Thank you, DuPont

Hi all,

Two minor, semi earth-shaking events occurred this week.

1. I bought a teflon pan.
2. I introduced banana bread to my cooking club.

Okay, so you’re all really wowed right now, I know. Let’s start with the damn pan.

So yeah, I bought a teflon pan in town. It cost a dollar and it’s red. There was a blue one too, but at the time, the red one was calling my name and found its way into my basket. Why is this exciting, you might ask? Well, you see, pretty much everything in this country is fried, sautéed, or cooked in oil. Eggs, fish, pupusas, chicken, plantains. All fried in oil. Lots of it. Not saying that’s bad. We do it in the states too. It’s just the way it is. Consequently, or maybe it’s just a funny coincidence (you be the judge), all the women (and men too) have a nice little buddha belly going on. They’re great. When you guys visit, you’ll enjoy them as much as I do. Trust me. So despite running around cleaning the entire house, or tending to their cows and kids all day, all the women here have these sweet panzas as they’re called. Even the little kids have their panzitas.

Anyway, back to the pan. So with my beautiful new shiny red pan, I whipped up some eggs and chorizo for lunch the other day, and I didn't use any oil. Egad! When my mom saw this, she nearly freaked out. “It didn’t stick! And you didn't use any oil?” “Yep, I know. It’s the magic of Teflon. Thank you, DuPont.”

So, this may all seem like nonsense to you all, but when every meal a family of six eats is fried up in a pan with a ton of oil, it adds up. You see where I'm going with this... the panzas. That's right. So it’s kind of a big deal when you get rid of all that oil. Or maybe not. Maybe their bodies will sense what the gringo is trying to do and start demanding calories from other things, like an extra tortilla, or demanding more sugar in their coffee. I dunno. All I know is it was a bit of a Aha! moment in my family when my mom saw how well the pan worked. So yay. Small victory!

Now the banana bread.

Okay, for any of you that know me, you know that I’m kind of a fiend for the banana bread. Don’t know why. Everyone has their fetishes I suppose. Well mine is the pan de guineo. When I got here in my community, one of the first things I noticed is that there were banana trees everywhere. You can literally just pick them off the trees, or if you buy them, they cost nothing. Like 20 for a dollar nothing.

In general, however, people are sort of obsessed with plantains, banana’s bigger, blander, older brother (no offense Ben!). They love them and fry them up every chance they get. When I questioned my mom the other day why we don’t fry up bananas for breakfast and always use plantains, she literally didn’t have an answer. It was one of those “just because” moments. Anyway, I made my choice years ago, and plantains can go screw.

So when my cooking group asked me (oh yeah, I formed a weekly women's cooking group - it's fun) what kind of stuff I like to make, I listed off a whole bunch of stuff. I also casually mentioned banana bread. When I said this, they all sort of jumped. "What's banana bread?" Ah, here was my opening. I told them everything. Long story short, next time we met (Thursdays at 2, if you're in the neighborhood), we all brought the ingredients, I wrote the recipe on a giant poster, and we went to town. Check it out...


In the end, it was a big hit. And helped launch the women's cooking group, which I'm sure will run out of steam after a few months. But, it's fun for now!


Hmm, what else? Some other news that you all might find interesting. My town hosted a motocross competition a few weeks ago. It was nuts. And pretty amazing considering gas is 5 bucks a gallon here. But hey, he looks like he’s having fun, right?


And we had a community-wide recycling day at our school. No surprises here. Exactly what you’d expect. We broke into teams and collected all sorts of plastic bottles and pieces of aluminum. The idea being that they’d see that the crap they throw on the ground is actually worth something, and that picking it up is easy. In the end, we filled up two “jumbos,” or what they call a frickin huge bag here. The final weigh in. Two jumbos: 100 and 45 lbs. And at 10 cents a pound, that works out to be $14. Not a lot, right? Well considering that the average daily pay for a salvadoran is just over 6 bucks, it's kind of significant. I'll let you know how it all goes.

If pooping in your pants is cool, then I’m Miles Davis

Oh jeez. I don’t know where to start.

The past few weeks have been loco. Just plain crazy fun. For starters, if any of you guys happened to be at the local hospital in Santa Ana for the past couple days, you might have been surprised to see me. That’s right. Sick again. And pretty bad this time. Like every 30 minutes bad. Like mid-sentence apologize to whoever I'm with and run bad. But now when someone asks me have you ever sprinted from the middle of a soccer game into the woods, desperately snatching at every large leafy substance you see along the way, to have explosive diarrhea leaning up against a cow, I can say Yes, yes I have!

