Hola desde El Salvador #5

Hola once again to mi familia y mis amigos,

Greetings to everyone back home (and abroad!). I hope that this summer finds your gardens growing well, and that you’ve all been able to take a little time for relaxation and reconnection with family and friends during this break from the craziness of the school year (that is, the US school year – the Salvadoran school year is January – November, so we’re still in full swing).

First of all, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of those who have supported the classroom construction project, whether with well wishes or financial support. We are still a ways away from full funding for the classrooms, but getting closer with each passing week! Please know that your donations really will make a difference in the lives of the young people of El Amatón, and thus in the community’s future. At present, sufficient classroom space is the only area in which the school’s proposal to the Ministry of Education to extend its offerings to 9th grade is lacking. As such, construction of these two rooms will allow students who would not otherwise be able to continue their studies to complete the cycle of basic education in El Amatón. Thank you for your generosity!

I suppose the biggest news here in El Amatón is that it is raining. After the annual 8+ months of drought, “la bendición” (the blessing, as they call the rains) have finally arrived. They began in mid-May, just barely enough to soften the land for the planting of corn and beans – the community’s sustenance for the coming year, if the farmers are lucky. I have thoroughly confused (and amused) the community by accompanying the farmers in their labors of clearing weeds by machete, planting the seed with a chuso (pointed stick), and walking along the rows tossing fertilizer at the base of each corn plant. As a Volunteer hoping to help the community move towards a more sustainable agriculture, this has been an important experience in understanding current agricultural methods and how they might be improved. However, an unintended consequence of my “playing in the dirt” has been a challenge to traditional ideas about male and female activities. In my community even mores so than most places in El Salvador, gender roles are very strictly defined, and women generally do not participate in agriculture (or community leadership / public life, for that matter). It’s not just any guy who will take me planting corn – indeed, when I asked people if I could go to the milpas with them, I got a lot of confused looks and “Ummm … we’ll let you know”s, which in this culture of subtle, indirect communication, is approximately equivalent to “When hell freezes over!” Blanca Lydia explained to me that her father-in-law had given me such a vague reply because he was embarrassed at what other people would say about his taking a women to work in the fields. Happily, there are plenty of people who were happy to teach me to plant corn, like don Antonio. As we finished a row on the hill he cultivates behind his home, he gave a mischievous shout to the neighbor girl as she washed clothes, “C’mon, Leia, help us plant corn!” “But I’ve never planted corn before!” she replied, aghast. “Well, neither had Megan before last week,” he called back, “and just look at her now! She’s barbara for planting corn!” (meaning, she’s really good at it!). Little by little, perhaps my presence will change some minds about what women are capable of doing … and at the very least people find my activities quite hilarious!

Planting corn

In mid-June the rainy season entered in full force, making possible the planting of vegetables and trees, which require more water. And we have been planting! Planting home and school vegetable gardens, planting fruit trees, and planting forest and multiple-use trees in agroforestry systems on farmer’s lands. (Multiple-use trees are species such as madre cacoa and leucaena that function in reforestation and soil conservation as well as the production of useful products, such as firewood and pods for livestock feed. Many of these species re-grow quickly after a pruning, and as such they provide a sustainable source of firewood.) We were able to obtain trees from a nearby nursery maintained by the organization Trees, Water, People (Árboles y Agua para el Pueblo, in Spanish) for farmers to plant as living fences or live barriers against soil erosion in their milpas, or in mini-forests to contribute to reforestation of the watershed while providing firewood. As you can imagine, I’ve been very happy playing the dirt with families as they plant their vegetables and trees. I’ve decided that one of my favorite sights in the world is that of a newly planted tree seedling, standing straight and tall with its tiny leaves reaching toward the sun and its roots firmly anchored in the earth. Each one seems to enclose a hope for a more sustainable future for the community.

