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