From Dylan, with some thoughts from Laura:

The past three days we have been attending a conference at the Hotel Entrepinos in San Ignacio with about 99% of the El Salvador volunteers and staff, and several representatives from Peace Corps Washington. This conference offered little opportunity for advocacy on behalf of the various interests of the volunteers. The conference consisted of two main components: (1) listening to Peace Corps Washington justify their decisions, and (2) here are some job hunting resources (including more opportunities to volunteer with PC, which seems unimaginable to me right now).

Rising trends in crime have caused PC to reevaluate their presence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. PCVs in these three countries are more than twice as likely to be victims of violent crime than the average PCV worldwide. The rate is about 8-12 incidents per year in El Salvador (out of 150 volunteers) since 2006. “Violent crime” includes any crime that has the threat of violence, such as armed bus robberies, even if no violence actually occurs.

We have been shown maps of violent crime rates in the general population in all three of these countries. The Peace Corps situation differs greatly in each. In El Salvador, these crimes occur in predictable patterns. First, fewer than two per year occur in the volunteers’ communities. They almost universally happen outside of our communities. Second, almost all of the incidents happen either on public transportation or in San Salvador. The public transportation component is entirely accounted for on inter-departmental (interstate) routes, or on urban San Salvador busses. None occur on local bus routes between our sites and local pueblos.

In Honduras, while there are some concentrations of violent crime around the major metropolitan areas, along known drug trafficking routes, and on the Atlantic Coast (where the best SCUBA is, lastimosamente), the rest of the country is peppered with concentrations of violent crime as well. No region of the country showed up as a light color on the map. The result was that PC/W felt they had to get the volunteers out of Honduras and rethink entirely how the program might be able to exist safely. A few off-hand comments we have heard at this conference suggest that there is some doubt that PC will be able to return to Honduras at all, at least for the foreseeable future.

Guatemala, in contrast, was highly concentrated. Moreover, volunteers were already concentrated in safer areas, and the headquarters of PC/G had been moved outside of the capital a half a decade ago. PC/W still decided to shrink the program, and a few PCVs are being uprooted, but the disruptions there have been lesser than they will be here.

Like Guatemala, El Salvador’s violent crime is highly concentrated in a few regions. Like Honduras, volunteers are distributed all over the country. So we fall somewhere in the middle. Because crime is somewhat concentrated, PC/W feels that the changes to the program can be put into place while volunteers are still here. The idea will be to reduce the number of volunteers from the current 110 down to about 50, and to concentrate those fifty into two or three of the safest regions of the country.

To reduce the population they are doing several things. First, the new group that had been scheduled for January was canceled (see footnote 1), and they will not be bringing any more this year.

Second, the two groups before that were smaller than the usual 30 (helping us to get down to the current 110. The group that arrived in February 2010 has been asked to leave a month early, and most will be gone in the next few weeks. Our group, who were originally scheduled to leave in September, 2010 is being shipped home in April 2010. There are lots of problems with this decision, and how it was reached, which I’ll leave for another time.

In addition to reducing the population of PCVs, they will be creating several “clusters” of volunteers in “designated areas” of the country, and creating regional offices in those areas so that volunteers do not need to go to San Sal, or take the bus routes that are dangerous. This is a good idea well targeted to resolve the problems.

In mid-February an assessment team from PC/W will be coming to El Salvador to evaluate what regions of the country will be authorized to receive volunteers. They are expected to provide the results of the assessment in mid-March. Though they must have a short list of areas that will be considered, that’s a closely held secret. Rumors are floating around that include the Ataco area in Santa Ana, and the Gotera area in Morazan. “Everyone knows” that our region, the La Palma-San Ignacio region, would be an excellent candidate, because the resources are here and it’s very safe. But there’s been no official confirmation that it’s even under consideration.

Which leaves us in limbo. After our group leaves in April 2010 PC/ES will be down to 34 or fewer volunteers (some of the volunteers in groups more recent than ours have already left). That leaves slots open for some of our group to apply to extend. Such an application will only be considered if our sites are already in one of the designated areas identified by the assessment team. Laura and I have received verbal and informal reassurance that our efforts to stay will be supported by the local staff, so the only question that remains will be whether this region will be designated to continue to receive volunteers.

So at this point we feel that staying in El Salvador until September has become “Plan B,” and going home in April has become “Plan A.” this means we’ll be looking for jobs over the next few months. When March-April roll around, if we still don’t have jobs, and PC offers us the chance to stay, we’ll consider it then. In the meantime, we have a lot of work to wrap up in El Centro.

* * *

1 PC Washington emphasized that the “restructuring” in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras was the result of years-long discussions and worry about the continual trend of violence, and NOT a knee-jerk response to the shooting of a volunteer in December 2011 in Honduras. However, the group of invitees scheduled for January 2012 had already been officially invited to El Salvador and were preparing to leave when their invitation was suddenly canceled at the end of December. I was in email contact with several of them who had questions about life in El Salvador. They wrote to me asking if everything was okay in El Salvador and what the hell had happened. Según mi entendimiento, they had not been given a reason why their invitation was canceled or what, if anything, had happened in El Salvador. (Nothing.) Was it a lack of communication between the invitation-sending employees and those officials in Washington who were already having serious doubts about the Central American programs? Was it terrible decision timing to just happen to cancel new training groups right before they were about to enter their new host country?

“Hi kids. I’m your new basketball coach.” (I am 5’1).

“I gotta have that Playboy shirt.”

“35 cents! No way I’m paying that, that’s 7 bananas.”

“That man has an awesome ‘stache.”

