Here is a treat I got to see recently – someone grinding Salvadoran-style “coffee” made of toasted maize, also called “cafe de palo,” or as my mother in law terms it, “cafe pusungo”. Our neighbors in Chalatenango, Lupita and her brother Cristian, came by my mother-in-law’s house to borrow her “molino” or grinder, to finish making a batch. Lupita says her mother likes to drink it because “no le hace dano” (it isn’t bad for her health).
She had a bucket full of toasted maize kernels, blackened on the comal/griddle, and was grinding away. Her arm was getting tired, so Cristian jumped in and started winding the grinder like it was a kid’s toy – he did it like a pro. Take a look at the results: doesn’t it look like coffee? I had to sample it, of course – didn’t taste much like coffee, or anything I’d want to drink, but then, coffee is an acquired taste.
Café de maize tostado is a traditional drink in El Salvador, and other parts of Latin America. It was consumed much more in the ‘old days’, but as we see by this example, still consumed by some to this day. Looking into the history of this beverage, I cannot yet determine if it was a traditional indigenous drink before the America’s were colonized or not, but it has been an economic surrogate for coffee. According to this 2001 article in the Diario de Hoy (translation, with original text, following),
“At one time, don Lito, the price of coffee was so high, that the poor, not having the resources to drink good coffee, would instead drink coffee of toasted maize, which they sometimes mixed with avocado seed and coffee casings [the shells containing the grains] to give it some flavor. Nowadays, 100 pounds of maize is worth more than 100 pounds of coffee, even though it only takes four months to produce that 100 pounds of maize, and four years for the same amount of coffee!”
“-En un tiempo, don Lito, el precio del café era tan alto, que los pobres, para variar, no tenían capacidad de tomar buen café y tomaban café de maíz tostado, que a veces lo revolvían con semilla de aguacate y algunas cascaritas de café cereza, para darle sabor. Ahora, un quintal de maíz en plaza vale más que un quintal de café, aunque para producir un quintal de maíz sólo se tarda cuatro meses, igualito que el café, sólo que ¡cuatro años! “ – link to article by Lito Moltalvo, in Diario de Hoy
Another once-in-a-lifetime [bird] experience. Only in El Salvador (or someplace tropical). This one was great, it happened early last week. I was leaving the office, a bit later than normal, and decided to wait a few minutes more for our security guard, Virgilio, to finish his shift at 6pm, and give him a ride. While I waited for him to put on his “civvies”, I had a few minutes to notice our environment – the sun was almost setting, and the birds chirping like crazy – “deciding where they’re going to sleep tonight” is what another security guard in the neighborhood said as he was walking past. “So that’s what all the chatter is about,” I said.
Rose-Ringed Parakeet (Psittacula krameri) Richmond Park, UK, naturalised population from cage birds that escaped into the wild. Photo by DAVID KJAER
I looked up to see where all the chirping was coming from, and wouldn’t you know it? Right there in the tree in front of our office – a house in a fairly urban neighborhood off Boulevard [Bulevar] Los Proceres – was a group of 6 PARAKEETS. All hanging out, getting ready for nighttime to come, before sunset.
WHERE in the WORLD do you get to see a group of 6 PARAKEETS, sitting in a TREE IN FRONT OF YOUR OFFICE? People can say all they want about “El Salvador dangerous this“, and “Are you sure you want to live there, that“, but this BEATS THE PANTS off most of your office experiences, wouldn’t you say?
Every day, in the hour before the sun sets, it turns into “bird time” in our yard in El Salvador. At times I feel as though we are inside of a bird sanctuary. We are blessed with a nice backyard, and wrap-around patio to boot, so have a good panorama of Salvadoran nature-side. As I write a flurry of activity is taking place, from the Yellow-Backed Oriole, who don’t sit still long enough for me to shoot him, to the clarineras (sp?), making their various noises, along with some small yellow-green birds about half the size of your hand, jumping around, and Salvadoran style pigeons/palomas (they are much smaller than the big fat guys on city streets up north), flitting from tree to tree.
hard to get a shot of this guy
The elusive Torogoz even got into the action, gracefully flying to a perch very near our patio, flying away again in time for me NOT to get a good picture of him.
Speaking of birds, on one of my last visits to Chalatenango, while walking around the neighborhood, a pack of loud, almost obnoxious birds were flying and singing in a high pitch above me, and as I looked up, I saw a pack of (wild) parakeets, a good 5 or 6, swoon over me and land high up in a tree just 15 feet ahead of me, where they continued their discussion, screeching and chirping along. My husband and guys in the neighborhood know how to find their nests and snatch them when they are young, before they grow feathers, and then they become household pets.
The same day I saw the parakeets, at my suegro’s (in laws) house, someone pointed out an exotic looking bird high up in a tree across the street. After a short moment, we realized they were Toucans!
from http://animal-wildlife.blogspot.com/2011/08/toucan.html
They were of the more simple colored variety, black and white with an orange beak. My suegra (mother in law) said this is very unusual in “these modern days” to see them where they live. They were very high up in the trees, and we saw at least 2 of them darting around, if not 3. As I finish writing this, the sun is almost setting, and the symphony of chirping has quieted down to an occasional chirp or peep. The excited activity lasts for maybe 45 minutes, like a “Happy Hour” for the birds, and then its time to find a perch or return to the nest for the night. Good Night, all.
Tops on my list of things I will NOT miss when I leave El Salvador: the cell phone mafia (white collar mareros* of El Salvador). Phone saldo (credit) runs out faster than you can blink. I suspected price fixing, jokingly, but thanks to my Google search for ‘noticias’ on Digicel, I found out some companies were BUSTED and FINED for it just three weeks ago! A cell phone experience this past Saturday illustrates how this happens:
Did a saldo (phone credit) check. Had $3.67 credit. Then made two phone calls:
1) 6 min 56 seconds to my husband
2) An 8 minute, 16 second call to a friend a couple hours later.
- – A total of 7 minutes and 12 seconds of talk time —
Saldo check after call two: I had 78 cents. That’s about 19 cents a minute.
Sure, I could get a plan, for as cheap as $10 a month, and they go from there. I went to their web pages, and see per minute tariffs you pay above your monthly rate, but don’t find plans where TALK time is included with a monthly fee. I can get anywhere from 2-5 “favorite numbers”, and up to 150 free text messages.
I’ve asked people here, and no one seems to know about cell phone plans with voice minutes included. Everyone says they don’t bother with a plan (unless their job pays for it), they all buy “Saldo” which is pay as you go credit. Here is a web page from the Claro website, which has a plan for $15 a month, where calls to other Claro customers are .08 a minute, and calls to non-Claro, .14 a minute. The per minute rate drops to .07 for $20 a month, .06 for $40 a month, and its only (only, ha ha!) .05 a minute if you pay $75 a month for the “plan”. For all plans, out of network calls are ALWAYS .14 a minute. You call that a plan? I call it a sham, stan! People who make $700-$1000 have a “good” job here. Would you sign up for one of these cell plans if you made that a month?
But there is some justice, after all. Proof that a number of them were price fixing, and some were fined for it, based on a January 22 article. My provider, Tigo, is not in this list, but I bet they collude with the others – the $500 in taxes they paid last year is indicative of their standards.
Million Dollar fine imposed for agreeing to fix telephone rates.
The Board of Directors of the Superintendent of Competition (SC) fined Telemovil, Telefonica, Digicel, and Intelfon for violating the competition Act by agreeing to set a fee, despite knowing the law prohibits such agreements.
The Superintendent of Competition, through its board, sanctioned the Telemovil, Telefonica, Digicel and Intelfon phone companies, for violation of the Competition Ac
Digicel and Intelfón received an economic sanction for a total of US$ 1, 215,497.94, after having agreed to fix the rate of $.21 plus VAT per minute for a call originating on a land line and terminating on their mobile networks.
Specifically, the phone companies violated Article 25 of the Law of Competition, which prohibits agreements between competitors. The article literally says that “anticompetitive practices made between competitors are prohibited, which, among them, adopt the following forms: a) Establishing agreements to fix prices o other conditions of purchase or sale under whatever form,” describes the Superintendent of Competition.
In this way each company is fined: $ 658,050.00 for Telemovil; Telefónica $260,672.03, $233,909.76 for Intelfon, and Digicel $ 62,866.15.
The fines differentiated based on criteria of reasonableness and proportionality considered by the SC, which, in addition to the criteria in Article 37 of the law, took into account the economic capacity of the companies being sanctioned.
* marero – a local name for a gang member, a member of a ‘mara’. The ‘ero’ ending is used to denote a person who does or is associated with something. Pelo is hair. A peluquero (you have to change the c to a q for it to sound correctly) is a barber/stylist. Here’s a fun one: Mujer is a woman. And a mujerero is a “womanizer.”