The good news is, I’m back on cipro and things are settling down again. My suggestion to you all if you do ever find yourself in this condition, is not to “gamble,” as it's known, and to suppress all urges to cough, sneeze, or even attempt a laugh. You will regret it. And so will the passengers on the bus next to you for the remaining hour of the trip.

Also, if any of you happened to be watching Hola, El Salvador yesterday morning, you might have been surprised to see a guy with a striking resemblance to me whitewater rafting with the Channel 12 news reporter. Yep, that was me in the Manchester United jersey and goofy helmet. Some guys in my community (who actually all live in East Boston) invited me for the day because their cousin owns a whitewater rafting company and resort 10 minutes from my community. I went expecting dinky rafts and a tranquil river and couldn't have been more wrong. It was amazing. I'd gone rafting on the Kennebec when I was 15, but this was infinitely better. Rafting through a canyon, watching the bats skim for bugs along the surface of the water, and having a big guy right behind me barking commands in Spanish at me was unreal. I can't wait to do it again... with you guys. Hint hint.

A side note: despite its short life, it sounds like the stache made quite an impression. Jewish pornographer. Disco king. All-around sketchy dude. Ha. You guys are pretty creative. No argument here. I actually was the one who couldn’t handle it in the end and mach 3’ed it off. Well, to be honest, I couldn’t handle how much everyone loved it. And not because I looked like Magnum PI or any of the dudes from tombstone. The other volunteers were clearly enjoying it in the bad way. I also hated that whenever I sat next to a mother and her daughter on the bus, the mom subtly clutched her daughter closer and watched me out of the corner of her eye. So the stache had to go. But don’t worry, it will return! Sort of like Indiana Jones, except I won’t be all wrinkly and apparently suck (haven’t seen it yet, just what I’ve heard).

Okay, back to what’s new. Last week, in addition to enjoying the consequences of eating delicious delicious street food, I convened a general assembly in my community. Sounds fancy pants but really it’s just an official sounding town meeting, the point of which was to share the results of the census that I’ve been doing. Long story short, a good amount of people showed up, and it turned into an hour-long discussion on what we wanted to see change in our community. We agreed to form a Health Committee (to organize health campaigns) and a Sports Committee (to organize tournaments and raise funds to repair the field). Perfect! I was stoked. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Another thing. I was telling Glen this a while back. Not sure if he even remembers. But it's this new feeling I’ve had lately now that I’m at my site. It’s weird. Kind of like every moment mattering.

Unlike our first couple months in San V, my life here isn’t with a “training family” or host community that I’m just passing through and practically never gonna see again. I’m here for good. So as a result, every conversation I have is super intense, and every activity changes my relationship with the person I'm with. It's pretty cool. Also, since my family here is my family, I try to spend as much time with them as possible and I don’t get a lot of down time to write and connect with everyone. That's the downside. Sorry. But that leads to the topic of visiting...

Okay, visiting. This is starting to come up a lot. Airfare from Boston to San Salvador is hovering between 700 and 800. Really, really pricey. But, airfare from Boston to Guatemala City a few hours away is a mere 350. Who knows why. My philosophy is who the hells cares why! Let’s take advantage of it!

Mi dirección

A bunch of you keep losing my mailing address so here it is, minus the town where I live. For security reasons, we're not allowed to post our exact location. But just email me and Í'll tell you:

Gabriel Cohen
Apartado Postal #19
Mysterious Town
El Salvador
Centro America

Small padded envelopes (with a few cds, etc.) go right through. But I've heard packages will get opened/taxed. Somebody actually told me that if you're sending me something new, you should open it up and make it look used so they won't throw BS customs tax on it. That kinda makes me laugh.

One month down

This Friday makes it one whole month at my site. Yippee! What a blur. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you what I’ve done each day. That's kind of funny. I should be keeping a better journal. But what I do know, however, is that I pass out in my hammock every night beat tired but really, really happy. Tired because I spend most of my days walking around, visiting families doing my community census. And happy because I am having the time of my life. I honestly don’t think I’d change a thing. I love it all. Even my bats. Somebody told me they’re slowly poisoning me, but secretly I love them. I love that they’re eating all the moths and mosquitos in my room and then crapping it out on me while I sleep. It’s beautiful really. And my house and host family are sweet. Really, really cool. But there's so much more. Hmm, maybe the best way to tell you all is to break it down. Okay, here goes...

