Up and down, up and down, the roller coaster of
Peace Corps continually wows me, makes my stomach drop (quite literally), jerks
me around in a way-too-small seat and inspires love and hate towards my life,
my experience, the organization, and quite possibly the entire universe, with
my feelings shifting as quickly as one minute to the next at times.
Thursday: Up early, hop on a bus, catch another,
wait for another, deal with a surprisingly docile bolo accompanied by his young
son, and eventually wind up in a hotel in San Francisco Gotera, Morazán where
"nadie habla con el patrón." I manage to read about 80 pages on the
bus and finished Palace Walk, a great book about a Muslim family in Cairo set
in the 19teens. I'm surprised at how easy this trip was. Comfort and confidence
goes a long way. I am the first volunteer to get to Gotera for a Gender and HIV
prevention workshop and soccer tournament, so I wander around the market to
familiarize myself with my surroundings and find a pool hall where I have a
couple beers before going back to the hotel to see if the other guys have made
it in yet.
Friday: Arrive at the mayor's office at 8am, where
the first part of the workshop is taking place. The morning’s theme is Gender,
what it means in any given culture to be a man or a woman (aside from the
differences in plumbing) and how these expectations can help or hurt us. This
was with a men’s only group of trained HIV prevention facilitators, about half
American and half Salvadoran. Really interesting discussions. The activities
themselves were interesting, but I found it especially intriguing during lunch
when we discussed how our actions don’t always meet our ideals. Cultural
expectations are an odd beast. Even when we know what we are doing is wrong, it
is easy to give in to temptations, whether they come from wanting to please
ourselves or from trying to live up to what we perceive as how we are supposed
to act. We spend the afternoon going over the agenda for the tournament and
running through some of the activities. I catch a few minutes of the Jayhawks
victory over Richmond in the hotel.
Saturday: The workshop takes up the whole morning
and the tournament all afternoon. The teams are 15-30ish year old men, and to
be eligible to play soccer they have to pass through 7 stations teaching about
HIV, condom use, etc. At my station we focus on which behaviors can transmit
HIV and which cannot. The behaviors are: Sharing a toothbrush, unprotected sex,
blood transfusions, childbirth from an HIV positive mother, getting a tattoo,
getting a vaccine, kissing, and sharing silverwear. Do you know for sure which
transmit HIV and which don’t? We get back to the hotel in the evening worn out
and sun-burnt. After showering up, a meeting at a pizza parlor reanimates us
for a bit, but before 10 we are back at the hotel, though we have to bang on
the door for about 5 minutes before someone opens up the gate and lets us in.
Sunday: Trip to Perquin, stronghold of the guerilla
force during the civil war of the 80’s. We see bomb craters, trenches,
underground caves, the site of a makeshift hospital, and talk with former
guerilla fighters. A free ride to and from Perquin, along with the satisfaction
of a successful weekend of work, and I feel great. The feeling doesn’t last for
too long, as I am violently ill by midnight. Hating life, hating water and its
tendency to harbour parasites, despising the toilet that keeps calling me and
the toilet paper that keeps irritating me. The suffering is short-lived. I
sleep most of Monday, restrict myself to whole grain granola bars and apples,
and start to feel better by the end of the day. Good news, I am recovering
quicker from these types of things than before. Bad news, all these recurrent
cases of amoebic parasites might actually be one long case of drug-resistant
parasites. If that is the case, medicine will have to be brought in from
another country as it is not available here in El Salvador.
Tuesday: I wake up well-rested, feeling in good
health. I spend most of the day at the Peace Corps office planning for the WYD
scholarship camp at the end of April. I eat Subway in the evening (no staple in
my sandwich this time) and head to the national stadium with Jared, another
volunteer, to meet our girlfriends for a match between El Salvador and Jamaica.
I’m not a big soccer fan, but I’ll put it in the same category as baseball;
painfully boring on TV, but enjoyable in person. The fans were rowdy, throwing
bags of water, taunting the other team, and the game was full of goals. We lost
3-2, and the jersey that I bought from a street-vendor on the way into the
stadium has a backwards S in El Salvador (should have looked that over a little
better) but it was one of the best dates I’ve been on in a while. A girl’s
being able to enjoy herself at a sporting event is a big plus in my book. My
girlfriend is pretty awesome. We go hear some live music and hang out for a bit
after the game.
Wednesday: Back to Usulután I go. It feels like I’ve
been gone more than I’ve been home this month. Between my mid-service medical
exams, a couple out-of-site soccer tournaments/workshops, a meeting with the
scholarship committee, getting sick, and the trip to Perquin, I have spent a
lot of days and nights away from my community. I’ve still been able to get some
work done there, too, but I have been out of my site more than I would like. I
am upset to hear that Gabbie, a neighboring volunteer who has been in country 6
months longer than I have, might not be granted the extension of her service
(to stay in her site and work for a 3rd year) that she is requesting. I don’t
want this to be taken the wrong way; I am proud to be a part of Peace Corps and
I understand that they are dealing with tough budget problems- but I feel that
it is important to say that it would be a big disservice to Peace Corps El
Salvador as well as to her community for her extension request to be denied. I don’t
know the details of the reasoning behind-the-scenes, and I think it is still
possible that she will be granted the extension, but I’ve collaborated with her
enough to know that she is doing excellent work in her site (murals,
reforestation project, HIV prevention, etc. etc. etc.) and selfishly I hope to
have her close by for a while longer so that we can continue doing projects
together.
I love my life here in El Salvador. Sometimes I am frustrated with the bureaucracy of Peace Corps, the persistence of the parasites in my stomach, the
attitudes and behaviors that just won’t change, but these little things that
bother me just make the successes, the good times, and the never-ending
surprises that much more enjoyable. Every once in a while I realize how lucky I
am, how blessed I am, and how good I have it, and it makes it all worth it.