I’m on a roll today, like a biology teacher, can’t help myself, this is fun. Right around Christmastime, I was visiting my friend Ileana not far from the Cuscatlán stadium. She has a small yard in front of her house, and prides herself in having the “nicest” one of all her neighbors. She really does. Don Chico, an old man and reformed alcoholic (who she herself helped reform) used to come by and tend to her garden, until the poor soul passed away recently. This post is in memory of Don Chico, may his spirit come to life again through all things that grow in front of Ileana’s house.
So while in her front yard that day, I looked down at this spikey looking plant, and had to do a double-take. I saw this little thing growing out of it, and wouldn’t you know, if it wasn’t the tiniest little pineapple you’ve ever seen?
There you have it folks, this is where pineapples come from. You learn something new every day. And if you’re lucky enough to live there, you get to see it up close and in person.
The Pineapple of El Salvador. Grows out of a spikey plant that looks like an aloe, before it ripens and gets cut, then transported thousands of miles, far far away to a Supermarket near you.
When you live in a northern climate, far away from the tropics, you never get a chance to see where some of your yummies come from. Kicking back on the couch on a chilly winter night, maybe with the gang, you pop open a can of mixed nuts and watch the football game. A couple peanuts here, maybe an almond or two, if it’s the deluxe mix, a brasil nut or two, and oh – your favorite – cashews. Ever wonder where they come from?
On one of my first trips to El Salvador, my husband pulled over on the road and showed me these fruits. “See these?,” he asked me “These have nuts inside them. Semilla de marañon.” I looked at this tree with all these yellow fruits, and at the bottom of each one was a funny looking thing, kind of grayish green, that appeared to be growing out of it. Strangely enough, it was in the shape of something very familiar. It was one of those naive gringa “wow” moments the natives here like to giggle at us for. Each marañon, as they are called in Spanish, will grow a seed, not on the inside of its fruit, like most fruits do*, but as a funny bud on the end, in an extremely hard shell, with the seed inside. And that seed, my friends, is the cashew. You cannot bite the seed open, it has to be roasted, and be sure to have a lot of fresh air when doing so, if you ever try, as the smoke can be toxic.
Here they are, hanging on the tree. You can see the hard-shell off the end of the sweet fruit part, which has the cashew in it.
A red variety of cashew fruit here in El Salvador
Fresco de Marañón I made the other day. I think you're supposed to peel them first. I'll be sure to next time.
* The sweet fruit of the marañon tree is a false fruit, according to Wiki, and it actually grows after the “real” fruit, which is the seed.
So I’m talking with my neighbor Sabas over the fence the other day. He’s the same guy with the cool birds and plants I’ve mentioned before. He had a couple soup bowls from meals I’ve passed over, and we were chatting about water bills or taxes, or something affecting the general populace here, when a small tree behind him caught my eye.
It’s fruit has small reddish brown berries. “Hey, that looks like coffee over there.” “Oh that, yeah, that IS coffee,” he tells me. What!!?? “Sabas, I say, why don’t you pick the beans to make coffee?” “Oh no,” he tells me, “that would be a lot of trouble, for the small amount of beans, then you gotta dry ‘em – and I’ve only got shade over here – then shuck em, then take ‘em to the molino (person with a grinder), wouldn’t be worth it..” I offered my sunny yard for drying them if he’d like. Might be fun to pick and make a small batch just for experience sake, then sit and have a cup with Sabas when we’re all through. I think Sabas and I are gonna do some coffee pickin’ this coming weekend.
We went on a trip to San Pedro Nanualco, where my brother-in-law and his family live, last June, and I thought I’d share the visit with you after running into the pictures again. The star of this visit is my niece Doris. While my husband worked with some men to cut lumber for the house we have been fixing, Doris and my nephew Edwin kept me company.
We went down to the creek to explore. First thing we saw, which fascinated me the most, the Salvadoran bug lover that I’ve become, was a swam of dragonflies, presumably mating, based on how they’ve positioned themselves. The bugs on top have different coloring than the ones on the bottom. There were upwards of 20 at one point all buzzing around together. << Click to Enlarge to see for yourself >>
Then we walked around the bend of the creek and Doris went and pulled something out of a tree. These are COYOLES, a type of fruit thing, that resembles a coconut in flavor. Doris explained that you can eat them at various stages, and when they get older and riper, they grow harder, and people often just eat the sweet nectar around them. These were earlier stage coyoles, so the flesh was still soft enough for us to eat them.
It’s as easy as one, two, three. Take the coyoles out of the palm tree, crack one open with a rock, and eat. Here’s Doris and Edwin at the creek while we snacked on coyoles.
Not only is my niece one of the most well mannered in my family, she’s also a tough tomboy, able to manage her little brother and heave him up and down over fallen trees on a steep walkway, and cut down coyoles and all sorts of fruits in the forest nearby.
Here she is, hauling coyoles out of the tree.
Yanking Coyoles down from the tree
Now examining the loot
All of 12 years old, Doris is a pretty tough girl. And now for the best photo – check out that machete she’s cutting the Mamey with!
I was finally able to get “Abate” – pronounced “ah-bah-tay” – a couple days ago at the health center on main street this week. I stopped there just before New Years and they said they had some, but the people with keys were out that week and to come back next week. Abate is a funny smelling powder that comes in small bags, which you poke holes in with a pen or small sharp object, and stick in the pila (washing basin) to keep the mosquito larvae from growing. The name comes from an actual name brand for a larvicide; the name is used as commonly in El Salvador as the word “Band-Aid” is for small bandages in the States. Although abate is almost a necessity in El Salvador for protection against mosquitoes (“Zancudos”) the local health centers often run out of it and I do not know anywhere you can buy it. The alternative is to clean out the pila 1-2 times a week, and wash its walls well with bleach. Works for the pila, but for the cisterna (large cement reserve water tank) that’s as tall as me…not sure I want to empty that out every week and wash it down with bleach. I recall stopping by the health center in San Jicinto last year and asking if they had abate. One woman directed me upstairs to a room, where another woman directed me to speak to a man there. He said “We don’t have any here, but I do happen to have some at my house. You can call me at this number (he wrote down his cell number) and I’ll bring some to the center for you.” Not sure where he wanted to go with that, but I decided not to call him for more than one reason. The gentleman this past week gave me 16 bags total, enough to dump several in the Cisterna and 1 or 2 in the pila. Said it will last for 2 months.
You’ll see for yourself, which one is the real “pomme de terre”. They are bland in flavor with a slightly sweet taste, and a texture similar to crunchy apple. Brought to you by El Salvador. It’s Jicama season. Buy one, try one, enjoy yourself.
I had no idea how to prepare this thing, but ate it once in a salad at a restaurant. No cooking needed. Just peel and eat. I squeezed lime, and dashed hot sauce into a bowl to “marinate” them a bit. Then took them out and sprinkled “alguashte” over them. Pretty good.
No matter how long I live here, I still can’t get over what a paradise it is. First, being in El Salvador, almost every day is a sunny day. On top of that, where I live is “fresco” as they call it, which means cooler temperatures, so it gets warm, but not steaming hot like other parts of the country below us.
The whole office is off for three weeks, so I’ve had a chance to re-connect with Los Planes, the house and its garden, and neighborhood, so I’ll share some of the sights on walks nearby with you. We start at the top of a street near the entrance, and walk downward. There’s no shortage of views here. Here’s a man carry a “tambo” of gas on his shoulder. If he were a woman, he’d be carrying it right on his head, like this woman in the picture below walking with her son. My husband says men can’t balance things on their head like women can. Our extra padding on the legs and behind gives us a lower center of gravity, so there may be some truth to it, however, I’m now convinced. I think men don’t even try the head balancing, because it would look “womanly”. Gotta carry stuff on your shoulder. It’s manly, and besides, looks like you’re working harder.
Throughout the neighborhood one can see banana trees in various places, like this house here. That works out nicely for the residents around this time of year, because people make lots of tamales for family on the 24th and the 31st. Tamales in El Salvador are wrapped with banana leaves, unlike the Mexican kind which are typically wrapped in softened corn husks. The house below has “ojas de guerta,” banana leaves, softening in the sun on the roof. This picture was taken a couple days before the 31st, so they were getting the leaves ready for tamales to serve to family and likely visitors coming to ring in the New Year.
