Day 3: Fun (and burning) in the Sun

Monday August 31, 2009

Vocabulary:

sipotes: kids

la anda: tag (literally "s/he walks (with) it," more like "s/he has it")

Photos: 

La Montanita
Lis' House

I was planning to start introducing people along with their pictures in the first post, but then I couldn't figure out how to embed a photo in a blog post.  I have now discovered how to do so, so I will introduce you today to the people that came to pick me up from the airport.  They're the ones I've spent the most time with.

Manuel's father, Jose Alfredo Guzman Ramos.  Technically he is Manuel's stepfather (thus the different last name), but he raised him from a baby and Manuel considers him his father.  He's 55 years old (same as my dad).

Manuel's mother, Fransisca Hilda Guzman Perdomo.  She is 57 years old, though she'll be turning 58 while I'm here.  She says Manuel is always the first to call on her birthday, which is funny because he has told me on multiple occasions that he has trouble remembering the exact date (it's September 2nd).

Alfredo and Hilda have six children.  Manuel is the oldest and this is the youngest, Ester.  The others all live in New York, and I've meet them all.  Ester is 24.  She always makes a face whenever I take a picture of her, so this is the best photo I have.

Luis is the fourth person in the house.  He just turned 13, and we actually celebrated his birthday (a few days late) today.  He is the son of Manuel's sister Ismenia.

Daisy (above) and Carolina (right) are the daughters of Manuel's brother Atilio.  They live with their mom a few blocks away from Manuel's parents, but they've been around all day everyday so far.  Daisy is 9 and Carolina 7.  They are even more darling than they look in the photos.

And finally, my stepdaughter!  (Yes, she is beautiful).  This is Manuel's daughter, Lisbeth Carolina.  He calls her Carolina, but everyone here calls her Lisbeth, mostly to avoid confusion with her cousin who is also Carolina.  That caused some confusion at first since I was calling her Carolina, but I've gotten used to calling her Lisbeth, or Lis or Li for short.  She lives with her mother's parents in a nearby village, but she's been staying with us since I got here and will be back next weekend.


Everybody around here has four names (two first and two last, the second last name being the mother's name), though I think I'm doing pretty well if I can remember just one per person.  It can get kind of confusing, though, and not just about Lisbeth Carolina.  Adults will sometimes call kids by their middle names only.  Ester was saying something about "Nando," and I wasn't even sure whether that was a person or maybe just a Spanish noun I didn't know.  I asked her, and it turns out she was talking about Luis, whose middle name is Fernando.  Same thing happened with "Janet" (which I didn't recognize as the name since it's pronounced differently)--it's Carolina's middle name.  It seems the middle name is used more when the kid is in trouble, which may explain why I don't know Daisy's and am quite familiar with Carolina's (Daisy is much more subdued).  Of course, the biggest confusion about names arrises from mine.  "R'el" is very hard for people to say and remember, and I'm getting all sorts of variations.

Today the big activity, involving everyone you've just met plus a few more, was going to a water park called "La Montanita" (the little mountain).  It's a pretty low-tech water park, but I had a lot of fun splashing around with "los sipotes" and taking lots of pictures.  I am especially pleased with some of the action shots (like the one where Luis is tossing the ball up, and the one where he's shooting out of the water slide); my old camera couldn't do those.

I was very careful to bring my swimming suit and even my snorkel and mask since I hoped to spend lots of time in the water here.  I'm glad I have the suit (haven't used the snorkel stuff yet), but I'm certainly an outlier.  No one here wears bathing suits, just regular clothes.  One of the girls even went swimming in an ankle length jean skirt.  We played a lot of tag, or "la anda" (I thought it was one word, "landa," until people started asking, "Quien la anda?" ("Who has it?") and I realized the correct structure.

I'm not a big daredevil, but I did ride the green spiral water slide (the others were closed)--twice.  The first time I put my arms out to the sides to slow myself down a lot, and by the end I was going pretty slow (the girl in the jean skirt had it even worse).  So the second time I kept my arms straight against myself, and I was going VERY fast by the end.  It was over pretty quick, and I didn't get a good sense for what was happening, but apparently I went way up to one side and then the other, and everyone thought I was going to fly right off, which would have been pretty bad.  As it was, I just banged my elbow ("codo"--that's a word I learned when I first started doing medical interviews in Spanish) a little.  Everyone who saw it was all concerned about my well-being, and also that Manuel not be told anything about it.

