Saturday August 29, 2009
(I apologize for the weird formatting, but I am still learning how to blog.)
Vocabulario
sanitario: toilet
quebrada: ravine
Photos
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.
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