Shortly after, I walked by this “terreno”, a little patch of land in my ‘hood. Its been up for sale, heaven knows how long, with the same sign saying “se vende terreno” up since I moved here. Dont’ see any “no trespassing” signs in sight, so what the heck, I decide to sneak in through the fence and check it out…
It’s a houseless piece of land, which starts up at street level, and has “some” room, perhaps, for a house, if you dug into the hill and/or dumped some fill in to make room for a foundation. Then it soon drops off in an angle downward towards a ravine. It has winding trails that lead into and around the ravine, with tropical shrubs lining the walkway. There’s a rusted out abandoned water tank near street level, with a few orange trees close to it, and peppered throughout the terrain are pacaya plants, everywhere. Salvadorans eat pacaya flowers just as they are sprouting (this one here is too mature) – they dip them in eggs and fry them.
Pacaya plant, about 6 foot tall
Pacaya shoot sprouting
As I walk downward, I’m wondering, “How far does this land go?” I spot a barbed wire fence marking the territory on one side, the fence moves downward. As I walk downward with it, I see the fence move somewhere past a dried creek bed below. From the looks of the angled land going upward, this same creek has slowly been drinking the mud of the earth above it, the hill eroding over time, with small dried water trails and crevices everywhere underfoot, evidencing this fact.
I walk out of the creek bed, and upward, into a type of clearing, with flatter land, marked by a fence ahead of me, and recognize what I see. Except now I’m seeing it from the other side. Months back during one of my walks in the neighborhood, I met a neighbor, who introduced herself as Patty. While talking, she had mentioned, “oh yes, there’s someone who owns ALL THIS back there” – gesturing towards this same clearing. And here I am now, lurking around, an invisible trespasser, feeling shame that she or another neighbor might see me, so I quickly do a 180 and walk back towards the dry creek….
To my left is a trail that I passed on my way to the clearing. I take it and move leftward. Shortly after I find myself in a type of underpass, created by the branches of a large veranera above me, and a cut out piece of land like a wall, meeting the trail I walk on. Dried purple flowers discarded from the veranera have carpeted the underpass, its entrance and exit. Here is it, I’ll show you, a little magic carpet ride..
Magic Carpet Ride - click to enlarge
I walk away from the veranera tree and back upwards again, struggling to keep my footing as the earth gets steep again. I make a note of the foot traffic above, trying to keep myself down low, aware of my trespassing status, as all the neighbors here know each other, and make note of anyone who’s not “from” here or not “where” they should be. I creep up the side of the hill, and run into this crazy spikey green fruit, growing right out of the tree trunks of a few different trees here. It reminds me of the “morro” tree, whose fruit also grows, bizarrely, not from the side or end of a branch, but literally smack dab off the trunk of the tree (the morro fruit is orgeat, the main ingredient used to make Salvadoran horchata with).
Here they are, the strange spikey green fruit in pictures – I don’t yet know it’s name yet, but I’m almost sure it’s NOT stinky durian, as those are super spikey. When I find out what it is, I’ll let you all know. CLICK to enlarge.
Here’s one more shot of the neighborhood before I finished my walk. Guerta / Guineo trees and mountain vistas.
On Christmas Eve I visited with my friend Ileana and her family near San Salvador. It was a nice gathering, and each of the three sisters/daughters’ children came by also, along with a neighbor and friend of the family who is 92 years old. The highlight of the evening was dancing with the very strong 92 year old woman who was showing me how to dance better. She said she was a “bailarina” (dancer) when she was younger, and that even her son doesn’t believe her. Well, we all did! Tamales were served first thing in the evening, made by Ileana’s mother, and later on we ate “Panes con Pollo” which are sandwiches of small French bread, filled with chicken, a special tomato-based sauce, and fresh vegetables like cucumber and tomato, and a leafy herb called “berro” – I don’t know what it translates to in English.
The tradition in El Salvador is to stay up until midnight on the 24th, until “Jesus was born” on the 25th. Then at midnight the whole room goes around hugging each other and saying “Feliz Navidad”, much in the same way we do in the U.S. on New Year’s Eve.
Meanwhile, throughout the afternoon and evening, and especially at the crack of midnight, fireworks aplenty are set off and everyone catches the celebration fever.
We danced to cumbia music much of the night, and long before that, way earlier in the day the major music stations in El Salvador, like radio UCA and radio Nacional, were playing back-to-back Cumbia, all day long.
Unlike the United States and some other countries where the 25th and the opening gifts the morning of are the big highlight, here in El Salvador, the afternoon and evening of the “24th” or “VeintiCuatro” is IT. It’s all about the party on the 24th, be there or be square, don’t miss it. The 25th is really nothing but a catch up on sleep day and just leftovers of the 24th for relaxing and doing nothing.
But the 25th for my friends family was a bit more than a catch up on sleep day.
A funeral
On the 24th Ileana’s mother’s cousin was shot in San Isidrio while milking the cows. They do not know who killed him, but someone stole one of his cattle about 2 months ago, so something was happening back then already. The shooters wore ski-style masks to hide their faces. They invited me and I decided to accompany them to the funeral.
San Isidrio is located in Cabañas, the same department where all the mining controversy (and murders on both sides of that conflict) are taking place. Ileana’s family lived there during her childhood years, and two aunts, along with a bunch of other relatives, still live there now.
It was sad to go to a funeral on the 25th of December, and though I do not know the man being honored, I did get teary eyed watching others crying, and just thinking of how he died; its unjustness makes one sad. The first place we went to was Aunt Clara’s house. Though her house is right on a main street in town, her backyard is extensive, and she had chickens, yay! She has a regular kitchen, but also uses an hornilla (firewood) stove made out of simple rebar. “That’s for the beans and long cooking stuff,” she said.
Then we crossed the street and visited the other Aunt, Magda, who has a bit richer trimmings that humble old Clara, but still country style. Her house, like the one at her deceased cousins, has a courtyard in the middle of it. Juanita, my friends mother, is so funny. Magda offered us all coffee, and had some nice dainty china cups, but there one small plastic coffee cup happened to be on table. “I’m not drinking out of that stinking PLASTIC cup,” says Juanita. “Get me a better one!” She’s a character. Never a worry she won’t speak her mind.
Then it was off to the funeral. We went to the home of the deceased cousin’s family, where a gathering had started. The house had a courtyard in the middle of it, with patio on all four sides, and sofas and chairs were lined up against the patio walls, where family and friends sat, greeting and talking, and others waited to visit with the sobbing wife and sisters. After awhile, in the front room of the house, a pastor began to hold a small mass, with prayers, and then songs some of the visitors were singing to.
When we arrived, it was obvious that we were the “city slickers” and there was a clear difference, and likely distance, between my friend’s family and the local (lugareño) family members now living in San Isidrio. I don’t know if my friend noticed, but I sure did and it was one of those fly on the wall moments in life.
Because of the heat, it felt like forever before the funeral procession would begin, and sometime around 4pm it finally did. By then we were all gathered on the sidewalk and in the street, waiting for someone’s cue. I looked to the right and saw the crowd moving in one direction, and then saw the casket up high, in its glass casing, slowing drifting away from us.
This was the first “walking with the funeral procession” experience I’ve had since I came to El Salvador. I’ve been to two other funerals here, but because of their distance, most of the attendees drove in with cars, and, as you often see here, a large group coming in on a local bus chartered for the funeral. It looks like any other bus route vehicle, old American school bus with the local route number and all, but someone has rented it for the day to bring family to pay their respects. I have to say, walking in a funeral procession, versus driving feels a much better way to commemorate someone who has passed on. There were probably 3-400 people walking along the street of this modest sized pueblo, it felt like half the town was there walking, all slowly together towards the church, where mass is held, and then afterwards, they march again to the “enterro” or burial. We made it as far as the church but did not go in, there were so many people we could not all fit. Meanwhile, we ran into a childhood friend of Ileana’s who is now an English teacher in Costa Rica and happened to be here visiting for the holidays. It was a serendipitous moment, and we stopped to visit with her, as it had been about 20 years since they last saw one other. They yakked about old times, and were joking around about how they used to walk/crawl on the roofs together as small children, breaking the “Tejas” (terra cotta roof tiles), or moving them out of position as they walked along. Days or weeks later, people would look up at their ceiling at a leak suddenly sprung up in a rainstorm, saying, “hmmm…wonder where that leak is coming from…”
As both an attendee and observer, I felt the weight of that particular day, of paying respects to the deceased, but also how important is was for the community and family to come together. A funeral is a place where long lost friends and family who’ve become distant have a chance to reconnect. And for people who have never met to start a new friendship or connection. The passing of someone significant gives an opportunity to strengthen or start relationships. Through death we are given the gift of renewal. We are reminded of the importance of today, because once we are gone we can no longer connect, reconnect, make an impact; it is a tap on the shoulder, noting the significance of our actions every day while we are still here.