“I can’t go outside right now, there’s a bolo sleeping against my door.”

“Yes, SuperSize that.” (uttered at the finest restaurant in town... McDonald’s.)

“God, I need fried chicken right now.”

“I’m going to a fiesta tonight. We’re getting a new Virgin.”

“I hope that dog dies real soon.”

I was on the bus yesterday when the call came:

Peace Corps is pulling me and the others in my group out of El Salvador in April, 6 months early. After so many rumours and chambre about this, here it is. Unless Dylan and I can appeal and get an extension from Peace Corps Washington’s decision to have an early COS (close of service) for those of us who entered the country in July 2010, we will be coming home to the big USA on April 30.

This decision is part of a massive scale-back of Peace Corps volunteers in Central America’s “Northern Triangle”: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. These three countries have seen elevated levels of gang violence for the last 10 years, and it is getting worse. Honduras recently beat El Salvador for the prize of “most violent country in the world”, measured in homicides.

In El Salvador, the 2 volunteer groups that have come more recently than ours are being allowed to finish their service, albeit with some rather draconian security restrictions (for example, no bus travel) that are currently being implemented. (These may in fact be too restrictive and counterproductive to safety).

So Peace Corps El Salvador is officially not closing down. The number of volunteers will be cut in half (to I think about 50) when we leave.

A lot of Central American volunteers (I think) feel like we have done a good job of handling the risks of living in Central America and we want to finish the projects we have started.

Additionally, many feel that pulling Peace Corps out is counterproductive to addressing the root causes of the violence happening in Central America. Taylor Dippert, a former Central American PCV, writes in the Journal of Foreign Relations, “Pulling Peace Corps volunteers out of violent Central American countries is an inappropriate policy response to a much larger, more complex dilemma. It is disaster mitigation. Washington should address the root causes of the problems in Central America, instead of avoiding them.”

That is why Dylan and I are going to do our best to finish our service and stay until September if possible. Our site is very safe and we feel we can assume the risks (which luckily for us are minimal) and have an obligation to our community. If we can’t appeal… we’ll just have to get it all done by April!

We still haven’t told our community members yet… We will wait until after the All Volunteer Conference Jan. 30-Feb. 1 to see what Peace Corps Washington has to say.

Top Ten Salvadoran Names for Guys:

I figured when I came to El Salvador that I would meet Josés, Jesuses, and Marias. I wasn't expecting Freddys, Nelsons, and Williams (actually here it is Wilian.)

Here are my favorites so far:

10. Wilmer

9. Nestor

8. Romel Oved

7. Elmer Adonai

6. Milton

5. Hermes

4. Ervin

3. Calixto

2. Wenceslao

1. Vladimir (also spelled and pronounced Bladimir!)

Other guys I know include Marlon, Arsenio, Esdras, Exequiel, Edgar, Sergio, Brallan (pronounced Brian), Gerson, German, Wilfredo, Edwin, Yimin (pronounced Jimmy), and Nehemias, Hugo, and Caleb

Women's names aren't as confusing, but here are some of my favorite unexpected names:

12. Ingrid

11. Nathaly (pronounced Natalie)

10. Berta

9. Glenda

8. Damaris

7. Norma

6. Haydi (pronounced like Heidi) or Heidi (pronounced like Haydee)

5. Edith

4. Zoila

3. Vilma

2. Onis

1. Griselda

My other favourite #1, just spotted: Hermayoni!

Mother's Day is such a big deal here that it is a holiday from school AND a separate day where the whole school day (and a week of preparation during 'classes') are devoted to a school-wide talent show put on for the mothers and a special lunch for the madrecitas.

Considering the dismal state of educational achievement in El Salvador, this celebration may seem a litle excessive. Then again, this is a country where bar none, THE most important part of a woman's identity is being a mother. (I know, I know, of course it is for many women everywhere, but here in the campo, where it is not uncommon for a woman to have 10-15 children, it seems, at least to this outsider, that it is often her sole identity.) If a woman doesn't get affirmation for her work as a mom, there isn't likely to be much other praise coming her way.

So looking at it this way, Mother's Day really is the most important day of the year for these Salvadoran super-moms that work hard from dawn till midnight. Feliz Dia de la Madre, madrecitas!

P.S. Father's Day merited a token mention in church for the beloved 'padrecitos' and no school activities. And all the Mother's Day signs are still up!

Silent Sam - This exploitation B-movie, produced by "Mad Samurai Productions" is what was inflicted upon grandmothers and niñitos alike - as well as us - on our public bus to Sonsonate. Its pivotal scene involves Babs, the good bad cop's partner, being tortured naked with electrodes by evil gangsters until she dies screaming in blood. As if there wasn't enough torture in El Salvador.

It was so bad that I had to look it up and of course I found it on the Internet. Almost as fantastic as the movie is slatromhsiloof's review on IMDB, in which he writes: "I would rather watch a colonoscopy video."

Moral of the story: even if you're not a victim of violence on El Salvador's buses, you will probably be a victim of one of these movies if you're here long enough.

Sitting on the porch stoop with my host mom and sisters, Kari and Lis, ages 11 and 3. El norte is blowing. I'm wearing my gringa sunnies, looking like a rock star as usual.

"Malvado lobo, Big Bad Wolf," says Lis and growls. I've been reading her The Three Little Pigs, Los Tres Cerditos.

"You're not a lobo, you still have milk-teeth", says Kari. She turns to me and says authoritatively, explaining the world to the ignorant gringa. "That's what we call baby teeth. After they fall out, we call the new ones 'permanent teeth', dientes permanentes."

