4am: Let´s go to the Market!

So after drifting in and out of restless, half sick sleep all night, I was dismayed to finally look at my watch and realize it was 3:40am. I turned my alarm off, and stalled until 4, when I finally decided I wasn’t really sick and that I should get up. Wandering out my door, I ran into Rina, engripada (she has a cold) and wearing an oversized fleece jacket. In San Vicente, it’s actually cold in the morning.

I went to SanVi last week to help out with the fresh group of trainees because I’m a part of GAD, the Gender & Development committee. It’s fun stuff. So I stayed a couple of nights with my host fam from my training days (weird that it’s already been three months since I left there, time really does go pretty quick). I spent Friday at the training center, and then had a bet going with myself and the disbelieving Rina that I would actually get up at 4 in the morning. Why? To go to the market of course!

Rina and Tive do seasonal work. While I was living with them, it was sugar cane season, and they were constantly working in the molienda making molasses-like stuff. Now they’re harvesting the tomatoes, cucumbers and chiles they planted just as I was leaving. By about 4:20, I was already glad I was up. We were driving down the highway with a truck full of produce and people, and the sun had yet to rise. It was cool, calm, and almost pretty.

Then we got to the market area, about 45 minutes away.

Oranges. Chiles. Tomatoes. Live chickens. Socks. Potatoes. Yucca. Onions. Garlic. Jocotes. Zapote. Large slimy fish. Live turkeys. Coconuts. Corn. And people. Swarms of people, climbing over each other and the piles of produce, arguing over prices while men carrying 2 or 3 large sacks of produce over their backs squeezed through shouting “voy, voy voy!” (comin through, move or be trampled). It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, if only for how people packed in around each other. I literally couldn’t move my feet for a while, there were so many sacks of produce and different vendors around me. And it seemed like every time someone would sell a sack of something and make a little room, a new vendor would swoop in with an even bigger sack or basket.

Vendors. I shouldn’t call them that. Most of them are farmers. Rina wanted to get $12 for her sacks of 300 chiles. She got 9 at most, and sold them at $2.50 for 100 instead of the $5 she was aiming for. One lady who bought chiles from us turned around and sat about 5 feet behind me, selling them in baggies for 4 for a quarter. So I guess the farmers never make out that great. After spending about 5 hours in the market, Rina came home with 40 some dollars from selling the week’s produce. Not much to feed her three kids and the nephew that now basically lives there as well.

It was a dizzying experience that I would never like to go through again, but I was glad to see that aspect of work. It never fails to give me a new appreciaion of how different people spend money, and the difference between people who really work for a living, and those who receive Remesas (cash) from family in the states (which is 1 in 3 families, according to a recent news article).

So, back in my site, I came home to a misbehaving dog. She likes to wander around in the street now, chewed through her leash to escape confinement while I was gone, and also got sick. My roommate, (sounds weird saying that, they don’t really use the term here) Aracely was very concerned that something would happen to my dog while I was gone and I would be really upset, so she kept sending me text message updates. I think she takes better care of that dog than I do, actually. She’s about 6 months old now. Anyone have tips on dog training??

So now I’m back in my site…and back to work. And it’s been thunder and lightening all night, but no rain. Wacky. Hope everyone is taking care…

address update, take 2

Super quick update, as I need to go catch a bus to go to Gotera (nearby city) for a “Morazan Meeting” with all the volunteers in the department of Morazan. I bailed on the last two meetings, so I feel it’s about time I made it to one.

So, update: I moved to a new house! Not one of my own, but I moved in with my friend Aracely, and her mom and little sister, Julissa. We just took her mom to the airport yesterday to go visit her 3 other kids in New York for 2 months though, so it’s just us in the house for now. I actually moved slightly outside of my working area, but it was just the right situation, and I am not really wanting to live totally alone right now. So I moved in with what are basically the sisters I never had. We spend way too much time teasing each other, laughing, and eating, but I’m really happy here.

My address: Since I know the post man, the mail will always get to me at the old address, but if you want a more permanent one, use this:

Melanie Patterson
Lista de Correos
Sociedad, Morazan
El Salvador, C.A.

Not much else is new. Just workin…I’ll get pics up of the new family soon. Take care everyone, and keep writing me, your letters definitely help keep me sane and make me feel a little connected even though you are all so very far away.

tough girl!

Nasty, I know....Read the blog below to find out what it´s from...

Host bro Yovany asleep in his mosquito net....

When it rains here, it pours, in every single way you can imagine.
My dog is frickin adorable
My pup!
Yup she´s a doll
Diabolical host bro? He´s a goof

Being couple-y out on a random hike somewhere trying to fit ourselves in a photo.
Matt takes the camera...we hiked out to a little waterfall.
Hammocks are the only way to go
Seriously. Hammocks rock.
My dog, being beat up by the other dog....who recently died...