What to wear? On a humorous note, if you dear readers will allow me, I’ll say a few words on attire. Wearing a borrowed brown long sleeved shirt, I felt a bit of a stepchild, but since I knew no one, I felt no shame, not to mention that being a gringa I’m excused of almost any social misstep I make in El Salvador (lucky me!). I made a note of what most women were wearing, and almost giggled to myself. If you are not sure what to wear to a Salvadoran funeral, just remember two colors: black and white. I thought black would be an important color, but it seemed almost always paired with white. Black pants with a white blouse – popular outfit. A black dress with white trim or accent. Black polka dot blouses. White striped with black, white flowers on black background, or vice-versa. Black and white and white and black, everywhere. But never with red.
Nacatamales
After returning from the funeral we were famished. Part of the reason is because Ileana’s sister has to be the slowest driver in El Salvador, after Aunt Jesusita, who drives 30 on the highway. On the way there it was less of a big deal. On the way back, when we are were all tired, hungry, bones and muscles aching or had to pee. I watched the speedometer with devotion. It was in Kilometers per hour, and I looked carefully and almost continuously as it went up to a maximum of 60 KPH – somewhere around 42 mph. On the HIGHWAY. TOPS! Then it would drift down again to 30, 40, 50 KPH… I give her accolades for safety, that’s for sure. A good thing is that Ileana’s entire family are good conversationalists, so there was never a dull moment on the drive there or back. We made it home in one piece, kudos to our safe driver. Ileana’s mom Juanita made a B line for the bathroom. Meanwhile, Ileana was toasting fresh rolls she’d bought the night before, and heating up the now infamous NACATAMALES. Yes! These babies were FANTASTIC! Ileana had either brought in or commissioned a woman from Honduras to make them. Still cant get the story 100% clear but basically it’s a Honduran woman who cooks them. These are super-tamales. They are almost double the size of regular tamales, and have typical ingredients one would expect like chicken, wrapped in the “guerta” (banana leaves), but there’s extry special stuff in there…. Some kind of spice, it tasted like the heat of hot green peppers if you ask me, but I could not “see” the spice, so I’m guessing. Nevertheless, they were picante! They also sported garbanzo beans, and some other kind of bean/nut/pea like ingredient that was hard to deciper. We had to keep contain our excitement, since less than 24 hours before we were eating Juanita’s tamales and would never want to put her tamales in the shadow of these, but the bottom line: Nacatamales are D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Yum Yum Yum. If you ever get a chance to eat them, do!
It’s here again: Sugar Cane season. It’s always a gas to see trucks of all shapes and sizes brimming full of brown sugar cane sticks on highways and main ways everywhere. The Cane, or Caña, as it’s called in Spanish is harvested from December – March, give or take a couple weeks on either end. The harvest season lasts 4 months because plants mature at different rates, and also because there is so much caña you cannot harvest it all at once.
I want to share this post with you all because though I have witnessed trucks roaring past full of sugar cane since my first visit here years back, for the first time ever, this past weekend, I got to witness a MASSIVE loading zone where all the action starts. There had to be about 30 tractor trailor trucks, all waiting in line, one after the other. It was so impressive I made my husband stop the car so I could shoot it all.
First, I show you several trucks milling about on my left…it looks like a red truck party, doesn’t it?
This is a Sunday. They’re all empty, waiting to get filled up with Cane. We also noticed a group of 4 buses in one of the sugar cane fields. We figure they must have bussed in people to work in the fields and they were hanging around for them to finish. I don’t think they’re silly enough to put cane inside the buses. So here is the train, below..
Still looking to my left, we see the beginning of the train about 6 trucks back...
Here's the one in front of where I'm standing....
Now we look to the right and see the long chain of tractor tailors waiting for the sweet stuff
The Sugar Cane Train keeps going.....
and going...
CLICK to ENLARGE
Some truckers make themselves at home while they wait. Two hammocks are strung up under this truck, I think it’s a clever setup.
…this picture could have been better, but I had to take it from inside the car, my husband started to drive away without me, no longer humoring the photo shoot
We drove off, the trucks and drivers of this sugar cane train riding off into the sunset behind us, and remarking to ourselves how many trucks there were, a lot of them double-carred. And then, a full 4 minutes later….
WHAT!?
Another “train” appears, with a good 15 more trucks! I wondered if this was the same plantation owner or not:
In comparison to Salvadorans, Americans have bad manners. I’m not talking about the kind of manners you were forced to learn as a child, like table manners, sitting up straight, or more ‘structured’ kind of etiquette.
I’m talking about social niceties, or “treating people right” kind of manners. There are things most Salvadorans simply do naturally and without thinking that have become less commonplace in American society.
1. Greeting people on the street. Almost always, when walking past someone you will hear a Buenos Dias, or Buenas Tardes, or often “Adios” which is a polite way of greeting someone here who is a complete stranger when passing them.
2. Buen Provecho. This means “good appetite”, and is said to a person eating by someone who sees them, usually when they enter or leave the room of the ‘eater’. I noticed it at work when people walked up to or past the table, but I ALSO experienced complete strangers in restaurants greeting us with a “Buen Provecho.” How nice!
3. When starting a business or other conversation where you must discuss getting something done, you must always “Add the Flowers “. A colleague of mine and I were discussing this one day, that when starting a conversation, you must say hello, how are you, maybe ask about the family or a small question or comment that has nothing to do with the business at hand before getting into the ACTUAL reason why you are conversing. Americans tend to be direct, and at times blunt. So if you call a Salvadoran on the phone or start a conversation and go immediately into “business” it’s like throwing cold water over their head. You must do the flower dance first, and then get into the serious stuff.
4. Expressing Anger will almost always backfire on you. Americans are accustomed to public displays of anger, even in the workplace. It may be just an irritable comment but can easily elevate to a raised voice with insulting commentary or graduate to all-out yelling. I rarely see this here. Salvadorans tend to show their “nice face” in public and get taken aback when someone blows up publicly. I’m sure there are exceptions, depending on personalities, but for the most part, it’s best to keep a lid on it and remember that yelling or becoming angry tends to startle people from El Salvador, and is not as easily forgiven as back home.
5. There is always an extra plate of food. If someone comes to a Salvadoran home unexpectedly and near mealtime, a plate of food is handed to them. I don’t know how some poor people suddenly have extra food, but they may just make everyone’s plate a bit smaller to accommodate the extra person.
6. On that note, receiving unexpected visitors is taken well here. This may come from the fact that many Salvadorans have larger families or live with extended family, so they are accustomed to having more people around, and in their “personal space.” So it’s not such a big deal when someone drops by without notice. We were talking about this the other day at the lunch table at work. A woman was mentioning the reaction her Canadian Sister-in law had when suddenly a bunch of family members who were visiting from our of town stopped by, and oops, it was almost dinner. Her reaction, which she expressed out loud was, “I cant feed everyone here!” A Salvadoran, on the other hand, might be upset, but would probably NEVER express it, and start rummaging through the kitchen or run out to get something quick to serve her new guests.
7. Kids are welcome and loved, basically EVERYWHERE. This isn’t necessarily manners, but more of a cultural custom. I’ve had time to observe how people from El Salvador behave with children. Here’s something innovative for us to learn:
THEY INTERACT WITH THEM!
In America, when visiting someone’s home or bumping into a couple with children on the street, you often see the adults talking the kids sort of melting into the background, or the parent doing most of the interacting with the children. I too, have been guilty of talking with just adults myself.
I remember this ‘melt into the background’ phenomenon when visiting a friend in the states last November. There was a group of us, and a small toddler all in the same room. While most of the adults talked, the little boy play and his mother checked in on him, but for the most part, he was kind of playing along by himself with some toys and things near him, while we talked amongst ourselves. In El Salvador, everyone in the group would be taking turns playing with him, or picking him up, etc.
Here, even when a complete stranger has just met a child, they talk directly with them, engaging them with questions about their family or what they like, and overall, having a much more participatory interaction. Kids are very much a PART of life and the social settings here.
There are more differences and customs beyond these, but I’ll stop here for now and I invite commentary by readers to add more.
We live in a mountaintop area not far from San Salvador, El Salvador. Our neighborhood has people of mixed economic class, with no “puerton” (gate) and no “vigilante” (security guard). In most areas in or near the city, living in an un-gated community can be a treacherous proposition, but it is very safe here, “sano” as said in Salvadoran Spanish. On our stretch of the street, three homes owned by upper class or well-to-do people stand in a row. However, just next to us is a family in a “casa de lamina” which is a house of corrugated metal for walls and roof, nailed to wood. They are nice folks, and actually live on the property rent-free, which is owned by another family just down the road in the neighborhood. This may sound like a “great deal” but comes with one caveat: there is no water pipe coming from the water system owned by ANDA, and they are required to pay the electric bill. But their family gets a break and the owners are more secure knowing no undesirable elements or squatters will move into the home.
