A day in the life

I woke up wonderfully comfortable this morning. I was lying “Brazilian style,” diagonally, in a hammock in the common area of the rectory of Maria Madre de Los Pabres, the same place I had slept for 9 days. I slipped out of my down sleeping bag, as well as out of my silk bag liner, and stuffed both into their proper sacks. It was 7:30. I finished some internet chores on the office computer before Rosalita and the other staff arrived, then went to prepare my “Mochila,” backpack, for my journey to Comayagua, Honduras.

Breakfast was prepared for myself and the St. Thomas Moore delegation as usual by Maria Madre staff. Strong stovetop coffee, fresh pineapple, sweetbread, pancakes with syrup from Meijer, Nutella (which St. Toms delegate Olena decided was not sweet enough when smothered on her pancake, so she added a second layer of jelly) and peanut butter, milk, and Kellogg’s cornflakes. If you know me, you wouldn’t be too surprised that I felt the need to tell my Salvadoran and Kalamazooan companions that W.K Kellogg’s brother John Harvey originally invented cornflakes as a meat substitute with one specific intent to deter masturbation for a reduction in consumption of testosterone.

The Saint Tom’s delegation had to leave to go see some community projects run by the parish. We did our round of goodbyes and wellwishing, and I told them I’d see them in 6 months to a year in Kalamazoo. Rosalie reminded me what she had told me before, that my mother and they would worry for me so that I wouldn’t have to.

I finished my packing. (Should I leave the wool sweater behind that I picked up in Xela, Guate for only 2 Quetzals?...or should I keep it for nostalgic or safety reasons. I wonder what the weather is like in Peru, even though its close to the equator? Ooo…my map says Bogota is at 3500 meters. Better keep it just in case. The locally-made cotton shirt Padre Luis gave to me will have to stay, however. I have three short-sleeves, which is plenty, and it’s a good excuse to come revisit Maria Madre on my way back.) My pack should be about equal volume and weight since I arrived in El Salvador since I ate the trailmix I made from the market, popped the corn I had brought, but picked up another bag. I did acquire a couple spoonfuls of Nutella in my peanut butter bottle, though.

A new group of Gringos, likely another one of the seven sister parishes from the States, started filing into the rectory. “Hola! Bienvenidos! Hola!” I said about 15 times, stepping into the role of welcoming committee for the parish I was about to leave.

They started a meeting in the common area, but I went and did some pull-ups on a strong crossbar of the laundry lines to which I had grown accustomed, listening to Daniel’s translation of Padre Luis telling this delegation that many of the local evangelical parishes were antithema to social change for the poor.

My water bottles I filled at the cooler in the kitchen, (which contained city water which was pumped through a filter-and-UV-light system originally brought to Maria Madre from St. Tom’s delegate Gerry, who had given me a pamphlet the night before on his Kalamazoo-based non-profit striving to bring clean water to poor communities with the request that I give his contact information to anyone who might be able to connect him to communities in need for my entire trip.) I strapped the liter bottle to my pack, but it fell out while I was walking to the bus station and the blue plastic cap busted, but I kept my eyes on the street for about 10 minutes and found a half-way decent replacement.

(A pretty dark-skinned woman across the aisle from me is breast-feeding as I am writing this…I am remembering our discussion from last night about how boobs are kosher in El Salvador, but showing skin from waist to knee is out-of-bounds, taboo.)

After my four sets of eight pull-ups, I figured I might as well join the group since I wasn’t going to drag Padre Luis away from the group while he was speaking in order to say goodbye. They asked who I was after a few minutes, and I began explaining in Spanish that I was kind-of part of the St. Tom’s delegation, but that I was also a backpacker headed to Paraguay, until my mind caught up that I was speaking to Spanish to people who couldn’t understand it.

Padre answered a cell phone call and left the circle, incidentally during a translation between what appeared to be a nun and a Salvadoran nurse about the health clinic’s relationship to abortion and birth control in light of its relationship to Catholicism.

I excused myself and found Padre Luis, asking him if he could buy a local newspaper for me so that the St. Tom’s delegation could take it back to some friends of mine in Kalamazoo: “Puede comprarme noticias papel para algunes amigos in Los Estados Unidos?” But I don’t think I got through, so I’ll just have to find an internet café in Tegus (pronounced the-GOOS, short for Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras) or Comayagua and email Mary Ellen before they leave on Friday.

“You are leaving now?” Luis asked?