She looks at my tooth-filled smile and at the gap-filled one of her mother's. Most adults here lose a few teeth before the age of 30 and most of the rest in the following years.

"I don't know why they call them that," she says. "It's not like they're really permanent."

Dylan writes:

On Christmas Eve, I had one of my horrible, periodic allergy attacks, and spent the evening reading in our room while Laura went to church with the family. She indicated it wasn't all that different from the usual church, except for a handful of skits by the kids, and that it was longer than usual. Then, for the rest of the night, the town popped and banged with firecracker explosions. No fireworks, mind you - nothing to look at - just a lot of sudden loud noises.

The next morning we met up with Nina N-----, Her daughters Nina B---- and A--- G-------, and B----'s 10-year-old son G-----, to climb El Pital from their house. We've been up El Pital several times, but each time from Rio Chiquita, a canton on the eastern ridge. That route is a dirt road, easy hiking, and heavily trafficked. We have to bus about 10 kilometers to Rio Chiquito, which takes about 45 minutes.

On Christmas day, however, the busses don't run. Further, we wanted to learn the route from El Centro, which is at the base of the north-western face of El Pital. Everyone we spoke with who was over the age of forty claimed to have done it once, twenty or more years ago. Nobody we know under the age of twenty had ever done it. We had also heard that John & Kathy, the volunteers who liver here before Will, had made an unsuccessful attempt or two to find this route. So with Nina N----'s 20-year-old memories as our guide, off we went.

In true Salvo-style, we left an hour and a half late, around 9:15. Laura and I had plans to attend a first communion at 3:00 in Las Pilas, a half-hour walk from our house. We also needed time to change and shower, so we had a deadline to return around 2:00, and a turn-around time of 11:30. Everyone we asked said it was a 2 hour walk, so we should have had just enough time to go up, have a 20 minute lunch, and come back.

Well, we made it nearly to the top and we found a clearing with three possible trails. For 20 minutes we followed the one that was likely to lead us around the east side of the peak to join up with the Rio Chiquito road. It paralleled some "poly-ducto," black ABS piping used for irrigation, for several hundred meters, and then petered out. It was about 11:30, so we stopped there and had lunch and decided to head back. We planned to return on New Year's Day for another attempt.

On the way down, however, we must have taken a wrong turn, because we found ourselves descending a steep ridge too far to the west. Keep in mind, the summit of El Pital is deep in a Salvadoran cloud forest, damp and mossy and cool, with pines and cypresses and orchids. Slipping and sliding on the steep hillside, and scrambling over down trees, and narrow paths over precipitous mudslides. Eventually we could hear a brook down below us on our left, to the west. Shortly thereafter we stumbled across a concrete border marker, indicating that we were on the border of Honduras, and the creek to our left was the headwater of the Rio Sumpul. Our canton is on the Sumpul several kilometers downstream, so we knew not to cross the river, but to follow it down. Eventually we found another outcropping of poly-ducto, and we determined that we should follow that, because it would lead out to a house or an irrigation system in a cabbage patch. The latter was correct, and we found ourselves out in a clearing several kilometers to the west of home. We cut north and east, down and right, until we encountered a Honduran man looking for his cows, who told us that we were in "Sumpul," which is not the name of any canton or caserio. We asked if he knew a path or road to El Centro; he looked puzzled, told us that Honduras was to the left, and we should go "alla, abajo" (there, below), which is one of the two different directions that exist in El Salvador (the other is alla, arriba; there, above).

To make a long story short, we hiked over hill and dale, through cabbages and blackberry thickets, and got home just on time. We arrived at church in clean clothes and with deodorant covering the sweat, five minutes before our friend whose daughter was having her first communion (she was, typically, a half-hour late). The church was packed, and I sat outside on the retaining wall with all of the apathetic young men; Laura pushed her way in with the women and stood on tired feet through a 1 1/2 hour ceremony. We had a lovely dinner of Carne Asada with the family, returned home and promptly fell asleep.

Two days later we did it all again. Our friend Katherine, a PCV in La Palma came up the 26th to see our site and she spent the night. On the 27th we set out to climb Pital by the same route. We left at 8:30, and she had to get back by 4:00 to catch the last bus back to La Palma. We made it to the clearing with the three trails around 10:00, and this time we went right. For 200 meters it was wide and clear, following some poly-ducto. It began to narrow, until we found ourselves passing over steep muddy precipices on narrow, slippery trails. We came out to a creek pouring through a cave formed by some fallen boulders. The clouds had socked us in, and everything was dripping and magical. I scrambled up through the underbrush to see if I could locate any kind of trail, but nothing was availing, and there were spots neither Laura nor Katherine wanted to pass. A tree near the creek was marked with red paint, so I suspected it was the Sumpul again, just a little higher than before, and that we had drifted, once again, too far to the west.

So we went back to the clearing and had lunch. We determined that we had another half-hour to go forward, so we tried the third path. This one, the middle one, was much fainter than the other two, and in fact disappeared for 20 feet or so, which is why we hadn't taken it the first two tries. You have to understand, these are not maintained recreational trails. They exist for locals to get to their cabbage patches, to collect firewood, and at the higher altitude, to lay and maintain poly-ducto to supply household and agricultural water. The fact that the path (probably) continues on to the top of the mountain past the source of the water is just a function of the fact that some people naturally have the need to "get to the top." But since those people are far fewer than the ones who come up there for work, the last stretch of trail is hardly used. Remember, nobody we know had been up that way more than once, and not for twenty years.

