Hola desde El Salvador #8

Querida familia y amigos,

I hope that the beginning of the school year finds you all well. As always, I love to hear how you are all doing and the exciting (and everyday) things that you are up to. If you get a chance please do drop me a few lines to let me know how you are.

It’s been several months so I figured it was time for an “Hola desde El Salvador” update. (Is that a groan I hear? Hee hee. Just keep in mind – you don’t have to read it all).


-- Water Project:
Everything is really preliminary, but things are looking much more hopeful than the last time I wrote. We have definitely had out share of disappointments, but I think things are coming together. It’s kind of a long story …

The Well:
In late April, I learned of the NGO Living Water – El Salvador from a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, and solicited a site visit from them in order to investigate the feasibility of drilling a well in El Amatón. Two engineers came to visit our community on May 23 and selected a site where they believed they could drill a well based on previous studies showing a strong vein of water at a depth of 38 m. Through a generous donation from my home church, contributions from family of community members living in the United States and Canada, and contributions from each family in El Amatón, we managed to pull together the $4,000 needed to drill a well. Our mistake was foregoing formal hydro-geological studies due to their high cost (about $2,000). We encountered many small veins of water, beginning at 39 m and appearing frequently after about 60 m, but none sufficient to supply the water needs of the 120 families of the caserío. We had hoped to drill until 90 m, but at 81 m, material caved in and the drill became stuck. Santos, the drilling technician, could not lift it up with the machine. Grim-faced and clearly worried about losing $30,000 worth of drilling equipment, Santos and his helpers began trying fervently to extract the drill. After two excruciating hours, the drill finally became unstuck, and they began to extract the tubes. Drilling could not continue – they simply could not risk losing the equipment that allows Living Water to help over 40 communities in El Salvador each year.

I will confess that I wept – for the community’s crushed hopes for a better life and for their fruitless sacrifice in work and scarce financial resources, for the disappointment of the Living Water employees who genuinely seek to serve the communities in which they drill, and for the sacrifice made by the people from my church. Santos later told me: “I was watching you as I drilled, with every tube I lowered, and I thought, ‘Poor Megan!’ I saw the intent expression in your eyes, as if you were imagining a river of water spring up and trying with all your might to just will it to happen.” He had read me like a book.

Right now our well is 78 m deep and has 15 meters of water. Santos has informed us that Living Water – El Salvador will receive, within the next couple of months, the donation of a more powerful drill. This machine has the capacity to drill up to 200 m deep and is also a different type of drill that makes walls of mud as it drills, thus preventing collapses of the sort we experienced. When we were forced to stop drilling, the earth samples we were bringing up included sand and gravel – according to Santos, a sign that we were entering an abundant aquifer. He has recommended that we widen the borehole and deepen the well, using this new machine, to a depth of 120 m. If the material continues to be gravel, he said, the well should have sufficient water at a depth of 120 m.

He hasn’t given us a price quote yet since he needs to test out the drill and see how much gasoline it uses, but this is an expensive proposition – a low quote from a well drilling company ran at $12,000 for 120 m of perforation. Now, we went ahead with drilling the first well without formal studies for lack of economic resources, worrying that with the high cost of conducting the study we would not have been able to raise enough funds to actually drill the well once the study was completed. It was one thing to go ahead with drilling the well without formal studies when these studies would have cost half as much as the well, but now that we are looking at possibly needing to raise $12,000 or so, we (and most likely, potential donors) would like to have more security of encountering a sufficient water source. So right now we are working to try and solicit funds for a proper hydro-geological study of the caserío. This would include an inventory of wells (subterranean water sources) and a determination of the hydrologic characteristics of aquifers. The engineers would also calculate hydrologic balance based on hydrologic resource availability and demand of the community. We would then have an estimate of the flow of a perforated well, a preliminary design, and technical indications for a well.


Engineers Without Borders:
With my lack of technical knowledge in water systems, I was pretty overwhelmed at the prospect of guiding the community in the design, funding, construction, and maintenance of a water system once the project with the Mayor fell through. So I was very, very thankful when I was advised in May that the Rowan University chapter of Engineers Without Borders had adopted our project. For the past week, we had the privilege of hosting their team of 2 professors and 5 students on an assessment trip to the village, and I will say that their presence has given renewed energy and hope to all of us. Dr. Wyrick, Dr. Gephardt, Dustin, Jared, David, Carolyn, and Mary are a very special group of people, not only for their technical skills (for which we are very grateful), but even more so for their big hearts – their willingness to use their knowledge to help the most needy, and their sincere desire to create friendships with the community. During their visit, they had three main activities: land surveying, water quality testing, and house visits / socioeconomic surveys.

The land surveying team – Dr. Wyrick, Dustin, Jared, and David -- went at their task with admirable dedication, beginning at 5:30 a.m. with the first light and working until darkness fell at 7 p.m. in order to survey the village in as much detail as possible in a short amount of time. Their goal was to create a digital, topographical map of the roads, houses, school, and proposed water storage tank site, showing distances and elevations. This will serve in the design of the water distribution system. The three students on the surveying team were great with letting the kids tag along and showing them how the equipment worked, even letting them help (although the kids’ biggest contribution may have been not holding the surveying rod, but scaring away chuchos bravos – mean dogs!). They also managed to teach the kids a little English. In imitation of Jared, who would advise his fellow surveyors when they could move on after he entered each point into the computer, Elias kept calling out “Good! Good! Good!”

