Stove Delivery, Un Baile, and Map Making

For me, the beginning of March has been a very challenging time in site, filled with letdowns, trials, and difficulties, even with the simplest tasks. I’ve experienced several evenings without electricity (during this time of year when the sugar cane is being burned, it’s common that the power lines get burned as well), gone five days without running water (let me tell you, with 90˙ heat, daily bathing is necessary), and even was charged by one of my community members with not accomplishing anything in my six months here in site (regardless that I know I have successfully executed projects, that indictment pierced my heart and made me question myself).

But, as with all things in life, there are ups and downs, successes and failures, and regardless of how frustrating times may become, the tension always breaks, things get easier, and you learn to laugh, even if it’s at yourself. In Peace Corps, though, these emotions seem to be amplified. Maybe it’s because we volunteers are out here alone, maybe it’s because we struggle daily to express ourselves in a foreign language and to be understood, and maybe, just maybe, we need to be pushed to the limit to fully recognize our successes (no matter how small) and to appreciate this unique time in our lives. No offense you all you back at home in your offices, but my job kicks your job’s butt.

Stove Delivery
For those of you who religiously read my blog (who I think are pretty exclusively my mother, father, Marsha, and Janet) you know I have been yapping on about Stove Team International for the last two months. In short, it’s a tremendous NGO based in Oregon with factories in several Central American countries that sell efficient, wood burning stoves that use significantly less fire wood and produce around 70% less smoke than traditional open fires. These stoves are even so efficient, and bien calientita, that you can boil a quart of water in just eight minutes. (In case you aren’t sure, that’s pretty impressive for campo cooking standards.)

Back in February, Stove Team came to my community, as my boss Rolando describes it, tucked up in the western corner of the country near Guatemala, to perform a demonstration. The demonstration itself was sort of well attended by eighteen women, not counting the three who walked out when they found out the stoves weren’t free. (I blame the remesa mentality for that, but that’s a topic for another day.) Of the eighteen attendees, fifteen ended up placing an order, making a deposit, and making a big investment. I ended up selling two other stoves to my extended host family members, making our first order a solid seventeen stoves.

After allowing two weeks for the interested people to provide me with a 50% deposit, I arranged free transport from the cooperative in our canton and we set the date of March 2^nd to pick them up. (Getting free transport is made easier when a volunteer from a neighboring community has successfully received it before you. It’s hard to say no when you come in saying “I know you did this for Tim, can you please do the same for me?”)

The night before I was set to head out all the way to Sonsonate to pick up my community’s stoves with my friendly cooperative driver, I went to confirm we were all squared away for a 7:30AM departure, you know, just to be sure. Lucky for me I went to check, because the cooperative had completely forgotten they had donated the services of one of their pickups and a driver for me the following day. In the end it all worked out, but only after several phone calls and a personal visit (not quite) begging a driver to work on his day off.

So, 7:30AM, we were off. The ride to Sonsonate is about two hours from where I live, and in order to prevent getting stuck in city traffic in the city of Sonsonate, we took the long way around Lake Coatepeque up and over the mountains. It was a gorgeous drive.

Finally, after asking quite a few people for directions and passing the most western looking Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints complete with plush green grass and a basketball court (the Mormons have mucho dinero and build churches like these, extremely out of place and protected like fortresses, all over the country), we arrived at Stove Team International’s El Salvador head quarters. As I paid the minimum 50% deposit on the seventeen stoves, two Stove Team workers loaded up our truck, tied everything down, and before we knew it we were back on the road again.

Once in San Luis, it didn’t take long for word to spread that the stoves had arrived and that they were sitting in my house, waiting to be picked up. Many women excitedly came by, proud with the rest of their payment and with sons and husbands in tow, to pick up their new prized possession. Each stove, though “portable”, weighs about 75 pounds. I was impressed by the men, throwing the stoves on their backs and carrying them al lomo, with faces contorted back to their homes. The women, on the other hand sauntered home to fire up their new stove.

I am pleased to report that all the women I have spoken to (notice they are all women, men don’t cook here) love the new addition to their kitchens. They are always pleased to remark how quickly it heats up, how little smoke it produces, and how little wood is needed to cook the daily pot of beans. Stove Team doesn’t lie.

