Jules + El Salvador = Awesome

Tell me this doesn’t sound like a Hollywood movie pitch: The hip, urban, New York ad executive comes to a third world country. She eats, drinks, sleeps local culture... and survives to tell about it!

So as you know, HC didn’t end up chilling down in ES with GC. She came, she saw, she conquered. But didn't end up helicoptering into my site, which is literally what was planned. If you're confused, don't worry, I didn't really tell many people about it. But just know that it would have been an amazing 15 minutes of fame... that ultimately petered out.

However, a month later, I got the next best thing - Jules! That’s right, add Jules to the “I actually came to El Salvador” club.



It was a crazy week. Because of the Fourth of July festivities and some community projects I had lined up, I had to give her a whirlwind tour of the country and PC life.

We kicked it off with a few days in the capital for the Fourth. Ah, the Fourth. Sort of an extra special day for those living outside the states. Quick sidenote, among other events and debauchery for the weekend, part of the excitement is for the annual inter-program soccer tournament, in which Rural Health would defend its title and right to hold the PC Cup for another year (double sidenote: just like the Patriots and my own fantasy football career, we pulled it off). Two years in a row. Victory is so, so sweet.



Anyway, while I was off playing, Jules was doing what she does best - networking! I was always glad to glance towards the sidelines and see her mixing it up with my friends. But at one point, it dawned on me that I may have been giving her a distorted impression of what PC life is all about (gringos converging on the capital, eating taiwanese food, going out dancing). But I think her time in my community quickly erased any notions of a posh PC existence...

So, off to my community or as it's called here, the campo. For a New Yorker and someone who admitted in confidence once she got here that she'd only been camping once in her life, Jules did great. She took bucket showers, ate beans and tortillas, interacted with my neighbors and local kids who sometimes, I fear, think they actually live in my house, and she got a good taste of campo life.

Here's Jules teaching a few bichas how to paint happy little trees



In addition to giving her best impersonation of Bill Cosby's Picture Pages on my front porch, Jules also helped me out with the graduation of my latest computer class. Man, I had a really good group this time around. I almost didn't want to let them go. As usual, for their last day we held a typing and math competition and I let them eat cake. Good times.









She also had the chance to take part in a huge event for my tiny little community - a two-day soccer tournament we've been planning for the past few months.







After that, it was my turn for a little R and R. We took off for a few days at the beach. Oh beach, how I adore you. There's nothing like drinking a few beers and relaxing in the sand to get your mind back on track...









After we got our fill of maritime adventure, we headed up to Juayua for a few days to visit Lauren and see a little of coffee country.





Lauren just recently was awarded a SPA grant (small project assistance) from USAID and is in the middle of a series of nutrition and health workshops for the women in her community. She also was able to build/buy two super efficient wood burning ovens for a nutrition center and her local school. Very cool. These ovens are made by the same organization that produces the wood stoves I've been promoting in my community and are pretty damn amazing.

My role for the two-day event was to teach 60 women my mom's famous banana bread recipe, which by now is spreading like wildfire. We divided them up into groups and got to work mixing up batches, as well as mixing in a bunch of info about basic nutrition and variety in their families' diets. Hey mom, bet you never thought your famous recipe would become world famous!

Most of the nutritional information we were teaching might seem pretty basic to your average american. You guys probably could tell me what the food pyramid is and what makes up a healthy diet. Or what a healthy amount of fat and sugar we're supposed to have in our diets. But when you live in a tin shack on top of a mountain, and have spent most of your life without electricity eating a combination of the same four dishes day in and day out, these messages aren't so old.

In addition to the baking classes, a fellow volunteer named Heather led self-defense classes, which I've got to say leads for one of the funnier images I've seen over the past year and a half. Here we are, in Lauren's über religious site, teaching the women to scream and punch and throw flying elbows. It was probably the loudest they've ever raised their voices.







And then off to the waterfalls...

Jules was visibly not psyched to hike in flip flops



But I think in the end, she'd be the first to say it was worth it



I think if one looks hard enough, you might find an analogy or two about El Salvador in that...