Planting trees: Me planting trees as a living barrier against erosion

in a cornfield; don Alex planting a tree for shade in his coffee fields

The vegetable gardens have been a mixture of success and frustration, as I learn along with the people of El Amatón what works and what doesn’t. I’m very proud of my little garden, with its tomato, sweet pepper, green bean, pipián (a smaller relative of the squash plant), and carrot plants. So far the plants look fairly healthy – my organic compost is giving fuerza to the developing plants; I seem to have avoided fungal diseases in tomatoes and pepper by covering the soil with a layer of dry straw mulch (prevents soil-borne diseases from accessing the truck and leaves via raindrops that rebound with soil particles on them); and the botanical extract of the seeds of the Nim tree that I’ve sprayed seems to be keeping away the gusano perfador de fruta (worm that perforates the fruit) of pipián. The big disappointment has been the radishes – despite the earth Blanca Lydia and I mounded up around the plant truck to stimulate root development, the radishes had absolutely beautiful leaves but no sign of a radish head! I actually wasn’t too sad, since the leaves are delicious cooked in soup and actually contain more vitamins and minerals than the head. But Lydia was bummed, because she really likes fresh, crunchy radish heads. Perhaps the soil was too fertile for radishes …

Home Gardens: Lydia moving finished compost from the pile to the garden;

Lydia's son Elias in the wheelbarrow;

Bitia and her daughter Bessie with their garden of tomatoes and carrots

In addition to working with the Community Association for Education (ACE) to locate funds for the classrooms, I’ve also been working with the school and the youth in environmental education quite a bit over the last few months. Of course, there is the school garden, and I’ve also worked with a group of 7th and 8th graders to start a “Literary-Ecological Club” for the young’uns. After seeing how much the kids LOVED reading the children’s books my mom sent me for Christmas, I got the idea that we could nurture their love for reading and their love for the Earth by reading books with environmental / ecological themes. The older kids liked the idea, and so for the past few months we’ve chosen a Saturday morning each month to read a story with the kids and then do an activity to better the environment in the community. For example, one Saturday we read El Lorax, which emphasizes the importance of planting trees, and then collected seeds of forest trees for use in a school tree nursery next year. The trees will then be used to reforest community water sources, in cooperation with the Water and Agriculture Committees. So far, we’ve had to repeat El Lorax since it’s the only book we have (thank you Mom!) but I’m working with the teachers to solicit funding for a small library. This would provide a sustainable source of books for use in the Literary-Ecological Club, the classroom, and to promote reading for the pure joy of it among the students. (By the way, if you’ve never read Dr. Suess’ classic The Lorax, you definitely should. And if you know Spanish, the Spanish translation El Lorax is fantastic – somehow, the translator has perfectly preserved the story’s message while making everything rhyme, with the same whimsical feel of authentic Dr. Suess. In addition to reading this book with the Literary-Ecological Club, I have read it with some kids at least 10 or 15 times!)

The adult literacy classes are small – smaller than when we began – but I think that the faithful few who have continued to attend are happy with the progress they are making. I can understand why many ended up dropping out. After getting up at 3 a.m. to carry water, then working all day in the fields or performing endless, tiring household chores, it’s difficult to maintain the motivation to study from 6:30-8:30, or sometimes 9:00, at night. Sometimes even I just want to go to bed. But when I see María Emelina reading aloud what to her was an indecipherable jumble of letters at the beginning, or hear don Antonio exclaim, “Look how much my handwriting has improved from the first class until now!”, I know that my efforts, and those of the members from the community who give the classes, are worth it. I’ve noticed that not being able to read and write seems to be associated with a sense of powerlessness and inability to serve the community. As such, I hope that the literacy program will help people feel confidence in their abilities to be leaders in the community and affect positive change.

Well, I think that’s the major news from El Amatón. As always, I love to hear from you all about how things are going in your lives.

Sincerely,
Megan

Hola desde El Salvador #4

Hola a mi familia y mis amigos,

I hope this letter finds you in good spirits with the arrival of spring back home. I’m sorry that it has been so long since the last “Hola desde El Salvador,” but I’ve been pretty busy in my site! In addition, I only get to email about once a month, when I come to San Salvador for the meetings of a committee that gives scholarships to girls to continue their education, as well as meetings with various Peace Corps staff members and NGOs supporting my work. My trips into San Salvador are always busy times with lots of work to do and unfortunately I don’t always get the opportunity to write emails. Plus, I always like to get back to El Amatón as quickly as possible, since I really miss the people, the spirit of community, and the land when I’m in the big, impersonal city.