“Si. Siempre estas tiempos vienen,” I said. He sounded a bits ad, as he did when I told him I was leaving the day befote and he convinced me to stay for another, so I told him that these times always come.

“You are in my heart,” he said, as he had many times in the past few days as my departure approached. He put his two arms on my shoulders, and said many rapid words to me in Spanish, and I received his blessing for my journey. I hiked my bag up first onto my right knee, then to my back. I hugged Daniel and Rosa, waved goodbye to the folks from Ohio, one of them snapped a photo of me, and I walked away from Maria Madre.

I walked through Chakra among the Salvadorans, saying “Buenos Dias” to several groups as I passed, crossed the single lane bridge over the heavily polluted, stinky, and foaming river, stopped by a friend’s house to say goodbye, walked uphill dodging traffic across the main thoroughfare, ignored several “bus-callers” trying to get me onto their buses bound for other cities, found my correct bus, separated my pack into bigger and smaller sections and watched the main part be heaved into the lower compartment, then boarded and found a good seat with a clear window on the right-hand said so I could get a good view of the trip. A boy came onto the bus selling huge bags of strawberries for a dollar, so I bought one. The bus took off, and I began typing this paper.

But as so often happens on trips such as these, my seat-partner and I began a good conversation. His name was Victor, an studious looking Latino a few years younger than myself, and he had come to San Salvador for his “tramitas,” which I eventually discerned had something to do with bank processing. I wrote that word down in my word list in the little black book that I always keep in my back pocket, as well as several others that he taught me through the conversation. I shared my strawberries. We spoke somewhat in “Spanglish.” I spoke much more Spanish than his English, but we taught each other quite a few words and phrases…both “maestros,” and both “estudiantes.” I told him of my visit to San Salvador, of visiting families with Padre Luis, of the street-art, candle-light procession of thousands people, and outdoor evening mass celebrated in honor of the 6 Jesuit priests assassinated 19 years because of their outspokenness against violence.

When the topic of conversation turned to music, I got out my ipod from my small pack. I gave him the right earbud, and put the left one into my own ear. I showed him the list of Spanish-language cumbia, duragense, and reggeton songs I had acquired from the computer of Escuela Hispanomaya in Todos Santos. We listened to several of those, and then I played a Spanish “conscious” hiphop song by Immortal Technique, and he told me in had a lot of bad words in it. Next was Eminem, because Victor said he liked him. I translated “Skeletons in my Closet” as best I could for him.

The ride to the nearest big city close to the border was three and a half hours. Every stop inside a village to drop off or pick up passengers also turned the bus into a temporary market as vendors crowded onto the bus yelling “Pollo! Pollo!” or “Gaseos, Agua Pura, Gaseos!” Other vendible items might include bags of coconuts, peanuts, fried fish, homemade breads and cookies, super glue, chocolate, Pupusas (a super-cheesy tortilla wrap, the national Salvadoran meal), apocalyptic literature…all available from my seat at each stop for a dollar or less. Somewhere an hour before my stop Victor woke me from my head-rattling-against-the-window-slumber to say goodbye at his stop, another friend-from-the-world whose physical presence I will likely never again enjoy joy, though in other ways our brief encounter is everlasting.

When they dropped me off in San Miguel, I grabbed my bag from below as a man from a “micro,” a van just ahead, shouted “Frontera, frontera!” (border) at me and tried to take my bag. But I told him “later” and headed toward El Centro to find a bank. I had a hundred dollar American bill in my pocket that had been damaged and somewhat discoloured from having gotten wet in the bottom of my shoe two weeks earlier when I stepped into a mud puddle on a hike in the mountains on the way to a hot springs outside of Xela (pronounced “shay-la”) in Guatemala. I wanted the security of having American cash on me, in good normal condition, which can be exchanged anywhere in Latin America. This town just before the border was my last chance for a bank in American-currency-using El Salvador.

I stood in line for 10 minutes at a bank. The clerk took the bill to her manager, who told me it was too disfigured for her to accept, but that I could exchange it at the Central Bank in San Salvador. Not helpful. Before I left, I exchanged a one dollar bill for the hardly-used Salvadoran currency, the Colon, for a gift back in the States. I tried another bank as well, same story, before heading back to the highway and my micro. I did stop at a coconut-shucking stall on the way back, so the side trip was not entirely in vain. I’ll have to wait ‘til Ecuador, the only South American country to use dollars as their primary currency, to exchange my crappy 100.

