El Salvador. Entry Four.

I have been to The Garden of Eden where all things co-exist in the pre-serpent harmony.
I have seen paradise. 
Banana and orange trees on a canvas of green where mangos rain down to land in small streams lined with exotic purple and red plants. 
Splashes of pink and yellow flowers sprinkled among coffee beans, corn husks, and butterflies. 
This was the road to Volcan Santa Ana, the biggest of El Salvador’s active volcanoes.


I climbed for two hours--in velcro shoes--to the top. 
As I grabbed a rock and hoisted myself up the slope, measuring each placement of my feet, lightning struck. Very close. 


"We have to be careful," the guide, a young woman, warned us, "There was a fire up here a few weeks ago from an electrical storm". 
I wondered how, exactly, we should be "careful"? Not strap metal to our chests? 
We had just hiked straight up an active volcano and were now basically climbing a rock wall to get to the top. 
We definitely weren´t going anywhere. 



When we stumbled onto the peak the first thing I remember is choking on sulfur. 
The second, thinking how worth it everything had been to look down into this mood ring crater--changing its color constantly with its tempermant. 



I realized how I have grown to love the heat here as much as hate it. It carries with it a pocket full of memories that I can breathe in and have forever.
 When it rains the air separates and stands still, like oil and water, visibley distorting the visions of buildings and people in front of you. 
The watery air smells sour.

The smells walking from my casita to the bus stop this morning: onion and corn smoking through the cracks in the wooden kitchens, the breathy giggles of children playing in the streets--they smelled of coffee and galletas, or pan dulce. Watermelons and guayabas have been dropped by sweaty hands on the ground and leave their sticky pungency hovering about.

I had a guayaba fruit for the first time yesterday! My new friend Nohe picked it for me from his tree.

Nohe is one of the men in my campo who goes to the city for his University classes during weekdays. He came over in the morning and walked me to his house where we spent three hours practicing English. 
"You´re a very good teacher," he whispered to me. "Very patient." And he laughed, his brain tired. 
That was worth it to me. 



He is almost a Lawyer, very determined to learn English. 
He tells me that to get almost any decent job here you must be able to speak English. 
He already has one strike against him in looking for work, he confides--being on the partido of the FMLN. 
It’s so incredible to me, this sort of life. 
You can be denied a job because of the way you vote. Even if you’re applying to work at the movie theater. 



Encouraging Nohe with his English is a welcome break from the work I’m doing at the radio station here. I actually really like the radio team, but it’s very difficult trying to construct a news program for a cultural that is upsettingly more foreign to me than not. So when I have an opportunity to spend time doing other things that garnish results that are quickly visable, like encouraging Nohe’s English, I get a satisfying helping of instant gratification.

El Salvador. Entry Three.

Last night was my favorite since I’ve been here. I loved it for the warmth of simplicity.

At about 5:00pm the clouds illusioned a storm onto every persons part of the brain that produces fear. 

As soon as the familiar wind broke through the radio’s office door, sending an eager bundle of baby dust tornados to dance around my ankles, I decided it was time to head home. 



Walking back the streets were empty, except for the occasional child who ran outside to look at the dark gray mass coming from every direction, heading for the collision course of washing away the one white splotch that lay in the middle of the sky. 


When I arrived at my house I shut the window to my room, locked it, and began writing in my journal. 
Five minutes later the power went out. 


I was going to try to write, one hand on the flashlight, but instead I saw the flickering of firelight and followed it through to the other side of the house where the family all sat talking by candlelight.

I sat here with them talking. 
A few moments later my twelve year old hermanito Walter began playing with the candle wax.

First he smashed little spiders that would crawl by, or the cicadas. The carapachas. He then would roast them over the flame and cover them in wax. 

I was half put-off and half charmed. 
He seemed to be doing it with the most caring technique, almost as if he hadn’t been the one who had just ended the insect’s life, but instead was only trying to send it off the proper way-ceremoniously-into another world. At some point I reached into the wax and made a cross to rest beside the graveyard Walter had now founded. 
My little sister, Patti, who is five, giggled and somehow the evening spiraled into wax balls, wax statues, wax people, wax houses. Here, by the light of few flames, the three of us sat entertaining ourselves as the rest of the family watched from their hammocks giving us ideas for what to invent next--all the while telling stories, and legends. 
So peaceful.