Desvio

I just got back to my community yesterday after a goodbye party with the other volunteers from my group and a close of service conference at the beach. I let my friends and neighbors know that I am leaving, and some tell me they will miss me. Some ask why I am leaving now instead of in March. Others go straight into asking me if they can have my iPod or my bed or my backpack or whatever else they think I might be leaving behind in El Salvador. People ask if I am marrying my girlfriend to take her back to the States, when I will come back and visit them, if we will hike the volcano one more time before I go?

I throw on my Salvadoran national team soccer jersey and a hat and start the walk down to the pueblo, planning on spending a few hours knocking out my final reports in English and Spanish and closing out some grants. I have two weeks left in my site before volcanoes and beaches, pupusas and pasteles, bichos and bolos, and all other things Salvadoran and wonderful are in the past and, for the most part, no longer my daily version of reality. Of course I will stay in touch with all the cheros and cheras as much as I can and plan on coming back to visit within a year or two. But it will never again be the way it is today.

I run into Niko, my neighbor and the coach of the soccer team that recently helped me organize one last tournament. He asks for a little backpack to keep his soccer cleats in as a recuerdo. Sure, I tell him. I will get it to you before I go. We slap hands and I continue walking.

I walk past the murals we completed in December and the MS graffiti on the brick wall just down the street. I see beautiful remesa homes and tiny, rusting sheet-metal shacks. As I pass the soccer field, I run into Esther, the volunteer in another village nearby, and her boyfriend Jorge. They tell me that Gabbie, who has been in Costa Rica, is coming back to town, and they convince me to head to the departmental capital, Usulután, to have lunch with everyone.

Jorge pulls out a cigar and we smoke it on the side of the road. Yes, a victory cigar, because I have mastered this language and found ways to succeed in a variety of community projects including organizing soccer tournaments, facilitating HIV prevention workshops, giving English and computer classes, painting murals, running a scholarship committee, starting a chess club, and all the while generally having a hell of a time in El Salvador over the past two years. Where did the cigar come from? Why did he have a cigar? After living here a while, you stop asking questions and just accept things as they come.

The bus pulls up and we hop on for what seems like the millionth time since I have been here. Like many times, there are no seats and I have to stand, my head brushing the top of the old, green school bus with tiny seats and low ceilings. Eventually, someone gets off and I cram myself into the freshly vacant seat like Shaq in a Kia. A guy hops on the bus wearing black suit pants, a dark red dress shirt, a black tie, and aviator glasses. His hair is gelled into a wall on top of his forehead. He carries the typical bus vendor man purse and greets us ‘good morning’ as he pulls a small bottle of pills out of his bag.

We pull up to the three-way intersection leaving the pueblo, and the bus heading north going to Santiago de Maria arrives at the same time. Although I am not going there today, the timing feels harmonious and gives me a sense of freedom. I think of the cool climate in Santiago, the coffee fields and the 18^th street gang graffiti.

We round the corner and a few people do get off of our bus and onto the other heading north to Santiago de Maria. We go south towards Usulután. The vendor starts into his spiel. The pills are daily vitamin and mineral supplements with a dramatically technical sounding name like Neurodromodoxin or something. The man introduces his product and starts into a long list of scary causes of death that seem to include just about everything other than deaths from car crashes and violent crimes. He lists strokes and heart attacks and kidney failure and brain-eating amoebas. The vitamins can prevent all of this. As far as sales pitches on moving buses go, it was impressive. About 15 people on the bus buy bottles of pills at $1 each.

We pull up to another three-way intersection. This time, there is a bus waiting on the corner about to leave going the other way for San Salvador. The drivers signal to each other and the San Salvador bus waits for those getting off our bus before departing. I am tempted to hop off and head straight to the capital. I have never had all the possible bus routes intersect perfectly with my trip before. There aren’t many times in life you get a chance to chase the rabbit like that, and I smile at the infinite freedom I have at my hands; to go where I want, do what I want, work how I want and hop on whatever bus happens to intersect perfectly with the one I'm on. Never again will my life be the way it is today, I think again.

In Usulután I work on some of my final reports, summarizing projects and compacting experiences into neat little paragraphs and statistics. I have lunch with Gabbie, Esther and Jorge. Gabbie has been in Costa Rica for a few months and was a volunteer here in El Salvadorbefore that. She's heading home to Seattle in a few days. Esther has 8 months or so left in the country. We have been here many times for lunch over the last two years, but not as much recently. One time Gabbie and I had beers over lunch and ended up putting back a few more than we meant to. We drew a map of Africa that day and labeled almost every country, and then got on the bus late in the afternoon to sweat the Pilsener out on the way back to her house where we padded our stomachs with greasy pupusas. 

Today we mostly reminisce and talk about our plans for the future. We hope to visit each other or cross paths somehow. We wonder whether we will find jobs and talk about the things we miss about the United States, the things we will miss about El Salvador, the things we won’t miss.

My life is at a strange intersection between memories and experiences, where this sweaty, quirky life I live in the smallest, yet most densely populated country in Central America is beginning to fade into the past. Things will never again be like they are today.