Dr. Wyrick, Dr. Gephardt, Carolyn, and Mary, and I took one morning and traveled to three community water sources in order to take samples and perform bacteriological and physical-chemical analysis. Although we obviously could not yet get a water sample from the well that will eventually supply the caserío (since we haven’t found or drilled it yet), the engineers wanted to get an idea of what contaminants might be present in the watershed in order to determine what kind of filtration or purification system might be needed. We’ll obviously need to do something. Right now the Petri dishes in which we have been growing the bacteria -- filtered from samples of the river where the women wash clothes and the natural well where people walk in the dry season to obtain drinking water -- are covered in blue and red colonies of bacteria. I think that the blue ones fecal coliform bacteria, which can make people very sick, to put it lightly.

Dr. Gephardt, Carolyn, and Mary, and I formed a team to carry out household surveys during the rest of the week. Dr. Gephardt and I both spoke Spanish so we served as translators, while Carolyn and Mary were the scribes. Women from the community volunteered to guide the teams around. The interviews inquired about the number of people in each home, amount of water needed for various activities (drinking, cooking and washing dishes, animals, bathing, and washing clothes), location of current water sources, incidence of water-borne illnesses and parasitic infections, time spent waiting for and hauling water each day, willingness to work on a water project, predicted water use if an abundant source was placed close their homes, peak water use hours, and ability to pay a monthly quota for water system maintenance. Their approach -- listening to the community and taking into account their needs and their perspectives on the water project – was so refreshing after the Mayor’s attempt to design a water project without ever consulting with the community. It meant a lot to people that they made the effort to visit each and every household, listen to their struggles to obtain sufficient water, and ask about their needs in anticipation of designing the water project.

The information obtained regarding the current water situation -- injuries incurred while hauling water up a steep bluff from the springs where we travel for drinking water, incidence of water-borne diseases, average time spent carrying water – will be extremely helpful in funding proposals in order to illustrate the seriousness of the struggle community members go through for sufficient water. It was also interesting to get the community’s perspective on the expected benefits of a potable water project. The ones most often named include: washing clothes in the home instead of traveling 2 hours to a contaminated river, establishing normal sleep patterns (i.e., not rising before 3 a.m. or staying up until midnight to wait one’s turn at the chorro), planting and watering vegetables to improve nutrition, and allowing children – who help with the task of hauling water – to devote more time to their studies.

The responses on quantities of water needed and predicted peak use hours will help them estimate the peak water demand and choose the pump and storage tank size accordingly, and responses as to a feasible monthly quota will also affect the design. The engineers are most likely looking at some source of renewable energy for the pump, perhaps a combination of solar and wind power. It makes economic sense for a poor community, since the operation cost is almost nothing, and as an environmentalist convinced of the need to develop renewable energy sources that do not contribute to global climate change, I am very excited about the idea! Although we are not sure yet what form the project will take, I am confident that thanks to EWB’s efforts, their designs will truly reflect the needs of the community, and the project will be sustainable – that is, the community will be able to maintain the water system.

In addition to their work related to the water project, the EWB team brought much fellowship and friendship to the community. Dr. Gephardt, with her fluent Spanish, did a wonderful job expressing the group’s thankfulness for the hospitality received and humble desire to truly listen to and serve the community. Yet all of them, in their own ways, also communicated their good will to the people of El Amatón: involving kids in surveying, playing ball with the kids, showing affection to kids who needed it, making a genuine attempt to learn and use a bit of Spanish to thank the women who cooked for them, and simply being open and friendly to all they met.

Of course, the community also did their part by showing hospitality and generosity to our guests. In fact, for me, the best thing about EWB’s visit (and hosting any visitor) was being able to share the joys of my experience in El Amatón. I feel so blessed to be living in such a wonderful community, and it is always fun for me to share this community with other people. When the women who cooked for the engineers showered them with all of the attention given to an honored guest, or I translated the words of gratefulness and thanks spoken by the women we interviewed, or I saw people running out of their houses to give the surveying team anonas (a fruit) to the point that they could hardly haul their bulging backpack, or we all gathered to make and eat pupusas, a sense of happiness and pride at belonging to such a community would well up in me. This is the kind of generosity that I have been blessed to experience for the entire time I have been living here – the generosity of a thankful people who genuinely want to share with others their abundant resources of hospitality and whatever material resources they may have, however poor they may be. This has been a great blessing to me, and I feel privileged to have been able to share that experience with them (You are all welcome to come visit me too! Just let me know when and I’ll even come to the airport to meet you! Of course, you will be required to make and eat pupusas.).

Now we are just keeping in contact with EWB as they elaborate different designs for a water project (with their corresponding implementation and maintenance costs) so that the community can choose what they would prefer. They have said that they plan to design projects ranging from water in each home to a more simple design involving several public faucets, which would be located at strategic points throughout the community and therefore much closer to people’s homes than the current chorro (in addition to possessing the considerable advantage of actually having water in them!). They also mentioned renovating a public wash station where women can go to do their laundry.

