Adios, Hasta Luego

Well folks, I'm back home. I'm ashamed that I haven't posted in the last month, but my internet plan expired about a month ago and there hasn't been much to report. In the last month I have been busy spending time finishing up last minute projects, packing up/throwing out, saying goodbyes, and searching for jobs. This last week has been overwhelming (I flew in last night), with planned going away parties and lots of surprises. While I am happy to be home with, saying goodbye was extremely difficult. I really have grown close to a lot of people in my community and I appreciate how much they have taught me and taken care of me in the last two years, becoming friends and family throughout the experience. Touchingly, the goodbyes were difficult on both parts for I seem to really have become a part of my community. People thanked me immensely for my time, support, friendship, and willingness to try new things and have fun. I received gifts and hugs and many memories. I will greatly miss the generosity and kindness of the people in my community.

Already I am finding it a little hard to be in the United States. I have noticed that no one looks up anymore - everyone is looking down at their phone/iPad/latest gadget. And there is really a lack of friendliness among strangers. I went for a run this morning and lots of people were out (a nice change from being the only runner in my area), but not one single person responded to my "Good Morning." Not one. What a shame. And life seems so much more complicated here with so many more things to worry/think about instead of relaxing in the hammock in the afternoon. Everyone is concerned about being connected with everyone else, though at home people are really isolated. I've seen one neighbor since I've been home and all we exchanged were "hello's." For being so electronically connected, people aren't genuinely connected. However, countless food options, couches, and hot water are welcomed benefits of being back. And of course being with my family and dogs is nice.

On to the next adventure.

Maintaining Poverty

All of us are born into a specific social class that depends on luck, virtuousness, destiny, or whatever reason you choose to believe. As plenty of people have demonstrated one can move up or down the social class ladder throughout their lifetime or even up and down a couple of times. However, lots of people stay in the class they were born in whether that is because of low self-esteem/confidence, lack of opportunities, vices, bad judgment...again, the list of "whys" can go on and on and is usually case specific or perspective dependent. Moving up the ladder is definitely possible, but it requires a lot of hard work and good timing and opportunities.

I live in a community that lives below the poverty line. Everyone here was born into one of the lowest classes possible, though I'm positive not the lowest due to the number of opportunities there are. Lots of people from my community and throughout the country go to the United States in order to look for opportunities to get them a little higher up on the ladder. Some are successful for a period of time and then come back, use up the money they saved from the States, and return to the same class from which they came. Some stay in the U.S. and might live in low conditions for a resident of the U.S., but they are higher up than where they came from. They send money back home and raise their family members a little too. While I'm happy for them in their climb on the ladder, it saddens me that they seem to only be able to do so with help from the States.

There are some exceptions, for example my health promoter. She is probably one of the most motivated people in my community and I see big things for her in her life. She's got brains and demonstrated to her parents how crucial it was for her to be allowed to study. She started school at a time when most people here weren't sending their kids to school because it meant fewer hands around the house, but she wanted to take advantage. And she studied hard and was able to get a scholarship to go to high school, which eventually landed her a job as a health promoter. She has a steady job, which is something nearly unheard of in my village. From her income, she has been able to pay to go to college on the weekends and will graduate with a Bachelor's degree in business administration in December. Her income has also helped her pay for the internet, allowing her to study other languages on top of English at her university. To say the least she is gung-ho and she's got dreams and I'm sure will follow them.

Then, on the other side of the spectrum, is the majority of my community. The reason this came up as a blog topic was because I received a shipment of donated electric toothbrushes from my future brother-in-law who is an engineer at a product design company. Lots of people have toothbrushes here, but they are probably years old and not used with frequency or properly. Sure times are changing and tooth care is improving, but there's still a lot of improvement. Now, I didn't have enough brushes for every kid in my village, so I decided to give them to the poorest of the kids since it is a luxury item and often the poorest are the ones that can't afford toothbrushes. I held a meeting to do a brushing demo (with the health promoter) and to give out the brushes. And to my shock, some of the poorest kids didn't come. Maybe their parents were busy or forgot, but it just reminded me that sometimes people like their own pity party. A lot of people here complain about being poor, but do nothing about it. They don't take advantage of opportunities presented to them, no matter how small or big. They don't have the self-confidence to go out on a limb in order to live a better life.