Being concerned for my well-being is a common theme here.  I feel like I'm constantly assuring people that everything is fine, I don't need anything, and that, yes, I can actually do that myself.  It kind of makes me want to prove I can take care of myself, but of course I've already managed to do some things that make it seem like I do indeed need to watched over carefully, including getting a very bad sunburn today.  I put sunscreen on but didn't reapply it often enough, and I forgot about my legs and apparently spent more time sitting on the side of the pool than I realized (the tops of my thighs are quite burned).  Oops.

Lisbeth has to go back to school tomorrow (she, along with everyone else, skipped today...), so after leaving the water park we dropped her off at her house (see photo album).  She's fairly soft-spoken, and I couldn't entirely tell whether she was happy to meet me, but her grandparents told me that she'd been asking everyday when I was coming and was very excited to meet me.  It's a somewhat delicate situation, but I'm just trying to get to know her a little and hopefully let her get to know me as well.  So far I think it's going well.

On the way back from dropping off Lisbeth, Don Alfredo offered to let me drive.  I was somewhat reluctant, but I did it, and I'm glad I at least got the experience (though it was just on a dirt road with no other traffic).  I think he was impressed that I drive stick as well as I do.

Day 2: Sunday in paradise

Sunday August 30, 2009

Vocabulario

culto: worship service
pupusa: traditional Salvadoran food--corn tortilla filled with cheese, vegetables, and/or meat
vos: you (used instead of "tu" in some countries, including El Salvador; verb conjugation is different as well, though I haven't figured out exactly how yet)

Photos

abuelo

rio

church

I've only been here really less than one day, but I feel like Manuel has already asked at least five times whether I've met his grandfather yet.  I should have met him last night, but he wasn't feeling up to having visitors.  This morning he was feeling better, so we walked all of the fifty feet across the dirt road that separates Manuel's parents' house from his grandfather's house and I met his grandfather.  We didn't talk much, but he seems like a cool guy.  He's 80 years old but is pretty healthy and sometimes even helps bring the cows in from the fields at night.  He has two pineapples growing on his property.  I've never had such a close view of pineapples growing.  It seems like an inefficient system--a whole big plant just for one fruit.

Right behind his house is a river.  I'm eager to swim in it at some point (did I mention it's stiflingly hot?), but today I just served as photographer for my photogenic nieces and stepdaughter.  They had a great time splashing around and jumping into the water from the banks.  When someone is going to swim in the river, they use the word "banarse" ("bathe") rather than "nadar" ("swim").  I thought this was mostly just a semantic difference, but as we were arriving Lisbeth said, "Oh, we forgot to bring soap!"  So I guess bathing in the river usually literally involves taking a bath, soap and all.

In the afternoon, we went to church.  When we talked on the phone before coming, I thought Manuel's father had said we would go to their church one week and mine the next, but it turns out he doesn't actually know where the LDS chapel is here, just that there is one (in Usulutan, the closest city).  So it doesn't look like I'll be attending an LDS service while I'm here.  The service was honestly pretty boring, very repetitive and very much focused on pure worship and not on learning anything or improving oneself.  I would have liked to join in with the singing, but there were no song books and the melodies were not familiar, so I had no chance.  The way the singing was organized was interesting.  Random people from the congregation would come to the front, suggest a song, and usually start singing it and kind of direct it.  However, there was also a leader of the meeting that was at the pulpit also trying to direct the singing.  So each song turned into something of a competition.  I also got the feeling there were many, many more songs than the leader was planning on.  Quite a contrast to our highly organized meetings.

For dinner, we bought pupusas from a neighbor in the village.  I've had pupusas in New York a number of times (and we always take visitors to a pupuseria--motivation to come visit us!), and also a couple times in Utah, and I really like them, but Manuel has always assured me that they are even better in El Salvador.  And he's right.  They were better.  I can't put my finger on why, but part of it may just have been being able to watch her make them right in front of me.  It was cool.

I continue to be impressed by the beauty of the countryside everywhere I go, and it's so green!  I can put up with heat for beauty like this.  These palm trees are across the street from the church.  I love palm trees.

(The formatting should be much improved this post, and I even learned how to use hyperlinks--thanks Matt!  Please let me know if the links are not working.)