So all in all, the past week with the Engineers Without Borders team has been one of the best experiences of my time in Peace Corps (up there with the week spent helping construct the school with the brave team from my church!) I really admire their technical expertise that will, primero a Dios, make immeasurable improvements in the quality of people’s lives, and I admire their openness and friendliness that allowed them to connect with the community. Although as I said, everything is preliminary, their visit has given me renewed energy and hope that one day, the most basic human need, water, will be fulfilled for the people of El Amatón.



-- Reforestation and Soil Conservation:
So you thought I was done talking about the water project! But no! As an Agroforestry Volunteer, I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of good watershed management as we contemplate a water project. We have a big problem with deforestation on the slopes of the Cerro Chingo, the main watershed for the community. Every year, mischievious, unemployed youth from outside the community burn high up on the cerro in the dry season, stripping it of vegetation. Without tree roots to promote water infiltration, heavy rains simply run off, carrying soil and rocks with it. There’s actually been two landslides this rainy season already, one of which was extremely threatening to the caserío until we managed, with the help of the Governor of Santa Ana, to convince the Ministry of Public Works to come and carry out mitigation works. I’ve talked to the Directivas about the problem, and they agreed that in order to sustain any well perforated in the community, we need to reforest the burned areas high on the cerro in order to promote water infiltration that will recharge the aquifer, and prevent landslides. The NGO Trees, Water, People has pledged to donate trees and technical support. Their forestry technician, Kevin, has already come out and hiked 2 ½ hours up the cerro to estimate the area surrounding the landslide origins that must be forested. It’s not going to be easy – he estimates that we will want to plant 7,000 – 8,000 trees at the beginning of the next rainy season, and excavate soil conservation and water infiltration ditches on the contour, called acequias. In addition to help from Trees, Water, People, we’re also counting on the Governor to help place forest guards there to prevent future forest fires.

Sand and rocks washed down the mountain by the landslide

So by this point you are probably all thinking, “Is she loca? She’ll never be able to finish all that before she comes home in December!” It is true that I will finish my two-year commitment to Peace Corps in December. It is also true that there is no way that the water project or the reforestation project will be anywhere near completed. (It’s really a shame that we wasted over a year and half working on the water project with the Mayor that fell through for political reasons and poor technical design.) When I first came to El Salvador, two years seemed like such a long time. But now I see that when it comes to community development – to making substantial changes in the quality of people’s lives and (perhaps even more difficult) changes in deeply entrenched ways of seeing the community and the world – two years is almost no time at all. My boss had warned me that as the first Volunteer in my site, there was no possible way I could address all the needs of the community in two years. But I had hoped to leave the community if not with a water project, then with definite project technical plans, permissions, and funding to hand to the next volunteer to oversee construction. I would also like to see the community through what is arguably the most important element of a water project – reforestation of the watershed. I’m anxious to come home, be with family, and start graduate school. But the people here in El Amatón have become my family as well over the last almost-two-years, and I want to walk with them a little further down the long, hard road to bringing water to the community. When I leave, I want to know that the people I have come to love will no longer struggle to meet this most basic of all human needs. With my community, I am applying to Peace Corps to stay a third year. I just can’t bear to leave my community now that everything – maybe – seems to be coming together. I just hope and pray that the extension will be granted. Keep your fingers crossed for me!



-- Everything Else:
Okay, so I took up most of my blabbing space with the water project, so I’ll have to limit myself to one or two sentences on everything else. We’re harvesting radishes and peppers from the semi-hydroponic home gardens and tomatoes are coming along. The improved breeds of chickens are growing and should start to lay eggs within 2 months (I am the proud owner of 4 very beautiful brown-and-white chickens!). We faced many enemies to our school tree nursery – first dogs who overturned the bags, then cows who bent their long necks right over the fence we put up to nibble on the trees, then zompopos (huge monster leaf cutter ants) but we still managed to produce about 130 trees. We used the trees to reforest three community water sources (the springs and natural wells people hike to when there is no water in the chorro) with the kids in the school and the Agriculture and Water Committees (yay! playing in the dirt!). The Health Committee is receiving a series of trainings in first aid at the clinic in El Coco. The ninth graders in the Life Planning Education class are learning to overcome gender stereotypes, set goals, make good decisions, think seriously about what it means to be a responsible parent and at what stage in their lives they will be ready to be parents, protect their health, and seek employment (well, maybe that’s a bit ambitious, but I am trying).

Semi-Hydroponic Home Vegetable Gardens: Tita with a flat of radishes (left); tomato and pepper plants in my garden (right)

Ester with one of her family's chickens (left); Carmen and Magali carrying trees from the nursery to the community water sources, where we planted them (right)

-- School Classrooms and Library:
Okay, I lied. The school inauguration is going to need more than two sentences. At long last, we inaugurated the two new classrooms, which will allow kids to finish their primary education in El Amatón, and the new library of ecologically themed books on July 21. I must say that despite the delays in finishing the school, I was very proud of the Community Association for Education (ACE) and all the work they have put into this project. It was their vision to expand the school and offer more grade levels that gave birth to the project, and their dedication that led to its realization. I know that there were days when don Alex didn’t return home until 10 p.m. waiting for a load of bricks or other supplies, or don Salomón willingly dropped his own work in the fields to go and purchase cement when the masons ran out, so work could go on. Purchase and transport of materials, coordination of parent workers, supervision of construction, detailed record-keeping of expenses using the ledger I taught them – it all happened nearly without me (except for the week that I dedicated completely to helping as unskilled labor with the volunteers from my church and the parents from the community). And I suppose that’s the way it should be. If a community is motivated enough to take on such responsibility and get the job done without my constant poking and prodding, it means that the project is really important to them. It fulfills a felt need – the need to give the children the educational opportunities that their parents never had.