While this concept is a little mind-boggling to me, someone who tries to take advantage of good opportunities and isn't greedy, but works towards a better education and more wealth, I can't do anything about it. I can invite, teach, demonstrate, provide, donate, and whatever other verbs apply, but if they don't have enough desire, there is no way that I can help. So I'll just sit by watching them scrape enough nickels to buy bread and listen to them complaining about being poor until they get it in their heart's desire to change their own situation.

Every Volunteer's Dream

There are plenty of little things that can happen in a community that make a volunteer happy and satisfied that they have done something good in their service. I have had plenty of those moments mainly in the last year and more in the last couple of months. Every time I see a woman from my shampoo group get excited about trying to sell their product to a new client, I'm like a proud mother. When I see the youth in my youth group get excited about a project idea and follow through with leadership, I jump with joy. When I see kids wanting to practice reading, wanting to plant a tree, or wanting to be involved, I am thrilled. Even people showing up on time gets me a little giddy.

Today I participated in something that I wish had happened at the beginning of my service, but was still great to see towards the end of my service. My (newly elected) town council had a meeting that included leaders from all groups/organizations in my community. There were male farmers, youth from my youth group, women from the health advisory group, teachers, representatives from the Catholic church and Evangelical church, just to name a few. It was the first time that I saw the community gather the leaders (representing quite nearly everyone), under their own volition to talk about needs of the community from everyone's perspective. The meeting wasn't perfect and wasn't completely time efficient, but it got lots of things on the table and really animated everyone to get working on projects.

I wasn't involved in the planning or execution in any way, I just went to put in my two cents and see what evolved. However, I had some proud moments in realizing that I had worked with a lot of the people in the room and that I had in fact created several of the groups represented in the meeting. Plus, I like to think that my own assertiveness has rubbed off a little bit on a few of the parties and allowed them to speak up indicating true needs of their group and the community. And it was just so nice to see people working together to prioritize projects and take the development of their community into their own hands. Good moment.

On another note, I am working diligently on a coloring book that I started a few months ago. I have all of the drawings done, scanned in, and touched up digitally. Now I am about halfway through adding text and details. Soon I will be sending out the book to get corrections from peers and some native Spanish speakers to make sure everything makes sense and it correct. Then I'll be working with a publisher to get them printed. So exciting! (Below are a few samples.)

Flying By

Well, my time is nearly down to 50 days and I recently went to my Close Of Service (COS) conference. In other words, yikes! I've got less than two months left to wrap up projects, see anywhere else in the country I want to see, finish up Peace Corps paperwork, and say my goodbyes. It is slightly overwhelming, but it is also exciting and sad at the same time. I look forward to going home and being with my parents and helping with my sister's wedding, but I also feel sad about leaving a place that I have come to know as home for the last two years. I have to say goodbye to a boyfriend (no, I'm not bringing him with me), to friends, to the wonderful community that has really taken care of me for the last two years, and to a beautiful and humble place in the world. In a letter I wrote to myself to be delivered to me in 8 months at home (a COS tradition), I made a list of all of the things I'm going to miss. Well, as many as I could come up with in 15 minutes. Closer to the time I leave El Salvador, I think I'll make that list a blog post. For right now, I've got to stay on the now.

Carol and I are going on a vacation to Guatemala leaving tomorrow. It is kind of inconvenient timing since I'm in the middle of some stuff right now in my village, but I'm looking forward to seeing a different part of Central America and getting to spend some time with a good friend who is going to stick around in this country for another year. When I get back, I'm going to keep going on the projects I've got going on in my school right now. Some good-hearted guys in my community just helped cement two walls so that the 5th, 6th and 7th graders and I can paint a world map and El Salvador map, funded by my mayor. And we'll hopefully be planting the 80+ trees hanging out in the school right now waiting for a home in town. I've also got a few women still in the middle of learning how to quilt pillowcases, and I hope to do a mini workshop on basic jewelry making. My women's shampoo group has been maintaining success and I'm hoping to teach them a few more products before I leave, and my youth group has a whole list of projects they'd like to start working on. And lastly, thank God, I've got to finish up a coloring book that I've been drawing and get it printed and distributed before I leave. Whew. I've got my hands full.