Living for four months among the incredibly generous and welcoming people of El Amatón has already made me feel like a part of the community. In particular, the family next door (consisting of Blanca Lidia, her husband Melvin, and their three sons Fernanado, Moises, and Elias) has nearly adopted me, and I give thanks to God each day for the care and companionship they offer me. I often accompany Blanca Lidia bring lunch to Melvin in the fields, and then stay on and work with him to learn how to prune coffee bushes or clear a field of weeds in order to plant milpa (corn and beans). He’s even started to teach me a bit of guitar. I haven’t had a lot of time to receive guitar lessons, but so far I can play Re Mayor (D Major). Fernando and Moises are always coming over to play, and Elias has definitely lost his initial shyness and has turned into a veritable chatterbox with me! When I’m in the back of my little yard turning my compost pile, he always begs his mom to pass him over the fence so he can sit and talk, talk, talk as I work, occasionally helping me sprinkle a bit of water to keep the compost humid.


I’ve also been blessed by the friendship of many other families in El Amatón. Although my busy work schedule has made it increasingly difficult to take time just to “chotear” (“hang out”) with people, I try to take every opportunity to listen to their stories and participate in their daily lives. When I’m at someone’s house helping them make up a garden plan, or when I’m informing the facilitators of the literacy project of the date and time when the promoters from the Ministry of Education will come to give the training, or while the bread made by the women’s group is cooking in the oven, I try to take the time to linger and savor the conversation. After all, this process of getting to know people is ultimately indispensible for my work here, as it helps me to understand people’s lives and the needs of the community.


Like all of you gardeners in the U.S., we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the winter rains and beginning of the planting season here in El Amatón. (In El Salvador, there are only two seasons, dry and rainy. The dry season, which they call verano, or summer, lasts from October through May. The wet season, which they call invierno, or winter, lasts from May through September and is really the only time when it is feasible to cultivate crops without irrigation.) Right now we are nearing the end of the driest part of the dry season, and the scarcity of water is even more serious than I originally realized. Coming from the shores of the Great Lakes (20% of the fresh water in the world!) I know that I never appreciated what so many people in this world go through to obtain water each day. With the beginning of the new year El Amaton had another lottery to reassign numbers for the order of filling canteros at the one public chorro (faucet) serving more than 100 homes. Although I probably could have played the gringa card and kept the original arrangement of being allowed to fill my cánteros whenever I showed up at the chorro, I felt that it was important for me to share in the lives of the people as completely as possible, to not only see but experience and empathize with their needs, in order to more passionately work with the community to fulfill them. So this time, I insisted on being treated as any other member of the community and receiving a number that dictates when it is my turn to fill my cánteros. The chorro is turned on each day at 3 a.m. and since my number is a low number it comes up quickly. This means that I’m up each day at 3 a.m., bringing my cánteros to the chorro to fill them up and carry them back to my house. And I’m lucky – when the chorro is first turned on, there is actually water falling from the chorro. My cánteros fill quickly and I don’t have to worry about water for the rest of the day. By about 5 a.m., the stream is already decreasing to a trickle, and after about 6 a.m. it’s not uncommon for the water to simply stop for awhile while the women wait and wait for it to return. In the last few months, there have been times when the Water Committee has been forced to reduce the quota of cánteros to three cánteros per household every two days. This comes out to about 7-8 gallons per day, for drinking, cooking, and basic hygiene including hand washing, bathing, and washing dishes for everyone ion the house. Washing clothes is out of the question – for that, people must travel to the river, which is highly contaminated by bacteria and parasites contained in the feces of livestock that are taken there to drink. As a one-person household, I don’t suffer when the quota is reduced, but for all but the smallest of households this amount of water is insufficient to supply basic hydration and sanitation needs. (Below are some pictures of community members -- including myself! -- carrying water and washing clothes in the river.)

