Ciudad Arce

12/29/2012

"Live simply, so that others may simply live." - Mother Teresa

Today we were woken up at 7:00am by Sr. Gloria's loud alarm horn. It is the most startling noise I have ever heard. We got up, got dressed, ate breakfast and made our lunches, and were on the bus headed for our first worksite by 8:00am. We drove in the bus with Joleman (one of our three drivers) to his village, Ciudad Arce. He had requested that Project FIAT begin construction on two new classrooms for the elementary school in his village. Ciudad Arce is about an hour away from San Salvador. We passed lava fields on our way to Ciudad Arce (miles and miles of volcanic ash deposited there when the San Salvador volcano erupted last), as well as several factories, sweatshops, and sugar cane plantations. When we got to Ciudad Arce, we stopped at the Ferreteria, or hardware store, where Joleman and Lynette ordered the supplies to make rebar. Then we drove up the hill to the school to begin work.
The school serves grades K-9, and has four outdoor classrooms, an outhouse, and an outdoor gymnasium. The classrooms were small, and had corrugated tin roofs, and where there should have been windows there was just wire mesh to allow for a breeze to keep the rooms cool. Each classroom was filled with tiny wooden desks and chairs, and the walls were decorated like any classroom would be, with construction paper letters, children's artwork, and classroom rules taped to the walls.
Don Miguel, the foreman, and Lynette showed us how to pickax the ground to get rid of the grass, so that we could start clearing the land for the new classrooms. Some of us did that while others began digging the foundation out. The only tools we had were shovels, pickaxes, hoes, and wheelbarrows. We pickaxed, shoveled dirt, and used wheelbarrows to carry the piles of dirt away. It was exhausting work, and we felt like we had been working for hours only to discover that the ground barely looked any different and only ten minutes had passed. I got blisters on my hands immediately, and knew from that point on that this week was going to be physically challenging for me as well as mentally and emotionally.
The students are on summer vacation right now, and will return to school mid-January. The director of the school told us that there are 204 students that attend every day. They hold class for K-3 go in the morning, and 4-9 go in the afternoon. Right now some grades have to share rooms, but once the new classrooms are complete, they will have one classroom for each grade in the morning and the afternoon. There are 6 teachers employed by the school. We met Saul, the director, and his son, Saul Jr. (age seven) at the site. They came to help us excavate the land. It was nice to work alongside them, speak Spanish with them, and see that this project meant so much to them and their community.
During a water break, Lynette told us about Miguel, one of the Project FIAT drivers (not Don Miguel, the foreman). He is a huge jokester (he stole my backpack this morning and tied it to the roof of the van) but he has had an interesting past. When he was a teenager he was forced to join the El Salvadoran army during the civil war, and his job was to take photos of dead people in the fields. After the war ended, he left El Salvador for the U.S., and rode on the top of a train car with hundreds of other people all through Mexico until he reached the border. He had some pretty horrific stories to tell about that experience. When he got to the Rio Grande, he had to swim across so that he wouldn't be caught, but he got caught in a sewage drain and was stuck there for hours. He has trouble talking about this experience, as it was one of the most terrifying and awful experiences of his life. He worked in the U.S. as a dog walker, making $7 an hour (which is what lucky people in El Salvador make in a day) and then he got a job in a factory and then another job as a dishwasher, eventually making $13 an hour. He said that when he got that job, he felt like a King, because he was making so much more money than he would ever be able to make in El Salvador. He stayed in the U.S. for a year, saving up his money to send home to his family. At the end of the year, his mother got very ill, and so he crossed back over to Mexico and returned home. I found his story so moving, Miguel is such a happy guy and he is so kind to all of us, and it is so hard to imagine all the terrible things that he has had to experience just to try and survive.
Before lunch, Joleman called some of his friends who were mototaxi drivers and they gave us rides around the town for only $2.00. They drove us through the town market and then up to an adjacent hill, where we could see San Salvador in the distance. On top of that hill was the high school, which was really run-down. Lynette told us that the high school was currently closed because the outhouses were full, and the town didn't have enough money to pay to dig new outhouses, so the school was closed until further notice.
When we were done with lunch we pickaxed some more, and were pleased with the progress we had made by the time we left. On our way back to the volunteer house we stopped at the San Andres ruins, an old Mayan archaeological site where we saw ancient artifacts and old tombs and pyramids that were being excavated. It was so neat to walk on the ground and know that we were walking on ancient buildings. It was nowhere near as excavated as an archaeological site would be in the U.S., it was nearly untouched.
On the way back, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep! I was caked in mud and sweat and sunscreen, and the cold shower I took when I got back felt really nice. Dinner was pupusas, pasteles (like empanadas) and of course, more rice and beans. After reflection we made arts and crafts for the kids at the orphanage that we are going to tomorrow!