The micro to the border was only 15 minutes. The baggage-handler harassed a young attractive Latino girl for the entire trip, even after the trip ended and she was walking for her shuttle for the final leg. She climbed into a three-wheeled two-stroke powered cart designed for short trips, but I always prefer enjoy my final minutes in a country with a nice reminiscing walk.

“Cambio! Cambio! Limpiras!” shouted the moneychangers as I approached the border, wanting to exchange my dollars for the Honduran Limpira currency. I thought of the last moneychangers at the Guatemalan-Salvadoran border, wondering what kind of rate they would give me. I told them I didn’t need to exchange money. I had already gotten some Limpiras from a hosteller in Xela, but I told the changers I didn’t need to exchange because I was a magician and could change my money with my magic.

At customs, the office said “Tres dollars,” as she stamped my passport. I only had four left. I was lucky.

The river I crossed separating El Salvador from Honduras was soothing…a good time for transition, an easy reminder of the tranquillity possible in any type of journey.

It was getting dusky. I knew I wouldn’t make it to Comayagua that night, 2 hours past Tegus. On the other side of the river, a bus-caller said a name to me repeatedly that I didn’t recognize. I said, “No, Tegus.” He thought for a moment, and then told me there were no buses to Tegus. I figured he was scamming me, so I said no thanks and headed further into Honduras. But after walking 15 minutes and not seeing any other buses or micros, I turned around and headed back to the border. I checked my map to find the closest big city on the way to Tegus, and the next bus I came to was headed there. When I tried to ask someone in Spanish where I should ask to get off, a young woman sitting in the seat in front of me asked if I speak English. So I met Laura, a Peace Corp volunteer frustrated with her lack of progress as a water engineer in the area. Trail magic: I gave her the contact info for the St. Tom’s parishner who wanted me to research needs for clean water.

After getting off at my stop, I bought a piece of chicken and some tortillas while waiting for a new bus to Tegus. A mama dog plopped down in front of me while I finished my meal, so I tossed her my bones, which she quickly devoured, in order to contribute rampant K-9 reproduction.

I wrote the majority of this piece on the final bus to Tegus. The bus dropped me off in what my guidebook said was a shady part of town, so I negotiated a good price for a taxi to take me to Hotel Iberia. It was 8:30 at night. The streets of Tegucigalpa were practically vacant. We drove up to a checkpoint, but the police waved us through. “Corrupt,” my driver told me. When we pulled up to my hotel, two police on motorcycles surrounded my taxi. While I got out and got my pack, they were sequestering my driver’s info. “Gracias, Señor, and Buena suerte,” I said as I walked into my hotel.

The man at the counter was staring into a television two feet away from his eyes. He didn’t look up as I asked for a bed, but said “200 Limpira,” which was the price for a double room. I told him I wanted a single room, which was 80 Limpira cheaper. He said they were full. I told him I wanted to pay less because I only wanted one bed. He said no. I considered the vacant streets outside. I paid the 200L, and he finally looked away from his television and took me to my room.

I ate some crackers and peanut butter and Nutella, watched a bit of Terminator III in Spanish on the boob tube in the common room, then went to bed.

EPILOGUE:

That was Monday, November 17. It was a travel day, similar to what most of my days will be like between Honduras and Paraguay, with the exception of the amount of Nutella I ate. Its Thursday, and I am now at Mission Honduras, a place I was sent 11 years ago by Father Jim O’Leary who came into my high school Spanish class, pointed only at me, and said, “YOU should go to Honduras this summer.” He must’ve known, because I wouldn’t be here now, or likely on this trip at all, if he hadn’t sent me then. For the next week, I am painting walls, fixing plumbing, and playing with orphans, until I leave again for lands further South.

p.s. no pictures in this post for at least a week because the local internet cafe's computer won't connect to my camera, but check back later if you're super-interested in a few photos from around that day

poco a poco

I almost got ripped off at the Guatemala – El Salvador border. After seeing 197 divided by 8 equal 12 on a moneychanger’s calculator, I handed over my Quetzales. But a Mayan mother figure standing nearby knew what was going on, scolded the men who had surrounded me as soon as I exited my bus, and then after getting my proper exchange she took my arm and gently scolded me to be more aware of my surroundings.