21.June.2007.
Here’s a little ditty to accompany the photos…

Matthew finally wrapped up everything in Iowa and hopped a plane down to Central America. I gave him the best welcome and crash course review I could: we spent the first day at the beach with a family I recently met, a night with my old host family (who are amazing, and my next vacation plans are just to visit them!), and some time in Animas. The people had quite the time meeting him, and no one wanted to believe he spoke Spanish (it’s ok, they didn’t speak to me directly at first either), but told me repeatedly (and continue to tell me) what a handsome guy he is, and what a good looking couple we make. Thanks for your approval, El Sal.

The weirdest part of him being here was doing “normal” “American” things, like having a beer and going to a movie (Pirates 3 is not as bad as the reviews say).

I’ve been working a lot since Matt left (he’s in…Mexico right now? Wherever he is, his job is cool and my friends and I are jealous), and overall things are going well.

Right now I’m helping the clinic re-inspect all the water containers in the houses, looking for mosquito larvae, because it’s a bad year for Dengue. So yesterday I visited houses all morning. I got to the 22nd and entered the yard with apprehension, knowing there was a mean dog there…waited for the owner to shoo it off to the side, and stepped in to talk to her. After..oh…30 seconds, the dog crept up behind me stealthily, and in one swift move, chomped my leg and took off. No barking (no warning). I was so startled, I didn’t even realize I’d been bit until the owner asked me. Upon unzipping my pants at the shorts-line, I saw the blood running down my leg. Pretty nasty. The lady gave me some lemon to put on it, and a stick to defend myself in the future. Gotta be careful of mean dogs, she told me. Still sorta in shock, I smiled and finished inspecting her water, had her sign a paper, and asked if her dog was vaccinated against rabies. Still smiling (I have no idea why or how), I went home for lunch.

Good thing they have huge campaigns here and all the dogs are vaccinated against rabies. So I’m going to post a photo of that….It’s pretty nasty, but…I dunno. It’s my first dog bite. (This blog is not for the weak of stomach anyway) It looks worse in the photo than it is, and it’s not really so bad at all. Although…the dog has bitten quite a few people….and I think after the obligatory 10-day observation period (to make sure he really doesn’t have rabies), he might end up dead…you can’t just go around biting the gringa like that.

That’s really the most exciting thing going on at the moment, other than me still looking for a house to move to, which is more frustrating than exciting.

Thanks to those who have been sending me mail…I’ll write back soon! Make sure to email me if your addresses change though (I know some people are moving around this summer, aka Nate and Nicole…so let me know where you are).

All for now, enjoy the photos!

Doin the census, gettin´ by...

22.May.07
A new ciber café opened up in Sociedad, so I now have internet access about 15 minutes from where I live (45 minutes on foot through the countryside). I suppose this means you can email me if you want, cause I’ll check it like once a week, but you should still write, too! And, let me know if anyone wants to talk to me, since phone calls out of here are only 10 cents a minute.

In my life: I finally began to branch away from Don Misael (Health Promoter extraordinaire) and to start doing the census PC requires me to do of 80 houses in the community. You know how bureaucracies are with stats. Since Animas consists of about 450 houses, 80 were chosen from the poorer, but also motivated, areas.

The day I began my census (May15), I ventured out at about 8:30am (late by Salvadoran standards, but I’m still not a morning person) to make the half-hour trek across oxen grazing grounds and open fields. It’s actually a really pretty walk with great views of the surrounding mountains (which tend to depress me, since I know there are cooler places so close to me, yet I am stuck in the oven down below, cursing at the water I drink as it immediately sweats back out my suffering pores).

However, every time I tell someone which path I took, I get an immediate “y no le da miedo andar solita allí?” (and it doesn’t scare you to walk there alone?)…to which I reply “uh…no…? Why?” Then people are like “oh, no, don’t worry about it, there aren’t drunks around here, it’s totally safe.” And I mean, I feel safe…there usually aren’t other people on the path, and if there are, they just say hi to me and ask who I am. Not very threatening if you ask me, but once in a while I tell people I’m going to start carrying my corbo (small machete). This gains a laugh. Girls don’t carry corbos. Silly gringa.

I ran into one guy, and he was like “Buenos dias. choteando?”
To which I replied, “Buenos dias, no, solo paseando.”
There’s an example of caliche Salvadoran slang. Choteando and paseando are the same thing…both meaning like, passing through, visiting, something like that. And word actually got around that I hadn’t known what choteando meant, and I’ve been teased about it. Heh, I’m learning though!