Julia Marie

View of the countryside on the way to Ciudad Arce

Lava fields

Ciudad Arce elementary school

Outside of a classroom

Inside of a 4th grade classroom

Inside of the Kindergarten classroom

Inside of the 9th grade classroom

Inside of the Kindergarten classroom

The worksite

Beginning to dig the foundation

San Andres archaeological site

Archaeological ruins

Archaeological ruins

Mayan ruins

Mayan ruins

Mayan ruins

Mayan ruins

Mayan ruins

Mayan ruins

The group in front of the tomb!

The Long-Awaited Return

12/28/2012

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other." - Mother Teresa

Today we arrived in El Salvador. For me, it was a long awaited return to the Latin America I fell in love with when I studied abroad in Chile and Argentina two years ago. The culture here in El Salvador is so different from the other places I have been, yet at the same time there are so many similarities.
Flying in this morning I was excited and nervous and anxious all at the same time. I didn't know what to expect, but at the same time I am expecting a lot. This trip will be very different in nature from the previous traveling I have done, and I am both excited and nervous about facing this challenge. I want as much out of this experience as I can get, and I am hoping I find this experience as life-changing as I have heard it will be.
When we landed in San Salvador this morning, we immediately went through immigration and customs (a very different kind of experience than immigration and customs are in the U.S.). After sleeping the entire time on both plane rides (Philly to Miami and then Miami to San Salvador), I think it didn't quite hit me that I was actually here until I was waiting in line at customs with the group. I ended up doing quite a bit of translating starting the minute we got off the plane. Of the 13 or so people in our group, I was one of 3 people with proficiency in Spanish. Karolina is of Cuban descent and was fluent, and Dan and I both spoke enough that we could communicate with and translate for almost anyone. When I studied abroad I ended up relying on other people around me to translate, and although I got lots of great practice, I had never had to feel responsible for making sure other people knew what was going on. However, I realized pretty quickly from the moment I stepped off the plane that many of the people in the group were going to be relying on me and Dan and Karolina, since most of the people in the group could only speak conversational Spanish. I ended up going through last, and was tasked with explaining to the incredibly confused customs worker that we were a volunteer group and that we were all University students in the U.S. She was very grateful that I spoke Spanish, because she could finally find out who we were and why we were here!
When we all finally got through, we exited the airport and were met with our first taste of the hot, hot El Salvadoran sun. Lynette, one of the women who runs the volunteer house for Project FIAT met us at the airport. She brought Fernando, the 14 year old son of the cook for the volunteer house, with her to get us. Fernando is one of ten children, nine boys and one girl! Outside the airport there were so many El Salvadorans just hanging out and watching the planes take off and land. We definitely got lots of stares when we exited, and we all realized pretty quickly that for the next 10 days, we were the minority.
The airport was right by the water, a good 45 minutes to an hour from the actual city of San Salvador. Lynette started giving us a tour as we drove toward the volunteer house, telling us about what we were passing as well as important information about the culture and what we would be experiencing throughout the next few days. She explained to us about the poor sanitation and how everything we eat needs to be disinfected because the water is dirty and often gets mixed with the sanitation system. We passed coconut stands along the side of the road, and trucks transporting raw sugar cane, and Lynette told us about how the biggest export from El Salvador is hydroelectric power (it gets exported to Honduras and Guatemala) as well as sugar and coffee. We also passed several sweatshops - large white factory buildings with no windows that had no indication of what company owned it. The terrain was a lot more green than I expected, although it is also very dry and brown in places since this is their dry season.
We drove up to La Puerta del Diablo (The Devil's Door), a mountain where there was a lot of vendors and a carnival for the little kids. We climbed up to the top on steep steps that were cut out of the rock - but the view from the top was spectacular! We could almost see all of El Salvador from the top. (El Salvador is just smaller than the state of Massachusetts, and has a population of about 6 million.) We saw the pacific coastline, the volcano in the south, and other mountains, as well as the city of San Salvador nestled in the valley below. The hike to the summit was the perfect thing after spending a day on a plane! Then we drove back down to the center of San Salvador. On the way, we stopped at a pupuseria (corn dough stuffed with cheese and meat, and then grilled like a tortilla) and we saw women making El Lote Loco, or crazy corn on the cob. It is toasted corn on the cob covered in mayonaise, and then drizzled with mustard ketchup and worcestershire sauce, then coated in parmesan cheese. It looked disgusting, but the locals seemed to love it!
After we stopped in the town, we drove to the volunteer house. The house is in the medical district of San Salvador, which is one of the safer areas. However, even though San Salvador is a city, there are no skyscrapers. The tallest buildings I saw were 3 stories. The house is a two story rectangular building, with offices, supply closets, a chapel, a kitchen, and a dining room on the first floor. On the second floor there are 4 bunk rooms that can hold up to 30 people, two small bedrooms for Sr. Gloria and Lynette, bathrooms, and a hangout room. At the house we met Sr. Gloria, the 70 year old nun that runs Project FIAT with Lynette. She is an amazing woman, and she spent the evening telling us interesting stories about El Salvador and her experiences as a mission worker.
One of the most interesting and thought provoking things she told us was about the begging culture in El Salvador. There are many volunteers that come through the villages that Project FIAT works in every year, and if volunteers are not careful they can end up doing more damage than good to the places they volunteer. Many of the people in the villages are very poor, and will resort to begging when the volunteers are around because they know we are vulnerable to their pleas. But Sr. Gloria implored us to not give in and not to give our things to the people in the villages because it creates huge problems for her and Lynette who have to keep coming back to these villages week after week. She told us how some volunteers in the past had given away coloring books, board games, sunglasses, everything including the sneakers off their feet to the people they worked with, and that by giving these things to the people we were contributing to a culture of begging that was almost impossible to reverse. For one, giving things to specific people creates jealousy problems among the people in the villages, and some of the people, especially the children, see begging as almost like a sport. They get so good at pulling at the heartstrings of the new volunteers that come each week. Sr. Gloria asked us to not do this, and told us that if there was someone we met that we thought was in need, to talk to her and she would make sure that person was truly needy, and if so, that the person was being taken care of. And if we wanted to donate any of our things, we could leave them at the house and they would make sure that they went to those that were the most needy. I had never really thought about giving in this way before. I had always just thought that anything I gave was a good deed, but it was interesting to look at it from Sr. Gloria's point of view, and see how our giving mindlessly actually had a negative affect on the villages and the people there.
For dinner, we ate a traditional meal of rice, beans and tortillas, and after a quick reflection we all took our freezing cold showers (there is no hot water at the volunteer house) and called it a night! Tomorrow we start volunteer work at 8:00am!

