fireworks

so last weekend el salvador's world cup team lost to mexico. we went to someone's house to watch the highly anticipated game. everyone was wearing their blue & white. i don't have anything blue or white. arbitrarily, i wore green, which i neglected to remember was the color of mexico's jerseys. oops. this photo depicts evil mexico confronting noble el salvador. evil mexico is wielding a pretzel and a pisco sour, just like real life.


after el salvador lost, we celebrated anyway, because it's more fun than whining.

my bruises from sunday's surfing adventure are starting to show up. they are bright purple like uncooked eggplant but also gray and kinda mushy looking like cooked eggplant. watching bruises over time is like watching the slowest, smallest, ugliest fireworks.
aaand time to go to sleep

the battle rages on

carolina lives next to the clinic. she is 4 and is starting school in january. she is super smart and loves coloring, she really loves coloring. this afternoon she took photos of me and i took photos of her.

there are a lot of battles to fight. sometimes i have to collect fuzzy black caterpillars and burn them before their evil oils burn me. sometimes we trap mice in the clinic because they eat the powdered milk we keep for malnourished children. then we have to drown the mice in the little cage in devastatingly clear water. and of course, cockroaches, with their sneaking and scurrying and you have to stamp on them hard because their shells are tough and when you do it well their guts come squeezing out and you have to clean that up too, cause come on, gross.

the bigger battle i've been fighting is against my personal proclivity to let things happen instead of making things happen. the music video group at the school is only going to come to fruition if i pester the students to come to the meetings, make the meetings fun and productive, figure out how to involve them, etc. i made up this project, now it is my puzzle to actually execute it. same with the young mothers group - i'm excited by their enthusiasm and even a little surprised by it. i'm really grateful to be paid to have the flexibility to take my ideas and make them live. the open-endedness of it is both daunting and enthralling. the battle also enters my life outside work - my default schedule is to get home from work at 4ish, maybe go to the store, make food, read, poke around on the computer. my challenge is to find things to do in the evenings, actually call people to hang out with. actually practice the guitar. it's so, so easy to get sucked into the internet. oh maybe ill look at the nytimes most emailed list. huh, that article looks neutrally interesting. yes, it is. huh maybe another article. maybe i will read stevie wonder's wikipedia page. then BAM 4 hours have passed. i suppose that i am spending more time alone here than i ever have, and i'm not accustomed to productively filling and dividing large blocks of time. anyway, all kinds of learning going on here, folks.

my dad used to ask my brothers and me two questions at bedtime every day. what did you learn today? what did you like today? he wrote down our answers in a notebook. "i didnt learn anything" did not work, and of course, is never true. my dad did this every day for years, and we have many notebooks full of learned & likeds. he stopped doing it eventually, probably because garrett was so whiny (sorry garrett, but you know it's probably true). two years ago, i started doing it on my own every night. it's kind of a mini journal that is easy to commit to and forces you to briefly consider what you did in the long hours since waking up. i really like looking back through it, "this day in caitlin history" style. here is what i will write tonight:

October 14, 2009
Learned - how to lay tile floor (jose taught me)(they are building a library next to the clinic)
Liked - taking pictures with carolina; eating the magnificently cheesy pupusas i made for dinner

now, to be fair, i never use semicolons, but i thought it would help you understand.

chronicle of delights

here, i'll tell you why today was wonderful.

• upon waking i enjoyed toast with pear butter and lemon tea with honey
• in the fat of the morning i learned how to surf at a snug little bay
• at elevenses i took a break and drank/ate a frozen coconut
• more surfing, many waves caught, great success
• i lunched upon a fresh buttery fish stuffed with caramelized onions and some yellow sauce
  
• nap in hammock
  
• afternoon, more surfing, bigger waves caught, greater success
• at dusk, i relished a cool, creamy key lime pie popsicle
• nap on the way home
• epic shower (during which i discovered many bruises)
  