So we followed the third path up the ridge until it split several times into faint paths. The main path appeared to drop off the ridge and pass east around a small peak; multiple faint paths bushwhacked up the hillside. We stayed on the main path and came out to a clearing where I could clearly see that the eastern ridge descending to Rio Chiquito was still a good 1/2 hour ahead. At that point we had to turn back, and we returned without incident and far earlier than we had expected.

The next day our boss, the Assistant Country Director of PC El Salvador, brought his two daughters up to see our site and climb El Pital. We apparently graduated from college with his elder daughter who looked familiar but we didn't know her. Anyhow, we rode in the white Peace Corps SUV up the Rio Chiquito road and sat in the sun eating pupusas and carne asada.

We're making a third attempt on New Year's Day. This time I'm pretty sure we'll make it, since our return deadline will be much later, and I'm confident we know the route. Once we know it, this will be a half-day hike for me to do solo. Wish us luck.

Dylan writes:

The Millennium Corporation, or FOMILENIO as its Salvadoran branch, offers dozens of different workshops in areas as diverse as agro-business, baking, restaurant management, carpentry, etc. These workshops are free of cost to the participants, FOMILENIO brings teachers, materials, equipment and everything to the community. Workshops are multi-day affairs spread out over several weeks; the shortest courses are 140 hours, so they're a big commitment. The only thing we need to provide is a minimum of 20 people interested in a particular workshop, a space to do it in, and a solicitude with an official signature on it (someone from the mayor's office, or from a local community development board - "ADESCO"). The deadline to submit the solicitude was Dec. 31, 2010.

SO we spent the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas going door-to-door, organizing meetings, and speaking with people in the street to gauge interest and to sign people up. Laura held and all-women's meeting to which one woman attended. The Asamblea de Dios -- our largest evangelical church -- had a 20 minute announcement one Sunday, and then we had a dramatic turnout at the following meeting on Wednesday. We visited several dozen houses. Several community leaders were remarkably helpful gathering names and numbers of people who were interested.

A number of people had questions; whether minors could participate, how the schedules would be worked out, etc. We had the damndest time getting in touch with anyone at the FOMILENIO office to get these questions answered. Nobody returned e-mails or answered phones. When we finally got through, people denied that they were the correct office to be speaking with, or stated that the guy in charge was not around. He never called us back. We finally got someone to answer two of our questions. After the second question, Laura said, "thank you" and he evidently thought that was the end of it, so he hung up the phone. When we called back, nobody answered.

As of now we have enough people to have three workshops -- Pasteleria (baking pastries), Panaderia, (baking breads), and Mechanics. We had one brave man cross gender lines and sign up for a class in baking. One woman signed up for an Organic Agriculture taller, but as of yet we only have eight signatures on that list and they all belong to the same cooperative. Several of them clearly signed up under pressure from the cooperative's president, who thought it would be a good idea, so it is unclear whether they would actually have the motivation to attend classes.

With lists in hand, and solicitudes on a flash drive, I went down to San Ignacio to print the solicitudes on December 23. I needed an official signature from the Alcaldia (mayor's office) since we don't have a recognized ADESCO in our community. I was specifically looking for the Unidad Ambiental - the official in the Alcaldia who is in charge of environmental matters. We've developed a working relationship with him, and for some reason he's the one in the Alcaldia with the FOMILENIO information. SO I drafted the letters with his name expecting him to sign.

Well, I lucked out. I arrived at 1:30 just as everyone in the office was piling in a pickup to drive out to some Canton or other to give away toys to kids for Christmas. The office was closed for three days before Christmas so that taxpayer dollars could be used for gimmicky political advertising. But the Unidad Ambiental went back inside with me and signed the solicitudes without reading them. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to stick around to let me use the fax.

So I went down to La Palma and faxed the solicitudes at the outrageous cost of $.45 per page. I then tried to call the office of FOMILENIO to confirm receipt of the fax and got no answer. Not surprising since it was just two days before Christmas. So we waited until Monday and called again. We finally reached someone at the office designated as in charge of the talleres, and they denied that they were in charge of the workshops. They told us that the person in charge was on vacation until January 3, and that nobody would be in the office to confirm receipt of our fax until then. Just to be sure, we put the original lists and solicitudes in an envelope and mailed them. We then sent an e-mail explaining that everything was signed and sealed before the deadline, and they should contact us upon receipt.

We'll see what happens.

As I understand it, the Canton next to ours had one of these workshops on baking, and the women tried to open a cooperative bakery which failed for want of cooperation and start-up capital. We tried to encourage people to sign up for workshops that would benefit them individually without subsequent need for capital investment or organization, but we had to go where the interest was. For example, some women were interested in a workshop about "Preparation of Comidas Tipicas (typical foods) of El Salvador". This would have been useful because many women run small restaurants, and could have diversified their offerings without having to start up new businesses or buy new equipment. But only a handful of women signed up for this workshop, and many more were interested in baking bread. The latter, of course, requires an oven and creation of a new market not already in existence. But that's the way they chose to go.

All the rigamarole getting this organized is typical here; people in the community are well aware of the inefficiency of the bureaucracy -- both government and NGO -- and are quite cynical about the ability to get anything done. It makes them reluctant to sign up or participate in any kind of organizing. Officials and bureaucrats are unresponsive and inefficient. People don't have the persistence (or often the resources to be persistent, which costs both time and money), to overcome organizational drag. And since there's a good chance that none of this will come to fruition after all of that effort, many people are unwilling to put the effort in to begin with.