Julia Marie

A coconut stand

El Salvadoran countryside on the way to Puerta del Diablo

Truck full of freshly harvested raw sugar cane

Sweatshops

Puerta del Diablo

Puerta del Diablo

Puerta del Diablo

View of San Salvador from Puerta del Diablo

The group on top of Puerta del Diablo

El Lote Loco

A local woman making Pupusas

Project FIAT volunteer house

Shannon, Lindsey and Morgan in the bunk room

Welcome Back!

Hey Friends and Family!!

Its been a long time since I last posted, but many of you have been asking to hear more about my amazing and life-changing trip that I took to El Salvador (and Guatemala) in January, so I thought this would be a great way to fill you in on everything I was fortunate enough to experience while I was away.

This has been an amazing year with many fabulous opportunities and exciting challenges for me, and this trip was definitely one of those experiences that tops my list. I found out that I would be going to El Salvador in October after I applied for the Service Break Experience offered by Villanova. Villanova sends students on service oriented trips during the fall, winter and spring breaks, for anywhere from one to two weeks. In the fall and spring, most of the trips are domestic, but in the winter they always go to international locations since the time span is a bit longer. This year, they offered trips to Ecuador and El Salvador, and since I am a Spanish major and had never gone on one of these trips before (everyone at school says that these trips are a must-do for anyone who goes to Villanova) I thought I would apply since I am a senior and this was my last shot!

When I found out that I had been accepted to go on the El Salvador trip I was ecstatic - but looking back now I realize I had no idea what I was about to get myself into. I went with a group of 13 other students (and one graduate student), and the purpose of our trip was to do community service work in various suburbs of San Salvador (the capital city of El Salvador) through an organization called Project FIAT, which stands for Faith in Action Together. We would be building houses and schools and community centers, giving donations to the people there, and doing community building. Our group met several times throughout the fall to prepare for the trip, but no amount of meetings would have prepared us for what we experienced when we got there.

Over the next few days and weeks I will post excerpts from the journal I kept while on the trip as well as pictures I took while I was there. I will also attempt to offer other thoughts and insight into the experience that have occurred to me since my return. I hope I will be able to convey to you how amazing and life-changing this experience has been for me.

Enjoy!

Julia Marie