Mexico vs. El Salvador - June 6, 2009

Scalped ticket... $30

El Salvador replica jersey, outside the stadium... $5

Being in the sea of white and blue filling the largest stadium in Central America when El Salvador took down Mexico... priceless

Turn your speakers up, the announcers are amazing...

Goal 1

Goal 2

Nicaragua... a thumb and a pair of sunglasses are all you need

Now I get it. That feeling parents have when their kids come running up to them demanding to know who they love more. And all parents can do is stare down at them with that concerned look and equally concerned tone of voice, assuring them they love them equally, yet secretly patting themselves on the back for dodging another bullet. A job well-done.

Why am I talking about all this? Cause it's been a month now since Lauren and I spent that crazy week in Nicaragua and my children are here at my feet with those same questions. And what do I do? Oh Sal, why can't you be more like your brother Nica? If only you were a little cleaner. And more tropical. And had monkeys. You live so close to Nica, why don't you have monkeys? And so many people! How can you fit so many people in such a small country?

Not that I don’t love El Salvador. Or that I'm unhappy here. Totally the opposite. It’s just that Nicaragua really is a magical place. Volcanoes and monkeys and islands and a lake almost the size of El Salvador with sharks in it. Sharks that eat people. And incredibly cheap food. I sorta loved my time there more than life.

But why?

Well, imagine coming from a tiny country with the highest population density in Central America to the country with the lowest population density, where empty lots are filled with local kids playing pickup baseball, where the government made literacy and protecting the poor and the environment a top priority, and with colors and colonial architecture that just blow you away. Add to that the challenge Lauren and I took on, to go there and back using just our thumbs, and you can start to see why it was such a memorable trip.

By the way, we pulled it off. The hitchhiking part. Didn't take a single bus. Crossed El Sal with one kickass big rig, snagged a ride in another at the border and crossed Honduras in a few hours, and then shot down to Nica. Seriously fun.

In the back of our heads we knew our luck was going to run out at some point, but somehow, it never did. With every ride, we realized we were meeting the most amazing people along the way.

Truckers running loads of bottle caps destined for distant Costa Rican Pepsi factories...

Families driving a Toyota Previa from Florida and moving back to downtown, dirty Managua after seven years living in West Palm Beach...

Shoe factory owners who just bought their own island, conduct business in Iran (what?!!!) and who filled me in on the Sox-Yankees brawl the night before...

Real estate brokers with bachelors degrees from VMI, enlightening us on the mad rush for Nica property (how does $1000 for a beachfront property sound?)...

Government water inspectors telling us all about how the Nicaraguan government cares for its people and natural resources...

Rich PR directors recalling their days studying business at Babson and doing 90 down the highway in a silver RAV4 that looked just like Kate’s...

Two guys driving around in a minibus loaded with gumballs and children’s toys filling up supermarket vending machines...

A gringo who moved down to the southern coast three years ago to get married and open up an auto shop...

The ambassador to Palestine, in a hawaiian shirt, talking on two cell phones, going to buy some wicker furniture...

A trucker who went to the University of Arkansas and drove us 30 minutes out of his way so he could keep singing Lauren’s mom’s alma mater.

You may not believe it, but most of those were in the same day.

Actually, for a quick taste of a typical big rig experience, check out the video...

You should have seen her 30 seconds before, passed out in the cab. You don't believe me? Here ya go...



At every juncture, Lauren and I went for the cheapest, simplest option. Most nights we slept in hotel hammocks for 2 bucks, or on a windy dock on the beach, or just in the sand wrapped in blankets. We couch surfed and rewarded people's generosity with harmonicas and candy bars Lauren brought along with us. On our way back we started to calculate how much we actually spent and were kinda shocked to see that we'd only spent 50 bucks each.

It was an incredible week.

A shot of a typical $2 "bedroom"



I have way more to say, but I've been sitting on this too long and I gotta get this up. As usual, I'll probably edit the hell out of this. But for now, enjoy the pics and random thoughts...

What's a hitchhiking tale, without the obligatory hitchhiking self portrait?



So we started off with a magic ride across Honduras. Piece of cake. A border cop flagged down a trailer for us and when I woke up, we were at the Nicaraguan border. There we started up a conversation with a family and ended up snagging a miracle ride all the way to Managua. A family coming back from the states, driving all the way down from West Palm Beach. Crazy.

They ended up being an amazing group of people. Super energetic, super positive. I think they were jesus freaks. That might have done it. In the span of a few hours, we ended up getting 3 flat tires. We'd repair it, and then get moving again. Then an hour later, another. Repair that, then not 5 minutes later, another blowout. But the third time we were out of spares. So the father hitchhiked into town, found a tire shop, ended up trading his gold watch for a tire, took the bus back out to us, and then off we went again. Crazy. Here's a shot of one of our pit stops



What's kind of funny is every time we blew out a tire, I ended up being the one to change it. Hmm, any connection between that and the blowouts?

Lauren usually entertained the kids. She's good at that. We also collected mangos across the highway



Later in the car, after stuffing our faces with mangos, we handed out floss and gave a dental hygiene charla. Go rural health!





After we passed through Managua, we spent a few days in Masaya, couch surfing at this amazing house and taking day trips to nearby towns and Granada, an incredibly beautiful city. Bright colors, colonial architecture, little league baseball in every open lot. So fun.

Lauren picked up a bug, but was a trooper. I, on the other hand, am a jerk who likes to take photos. For your enjoyment...

Lauren's stomach problems 1



Stomach problems 2



Stomach problems 3



But she recovered.

In Granada, the colors and architecture were amazing.



¡Viva la poesia!



Hammock tree? Sure, why not.



Central cathedral



After that, we headed down to Rivas and onto the ferries to the Island of Ometepe. Our buddy Brad had said this was a pretty cool place and man, that kid was dead on. Imagine an island made up of two enormous volcanoes, surrounded by an immense freshwater lake nearly the size of El Salvador. And toss in howler monkeys, organic coffee plantations and rainforests and you can start to see why. Not to mention the sharks. Real ones. That eat people. Yikes.













On our second day, we decided to climb the smaller of the two volcanoes. Part of me wanted to try the big one, but a decent amount of people fall to their deaths in the ravines near the top. So um, yeah. The small one was adventure enough. More on this later.

We hired a guide for 5 bucks from the coffee plantation where we were staying and headed up into the clouds. As we started up, we passed through their coffee fields. Here's our guide next to their nursery.



On the way, you pass through all sorts of forests, see cool indigenous petroglyphs, and hike among the clouds. Amazing.







When we reached the top, we hiked down to the crater lake inside the volcano. Spooky.



Sidenote: what's better than seeing a landslide? Being part of one.

At one point, I leaned over a cliff to glance down into a ravine, and the earth just sort of disappeared beneath me. No idea how, but I bounced off a few rock walls and landed in a pool of water at the bottom of a ravine, about 5 meters down. The guide was way up ahead with Lauren, but they heard my girlish screams and came back to help. The guide climbed down along the side as far as he could and pulled me out with his leather belt.

I still remember the look of concern on his face, surveying the damage and clearly imagining what could have happened. I'd say I got my money's worth for the tour right there. By the way, if you look close, you can actually see my claw marks as I spun and tried to catch myself. Sweet.



The next day, back on solid ground, we paid some kids a few bucks to ride their horses for a while. Good times until we realized they had gone through our bags when we weren't looking. The little bastards stole my phone but we contacted the police and got it back. What an ordeal. Still love the country though!

Cowgirl Lauren



My view for the most painful 30 minutes of my life



Later on, we left the island and headed down to the beaches around San Juan del Sur. Super chill place and the definition of utopia. Ate food from a beach shack, prepared by a one-armed women, and slept in the sand.

Madera beach, Nicaragua



The next day, we stuck out our thumbs and hitched from the Costa Rican border to El Sal in one day. It was insane but we did it.

And now I can't wait to go back.

I guess the moral of the story is all that stuff you read about certain places - crime, hatred of americans, everything - means nothing until you actually go there and see it for yourself. Too many people tried to talk us out of even going to Nicaragua, for fear. Their own fear. Based nothing on reality. Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador. It's all the same. To experience them is to understand them.

I'll leave it at that.

Trashy trash

Still working on getting those Nica photos up. But it's been a long time sinced I've posted anything, so in the meantime here's some pics from our latest recycling day.

We organized it through our community's school and about 30 kids participated. Here's one of em. Before we split up for the day, his shirt caught my eye. I love it. This world is so damn small...



Salva doing his part. After a while, the kids turned it into a competition and insisted on carrying everything. Is it child labor if they want to do it?



Anyway, in total we collected a couple hundred pounds worth of plastic bottles throughout our community. We have a guy who buys them off us and the money goes towards the school. Less bottles for dengue mosquitoes to breed in and dinero for the bichos. There ya go.

On the importance of reducing household smoke emissions

<<<NYTimes article - April 15, 2009>>>

"... Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming — especially in the short term, climate experts say. Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap, while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels."

<<<Stove Team International>>>

"... In fact, reducing black carbon is one of a number of relatively quick and simple climate fixes using existing technologies — often called “low hanging fruit” — that scientists say should be plucked immediately to avert the worst projected consequences of global warming. “It is clear to any person who cares about climate change that this will have a huge impact on the global environment."

Los osos de malas noticias *

For this story, you need to know a few things. First off, Jimbo, my notoriously hairy buddy often featured in my blog and fellow peace corps volunteer ≠ Kimbo, the equally notorious streetfighter who probably could grow a beard just by thinking about it. Maybe to avoid any confusion, I’ll start using nicknames.

So Ridiculously Hairy Jimbo lives an utterly horrible life in a picturesque town on the gentle slopes of a volcano, full of beautiful people who couldn’t be more open and nice. That's right, Absurdly Hairy Jimbo’s site is literally on the side of a 7,000 ft volcano. Horrible.

Because of this, or maybe because of the abject poverty, who knows, the kids up there have never played baseball before and have never used mitts, baseballs, or any sort of equipment. Cue Gabe with his giant hockey bag full of bats and gloves courtesy of my man Mark Erlandson. Thanks again, Mark!

To get the kids out and excited for physical activity that doesn't involve hauling 100 lb sacks of fertilizer, Surprisingly Hairy Jimbo invited me to come up and help run a day-long baseball camp for his community's kids. Nothing too complicated, just a few workshops teaching the fundamentals.

I jumped at the chance, convinced there would be a reward in my future for my selfless, humanitarian acts (read: cold beer). And I guess the whole helping salvadoran youth and checking out Suspiciously Hairy Jimbo’s community thing kinda influenced me too.

Jimbo did some great promo work beforehand, including using the nearby church's voice of god PA system (I gotta get one of those) to command kids to attend our camp, as if god himself were a baseball fan. In the end, over 30 bichos came, albeit an hour late. We rotated them through stations, taught them how to spit and grab their crotch, and got a few of them to at least admit beisbol was kind of a cool sport. But nowhere as cool as futbol.

Here are a few pics from the weekend.

Infield drills. More than a few kids took a couple hard grounders to the face. Como se dice "walk it off, kid"



Wendell giving some batting tips. Get that elbow up, punk!



Aw, look at that kid kinda sorta backing up his friend, just like I taught him



We ended the afternoon with a little homerun derby competition. How'd they do? Um, well, there's always tee ball...



Stylishly Hairy Jimbo, handing out the bribes, I mean snacks



Davebo showing em how it's done



Happy future MLB'ers



Improbably Hairy Jimbo and Wendell enjoying a bromantic moment together



A few excerpts from our 9 hour (I wish I were joking) game of cribbage, following the camp







All in all, an awesome time giving a little taste of the old US of A to El Salvador's youth. And if anyone has any football equipment, send it on down!

* Title translation: The Bad News Bears. Please tell me you've seen it.