El Salvador. Entry Six.

The night before last, in the company of fireflies, I ran around the block hand in hand with the kindergartners--
All of us children enchanted by the night. 

Down the dirt path our feet beat in pace with our hearts. 
The kids running from the Only-Comes-At-Night witch and me following their laughter, lit with the quick blinks of light, darting and fading like falling stars. 



But, as is usual with nights here, the rain came and ushered everyone back inside.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping.

I went to bed around eight, and as I laid staring at the tin roof I thought of the title, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 
I wondered, why was the roof hot? 
Then I remembered how much lightning there is here and thought,
"Maybe that´s why the roof was hot! Maybe it was on fire!"


Then I heard thunder. 



This is what my mind likes to stray to as I´m trying to fall asleep. 
Earthquakes, Sunamni´s, and pretty much everything that could go wrong. 

With the pounding of the rain outside I quickly decided to turn my thoughts to other things, so naturally the next best thing was to try to plan the remaining years of my life. 

This proved stressful when I found myself awake until at 11:43--the last time I glanced at my watch. 


Here it is a ridiculous thing to not get to bed until so late. I am routinely woken by the roosters between four and five AM, and if they don’t get me the first time around the cows serve as my snooze alarm. 
The day starts at dawn for the people of Cuidad Romero. The women go to the milpa to stock up on their corn that they labor the day away making into tortillas, atol, masa, pupusas, etc. The men start herding the animals and head for the harvesting fields. The children start on household chores.

I remember telling my host sister Diana that in college I don’t usually sleep until two or three in the morning. She laughed the sort of laugh you force around crazy people so they’ll think you’re on their side and not try to hurt you.

None of the adults here I know are employed, yet they work through out the day: The women who ride the bus to sell pupusas and horchata hoping that, between here and the mile away stop from which they’ll have to walk back, they can make enough money to feed their six children.

The children that get up two hours before school begins at seven thirty (if they’re lucky enough to get to go to school) so they can go to the milpa and stock up on corn for the masa their mother’s and sisters will sweat away the day turning into bread, tortillas, pupusas, atol, cookies, etc. 
The men who can spend full weekend days cutting down, and then chopping up a Palo de Coco so that they can have wood for the next two month’s worth of cooking.


In talking to many of the parents in Cuidad Romero it’s clear, though they would never say it because they have a Salvadorian pride and resiliency, that many feel inadequate. A surprising amount of people cannot find work, either due to lack of it in a location that is realistic for them to reach, or their political affiliations.

There are a lot of people my age on my radio team who hate the United States for what it has done to their country, but still have it as their life’s goal to cross our border and achieve The American Dream.


So many people here don´t really understand what life is like for immigrants over there. They have family in the U.S, maybe a child, cousin, uncle or brother. They see pictures of gaudy television sets and clean carpets and think this life is everyone’s reality. It´s everyone´s entitlement. But,  the family’s in the U.S are responsible for this false hope too. They aren’t sending the letters about the stress of finding the three jobs they’re working, or the difficulty of not knowing the language.

July 20^th, 2005

I’ve only got a little bit of time left here, so this will probably be my last letter to you.

The absolute best times I have had in El Salvador--my favorite days--I wont tell about here. 
I don´t know how. 
If you and I should happen to talk one day, ask me about them I will tell you face to face, but some things here, like experiences, don’t have translation. 
Just the sort of way I cannot write the relationships I have built with people here, because they are too complex and beautiful to risk being ineloquent in description.

El Salvador. Entry Five.

I live here in what many North Americans would call economic despair, yet I’m not sure I’ve ever been so comfortable. Nights I spend watching novelas with my fifteen year old sister, or reading in the hammock as my hermanito plays chibolas (marbles) on the porch my father was building the day I arrived. 
My little sister braids my hair and comes to my work in the afternoon to lead me home by the hand so I can play. 


My mother and Diana lay in the bed next to mine before bedtime and gossip about the community scandals with me. My Papa and brother like to talk to me about stories they’ve heard, and try to scare me by handing me carapachas or telling me "Mela, Lencho is coming".

Lencho is the town crazy who dresses in a Chinese fisherman’s hat, a blue sweatshirt, and tan pants every day. Also, he does not shower. 
His father used to make him…until Lencho came at him with a machete. 



There are many stories on what happened to him: his ex wife was a witch who put a curse on him, he was bit by a rabid dog and was never the same after that, his son died and he went insane. 
All I know is that he seems pretty harmless most of the time--he talks quietly, and mostly to himself. But I try to avoid him as much as possible because he spends an unnecessary amount of time staring at me, which is why the men in my family think it’s hilarious to tell me he is coming for me. 


My family.

As time sneaks away I have more and more trouble remembering the family here isn’t actually my own. 


Don’t get me wrong, I have no romantic notions of living amongst the people here forever. 
Every person I meet here will forever have a part of my heart, but yesterday I met a Scorpion near the bucket shower I bathe in—the one hidden between two slabs of tin and a small piece of blue tarp. 
And also my hair smells like sulfur. And my fingernails are the color of the dirt the kids flop over on to nap in. 
           I

I’ve always had this fantasy of Cowboys and sprawling Montana ranches. But now I’ve seen real cowboys, and they are not Robert Redford. 
 They spit discolored things on the ground, whistle at you, and kick their dogs. 
The "ranches" are full of insects and grass that makes me sneeze. 
Remind me of this if I ever speak to you of Montana.



At present, on the right side of my body from the waist down, I have fifty-three bites from varying insects. Mostly mosquitos. I remember being little and seeing the canopies the princesses in my favorite stories had over their delicate beds. 
I remember thinking that you had to be royal to be in possession of such an extravagance. 
Now I realize that not only do you not have to be rich to sleep under the protector of Disney´s leadings ladies, but that its actually the impovershed´s version of health care.  Fifty three. If anything I missed counting a few that I could not see, so this is not an exaggeration. Neither are the vast amount of cockroaches that live in my host-family’s latrine (and my family has one of the better outhouses in the community).

This morning I stepped in a green puddle of malarial swamp water. It smelled like poop and rotten fruit. Mainly because that’s what was in it. But these things, though, piece by piece and all of them together hit me forcefully today with the message that I’ve really begun to settle in.

 If you could see the way I look you would think I am miserable here. 

Ironically, my sloppy appearance is something I revel in, because to me it serves as evidence of the unforgettable time I am having.

Almost all, literally, of the clothes I brought are ripped or stained, but from climbing trees, feeding my little brother, dropping grease while cooking, chickens getting into my things. 



My hair is snarled, but seeing the country from the back of a pick-up truck and being caught in intense tropical storms make me indifferent to that. 



I am covered in scrapes. Proof of scratched mosquito bites, jungle I’ve walked through, the barbed wire fences I’ve climbed through and over while catching rabbits or roosters or whatever has escaped that day. 



My nails are dirty with residue from things I’ve planted, playing in the street with the neighborhood kids, left over sand from trips to the beach I’ve taken with the owners of hostels or the radio team.

This country, yes, is poverty ridden and corrupt, but it is also breathtakingly beautiful. It breaks your heart in a new way every day—in only a way something you have begun to love can do.