• now i shall make myself something hot with a lot of cheese in it
  
• mmm lotion
  

blow that conch shell

yesterday i held the first meeting of my young (mostly teenage) mothers group. out of 18 invitations sent, 4 women came, but that is ok. 18 would be too many. we talked about what they wanted to do in their lives apart from raising their kids. brenda (17) was in cosmetology school when she got pregnant , and once her baby is 1 year old, her family is going to support her to return and complete the two-year degree. alba (19) had a hard time coming up with something. is there anything you want to learn, anywhere you want to go, i asked her? i mentioned cooking and she said she would like to learn how to make different food from different cultures, not just typical salvadoran foods. she also wants to play sports. softball is the women's sport here. the father of alba's baby left her but still sends her money. alba added that she wanted to work in a factory to make money for her baby. sandra (22) is the outlier in this small group. her pregnancy was planned. she wants to learn how to make bread by hand. i told her about my efforts to do that last year, how sometimes my breads were "super feos." tatiana (18 i think) is also interested in playing sports. when i think about the options open to them versus the options that i have already enjoyed and will continue to enjoy, it is kind of embarrassing. they asked me what i wanted to do. i told them i wanted to travel, and even that is something they can't really do. apart from this sad/grateful feeling, the meeting was good, they were talkative, perhaps they will bring friends next week. the point of the group is to expand upon the basic sex ed they have received and talk about family planning and women's health.

similarly, two seventh grade girls came to the first meeting of the music video group. to be fair, the entire 8th grade had been let out early so they were gone. i'm not sure if i have explained this project to yall yet. basically, we are going to write parodies of popular songs so that they convey health information about, for example, dental hygiene or malnutrition. then we are going to plan out a music video, record the track, shoot the video, and BAM youtube sensation. the two girls who came seem psyched about it and hopefully, again, more people will show up next time. i taught them a little bit about my beloved rule of thirds for composing shots.

last night i finally made it to the fabled "bohemian district" of san salvador with some friends. the scene was quite familiar to me compared to my swanky fancy neighborhood. people with dreads! piercings! a sweaty dance party! why, this feels like a house party at wesleyan. at one point the music stopped and some guys started playing drums and a conch shell and a tortoise shell and maracas. why, this feels like drum circle in dc. it's nice to know that this scene exists in san salvador, but kind of sad that it is so far from where i live.

in other news, i can play the chords to midnight special on the guitar now!

snip snip

while showering today i found lots of red spots around my hip-al region. they look like some kind of bites. i shall ignore them. maybe i should stop computing on the floor.

we visited a woman today who is 38 weeks pregnant. she is 19 and has a 5 year old daughter. she was asking about sterilization. morena, the health promoter, was advising her to wait two years, that she might be lonely when her kids start school, that she might remarry and her new husband might want children. i understand that tubal litigation is a serious surgical procedure and that 19 is pretty young to undergo it. i said, why don't you just have your husband get a vasectomy? i cited the fact that at the pro familia clinic, tubal litigation is $38 while a vasectomy is $6, and that vasectomies are much less invasive. morena said the men here aren't ready for it, that they think it will make them less of a man. have you ever tried to convince them otherwise, i asked? no, i don't think they'd go for it, she said. and thus i have found a new challenge. i've actually been thinking about this for a long time, that vasectomy is the birth control option that makes the most sense for a committed couple who is done having children. check out these facts/reasons on tubal litigation vs vasectomy. if women spend years injecting hormones into their bodies to prevent pregnancy, it's the least their partner can do in return, right? if i convince one man to get a vasectomy i will be overjoyed. it's a tough sell in a machista culture. but isn't the prime audience for your manliness your wife? and won't your wife be elated to be able to stop taking pills or getting injections?

while we were leaving this house, a neighbor guy who had been watching the consult and listening intently to the vasectomy conversation yelled out to morena "i want to add that flower to my garden" (me). thanks, i'd love to join your harem, really, it sounds neat. let's get together sometime, just me and you and your wife, and talk about cutting your vas deferens. i'll bring diagrams.

