life ain't easy, audible, small town livin'

Bedroom and kitchen

It's been six or seven weeks since I came down to El Salvador so I figured I'd check-in. This has been by far the toughest trip or stint abroad I've had. In San Miguel, where I live, there's no expat culture.  In fact there's really no culture at all (locals are the first to note this) and the town closes when the market closes which is around 530/6pm. The first real adjustment was getting accustomed to the pace of life in a developing latin american country. Yeah, I got a dose of that in Guatemala obviously but I also had a madrastra (house mom) that cooked my food and cleaned my room and I took my laundry to the laundromat ($1.50 to have all my clothes washed and dried).  A big kick in the nuts was the reality that without a tourist culture, laundromats don't exist here. So Sundays are dedicated to laundry and I scrub out my clothes by hand...by the end I'm a sweaty exhausted mess and then I wait around as my clothes dry in case a ever-present thunderstorm strikes and I have to run out and take down my clothes. Market trips are nice but a time consuming process. Life is slow, but I've started to appreciate taking the time to really just do nothing. Kinda. My mind still races a million miles an hour thinking bout things.

Closet and bathroo

My room, as ya'll can see in the pics, is basic but comfortable enough. I have AC so I can't really complain. I usually come home, go on a run and then come back and cook something. Watch a bit of TV, read maybe and then pass out around 930 or 10pm. Being able to cook with my "lil stove that can" has really kept me sane. Comfort foods like bachelor pasta and the routine in preparing them make a world of difference for my psyche.

I've hung out with coworkers a few times, which has been nice, but this is the first time I've felt really alone. No one speaks my native language, which is a good challenge for me obvi, but I work in a bank and let's just say that the culture is quite reserved though I do my best to stir the pot with my two closest co-workers. I call my desk "el nido" or "the nest"cuz I sit between two chicks and I like ruffling their feathers and getting some convo going in the otherwise monastery-esque oficina. But a big lesson I've learned is that as cool as it is to meet people from other cultures, I'll never feel truly connected to them. We come from different worlds. I cringe when people ask, "how many countries have you been to?" I really have no clue but I usually just name the central american countries and maybe a couple in Asia. It makes me feel like such a jackass. Here comes this gringo volunteer having traveled all over the place and this local hasn't even left this country the size of new jersey. Clearly differences pervade mere travel experiences, but you catch my drift.

You know there's times here, being by yourself all the time, when you wanna just call mommy and daddy and watch re-runs of How I met your mother. But you can't because you have no Internet to call the rents and they don't show How I met your mother down here.

But as I learned in Vietnam, tho I wasn't nearly as alone as I am here, you need to embrace the solitude and carve your own path out of it. Don't just sit there and sulk about being alone. Your own mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With so much time and lack of stimulation, many turn to booze or drugs to pass the hours. And for the first few weeks here I def had a few Bud heavy tall boys every night to numb the boredom. But you can't do that, at least not in the long term. I guess in this regard, I've blended ideologies between the crawling pace of life in the developing world and the american desire for constant development, progression. I mean heck, if I have goals in my life, why not use my buffet of free time to work towards them? So I focus on building vocab and working on my pronunciation and obvi prison-style workouts are part of the daily routine.

Outside patio of my crib...waiting for clothes to dry

Not to say I don't go through swings, but I've come to really enjoy every day here. El Salvador is a really unique place. Just about everyone I've met has either lived in or knows someone living in the US. I've been getting updates on the friend of my coworker who's been making her way to the US. She paid $9K to a coyote for the trip. She went by car from here up through Mexico and now she's living in a house of 30 people waiting to cross the rio grande into Texas. Their border contact pushed back their crossing date because of increased police activity along that stretch last week. Yes, omg i can't believe it either! There's actually corrupt US government officials. OMG!!!

The largest segment of the country's GDP comes from remittances from the U.S....and the first of the month brings long lines outside of the banks. This also adds a unique twist to the higher education market that I'm working in as a lot of kids wanna burn remittances on cars, jewelry and clothes (things that get you laid) instead of education (things that get you paid). The other major US "export" is obviously MS-13, the maras, and their presence saturates the country. You can't go five minutes without seeing a tag on a wall, reading about them in the paper or hearing about something that they've done. Like other developing countries, the cities have pretty decent infrastructure but then living standards drop precipitously upon entering the countryside.

As part of my strategy to hack my way out of solitude, I met a chick named Sandra over Couchsurfing. Really awesome chick that's both older and has traveled quite a bit so we have a lot more to talk about than the average person I meet. She also understands what it's like to be alone in a foreign country after doing it herself in Japan. So here I was this past weekend, sitting in church with her and her family in a tiny rural town. Census says 7.5K people live there but approximately 2/3 spend the majority of their time in the US and most of the houses are shuttered.  I got to thinking how I came to be in this place. A church, adorned to the teeth as best they could, rife with water damage and filled with a zealous crowd in the middle of nowhere El Salvador. Over the past ~2 years I've put myself in some really unique places or situations I never thought I'd be in. And this was another. I had spent the weekend with Sandra and her family, in their rural house in the countryside. The bathroom? Hole in the ground. Brush yo teef camping style outside. The shower is a concrete cubicle a lil less than chest height. So I'm butt naked showering and the family is standing 3 feet away washing the dishes. Her brother farms watermelons and relies heavily on microfinance loans of $500/year. Obviously there's nothing to do in a town that small so you spend the time chatting with neighbors, doing household chores and cooking real "slow food". They're gonna teach me how to make my own tortillas and pupusas next time. Booyah.

Sweet graffiti by my office. 

So after the first month or so and getting some experiences like the above I called an audible and decided I can't move back to the states for at least another year. If I want to work in poverty alleviation in latin america, I need to get some big time experience under my belt and get jedi at Spanish mos def. So I'll spend the next year working with different projects - Ecuador til May 1 and then maybe Nicaragua and as of now I'm hoping to eventually move back to Guatemala and live in the field for a while...yes remote and all but I think it'll prepare me to work in this field long term. The juice'll be worth the squeeze.