The location: For security reasons, I can’t spell out exactly where I live. But what I can say is that my mysterious community is relatively small (about 150 houses) and is just outside a decently-sized city a stone’s throw from the Guatemalan border. Most of you know by now anyway so no biggie.

The fam: I live with a young couple and their four little girls. The dad actually lived in Boston for a number of years and worked three jobs to save up money for a life back here. Actually, what’s sort of amazing is that everyone in my community has done that. It’s crazy. There’s a huge salvadoran population in East Boston and every time I mention that I’m from there, 20 people are like oh yeah, I have three uncles there and my dad’s in JP right now. Crazy.

The digs: I have my own house. Yep, my own house. I’m pretty much in heaven. It’s huge, has a bunch of porches, a flush toilet (no more temple of doom pit latrines!) and the community even chipped in and got me a fridge. It’s ridiculously nice. Just imagine relaxing in a hammock in the shade on a hot day and eating chilled mangos. It’s indescribable.

The work: At first, I took a tour of my community and asked myself what the hell I was doing here. They have big houses. Everyone’s got electricity and a fridge. The women get together and play softball twice a week. But then I starting doing my census and asking questions and realized there’s actually A LOT of work to do. Oh, your kids go swimming in the river? That’s nice. Oh, and your family drinks the river water? Um, I guess that’s nice too. Oh, and you don’t have a latrine so you just sort of go over there, huh? Suh-weet. Now we’re talking.

So what else do you guys want to know about? The layout? The food? Just keep sending those questions.

A few photos...

We're swearing in tomorrow and shipping out on Friday, so no time to write. But I promise I'll explain and fill in the details soon...

Okay, here's the update. I just wanted to throw a couple pics up for you guys to give you a sense of what my days are like. Here's what I do when I'm not in class or working with my youth group...

For starters, I eat weird food with my roommate Chris. These are enchiladas.



I kill bitch-ass scorpions trying to hide in my room. I see you f*cker!



I teach the kids how to make jello...



I remind myself that I like to be artsy-fartsy...



I play with my dog. She just had puppies!



I get creative with my facial hair...





I play hide and seek with our kittens...



I hang out with my friends on top of our community's water tank...



And I chase the chicken out of my bed!



That's pretty much it. Not a bad life, really. No idea what the next couple weeks will be like, but as soon as I can, I'll let you all know...

Pickup trucks and piñatas

Oh boy, where to start? So a lot's been going on here. All of it good.

As some of you now know, I got a cell phone! They're ridiculously cheap (10 bucks!) and it only costs me 10 cents a minute to call the states. Still can't believe that. So if I haven't called you, it's because I don't have your number. But that's easy to fix. And I don't recommend calling me cause that'll probably cost you guys a fortune. But here's my number all the same: (503-7551-7925).

In other news, I just got back from a three-day immersion visit to Morazán in the northeast highlands. Apparently, it's the most remote site there is. All my camping buddies (you know who you are) would have loved it. The PCV I visited (PCV = peace corps volunteer) lives waaay up in on top of this mountain, somewhere in the ballpark of 4000 feet up. El Sal has a pretty damn good highway system, but even flying down the pan american at 60 mph, it took me two hours in a bus just to get to a town at the base of the mountains, and another three hours in the back of a crazy crowded pickup truck to get up to his community. It was absolutely brutal on the ass but once we got there, I realized why my PCV, Mike, loved it up there so much. The air was cool, the water pure (no chemicals and sh*t when you're on the top of a mountain), and because the climate is perfect, there are coffee and banana plantations everywhere. Unfortunately, for safety reasons, I couldn't bring my camera. But we used his and I'll post the photos when I get them from him in May at my swearing in ceremony.

It was an epic trip, so I couldn't possibly cover it all. But here are some highlights: taking a ¨shower¨ in a stream, sleeping in hammocks, watching a bull get slaughtered (yikes!) and eating steak (him!) and eggs for dinner, and getting buzzed on cuba libres and talking about politics until sunrise. For the record, the bull slaughter was my least favorite moment of the trip. I threw up a couple times and felt all around sh*tty. But it was an experience and that's what this is all about, right?