On the "saying goodbye" side, I'm also busy. Aside from the required Peace Corps paperwork, I want to make sure I show my thanks to my community. I am working on a few little gifts to give to the people that I have worked most closely with as well as people who have helped fund my projects. I am trying to do a little craft to give to everyone in my community (something really small and simple, don't worry!), so they have a little memento from me. And although I'm not thrilled of the idea I am planning a goodbye party for myself. Peace Corps really recommends doing it and so in order to take control and make it good and not totally awkward, I'm going to organize it. Plus, I think it will be a nice way for me to say thanks to the community and say goodbye without having to go house to house, which can be time consuming and awkward. Part of the saying goodbye process for me will be easy because there are aspects of living here that I don't love, but other parts will definitely take a toll.

Right now I am staying in the moment in order to get everything that I need to get done, done and to enjoy my time while it lasts. Plus, I want to give my community what they deserve: my attention and work.

(I've just recently started playing soccer with the newly formed girls soccer team. This was a glorious fall my first game ever...ha, ha.)

God Driven

I am finally recovering from a two-week miserable cold with double middle ear infections, two trips for treatment to the capitol, and a plethora of medications. But, my spirits are mostly high and I'm trying to stay busy here in my site.

Every week there's a savings group that gets together in my community. I don't take any credit for the creation of the group (it was established by OxFam before I got here), but I am a member and participate. Towards the beginning of this year I had been participating for over six months and felt like something was lacking to the group. People showed up, saved money if they could, took out loans if they wanted, paid loans, and left. I felt like it was a group but with very little group interaction. Sure, there were side conversations and at least it allowed people to get out of the house, but it still didn't feel totally worthwhile if you didn't save or deal with loans. So I made a suggestion that each meeting should start with a little discussion, activity, or mini-training.

Having suggested the idea, I was the one that started doing some of the activities, or charlas. Seeing as I'm an environmental education volunteer I have done some related to the environment, like reducing/reusing/recycling our trash. This past week I was feeling kind of down and decided to watch The Secret again and was inspired to do a mini-charla related to the concept. If you don't know anything about The Secret, I highly recommend it (the book more than the movie), and I'll give you a briefing. Essentially, the secret is the law of attraction: that each thought one has weighs something, positive or negative. Thus if you think positive thoughts, you will attract positive actions and the contrary holds true. For example, if you have a lot of debt and keep thinking about the debt, you will continue to have debt. But, if you have debt and just think about and visualize yourself with lots of money, the debt will subside and you will attract money.

Using this concept, and trying to just scratch the surface in order to get understanding, I did a basic activity with my savings group. I gave each member a piece of paper and had them put down one thing they appreciated in their lives at the moment. I collected them, redistributed them and read them out loud. (The idea being that if you focus on good things you already have, you will continue to have them.) Then I gave them a second paper and had them write something negative they think about themselves or their situation. Examples being, "Man am I poor," or, "I am so stupid." I collected them and we burned them. (The idea being that they shouldn't be thinking the negative thoughts, but focusing on the good and their desires.) In the last step they wrote down on a third piece of paper something they desired that was attainable, written in a very positive light. Then they read their own out loud, hopefully giving them encouragement from the rest of the group to really go after it. With The Secret, you have to be specific too and really believe it, so I gave them examples accordingly.

The idea from my perspective was to encourage positive thoughts and a sense of being able to accomplish whatever it is that they want to accomplish. What I forgot about, was the huge religious hold the Catholic and Evangelical churches have on these people. They put all of their faith in the hands of the Lord instead of their own hands. During the first round of papers, a lot of people wrote things like, "I appreciate that the Lord has blessed me and my family with happy lives." I had given examples like, "I appreciate when my kids help me with the dishes." That's nice that you appreciate that God has given you a happy life, but I was hoping for something more specific that you can manifest more of. We burned the negative thoughts without reading them, so I don't know if at least that step went wrong. For the third step I wanted, again, something specific. There were a couple of people that got it and put down things like, "I want another child." Or, "I want $5,000 by the end of the year." Everyone else put, "I want God to take care of me." Oh, man. What does that look like? How can you visualize God taking care of you? So, it didn't quite go the way I had hoped.