The inauguration was a joyful celebration, with speeches by me, the Community Association for Education (ACE) President, the school director, a parent, and a student, as well as two environmentally themed song-and-dance numbers by the little kids and a ceremonial ribbon cutting (I almost cried when they invited me to cut the ribbon). Peace Corps volunteer friends and staff from the office were there to share the day with me. AND, to my very happy surprise, after the refreshments, most people actually heeded my pleas to deposit the plastic bags containing their “fresco” drink in the INORGANIC TRASH barrels and the napkins from their sandwiches in the ORGANIC TRASH barrels. All in all, a blessedly happy event.

The new library and two classrooms, decorated for the celebration (left); kids perform a dance to celebrate the opening of the Ecological Library (right)

Well, I hope I have not bored you all with this very long email. Congratulations to those who have reached the bottom, and do let me know how you are doing. I really enjoy hearing from you all, even it is just a few sentences.

Con amor desde El Salvador (With love from El Salvador),

Megan

Hola desde El Salvador #7

Querida familia y amigos,

Greetings once again from El Salvador! I hope that all of you are enjoying the beginning of spring back in the States. We are still awaiting the rains here …

I’ve been keeping busier than ever, so here’s an update on what I’ve been doing:

-- Water Project:
To be completely honest, I am very, very discouraged on this front. After more than 6 months of requests for donation of the well, incessant phone calls, and personal visits to the appropriate government ministries in San Salvador, we have realized that they are not going to donate the well to the community. Without the security of title to the well, work on the project absolutely cannot proceed. This means that the community and I are back to square zero, completely on our own with project design and, even worse, on our own with project funding. We must locate a new source of water (preferably within the community), perforate a new well (which will likely be extremely expensive because the subterreanean water in the community is very deep … that’s why people don’t have hand dug wells), and redesign the entire technical folder. Then we must seek funding for the ENTIRE project, since the Mayor has flatly stated that there is no money for the perforation of another well and is not disposed to support a new project different from the one he designed – especially now that municipal elections are over and he is entrenched once again, safe in his office for the next three years, at least. In fact, he says that the community should have already begun work on the project, even though we do not have title to the well.

This means that we will have to seek much more funds than originally thought – an estimated $135,000 for the perforation of a deep well and water system infrastructure. Given that we haven’t even been able to secure the $20,000 for the water storage tank and distribution tubing in the first project, I’m really worried about how we’re going to do that. Even the Rotary representative from the North Sacramento club that we have been in contact with has not been encouraging, pointing out that the project is a very high cost for such a small number of beneficiaries. Because of the unfavorable “cost-benefit” analysis, she has not had any luck in garnering support from other Rotary Clubs. I understand that clubs want to help the most people possible with their donations – but I also understand that the needs of people in small communities are just as real as the needs of people in larger communities, where the per capita costs of installing a water system are less.

On the technical front, we have solicited the help of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) – USA for the location of a water source and perforation of a well within the community, studies of well capacity and water quality, and elaboration of technical plans for the water system infrastructure. Our application has been approved by the national organization and is now posted on the EWB website awaiting adoption by a chapter. Until we have these engineering studies, we really can’t move forward with formal funding proposals. I’m also planning to contact several Salvadoran universities to see if engineering students can work on the technical folder for our project as part of their social hours (other Volunteers have worked with University students in this manner).

But to tell you the truth there have been several times when I have been nearly in tears as everything I have fought so hard for and come to depend on -- the already-perforated well, the technical folder, hopes of funding from various NGOs and government aid agencies, hopes of support from the Mayor, and now even hopes of funding from Rotary -- has suddenly crumbled to pieces. After nearly a year and a half of efforts -- incessant phone calls to engineers and government ministries; long bus trips to Chalchuapa, Santa Ana, San Salvador; hours of waiting to meet with the Mayor, the engineers, government ministries with jurisdiction over the well; entire nights spent in the Peace Corps office assembling all our documentation and writing funding proposals (that's right, there have been nights when I have not even gone to the hostel in San Salvador to sleep but have stayed at the Peace Corps office all night trying to pull everything together) -- we are at square zero, with nothing, furthur back then when I came to El Salvador. No well, no technical plans, no budget, and really no realistic hopes of funding. In the end, no one has been encouraging about the prospects for funding a project even if we could get it designed. At the end of my own resources, I often try to turn myself to God for wisdom and strength and guidance -- only to find that I do not even have the energy to pray. Rising at 2:30 a.m. every single day to get my water takes its toll. I do it voluntarily, but the people of El Amaton have no choice.

I’m at the end of my own resources here. So I feel bad about using my email list this way, but I’m asking for all of your help – your contacts, your ideas, your inspirations – in three ways:

1) If anyone knows anyone in engineering at any university with an Engineers Without Borders chapter, I would really appreciate any contact information. This could increase the chances of the project being adopted and the studies carried out.

