Feb. 24th

Feb. 24th 2010
So here we go… now getting close to week 4. Things are starting to become more normal and the shock is wearing down… but definitely not out. We are all more comfortable now.. we know the bus routes, we know our host families and we are at ease in our communities. But that will all soon change. In about another month we will move to new host families in our permanent sites and we will have to go through the readjustment phase once more. It breaks you down… but you will always come back up stronger.
There are a few things that keeping coming up in daily life here that I never really considered or thought would be issues back in the states. Most of us keep getting the feeling that the Salvadorians feel very inferior or insecure to us gringos. We see it on several different levels. In our homes… our families are constantly checking out our food and what we eat and don’t eat… and then they will hesitantly ask if we like their food. If they see us going into our rooms and not spending time with them they will ask us if we are happy there or if there is something wrong. On a larger scale, today we visited a community where the town health promoter has been trying to change people’s habits for years in order for them to be healthier and they never listened. Last year their first Peace Corps Volunteer arrived and he immediately changed things. Infant mortality rate dropped, cases of diarrhea fell significantly, and the general overall health improved. In these rural towns, Americans are on the same level as god almost. Whatever we say… they do. They will believe anything we tell them, which kind of makes our jobs a lot easier.
Yesterday we went to the next town over where a medicine lady practices. I really did not know much about what they did until she explained it. It was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Her specialty is curing children of sicknesses. For example, mothers will bring their sick children to this lady and she will crush leaves up and add an oil to them and rub it all over the baby. She then rubs an egg around their body. She then follows that by cracking the egg in a glass of water. If the egg is yokey the baby has one thing.. if the egg is “cooked” ‘the baby has another. She also explained that the oil and leaves must remain on the baby for 3 days before it is cured… she said the reason the babies get sick is because a person with bad spirits or a drunk has looked directly into their eyes. I sat there and couldn’t believe what this lady was telling me and that mothers actually believe this garbage. Our teacher said that this is common practice and so many children die each year in El Salvador because of it.
This past weekend my host mother was determined to show me how to wash my own laundry. Let me start off my saying… I will never ever complain about doing laundry once I get back home. Each item has to be done one at a time. You lay the clothes out on a rock and rub them down with a bar of soap. You then proceed to rub the item together and on the rock underneath… you continue to poor buckets of water onto them until it’s clean. Jeans take longer than underwear, but they are equally as painful. It makes you want to wear your clothes several times before you wash them. After about 20 minutes of washing the clothes as I took instructions from my madre… she more or less pushed me out of the way because she could not handle my lack of skill… after she was done cleaning a pair of jeans or a shirt… she was out of breath! It’s not easy work. Something tells me I will be paying a villager to do mine once I move to my permanent site. .. In the future I will most definitely not put clean clothes in the hamper because I don’t want feel like putting them away
Right now I have one more shirt that I have not yet worn since being in El Salvador… I’m going to keep it that way because I want to be able to smell home. Once they are clean…the tide smell is gone!

Tomorrow I am off to spend 4 days in another village with a current Peace Corps Volunteer who has been here for a year. I will take a 3 hour bus ride to another province and meet the other kid there. I have to sleep in a hammock each night and I’m not looking forward to it. I will sleep 2 nights at his house and 1 night with a random family in the community.