We give them water from a hose every few days which they fill their barrels with. They holler over the fence where we sometimes talk together. My neighbor was telling me today they’d like to move, and wants to buy a refrigerator. But she is still caring for their 2 year old boy at home, and her husband’s salary is a check for $80 twice a month. A miracle the two of them and their toddler live on that. I thought they were ‘really poor’ but when I talked with another friend in the neighborhood later on, learned this is par for the course: her husband, twenty years older than the neighbor’s husband, only makes $40 more a month. Yikes! So much for a laborer’s career path in El Salvador…
Along a walk today with my pet dog I met another neighbor. A nice old man started chatting me up by commenting on my “bonito” dog. If you want to meet people, buy a dog and start walking, its the perfect ice-breaker! How long has he been living here, I asked. Oh…he had to think for a moment…52 years, he said. “I used to take care of the property here, next door” he showed me, gesturing to the puerton next his house. “One day the owner said he was moving to the United States. He sold that part to a doctor, and this piece which goes all the way over there, to me.” He built the reinforcement wall in front of the now doctor’s property when he was much much younger. His name is Alfonzo, and he also lives in a house made mostly of corrugated metal. His dog and mine made friends while we chatted. He told me he keeps his dog chained because if not, he wanders into the house and sleeps on the furniture. One day when I came back in the house, there he was lying on the bed, Don Alfonzo told me. I decided not to tell him about the time I saw his dog, outside in the street, dragging his chain which had broken off, and a moment later struggling to get back IN the front yard, jumping through a gap between the gate and the wall. Don Alfonzo was doing some yard work and sporting appropriate clothing: his white T-shirt was aging, with small tears forming along the collars. It is not uncommon to see small tears or holes in people’s clothing here, and it is OK. Most people in El Salvador, excepting the upper classes, have a shirt they wear with a rip or a stain. It is quite acceptable to wear it, because everyone else has a rip or stain in something they sport so who really cares anyway?
Further down the road from Alfonzo after we turn left at the bend and walk down a steep hill is another humble home. This one is made out wood and mud. Thin pieces of wood are encased within dried mud, and horizontal layers of mud with wood dividing them make up the walls. It seems a variation of the adobe brick homes still found in the country. Right before the bend in the road is a fantastic vista of the un-housed ravine below it, filled with numerous banana trees, forming a “guerta”, and of the hill on the other side, sporting a few modest sized ‘modern looking’ homes. Turning at the bend and walking down the hill you are greeted by more banana trees, as you continue down the slope, and walk over a small bridge for a small creek. The road reaches a dead end, with a few houses on either side and where is tops you see a ‘pasaje’ which takes you down to a house below, nestled in the trees, near another creek you can hear trickling.
A half dozen little convenience store “chalet” (pronounced like the French word) are peppered throughout the neighborhood, and perhaps a half dozen more I don’t know of are nestled among smaller streets and “pasajes” (passageways).
Our neighborhood also boasts its own Church with a parochial school and Soccer field. No surprise on the field, they’re partial to soccer here (called “futbol” in Spanish and other languages).
Living in a developing country, in the middle of nowhere? Not to worry, you needn’t leave your house, most of the necessities in life come to you.
Various vendors, marketers, and peddlers wind their way through roads and passageways throughout El Salvador every day. This entry takes you through encounters with vendors selling their wares on country roads in rural Chalatenango to others walking door-to-door in a tourist area just south of San Salvador.
Bakers peddle on bikes through caserios (country neighborhoods) and colonias (urban and suburban neighborhoods), offering rolls, bread, and pastries; signaling their arrival with a horn (comically, it’s a clown’s horn), attached to their bicycle.
Rural Chalatenango: A vegetable vendor we prefer comes into the caserio every week on selling tomatoes, cabbage, cucumber, onions, avocado, etc. off his small commercial truck. Unlike the grocery store, there may be only 1 variety of orange that day, or red onions but not white, but he usually produces most of your vegetable needs. He packs a big plastic bin of “gelatins,” small bite-sized capfuls of a jello-like candy to give out to kids on his stops. Every Thursday between 7 and 8am we hear the long hand press on his horn, announcing his approach. Since my mother in-law buys large amounts of tomatoes and cabbage to run her ‘pupuseria’ he stops right in front of the house for her. My husband and I stock up on veggies for 5-9 dollars a week. Avocados went up from 3 for a $1 to 40 cents apiece*, still not bad considering they were 2 for $1.50 at best when I left the U.S. Food selection is limited in rural El Salvador, but bless it for cheap fruits and vegetables! Another veggie vendor made rounds here, but thankfully he stopped. He had a megaphone strapped to his truck, broadcasting his products in a loud, not so good auctioneer style (aspiring auctioneer perhaps?); we heard him blocks away but couldn’t understand his garble.
Chulto City is a major salt vendor and use the megaphone well. All they sell is salt, and boy are they proud of it. “Get your best salt here, Chuuulto City, bright white white [Chelita Chelita Chelita…], iodized salt, don’t live without it…” is chanted on wheels in Spanish. “Helados ‘Candy’” dances ’round the neighborhood in their ice cream truck a few times a week.
The final but not forgotten of the megaphone crew are the “Chatarra” guys. In any neighborhood in El Salvador at least once a week they come by not selling, but buying “Chatarra Chatarra Chatarra lamina, compramos refridge, tele (TV), latta…” They pick up discarded items with scrap metal, tin or aluminum. Auctioneer style as well.
Got room for a few more bottles? Spotted in Puerto de la Libertad October of 2010
Recycling hasn’t hit prime time in El Salvador, but there are recycling centers, and ambitious people with trucks will travel:
courtesy of Daniel at ocasaz.wordpress.com
The helado (ice cream) guys ring a small bell to humbly announce offerings from their cart.
It breaks your heart to see them pushing along in the beating sun. And almost always an older gentleman, so one is compelled to buy a couple cones.
A sweet older woman came by last fall, selling canastas (baskets). I got a deal buying a small hamper-sized basket for 5 bucks.
[I interrupt this story to note that as I typed this, along came someone ringing a bell in the street in our new neighborhood, Los Planes de Renderos. Sure enough – a sorbet man! Just as I was saying, an older gentleman, selling 25 cent child-size cones in your choice of vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate. “I’ll take four!” I said, and treated my husband and the two masons working at the house we’re renting. The ice cream vendor carried everything in a large cardboard box with a strap, on his shoulder. Pictures of fancy ice cream bars adorned its top. Inside were cones, cups, his scooping spoon, and a smaller cardboard box containing 3 flavors of ice cream. No plastic containers, no ‘cooler’, just a simple cardboard getup, human powered with hands legs and feet! He had travelled from San Marcos, a town nearby to sell his cones in the well-off neighborhoods of our tourist town with Mountain Vistas.]
Meanwhile, back in Chalatenango….not long after Chulto City belted out their salt-selling sermon, a guy selling blankets came by our rural house. One had a Whinnie-the-Pooh and friends design in blues and whites, colors inverted on the opposite side. I bought the blanket and my husbande teased me, but we did use it a few nights when it got “fresco” (brisk) on December nights last year. Sundry food items also pass through the ‘hood’, such as frozen chicken, which comes by regularly. When in season, an old woman with very few teeth and her mentally challenged son come by with fish, which my husband likes to buy. The tamale girls, as I call them, come by selling freshly made hot tamales which they carry in “guacales” (shallow plastic buckets) on their heads. They live in the neighborhood and make their rounds occasionally. I’m usually game as it’s warm and fresh.
http://popartmachine.com/item/pop_art/LOC+1248636
The oddest thing I’ve seen sold by mobile salespeople in El Salvador would be Mattresses. Sold by men and women who walk them around. Obviously not Sealy Posturepedic (try hauling that down the road!), but a thinned-down version one can fold and carry on the shoulder with a strap. I feel for these vendors when I see them carrying such large and cumbersome items. I’d often like to give them a ride, but my husband reminds me their success comes from entering every neighborhood, and walking by every home, like door-to-door salesmen your grandparents knew. So no point in offering a ride unless I want to be the salesman’s side-kick.
My husband and I made a furniture purchase from mobile vendors once – a pair of men selling folding wooden tables in Chalatenango. Seeing how easy they carried them helped make the sale!
“Ah La La Pizzaaaaaaaah!’. This guy is one of my favorites. The pizza man has a unique songlike chant, it’s rather inviting. We hear him streets away, buzzing around on his motorbike, pizza and soda on tow. A buck a slice with a cup of soda, a deal by American standards, but pricey for Salvadorans (daily wage for a laborer in the country = $7-10 day), so more likely indulged by families getting remittances. The remittance club can also afford to buy from the motorbike carrying Pollo Campero, or as I like to call them, Pollo Robero ** (see ‘robo‘). It is good stuff, but be ready to empty your wallet – costs almost as much as the states.