2) As far as funding goes, I have a feeling that the only hope we have is pulling together the money from numerous sources. We are planning to seek smaller contributions from as many organizations as possible -- churches, Rotary, Kiwanis, and I will also be making some inquiries to companies here in El Salvador. As such, if any of you belong to any organization – a church, civic group, professional group, community service group – that may be interested in helping to fundraise this project, please let me know. I have attached a "generic" cover letter presenting the project, which can be adapted to any organization or company you can think of that might be interested in supporting the project, and a detailed project proposal describing the community’s great need for water and the project we propose to carry out. (All technical and budget information is still preliminary… which is why I would like to move along the Engineers Without Borders application as quickly as possible).

3) If you are religious … please pray for my community, that their most basic human need might one day be met. I know in my heart that it is not God’s will that God’s children suffer such deprivation. Rather, it is God’s will that all people have the means to live healthy, satisfying lives – that all have their basic needs met so that they may fulfill their full potential as members of their families and communities. “For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit on your seed, and my blessing on your offspring” (Isaiah 44:3). Así sea. May it be so, for El Amatón. I do not know how God plans to work here in El Salvador, who God will use to pour water on those who are thirsty, but I have to believe that somehow a way can be found. I need your help to find that way.


Right now it’s hard to think about anything but the water project, but of course there are other needs in the community too.

--Home Gardens Project:
I’m working with a small group on the cultivation of organic, semi-hydroponic home vegetable gardens in the hope that this will reduce the incidence of fungi and diseases in the crops that we faced last year and economize the use of water. I’m a little nervous about all the somewhat complicated inputs, such as the nutrient solutions we must mix, but we’ll have to give it a try, keep good records, and see if it is feasible.


--Chicken Raising Project:
The chicken raising project is moving along well, with incredible enthusiasm from the 13 participating families (and many more have approached me saying that if there is a second stage of the project, they want in!). So far, my Ministry of Agriculture counterpart and I have held four trainings for participants to prepare them to receive their chickens. The first training was on Facilities – construction of chicken coops, nests, enclosures, feeders, and waterers. Next, we had a training on Animal Nutrition, including information on the elaboration of home concentrate recipes, planting of pasture, and cultivation of worms in worm composting bins (worms are an excellent source of protein for chickens). In the Management training, we reviewed the recommended program of vaccination and deparasitization before giving the participants the materials to build enclosures, chicken coops, and nests. Finally, we had a training on record-keeping of costs and production. With good care, in 5-6 months the chickens should be producing protein-rich eggs to contribute to the nutrition of the family, and possibly to sell in the community to generate income for medical care and school costs – and to incubate in order to produce chicks to pass on to more families! I myself plan to try my hand at raising at least two or three chickens (yes, I am a vegetarian – but at least here, where I know that the chickens are being raised in a healthy environment and not pumped full of antibiotics, I would eat an occasional hard-boiled egg.)

Chicken Raising Project: Constructing chicken coops (left) and nests (right)

-- Stoves Project:
Almost all the fuelwood-efficient stoves have now been built, and most people are really happy. Lidia and I make tortillas on her new stove using just a splinter of firewood, and Nina María beamed as she told me, “I cooked corn, and beans, and made tortillas, all on the stove … and now there’s no smoke in the kitchen!” The big challenge now will be to do lots of follow-up visits to make sure that people are using the stoves properly and giving them correct maintenance.

Improved Stoves Project: Geovanni constructing a stove (left);

Amelia using a finished stove to make tortillas (right)

-- School Tree Nursery and Reforestation:
The school tree nursery to reforest community water sources is now established, and there’s been a lot of frustrations. The teachers simply haven’t been very dedicated to ensuring that the students faithfully water the trees, and now two times dogs have rooted around the nursery and overturned a lot of bags with the tree seedlings (the second time was after the teachers had promised that they were going to fence the nursery so no more dogs would get in). But we do have some arbolitos (tree seedlings) to plant in community water sources and on farmer’s lands, and I’ve worked with the students and beneficiaries of the stove project to fill more bags with dirt and replant the bags that we lost. It’s kind of late in the season to be planting trees from seed if we want them to be ready to transplant right at the beginning of rainy season, but even if the transplant is a little later, with conscientious maintenance coordinated by the Water and Agriculture committees, the trees should still be able to thrive. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this time the teachers and students take care of the nursery a little more seriously, and I’ve enlisted the help of Water and Agricutlure Committee members to oversee the nursery’s maintenance. Although the nursery is just getting its start, last Saturday the Water and Agriculture Committees, some youngsters, and I began reforestation efforts by planting shoots of trees that reproduce vegetatively in community water sources.

The School Tree Nursery: Aroldo and Alexander planting madre cacoa

seedlings into bags (left); Me working in the tree nursery (right)

--School Classrooms and Library:
The school and library are almost done – all that is left to do is construct a “corredor” (an extension of the roof around the classrooms and library to provide shade and prevent rain from entering) and paint. Instead of the plain white-above-and-blue-below color scheme of the typical Ministry of Education school building, at least for the Ecological Library we’re planning to paint it with colorful murals of plants, animals, landscapes, and other nature themes. The books are already classified, equipped with spine labels and check-out cards, and ready to be placed on the shelves – and better yet, taken off the shelves and read! Once the library is established and things calm down a little bit with the projects I have going, I’m hoping to start a “Book-Buddies” type reading promotion program. After all, books don’t do any good just sitting on the shelves!