Bienvenidos! (Welcome!)

As most people who will actually read this blog (hi Mom!) know, I take a lot of pictures, and I enjoy sharing them (as those on my regular e-mail list know). My recent trip to El Salvador was no exception; I literally took thousands of pictures, and I am eager to share them (well, really only the hundreds that I've determined are the best). However, even those thousands of pictures are not enough to convey all that I learned and experienced on this trip. So I am trying something new and starting a blog, solely for the purpose of chronicling my time in El Salvador. It is mostly a journal entry for myself, but I figured I might as well share it just in case anyone else is interested. I will still post facebook albums as usual, and links to relevant albums will be found at the end of each blog post. I will also incorporate a few photos into the blog (if I can figure out how to do that... I'm very new to this whole blog thing). The posts are written in real time as if I were still in El Salvador even though I am publishing them after the fact.

If you happen to be reading this blog and do not usually receive my "photo update" e-mails and would like to, please e-mail me or make a blog comment and let me know. Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy!

Day 1: Arrival!

Saturday August 29, 2009 

(I apologize for the weird formatting, but I am still learning how to blog.)

Vocabulario

sanitario: toilet

quebrada: ravine 

Photos

arrival

My plane left JFK at 11:10 AM, so I left the house around 7:00 AM with two big suitcases in tow (mostly gifts, including 30 New York tee-shirts of various sizes and several bags I'm transporting for Manuel's siblings to various family members).  Manuel helped me to the train station and bungeed the two suitcases together, but from there I was on my own.  It was a little scary to tilt the unweildy package onto the escalator, but that turned out to be quite preferrable to the two flights of stairs I had to get down.  But I survived and made it with plenty of time to my flight. 

The airline I took is a Salvadoran one called Taca.  I talked to Dad from the airport and he asked if I'd like him to look up their safety statistics.  I politely declined.  It turned out to be the very nicest airplane I've ever been on, except maybe for the Thai Air flight I took to Japan.  The coach seats were roomy, everything was new and clean, the food was decent (and free!), and the staff very professional and friendly.  The passengers were certainly mostly Hispanic, I assume Salvadoran, and also mostly elderly.  As we were deplaning, I noticed a woman sitting in front of me was carrying a bag on her head.  I had seen the same woman when we boarded, and she had been carrying the same bag in her hand.  It's as if just the knowledge that she was in a different country (we were still on the plane) made her act differently.   

Both the landing (I had a window seat) and the two hour drive from the airport gave me a pretty good sense of the landscape.  It's very green and mountainous.  It reminds me most so far of Dominica, just more spread out.  El Salvador may be a tiny country in the grand scheme, but compared to Dominica it's pretty big.  There are large flat areas between mountains (valleys, I guess is what those are called) where in Dominica the mountains practically meet the sea.  It's also stiflingly hot, just like in Dominica, and I had on long pants (air conditioning makes me cold) and sneakers (to leave more room in my luggage). 

The airport was smaller than JFK and the signs had the order of English and Spanish reversed, but otherwise was not that different from an American airport (though I did start learning new vocabulary soon after landing and before speaking to anyone, when I went to the bathroom and learned the word "sanitario" for "toilet").  Everyone from the flight attendants to the customs officials insisted in speaking to me in English.  The flight was basically on time, and the only trouble I had was a very very long wait for my baggage.  I was especially nervous during this wait because for some reason I had checked my camera, and I didn't want to miss out on taking pictures if my luggage was delayed a few days.   But it did eventually arrive, and I started taking photos absolutely as soon as possible. 

While walking through the airport and waiting for my luggage, I started a list on my cell phone of things to remember.  It's already kind of long (and most of the things mentioned here are on that list).  Since my phone won't work here as a phone (it's still fine for making lists of things on) and is probably something of a target for pickpockets, I'm going to have to buy some kind of analog (ie, paper) replacement soon.  If I had things to write down while in the airport, I can only imagine I will want to record a lot of things once I'm actually really in the country and meeting people. 

Speaking of meeting people, Manuel's parents (the main people I'm here to meet) had joked that they would be carrying a sign with my name on it, which I personally didn't think was such a bad idea.  The area outside the airport was mobbed, and I only know what they look like from a few photos that are not that current.  But they saw me before I saw them and were able to get my attention quickly.  The whole entourage came to pick me up: Manuel's parents (Alfredo and Hilda), his sister Ester, nephew Luis, daughter Lisbeth Carolina (he calls her Carolina; everyone else calls her Lisbeth), and nieces Daisy and Carolina.  You will meet them all specifically (at least in photo) in a future blog post.

