hot rocks

to be quite honest, i have been lazy on the blogfront. i don't have internet in my house anymore, but i'll admit that i have been visiting the internet. obviously i have been visiting the internet. it's like that song, ain't no mountain high enough. just because there are about 6 cafes with internet within a 5 minute walk of my house, doesn't mean i'm going to spend $1.50 on some coffee product when i can sit on the ground in some creepy industrial breezeway and steal an unsecured wireless signal. the point is, i'm sorry i've been lazy. i promise renewed blog enthusiasm. and more pictures from my lovely new camera!

we have two possible dengue fever cases in las delicias. a 10 year old boy and an 8 year old girl who live a few houses away from each other have each presented very high fever, headache behind the eyes, joint pain, and general looking like death. this is very bad news. there is no treatment for dengue - just supportive care, cold compresses, acetaminophen to reduce the fever. this type of dengue is called classic dengue and generally doesn't kill people. if you get dengue a second time, it can be hemorraghic dengue, and that is when people die. malaria mosquitos bite at nighttime, but dengue mosquitos bite during the day. maybe i will start wearing mosquito repellent. probably not though.

in my house, i have had great difficulty with mosquitos at night. my room is the only room that doesn't have a window screen, but i am trying to remedy that. usually i get ready for bed, get all calm and tranquil, turn off the light, lie down, and then i hear the buzzing. mf. first far away. then all up in my ear. i turn on the light and crouch on my bed in leaping position with great bloodlust. these mosquitos are not like american mosquitos. they are very fast and very good at hiding. it usually takes about 10 minutes to catch one. i turn in frantic circles and clap my hands together but they are so damn fast. if i close the window and the door, i suffocate from heat. i think they can bite through sheets and clothes. last night i tried to go out and sleep on the hammock wrapped in a blanket cocoon, but there were mosquitos there too. finally i remembered/imagined some tip that you can rub dryer sheets on your skin to repel mosquitos. i did this and put the dryer sheet next to my pillow and fell asleep. i have about 30 bites from the last week, but i'm not sure if they are mosquito bites or flea bites from the dogs at the clinic. today i smell like dryer.

yesterday i went to a town called suchitoto. outside of town there is a waterfall called los tercios, which is made of hexagonal rocks. no one knows why. probably some volcanic action. there was no water because it's dry season, but the rocks were really cool. look at them.

these are the rocks that didn't make it into the waterfall

italo is on top of the "water"fall

ferris wheel seats

"in this house we want a life free of violence towards women"
this stencil was on almost every house in suchitoto

the lake is in the background

plaza

a quick collection of photos from volunteers

i am so helpful

kids from the government sponsored "infantile wellness center" aka daycare

ohhhh that water is full of mosquito larvae

my lunch when i dont bring a lunch - hot tortilla, tomato and cheese

no mercy

it's my life

welp

HELLO!

-i don't have internet anymore
-i have truffles and chocolate and waffles from belgium - thanks nick and owen
-there have been giant gangs of volunteers, great hordes
-owen is here
-yesterday we jumped off of many waterfalls
-later we ate burritos and even later pineapple
-i lied i already ate the waffles from belgium they are gone

in the dark of the night

chriiiiistmas. i stayed with morena and her family in las delicias for christmas. we did the typical salvadoran christmas things, like eating chicken sandwiches and bashing pinatas and setting off fireworks. morena's father in law climbed this mango tree and brought down a backpackfull of mangoes.

jungle CHRISTMAS

mango CHRISTMAS

beans + avocado + cheese + CHRISTMAS

i was excited to see las delicias at night. darkness was everywhere. it is easy to forget that night should mean that you can't see where you're going. i was concerned about the large piles of animal poop that i happily avoid during the daylight. there was a half moon. you pay a lot more attention to the moon when you see it as a source of light. and lots of stars, mmm, many stars. it renewed my desire to spend at least one lunar cycle in a place where you can see all of the stars, very far away from cities. apart from the darkness, the village was very much as i expected. the biggest nightlife hotspot was the evangelical church, which was much more popular than the catholic church, probably because they have better music. i went to the catholic mass with morena and her family and i zoned out real fast. i stopped kneeling during the kneely parts and clapping during the clappy parts because i really hate clapping. after clapping for about a minute i usually get nauseous or dizzyish and have to stop. i also did not participate in the part where everyone lines up to get their cookies. man now i sound like a church party pooper. the proper praying pose here is to rest your forehead on your hand and look pained, but it's hard to tell who is moved by the spirit and who is asleep.

soccer practice CHRISTMAS

fernando jose, morena's son, plays with a sparkler

GOOOOO CHRISTMAS

mostly we ate and chatted and napped in hammocks. then morena's father in law, rupe, starting telling stories of yore about how he escaped a gang massacre where 120 people were killed, some by decapitation. he continued describing various atrocities, such as finding human heads in trash piles or watching someone get shot down from the top of a tree and falling to the ground. was this during the civil war? i asked him. no, he said, this was 2 years ago, maybe 3. uhhh what. apparently it happened in sonsonate, where i've been a few times. fernando jose, who is 4, wandered in while rupe was telling this story, and morena sent him away saying "the adults are talking." it just struck me as such a quotidian normal thing to say when adults want privacy, but i haven't heard it in the context of talking about surviving a mass gang murder.