-- Life Planning Education:
I’m also teaching a Life Planning Education course called Como Planear Mi Vida (How to Plan my Life) to the 9th graders in the school. Basically, CPMV is a program to help youth define their life goals and learn to make responsible decisions regarding their family, community, and professional lives. It’s definitely needed – in this fatalistic culture combined with a marginal existence, just struggling to make ends meet and fulfill the most pressing basic needs, youth aren’t encouraged to think about their future or consider how the decisions they make today will affect their lives tomorrow. They’ve also never really had the chance to dream of what they could be – they aren’t even aware of the opportunities that exist or conscious that their life could be any different from what it is. In the U.S., kids are asked from the time they are three what they are going to be when they grow up. Here, all I get when I ask kids that question is confused looks. Without aspirations, youth have little incentive to take their studies seriously or postpone immediate pleasure to protect their health and achieve something greater. CPMV is designed to help the kids define and achieve their aspirations. But even with my conviction of the importance of CPMV, the classes have been difficult and somewhat awkward. Students aren’t used to participatory or discussion-based education and are very hesitant to share. We’ll have to see how things go as the class progresses. Hopefully, we’ll develop more trust and confidence as a group.


Whew. With all my work-related responsibilities, I haven’t really had enough time to just share with people – not to talk about any project or hand out any invitation or check on any compost pile or trash management effort … but there have been those special moments in the midst of the craziness, those few kind words or realizations about how much I’m learning about life here. I just wanted to share one of those moments with all of you:


A couple of weeks ago after dinner (I now cook and eat with Lidia, Melvin, and the boys), Melvin stood up, stretched, and said “Pues, ya comimos, gracias a Dios y a las mujeres que echaron las tortillas.” “Well, once again we’ve eaten, thanks be to God and to the women who made the tortillas.” He smiled at Lidia and me.

“And thanks to Melvin, who went to prepare the land and plant the seed and harvest the ears so we could have the corn to make the tortillas,” Lidia chimed in. Melvin laughed, his eyes twinkling.
“We all had our part, didn’t we? God took care of the most, and we each did our little part to eat this meal. It’s nice that way,” he said contentedly.

I sat in the golden light of evening, and thought, it is nice that way. How many people in the United States can thank the farmer who grew the wheat for their bread? Here, I share the fruit of the land with those who cultivate it – and sometimes I go along to help. There’s something satisfying about making tortillas from corn I helped plant or eating beans that I helped thresh or enjoying juicy tomatoes from a plant I raised from seed. And it’s not only the closer relationship between people and the source of their sustenance that I cherish here, but also the communal nature of agricultural work that creates a closer relationship between the people that share around the table as well.


Well, I think that’s all for now. As always, I love to hear news from home, what is happening in all of your lives. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and prayers on the water project.

Con amor desde El Salvador (With love from El Salvador),

Megan

Hola desde El Salvador #6

Querida familia y amigos,

Shame on me! How did the last 6 months get away from me without writing to you all? I guess to answer that one, I’ll just quote Calvin and Hobbes – “The days are just packed!”

At any rate, I wanted to wish you all a belated Happy New Year and give you an update on what I’ve been doing in the last half year for anyone who’s interested.

Anyway, this could get kind of long, so feel free to scan and read sections of interest. Here goes…



I) Planting and Harvesting

I continue to learn the traditional Salvadoran agricultural cycle, which has finally come full circle. In my last email back in July we’d planted corn and beans on the rocky land with a chuso in May and fertilized them in June and July. In late August the corn finished maturing and we folded down the stalks to allow the corn to dry, then planted a second crop of beans in between the rows of corn. The fun part came with the threshing in November. Once the bean plants have dried out, we went to the fields and pulled them up, then piled the crisp plants with their full pods on a big tarp. Then we hit the piles (taller than me!) with big sticks, which causes the pods to burst open and the beans to fall to the tarp below. When the threshing is over, you can sweep the chaff off the top and pour the heavier beans into sacs to carry home.

Threshing beans

I certainly enjoyed learning the agricultural tasks, for the farmers, this was a difficult year. Invierno (winter, or the rainy season) blew in with cold, heavy rains associated with Hurricane Adrian in May, ruining any beans that were already planted. Then, 8 days of nonstop, torrential rains from Hurricane Stan in early October soaked the bean fields and made perfect conditions for fungi to destroy the crop. Most probably harvested just enough beans to store and eat for the year, but many farmers lost over half of their crop – which is just devastating. A family’s stock of beans is its buffer against insecurity. Thanks to the inflow of subsidized corn from the United States and Europe, farmers can’t even recoup their investment selling their corn, but there’s at least some hope of turning a profit with beans. When a need arises or someone falls ill, families will sell an arroba (25 lbs.) of beans in the pueblo in order to pay for it, and farmers also depend on the sale of surplus beans to purchase seeds and fertilizer for the following crop. This year, my neighbors Lidia and Melvin confided, there will be no extra beans to sell, no source of income. But the sacs I helped them gather will probably be enough for us to eat for the year, and for that, we are grateful.