Ok, so back to this first day of doing the census. I made it to four houses. I entered, introduced myself again (most people have met me before and pretend to know why I’m here although it makes no sense to them why in the world someone from the states would want to come here, when people here are dying to get stateside), and made it through the painstaking census. Some questions are simple: who lives in the house, how many times have you been to the doctor lately. Others are a little less comfortable: Tell me what you know about HIV/AIDS. Are you using any form of birth control? They’re not so bad if there are just 2 or 3 people home. But when there are like 7 people home of all ages…things can get awkward. Sometimes questions get skipped over…

Four houses= 1 cup coffee, sweet bread, quesadilla (another type of bread, not tortillas and cheese), hot milk, 2 cups of salva cola (again, sort of like a flat nasty RC cola, but even sweeter)

**digression**
Here they sell “Coca Light” instead of Diet Coke. Why? Because here the word “diet” implies that a doctor has put you on a restrictive diet…so the product didn’t work. Coca light though…they’ll buy. It’s the same thing, except in a silver, narrower, sexier can. The other day, I saw both a Coca Light and a Diet Coke sitting on the shelf together. Strange,
**end digression**

back to the food, I also received multiple tortillas (several people have said to me, “is it true that in the states people don’t eat tortillas??” – here they are the staple of every meal), and some cuajada, which is this cheese made from milk, cut into cubes. It’s actually pretty good, fresh tasting, and not usually too salty. I think that’s all the food I ate along with a LARGE glass of orange liquid (a “fresco”. Now…I’ve talked to these people. I know for a fact that they do not treat their water. It is not potable. But when someone hands you a drink…Let’s just say, I was handed a plate of food, freshly cooked, and I was pretty content. When the bright orange drink landed itself on the table…well…I looked at the fresco. The fresco looked at me. And then I drank the entire glass, somehow actually thinking that if I managed to gulp down every last drop, I would have conquered the cup, and would be out of harms way.

(can you tell where this is leading?)

Fast forward to being back in the house where I’m staying, later that night. I eat MORE cuajada with another tortilla, then a cheese-filled pupusa with curtido (grated up cabbage, carrots, onions, with vinegar…a lot of Salvadorans don’t even eat it because cabbage is really hard to wash, and well…it’s not washed anyway).

**Insert Stomach Ache here.
**Also insert phone conversation with Matthew, and me stating something like “If I make it to the weekend without being sick, it will be a miracle.

Uh-huh. So I’ll spare you the details so as not to make this blog totally gross, but let’s just say I was pretty damn sick, and didn’t eat for about 3 days afterward (though for all the concerned mothers out there, I’ll have you know I was drinking massive amounts of water, and kept taking vitamins!). Anyway. Parasites again…although still not as bad as the food poisoning Matt gave me (haha) in Argentina.

It’s been a week since then, and for some reason, even though I know I like cuajada, the very thought of that cheese makes my stomach churn…even though any number of foods could have given me the amoebas, for some reason that’s the one engrained in my mind. I keep trying to convince myself I like it…maybe in time.

What else. Ah! My mail delivery system, this is amusing. So, a few people were still sending mail for me to the San Salvador office (which is like 5 hours from where I am), so whenever nearby volunteers have to go to the office, they’d be bringing me back mail…then I would go wait at the nearest bus stop, where they’d toss me my mail out the window. So this consists of me receiving a text message, and me grabbing my dog’s leash (pretty sure I’m one of 5 people who own a leash in El Sal), and dog, and half jogging the block to the bus stop. Yesterday, a package was sent to the village near me (I swear, the whole town knew it was there before I did), so another friend who was going by at 6:30 this morning (I had to peel myself out of bed for that one) passed it through the bus window. Pretty amusing. So if you’re going to send mail (aka, when you send mail, because you better be! I have to prove I have friends back home- send pictures!), make sure to send it to Animas (see address in previous blog), and then anxiously await my brilliant reply.

In other exciting news, I was roped into playing softball yesterday with a group of teenagers. I was just going to watch…but of course they all haggled me until I went up to bat…I haven’t hit a ball since like middle school T-ball or something, so my attempts were pretty pathetically girly. However, thanks to the fact that I can run, and the team on the field was just lazy, I got 3 hits….3 runs…whatever. However, since I have not done my summer ritual of playing catch with Dan, I can no longer throw (I always forget how…it’s not like riding a bike, I swear), so my throwing was, well, embarrassing. The bases were plastic bags and rocks, and most people were playing in flip-flops (called ginas here). Fun times though. By the time we were done though, it was almost dark, and I had a half-hour walk home, so I was accompanied by 4 girls and a guy, all the way home.

These kids are the first group of people I’d consider to be my “friends.” It’s about time I got some, right? It’s strange moving somewhere where you just don’t know anyone…I was trying so hard to introduce myself and get some “work” done that I hardly realized I didn’t have any friends to hang out with. But finally, I’m meeting some people. Although, my community is so huge that the different groups of kids I know don’t even know each other.

