Holy Crap, it’s Hot Here (Seriously, that’s the best title I could come up with for this post)

4-11-11

El Salvador is like an oven right now.  A scorching, merciless cooker, baking everyone in it to an absolute standstill.  Even the dogs have stopped chasing the chickens.  They stare apathetically up at me from their little patches of shade, like it’s too hot to even lift their shaggy heads or beat their tails against the clouds of insects that gather over them, let alone bark at any feathered trespassers on their territory. 

April is the hottest month of the year in El Salvador.  The air seems to have ceased any pretense at circulating even the tiniest breezes, and I have never so looked forward to my daily, cold bucket bath in the whole year that I’ve been here.  Unfortunately, as soon as I dry myself off, I’m immediately drenched in sweat again.  

I’m sure, were there any pavement to be had in my village, the heat would be shimmering off it in waves.  The dirt doesn’t produce quite the same effect.

I still have to do my best to carry on daily activities, just like everyone else.  I still do house visits, although I usually arrive bright red and pouring sweat like I’ve just run a marathon.  (Why don’t Salvadoran women sweat?  Why??  Seriously, if I have to listen to one more woman say, “wow, you sweat a lot”, I’m gonna flip my shit.  And it’s way too hot for that.)  I still cook my meals over my gas stove, even though it’s really tempting to revert to eating nothing but milk and cereal and peanut butter bread.  At least the weather’s an easy conversation starter.  Never before have I used conversational Spanish with such ease.  “Hace calor, verdad?”  It’s hot, isn’t it?  And whoever I’m talking to groans and fans their face with their hand, and an instant kinship of misery in the face of the overwhelming climate has been established.  Presto.

My house must be of the poorest construction type in the world for natural heating and cooling.  If anyone out there is considering cinderblock and clay tile for their next vacation home in the tropics, I highly advise against it.  In the cold months of November and December, my house turns into a large refrigerator, and is noticeably colder inside than whatever temperature it is outside.  Those months, I have to wear two pairs of sweatpants, two pairs of socks, three t-shirts, a sweatshirt, and sleep under two blankets to keep myself warm at night.  Now, I wear as little clothing as possible, and don’t even keep a blanket on my bed.  I toss and turn and sweat, and if there existed any small breeze that were to by some miracle make it through the gap between my walls and my roof, my mosquito net successfully blocks it. 

It’s rained the last two nights here.  My neighbors and friends all keep talking about how much it cools things down.  I think they’re crazy.  It’s not cooling anything down, it’s just creating giant, steaming puddles of dirty rainwater.  So instead of just being really hot and fairly humid, it’s now really hot and next-to-impossible-to-breathe humid.  The air around me feels so close.  All the other volunteers tell me, “Oh, you must be so used to this, you’re from Las Vegas.”  Ha!  Even leaving aside the cliché of, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity that gets you” (and let me remind you, clichés are clichés because they’re usually right), when I lived in Las Vegas, I spent next to zero time in the heat during the summer.  Seriously, ask me how much time I spent outside of air-conditioning.  The time it took me to walk from my front door to my car, and then my car to the front door of wherever I was going, that’s how much.  I literally never took more than ten breaths of fresh air a day.  And you know what?  I was okay with that.  Whoever’s advocating this “fresh air” nonsense has obviously never spent August in Las Vegas, or April in El Salvador.

My conundrum now is whether or not to buy a fan.  They have them in stores in Chalate; they only thing between me and the bliss of an electricity driven, endless blast of air is myself.  It’s only this hot for one month here.  The rainy season (the real one, not this once in a while crap of the last two nights) starts in a few weeks.  I can stick it out…

Truthfully, I’m worried that if I buy a fan, I’ll never leave my house again.  No, scratch that.  If I buy a fan, I’ll never leave my hammock.  Ever.  I’ll most likely starve to death, slowly and painfully.  But at least I’ll be blissfully cool during the process.

Yep.  That seems like a trade I can come to terms with.