Hopefully, the activity at least inspired a little positive thinking. Because whether or not it is God you are putting your faith in, you can still attract positive things if you have positive thoughts. I'd like to encourage them to put their own future in their own hands, but that would take profound change of belief. So I guess for right now I have to hope that they'll take the first step of appreciating what they have, knocking out some of the negative personal thoughts, and thinking about good things they do want.

Street Cred

I can't speak for all Peace Corps volunteers in the world, but from my own personal experience and from talking with other volunteers, I think one of the reasons people join Peace Corps is to be bad ass. Sure, this might not be the primary objective for most volunteers (I hope not also), but I think it is a factor for joining the Corps. I know that one of my many reasons for applying was that I could rough it for two years and come back and have some bragging rights.

Once you are in country you start racking up bad-ass points. (This is all from my own perspective of course.) One might gain points for having no water or no electricity or might lose points for living an hour from the capital. In my tally, I gain points living in a place with no direct transportation (i.e. I always have to walk to go anywhere), but I lose points for having internet access in my home. I gain points for having gotten dengue fever, but I lose points for my somewhat ritzy living situation. I gain points for having a Salvadoran boyfriend, but I lose points for living in the cheapest department. I don't actually count points or compare to other volunteers' values, it just theoretical.

I mention this because yesterday I just gained some bad-ass points. I was going down to the cornfield (that along might gain me some points), to help prep the land for planting and to haul some firewood, when I noticed there was something in my pants. I figured it was just toilet paper balled up from being washed or something, so I knocked at it to see if I could slip it out of my pants. As soon as I touched my leg I knew that was a stupid move - it wasn't wadded up paper, but the hard shell of a scorpion. As soon as I felt the sting I took off my pants, not caring if other farmers were in the vicinity, and with my cuma (a machete-like tool) I pushed the scorpion out of my pants and killed it. Not feeling terribly up for work I went down to the field and told my boyfriend that I was going home because I got stung. On my way back home I felt some more mild stinging, but I figured it was just the initial sting bothering me. At home I took off my pants and realized that no it wasn't the initial sting, it was in fact a baby scorpion (I assume born in my pants), that stung me two more times. Lovely.

The pain, swelling, heat, and tingling in my leg was gone around the time I went to bed though it was never that severe. I did rest for a few hours but then I went for a run and did laundry by hand and went about my usual schedule. There is often numbness in the tongue and lips associate with scorpion stings, which was bizarre though not too much of a bother. So it was that thrilling of an experience. The whole thing probably shocked me more than anything. However, it did give me some street cred. I can now say that I've been stung by a scorpion while living in El Salvador. Point: scorpion. Two points: baby scorpion. Bad-ass points: Alicea.

This is not the actual scorpion that stung me...I didn't feel like running home to grab my camera. This is one that I've had visit me at home though.

Creatures

I don't consider myself to be living in a terribly rustic setting. I have water, electricity, a refrigerator, and notably, the internet. However, my recent interactions with creatures has made it dawn on me that I am still living kind of rustic. My cement block house with an opening all along the roof and below my door allows for all sorts of creatures to appear in my daily life. Here are a few that I've been involved with in just the last week.


The Wasp
I don't really know much about a typical wasp, but there is this one type of wasp in this area that has really made an impression on me. They are busy! They're pesky also because they are always around and make a considerably loud noise considering their size. Anyhow, I'm featuring them because these little workers have built their homes in my home. With perseverance. They build long hollow tubes on the wall out of a mud they transport from somewhere...I am curious where it comes from. Often one will start construction in my house right above where I'm working, so I'll quickly use the end of my broom to knock down the fresh mud because I literally can't hear myself think when they are building. Plus, if it is in a pretty location that will make it ugly I'd rather not look at it. One day, however, I spent the entire day out of the house. In the seven hours I was gone one little wasp built a tube over three inches. I was impressed. Then I sadly knocked it down. I swear I don't have anything against wasps I just don't want them raising their babies above my bed.