And for that reason, I’ve continued working with the Water Committee to solicit a potable water project. The Potable Water Project we are proposing would pump water from the well near the frontier with Guatamala to a water storage tank in El Amatón. From the storage tank, water would arrive in each home by gravity flow through distribution tubing. The Mayor’s Office of Chalchuapa has agreed to fund the pump, electricity, and tubing to bring water from a well near the frontier with Guatamala to the community, if we can obtain funding for the water storage tank and distribution tubing. I’ve already worked with the Water Committee to write the basic elements of funding proposals – basic information about the community, description of the community needs that the proposed project would fulfill, overview of the proposed project, and elaboration of the community’s contribution to the project (unpaid labor, land for construction of the tank, etc.). Now we are waiting on the engineers to finish up the technical folder so that we can provide an exact budget. We’re also working with the engineers to develop a plan for the cleaning, maintenance, and repair of the water system, as well as with the organization Trees, Water, People to reforest the watershed. These actions will ensure that the project will be sustainable, and in particular that the well will have sufficient water recharge due to infiltration of rainwater facilitated by increased vegetative cover on the land.

Once we have all the information together, we can start actually soliciting NGOs such as CARE and Project Concern International, the Embassies of developed countries in El Salvador, and Rotary Clubs. Already we’ve met with the Rotary Club of Santa Ana, and they have promised to help us by contacting some of their sister clubs in the United States to see if they might be able to provide funding. Since USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) is no longer funding water projects in El Salvador, I’m hoping that the generosity of NGOs and Rotary Clubs will be able to fill that void not only in my community, but in all the dry and forgotten communities of this tiny country.

I’m trying not to get my hopes or the community’s hopes up too high, but I already feel that I don’t want to leave El Amatón until I see water flowing in each household. This project would literally change lives. It would improve health by bringing enough water to the community to fulfill hydration and sanitation needs, and also by eliminating el desvelo – the need to rise before the sun or stay up long after the last rays have disappeared behind the horizon to fill cánteros. People would finally be able to sleep securely, without the fear that their number will pass, thus increasing resistance to disease. And water in the house – that would change all aspects of life! By liberating people from the time-consuming tasks of waiting for one’s turn at the chorro, filling cánteros, and carrying them to the house, a water project would give people more time to spend with their families and participate in community activities. I’d really appreciate your prayers that this most basic human need might arrive in my community in this corner of El Salvador.



In addition to my work with water systems (which I know NOTHING about but am learning as we go!) I am doing some work in the areas that Peace Corps spent two and a half months training me to work in – sustainable agriculture. In that department, I’m working with a vegetable cultivation project for the farmers and home vegetable gardens for the women, and soon we will begin a fruit tree project as well. All of these projects are designed to aid the community in crop diversification, organic cultivation practices, reforestation, and nutrition.


Unfortunately, my counterpart in CENTA (the agricultural extension agency) has been super busy and hasn’t had much time to help me, so I’ve pretty much on my own planned and given the first three trainings for the vegetable cultivation and home gardens projects. So far, we’ve covered composting, Lombricultura (worm composting), and garden planning using principles of crop rotation and polyculture. (Polyculture simply means interplanting a variety of crops in a single plot to take advantage of complementary requirements for space and nutrients, and to prevent the pest problems that come with large monocultures, or single-crop systems.) Given all the hard work that I put into researching these topics and preparing posters, picture-rich handouts, and demonstrations, I’ve been a little frustrated by the low attendance at trainings. I’ve ended up going house to house to those who signed up for the projects but did not attend the trainings to individually give them the information, which takes a lot of time and energy and means I can do less with other projects. When people have so much to do today – haul water, make tortillas, go to the river to wash clothes, travel a long distance to work in the fields, bring the cows back from their pastures – and the rainy season doesn’t start until May, it’s hard to convince people that they need to be thinking about vegetable gardens now if they want their compost to be ready and the seeds they’ve asked for to arrive in time. Yet little by little, person by person, I feel that I am reaching those who really want to participate. There are a faithful few whom I’ve helped to build compost piles and sat down with to place the vegetable crops in a sustainable garden plan – borders of nitrogen-fixing peas around beds of nitrogen-demanding tomatoes and peppers, rows of fast-growing radishes in between rows of slow-maturing carrots or onions, and pest-repelling radishes planted around infestation-prone pipián (a sort of small squash … yum!). And they have returned the favor, teaching me about the allegedly excellent fertilizer produced by ants in the zompoperos (humungous ant hills) and the trick of placing branches cut from spiny trees around the hills where squash and pipián are planted to keep the chickens from eating the seed. Though perhaps it will be a small number of people who fully participate in these projects, I’m hoping that they will be able to pass on their new knowledge and skills to others who see their success and are interested in learning how they can cultivate vegetables that nourish themselves as well as the land.