Something else you guys might enjoy. Two weeks ago we threw a surprise birthday party for my buddy Umberto, the (now) 70 year old Italian dude who I shared a room with back in DC. I mentioned to a few of my friends, Betsy and Lauren, that I was going to buy a cake and some scotch for him. It was, after all, his 70th bday and he was having it without his wife and kids back in New York. Well, the next thing I know, the girls have mobilized the entire PC crew. Cakes are being ordered, decorations are being made, drinks and snacks are being bought. Each community contributed something. It was fantastic. Plus, I got a piñata, which is sort of everyone’s childhood dream come true. It was really fun.

Scorpions, cipro, and shitting in a cup! Oh my!

Well, another week has gone by, and that means, you guessed it, another scorpion adventure. Que divertido! At least this one doesn’t involve someone being attacked while they’re sleeping. So a few days ago, Chris called me up to meet a “friend” of his. Turns out, it was a decent sized scorpion at the foot of his bed. It had actually been there for a day or two and Chris had been sleeping next to it. I told him he was nuts. “What? It was outside my mosquito net,” he said. Nuts. Anyway, we decided to take him out with extreme prejudice. We mobilized the family and gathered around Chris’s bed. I grabbed him with my leatherman and Iris the Scorpion Queen looped some string around his tail. We snipped his stinger and lo and behold, we had ourselves a pet scorpion for the night! Everyone took turns walking him around and then, drunk with confidence, we started putting him in our hands to pose for photos. When it was my turn, Consuelo, aka Yoda who is always right, suggested I put him on my forearm. Thinking it would be a cool shot for Steve to have a scorpion crawling across my ALS wristband, I did it. Well, before I knew it, the f*cker made a break for my sleeve! If only you could have heard the girlish scream I let out. Especially when I could feel him grabbing my skin tighter as I flapped my arm like a wounded bird. Eventually I flapped my little chicken wings hard enough to get him off, but my heart was racing harder than any skydive I’ve ever done.

In other news, apparently I’m a filthy bitch. After a few days of feeling really, really weak, sweating bullets, and not sleeping very well, oh yeah, and a lot of the dreaded D word, I casually mentioned it to the PC medical officer when I went in to get what seemed like my 20th vaccination. Irma, an amazingly sweet woman, smiled as she just as casually asked me to step into the bathroom to sh*t in a cup so they could send it to the lab. Um, skipping over the next part, she said it’d be a few hours for the results. Meanwhile all my PC amigos enjoyed the fact that I pooped in a cup. What, you haven’t? And the results… drum roll please… parasites! But wait, it gets better. A gastro-intestinal infection to boot! Turns out it was some sort of free spirit parasite (actually, it was E. Coli for all you medical freaks) and apparently it got bored of me after a few days and left. But I just finished up cipro for the infection and it’s worked wonders. Plus, I feel like I can eat anything since cipro is like bleach for your stomach. Yay!

In the end, I think these experiences are helping me a ton with my fear of many legged creatures, which can pretty much be traced directly to the Temple of Doom. Thanks Dr. Jones!

By the way, I LOVED hearing from you guys last week. Keep sending what you can and letting me know how you're all doing.

Okay, signing off for now.

Here we go...

When I first set out to create this blog, I had planned to do with it what any new blogger tries to do - write quasi-philosophical, totally unpublishable junk that seems like pure gold at the time, but is usually just sort of internet nonsense. But stuff is just happening way too fast for me to sit down and write amazing entries for, and it’s already sort of piling up. So I’m going to cruise through a bunch of things here and play a little catch up. I´ll probably edit/add to them later.

Goodbyes

Somehow they ended up being bittersweet. I was thinking, everyone should go away at least once in their lives. Even if it’s for a couple months. Actually, it doesn’t even really matter how long it is, just as long as it’s real. The conversations you get to have and the parties people throw are amazing. It’s something I’ll never forget. More on this later.

Training – Washington DC

What would you do if the government gave you 160 bucks to spend on your last two days in the states? Nuf said. You’d have kickass meals and toast potable water as much as you could. Also, quick shout out to the people at PC Washington who are reading my blog to make sure I say nothing bad. Hola! No, seriously, imagine trying to assemble 40 anxious kids (except for one 28 yr old, one 30 yr old, and one 69 yr old) in one room and make them feel confident and unified in just a day and a half. Pretty awesome. Three cheers to Abi and Emily for pulling it off despite doing everything but flat out tell us to quit the Peace Corps more times than I can remember.