II) A quick update on last year’s projects and ongoing projects:


-- Home Vegetable Gardens, Fruit Trees, and Forest Trees (oh my!)
The home vegetable gardens had modest success, mostly by the women who were most faithful in attending the trainings and as such took the best care of their gardens. Lidia and I harvested tomatoes and carrots; Tita harvested very tasty, tender sweet peppers; and Bitia improved her daughter’s nutrition with Vitamin A-rich carrots and even generated a little income selling her surplus tomatoes to neighbors. Although we had problems with pests and with the seeds simply not adapting well to the climate, I think that the women learned important skills, such as composting and garden planning, that will be important as we continue to learn how to grow vegetables in El Amatón. Next year, we plan to continue our efforts working with organic home vegetable gardens. We plan to seek out a local seed source, even if we can’t find open-pollinated seeds, to ensure that the seeds will be of varieties appropriate for the local climate. I’ve also contacted an organization that specializes in organic vegetables, and they have agreed to help provide additional training in natural pest control to help prevent some of the losses we faced this year. The fruit trees planted around people’s homes and the multiple-use trees planted on farmer’s lands as living fences, barriers against soil erosion, and mini-forests for soil conservation and firewood are all looking good. I’m confident that I’ll have a good excuse to visit El Amatón in about three years -- to eat the oranges from the trees we planted!

Me harvesting tomatoes in my garden (left);

Rosa standing by a maquilishuat tree she planted

as part of a living fence (right)

-- Water Project:
The water project is, well, languishing, along with the community as dry season sets in once more. The engineers FINALLY turned in the technical folder in August (after promising it would be done March 1). The Water Committee and I busied ourselves, first going through a lot of trouble to get title to the land where the water storage tank will be built. Once we had that, we began preparing funding proposals for our portion of the project: the water storage tank, chlorination system, and distribution tubing, about $20,000 (the Mayor promised to fund the pump, electricity, and supply tubing). Unfortunately, almost all of our proposals have been turned down. The North Sacramento Rotary Club actually came to visit the community, but they only have about $1000 in their account for international projects and haven’t been able to garner support from other clubs. The non-government organizations we contacted (CARE, Project Concern International, and Catholic Relief Services) couldn’t help us, because USAID stopped funding all water system infrastructure projects in Central America, and these NGOs got most of their funds from USAID. The Salvadoran Red Cross was looking hopeful, but recently informed me that they are overwhelmed with reconstruction from Hurricane Stan and won’t be able to help us economically (I did beg some technical assistance out of them). We also got turned down by the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives and the Swiss Organization for Cooperation and Development. So as far as the funding goes, we are back to square one.

And that’s the least of our worries. There’s a lot of loose ends that the Mayor didn’t concern himself with tying up when he drilled the well, supposedly with the intention of eventually providing water to El Amatón (although I don’t think this project would be in motion if we hadn’t gone and solicited the technical folder). We have gone through a lot of trouble trying to get the well donated to the community (can you believe the Mayor paid something like $10,000 to drill a well and he didn’t even know who owned the land?) but there is a lot of politics that is making me doubt that we will able to get title. In short, it’s under the jurisdiction of one of the ministries of the central government, which is dominated by the right wing ARENA party, and they are not about to facilitate a project that will make our mayor – of the left wing FMLN party – look good, especially right before municipal elections in March. And this really scares me, because if we can’t get the well, that basically means we would have to start all over: find a new water source, scrap the current technical folder and all the funding proposals we’ve done, and somewhere find the funds to drill ANOTHER well (this time on land owned by the community) and solicit ANOTHER technical folder (which could take approximately forever), etc., etc. The Mayor also never bothered to test the water in the well to make sure that it wasn’t contaminated, which he should have done when it was drilled. Now it’s going to be a lot harder (and really expensive) to get an uncontaminated sample and test it, and he is not disposed to help us at all. I get the feeling that the Mayor really wants this project to happen, but not for the good of the community. He just wants to do something really visible and put his name on a big sign, and doesn’t really care if there is invisible contamination in the streams of water flowing from the faucets.

The bottom line: I’d really appreciate your prayers on the water project. People in the community are losing hope that their most basic need – sufficient and clean water -- will ever be satisfied, and I’m at a loss to know what to do. The Mayor and his cadre of engineers clearly are not taking responsibility to ensure that the project is done well, I’m certainly no technical expert in water and sanitation systems, the government ministries we’re dealing with are so impenetrable, and I don’t see any hope of funding at this point even if we could get the donation of the well. But we’ll keep fighting.



-- School Construction:
A happier story! Thanks to the donations of my family, friends, and especially members of my church, we received enough funds to construct the two new classrooms that the school needs to expand its offerings through 9th grade. Construction began in late October, with parent volunteers happily providing all the unskilled labor.

