Así es la vida

I just got back to my cantón the other day after being out of town for 8 days. Above is a picture of Wilson, a kid from my village, at his sheet-metal house. This is about what the majority of the houses look like.

When I’m here, it can feel like nothing ever happens, and sometimes that really is the case, but I came back to a US Weekly sized update of gossip and news.

Anyways, I was gone for WYD Scholarship Committee Meetings (Donate pleeeease, we are ridiculously behind on our fundraising and even a $25 gift would really help) in the capital, then off to another city, San Miguel, for an HIV prevention and education workshop, and after that back to San Salvador to celebrate Thanksgiving gringo style, sort-of.

I’ll fill you in on the gossip first and then we’ll jump back and get to all the other stuff.

When I left El Palmital at the beginning of the trip, the mayor of our municipality’s daughter had recently been kidnapped and the kidnappers were demanding a $40 thousand ransom. She had been receiving threatening phone calls, according to her 6 year old daughter, and her family has an interesting history, to say the least. Her father was previously the mayor, but was kicked out of office for embezzling money. His wife was elected by the pueblo to fill his spot despite this, and is the mayor to this day.

Anyways, when I got into San Salvador I found out that the kidnapped daughter had been found alive in San Miguel (the city I would be headed to a couple days later) and that she had actually kidnapped herself to extort money from her mom.

(I'll tell you what I'm blathering about... I've got information man! New shit has come to light! And shit... man, she kidnapped herself. Well sure, man. Look at it... a young trophy wife, in the parlance of our times, you know, and she, uh, uh, owes money all over town, including to known pornographers, and that's cool... that's, that's cool, I'm, I'm saying, she needs money, man. And of course they're going to say that they didn't get it, because... she wants more, man! She's got to feed the monkey, I mean uh... hasn't that ever occurred to you, man? Sir?)

Anyways, here is the link to the story about her self-kidnapping.

So, more or less, she faked her own kidnapping with the help of some trusty MS gang members and is now in jail. The news story claims that she pulled this stunt because her mom had refused to buy her a car. Word on the street is her mom has also refused to visit her in jail.

After a couple days of working hard on WYD business in the capital, grading scholarship applications, working on fundraiser ideas, and a million other things, I headed to San Miguel for the HIV workshop. We worked with about 20 Salvadoran men, training them to inform their communities about HIV prevention and reduction of discrimination against people who are HIV positive through. The last day, they reproduced a chunk of the training they had received with local police and soldiers, and did a really good job. I can’t take a whole lot of credit; I was sort of in training myself. Some of the members of the Men’s Health Initiative are getting ready to finish their service and they invited me to the workshop to ease me into one of their roles for the next workshop. Anyways, the guys did really well and I made some new friends from different places in the country.

And while I was there, the crime news was just piling up in my home, sweet home of El Palmital. Overnight someone (or more likely, a few people) broke into the school I teach at and cut the locks on the door to the computer lab. All of the computers were stolen. A couple people have theories on who did it, but there really isn’t any good lead and the police haven’t done anything. (Imagine that.)

I was back in San Salvador again after the HIV workshop for Thanksgiving, which I spent with four other Peace Corps volunteers at the home of a US Embassy employee. The guy has a 14th floor penthouse apartment with an incredible view of the capital city, artwork from all over the world, and a well-stocked bar. The food was great, especially the stuffing, and he also invited about a dozen Salvadoran friends over. These were not the type of Salvadorans I am used hanging out with in the small town I live in. They travel the world, speak multiple languages, have high-paying jobs, etc. It was almost another culture shock hanging out with the upper class crowd of San Salvador, but they were friendly and outgoing, and it was a good time.

Being out of site for a while was a great re-charge. I'm bummed about the computers, but I'm not dwelling on it. There's not anything I can do about it but forget it anyways. My host brother's family is in town, and his high school graduation was yesterday, which was not too different from a graduation in the States (long and boring).

Verónica, the scholarship winner I tutor

"If you had a day free from all of your responsibilities to do whatever you wanted, how would you spend it?" I asked Verónica.

¨I would help my mom with everything so that we could both rest together in the afternoon, ¨ she replied.

While Verónica’s answer may not be the most imaginative, it is certainly revealing of the thoughtful, caring nature of the 17 year old first-year student at Instituto Nacional Ozatlán, a high school in the pueblo just down the road from me. 

