Travel Blog!
Day 2: Romero Day/Rio Sumpul
Jasmine Graze/Melia Manter:
I don’t do kids.
When I grew up in the quiet suburbs of San Diego, I was the kid. I lived with and around adults. Kids are cute, but what the hell do I do with them? This is what I was thinking as I stood in front of a second-grade class full of kids from the town of Guarjila, El Salvador. Early Monday morning, on our first day of spring break, we woke up early, ate breakfast, and went to school.
We met with the director of the school and learned about some of the history of how it came to be. Before the school was built, classes were taught underneath a tree. When the physical school structure was finally built, it had a solid cement roof in order to protect students from the falling bombs during the war. When the war finally ended in 1992, the roof was replaced with metal and the school expanded.
Walking into the classroom the word 'gringa/o' spread throughout the class in a flurry of whispers. A room of widened eyes ogled me as Paula, their teacher, led the kids through their science texkbooks. As I stood, shifting from foot to foot ans pulling at my sweaty shirt, I wondered. The giggles, the blatant staring, the wondering around the classroom-- this was not the classroom I was familiar with. How are you going to help out, I asked myself, if you don't know what you are doing? I edged up and down the aisles with much less confidence than my fellow LC co-teacher, who was fluent in Spanish and seemed to know exactly what to do."What do I say to them? I asked him. I walked around with a smile and constant barrage of "necesitas ayudar?'s" and "vas a dibujars." I made sure their animals and plants were drawn, and their text passages copied. I felt significantly less uncertain with a goal in mind. Then I felt a poke. I dropped to my knees and asked the poker-in-question, “Necesitas ayuda?” "Como te llamas?" She whispered to me. I told her my name. “Que es este?” I asked her. She leaned in close, like she had a super amazing secret. "Es un conejo," she explained. "Come se dice en Ingles?"
“It’s a rabbit,” I said. “Rabbit.”
"Ribbit?"
"Rabbit."
"Robbot."
“Rabbit.” We smiled at each other, and I made to stand up to continue my circuit around the room.
"Jasmine," she said suddenly. I spied her name written out in her notebook.
“Yennifer,” I said back, and picked up a fallen pencil sharpener. I handed it back to a nearby girl and asked for the names of the girls around me, and then I’m in. I did not understand what they said most times, but it was clear that I had been adopted as their gringa.
In the end, I felt like we developed a mutually beneficial relationship. I motivated the cute, inquisitive chico/as to keep studying and they...they were kids. That is, they did the generally adorable kids thing where they befriend you and you are suddenly BFF's. By the end of the morning, I had a group of new amigas. They gave me little kid hugs and pressed close to my legs like it wasn't too hot to function and just loved me. These kids know of love at such a young age, and they do something powerful with it-- they love unconditionally, blindly, deeply. Being there, in this classroom and in this community, made me remember the sheer awesomeness of love. How great would it be to love others like these kids love? Lesson learned, and duly noted.
After a long day at school, we headed up to cool off at the nearby waterfall, “La Pozona.” We then ate dinner at Betty’s and prepared for an intense soccer tournament with the Tamarindos. As we had been learning all week, we found yet again that when it comes to competitions with the Tamarindos, we generally find ourselves at a loss. From mango-picking, to waterfall-jumping, and finally to the sport of “futbol”, these kids are relentless and always victorious. These kids can do anything.
Day 3: Community Service/Mango Picking/Made Dinner for Community
Mia McLaughlin
The group met on campus around 2:30AM to head off for a long day of travel to El Salvador. The plane departed Portland around 6am and arrived in San Salvador in the evening after a long six-hour layover in Houston, TX. Most of the group sprawled out all over the airport floor and got in some good sleep for a long week ahead. Once we all arrived in San Salvador, we were welcomed by the loving and excited faces of a few of the older Tamarindo members. From there we took the two- hour drive to Guarjila where we set up camp for the night in the Tamarindo excited for the events ahead.