A big highlight of the classroom construction was in mid-November, when 5 members of my church plus my Dad came to work alongside community members to build the classrooms. Our main task was moving 4,000 bricks from the site where they had been unloaded from the truck up to the construction site, 3 bricks at a time (at first we got the idea of using a wheelbarrow, but then that was appropriated for moving sand to mix the cement for the foundation and securing the bricks). We were there when Armando, the mason, laid the first brick. Thinking of the learning that would take place inside those walls, it was an emotional moment. Throughout the whole week, Greg, Phil, Nancy, Sharon, Laura, and of course my Dad Fred were awesome, working alongside the parents to mixing concrete, pour the foundation, and pass bricks to the masons when they began to construct the walls. I am almost positive that my Dad and Phil also garnered the distinction of being the first males EVER to wash clothes in our river (although they are cheaters – they didn’t turn the shirts inside out to wash the inside too!).

WPC Mission Trip: Dad and Sharon carry bricks (left);

the whole group in front of the growing walls (right)

Dad and Phil washing their clothes in the river

At this point, the brick walls of the school are finished and the lamina roof is secured. The work still left to be done includes placement of doors and mesh windows, laying floor tiles, siding the walls with cement, and painting the walls. The classrooms should be finished several weeks after school opens for the children to use!

Okay, so that wasn’t so quick. Sorry …



III) What’s next:

-- Chickens!
In addition to planning an improved organic home vegetable gardens project, the Agriculture Committee’s latest adventure is a project to raise improved breeds of chickens for egg production. Most women in the community already raise some chickens, but right now the chickens run around wild, eat whatever weeds they can find (or people’s gardens, if they are not fenced), and make their nests in random places that are often discovered by hungry dogs. As such, egg production is low to begin with and a lot is lost to egg predation.

We began working to improve chicken health and production with vaccination campaigns (I can vaccinate chickens against viruela! And Manuel promised to teach me to give the triple vaccine against avian cholera in the next campaign!). Out of that grew the idea of a more comprehensive program to improve the raising of chickens using “agroecological” (environmentally friendly) techniques. I’ve already gone with the members of my Vaccination Committee to visit an existing project in another community to get ideas for our project, and they are really excited. Basically, what we want to do is bring improved races of chickens which lay many more eggs than the inbred strains currently in the community, and build enclosures and chicken coops to facilitate better care of the chickens and prevent loss of eggs to mischevious dogs. We also want to plant a special soil-enriching pasture and teach people about vermicomposting (raising worms for the chickens to eat on fruit and vegetable scraps – with the added benefit that the worms produce a really rich fertilizer). Ultimately, the project should improve children’s nutrition by providing eggs and provide a source of income for participating families when they sell surplus eggs in the community. I also like this project because it provides the women (the ones who traditionally raise chickens) with an opportunity to develop leadership skills and contribute to their family’s sustenance.


-- Health Committee:
We’ve been working with the organization Trees, Water, People (Árboles y Agua para el Pueblo) to solicit a donation of materials for an improved stoves project. Cooking on open fires uses a lot of firewood and produces a lot of respiratory health problems because of the smoke. But the Aprovecho Research Center (an appropriate-technology organization) in Oregon developed an improved stove that includes an iron plancha atop an enclosed flame. There’s room for just a little firewood, and the rest of the stove is filled with cascajo, a material that retains and distributes the heat. If they are maintained properly, the stoves save up to 75% of the firewood that one would use cooking with an open fire. It also produces less smoke and has a chimney to funnel it out of the kitchen so that the women can breathe a little easier. AND they are super fun to build (we did one in training) – at one point, you have to make a mud mixture held together with this thick molasses stuff, and it’s mixed by taking off your shoes and “dancing” in the glop!

We’re also trying to scale up a Trash Management project that we started in the school to the entire community … separating organic from inorganic trash, composting the organic, recycling the cans and plastic bottles (I got the bus driver to say he’ll take them to Chalchuapa to sell if we collect them in the school), and burying the rest of the inorganic trash in a semi-sanitary home-made landfill, with clay at the bottom to prevent contamination of sub-terranean water. I think this one’s gonna be tough … there has never been a trash collection, so people are pretty used to just throwing their trash wherever …


-- School Tree Nursery and Ecological Library:
We were able to solicit the funds for an Environmental Education project that includes a school tree nursery and Ecological Library. I’ve done a lot of planning in the last couple months with Manuel (the agronomist), the teachers, and the Water and Agriculture committees to plan a tree nursery, where we’ll produce trees to reforest community water sources. We’ll start the trees in February, transplant them into bags in March, and then out in the field in June, when the rains come to help them get established. The Ecological Library is being constructed along with the school classrooms, and some of the older students from the Literary-Ecological Club have already helped begin classifying the new books. The teachers and I selected a combination of fiction books with nature themes (to read with the kids in the Saturday club) and non-fiction books on plants, animals, ecology, etc. (to be used in school projects). We’ve spent a couple Saturdays classifying the books, placing spine labels and pockets with check-out cards, and making a card catalog. I’m hoping that the library will get kids excited about both reading and the environment and provide inspiration for more activities of the Literary-Ecological Club … at the very least, it will give my now-tattered copy of El Lorax a rest! (If you’ll remember from my last email, that was one of the few kid’s books in Spanish that I have and was getting pretty worn out from repeated readings. The kids just LOVE books!)



Okay, I think this has gone on long enough! I’m going to despedirse (say good-bye). Please, if you get a chance, do drop a note to let me know what you have been up to.

¡Próspero Año Nuevo a todos! (Happy New Year to all!)

Megan

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