Verónica wakes up just after 4 o’clock each morning to help her mom wash dishes, do laundry, and cook breakfast for her younger brother and sisters. She heads to school on a bus at 5:50 a.m. After nearly an hour-long ride, she spends the day in class until just after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, a full twelve hours after getting out of bed. Another bus ride and she is back at home, spending the evening studying and helping take care of her siblings.

Verónica’s father left the family when she was a young girl, leaving her mother with the burden of raising four girls and a boy on food and income collected from growing corn and selling any leftover harvest.

On the weekends, Verónica helps out in the corn fields and attends church, where she is a member of the youth group. She also finds time to serve on a committee working to bring a library and cultural center to her village, El Delirio.

An aspiring Doctor, Veronica hopes to attend a university to study medicine after completing high school. She wants to work in a public hospital or clinic where she can continue to do what she enjoys most; helping others.

Keeping busy

After spending the first few months in my site laying in my hammock and trying to figure out how to make myself useful, I am officially busy these days. I won a small grant to fund the soccer tournament/HIV-AIDS workshop and the school director and I chose a date and are crossing our fingers for a sunny, rain-free day. Next week I´ll be visiting the three other schools we are inviting, along with the mayor, police, and a number of other people we need to get in touch with to make everything go smoothly.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with my youth group. We meet a couple times a month and play games for the first half-hour or so and then do some educational type of activities about health, adolescence and values.

I´m also planning a dental health day for the kindergarteners and 1st graders in the next couple weeks.

A project that I´ve spent a lot of time on lately is the WYD committee, a group of myself and fellow Peace Corps volunteers that provides scholarships to talented but underpriveleged youth who want to go to high school or college but would not be able to without a little bit of help. I´m honored to have recently been chosen to serve as one of the co-presidents and we are working hard to plan for the next coming school year. These scholarships are not easy to get. Last year, there were well over a hundred applications and only 24 girls won scholarships. We give as many as we can, but there is only so much money to go around. I want to emphasize how smart, motivated and resourceful these kids are. In El Salvador, education is unfortunately a privilege and not a right, but we are hoping to do a little bit to change that for 30 or so kids this year.

Here is a little write-up about the committee that we put together.

HOLA! We are Mujeres y Jovenes en Desarrollo (Women in Youth Development or WYD) El Salvador, a committee of Peace Corps Volunteers (PVC’s) and local Salvadoran non-profit organizations, which facilitates a mentoring program to underprivileged rural Salvadoran young women*. The main focus of the program is to provide “life skills” and “scholarships” to the partici

Life-Skills

In addition to their normal community activities, PCV’s in this program commit to provide one-on-one mentoring to a young woman* in their rural community that has enormous potential but lacking guidance and opportunities to make the most of their natural talents. Besides receiving ongoing encouragement and support from their PCV mentors, the young women* are sent to an annual weekend seminar in which they are introduced to a number of life and leadership skills with the main goal of building self esteem and provide a passion to overcome their unfortunate circumstances. The seminar is designed and managed by the PCV mentors.

Scholarships

The program also provides educational scholarships to the participants, who without outside assistance would not be able to continue their studies at the high school and university level. As part of the process of matching participants to PCV mentors, each potential participant submits a scholarship application which are reviewed by an impartial committee consisting of local educational professionals. Furthermore, each participant must attain a minimum grade of 70% in each subject to have the scholarship renewed annually. Currently the program is providing annual high school scholarships of $300. The first $250 of that goes directly to the student, and the other $50 covers the cost of the life-skills camp that they attend to supplement their formal education. The funds are administrated by PCV mentors and used by the participants to cover direct cost of their education, transportation, and school uniforms/supplies.

Also, you can get to know the students you are supporting and follow their academic progress on our Facebook page. Just search for ´WYD Scholarship Program.´ Our current Facebook page displays several profiles and pictures of students benefitting from our generous Friends of WYD donors, and in the future you will be able to communicate with your sponsor student via Facebook and Skype.

How can you help

Please click here to make a donation to help provide scholarships. Every dollar helps. If ten people who read this blog donate just $30 each, together we will be able to send a brilliant young student to school who wouldn´t have the option to study otherwise.

¡Usted no trabaja para nada, señor!

Like a lot of things in El Salvador, teaching computer classes to 1st-9th graders has led to a set of unexpected difficulties. I spend as much time trying to explain the difference between left click and right click as about everything else combined. The fact that approximately 50% of my students do not as of yet have a firm grasp on the concept of left and right makes this task a bit difficult. Those who do understand that each of their hands has a name, and that this concept can also be applied to a computer mouse, are inevitably bogged down by the difficulty of a theoretical concept we call ¨double click.¨ Philosophers and mathematicians have worked out hypothetical situations in which a ¨doble click izquierdo¨ opens an educational program with math and reading games inside, but this obscure theory still lacks overservable results confirming its validity.

