I said I didn’t break him, but I might have wanted to break some of his bones.  They glanced subtly at their abundant offspring – not a husband or boyfriend in sight – and said that sometimes, they understood the feeling.

1/23/11

I went to the cancha today with Elena.  The soccer field is located in La Loma, a tiny caserío only a few minutes up a beaten, rock-strewn path that forks off from Los Alas.  There’s no actual grass on the cancha, only a thick layer dust which gets kicked up and then settles in a dense coating on the players.  I love going to the cancha on Sundays, because they’re always selling food.  Sliced fruits and veggies like watermelon, jicama, yucca, papaya, and cucumber are sold in plastic bags.  Most people spoon in salt and chili sauce, squeeze the top of the bag shut, and shake it copiously to make it a sweet, salty, and spicy treat.  They also sell fresh-squeezed juices in plastic bags (just rip a whole in the corner with your canines and suck).  This week it was pineapple and coconut fresco.  Another popular (and frankly, irresistible) snack are small rings of dough, fried until they’re light and crispy, and topped with lime juice and chili sauce.  They don’t look like they’d be particularly tasty, but good Lord are they addictive.  And of course, it wouldn’t be a Salvadoran sporting event without someone selling pupusas – either revueltas, filled with beans and cheese, or the more simple queso, filled with cheese and loroco.

When my Mom visited me, she couldn’t stop eating (nor could I, for that matter).  She said that she experiences other cultures through their foods, and I’m inclined to agree.  After two months of training and two months more with a host family in my site, I was pretty sick of Salvadoran food – but I’ve been cooking repetitive meals for myself for so long now, that I’m coming to a new appreciation of the foods I encounter here.  Salvadorans love their food, and they sell it everywhere, at soccer games, at community dances, on the street, and in the buses.  You don’t even have to leave your seat in the bus, the venders will come around carrying baskets filled with plates of chicken and rice, plastic bowls of French fries, bags of fried yucca, and of course, the ever popular dulces (Salvadorans love their sweets).  There are also vendors who sell fresh juice, sodas, and bags of water from buckets.  I have two personal favorites when it comes to bus snacks – maní dulce, peanuts coated in caramelized honey and sesame seeds, and plátano frito, slice plantains, fried and served with chili sauce.

1/25/11

For some unfathomable reason, for the last week or so, my host family (who live next to me, but at a slightly higher elevation) have taken to watering my house.

Yes, that’s right, my house.  I don’t get it either.  But for good or ill, after they’ve thoroughly inundated their plants, they turn their garden house on my house.  They water my roof, my walls, my windows – pretty much everything they can reach from their position of about ten feet above me.  For those of you who have seen my house, in person or in pictures, you may have noted that my house is not exactly what one would call water-proof.  The roof tiles have cracks, there’s space between the window frames and the walls, and – oh yeah! – there’s a six inch gap between the tops of my walls and the roof.

Until last night, the daily watering usually only resulted in a light misting, a few drops sprinkled around my house.  I’d cover up my electronics, and wait out the sprinkle.  Last night, however, they decided that my window was too dirty, and needed to be extra clean.  So they took the hose and trained the spray directly on it.  It took me a few minutes to realize, but finally I saw that the water was leaking in at the bottom of the window and creating a puddle on the floor.  And by puddle, I mean I had a kiddie pool in my house after a couple minutes.  I ran up to my host family’s house just as one of their hired guys was turning off the hose.  (Incidentally, this hired guy has the colorful nickname of “Banana” – and given the Salvadoran propensity for using fruit names as euphemisms for genitalia, I’ve chosen not to ask him the origin of this particular sobriquet.)

In any case, I told him to stop, because water was coming in through my window.  He looked confused for a minute, then set off determinedly towards my house.  I caught up with him and said no, no, no, there’s nothing to fix, just stop watering my window.  He said ok – and kept walking down to my house.  This is when I start getting slightly panicked, because I had I line of lacy, delicate underwear hanging from the hammock inside my house, drying.  And whether his nickname is from an innocent predilection for bananas or not, Elena and I did overhear him chatting with his buddies quite openly at the soccer field about his preferences for the grape-flavored condoms.  While I applaud his decision to use condoms, his choice of venue for the discussion was in questionable taste, and I’d just as soon he not have the opportunity to ogle my thongs.

I caught up with him again on my porch and said (more firmly this time), “No.  It’s OKAY.  I can clean up the water.  There is NOTHING to fix.  Have A GOOD NIGHT.  GOOD.   NIGHT.”  He looked a little confused again, and looked like he was still a little inclined to try to enter my house, so I went inside and shut the door firmly, still saying, “Good night!  Good night!”

1/27/11

I know that I’ve spoken before (at length) about how much I hate the roosters that inhabit my front yard (and my back yard, and my side yard, and my porch…you get the idea), but I really think I’m getting desperate.  There’s one particular rooster that’s driving me mad.  (He shall heretofore be referred to as ‘chicken demon-spawn from hell’.)  He’s even invading my dreams.  He wakes me up every morning at half hour intervals from about 4:30 am until I finally get up.  I’ve started to adjust to this; I usually fall asleep again right away every time he crows.  But this morning, I was dreaming that I was back in the house I grew up in with my sisters and mom.  And the chicken demon-spawn from hell crowed (in reality, not in my dream), but instead of waking up, I looked out the window of the kitchen, and there was that damned bird, crowing from the back porch!  I freaked out, and started shrieking, “Mom!  Anna!  Lindsey!!!  That’s the damn rooster from El Salvador!  He followed me!  That mother…”  Well, for the sake of decency, I don’t need to finish my actual sentiments on the subject.

I finally woke up, and was (a) disappointed that I wasn’t actually back home with my family, and (b) appalled that that frickin’ bird has so invaded my psyche that I’ve started dreaming about him!  This can’t be healthy.  Of course, my host family and all my friends know how much I despise the rooster, and tease me at every available opportunity, telling me how lucky I am that I have an alarm clock that wakes me faithfully every morning.  It’s just soooo funny.  Funny, funny, funny.

In any case, this further evidence of the loosening of my already tentative grip on sanity has made me hurl increasingly churlish invectives at the chicken demon-spawn from hell.  Thus, my neighbors are now treated to daily outbreaks of coarse tirades in English, which usually go something like this: “Damn bird!  You barely deserve the name!  Can’t even fly!  I hate you!  And so do the hens!!  They only put up with you cause you’re faster than them, you know!  And you look stupid, too!!  DO YOU HEAR ME???  I HATE YOU!!!!”  Then I usually degenerate into actual expletives, which is okay, cause it’s in English.  Of course, my neighbors all smile and giggle when I do this, leading me to think that there are some things that don’t actually need translation…