On the horizon are trainings in soil preparation, identification of pests, and elaboration of botanical extracts to control pests. Right now we are waiting for the seeds to arrive so that we can sow the tomatoes, peppers, onions, and lettuce (all the transplants) in mid-April to be ready to transplant in May. I’m especially excited that after searching high and low, I was able to find a source of open-pollinated seeds for the home vegetable garden project. These are obtained from heirloom, or traditional, varieties of vegetables that have been allowed to reproduce naturally as opposed to being generated by hybridization. (Hybrids generally have superior production to open-pollinated seeds in the first generation, but due to genetic problems with reproduction, crops grown by saving seeds produced by hybrid plants generally worsen with each successive generation. As such, it is necessary to buy new seeds every year from an agroservicio.) Obtaining open-pollinated seeds will allow us to save seeds from the harvest to plant the following year, thus ensuring the project’s sustainability. Each participant has already signed an agreement to donate some seeds of the open-pollinated vegetables she grows to a communal seed bank after the harvest to share with those who would like to begin a garden the following year, Heifer-project style!


I’m also working with the school on a school garden project, and have gotten quite a bit of support and enthusiasm from the kids as well as the teachers. The older kids hauled sacks of dry and green leaves and manure to school to build the compost pile, while the younger kids brought in fruit and vegetable scraps to feed to the worms I donated from my worm composting bin to start a bin in the school (the worms reproduce quickly, so there is still a mess of them in my bin eating all my fruit and vegetable waste and producing fertilizer for my own garden!). We’ve also planned the garden and built a stone barrier against erosion below the site of where we will plant the garden, which was a great opportunity to teach the students about the importance of soil conservation. Seeing as how the adults have kept me so busy thus far, I’m hoping that my involvement with the school garden project will be a good starting point for getting to know and working with the kids. After all, they are the future of this community and this country!


These vegetable and fruit tree cultivation projects coincide nicely with the Health Committee’s preventative health care program, showing the interconnectedness of agriculture, environment, and health. We are working with the health promoter, Eunice, to complement the Agriculture projects with trainings in nutrition. In particular, we are hoping to teach about the vitamin and mineral content of the various vegetables and fruits, since this is what is most lacking in the typical diet of the community.


Well, there’s more to tell – working to start an adult literacy program, teaching English classes on Saturdays, baking bread with the women’s group – but this is getting long so I think I’ll save the details until the next “Hola desde El Salvador.” Congratulations if you have reached the bottom of this email, and best wishes in your daily work and play.

Sincerely,
Megan

Hola desde El Salvador #3

Hola a mi familia and mis amigos,

I hope that you all enjoyed a blessed holiday season with your families and that your New Year has begun full of promise. As for me, I am really settling into my community here in El Salvador and beginning my work alongside the Association for Community Development (ADESCO), so I am excited about what 2005 will bring.

Back in El Amatón, I've been very busy between trying to visit all the homes (87 down, about 20 to go) and meet with the committees that we've formed, not to mention simply maintain my life! I'm slowly getting to know that day-to-day routines of people in the campo, and it's enough to make anyone exhausted. Waiting for and carrying water from the chorro, putting tortillas and beans on the table, and washing clothes takes a lot of effort and almost as many waking hours as there are in a day. Yet my neighbors are eager to teach me how to get along here in El Salvador, and participating in daily life for just a month has already taught me many important lessons.

