Communism! And Machismo!And the (sort of) Death of Vegetarianism!

Here I am, procrastinating on homework on my free day by going to the internet place to upload pictures and write a blog post. Oh well...
As usual, far too much has happened to even begin to explain in a blog post....but I'll try to get all the most mildly interesting parts in....Oh, just a heads up that this will probably be unacceptably long. sorry.

First off, history class last Friday:
Our teacher, Gene Polombo, came down to El Salvador in 1980 to cover the civil war for NPR and the NY Times, so he basically knows everyone in the country. No joke. Our class every week is a different speaker who comes in to tell us their experience of the war, and since he knows everyone from every side, we get pretty different points of view every week. For our homework last week, we read a book written by a famous central american journalist about her series of interviews with a campesino (someone from the rural regions of El Salvador) named Don Pablo Lito. Then, on Friday, Don Lito came to talk to us. See, I told you Gene knows everyone.
First of all, the room we had class in was about 100 degrees. Pretty rough. But Don Lito was such an interesting story teller and actually pretty hilarious as well. He told us about his village's experience with the Catholic church and the various preists they went through before and during the war; like a lot of places, they experienced both the priest who abused his power and didn't listen to the needs of the people, and later a priest who helped them to organize, learn to read ,etc etc. Side note: best part of this part of the story was Don Lito's explanation of communism.
Apparently, one time a government representative came to their town to encourage them to join a government group to "help control communism." When they asked what communism was, the explanation they got was that it is something that is happening in Cuba, wherever that was. Fidel Castro, who had taken over, always wore a military suit because he was covered in hair like a gorilla. Also, he had horns and a tail, like the devil. He ate humans, and preferred them raw, but his FAVORITE food was children--he would just pick them up off the street and eat them.
Pretty accurate, I think, yeah?
The second half of his presentation was Don Lito recounting stories of his village and his friends during the war, which was almost unbelievably sad. Literally, it was hard to believe some of the stories he told us because it was just so hard to even imagine how people could do these things he told us stories about. Probably the most devastating part of this all was how normal it seemed for him to be telling horrible story after story, and the fact that everyone in the country seems to have a similar story.

Right after history class, we all climbed onto the bus and went off for Praxis weekend, which means we stayed for the weekend in the places where we spend time on Monday and Wednesday. Me, Dawn, and Elizabeth (my amazing praxis partners) all went to San Ramon, but stayed in different houses. I stayed with Areli, the woman who walks around with us on mondays in San Ramon. She and her family live a little outside the center of San Ramon in the more 'rural' -ish part, about a 25 minute uphill walk to the base of the volcano. Areli is absolutely hilarious and her whole family was super welcoming, so it was a pretty fun weekend. I hung out a lot with Yefri (yes, Jeffery in Spanish), her 5 year old grandson who lives with her. he had strep but you would never know it, with how much energy that kid had.



























I don't even know where to start with the hilarious stories from this weekend...first off, when i got there, we were talking about American cartoon characters who are popular in El Salvador and her husband, Rene, asked me if i know "Alf," and proceeds to get from the bedroom a 2 foot tall Alf doll. Later we spent a good hour altogether watching Puerto Rican and Brazilian music videos, all of which they knew all the words to and pointed out to me their favorite ones. We then watched this really silly Colombian variety show that i understood a good 2% of. Only in Latin America would the variety show survive as a viable form of entertainment....
A huge part of this weekend were the meals...those were some rough times. Areli was cooking dinner on the first night and says to me "I know you are vegetarian, so we are cooking all vegetarian this weekend!" Literally as she is saying this, she is sprinkling chicken boullion seasoning into the rice and poatoes. Here, being vegetarian means that you don't eat CHUNKS of meat, but meat by-products? Why not?! I was definately NOT going to be the snobby American girl who refuses food that was so generously cooked for me, so I just thought to myself, 'buen provecho' (bon apetit), and dug into the first meat product I had eaten in 12 years. Sigh. That was repeated every meal, by the way. It's pretty humbling to be totally not in control of what you are eating...
I was also given SO much food at every meal, to the point where I physicaly could NOT eat anymore. For breakfast, I was given a HUGE bowl of beans, potatoes, fried plantains, 2 tortillas, and coffee. At 7 in the morning....oi. Regardless of the fact that this created a lot of awkward situations this weekend, it still amazes me how generous people are with everyone, even guests who they have just met.

One thing from this weekend that I still can't shake, though, is the family dynamic of so many families here. Where I stayed, everyone in the family was so welcoming and nice, but Areli does ALL the work. Her husband was such a nice guy, but would just lay in bed in the morning and yell that he was hungry, all while Areli was running around in the kitchen getting ready for church, making food, ironing, etc etc. Later, at church, Areli told me that she was hungry because she hadn't eaten breakfast. After she was running around, giving her husband and her 17 year old sons everything they wanted, she didn't even eat ANYTHING herself. So many other people had the same experience this weekend. I had gotten so used to the machismo on the streets--literally, you can't walk to school without being hassled or kissed at--but seeing it in the home of people who we have spent time with and respect was so discomforting.

Finally (I promise, finally), one of the most interesting things from this weekend was the fact that i went to 2 church services that could NOT have been more different. Saturday night, Areli and her family went to the evangelical church service right down the road. It was a really uncomfortable hour for me, to say the least. It was mostly praying loudly with closed eyes and reading a bible passage and listening to the really lame interpretation by the priest. Also in the end i was handed a gigantic sandwich filled with chicken. yum. The next morning, Areli and I went to the celebration of the word at the Pueblo de Dios en Camino, which is a community group started by an amazing woman named Anita whose house we hang out at quite a bit. This group had orignially been part of the church in San Ramon and had amazing community programs and initiatives, but a new priest came and shut down all of these. So the community created their own church, without a priest, where the mass consists of community members reading, sharing ideas and problems, offering their own bits of the homily, and giving communion of a cookie or peice of pan dulce (bread) that they had made. This weekend, the mass was outside in a memorial park to commemorate the 27th anniversery of the eruption of the volcano that killed hundereds of community members. They talked not only about this sadness, but also about real and concrete social problems that existed then and still effect their community, as well as what they are doing to help prevent another distaster like this. Comparing this to the mass from the night before, where we just listened to some random guy who drove there in a nice car to give mass, was absolutely crazy. The two could not have been more different. Sadly, the evangelical churches here (in place of community based churches) are really popular. In fact, I am woken up every day by the insanely obnoxious tamborine songs of the church next door.

When we got home, we went out to Mexican food for dinner to celebrate Chelsea's 20th birthday and eat real vegetarian things and enjoy some very very very light Salvadoran beer. All in all, a wonderful weekend.

Alright that is all, I promise! Unlike other people, i suck at journaling so i mostly write things here instead. Now off to enjoy the rest of my day off--probably do some laundry and homework, and maybe nap in a hammock while getting eaten alive by bugs. Can't complain.

:Sabine

PS: I Finally started to upload pictures!!! I only have a few up so far since the internet is so slow, but I will finish soon. Here is my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabinetb/