A Lull in the Action: 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