Perhaps one of the first things I've realized since arriving here is the preciousness of water. Waiting at the chorro at 4 a.m. for the thin stream of water to fill my cántero and hauling every drop of water I want to use really makes me appreciate this fundamental resource that I depend on for drinking, bathing, and basic sanitation. I spend, at the very least, an hour waiting for and carrying water every day, and most women in the community probably spend 3-4 hours. Not only do they have to carry water for the entire family while I only carry enough for one person (minus the cánteros they insist on bringing to my house), they also wait much longer, since the community insists that whenever I come to the chorro, I should fill my cántero without waiting in line. With the dry season (September - April) really setting in and the thin stream of water decreasing to a trickle, water dominates people's thoughts, daily routines, and indeed their very lives. Each home has a number, assigned by lottery, which dictates the order in which families can fill their quota of cánteros at the chorro. Now that water is scarce, the community is filling cánteros strictly by number, which means that you have to be at the chorro when the number before you finishes filling if you want to get water, whether that's at 3 a.m. or 11 p.m. All day, women are forced to interrupt their daily work to run to the chorro and find out what number is filling, or they send their kids to relay back the message back home. Since it has been taking about 3 days to get through all 108 numbers, families are forced to stretch what should be a minimum daily allotment of water to last longer. Potable water is definitely the most serious need in the community and as such will be a priority for my work here. But for me, who had always enjoyed an apparent abundance of water, the experience of carrying and conserving water is a good wake-up call as to the actual scarcity of water and the necessity of using it well. I only hope that when I return home I remain conscious of and thankful for how precious water really is.

I'm also beginning to appreciate a way of life that emphasizes the value of community, helping, and sharing. Every task, from cutting sorghum or coffee, to washing clothes, offers an opportunity for collaboration and socializing. In the United States, we'd probably consider the Salvadoran way of doing things "Inefficient" -- and granted, it definitely takes a lot more time to harvest crops and wash clothes by hand than it does with a machine. But it also takes a lot less of our rapidly decreasing supply of fossil fuel, the burning of which threatens the (in geological perspective) mild climate we have come to depend on. Such manual, communal labor also builds relationships between people in a way that operating a machine alone cannot.

These relationships lend themselves to a culture of generosity and sharing that continues to amaze me daily. Perhaps the best example of this is my evolving friendship with my neighbor, Blanca Lidia and her family, whom I've come to know quite well. (Her three sons, Fernando, Moises, and Elias are always playing at my house -- I even asked their father Melvin to open a little door in the fence between our houses to let them pass without going all the way around on the path that loops around from the entrance to their house to the entrance to mine!). As I realized that it would be impossible for me to attend all my meetings, prepare my classes and demonstrations, and do all the cooking I had been attempting to do, I was looking for a way to lighten the load a little. Blanca Lidia had constantly reminded me to let her know if there was any way she could help, so I finally broke down and asked if she would be willing to bring enough masa and cooked beans in the morning to last the day if I brought her the dry corn and beans and paid her a little for her work. She seemed genuinely happy to be able to help and explained that she had actually been thinking of proposing such an arrangement, seeing as every day she cooks the corn and goes to the molino for masa (dough for tortillas) and cooks a big pot of beans for her family anyway. Of course, she flatly refused to let me pay her money, but I've been discovering other, more culturally acceptable ways to return her generosity, such as a few bananas, plátanos, or oranges in a dish I'm returning. One day, her sons were over, watching in awe as I cooked broccoli, when they explained that they had never eaten it (even though a truck comes every Saturday selling all sorts of fruits and vegetables, most people don't eat much besides tortillas and beans, plus whatever fruit is abundant in the community). So now every so often I'll bring over a dish of some vegetable I've cooked for her family to share. I'm learning that here, payment in money for services rendered is a foreign concept. Instead, their economy is one of reciprocal sharing between fellow members of a community, each giving freely of what he or she has a graciously accepting the gifts of others.