San Salvador

Where do I start?!!! Okay, I’ll start with the easy stuff. As I’ve mentioned to a few of you, our training for the next few months is in a small town outside of San Salvador called San Vicente. I live with a large family in a town called La Virgen (haha!) just outside the city. There are eight people in our family, not including the four kids and adults who drop by every day or the old guy who lives in a shack behind the house who the family never talks about. Seriously. I actually live with another PCV named Chris, a cool guy from Chicago who studied IR and Criminal Justice and first heard about the Peace Corps after he googled it while watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith (apparently Anjolina’s character lies about being in the PC) and who I’ve found out can pretty much make himself throw up just thinking about our pit toilet. It’s hilarious. He also loves tow trucks. Also hilarious. He lives in a house just off the road and I live lower down on the hillside in my own mini-house closer towards the center of our family “compound.” I have electricity, which rocks, and a decent amount of space.

We have training in San Vicente twice a week. One day for health and technical training and another usually for general PC training. When I think of the PC training center, I think of air conditioning, flush toilets, and good stories. Usually I haven’t seen people for a few days and there’s always something to share. Here´s a (crappy) photo of what it´s like.

Okay, that’s the quick lowdown. But here are some random things you guys might also find interesting.

1. I started a “last hombre standing” pool to see who will get the sh*ts the last. The logic is that everyone’s going to get them, so let’s have fun with it. The buy in was 2 bucks and 19 people entered so the winner takes home 38 bucks! That’s an insane amount of cash here (my 20 minute bus ride to/from my village in the hills is 50 cents). I am already out of the pool. More on that in my next post.

2. My roommate in DC was a 69 year old man who they’re making an Italian documentary about. He’s turning 70 this Sunday and I’m planning his bday party. A really cool guy.

3. I’m woken up literally 20 times a night by the sound of dogs barking/fighting or roosters crowing ridiculously loud at 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, and of course, dawn. It’s AMAZING how horrible the sound is, especially since they’re right outside my door, or standing on top of my roof when they do it. There’s absolutely nothing romantic or farmy about it. It sucks. Sleeping with my ipod and loud classical music seems to help. With my new camera, I can record sound, so I’m planning on recording a video and uploading it so you guys can experience the weirdness that is a night en el campo.

4. We caught that little bitch scorpion that tried to kill me last week. Oh, you mean you haven’t heard? My first night with my host family, I woke up with a scorpion crawling across my back. Made for an interesting adventure trying to find the little f*cker (I couldn’t) and go back to sleep (also, couldn’t). Anyway, we found him the follow day. He was hiding at the foot of my bed, or as I like to think of it, waiting for me at the foot of my bed. Eeek. Anyway, he gave a satisfying squish when we stepped on him and then fed him to the ants. And speaking of my host family, it’s only fitting that I introduce you. Sorry I’m photo dumping but people keep asking what everything looks like so I’m including a bunch at first so you all can get a sense of it all.

Consuelo

The closest thing to yoda I’ve ever met. She talks slow, she moves slow, everything slow. She’s also amazingly cool and makes me feel very welcome. She´s had four PCVs before us so she´s great about sensing my vibe. I swear she has the force.



Iris (pronounced E-ris)

Consuelo’s daughter who lives in the upper quarters with Chris. Very cool. And clearly a badass. Note the utter lack of fear on her face.


Nemesis

The cutest thing since baby monkeys were invented. She’s five but one of the best Spanish teachers I’ve ever met.


Dani

I think somehow Dani got a hold of some US grade pixie stix otherwise I have no idea how he has this much energy. For the first few days, the only word I could think of to describe him was “mono” which sort of means cute but is actually the word for monkey. Nuf said.


Okay, what else? Oh yeah, I love hearing from you guys, even if it’s a quick hello to let me know what’s going on back in Lake Wobegon. Know that for these first few weeks, my days are planned for me way in advance and my internet time is extremely limited so it may take me a week to get back to you. But I do read your emails and save them onto my flash drive to respond to back at my house. Okay, that’s all for now. If there’s other stuff you guys want to know about, just let me know.

It goes without saying that I miss you all very much!

the calm before the storm

one month and counting...