Let’s take a gander back to the mountaintop venue again in Los Planes de Renderos. The vendors have been selling and walking along, all this time. There are two ladies I know well by face, and a 3rd who has made herself familiar of late. All three sell chocolate discs, which are used to make Latino style hot chocolate with, and other small items. I can go to the “Mercado Central” (main market in the city) and buy everything they offer for a better price, but they are such dears and make their living this way, so I buy when they stroll by. They are from nearby towns, and we often remark about the big difference in climate just 15 minutes down the hill, often 10 degrees warmer than here. Thus, the ever-present chocolate discs and sweater they carry with them.
A salesman of house wares came by just a week ago and left an impression. A mountain of goods, he pulled out item after item from his collection-in-tow, trying his darndest to sell one of a dozen aluminum pots, curtains, and blankets. Insistence often pays, so he kept on after my first warnings, offering one thing, then another. He piled it all back after my final ‘I’m sorry, I have all those things’. Eventually, everything was on his shoulders again. I couldn’t believe he could carry it all – a dozen or more aluminum pots up high on his back, and several blankets and curtains held on his sides from a strap. A human mule, hoping to dump some cargo in exchange for a few bucks.
Clothing, shoes, and hammocks lend themselves well to sales walkers and we’ve seen all kinds. Hammock sales have a comical barter process. The vendor starts at, say $15-18. ‘No, I already have hammocks’, you say. “But this is a great hammock. I’ll bring it down to twelve.” ‘No, really, I have that kind already’. “You can always use another. How about $10?” ‘No, really, I don’t need anymore hammocks’. “OK, OK…$8. But I can’t sell it for any less….” At local gas stations down the road hammock vendors approach to take you through this interchange; after the 4th ‘no’ the price has dropped in half.
Another time here on the mountain a couple of young girls (tweens?) came by selling “Atol de Piña,” a hot drink made of ground corn meal and pineapple. I’d always eaten pineapples in cold dishes, so this was an exotic treat.
The best purchase I remember in our mountaintop locale was from a husband and wife duo selling popsicles. I bought an arrayan flavored frozen fruit treat, generous sized and shaped like an umbrella. Best popsicle I’ve had in years, and was only 35 cents.
* Avacados, at the 3/2010 price; they’re now up to .50 apiece (vendor/market price) or more a year later.
** Went to a Pollo Campero. Got a bucket of chicken, and….hmmm…I don’t see the drinks on the menu. Ah well, let’s get 4 big drinks for the gang, we’re dying of thirst in 90+ degree heat. Along comes the receipt. Drinks are $1.25 for a smallfountain soda (in El Salvador, no less) and we ordered all LARGE! Slick job not listing drinks on the menu, Pollo Robero.
This article explains How to use a Washing Sink, or “Pila”, as its called in El Salvador.
First, familiarize yourself with the Pila. All Pilas have a “tub” area to hold water, and one or more “washing” areas/slabs.
Pila, El Salvador
Fill the tub with water, when water is running*. Be sure the faucet is in the OFF position if you turned it when water wasn’t running, or it will spill over when it comes back on (happened to us already). I’ll share a phrase my friend in maintenance at the Omni Hotel in Charleston, SC taught me over 20 years ago: “righty-tighty, lefty loosy”. Thanks, Jim, still use it today!
Have soap and a guacal ready.
SOAP for washing clothes is sold in short, fat cylinders at the Super in packages of 3.
Max Poder or "Max Power"
My preferred washing soap. We like anything with the word "Indio" here.
GUACAL**: a shallow plastic bucket
Now for the washing part: Wet your item, lay it on the slab of the Pila, and roll on the soap. Use the item to wash itself. Hold the part closest to you on the pila, with one hand, palm down. Grab the far end with your other hand. Bring it to the near end, and rub it against itself, in “away” motions so not to get suds all over yourself. Don’t by stingy with the soap: if you don’t have enough, more friction makes it harder to wash and wears it out faster. For large items like bath towels, I do it in reverse – hold the far end and pull ‘toward’ me for greater arm force to move a heavy, wet cloth.
Blankets and sheets? Forget the Pila!
Some Salvadoran woman may pride themselves in their ability to wash a blanket on a tiny cement slab, but I’m not that crazy. Tried it once, pieces of blanket were dangling off the pila, landing on the ground, so tried bunching it up but parts would fall out again, and into the pila’s tub. Damn thing was more dirty after I washed it than before I started.
Allow me to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Large Bucket.
Throw some “Rinso” in water and mix. Let ‘em set 30 minutes or so, do some “human agitate” like a washing machine, and presto! Freshly washed bedding.
Works for me.
Wring where needed, and hang. Clothes drip dry fast in most of the country, heck there’s nothing but sun here. Except…last year in the rainy season, we were “Living in the Rain forest,” as there was exceptional rainfall between August and September of 2010. Took 3 days to dry clothes (I got good at wringing). Sweatshirts – took so long they smelled like sweaty socks, never really dried. A friend showed me the “hang it on the back of the fridge” trick, it helped tons.
Hangers: People on the mountain put everything on hangers as it rains throughout the day during soppy season. At the first sign of a sprinkle, one dashes out, grabs all the hangers in one fell swoop and brings them in under cover. Rain stops, hangers out again. Repeat.
Dry items ‘reverse’ and Don’t leave ‘em out too long. The sun is STRONG here, so if you forget to reverse your nice new green shirt and take off for the afternoon….you’ll find a nice lime green shirt when you get back.
Laundromats? I know of no coin-op laundries in El Salvador. May be for many reasons: tradition + economics tied to hand-washing, issues with a city’s plumbing infrastructure, and safety issues (most people are in by 7pm to avoid dangerous encounters – that’s prime laundry time). Fortunately, there is no shortage of women offering laundry services for the working woman too busy to hand wash.
Benefits of Hand Washing Clothes:
1) Avoids premature “dingy-ing” of clothes (no “grey soup” in the washing machine from pieces whose colors run)
2) No more wings! You know: the under-the-arm flesh that jiggle when you wiggle? Hand wash for a few months and see them disappear!!
3) Saves on electricity. 4) Free Exercise ( see #2 )
* In many areas of El Salvador, the water does not “run” with constant water pressure 24×7. Salvadorans have adapted well; they fill their pila and one-two barrels of water to have enough when it is not running. In some places, like where my in-laws live, there is a specific time window when the water “runs” so homes can fill their drums. Even the well-to-do live with water interruptions. They have a large “tank” called a “Cisterna” – seen in urban and suburban El Salvador (a large cement tank to store water, located on their property), or a black hard plastic water tank.
** a Guacal (alt. spelling: huacal) is the word used for a shallow bucket. Ranging from the size of a small bowl to a large 2 foot diameter basket-size. Guacales are used to pour and store, all over the house and market. Used in washing, cooking, and transporting items like ground corn meal (masa). Women throughout El Salvador (and Central America) carry items in guacales on their head; the shallow shape lends itself well to balancing on the head.
We see new things every day in El Salvador. Today’s lesson was on how to connect powerful 220v (volt) tools without using an outlet! This “How To” is for HUMOR ONLY so please DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!!
A welding/soldering team came by and cut a piece out of the large metal garage door (“puerton”). They fashioned a smaller door out of it, and needed power to weld it into the main door. Our house isn’t outfitted with a 220v outlet, but even if it were they would not have used it. The “jefe” asked ‘Where is the electrical box?’ When he took the entire FACE off the box, I began unplugging things in the house, quickly.
Here is the pictorial:
1. Bring machine to job
2. Have extra long cord attached
3. Remove face of electric panel
4. Connect exposed part of each metal wire to one of the two openings available in the live electric panel
This is all tongue-in-cheek here folks, so again, DO NOT try this at home! Oh, one more tricky detail – there is NO main cut-off switch in or to the service box – all wire connects/disconnects happened l-i-v-e.
Apparently this practice is common for welders throughout El Salvador. The gentleman who worked on the Puerton (large gate/door) at my in-laws house in Chalatenango did an interesting variation: he scaled the utility pole and connected wires from his welding machine directly to the live wires on it!
Life is exciting in very odd ways here. These crazy risk-taking welders are up there with extreme skiers in my book.
My neighbor Sabas may be poor, but he’s got the coolest flower and fauna around.
Here are his digs, a humble house of corrugated metal. He sells firewood for a living, a scarce commodity in this area. But don’t feel sorry for him – he doesn’t want your sympathy. He’s happy have his good health to collect firewood, and he is OLD! (Seventy-something. A lot of very old people are seen working throughout El Salvador, but the good news is they’re in much better health than Westerners their age).