Although I spent most of my first month "hanging out" and "getting to know people" (and that process will continue for the next two years, I imagine) I have recently begun my work with the Association for Community Development (ADESCO) to address the needs of the community. I've done several community diagnostic activities with people, and we decided to form committees for Water, Agriculture, Health, Education, and a Women's Group.

Not surprisingly, water is the first priority of most people. The mayor's office has perforated a well 3 km from the community, and it supposedly contains enough water to put, at least, more public chorros (closer to people's homes) and possibly supply water to each house. We know that a project would require electricity to pump the water, a pump, 3 km of tubing, a storage tank, and distribution tubing. The mayor's office has told us that if the community can find the funds to build the storage tank, there is a possibility that the municipality can provide the funds to bring the water from the well to the storage tank, but people in the community tell me that there's a lot of politics that make that promise very uncertain. I'm currently working with the Water Committee to develop a more detailed proposal for a water project and seeking funding to carry it out -- no easy task, since EVERY community in El Salvador is looking to fund a water project and USAID is fresh out of money for water projects. I have a couple of NGO contacts (CARE, Project Concern International, etc.) and I'm also planning to contact the Embassies of other developed nations to see if they provide economic assistance. Also, if anyone has any contact with your local Rotary Club and think that they might be interested in raising funds for a World Community Service project in partnership with a Rotary Club here in El Salvador, there is a Matching Grant program through The Rotary Foundation and I could contact the Rotary Club in Santa Ana to see if they would be willing to oversee the project. (Yes, this is a shameless plug and I'm really sorry ... but I see the need in my community and I know it's really, really hard to obtain enough money for a water project).

Thinking in the long term, the Water Committee has also expressed interest in reforesting the two watersheds where they currently obtain their water (were we to obtain a water project to bring water from the well perforated by the Alcaldía, the project would add the water from the well to the water the community already receives from these two sources). Reforestation would increase the amount of water that the land absorbs and retains (and ultimately supplies to El Amatón), since the vegetative cover prevents excessive run-off. It would also improve water quality due to the action of tree roots in filtering water. Although the benefits of reforestation may not be apparent for many years, it will create a more hopeful future for the children of El Amaton. And in contrast to the potable water project, I feel that reforestation is entirely feasible, with the help of CENTA (the agriculture and forestry agency that is my counterpart) and the local branch of the NGO Trees, Water, People (Arboles y Agua para el Pueblo).

In the Agriculture committee, people expressed interest in diversifying their production by planting small pieces of their land in organic vegetables, at least for home consumption, and by planting fruit trees. The lack of water for irrigation may make vegetable production for market impossible, but at least in the winter there is sufficient water to produce a wide variety of vegetables, which would contribute to crop diversification as well as improve nutrition in the community. Fruit trees would also bring environmental as well as nutritional benefits to the community, as they could be planted as live barriers in fields of corn and beans to prevent erosion, and they can also serve to reforest watersheds. I'm hoping to involve adults as well as kids in these two endeavors (organic vegetables and fruit trees), seeing as the teachers at the school expressed interest in having me work with a school garden, school nursery, and reforestation of some pieces of land near the school.

Although some of the needs that the community identified in the diagnostic activities were agriculturally and environmentally related (such as reforestation and crop diversification), there were also many needs expressed that fall outside Agroforestry and Environmental Education activities, people have expressed interest in a clinic, English classes, an adult literacy program, and even sewing classes to learn how to make their own clothes. I'm a little scared about working in areas in which I have no training, but I have to remember that it's the needs expressed by the community, in combination with the knowledge and gifts that I bring, which must guide my work. I guess I'll be doing a lot of learning along with the people of El Amatón!

Well, I better leave the Peace Corps office now if I want to get back to Chalchuapa in time to catch the ONLY bus that goes to my site each day! Best wishes to you all for a Prospero Año Nuevo.

Sincerely,
Megan