Hola desde El Salvador #1

Hola a mi familia y mis amigos,

I hope that this letter finds you all well. Welcome to the first installment of my updates from El Salvador, which I will try to send out every so often.

Things are going well here in El Salvador, although I do find myself missing my home, family, and friends. My group of 14 Agroforestry / Environmental Education Volunteers arrived in El Salvador a month ago to begin 2 ½ months of training for Peace Corps service. The training center is located in the pueblo (town) of San Vicente, about 1 ½ hours away from the capital, San Salvador. We are all living with host families in the cantones (rural villages) surrounding San Vicente. I live in a small community called San Felipe, where the majority of the population works in agriculture (corn, beans, and sorghum are the principle crops). Most of the Volunteers are living in big families, but I have kind of a different situation in that my family consists of a senora (who actually just left to visit her sons in the U.S. for two months) and her 29-year old daughter Silvia, who works for a judge in San Vicente. The senora’s other 7 children are all grown and living elsewhere, so my house is very tranquilo with just Silvia and me. However, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Silvia. She’s really a very unique woman in that she is quite educated and is a leader in her community as the organizer of her church youth groups. In a country where machismo is very apparent and there is considerable inequalities between men and women in education, employment, and influence in family and community decision-making, it’s inspiring to see a woman who is so confident in her own ability to have a positive impact in her community.

My group is receiving community-based training, which means that we come to San Vicente only 2-3 times per week for classes in Spanish, technical material (sustainable agriculture and participatory education), development approaches, and culture. The rest of the time is spent in our communities, where we have Spanish class in small groups as well as Community Contact assignments.

So far I’ve really enjoyed training, especially the technical classes. All of the sessions are very hands-on, with lots of playing in the dirt! We’ve built compost piles, planted organic vegetable gardens, treated tree seedlings for optimum germination, planted a small tree nursery, made worm compost bins, planted ‘green manures’ (nitrogen-fixing crops that are planted between rows of corn to enrich and protect the soil), and planted ‘live barriers’ of grasses and nitrogen-fixing trees on the contour of hillside farms to prevent soil erosion.

For Community Contact, we’ve spoken with farmers to investigate basic crops, worked with a local farmer (a week later I was still sore), visited the Alcaldia (mayor) to find out what role municipal government plays in the development of rural areas, and visited the local primary school. This week was a big week for us, because we had to prepare and give charlas (presentations) in Spanish on an environmental topic at the local school. I taught the 6th- grade class about composting, and its relationship to reducing the waste stream and maintaining soil fertility. Both of these concerns are pretty important in an area with no trash pick up and fairly poor quality soils. I think that the lesson went pretty well – I arranged to have all the materials at the school so we could actually build a compost pile, and the teacher seems enthusiastic about keeping it going. I also made up a sheet of instructions for the kids to take home so that they can start compost piles at home. The main challenge I encountered was engaging the students in the classroom part of the lesson, before we went outside to build the compost pile. Traditional Salvadoran teaching methods are not terribly participatory, so the students were very hesitant to answer questions or offer their ideas. This made things a little awkward, since I am used to teaching methods where class participation is an integral part of a students’ learning. However, I talked to some of the staff at the training center, and they were able to give me some good ideas on ways to encourage student participation.

The other big excitement for the week happened on Wednesday morning, when a rat fell in our pila (a pila is a big concrete tank outside the house that people fill with water for bathing and washing dishes and clothes. Our families around San Vicente are lucky enough to have water that usually runs every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but in other parts of the country people fill them up by drawing water from wells). Anyway, like I said, a rat fell in our pila and then a cat jumped in a killed it so it was a big mess. Since Silvia had to go to work, I got the lovely job of draining all the water out of the pila and scrubbing it down with bleach (it’s a good thing I had a Community Contact day so someone could take care of it!). I was so disgusted by the thought of a (probably disease-carrying) rat swimming around in my bathing water that I was literally sloshing everything in sight with bleach. It was definitely an experience!

Beginning next week, we will be having a lot of “Self-Directed” Community Contact time, in which we carry out small independent projects in our host communities. There are two main things that I’m working on. First, I’m working on a trash collection project with my Spanish teacher, Vicki, who lives in San Felipe. Since they currently have no trash pick-up, people either throw their trash on the ground (believe me, it’s everywhere) or burn it, which can cause severe respiratory problems, particularly when they burn plastics. We’ve spoken to the Alcalde, and he said that trash collection in San Felipe would be possible if the majority of the community was willing to pay $1.05 per month. Beginning in January, the municipality will also be participating in a region-wide recycling program, so San Felipe would become part of that if they agree to receive the trash collection service. I’ve been working to talk to people in the community about the dangers of throwing trash out in the open or burning trash, and the benefits of a trash collection program. Vicki and I have set up a meeting for this weekend to talk about the issue. If enough people are interested and San Felipe does receive trash collection, I’ll probably be working with the Alcaldia and Vicki to give some presentations on the separation of trash into organics for composting, recyclables, and nonrecyclables.

The other project that I’m working on is a series of workshops on organic vegetable gardening for the women of the community. Right now very few people cultivate vegetables, and in the years when the harvest of corn and beans is poor, most farmers don’t make enough money from their extra corn and beans to buy lots of other foods for their families. As a result, many children lack the vitamins and minerals provided by fruits and vegetables. I’m hoping that home vegetable gardens could be an inexpensive way for families to care for the land while improving their nutrition.

Well, that’s what we’ve been up to in training thus far. Although I’m really enjoying training, it has been difficult to see the poverty, lack of opportunities, and environmental degradation that exist here in El Salvador. Already, I’ve met too many bright, motivated kids who will never get to go to high school because their families are too poor to send them. I’ve talked with too many families that are broken apart because the sons are forced to seek work abroad (One-third of the Salvadoran population – 2 million people – lives in the United States because unemployment is so severe. My host mother has three sons living in the U.S. Salvadoran families are incredible close, so it’s terribly hard for them to live so far apart). I’ve seen too many hillsides that can no longer support vegetation because all the rich topsoil has eroded away, and too many rivers that run opaque brown with eroded soil particles and agrochemicals. Sometimes the problems seem so overwhelming, and I find myself wondering if I can truly make a difference. But then I remember that I’m not the only one working to improve people’s lives and the land that they depend on in this little country. Between the Agroforestry / Environmental Ed, Rural Health and Sanitation, and Municipal Development programs, Peace Corps is 120 Volunteers strong, and there are countless NGOs working toward the same goals – not to mention the hard-working Salvadoran people. It’s not going to be easy, but I have hope that I can make a difference, at least to the people of one community.

We’ve been very busy, but I promise to do my best to write you back! I look forward to hearing about all the excited things that you are all up to.

Sincerely,
Megan