Molly Sobel and McKay Campbell:
Saturday morning we woke up to the sound of the infamous John Guiliano and the screaming roosters, both of which seemed to hit the same pitch at 7 AM. John is the ex-priest who is in charge of the Tamarindo Foundation, the community center at the center of the rural town, Guarjila, which we would call home for the next week. In the next twenty minutes we were introduced to the Salvadoran living style: buckets of water thrown over our heads for a shower, cockroach covered latrines for toilets, and brushing our teeth among the chickens. Little did we know, after just eight days, it would be hard to abandon these simple morning rituals. We then walked to Betty’s, the simple yet stunning restaurant where we would eat almost every meal. We ate casamiento (beans and rice) and platanos (fried plantains) for breakfast, and loved every bit of it.
That day, March 24th, was Montseñor Romero day, a day that celebrates the life of Priest Oscar Romero who was a charismatic voice for the poor. John decided that the best way to celebrate Romero’s life was to serve the elderly of the community who were personally affected by Romero. We spent the next few hours setting up the community center for a banquet, or a fiesta, of sorts. This was a cool opportunity to see the town, as many of us spent the time searching the community for extra tables and chairs or picking up the elderly from the back of John’s pick-up truck. The celebration was incredible. The elderly were happy to meet and talk with us and eager to share their life stories. My personal favorite memory was watching how excited the children and youth were to grab plates and serve the older members of the community. John even set up games of piñata and musical hats for the elderly to play, and the children were happy just to watch. Later in the week I asked a little girl what her favorite holiday was: she quickly answered that Monseñor Romero day was easily her favorite.
After cleaning up the banquet, we split off into pairs and were assigned our homestay families. The houses in Guarjila are mostly one or two room houses made of cement blocks with a latrine and a shower stall out back. It wasn’t uncommon to share your room with the family’s chickens. After unloading our stuff and meeting our welcoming families, we grabbed our day packs and headed out to Río Sumpul, a beautiful river about half an hour away from Guarjila.
We traveled in a cattle truck and a pick up truck and got to know many members of the Tamarindo community that way. There were about 80 of us total packed into the two trucks. After a thirty minute drive, we arrived at the Río Sumpul, a historical site where 800 people were massacred in 1980. Despite the history, Río Sumpul is one of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen. After getting in the water, John suggested that we jump off the bridge and despite our fears, he said it would be safe. The bridge was about 40 feet high. After seeing others survive the fall, we decided that we would join. It was amazing, but also terrifying. The weather was about 90 degrees and the water was close to 80. We spent the next hour and a half playing water volleyball with the Tamarindo boys only being interrupted once for a moment of silence at the time of Romero’s death. At about 7 PM, John got everyone out of the water to eat a dinner of Papusa’s by the campfire and roast marshmallows. During dinner, we were able to socialize with many of the Tamarindos we hadn’t had a chance to meet yet. Just an hour or so later, John determined that there would be a storm, so we wouldn’t be able to sleep at the river as we had planned. As the thunder and lightning began, we all gathered our things and ran up to the trucks. Sure enough, as we chaotically piled into the trucks, the rain began. It did not stop pouring until we arrived home. The truck ride was a bonding experience, to say the least. Somehow, our truck managed to turn a few trash bags and one rain jacket into a cover for everybody. Half an hour and numerous slightly dangerous and adrenaline-pumping events later, including some near-death experiences and having to unload to push our cattle truck that had gotten stuck at the bottom of a muddy hill, we arrived home. It was an incredible day that felt like a week, and got us excited for the rest of the trip.
Day 1: Travel Day
Rachel Wolf and Jeff Rhoades
Jeff: Sunday we woke up early to pick up garbage. Now, that probably doesn’t sound like as much fun as it was. Then again, I don't think anything I could write could accurately convey how incredible my experiences on this trip were. But, as I was saying: We woke up earlier than I have since high school, but somehow it was the second day I can remember that I have woken up that early and still been excited to get out of bed. (The first was Saturday.) Yeah, I was dirty and groggy, but it wasn't long before I was feeling great. I got to pitch in to help clean up a wonderful town, in which I came to feel quite at home.
I have to admit that there was a lot more garbage than I had expected. I found it odd that people living in such a beautiful place would be so careless with their refuse. In some ways, I think this may speak a bit to a certain degree of fatalism that many people in Guarjila seem to have. It seemed that a disregard for the future was not uncommon, especially among youth, and often resulted in maladaptive behaviors, including drug use and violence. However, there was also the presence of hope and activism, of which we were lucky enough to be a part.
Rachel: Having just arrived a day ago, the clean-up was a great way to tour a bit of Guarjila - we cleaned up the park and a soccer field next to the school, then went up to the clinic with John. Clean-ups are one of the ways the Tamarindos give back to Guarjila, and it's good to see them as a positive influence helping make the community safer and cleaner in a place that's struggling with poverty, drugs, alcohol and violence. Guarjila's a beautiful place, and it's sad to see the streets and fields covered in plastic bags of all sorts, empty bottles and glass.
Jeff: The tour included history of the town, which was conveyed on a personal level in a way that could only be done by someone who was there to see everything happen. Highlights included the school and the clinic. We learned about how the school used to be tiny and have a thick cement roof, in order to protect the students and the teachers from helicopter fire. We learned that the clinic was one of the only sources of quality healthcare within many miles. People come from Honduras to get treatment. (Hopefully, I will be working at this clinic after I graduate, before I go to medical school.) Possibly the most astonishing thing we learned was that the original town of Guarjila was actually almost completely demolished during a bombing campaign in the civil war.
Rachel: After breakfast at Bety's (wonderful and filling as usual, despite John's commentary about our bowel movements as we adjust to living in El Salvador), we headed to the Tamarindo. For me, the kids make the Tamarindo. Every moment I can catch with them is a joy, even in things as simple as a game of BS (which, in case you're wondering, is "mentiroso" in spanish). In no time at all we had a ring of thirteen players for the game, plus a posse of watchers. As someone with an understanding for cards, you may realize that thirteen people quickly makes a game of BS impossible since each player ends up with the same number they have to play each time. Rules are relative with that many people, so there was a lot of hilarious improvisation and moving around the circle to play three or four times in a round and get rid of everything as quickly as possible without everyone catching on to the blatant cheating.
That spirit of fun permeated everything we did on Sunday, and as the game degenerated into throwing cards into the circle, we got the call to move out. The event to come was actually the only thing on the itinerary that we knew about before coming to El Salvador - the MANGO competition.
Jeff: Ok, so every day had at least one big event. This was one of them: The Mango Picking Contest.
Rachel: We embarked on a hike to some forest land owned by the Tamarindo. John calls it the tree museum because so much of the forest has been clear-cut and has lost its native vegetation. It wasn't really a fair fight, and I could see John cackling as he gave us the rules, which basically comprised of 1) Don't pick mangos off the ground - that's cheating; and 2) Get as many mangos as humanly possible in 15 minutes. We never stood a chance. The high schoolers and the father were far too competitive for their lack of experience, and they lost spectacularly. That's not to say we didn't lose spectacularly, but Jeff had a pretty good run after he figured out which trees actually had mangos in them and climbed one. I elected to watch the spectacle as all the Tamarindos raced to the biggest tree and Daniel and Gio literally scaled the tree in a minute, then started shaking the branches until it rained mangos. Everyone underneath took cover, then raced to collect all the fallen mangos into a huge pile. I had my first mango ever, and it was delicious. The only way to eat mangos is off the tree, peeled with your teeth, feeling the juice run down your face under the heat of the Salvadoran sun.
Jeff: It was incredible. It was LC versus the Bishop Chartard high school students versus the Tamarindos. We came in second. The Tamarindos won, of course. But they also had the most practice. John shouted go, and all we had was 15 minutes and a burlap sack to collect as many mangos as possible with. The Tamarindos really knew what they were doing. In no time at all, a bunch of them had climbed up a tree and were shaking the poor thing so hard that everything, mangos, bugs, leaves, etc., was falling off into the waiting arms of the other Tamarindos. The high schoolers and ourselves had begun with the conventional find-a-tree-reach-up-and-pick-a-fruit-technique, but I took it upon myself to take it to the next level, and give our little group a fighting chance against the other two. I found a tree that looked well endowed with the juicy fruit, and, with some encouragement, I climbed up it until I was shaking branches just like the Tamarindos. It was so much fun. I highly recommend it, if you ever get the chance. My efforts helped a bit, but our group was just too small and inexperienced to compete with the Tamarindos. However, we did out-gather the massive horde of high schoolers from Indiana. The mangos were delicious.
