EDogBlog

Living life as a Peace Corps municipal development volunteer in El Salvador from 06.2006 to 08.2008. Please note that the contents of this website are solely my own and do not reflect the views of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

Monday, February 19, 2007

General Musings

"If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused." - Walter Mondale

Saturday February 17th marked 6 months at site for myself and my fellow MD/YD 06 volunteers. It's hard to believe we are already a quarter of the way through our service, as the time has passed relatively quickly. I don't think there's been another 6 month period in my life where I have grown so much as I have in my half a year in Chapeltique, and yet I still feel as new, and almost as confused, now as I did in my first few weeks at site. It's been noted among friends here that we now use the phrase "this is crazy" much less often than we did in the beginning. I think it's more that El Salvador continues to surprise and confound me just as it did at day one - it's not crazy anymore, but it still defies logic as we know it, or perhaps as it should be. The same family that raided my room and stole some belongings back in September now approaches me on the street and yells at me for not coming back to visit them since my move to a new house. The Alcaldia has no funds for either the road or the water project our rural communities are soliciting, yet not two weeks ago the mayor pulls into the parking lot with a brand new Range Rover and central air is installed in our office. The receptionist at work, famous for once giving me a card that said "spanky," sat down at my desk on his own accord last week and apologized for trating me with disrespect for the last 6 months. These are all illogical occurrences that should never have happened, but so they have. I can't wrap my mind around a lot of how life functions here, and not just because I'm yet to be fluent in spanish either. Sometimes I want to take someone by the shoulders and shake them for doing things in such roundabout, inefficient and counterproductive ways, and sometimes I want to kiss them for surprising the hell out of me and exceeding any and all expectations. I guess maybe that's it - in 6 months, I still have yet to fully learn that my expectations are shite. In order to do something like this, submerse yourself in a new culture and live for 2 years in a different world, you must relinquish all ideas of how life should be and simply accept the facts of how life is. That's not to say that I don't believe things can change and improve- certainly not. Life isn't stagnant by any means. It's just to say that instead of trying to figure out every person and all things, I need to sit back, accept my constant state of confusion and move onward despite of it. It is possible to do real, meaningful work here and develop strong relationships - I see that now much more clearly than I did half a year ago. I'm beginning to think that that knowledge alone is enough to go on - who needs to understand everything all the time anyway?

"Down to the wire/I wanted water but I'll walk through the fire/If this is what it takes to take me even higher/Then I'll come through, like I do, when the world keeps testing me testing me testing me" - John Mayer

Whether or not this is justified, I do feel as though I've been tested lately. I've recently come back from a trip to the States, where I was able to see my loved ones everyday for two weeks and realize anew just how fantastic they all are. In come back to El Salvador I give up the chance to spend time with them again - to hang with my grandmother as she progresses further in her Alzheimers, to help plan my sister's wedding rather than just come home in time to be in it. Coming back, I had to say goodbye to a good PC friend, who just made the choice to leave and is now back in the U.S. Here in site again, I find myself struggling to get back into work, re-igniting projects I had started before I left and attempting to motivate people anew. The common feelings of lonliness and isolation are back in full, after so much time constantly surrounded by friends and family. And of course, my spanish has suffered from almost a month of no use.

These things were all on my mind come Friday morning, when I agreed to take a bus out to some of our cantons with a work colleague, Pedro, to deliver notebooks and pencils to school children. Pedro was just as jubilant as ever as he announced with a grin on his face that we had in fact missed the 8am bus and would have to find another means of transportation for us and our four boxes of school supplies. No problem - we'll take a taxi in as far as the road is decent and then walk the rest of the way to the school. How long of a walk will it be? I ask him. He waves his hand nonchalontly - five minutes. Ok, so I'm still good to go in my flipflops, is what I think. We get in the taxi, so far so good, and do make it quite a ways into the rural area before the driver promptly proclaims that his tirest can't handle the rocks and potholes any longer. So we load the boxes onto our shoulders and set off. Pedro was right - the school was just five minutes from where the taxi left us. I'm starting to feel pretty good about all this, especially when we begin handing notebooks out to the kids and they are genuinely excited. Then, before leaving I went to use the bathroom and proceeded to slip down the stairs, landing hard on the ball of my hand and one ankle, in front of everyone. It's fine - I'm used to falling in public by now - but not so good when we go to leave, still with 3 boxes full of notebooks, and Pedro tells me we're just going to hit up a few more schools, seeing as we have so much leftover. And how will we be getting to said schools? I wonder. Again with the grin - he picks up a box, hands it to me, hauls the other two over his shoulder and sets off - on foot.

This is where I start to get weary, then annoyed, then midly hateful of Pedro - all in my head of course. Is he crazy? He tricked me. There probably never was a bus in the first place. My hand and foot are stinging and I'm wearing flipflops, and the road is all uphill, composed of rocks made slippery with a layer of dust and dry leaves. But onward we go, 45 minutes, until we approach the second school. Alas, there's no one there. Pedro, sweating, good-naturedly smacks himself in the head and says he forgot, the teacher had a meeting and because she's the only administrator there, the kids had the day off. No problem, he says, we'll just carry the stuff to the next school. No problem, no problem is the mantra running through my head as we climb, slip, clamor down the "road" to the third canton school, all the while lugging our Trapperkeepers and Number 2's and sweating in the sun. We walked for two hours before approaching a one-room school that, surpise! was empty. I look at Pedro, he looks at his watch. 12:00 noon. Of course the school is empty! Everyone went home for lunch. We'll just have to take our boxes back to Chapeltique and come another day, is the logical conclusion. And how are we getting back? Walking, of course. I started off a bit behind Pedro this time, so my frustration wouldn't manifest itself in the form of me reaching over and throttling him. It's not that I don't mind walking, and I'm certainly not opposed to giving to children. It's just, why couldn't Pedro have told me we'd be walking all this way? I could have brought water, and sneakers. Why hasn't he asked me if I'm feeling well enough to walk, given the impressive fall I sustained back at school numero uno? And why does he insist on whistling while he walks, like he could do this all day? I'm grumbling to myself and falling back, until at one point I turn a corner to see Pedro stopped with his boxes on the ground in front of a small house. "House" imight be too gracious a word - this was a shack with tarps for walls, and the women and children emerging from it were no less desolate-looking. Pedro is pulling notebooks and pens from hsi box and, upon seeing me, asks me to pull otu some of the clothing and bars of soap my box contained. I do as he asks and listen as he questions the family if the three children present attend school. They say no, they can't afford school supplies or uniforms and besides, school is too far of a haul to go everyday anyway. No matter- Pedrogives them the notebooks anyway and tells them to consider it - now they have some of what they need. I approached a young woman holding a baby and gave her three dresses I thought might fit her girl, and she took them with a smile and asked God to bless me three times over.

It only lasted a few minutes - we had packed up our boxes, said goodbye and were on our way again before I realized what it all meant. Sure, it's illogical to set off with heavy cargo without a plan and walk on rocky terrain in flipflops, but who cares? What does it matter if my hand hurts and my feet are dirty? They won't always be this way. But as I write this, that poor family is still living in their tarp house, still walking great distances to find running water or go to school. A little bit of discomfort from me is nothing compared to the essence of their lives - and all we did was give them some dresses and a few notebooks. I would like to return there and give them the shirt off my back, in an attempt to make up for my stupid complaints. This is really what it's all about - I'm a Peace Corps volunteer, I live in the third world, and I delivered notebooks to poor kids on foot one Friday morning. If only every morning could be like that one.