Most afternoons you’ll see Sabas stroll down main street with a caretilla (cart) filled with the day’s wood findings, while gleeful upper-class Salvadoran tourists skip along the other side, deciding which bar to thrown down a couple of beers at and enjoy the view on the “Mirador” side of the mountain*.
Does it get any better than this? A Torogoz, the national bird of El Salvador, hangs out in his backyard every day.
Photo by Ruben Quinonez. Visit www.quinonezphotography.com
* El Mirador is one of two major tourist stops in Los Planes de Renderos (San Salvador), El Salvador. This viewpoint is GORGEOUS both day and night.
The other hot spot is the Puerta del Diablo (Devil’s Gate) on the other side of the mountaintop, also with fantastic views. The area is popular with young couples for ‘romantic jaunts’ but also with families on weekends, who like to enjoy the cooler climate, drink Atol de Elote (sweet corn drink), and eat Riguas and Tortas (pancake-like treats made out of cornmeal).
The carpets / alfombras of Semana Santa (Holy Week) seen in El Salvador and Latin America are a wonderful creative expression of spirituality. The carpets are made of pigment colored salt or sawdust and are ‘painted’ by teams of people who start working on them as early as midnight on Good Friday. The photos speak for themselves. Photos below were taken the morning of Good Friday in Los Planes de Renderos, San Salvador, El Salvador. Unlike other places, where the carpets get wiped away by the religious processions of Good Friday (Viernes Santo), these are marked off with cones or tape and people walk around instead of on them, so they last through both the morning and evening processions, on display for at least 12 hours.
>> CLICK on any picture to enlarge <<
A picture of Christ – all in Salt!
The craftsman checks his work
Texture and dimension
…see the detail in Christ’s hand
ANY CHARACTER HERE
ANY CHARACTER HERE
Largest alfombra we saw
LEFT detail.
MIDDLE detail
Detail, RIGHT
ANY CHARACTER HERE
The carpet quotes Luke 9:35 In Spanish:
Camino, Neocatecumenal….”Este es mi hijo, el [mi] elegido, escuchadle” La transfiguracion Lucas 9, 35
ANY CHARACTER HERE
My favorite alfombra,
depicting Jesus and Romero
Romero is a modern day Jesus
for the Salvadoran people.
I love the detail, colors,
and cursive writing
ANY CHARACTER HERE
ANY CHARACTER HERE
It all starts with a drawing
And patience
Careful craftsmanship
Tinted hands
ANY CHARACTER HERE
Close up look at the salt
Not all are religious pictures.
ANY CHARACTER HERE
As I wrote this I realized boy did we get lucky. A few sprinkles fell from the sky mid-day on Good Friday, but stopped, sparing the artwork so painstakingly created. Saturday, just a day later – the sky belched out a POURING rain for two or more hours in the afternoon.
A couple links to other sites showing Good Friday carpets here:
Fruits of the Finca: marañón, mango de coco, maracuya, manzana de agua
Two Sunday’s ago, I was invited to a Finca in Nueva Concepción. It was a real treat.
Our host was Tito, an older gentleman who was delighted to have us, and chock full of good stories of days-gone-by. Pictures of us, below, with Tito and the famous 5 pound mango.
As always, CLICK on a PICTURE to enlarge – these are fun fruit shots.
Thinking the Finca would be a distance from the center of town, I was surprised to see it was literally “steps away” from the main market. We turned left onto the street at one end of the market and right there, almost across from the side entrance was a short dirt road we turned onto, which leads to Tito’s Finca and Auto-Hotel.
One thinks of a Finca as being “in the country’ and a fair distance from town, but being so close, this walk-ability turns out to be a very good thing for Tito. Tito had worked in a textile ‘fabrica’ for 34 years. Straining his eyes every day, often into the night hours, he can no longer see things in the left field of vision of his left eye; this resulted in two accidents within one month, so no more driving for him these days.
Tito told us how he used to fix the machines in the mill, and that he knew them all so well, when he walked into the fabrica and a machine was ‘off’ he could tell, and would say, “something Better check the machines, one of them isn’t working right.”
The Finca was relaxing and a great diversion. It was extremely hot, as it is in that area of Chalatenango, but we stayed cool in the pool. It’s a common misconception that Chalatenango has Cooler weather (‘Chalatenango es Frecso’), even among Salvadorans. *
Tito was a great host. We passed him walking into town to make a few purchases as we drove on the driveway and he told us straightaway to hit the pool, he’d be right back.We spent some time in the pool and the kids had a blast. I was holding my sister-in-law’s baby, and she being much ‘whiter’ or “chelita” than other kids, I tried my best to shelter her in a small corner of the pool in the shade. So much for that – later when my sister in law had her, they were all over the place, and I felt so foolish trying to “protect her” from the sun – this is a very American thing, and likely more necessary with people of serious northern-skinned ancestry. Although little Wendy is on the pale side, her mother’s nickname is “Morena” – which means dark-skinned, and by day’s end little Wendy showed no signs of looking pink or red.
Tito was so generous, I would say almost OVER-generous, with us. After the pool festivities winded down, and it appeared things were wrapping up, Tito announced “And now we’re going to have a little lunch….” This little lunch was a GIANT box of Pollo Campero with all the trimmings – fries, slaw, bread, and flan. He had picked up some horchata as a cool refreshment, and even bought a six-pack of beer for us ‘adult ladies’ to drink.
While we ate lunch, Tito told us stories from when he grew up on this Finca. His parents had him help keep “watch” for small animals and other intruders, outfitting him with a hunting rifle to keep vigil at the age of nine! Tito showed us the tip of a nail sticking out of a large tree near the patio. You see this nail, he said, when I was nine I’d hang the rife on it, and would sleep right here, on this root of the tree….at that time the nail, which was about a foot long, was nailed only 3 inches or so into the tree. Look at now…it shows how much this tree has grown – only 2 inches of it is left sticking out!
Although Tito grew up at the Finca, at the age of 17 he left abruptly. You see, he explained, I was talking to a young girl my age right here, in the brush – he gestured – when a neighbor saw us, and well, my mom sent me to “work in El Salvador” straightaway to keep me out of trouble. That’s when I started working at the Fabrica, he said, and he’d worked there ever since, the job he held his whole life.
Living in San Salvador, he married and raised children there, but always longed for the life he remembered back at the Finca.The Finca passed through different hands during those years, first from his father to his brother. Then his brother sold it to his mother, and his mother ‘willed it’ (I really bought it, Tito explained, having given his mother money almost every weekend as he was working). Tito moved back to Nueva Concepción to take over the Finca 16 years ago.
Tito’s three children live in and around San Salvador, and make it out here once every 2 or 3 months. Raised in the city, unlike their father, a Finca in a country town might not have the same appeal to them. Tito also has three step-children whom he’s in touch with daily. He says every day before he goes to bed at 9:00, he talks with each of them, all 3 living in the United States; he never goes to bed without doing so. Tito believes kids who aren’t from your own biology often appreciate you more than your own children. It appears in this case at least, the relationships you have to ‘work at’ instead of the ones that are automatically set up for you can become ones you treasure. It also helps that Tito had a lot of practice with the first three before the second set came along.
He told us he is also close with his helper / ayudante; this young man has been with him for ten years, and by now they are like father and son. Even though it is his day off, Anibal stopped by to help clean up the pool to prepare for Tito’s grand-daughter’s visit later in the day. He really liked Wendy, and asked if he could pick her up. You could see that he, like many Salvadorans, adores children. While in many parts of the Western world, children are often partitioned from adults and adult activities, children are seen and cherished everywhere here, and are called “blessings from God” ( Bendiciones de Dios ).
For a Salvadoran coming from a somewhat older generation, I was surprised at some of Tito’s viewpoints, and discovered him to be a bit unique from most: he seemed to have a libertarian attitude in some respects broke from the religious mores in another. He announced quite firmly at one point: “I don’t believe in the Devil!” This is a bold statement here, as nearly everyone in El Salvador is indoctrinated in one main Christian religion, often Roman Catholic or some version of Evangelism. He said humans are always trying to overcontrol each other with all these rules and systems and don’t let people live as they should. Regarding teenage pregnancy, he said “You know what he problem is when a young girl gets pregnant?” It’s the “Panza!” ( her big belly ). Everyone is ‘ashamed’ because their daughter is walking around with a big belly but soon after the baby is born their the first to go spoiling it with all kinds of things.
After lunch was done, Tito sent us off to pick fruit, even providing large plastic bags to fill up, saying take all we want, there’s plenty. At his Finca, there are mangos, bananas (guineos), maracuya (passsion fruit), guayaba (guava), limes, and a few orange trees. Morena went crazy picking the “loroco” which was intermingled with the passion fruit vines, a favorite among salvadorans pan-fried and cooked with cream, or most often in pupusas with cheese. Also, a leafy plant called ‘moro’ I think, which Jessica and Morena grabbed tons of, is used in cooking.