I felt sick to my stomach, physical pangs of anxiety for my own gullibility, in my next bus across the border, even though it was only 10 dollars I would have lost. Deep breaths, don’t let the accountants in my head scold or laugh at me too much, and move on to San Salvador. With risk necessarily comes loss, but also great possibility. Though I am not about to just hand over what I have at least partially earned, I must accept loss, even lies, theft, or violence, as a worthy tax for my grand privilege.

I want to tell you about the wars in Guatemala and El Salvador, and the rest of the South. I want to tell you about the atrocities that were committed by both the army and the gorillas, and about how much worse was the rape, torcher, and murder of the regular armies, and of U.S. culpability in supporting dictatorships in Latin America with arms and monies, or through direct CIA overthrow of democratically elected presidents, what Reagan called “limiting external aggression in Guatemala,”…of how ages of colonial legacy and “free market” policies (keep-things-as-they-are-policies) has produced a vastly stratified society of ladino and indigenous, lowland and highland, rich and poor, landowner and land worker, and how nicely these stratifications have benefited U.S. wealth.

But I am bitter towards many of you for not wanting to know, and the others don’t need to know any more. The facts I could supply are useless you wish not to know, or have a strong “American always has goodness in her motivations” information filter. Please forgive me for my negativity. I beg you to do your own research on the history of the United State’s relationship with Latin America, what the Monroe Doctrine first patronizingly suggested was “our backyard.” We affect them explicitly while they affect us only implicitly, being faceless and nameless to us, except to bear some of the pyramid at which we are near the top. For evidence of this pyramid, consider the price you pay for bananas vs. the labor that went into their collection, or consider the names of the countries in small letters on your relatively free T-shirts.

Reagan, however, was at least half right in his implications when he said that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

I last posted here about a month ago. I went up into the hills of Guatemala to study Spanish, away from other tourists and English speakers. I lived in a village named “Todos Santos,” which in English means “All Saints.” The people here all wear the same clothing: red and white stripped pants and a straw hat for the men, and woven blue and purple blouses for the women. I think they like identifying themselves as Todos Santoas in order to distinguish themselves from the more modernized mixed-race Ladinos, and even from other Mayan villages.

And they have wonderful markets every Wednesday and Saturday…truly free markets, not what you were taught is a free market from the Chicago school of economics.

I am studying Spanish. It is much harder, but I am learning much faster then when I was in high school. I had a personal tutor in Todos Santos for three weeks, and I lived with a woman named “Rosa” and her three children. I lived across the road from her in her sister’s vacant house and I was awakened each morning by roosters. Rosa’s daughter “Grisalda” let the turkeys and chickens out each day, and when I eft my house in the morning the chicks all scattered around my feet. I joined Rosa’s family in a small house with walls and floor made out of mud for meals three times a day. We ate a lot of corn tortillas as well as eggs, beans, rice, and sometimes some strange Guatemalan vegetables that I had never heard of before. She spoke to me in Spanish quite a bit. I only understood about half of what she said, but I understood none of what she says to her children because they speak to one another in their indigenous language, which is called, “Mam.”

Rosa is missing her two front teeth, which makes her look 10 years older than her 37 years. Her two former husbands both left her for the same persuasive woman named “America.” The machismo of highland culture says that its not their responsibility to raise their children, but I had the privilege of learning in my three weeks with them that their former fathers are jilting themselves of their beautiful children.

America beckoned them, and they went, leaving all else behind. Even if they never cross the border, All Todos Santoans have been visited by her. Many send money back: Todos Santos has been transformed by American remissions. The houses are larger than they were 20 years ago, and general health and wellbeing has also likely been raised, if not only for the lack of war. Rosa’s family recently received a television as a gift, she put up an antennae, and they now watch the Simpsons in Spanish broadcast from down the valley in Mexico while they eat their meals. I warned Rosa’s oldest son Eric as best I could in Spanish before I left that while television can teach and entertain, it can also steal. The Coyotes of Todos Santos are well known; they have the best vehicles, because they make loads of money, because they know the routes and the contacts to the states, because there are always people who want to go. Most people here believe it is their right to try to cross into the states illegally if they so desire, because borders are only for the rich and powerful.

I am in San Salvador, El Salvador now, at the sister parish of St. Thomas Moore. I’ve been making house calls with Padre Luis in this barrio of San Salvador, a former garbage-dump turned neighborhood. Paintings of Oscar Romera, a liberation theologist and Catholic bishop who was assassinated in 1980, are everywhere.

I'm having a grand time, though home is often on my mind:

Thanks for reading!