Oh, and I got my hair cut yesterday. The first time, I cut it myself, just the tips, and I was going to pay someone to cut it, but my host mom was like oh ask Keyri (pronounced Katie), she’s a cosmotologist! So yeah…20 year old Keyri made me a little nervous, but it turned out pretty good. It’s kind of shorter in the front, tapers down in the back….not bad, not bad.

All for now.
More notes from The Savior soon to come, and as always, feel free to email questions or comments, or post them on here….it’s a little weird not having any idea how many people are reading this. Sometimes I feel like I’m keeping in better touch with people now that I did in the states. I guess I have time to write though.

Photos!

I was going to put more pictures up, but it´s not working for some reason. Here are the important ones at least-

My birthday cake!
The new fam, on my birthday...from left to right- random aunt, host mom´s mom, me, neighbor Anita and son Roger, host mom Lilian on right, and in front, random chile, host bro Yovany, and Oscar.

>The night before I left my host family in San Vicente...with the kids. They called me the other day just to say hi..I´m going to go visit them in a few weeks, so I´m pretty excited

Birthday, etc

7.May.2007
Yesterday was my birthday. After a few not-so-subtle hints, (I dreaded the impending lonely feeling of a birthday passing without anyone knowing it), I ended up with a large, rather delicious cake, decorated with “Felicidades Melany.” 22nd birthdays aren’t too important, I figure. It got me away from the infamous 21 (what a long year that was), and only a little further away from still feeling like a teenager.

Life in my new home is going pretty swimmingly. I haven’t really done anything on my own yet…I sort of just shadow Misael (health promoter) around while he introduces me to people and I check their water supplies for mosquito nesting grounds.

I did manage to find a favorite hammock spot, though. This fabulous little old lady, Niña Alejandra (I think that’s her name at least…I’m so bad with names), lives on the top of a hill in an area that I’m going to focus on (Los Venturas). She always invites me in to cool off and relax in her hammock for a while (the 20 minute trek up the rocky path to her place never fails to leave me chapuda (pink-cheeked). She tells me about the nine children she had (all at home), and chats with me for a while. I can actually understand her (she doesn’t totally slur her words together), plus she gives me coffee (real stuff, not instant) and homemade sweet bread. (The humorous part was when I told her my mom wanted to come visit, and that she’s a nurse. Her reply was “Oh! How nice! Is she from El Salvador?” Um, no…my mom’s a gringa too...)

There was a case of dengue (breakbone fever) last week in Sociedad (nearby pueblo). I accompanied the head doctor of the health clinic to the house where the sick girl lived, and we fumigated and killed mosquito larvae in water supplies within a 200meter radius around the house. I’m sort of vaguely convinced that within my 2 years here, I will eventually get dengue. It makes your whole body ache and your eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of your head, but then a week later you’re basically ok (as long as you stay hydrated)

I’m starting to find a sense of home here. I fixed up my room yesterday, hung up my mosquito net quite perfectly, patched up a few holes it had (thus thoroughly impressing myself with my ability to sew). I also (am a huge dork) put up some glow-in-the-dark stars and galaxies stickers inside my mosquito net and on the walls. I’ll probably still be putting those up when I’m 32 (sorry, Matt).

Mentioning Matt, I think I need to brag for a bit, here. Matt graduates this week from U of Iowa (most of you already know this). In less than a month, he has to pack up his life, take a wilderness first aid course, and move down here. He landed a fantastic job with GAP Adventures, a Canadian eco-friendly, local-business supporting tourism company. He’s going to be working in all of Central America (insert my tinge of jealousy here), which means a few things. He’ll become an expert on Central Am, and get to visit me once in a while. In short, I’m so excited! It’s awesome. So maybe with all that travel experience, he’ll come across a pretty beach where we can get married in a couple years…Costa Rica is the general aim at the moment (who wouldn’t want to vacation there??).

In general, things are good here. Despite the large numbers of flying beetle things in my room each night, swarms of flies and flying ant things, flesh-eating mosquitoes (not really), loud music and boys in the house every night (because my host mom sells food), and current lack of water (it only “falls” every three days, and I guess a pipe is broken somewhere, so we can’t do much here), I’m settling in, and starting to like it here. Why? Good food, friendly people, an adorable dog (who for some reason doesn’t like a lot of old ladies), a house without rats or bats (or cats, hah), and thinner tortillas! (as we are closer to Honduras, the tortillas here are bigger than San Vicente, and wonderfully thinner, so they don’t sit like a rock in your stomach, but rather like a pita.) Also, there are usually 3 or 4 fireflies in my room each night. Along with my glow-in-the-dark stars…it almost starts to feel quaint.

There you have it. I hope everyone is safe and well and taking advantage of the resources you have. And also that you are sending me mail. I went to the post office the other day to mail some things, and the guy was like….so… no one’s sent you anything yet, right? Because I haven’t seen anything for you. Punks.