I think it's a common experience for volunteers here to be the motivating force behind other people's projects. We have the motivation, time and resources to tromp around and sign people up and track people down and pester people to do their jobs. I've never been much of an organizer - preferring to go out and do something, rather than to try to get a bunch of people together to go out and do something - but in my work as an attorney I've had some experience pushing people to get up and go. It's a lot easier when you're pushing someone to do their job or act in a professional capacity. Getting people to move on their own, for their personal benefit is trickier. In this case it was easy, because all they had to do was sign their names, and we had a few motivated individuals like Don Manuel and Nina Raquel. But trying to organize an ADESCO, where people will actually have to voluntarily do work for the common good, seems like a nightmare.

According to senior staff at Peace Corps El Salvador (PCES), the U.S. Peace Corps is tightening its belt worldwide in anticipation of a tough budget year for U.S. development agencies in 2011.

An email sent to all Peace Corps El Salvador volunteers last week detailed some of the changes that will be happening here in El Salvador and worldwide as a result.

According to the email, Peace Corps worldwide is scaling back its previously planned expansion by half. The organisation will still be trying to increase the number of volunteers by 1,000 per year, from the current 8,500 to 9,500. But as recently as October, Peace Corps officials had been planning for an increase of 2,000 per year. (see: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1629). This modest growth is likely to disappoint many who had hoped that with President Obama's tenure the Peace Corps would gain strength and standing as an international development agency.

Furthermore, Peace Corps staff have been instructed to cut the number of in-country projects. In El Salvador, this means that the Environmental Education program (my project) will be "absorbed" by the Community/Economic Development project. Currently Peace Corps El Salvador has four operational project areas: Youth Development, Environmental Education/Sustainable Agriculture, Rural Health, and Community/Economic Development. The Sustainable Agriculture component will be effectively eliminated by this move.

According to the email, El Salvador is not the only country in which Peace Corps is de-emphasising agriculture. "Across Central America, Agricultural Projects may be downsized or discontinued," it reads.

What will this mean for volunteers' sustainable development work in El Salvador and similar countries? Peace Corps El Salvador staff insist that it will "attempt to preserve programmatic goals", so it is possible that simply combining PCES projects into two larger ones will cause a few headaches for staff but maintain as a major goal the promotion of sustainable development and environmental education.

But it seems likely that specific emphasis within PCES on agriculture/environmental issues will decrease. As an example, out of our trainee group of 15, which entered in July 2010, nearly all of us had educational/work backgrounds in environmental, agriculture, or science fields. Agriculture and environmental issues were also the (at least putative) focus of half of our training. I worry that, with 'absorption' by the Community Development program, there will be far fewer incoming trainees with science/agricultural backgrounds, thus decreasing the likelihood that they will undertake these types of projects as volunteers. This in a country where the majority of people work in agriculture, and the vast majority of poor people work and live in rural areas and rely on farming for their food security.

I live near the Honduran/Salvadoran border, so I often see the border patrol. I'm not entirely sure what they're patrolling for. The border crossing nearby are dirt roads or wading across the River Zumpul and climbing through the cornfields (milpas) on the other side. Most people - locals with family or land on the other side - cross on horseback. (And man can they ride! No saddles or bridles necessary, either). So not very efficient for trafficking.

What commerce exists in our region - 'La Zona Alta', the high-altitude zone of El Salvador - is far more mundane. Most revolves around vegetable farming, especially cabbage (see pic). Every day, distributor trucks come rumbling and honking and scattering dust and rocks down the gravel-dirt road. Young men line up to earn a dollar transporting the harvested cabbage to the truck and packing it in as tightly as possible without brusing.

I've heard reports of unlawful produce dumping in El Salvador, so the best guess I have for the police presence is to ward off illegal cabbage smuggling. Welcome to life in the campo.

Foul, foul weather today. I was scheduled to go out with the associates ofACAMSERTA (the organic fertilizer-producing co-op in town) to collect materias primas (prime substrate) for the worm compost, but we cancelled when only myself and two members showed up. Don Secundino, the president, has "The Gripe" (a cold), with a horrible cough.

It's 55 degrees, blustery and we're in a cloud. Our shelter is unheated, but it's still shelter, and I'm glad to have it.

Today makes me miss public libraries. If we were in Madison, I would brave the weather to go to Central Library and stay there all morning, then head to the Irish Pub for lunch. Instead, lots of tea and books. We've been devouring the handful of magazines my folks sent last week. I'veread every article in the Nov. 11th issue of The New Republic (except the book review on the biography of some art dealer), and a good chunk of the November Atlantic. I particularly devoured all of the book reviews, but realized that the inherent pedantry of a book review is easy to overdose on if you don't pace yourself.

For those of you not familiar with Doctor Who, do yourselves a favor and read the review in the Atlantic for a brief exposure to a great Brit-Pop phenomenon. For those of you already familiar with Doctor Who, do yourselves a favor and read the review in the Atlantic for a great retrospective full of Whovian character.