The Scorpion
I used to see scorpions a lot more when I first moved in - maybe I've scared them all away. In the last week though I've seen two little guys. I don't know if they were babies or just a small species, but literally they were as long as my pinky fingernail. (I didn't measure with my pinky, I'm just estimating. Small or not their sting probably hurts.) One of them I saw because I was up late one night and in the calm of the night I heard a rustling coming from a box in the corner. I assumed it was a mouse or a rat (there's enough material on those guys for a whole post), but I wasn't feeling adventurous so I left it alone. The next day, with my boyfriend at my side, we went through the box and the only thing that was there was this little scorpion. Here it is apparently bad luck to kill a scorpion, so my boyfriend just cut off its stinger and threw it out the window...I'm not sure which is more humane.


The Toad
I don't know if the toads here are just kind of dumb, but they are always wandering everywhere and getting killed. If I'm walking around after a storm I always see a few plastered to the road. The other night I had a little dark-yellow visitor. The space under my door is enough for some creatures to get in and somehow this toad found its way under my door. He hopped a bit, but didn't get too far into the house. Thankfully all it took was a little sweeping and he was on his way. Goodbye Mr. Toad!


The Cockroach
The same night that I thought I had a mouse and it just turned out to be a scorpion, I was convinced that I really need to wash everything well all of the time. Or just deal with a myriad of sicknesses I could acquire. It was late and I was up finishing Dan Brown's newest book and I think the creatures of the night know my schedule. So around 10:00 (way past my normal bedtime), all of the creatures started to come out, not realizing my unusual presence. And what disgusted me the most was witnessing a pair of cockroaches scuttling over everything. Namely my dining room table and entire kitchen area. Ewwww. I reorganized the room the next day hoping to throw off the cockroaches for a few nights, but I'm still grossed out.


The Tick
I get ticks here with some frequency. I guess just walking around in the monte (brush) does it to me every time. The thing with ticks here is that they are tiny. And they don't even enlarge much when they've filled up on your blood. So discovering them sometimes takes days. I think I'm done with this one - I don't like ticks or pulling them off of me. And I even dreamt about one last night. Yuck.


The Palomilla (type of moth)
During the first couple of storms of the "winter" there is a massive outburst of these little bugs. I translated their name, but I really don't think they are moths. Anyhow, they are these little black guys with long skinny wings. The funny think about them is that their wings fall off really easily. I had one crawling on my arm while washing dishes yesterday and blew at it to get it to move (since my hands were all soapy), and all I did was blow off its wings. The little body of the guy was wriggling around on my arm still. Can it still live after that? So right now all of the spider webs in my house are full of these little black wings. It's really more funny than unnerving or disgusting. Though they can cause trouble when getting over excited. I had one fly in my ear last year and had to have a friend pull it out with tweezers. Yikes.


The Ants
There are ants here as there are everywhere, but there seem to just be a ton. I think I've got some holes in my house where they are regularly living and there's always some type of brown waste of theirs spilling out. The worst though are the ants that bite because man are they vicious. I hopped down to my "backyard" the other day to collect some kindling for my stove and was walking around when I stepped on a nest. My foot had a scrape on it and that's what they all went for. I had maybe twenty bites on my foot, but was able to shake off the rest of the ants before they bit me. I walked a different direction in order to try to get a little work done and conveniently stepped (with the same foot, mind you), into another freaking nest. Even with somewhat quick reflexes and jumping around a bit I still walked away with no fewer than 40 white painful bites on my one foot. Damn ants.

There are plenty of other creatures that I'm in contact with on a regular basis. I had a hairy horse spider visit just this morning. I've gotten pretty used to all of the creatures, though occasionally one will surprise me or scare me. There are little moments though when these creatures remind me that I'm living out in the countryside and yup, it's kind of rustic.