Last year El Zachador and Yaneth showed me pictures of the salt rug they’d made during Semana Santa (Holy Week).  They live in Sonsonate, out west, the center of the salt rug tradition in El Salvador.  On Good Friday people take colored salt out to the street and make paintings with it, of Jesus on [...]

“Ahora tenemos presidente,” repeated my friend Haydeé, grinning after Mauricio Funes’s victory.  Now we have a president.  Her words captured both the satisfaction of the leftists in winning their first presidency and the calmness with which the nation has received the result.   My reporting is belated, but on March 15th, in Latin America’s first election since [...]

A few days after the soccer game, on April 1st, I hiked the tallest and most recently active volcano in the country, Ilamatepec (7800’), renamed Santa Ana by the Spanish.  In 2005 Ilamatepec hiccupped and belched and spewed a bunch of ash.  Some people died and the coffee fincas on its slopes suffered a lot [...]

Life in the Savior hasn’t been uneventful lately, I just haven’t been writing.  The blog merits an update.  You merit an update.  Thank you for caring.     Let’s go back two weeks, to San Salvador, Estadio Cuscatlán, where El Salvador played the U.S. in a World Cup qualifying game.  There was the possibility of a poor game [...]

A couple of recent variations on the conversation below have made me want to put it up here.  This conversation is all too common with uneducated people in the campo.  It comes in various forms—from strangers in a pickup or people I know well, from kids or old people, etc.  From a guanaco (male Salvadoran) [...]

The other day my boss Rolando, a Salvadoran who’s worked for Peace Corps for 15 years, told me, “Your Spanish is excellent; in most groups there are a couple of volunteers who leave the country with virtually no accent, and I think you might be one of them.” Well shoot, that oughta show me there’s [...]

2/15/09 After a solid evening of pickup soccer, teaching guys to throw a frisbee, running ten laps of the field, fast, and showering under the stars, I arrive at Niña Fermina’s, where she is watching a re-broadcast of the new archbishop’s swearing-in ceremony. The former archbishop is there (not dead), looking old but healthy. Provoking curiosity [...]

Now that you’ve met Niña Evangelina and her daughter Niña Fermina, I’d like to publish a one-of-a-kind document.  This is Niña Evangelina’s life story, as told to her granddaughter Angela, who recorded it and typed it when she was 14 or 15.  I attempted to translate it.  It came out a little rough.  I tried [...]

December 9, 2008 The day before Thanksgiving I went to visit Niña Fermina’s mom, Niña Evangelina.  I like visiting her because she’s an assertive character and a prolific storyteller.  If I want, I can just sit and listen.  It’s also fun to see where Niña Fermina came from: they are obviously mother and daughter, but they [...]

Three weeks since the last Superplush post, and a month to the day since landing once again on the Savior’s soil, it’s past time to wrap up the visit home wrap up. I was in West Virginia from October 13 to 16, which meant the fall colors were stunning. What I love about seasons, [...]

Why the Title Two years ago a few friends spent New Years in West Virginia with me at my parents’ sangha’s retreat center, which features an extremely well padded green carpet.  It was so sumptuous, in fact, that we saw no reason to use the beds or chairs, instead lolling about on the floor as frost [...]

Lo and behold, it turns out that Peace Corps Volunteers don’t just fall off the edge of the earth for two years, coming back tanned, tough-stomached, and bemused by our strange North American customs. Just as Thoreau in his famous isolation sometimes saw fit to take Sunday dinner at his mother’s or Emerson’s house, some [...]

9/29/08 Hello, it’s pouring. The space in front of my front porch has filled with water, almost to the point of overflowing onto the tiles. The cascade pouring through the hole in my roof above the pila (water basin) filled it in record time. I’m so glad I have plastic up under the roof tiles; otherwise [...]

9/15/08 This morning, the morning of El Salvador’s Independence Day, I found myself in a parade.  I was helping manage the kids of my school (grades K-9) through the long, sunny parade route.  Many of them are about half my height, so I stuck out like an ungainly weed as I moved up and down the [...]

September 1, 2008 It’s the first of September and I woke up this morning to light rain and dense fog, which has since lifted, but it’s still gray and sprinkly. I’ve had three cups of coffee, not because of the weather, but because I got a new coffee apparatus from Samantha and Christopher yesterday. They’ve been [...]

August 14, 2008 It’s been an atypical week.  Let me give you an idea: I’ve: eaten a French-Salvadoran fusion dinner in the company of a spunky 15-year-old French girl, drunk water straight from a stream, talked about carpentry in Spanish with a young Belgian couple, had a bellyflop contest across a lake from the highest volcano [...]

August 4, 2008 A thunderstorm just rolled through, leaving chilly air in its wake.  It’s probably about 60ºF.  (I haven’t mastered Celcius yet; people don’t really talk about temperature here.  If it’s not hot, it’s “fresco,” and that’s as in-depth as it gets.)  It’s cold enough for my sweatshirt, which I sometimes wear in the evening, [...]