A Lull in the Action: 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