Since arriving in El Salvador in late July I have read, in order:

{1} "A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul;

{2} "Foucoult's Pendulum" (for the 3rd time), by Umberto Eco;

{3} approximately 1/2 of "The Collected Fictions" of J.L. Borges (a complete collection);

{4} "Huckleberry Finn" (for the first time!);

{5} "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (meh.);

{6} "The Best Science Fiction of 2003" (with several great stories andmany average ones);

{7} "The Moor's Last Sigh" by Salman Rushdie (for the fourth time?);

{8} a volume of short stories by former Peace Corps volunteers, including one by Paul Theroux that was far and away the best;

{9} "Einstein's Dreams";

{10} "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov;{

11} "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris;

{12} "The Way Some People Die", (a pulp-noir from the '50's that was a lot of fun, recommended);

{13} "Sieze the Day", by Saul Bellow;

{14} "David Copperfield", (all 900 pages in under a week);

{15} "What is the What" by Dave Eggers, (a *highly* reccomended"fictional" biography of a Sudanese refugee - don't miss it);

{16} "Far Appalacia" by NPR's Noah Adams (made me somewhat homesick);

{17} "East of Eden" (for the 3rd time);

{18} "The Past Through Tomorrow" by Heinlein (for the dozenth time?);

{19} "Salvador" by Joan Didion (not as good as "After Henry", but she's really an exceptionally talented observer of culture);

{20} "Friday the Rabbi Slept Late", (a slender, not-very-good pulp-noir);

{21} several lousy pulp-noir short stories;

{22} "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", (which is not as good as I thought it was when I was 20).

Laura has read two books:

1) Foucoult's Pendulum (not overly wowed, but itwas pretty okay).

2) Einstein's Dreams - fun and nice.

3) Currently reading "The Once and Future King" by T.H. White, "Salvador" by Joan Didion, and re-reading "Cien Anos de Soledad" by Garcia Marquez, which will probably take her the next two years. But to be fair, she's been reading bits and pieces of dozens of others, from Plato to Ms. Dalloway.

I'm now re-reading "For Whom the Bell Tolls" which turns out to be anrather difficult read, and I'm surprised that I read it once before, nearly 15 years ago! The surplus of mediocre pulp in this list is a reflection of the contents of the Peace Corps library, which is just the accumulated junk from many years of volunteers buying airport books as they travel back and forth to visit family. There must be a half-dozen copies of the same three John Grisham books, three dozen Maeve Binchy "books", and hundreds of other copies of crap. The reason I'm rereading so many books (for example, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), is that of the few good books available, I've already read many of them.

After six weeks in our Peace Corps site in Chalatenango, we were whisked back to San Vicente for another two weeks of "technical" training. This training session was intended to be geared more towards our actual program areas, sustainable agriculture and environmental education, and not so much on cultural integration, which made up the bulk of our first two months of training.

During this time, we had some field trips to vegetable projects, compost-making demonstrations, and integrated tree/crop systems that conserve soil and provide diverse sources of agricultural income. The environmental ed folks (Laura) also got a whole bunch of info on how to do participatory (read: fun!) charlas (talks/workshops) with kids and we got to practice with a group of super-listo (very smart) kids in Suchitoto. We're headed back to Chaletanango today to hopefully put all these things into practice over the next two years!

El Salvador schools finished their exams last week and they are now on vacation until January. This is the equivalent of our summer vacation - and it's summer here too now - and they think it is very strange that our vacations are June-August. But the planting season is completely different here, and many kids (at the lower elevations) are helping harvest beans and sugar cane during their vacations. And of course preparing for Christmas, La Navidad! Everyone is already decking the halls and all that jazz. In our Canton, the preparations are less commercialised and more religious, but people are excited nevertheless.

I (Laura) am assigned to work with the school in our communty (pictured here), which runs from kindergarten to ninth grade. It has about 250 students, most of whom are in the lower grades - the dropout rate is abysmally high. The teachers are great and have already asked me to teach a lot of English, which I have started doing. I enjoy it, even if it is completely impossible to keep any sort of order in the classroom. I am sometimes tempted to get a whistle and a large stick. But the kids are great. Can you picture me singing "Head shoulders knees and toes" with a class of third graders to teach them body parts in English? I can't picture this either but I did it. Just my luck, they loved it and always want me to sing it with them. Don't tell anyone please. The previous volunteer sold me his guitar, so I'm going to try to incorporate this into lessons. Unfortunately, the only song I know is "House of the Rising Sun", which I sung for the kids in my family, and they all want to hear it over and over too. They would probably kick me out of town in they understood the words.

House visits are the awkward, uncomfortable rite of passage for a new Peace Corps volunteer. When a volunteer comes to their community, your first task is to introduce yourself to as many people in the community as possible. Especially in a site with a large population, where one cannot realistically reach all the people within a month or so, it might be helpufl to define what one means by 'the community'.

In my case, I start with the political unit of the "canton", sort of like a county in the U.S. Our canton has more than 800 families in it, and 5 subdivisions. Each subdivision is called a "caserio". So I'm hoping to visit a good portion of the families in our caserio, which is the most central, and maybe a few others along the road who are important leaders, and call that 'my community'. That will probably be about 100 house visits, which is awfully ambitious. The cold and wet weather that has come lately has been steadily eroding my ambition to go out door to door...

We've only done about 10 house visits so far, with positive but mixed results. About half the people are super-welcoming and give us tons of info about the community and invite us in, but others don't come outside or only come to the gate and speak little and cautiously in response to our strange accents and forward American manner. The house visits are definitely worth doing, even if it sometimes strikes out. We have met so many people this way, and virtually everyone we visit we see the next day on the street and say hello.

Dylan and I have moved to our permanent (2 year) Peace Corps community in the northern Salvadoran department of Chaletenango. The terrain is mountainous and our elevation is around what Denver would be.

The mainstay of our community is agriculture, mostly cabbage and potatoes. This forms the backbone of most households' income, although many families also have members who do other jobs such as construction, truck driving, tailoring, little shops, etc. And some have members in the States who send money home as well to support their families. There is a little school, a bunch of churches, some very small shops, and a dirt road. Many people have electricity. Illiteracy is very high, especially among adults, many of whom never went to school. Graduation rates from even the 9th grade are fairly low.