goose watch 2k9

i could eat this picture
the water in the background is bubbling up from a tiny tiny underground spring
or i guess maybe a ruptured pipe

this weekend i went with some friends out to little mountain towns and to a friend's family finca, which used to be a coffee plantation. the big old house is still there. i spent a lot of time in the hammock on the patio staring off at the volcano peaks. the fresh air is so delicious compared to the diesel fumes in the city that often irritate my eyes and throat. here are some pictures from the grounds of the finca...

the old cockfighting ring
now there are beans growing in it

there's something i like about this picture

i've got all my geese in a row

work it

apart from hanging out at the finca, we went to ataco, where they were celebrating st francis of assisi's saint day. fireworks! youth symphony orchestra! polish sausages! i even consumed a beer to join in the revelry. it was a golden, a salvadoran beer, and it tasted like beer. surprise surprise. the group of people i was with was very interested in teaching me slang and hearing my wacky accent from spain, and i was very interested in learning. this was probably the first time i went out with a bunch of salvadorans. look, i'm making friends. and they aren't trying to introduce me to christ or kiss them on the mouth! they want me to sing karaoke to 80s songs from spain - one of my particular talents. friendship slam dunk. next weekend.

here's a fun fact: when someone has a whole bunch of kids, the kids are called a marimba because when they all line up they look like a marimba. i'd say the quiglets qualify as a marimba, or rather, qualified. everyone else kept growing when i stopped. curses!

a shocking expose

for years, i regarded yellow rice as "that fun rice with a positive attitude." but i just bought yellow rice. i put it in a pot and the water turned yellow. i'm sorry, what? yellow rice is just white rice with yellow dye? i rinsed it to try to get rid of some of the yellow, and although much yellow water flowed out, the rice did not become less yellow. i added this fraudulent rice to some wonderful coconut curry and that helped soothe my bitter disappointment. augh i still have half a pound left.

last night we went fancy salsa dancing at the fancy mall. i wore my best clothes, even changing out of a sports bra. i did not shower beforehand because obviously i would get dirty there, so i went dirty. big deal it's dark in there. first i danced with a freaky old dude who wore a white cap and smelled like 1940. then i danced with some salsa instructor and he was great and taught me things and smelled like the optimism of youth. later i danced with many others, including balding joe from rochester, new york, and elfen armando with his pointy lil ears. one guy spun me around so much that i reached a point where i could not withhold my hysterical laughter because what are you doing dude i'm going to throw up for sure. i also enjoyed that dude from the bronx via puerto rico who now works at the us embassy who wrote his number on a napkin for my benefit and insisted that he could teach me to salsa dance for free. wow really mister? i'd almost endure your sketchiness if you weren't hands down the worst dancer of all.

today i ate sugar cane for the first time. morena and i stopped by this old guy's house. he was lying in a hammock when we arrived, but at morena's insistence he went to cut us a stalk of sugar cane. he cut off the peel and gave me a 2 foot chunk and gave morena the rest, about 4 feet. you take a bite and chew the fibers and suck out the delicious sugar juices. then you spit out the fibers. check out all of these happy people eating sugar cane. an even older guy with no teeth and no shirt passed by carrying a cane and a machete. "sucking on sugar cane?" he asked us. "i can't suck on anything anymore," he said, then continued on. i ate about a foot of mine and had sugar crystals all over my hands and felt a little nauseous but mmm i'm glad there's a way to eat sugar as a "food." also, he was wearing a t-shirt from a hardware store in port washington, ny, hometown of the most enthusiastic section of my fan base. he said he had lived there and in maryland for some time. it's always interesting to hear about people's connections to the US, about their mother in brooklyn or their sister in suburban maryland. they have family where i have family.

yesterday was día del niño (children's day) in el salvador. this mostly meant that kids could eat free at a variety of chain restaurants. we had a little party for the micro health insurance program kids and their mothers. we even pulled out the radishes that we planted about a month ago, remember, faithful audience? some were quite robust and others a little spleeny. each one we pulled out was an oooh of approval or a laugh of derision. we split up the radishes among the women, so they can go home and make whatever it is you make with radishes.

ah crap there's a cockroach at the very top of the wall right now. too high! cannot reach on a chair! no rocks to throw! throwing shoes would dirty the wall! the waiting game begins, my crunchy foe.