With so many mangos available, it was only a matter of time before the perfectly sized fruit started to get thrown. As things tend to do when people are having fun, throwing escalated into a full scale battle. I couldn't help thinking that it was a tropical version of a snowball fight. I, personally, was hesitant to get involved. Mangos don't exactly fall apart when they hit you, like snowballs do. The priest from Indiana, however, was all for it. By the end, John had to tell the father and the Tamarindo strike team to stop their fruit-fueled shootout. It was hilarious.
Rachel: I got off a few well-placed shots that landed squarely on one of the Tamarindos before the battle turned into Tamarindos versus the Father and everyone else ran for it.
Mangos have this wonderful texture and stickiness which makes them delicious to eat, but also makes them terribly tempting to squish. Kapu wiped his mango hands on my back, and that was all the excuse I needed. I may almost be a college graduate, but I'm always down for games, and especially for sticky revenge. Suffice it to say that the end result was a mangled mango that was basically skin because the entire inside ended up all over Kapu and myself, from hair to face to neck to arms to shorts. That hot Salvadoran sun I mentioned? It turns out it dries mango really fast, and dried mango is sweet and sticky and virtually impossible to get off because it turns slick in water. I regret nothing, though.
Jeff: After some attempts to wash up (dried mango goo is hopelessly sticky), the Tamarindos and the high schoolers played their annual kickball tournament. Meanwhile, we went to the market to get ingredients for the soup we were preparing for the community that night. After getting ingredients John took us all out to get ice cream. This earned him the nickname of Uncle John. He deserved it.
Rachel: The day seems so full already, but that wasn't even the half of it. Since we told John we wanted more time with the Tamarindo, we also had more responsibilities, including providing dinner for all eighty of the Tamarindos, high schoolers, and ourselves. Cecilia is a pro, and we followed her lead on making Argentinean locro, a meat and vegetable soup. I also convinced Rosie Bell that dessert was necessary (of course!) so we got milk, rice, sugar and cinnamon for arroz con leche. It was quite the operation to prepare everything, but with a lot of knives and a lot of excitement we pulled together a pretty fantastic meal.
Jeff: Cecilia knew what to do, in a big way. In a feed 80+ people kind of way. All of us just followed her directions, and, after a cooking frenzy and some horseback riding, dinner was served. (Everybody got a chance to go on a quick horseback ride around town.) The meal was a overwhelming success.
Rachel: As we finished the soup, thunder cracked and the mad rush began to get everyone and everything inside the Tamarindo before the downpour started.
Jeff: The dance party we had been planning for afterwards got rained out by a torrential downpour. Thunder, lightning, and gallons of water every minute. It was incredible. Most people went home, but several of us (a couple LCers and a couple Tamarindos) decided to make the best of it. And, by the best of it, I mean do something way more fun than any dance party ever. We went mud wrestling. We ran outside. Instantly drenched, we ran up the road to the grassy futbol field. It was too dark to see, except for during the lightning strikes, so we ran and wrestled under a strobe light effect. The field was completely flooded. Mud was thrown, guys tackled each other, and gently picked up, then set down the ladies on the ground (right before smearing mud all over them). The thunder claps got louder and louder, until we realized that we were standing in an open field, which might not be the safest place to be during a lightning storm. So, we ran back to the Tamarindo, where we spent at least an hour trying to get clean. The mango stickiness was definitely eliminated, but there was mud everywhere (and I mean everywhere).
All that in one day, followed by a friendly chat with my host brothers before bed. It was quite a day.
Day 4: School Day/La Pozona
