So last Thursday, March 1st, was the start of what is called Immersion Days. Basically it’s our first adventure on our own as trainees. We go to visit a current volunteer at his/her site, stay with a host family and hang with them for two days and then spend one day with the volunteer. It’s called “immersion” because we are being completely immersed in the language, culture and country – the only gringa in the community.
So honestly I was really not looking forward to this because I had heard some horror stories, but my Immersion Days were pretty awesome – I definitely enjoyed it, although it wasn’t as rural as I had thought it was going to be. And that isn’t a complaint because rural kinda scares me. But anyways, traveling is an adventure for me, so on Thursday morning I set out on my adventure: to navigate the public buses to get to Sonsonate. It took about three hours and I had to take three buses and a ride in the back of a cattle truck, although luckily there were no cattle in the back. It was so funny because I had to ask the cobrador (guy who collects money on the buses) to make sure the bus was making the stop I needed, and he assured me it was, but of course everyone else also heard. So when we were getting close to my stop the driver starts giving me these looks like hey get ready this is your stop coming up. Then the guy next to me turns to me and asks, “You’re getting off at Cerro Verde, right? I’m getting off there too,” Meanwhile the driver is still giving me looks as the cobrador yells out our stop and glances my way. I felt very taken care of – there was no way I was going to miss my stop.
I met up with a Youth Development volunteer named Michelle. She lives in a town of about 9,000 people and mainly does work in the two schools there, one of which is a pretty nice high school. She teaches computer technology classes and has been able to help the community and schools raise enough money to put internet in the school computer labs, increase the number of computers in the labs and build an internet café in the community! She’s awesome. And she has a beautiful house that I only wish I could live in. It’s a brick house with three rooms and a small patio great for sitting out on the hammock.
After lunch we went to the neighboring community of Las Lajas, about 3,500 people. There I was to stay with a family, but they decided they couldn’t take me in because the mom had to work nights and she felt bad. So we asked the neighbors, who said they had no room. The next woman we asked made a billion excuses before hesitantly accepting: we’re very poor, we eat very simple food, we don’t have a toilet, we’re very religious and go to church every night. Well things worked out just fine. I stayed with Mirian, her husband, one of her daughters, and her two grandchildren, Claudia (13) and Mario (15). It was kind of awkward at first because it didn’t really make sense why I was there, but that didn’t last long because I asked Mirian to teach me to tortillar – make tortillas. Haha mine were so deformed and retarded.
On Friday I went to school with Claudia to observe her 7th grade English class and I participated in the PE class, which was fun – we ran laps around the fútbol field, ran races and then played fútbol. The schools here in El Salvador are in just a really bad state. This school had over 700 students divided into the morning and afternoon sessions, with only 8 teachers. The English teacher said he learned English in a training given by the Ministry of Education in their attempt to adhere to Plan 2021 – to implement English classes in all schools (grades 5 and up) by 2021. Also the school has been working with a local NGO and received a grant to get computers to start a computer lab. The school has a lab set-up, a teacher in place, but no computers because the NGO hasn’t been able to deliver the computers, since November.
Claudia and IBefore lunch I went to visit the local health promoter and the Nutrition Center, which is an amazing program. It receives and cares for children less than 5 years of age who are under-nourished. It’s like a day care program but focused on the health of the children. A doctor comes once a month and the staff gives info sessions to the parents of the children in the program on how to take better care of their children, nutrition, diet, hygiene, etc. In the afternoon I also visited the coffee cooperative that is a huge source of income within the community and I got some free coffee, which I deserved because I felt like the President of the Cooperative was interrogating me. He kept asking me questions about Peace Corps, what I was going to be doing and how I was qualified and in this strange manner.
Anyways, so the family I stayed with was very religious and we went to church both nights, but they are Evangelical and it was very different from my experience with the Evangelical service here in San Vicente with my host family. So the first hour of the service was singing, which wasn’t that bad because it was Hispanic Christian rock! Three guitarists with underlying pre-recorded Hispanic rhythms. Everyone was singing, clapping their hands, eyes closed and everything. Then the preacher got up and talked for about 45 minutes, very passionately I might add with eyes closed, yelling, making faces like me might cry, while people yelled “Amen” “Gloria a Jesus” “Alleluia!” After the homily everyone walked to the front of the church and started yelling, singing, screaming, crying and incomprehensibly. The pastor and others walked around laying on hands and about four people fell to the floor on the second night. It was SO loud!! And honestly I was a little scared. The second night the preacher came over and asked if I was Christian since I wasn’t participating in the yelling. Then another man got up in front of the whole congregation and flat out pointed to a man and was like, what’s your intention here? Then he turned to me asking me if I was Evangelical or Christian and I had to testify in front of everyone. But the thing here is: if I say I’m Christian it really just means Evangelical. Catholics are only known as Catholics and they don’t also call themselves Christians.
Other than the slightly frightening church experience I had a great time and felt like I had a great connection within the community already, probably because I went to the school and hung out and word just got out about the gringa named Natalie. On Saturday morning I headed back to Michelle’s house and hung out with her all day and then in the evening she had last year’s graduating seniors from high school (ages 18-20) come over for pizza and games. At first it was a little awkward but it ended up being SO much fun. There were 5 girls including Michelle and I and 5 guys. First we played Yahtzee which I don’t think I’ve ever played before but man is it fun. Then we played Egyptian Ratscrew, some crazy card game Michelle knew that involved slapping your hand in the cards whenever there was a 5, 10, or pair of numbers. After we all caught on and everyone was slapping each other all we did was laugh. It was great and I thought it was an awesome bonding experience.
The next day Michelle was teaching classes so her friend Adolfo took me to this beautiful lookout point by the Santa Ana Volcano (that erupted 2 years ago) overlooking the crater lake there. It was so beautiful. After Michelle finished classes we drove into San Salvador, got some lunch and parted ways. It was a great weekend, more of a break from training than anything else because I was able to do what I wanted to do, not what I was told to do.
2 comments:
How did you know to do that stuff--like go to the nutrition center and the coffee co-op? And was the family you stayed with, the third one you asked, just random, like Michelle didn't know them or anything?
Where did you sleep? What was your bed made out of? (What's your bed made out of at home?)
well the family was random but it turned out that the neighbor attended michelle's computer classes. but yeah we just asked a group of kids at the school if they had room in their house.
well that's what we talk about / do in training so i'm always interested to see what other communities have and coffee...HELLO!!! but i was just like hmm... what can i do to get to know the community more and get an idea of what goes on. at immersion i slept on a real bed in a room by myself and at home it's like a thin foam mattress on a metal bed frame, so there is a metal bar digging in my back all night.
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