When I offered to teach computer classes, the school director devised a schedule in which half of the grades would have class on Tuesday and the other half on Thursday. It worked pretty well the first few weeks and the right class usually came at the right time. After a few days of cancelled classes due to the school being closed or my having to miss a day here or there for an event on the other side of the country, groups started switching days to make up for missed class or just because they bugged their teacher enough to let them. Lately, no one at all comes about 25% of scheduled class periods. Whether the schedules are mixed up, or someome decided that computer class wasn’t necessary anymore, I don’t really know. I don’t really mind when no one comes. I have gotten addicted to a geography game that I originally intended to use with my students (which flopped when I found out that most of them cannot even locate El Salvador on a map of Central America... and those who can are unable to prove it by clicking on the country to highlight it. I should mention the exception of one 6th grader who can correctly identify most of the countries in the world and seemingly every flag. There are also a few 8th and 9th graders who can get the Central American countries right.) When the teachers forget (or choose) not to send their students in for computer class, I spend my time memorizing geography. I admittedly suffered from a condition relating to the part of my brain corresponding to knowledge of geography, common in Americans, called ignorance, but have treated this with many hours studying to the point where I can correctly identify every country in the continents of Europe, Africa and the Americas. I even know the provinces of Canada (though I realize how worthless that information is). All that is left is a handful of annoying little countries in Asia that still get me mixed up.

Now that I’ve thoroughly catalogued the frustrations, I’d like to add that the computer classes are rewarding at times. I taught a cute little 2nd grader how to add and subtract with the help of an educational program I found for free online and she was really pumped. She hugged me around the knee and thigh area after class and always runs up to the barbed wire fence to say hi to me when I walk past her house. To ruin this happy story, I’ll tell you that her house is actually more of a shack made out of sheets of aluminum and tarps and her teeth are close to rotting out because of cavaties (and I assume, a lack of toothbruth and toothpaste.)

I recently taught a couple of my friends the concept of knocking on wood. As in, I haven’t been robbed yet, knock on wood, or I haven’t had Dengue or Malaria yet, knock on wood. With this in mind, I am getting close to success in a little project I have been working on with a family in my community (knock on wood). The youngest son of this family is in a wheelchair The family lives in one of the most elevated, and also one of the poorest, parts of the community. During rainy season, which lasts about half of the year, it is too muddy for his wheelchair to go anywhere and even when it is dry, wheelchairs aren’t great for navigating a half-mile or more of stone paths. He has recently had some neurological problems (or at least that’s what I think his mom said) that have resulted in a need for glasses. So basically this kid is restricted to an area about the size of a living room and as of recently, can no longer see anything clearly outside of that area either. Neither of his parents can find work and his house is similar to the one described earlier in which the cute little 2nd grader lives. I offered to help the family do fundraising to buy the glasses for Cristian, the 10 year old kid in the wheelchair. I bought a cheap cell phone and, with the help of some other kids from the village, we sold lottery numbers for a quarter each until we raised enough for a pair of glasses (just a little shy of $40). Tomorrow we are picking the winning number out of a hat (actually, we are using a plastic bowl called a ‘juacal’ that people use for everything here) to determine who wins the phone. The kid and his mom are going to come into the city on Tuesday for a free eye exam and to buy the glasses for cheap at an eye-fair (they would cost $80 otherwise). Unfortuantely I am going to be at some training event on the other side of the country so I won’t be able to be there to make sure everything goes smoothly, but, knock on wood, when I get back into town Cristian should have his glasses.

Festival del Maíz

I've always been somewhat of a 'go with the flow' type guy. What I mean by that is that I can adapt pretty quickly to my surroundings. I wasn't particularly bothered when I switched from hot showers to pouring rainwater over my head with a plastic bucket to bathe. I don’t mind the heat. I actually prefer speaking in Spanish when I have the choice, not because it’s easier but because I always feel like I’m learning something new. I’m not homesick and I definitely don’t miss my job back home.

Now I don’t mean to say that I don’t miss my family or that I don’t linger in hot showers when I stay at hotels in the capital, but I tend to get along pretty well regardless of my surroundings. All I really need is a decent night of sleep, the company of people I like, and some way to keep myself busy.