Un Baile
My friend and municipality mate, Bri, is a Youth Development volunteer (a special breed of their own, really; Yorda in Morocco can attest to that) and has been working with an amazingly active and motivated youth group in her community for the last three months. In addition to selling a local delicacy known as pasteles (think little fried dumplings made of corn dough and stuffed with peppers and potatoes) weekly to raise money to provide food packets to shut-ins of their community, they decided they wanted to undertake the challenging of putting on a dance. So, after two months of planning, hiring the best mobile DJ in the western part of the country—Discomovil High Power, flyering all the busses in the Chalchuapa terminal and pre-selling tickets, the big day finally arrived.

Myself and two other PCVs went into Bri’s community early last Saturday to help her youth group and her set up for the main event. But, these kids, whose group name translates to “Youth Working to Serve Their Community”, had everything under control. Be sure to check out my pictures on Facebook to get a real sense of the grandiosity of this event, especially out in the rural campo of El Salvador.

With the mountain of 24 speakers piled high, the strobe lights and disco ball strung, and the dance area partitioned off, Bri, Marissa, Liliana and I were free to head out and eat our pre-dance energy meal of pupusas and curtido before getting all “Salvied” up in our dance outfits. Bri and I both put on our Salvadoran best, though we skipped the makeup; her host sisters tried pretty hard to paint our faces, though.

The dance started at 8PM, and like most dances, no one was grooving as of 8:15PM, and we were wasting precious DJ time. Bri asked Marissa, Liliana and myself to kick off the dancing and get the party started, so, being the gringas as we are, completely accustomed to being constantly stared at and watched, we strutted on out there and busted a move. By the time Black Eye Peas “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” came on (I’m pretty sure the DJ put it on for our benefit) the baile was officially under way.

My dancing energy maxed out after over an hour and a half of straight dancing. At this point, I switched with Bri on door duty and let her go enjoy the fruits of her labor. Door duty meant that I got to hold all the money (which of course I love) and though there was a huge crowd, I felt safe knowing that there were four national policemen with huge guns in their hands and handguns on their hips behind protecting me. (Bri’s site underwent a tragedy last month involving a murder of one of their community members. The police were there as a preventative measure.)

By midnight, Marissa, Liliana and I were spent. Bri gave us leave and let us head back to her host family’s house to hit the hay. Of course, Bri held out until the bitter end, helped make sure everything was squared away, and I was barely aware of when she finally came in to go to bed at 3:30AM.

All I have to say to Bri is congratulations on a job well done. Her community was extremely participative and appreciative of the efforts of the youth group and of Bri herself. Based on Bri’s experience, I think a baile would be a great idea to get people involved in their community and have a night to just enjoy themselves. Too bad my community is over 75% evangelical Christian, a religion in which dancing is a big no no. I’m just glad I got to experience the success and unity of Bri’s community.

Map Making
OK, so I admit I’m not a topographer and I’m definitely not an artist, but really, how hard can painting a world map be? Huge numbers of Peace Corps Volunteers, around the world, not just here in El Salvador complete a world map project during their two years of service as something tangible to leave behind. Heck, there is even a globally used manual on how to go about painting a world map, the materials you need, and how much it should cost. Easy as pie, right?

Not so much.

First and foremost, a huge thank you to all who have contributed to making this project possible. Without you, the students of Centro Escolar Caserío San Luis would still be studying in a school without maps.

So, to tell the story from the beginning, I was considering some projects that I could begin to work on during my sister Dana’s visit these last two weeks of March. I needed something fun, something we could get the kids involved in, something that could be completed within two weeks, and something flexible enough to allow us to see a bit of El Salvador as well. After scouring my handy tech CD (PC resource tool with mountains of already successfully complete projects) I decided that not only a World Map Project, but also El Salvador Map Project, too, would be perfect. From all the materials I read, this should take no more than six days total. Perfect!

Right away, I headed to my school director and asked him permission to use two walls to paint a world map and a map of El Salvador. He thought the request was a bit strange, but agreed nonetheless. We selected the two walls, one above the outdoor student sink, and one on the face of the school. Because the school is made of brick, that meant I would have to add one more step to my map project process. I would have to cement over the brick to make a flat surface. No big deal, my Dad taught me how to use power tools, I can definitely cement a wall. Haha. That’s funny.