a fruit is worth a thousand words

look how cute these bananas are! fingerling bananas!

remember the paint cards from my old house? i started putting them up on my wall here and then all the power went out and i spent half an hour taping them up in the dark. this is what it looked like when the lights came back on. i can't tell whether i like it. i think i do. it reminds me of tetris.

the guy who lives next to the clinic came up to me very determinedly as i was leaving today, shook my hand, and handed me a guayaba, a fruit which he grows in his yard. i asked him if it was ripe, and he said yes yes yes. then he shook my hand again. people often give me fruits and vegetables, but it's generally it's multiples, not a single unit of fruit all alone. on the way home, as i was examining it for ripeness, i noticed that there were some letters on it.

as far as i can tell, the letters spell "ME OTS." what the hell does that mean? i also tried to read it upside down as "STOEW" but the E is backwards so it cannot be. OTS is not a word in spanish. or english i guess. if the O was supposed to be a G, it could be some kind of shorthand for ME GUSTAS ("i like you"). this is pretty likely. what other messages do you carve into fruits? "thanks for helping me move?" "your baby needs to see a doctor about that rash?" maybe he ran out of space. why not choose a larger guayaba? improperly executed. i don't think i've ever received a fruit with a cryptic message carved into it before. now what do i do? i really don't think it's ripe yet, for one. he also added that anytime i want another one he will pick it for me. maybe i have to pick another one to get the vowels for this one? maybe it was because i wore a normal bra today instead of the usual sports bra.

dashing through the snow

my organization started renting a house for volunteers and i moved in too. the house is gorgeous and clean and breezy and light and i float through it with gusto. i am so delighted. sure, i am giving up some privacy to live 24/7 with volunteers, but come on, look:

this is my new secret garden

look how much fun!

the house is in a very tranquil neighborhood where instead of waking up to roosters i wake up to some other kind of bird, but i'm sure it's a more refined bird, since this area is fancier. also, we can see the brand new skyscraper called "the future tower" from our backyard. the future tower lights up at night just like philly's cira center. it is quite pretty. the future tower unfortunately emanates muzak during some evening hours. however, the next-door neighbors have a very elaborate fountain/waterfall system in their backyard which provides the soothing sound of moving water.

the most important part of the move is my new location relative to a special landmark. today i went to get a lighter and on my way back chatted up the guardian there. his name is ruben. they were having a party with diplomats and i asked him to invite me next time. he laughed but i was serious. i told him i can be the diplomat of a tiny, ethnically ambiguous country so no one will doubt my presence in such an esteemed hall. i bet christmas will be a big deal there.

comes from somewhere

i have recently discovered what lou discovered on his trip to china in january 2001: poinsettias are trees. like lou, i was overflowing with smiles. poinsettia trees are in full bloom now in el salvador. of course they are trees. of course they are trees that bloom in december. this is obvious now, but i had never spent much thought on the origin of the ubiquitous christmastime poinsettia-wrapped-in-cellophane. the more you know.

today a woman in the community was telling me excitedly about how her 4 year old and 7 year old daughters went with her to cut coffee. sure, that is amusing, children make amusing day laborers. she then excitedly showed me pictures of the event on her cameraphone. i thought, this is some kind of moment of clarity. you might ask, why does she have a cameraphone if she makes roughly $1.50 an hour cutting coffee, a job that will not last more than a few weeks? do not ask that question. she has some other inconsistent sources of income of course - selling handicrafts, maybe money from family in the US. but the moment is typical. people with dirt floors may have televisions, and sometimes dvd players. this confuses americans who visit. do not be confused. if you live in a house with a dirt floor in a village in el salvador, your desire to connect to the larger world is probably very strong. best way to do that? radio, tv, sweet american pirated dvds and their fanciful worlds of pretend. it's the easiest way to connect to the outside reality and also join in the outside fantasy, the promise that with all your new shoes and gadgets and t-shirts you can forget about the fact that you went into early labor from shock because you saw someone get shot outside of your house.

yesterday i met an 11 year old girl named marta. she was very bright, going into 6th grade, but she said sometimes she didn't have time to study. why's that? she gets up at 5am so she can make coffee for her mom before she goes to work. then she has to make breakfast for her siblings, clean up, soak the corn, go to the mill and get the corn milled, make tortillas, etc etc. 11 year olds - busy little beavers! she has an older brother but obviously he cannot do any of that as it is girl work. she said she liked drawing, and that although some people found it difficult, it was quite easy for her. i snuck her two big H1N1 posters from the training we were giving and told her to do some drawings on the blank side and come show me. i asked her what she drew with, and she said a pencil and sometimes colors but she didn't have any colors right now. it's hard not to feel guilty that at her age i was taking weekly art lessons and my mom brought me to meet the town watercolorist and i had all kinds of brushes and pastels and colors and encouragement and marta has a pencil and no time to draw. well, now i have a box of colored pencils with her name on them, and depending on how the epidemic goes, a lot more H1N1 posters.