I’ve been here a few days short of 7 months and now that I have found some ways to work in my community I am spending significantly less time in my hammock and at cyber cafes. I spend a lot more of my free time hanging out at the bus stop on the road that passes through our village, where a bunch of guys spend their afternoons just hanging out. Rarely do any of them actually get on a bus. Yesterday evening I stopped to chat after getting done teaching at the school. There were 6 of us hanging out. Three of us, myself included, could speak English and Spanish (myself lacking a bit in Spanish still and the other two vice versa). I couldn’t tell you exactly what we talked about, but the conversation switched back and forth between languages and among topics.

I walk a lot around my village, visiting people all over and wearing down the soles of my shoes on the cobblestone paths.

I go to the market in the city a couple times a week to buy anything from fruit to clothes to illegally burned dvd’s. It takes a little longer to buy things in the market, but bargaining over prices and having vendors court you is a lot more enojoyable than standing in the never ending lines at the supermarket.

This past weekend I went to a Festival de Maize in the pueblo just down the road from my village. The festival was put on by the catholic church and the mayor’s office to celebrate the corn harvest and just give everyone a reason to have a good time. About every food possible was made from corn, and a few beverages too. A former Peace Corps volunteer was back in town visiting the pueblo and brought along a British guy backpacking through Central America whom she had met in a hostel in the capital. The three of us were unmistakable, a trio of tall blondes in a country of tiny people with universally brown hair. Some moderately famous singer who is originally from the pueblo performed in hilariously tight spandex pants with openings on the sides. There was also a museum of ceramics and other artifacts from hundreds of years ago that have been discovered over time.

The British guy has a comically low level of Spanish. It is a bit terrifying to hear what I must have sounded like 7 months ago, although I was never quite as bad as he is. To his credit, he gives it a shot at least instead of just keeping quiet.

We were willingly tricked into drinking some fermented maize drink. Betsy, the former volunteer back visiting, asked a couple times if it had alcohol, and after the response, ¨No, they don’t put any alcohol in, it just ferments,¨ we said what the hell and drank it.

On a side note, alchol use here is all or nothing. Only at big festivals like that does anyone drink socially in rural areas. Either you are an alcoholic or you don’t drink. A lot of things are like that here. Either you believe in God or you are a devil worshipper. All Americans are rich and all Mexicans are evil. Women wash dishes and men absolutely do not. People tend to believe generalizations and extremes.

Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for today. I can tell my vocabularly in English is shrinking. Multiple times today I had a word on the tip of my tongue (or fingertips, to be literal) and just couldn’t find the right one. I guess that is inevitable when I spend at least 90% of my time speaking (or at least trying to) in Spanish.

The two times I almost ate a staple... and other stories

I can get over a hair in my food. Enough bugs have landed in my beans by now that I'm able to scoop them out and eat around the affected area. Staples, however, I don't think I am going to be able to get used to. As you probably figured out by the title, twice now I have come within centimeters (yeah, I'm on the metric system now) of swallowing a staple.

In the middle of devouring a Subway cold cut trio at a mall in the capital, I bit into something crunchy. No one bothers to take bones out of fish, chicken, or anything else they put into sandwiches in the village, but I figured Subway would have a bit higher standards. I tongued the as of yet unknown object in my food(this story is getting sensual) and it poked me rather unpleasantly. So I spit it out and said, "Oh my, a staple, how strange," except that I replaced the first two and the last two words with nineteen variations cuss words in Spanish and English.

Apparently word got back to the other staples about the tongue-lashing I handed out and they were out for revenge. Riding a bus from the market in Usulutan back to my village, I finally relented to a tiny little man who always hands out free samples of sugar coated peanuts and appears increasingly irritated everytime I refuse him. "Huh," I thought, "These are actually kind of good." I handed him a quarter for two small bags and started eating right away. Halfway through the bag, I encountered a particularly crunchy peanut. The thought even crossed my mind that it felt kind of like a staple, but I had a whole mouthful of sugary goodness and I brushed that thought away as paranoia caused by my trip to Subway a couple months before. I chewed a bit more and there it was, staple number two in between my molars.

............

Manuel, mentioned a few months ago in another blog, got cut up by a machete a week or two ago. The story that I've heard (which is likely to be partially untrue considering there are usually at least three conflicting versions after incidents like this) is that one day he was riding in the back of a truck with one leg hanging out the side. The truck passed by some other guy, and Manuel proceeded to kick the guy in the chest from the bed of the truck. A few days passed and the guy came looking for him with a machete. Manuel also had a blade, but it was a shorter one. The other dude cut his thigh first and then went for the kill shot with a swing at the neck. Manuel put his hand up and blocked it, but came close to losing three fingers in the process.