Before getting started, I dutifully made my shopping list, asked for help from two parents who help me with everything, Don Mercedes and Niña Morena, to cement the wall, and got down to business. Don Mercedes let me know that the ADESCO had a half bag of cement open from a project they hadn’t yet finished and that I could have it to smooth out the wall. Awesome. Saving pisto. I then made my first of many trips to the pueblo and hardware store and made my first purchases of paint scrapers, a level, tape measure, and cement trowl.

On Sunday, having absolutely no clue of what I was doing, I headed to the school with Don Mercedes and Niña Morena. The wall that we needed to cement over was brick and painted over with oil-based paint, which meant that there was nothing for the cement to latch onto. It would simple fall off. So, what we needed to do was chip the paint off the wall. That sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Easier said than done. The three of us ended up literally taking a machete to the wall and chipped off all the paint.

After about an hour, the wall was sufficiently defaced and ready to be cemented. Believe it or not, though we were making a hug racket and literally destroying government property (though of course we also repaired it) not one person stopped by to ask what we were doing. Strange, don’t you think? I helped mix the sand, cement and water, which as it turns out is an art, not a formula. Again, I’m learning. Morena taught me how to repellar and within another hour, the wall was cemented, smoothed, and looked great. Without the help of Morena and Mercedes, this project would have been down the toilet.

I then spent two days scraping paint off the wall where I will be painting the world map. The paint on the wall was water based, layered, and peeling terribly. My thoughts were (purely a Dan train of thought) if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. Sure, I may be swearing along the way (it’s a good thing the kids don’t understand English), but it will be amazing when it’s done.

Finally, after the scraping was done, I was more than ready to get down to business priming the wall. So, with my white oil-based paint and four-inch brush, I started stoking away. It looked absolutely awful. The instruction packet didn’t mention anything like this. What am I doing wrong? Besides, Dan taught me to paint; there was no way the quality of this job would be acceptable. I’m painting a map for these kids. It’s got to be done right.

Frustrated beyond belief I packed up my supplies, cleaned my tools (which is a total paint in the butt with oil paints) changed my clothes and headed back to the hardware store, for literally the fourth time in a week. Once finally in the pueblo after a forty-minute bus ride, I was greeted by my friends at the hardware store, they chuckled and asked, “¿Que necesita hoy, Rosellen?” To clean up the mess that was my first attempt at priming, I needed some sandpaper and a paint roller kit. $4.80 later, I had what I needed and was ready to get back to work. Of course by the time I got back, the school gate had been locked and it was starting to get dark, so the work was left to the next day.

Finally, after sanding down my first attempt, I poured some well-stirred paint into my tray and got rolling. Success. The roller was just the tool I needed to get nice, even coverage. Granted it took two coats, but it was a huge improvement. I left the primer to dry the rest of the morning, then returned in the afternoon with my measurements, level, tape measure, ruler, pencil and tape to mark off the area that will become the map. The level proved to be my best investment so far in the project, making drawing the lines simple. I taped off my lines and painted the base ocean blue on which we will eventually be painting the map itself.

Now only five days until my sister’s arrival, one of my map areas in prepped and ready to go, and the other will be easier to do having learned from experience. By the time Dana and I are back in my site, we will be good to go to complete this map project.

Be sure to check out a step-by-step walk through of my map project in photos on Facebook. So far the pictures aren’t too dynamic, but I promise they will get better with time.

So, here I am, now six months into my time in site. Everyday I continue to learn new things, new words, new foods, things about myself and things I can improve on as a person. My experience with the stoves has taught me that a little strong and sustained interest is better than none. Bri’s dance has taught me something as seemingly insignificant as a dance can really unite a community and rejuvenate spirits after a neighborhood tragedy. The map is teaching me, like so many things here, to slow down and have patients. There is time, no need to rush. Things will get done in their own time.

I can’t wait to see what the coming eighteen months have in store for me, but I need to remember to let them come, as they will. If I don’t slow down and relax a bit, I just might let my whole PC experience fly by without really appreciating it. Tranquila, chica. Tranquila.

A special thanks goes out to all those who are helping to make my Map Project possible. Also, thanks to Marsha for a great surprise letter. Mail really has the ability to brighten an entire day.