The people are friendly, the mountain vistas are incredible, and this area is naturally very rich in biological diversity and natural resources (like clean water, definitely a plus!) It's a great site.

A daughter of a friend just passed away suddenly. Seventeen years old. Lo mataron, they say: she was murdered. She had fallen in with bad people. This is happening all over the country. I can't even imagine what her family must be going through. I didn't know her, but everyone in the community chipped in to help pay for the coffin because the family cannot afford one. We paid our respects at the funeral... There really are no words to describe how to face it when a life so young is so brutally cut short.

* * *

On the brighter side, we've almost successfully completed training. Only two weeks (and still lots of homework) to go, and then we will swear in on September 16 and head to our new site on the 17th. And then... the great wide world of Peace Corps service awaits. I have few illusions of superheroism or being a rock star Volunteer. I'll do what I can, but I feel that even the process of learning what a community needs and wants (and not just what I want) can take many months, even years. Development is slow work with many pitfalls. Success is hard to measure. Sometimes the most successful volunteers are not those that build a new Casa Comunal (town hall) or get grants for the community, but those that spend their days really knowing the people, making organic shampoo, giving a hand in the field, teaching students (and even more important, teaching teachers). We shall see…

I feel like I am just getting to know the people in my training community. Every day I discover more about the complexities of the deceptively 'simple'-seeming life in the campo. Every decision a person makes might mean the difference between food on the table or privation. Every community member is a fountain of knowledge about the families, relationships, history, and context of their community. I will be sad to be leaving for my 2-year site just when I feel I am getting to know my community here near San Vicente, and when I still have so much to learn! I will miss my training host family, who have been so wonderful and essential to learning about El Salvador.

Salvadorans may be poor compared to Gringos, are rich in language. By this I mean that the spoken Spanish is not the textbook variety, but a syncretism of Spanish proper, a combination of the colonial language, Nahuat (the indigenous language), various miscellaneous, and yes, English. (For example, we've got "car washes" and we get "rides" everywhere in "pickups". One quarter is "una cora" here. We're on the dollar too, in case you didn't know.) Many indigenous-influenced words feature the "ch" sound.

Other great caliche words:

- chivo: very cool

- chuco: dog/perro. Que se vaya, chucho!

- Puchica!: used for everything; Wow/Sh*t/oh man/oh no/Really?/oh my god

- chevere: nice

- choyudo: slow (as in, hurry up, choyudo, you're late for school)

- tufo: bad odour

Our free weekend - the one we got during Training - we spent in Ahuachapan, on a beach/estuary by the name of Barra de Santiago. We took a boat tour through a protected mangrove area, where conservationists are working to prevent people cutting down mangroves to repair the roofs of their houses (apparently the wood is excellent for this use), and are trying to protect nesting habitat for parrots and loras. We also took a night hunt for sea turtles, which nest along the beach. The Pacific ocean waves was the music to our romantic night on the beach. We were searching for the turtles in order to find egg-laying females. Conservationists take the eggs to a nearby conservation center where they raise the eggs and then eventually release them back into the sea. This prevents people from stealing the eggs for food, and each person that brings eggs to the conservation center receives a payment, from the government's Ministerio de Medio Ambiente (Environmental department). Money from international donors also supports the project. There were lots of locals out hunting for eggs and turtles. Apparently they come ashore more often when the moon is full and when it is raining. We were out of luck - no turtles tonight. But in December, in Barra de Santiago, there is a day when they release all of the baby turtles into the Pacific Ocean - "Dia de la Liberacion de las Tortugitas" - The Baby Turtle Liberation Day - and I am just dying to go back and see this sight. Barra de Santiago was a bit difficult to access (dirt road that floods often, infrequent pickup service, car pretty much necessary), and although beautiful and relatively free of trash by Salvadoran standards, we found the infrastructure at this time of year (winter in El Salvador) somewhat lacking. Affordable restaurants were not open. There was no cashpoint in town, or anywhere near, no one takes credit cards. However, we felt safe and did I mention it was beautiful? There were tons of shorebirds and seabirds, lots of local culture, archeological ruins nearby and rich in indigenous history. In short, the place shows promise for eco-tourism in the future but it's a ways off due to the logistical problems. Let's hope it can develop sustainably and protect its amazing resources along the way.

There are about 30 Volunteers-in-Training (Aspirantes) in our training group. Groups of 4 or 5 of us each live in different small communities surrounding San Vicente. Most of our Spanish classes and cultural activities take place within our own communities, and then once a week or so we head in to San Vicente by bus to meet up with the rest of the training group. The training communities are a fantastic part of our education, especially since part of our assignments are to investigate various aspects of the community in a structured way. The Peace Corps has provided us a list of "Community Contacts" that we have to make, some samples of questions we can ask the various community contacts we make, and suggested dates for completion. Our Spanish teacher, who is super-helpful, has also helped us meet people. We have met with the President of the local community government (ADESCO), the regional Health Promoter, the local environmental official in the mayor’s office, the director of the school, and many other community members. This is fantastic not only because we learn a lot about the community we are in, but also about how to make these sorts of contacts: how to do house visits, etiquette in professional settings, how to write letters of contact, what sorts of questions to ask in an investigation. I don’t know if this model of learning applies to all Peace Corps countries, and I admit that it might be a lot harder to do when one doesn’t know the language, but for students that have some grasp of the language, it is a great way of training, IMHO.

Dylan:

Tuesday is class day in San Vicente. We have a class on diversity, a class on febrile disease, a class on Salvadoran history andeconomics, and a class on the environment. And so I'm going to give a little history lesson. Keep in mind that this is my attempt to piece together a consistent narrative from one lecture and bits and pieces picked up here and there. It's by no means reliable or definitive. It's just how I am beginning to understand society and history here.