............

I'm trying to figure out a Central American vacation for December once the school year ends. Travel restrictions into Guatamela are being lifted in October, so I'm considering Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Before then I'm hoping to visit the Mayan (or maybe Incan?) ruins on the other side of the country and make it to another beach or two.

...............

Very brief work update:
teaching computer classes, organizing a youth group of 5th-9th graders, applying for funds to put together the soccer tournament I mentioned in another post, fundraising to help a disabled kid buy glasses, serving as treasurer of WYD committee of volunteers from all over the country to provide scholarships to high school and college students.

The volcano in my backyard

A few signs my Spanish is improving; I was able to talk on the phone for over an hour without any real trouble, and I can understand misspelled text messages without much effort.

I'm in the early stages of organizing a somewhat fairly large event in my site. I have been working in the school and attending meetings with just about every committee that exists as far as I can tell, and now that I am more familiar with people and resources I am going to try to organize a soccer tournament with HIV education worked in somehow. We’ll see how it goes. 

I hiked the volcano up to the peak with the guys for the first time today.

Two hours of walking, climbing, cutting back and forth through the Volcano, guessing at which paths will take us up the quickest, stopping for water and a bite to eat, and we're resting a few hundred meters below the peak. Tony pulls on a cigarette and Rueben gulps a bottle of liquor. Liquor is like Gatorade for Rueben. There's an abandoned brick house here, used by the guerilla fighters during the civil war. Many of the confusing, intersecting paths we took on the way up were made by them during the war as well.

We hang out for a bit and I get talked into taking a swig of the guaro. Nasty, just like it always was, and my throat burns a bit even after washing it down with water. Picsis takes off towards the peak and I follow. I'm anxious and ready to get there already. And I don't want anything to do with the bottle of guaro. The other guys start to get everything together but I know they will be a few minutes behind. Picsis has long hair, a girly voice, and is gay. Surprisingly, in the sexist, homophobic world that is rural El Salvador, the other guys don't give him too much crap about it. He's also done most of the hike barefoot, kicking off his rubber flip flops about a half-hour after we started. We walk for a few minutes on a fairly level path, not nearly as steep as what we'd been hiking before, but shortly the terrain changes and it is real climbing. I can see Picsis ahead when the path straightens out, but for the most part I am stepping, grabbing, and pulling myself up bit by bit in complete solitude. The paths were many on the way up to the landing, but from here up there's only one way to get to the peak without real climbing gear.

The swig of guaro I took has me in the zone and I am blazing up the mountain now, crawling on all fours without stopping to look back. I glance to the side after about 10 minutes of climbing and notice that beyond a small border of shrubs and bushes is a huge drop-off. I stop and wait for the rest of the group to come back into sight, admiring the view. I had been focused on the climb and didn't notice how close the cliff was nor how far the drop; my heart speeds up a bit even though I'm starting to catch my breath.

Picsis is far ahead now, but I can hear the other three laughing and making their way, slowly, up the climb.

¨Puro guerrero!¨ I hear Tony yell, and I see them come around a curve in the path. We talk for a minute and I take off again, grabbing plants, rocks, trees, and whatever else I can find sturdy enough to pull myself up with as the path steepens. I crawl over a big, round rock and everything flattens out again. We're at the top of the volcano, a half-circle curving around to a collection of rocks where the true peak is. We walk along the rim, a thin, rocky path bordered with no more than a couple feet of loose stones and dirt on each side before a big fall. The path has a slight incline, and we reach the rocks, side-stepping in parts, squeezing between giant stones to reach the highest point. ¨This would not be a good time for an earthquake,¨ I think to myself, focusing my gaze ahead and aboze, never looking down, never glancing back.

At the peak, my heart is racing. The climb was tough, but the view is messing with my nerves. The panorama is incredible but it always takes me a few minutes to get used to standing next to an abyss with certain death just one stumble away. I wouldn't say I'm scared of heights. I just have a mild allergy. Okay, I'm kind of scared of heights, but I can usually get control of it with a couple minutes of adjustment and a few deep breaths. A bit of fear can make things more interesting, and once my anxiety fades away my body is surging with adrenaline.

I'm on top of the world! Or at least it feels like it.

June

Sleeping in a hammock is awkward at first. I toss and turn most nights, and that doesn’t work the same in a hammock. After figuring out how to wedge a pillow around my head, holding my neck in place while blocking out pig squeals and bovine parades. After a few weeks, I prefer it over my bed. That’s not saying much, since my bed is about 6 inches too short and constantly wet due to leaks in the roof, but the hammock feels good now. What’s your sleep number?