It's the rainy season, so I expected it to be, well, raining.  When I was planning to go to El Salvador with HELP International (the program I went to Bolivia with, and no, I didn't end up actually going to El Salvador), the preparation materials said that to test whether rain gear would hold up to Salvadoran weather, one should don the rain gear, turn on the shower, and stand under said shower for 10 minutes.  So I was expecting torential rains.  But at least today the weather has been absolutely beautiful.  Bright, blue sky with white, fluffy clouds.  It's pretty hot and humid, but I can deal with that (I have lived in Dominica, after all). 

I followed the entourage through the beautiful sunshine to the car (actually a minibus), which did not start.  I started getting to know the girls while the adults and Luis worked on getting the car started.  I have no idea what was wrong, but the solution involved taking the battery out of a neighboring car (you can see the battery in the photo if you look closely).  I have always given Manuel a hard time about his propensity to litter, and it appears it's cultural (or at least familial); the girls were all eating snacks in plastic baggies, and they all left the baggies behind on the grass.

With the car started, we were on our way to Manuel's home village, Hacienda la Carrera, about a two hour drive from the airport.  When we passed a roadside stand selling fresh coconuts, I mentioned that I used to drink coconut water in Dominica, and that I like it.  At the next one we saw, Don Alfredo pulled over and bought me a coconut water.  In Dominica, we drank the water straight from the coconut and then chopped it open with a machete to eat the meat ("jelly" in Dominica).  Here, the juice and meat both were put in a plastic baggy which you tear a corner off of with your teeth to drink it.  The views from the highway were incredible.  It's so green, with mountains rising in the distance and lots of expanse of farm land or wild land between the highway and the mountains.  Much of that land appears to be for sale, and many of the tracts have romantic or whimsical names.  However, I saw one that was called "Proyecto la Ilusion" (yes, that means "The Illusion Project").  Somehow I don't see how that can be very encouraging to potential buyers.  Another thing I say a lot of was little rivers labeled "quebrada" (the big rivers were labeled "rio," which means "river"). Literally "quebrada" means broken, which I thought was kind of cool, since a river does literally break the land it goes through. According to my dictionary, it means ravine or gorge. One last thing I saw a lot of was corn (still in its husks) drying by the side of the road. My guess was that it was meant for eventual consumption by animals, but actually once it's dried it's ground up into the "masa" (dough or batter) used to make the ubiquitous tortilla.

I started out right away taking lots and lots of pictures, and some came out okay (it's pretty tough to get a good picture from a moving car).  We seemed to be going pretty fast, though the speedometer on the bus was broken, so I don't have an exact number.  The highest speed limit I saw was 90 kilometers per hour.  Passing on the highway was quite an experience.  Many times, the passing car wouldn't quite make it in time before a car (or huge bus) came in the opposite direction, so the outer cars would have to edge over a little to make space for the middle one.  One time there were four cars all in a row, all barreling down  the two-lane highway. 

Once we arrived at the house, I unpacked and shared the small gifts I had brought.  The most popular were the photos I brought of our trip to Utah and California.  They included many of family members and friends originally from the Hacienda, some of whom left for the United States over twenty years ago.  The absolute favorite was a photo of a photo that one of Manuel's California cousins has of Manuel's grandmother, who died five years ago.  Photos of her are scarce, so they were excited to have that one. 

In the evening, I accompanied Ester (Manuel's sister) to a birthday party.  I thought it was of a young friend and that there might be dancing, but it turned out the guest of honor was turning 60 and is the grandmother of Ester's friend's husband.  It was a bit overwhelming to meet a whole bunch of people, and be completely immersed in Spanish.  I spend a high percentage of my time in New York speaking Spanish, and I've gotten pretty proud of my knowledge and ability in Spanish.  Wow.  Am I being humbled.  I expect this will be a great vocabulary-building experience.  It's especially helpful to talk to children, and to try to follow a rowdy conversation involving lots of people.  Much harder than interviewing a patient on my own terms in my own comfort zone of the hospital or clinic.