And it is all about land. The Spanish colonized ES in the 1500's. By1580 the indigenous people - the "Pipil" - were "wiped out." Quite what this means is unclear, because the population of El Salvador is clearly descended largely from indigenous Americans. My hypothesis is that the imprecise term "wiped out" is employed to signify that Spanish colonization permanently disrupted the indigenous culture and society by that date, and that the surviving Pipil were forcibly integrated into a Spanish-designed feudal society. Make no mistake, many, many Pipil were massacred by violence and disease and starvation; but I do not believe that "wiped out"means a successful and deliberate genocide. This hypothesis is supported by the existence of a local "caliche."Something more than a slang but less than a language, it is seamlessly integrated into the more classical Spanish spoken here. Words like"chevere" (nice), and "guisquil" (a kind of vegetable) employ phonemes not found naturally is Spanish. These words are imported from theindigenous language, Nahuat.

The most dramatic and still largely felt effect of colonization was theconsolidation of all of the land into the hands of a small oligarchy. There are a mythical 14 families, which symbolize the truth that all ofthe land is owned by a small oligarchy of people living in San Salvador. The reality is that the number of owners and the form of ownership haschanged over the centuries. For centuries this oligarchy and themilitary worked hand-in-hand to repress the population and to force them into working conditions that would make Tom Joad and Joe Hill feel lucky.

In 1932 the people attempted an armed insurrection; it was brutally suppressed by the military. The general consensus is that 30,000 people were killed, though some claim this number must be inflated, since the"military could not have had more than 10,000 bullets". Many considerthis date to be the beginning of the Salvadoran Civil War. For the next two decades the military remained extremely aggressive in its repression.People here still remember those days, and to this day it makes people uneasy about "organizing" and about unions and other leftist tactics. This nervousness about organizing, protesting and other forms of civicaction began to wane in the '50's and '60's. The Cuban Revolution, Liberation Theology, and Soviet dollars all combined to strengthen thepopulist and leftist movements in El Salvador. By the late '70's there was an active reform movement again. War broke out in 1979 between armedleft-wing guerilla groups and the military protecting the interests ofthe oligarchy. The guerillas hid among the civilian population, striking atinfrastructure in an attempt to destabilize the economy that supportedthe oligarchs and to cripple the mobility of the army. The army responded by striking civilian targets because the guerillas were hiding among them. The destruction was devastating to the civilians. The U.S.loaned millions of cold-war dollars to the government to support themilitary and fighting "communism." It is clear that both sides employed tactics and strategies that were immensely destructive to the country and the people. To this day thereis no historical or social consensus in El Salvador regarding who was"right." In the late '80's the U.S. used its considerable economic leverage topush through "Neoliberal" reform and open up El Salvador to foreign investment. One effect of this was to force the oligarchy to restructure its power; no longer able to hold a political monopoly, the land andassets were transferred to corporate holdings in privately ownedcorporations. While the government was de jure democratized, the oligarchy maintained (and still maintains) an economic monopoly in El Salvador.

Dylan and I have begun training in San Vicente, and as part of this training, we are living with a host family in a small, rural community near San Vicente. Agriculture and small businesses dominate here. The staple crops for food and selling are maize and beans, and sugar cane for sweet juices and dulces. Local fruits, vegetables, eggs, and meat for the more well-off are popular food items. Dense corn tortillas are eaten with every meal! We have eaten lots of great food, notably pupusas, the national food of El Salvador. We are lucky to know a lady who makes what we think are the best pupusas en el mundo. They are corn tortillas filled with cheese and beans. We eat them with salsa and with curtido, a cabbage dish in vinegar that goes very well with the pupusas. (PC Volunteers should soak their cabbage in chlorinated water for 30 minutes to make sure it is decominated. This is important because a: Our stomachs are still adjusting, and b: About 90% of the water in El Salvador is unsuitable for either human or animal consumption. Water treatment is virtually non-existent and feces (animal and human) commonly contaminate water supplies).

We also eat soup of guisquil (a zucchini-like vegetable with a very cool name derived from the Nauhautl indigenous language of El Salvador), yuca, platano, and for breakfast, Corn Flakes or pancakes! For fruits, we have bananas (called guineos here), papayas, guayavas, anonas, strawberries, and lichas. Many new adventures in food, all of it delicious.

Infrastructure here near San Vicente is more developed than in more remote parts of the country. Many roads are paved (although potholes and rocks in the middle of the road abound). Many people have some electricity, running water (but NOT 'clean' water), and latrines. A few have toilets.

San Vicente is a nice city of about 50,000 people. Its most prominent feature is the Tower (Torre) of San Vicente, which was damaged in the 2001 earthquakes and has just been repaired. From the top, there are wonderful views of all around the city and surrounding campo, and San Vicente's overlooking volcano, Chichontepeque (a name which means 'large breast', following the universal tradition of mountain-naming). At the right is Wikipedia's image of the San Vicente Torre:

Note on the blog title: "Y Otros Demonios" (English: And Other Demons) is derived from a fantastic book by the fantastic Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian author and general force of nature.

Laura and Dylan are starting Peace Corps service in El Salvador beginning July 20, 2010,within the program area Sustainable Agriculture/Environmental Education. This program used to be called "Agro-Forestry/EE" but has changed in the last few years to reflect more sustainability-focused objectives. We are training for two months in San Vicente, and then in September we will be assigned to a rural community where we will spend two years teaching and learning!

The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.