I’m lucky to have made such good friends with a few people in my site. I know a lot of other volunteers who spend all two years without ever making any true friends. I’m indebted to the volunteer before me, Richard, for gaining their trust during his time here and introducing me before he left.

In terms of work, now that training is done I can get started for real. I’m the new computer-technology teacher at the school starting next week. I’m also going to be working with kids in 6th through 9th grade who have trouble reading. Some other plans for the new future are starting a compost pile and garden, raising rabbits, and forming a youth group.

During training I was chosen as one of the new members of the WYD committee that helps provide scholarships for Salvadoran youth who wouldn’t be able to continue their schooling otherwise. Two girls in neighboring villages won scholarships this year and I have already been doing some tutoring with them individually in English and some other homework here and there.

The World Cup is a big deal here, but not as much as I anticipated. Most people are aware of it but few follow it closely. Luis and I watch as many games as we can, but his cousin Alex (who lives in the same house as us) gets bored with the games and lobbies to change the channel to watch movies instead.

The poverty many people here struggle with still startles me at times. Some parts of the village are sombering, and despite promises from NGOs and the mayor, the water project is at a halt and doesn’t look to be going anywhere soon. The scheduled completion date was May 14. It is close to done, but no one has been working for weeks. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly the problem is, but I’m sure it has something to do with funding. Some of the large plastic pipes designed to carry the water that isn’t yet running are already exposed and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are broken before the project is even completed. They were underground, but fierce tropical rains formed temporary rivers that washed away the soil and tossed rocks down from the volcano. Sooner or later, one of those rocks is probably going to hit a pipe and it’s going to break. Why the pipes were built where the ground washes away every rainy season I’ll never understand. The engineer probably never bothered to ask anyone who knows the land before he drew up the plans. Who knows if there will ever be running water here, and if there is, how long will it last?

Some of the people are distraught by the slow progress and broken promises. Others aren’t phased.

"During 12 years of war, the only water I drank was what fell from the clouds," one man told me, and then shrugged his shoulders.

Well, there aren’t any parasites in rainwater. Or at least not any I know of.

Homecoming

There’s a guy named David who has a little store just across the street from the school in my village where he sells soda, chips and other snacks like that. Nothing big really, probably not all that profitable from what I’d imagine. David was born in El Salvador and lived here until he was 14, moved to Miami for six years until his temporary visa ran out, and just got back here in the village about the same time I did. He’s 20 now and speaks English almost as well as you or I. David doesn’t like living in El Salvador. He misses his friends and family, and that’s a big part of it. Another part of it is that he doesn’t feel safe. People see him as a target. He’s never told me this but it’s not hard to gather from the stories he tells me.

Right after he opened up his store, a guy shows up with liquor on his breath and gives David a piece of paper. I’ll be by once a month to collect $50 dollars from you, it says. Pay up or else. David ripped the paper up and dropped it on the ground as the guy was leaving. That night people showed up at his house and broke the aluminum roofing with a big rock. David got out his gun and shot three warning shots. Maybe they were just trying to scare him, or maybe they were coming to get him. There is a lot of extortion done by the gangs here in El Salvador and people who don’t pay often don’t live very long. David doesn’t sleep in the bedroom in the back of his store anymore. He stays with his uncle instead.

That was the worst, but it wasn’t the only time he’s been messed with. He’s almost been robbed twice in the town down the road. Once for his gold chain while he was eating dinner. His uncle pulled out a gun and got him out of that one. Another time for the money they assumed he was carrying. He gave up a quarter and talked himself out of that one on his own. What did the police do? Nothing. Not that time at least. Though another day they did threaten to take him into the station for smoking a cigarette without having ID proving he was over 18. He started laughing and the cop told him to shut up unless he wanted to get hit.

His eyes get red when he tells me these stories. He looks like he’s about to cry but I know he’s not going to. After spending six years in the States, struggling to learn English and then, at last, fitting in, feeling comfortable, feeling at home, he has to come back to where he’s from everyone is out to get him, take advantage of him and get their hands on the money they assume he has. It’s not just gang members or strangers either. His aunt and uncle have taken care of him, but he’s only talked to his dad once since he´s been here. He showed up drunk in the middle of the day and asked David for money. David offered a $20 bill and his dad pushed his hand away and said he needed $100. He shook his head and said he didn’t have it. His dad grabbed the $20 and walked away. They haven’t talked since.