Manzana de Agua (no es marañon japanes)
An odd fruit which I thought was Marañon Japones (Japanese cashew-fruit) is really called watery apple (manzana de agua).
It looks peculiar and does taste watery!
Jessica was a brave fruit soldier. She climbed way up the giant mango tree and pulled these big ones down with a special fruit picker a flexible net basket on a metal ring, attached to a long bamboo pole. She grabbed ‘em and I pulled them out the basket.
Check out this GIANT mango.
These are called
Mango de Coco -Coconut Mango, on
account of their large size.
Here’s Jessica, with Guayabas- isn’t she gorgeous?
* In actuality, a few geographic pockets within the department of Chalatenango have a cooler climate, mountainous areas usually famous for tourism such as La Palma, or mountaintop towns like Las Pilas and El Pital. San Fernando de Morazan is a mountain town we visited once, driving through Dulce Nombre de Maria to get there. Many parts of Chalatenango are hot and dry, including where my husband grew up near Agua Caliente. Farms and cows everywhere, hot and dusty during the dry season.
I’d like to share with you two funny and odd sights I saw today, within 30 minutes of each other.
Coffeewalkers & backpacks here look like the guy on the left
On our way into the grocery store parking lot in San Jacinto, a “coffee walker” crossed the street in front of us. Usually selling Nescafe brand, coffeewalkers are ambulatory vendors who carry your favorite morning beverage and its accoutrements strapped to them in a square-shaped backpack. I had not seen this before coming to El Salvador, and it’s a curious site the first time you see it. Coffeewalkers, or ambulatory coffee vendors, are also often seen in the “colonia medica” where I bought a cup of fresh brewed there once.
After we’d bagged the grocery loot, and were walking out the door, quite literally AT the door – there was a woman sitting in a barbershop stool getting her recently cut hair blown out. There is no separate room or even a partition – the hairdressers and clients are sitting right there in the open, in the exit area of the grocery store, just outside of the path of exiting customers. Super Selectos has improvised a small hair salon right at the exit of the store. It’s hysterical! I have seen up to two clients attended to at a time, recalling a woman getting makeup put on in the “salon” on a recent grocery trip.
I’m sorry I don’t have pictures, but I hope you can imagine it. The stuff you see here sometimes is such a hoot!
One of the current administration’s biggest gaffes was changing the propane gas subsidy. “Propane Gas?” you might ask, thinking of your backyard barbecue grill.
Photo by Víctor Peña at La Prensa Grafica
Propane Gas tanks are how most Salvadorans power their stoves and ovens. It’s also how anyone that runs a food service business heats up anything that is cooked. In short, it’s a utility. And for years now, in El Salvador, propane gas has been subsidized to protect the consumer from high costs.
The subsidy, in its previous form, blanketed everybody: rich, poor and in between. The subsidy was paid directly to the propane gas distributors, who would sell the gas tanks at the subsidized price to everyone in the populace.
Then someone in the government had an idea – why don’t we find a way to take the subsidy away from the rich or well off, since they don’t need it, and give it only to those who do?
Thus, the subsidy process was changed, and as of April 2011 it is now tied to your electric bill. It is given only to those who use less than a specific number of Kilowatts (showing as 300 KW on our most recent bill). Usually, a poor person in El Salvador with a smaller house and less appliances uses less than that KW threshold.
“Subsidio del Gas: Justo para las grandes mayorias” is their slogan (The Gas Subsidy: Just for the Great Majority).
In theory, it sounds like the perfect plan. In practice, it turned into a disaster for many people.
The price of propane gas went up for a lot of people unexpectedly, and as a result the price of many other things went up along with it: pupusas, tortillas, and fresh baked bread, to name a few. For example, tortillas went up by 20%: previously 20 for a dollar, now reduced to 16. Propane gas for a 25 pound tank was about $5.25 before the change; now a tank is $15.30, the cost after the $9.10 subsidy $6.20.
Why are so many people not getting the subsidy now? One Reason: COMMUNITY ELECTRICITY. It is common for multiple families living in one or more dwellings on the same property to be sharing the same electric meter. Use of a common electric meter has helped Salvadorans historically, by not having to pay the up front fee to install separate service and an additional meter, and probably helps by sharing the minimum delivery charge. But all that cost-savings has just gone out the window. If 2 families share a meter and bill, only 1 gets the subsidy.
There IS a solution, supposedly, for families living on the same meter to continue receiving the subsidy. They are to visit their closest CENADE, a government organization. CENADE can send a representative to visit the house/homes using a common meter and verify that separate families live there, so each can receive the subsidy. According to my husband, people in the neighborhood he grew up in have done that with success.
Another Reason the new subsidy process is failing the poor: the subsidy only goes towards one “tambo” or tank of gas per month. Families who use more than one tank a month only get help on one. And small businesses who do not qualify for the electric subsidy, or who use multiple tanks of gas are in the same boat.
The gas subsidy changed even pissed off the distributors, who even went on strike for a couple of days recently, complaining that their profit margins have been cut, as the price of propane has increased but they are required to sell it at a fixed price.
My husband and I receive the subsidy each month, and we use one tank every 2-3 months, so we’re actually better off than we were before. We decided to put the money in an envelope and buy something or give the money to my mother in law, who IS poor and needs the subsidy, every few months.
A law was passed yesterday, May 26, 2011, by the Legislative Assembly in El Salvador, which gives students who become pregnant the right to continue their studies without being expelled or discriminated against in educational institutions.
The Legislative Assembly approved reforms to the General Law of Education that indicate is it prohibited for public or private educational centers to adopt “measures that impede, limit or disrupt the initiation or normal continuation of studies by students who are pregnant or breastfeeding. (translated from Spanish)
I was happy to hear the news, but surprised that 11 years post-millennium, students are still being expelled from school for pregnancy. I wanted to see how prevalent this phenomenon was, so did some research.
The first statistic is from the Ministry of Education in El Salvador: in 2009, 1,191 youth were discriminated against or expelled for pregnancy; of those, 41% could not continue their studies, stated Jaime Valdez of the FMLN.
ElSalvadorNoticias.net: Datos proporcionados por el Ministerio de Educación, en el año 2009 fueron discriminadas o expulsadas por dicho motivo 1,191 jóvenes; de las cuales el 41% no pudieron continuar con sus estudios posteriormente, señaló el diputado Jaime Valdez, del FMLN.
In an October 2008 report presented to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Salvadoran Attorney General/Ombudsman for Human Rights Defense cited that discrimination against pregnant youth by the educational community was a human rights problem in El Salvador. (Paragraph number 93).
The good news is that some educational institutions have been ahead of this law for a long time: one such is the National Institute of Santa Ana. According to a September 2003 article on Elsalvador.com (Diaro de Occidente / Diaro de Hoy), INSA (Instituto Nacional de Santa Ana) began a program 4 years prior (1999) to help young mothers stay in school. At the article’s date there were 2 pregnant students in their high school program. However, the article states, in private schools, if a student becomes pregnant, she is expelled immediately for breaking the school’s regulations. The article stated that the Ministry of Education in Santa Ana gives [educational] institutions the authority to establish their own rules for deciding if it’s an infraction or not.
And here we are today. Progress is evident by passage of this new law, where 57 Diputados (they are like Senators) voted in favor and 6 against, with 3 absent.
Headlines with links to articles in Spanish reporting the news:
La Asamblea Legislativo aprobó reformas a la Ley General de Educación que permitirá que las adolescentes embarazadas puedan continuar con sus estudios.
La Asamblea Legislativa aprobó reformas a la Ley General de Educación que indican que se prohíbe en los centros educativos del país, la adopción de medidas que impidan, limiten o perturben el inicio o continuidad normal de los estudios de las alumnas embarazadas o durante su período de lactancia, las autoridades de dicho centro educativo determinarán según el caso.
I’m not going to repeat the entire story, others have done a fine job explaining the situation, and reasons postulated for why Mauricio Funes appears to have LOST HIS MIND regarding his behavior in signing Decree 743 into law a little over a week ago.
Mauricio Funes approved a bill which was crafted by the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly, primarily by the Arena party and its allies, which requires a “unanimous vote” by the Supreme Constitutional Court to make decisions about the constitutionality of laws.
The entire county is in an uproar and people were even protesting in the streets last week.
So after all the public reaction, the Arena party is now BACKPEDALLING, weasels that they are. And Funes, now that he’s completley pissed off the Left and insists upon making jabs at the Right, is making himself an enemy of everyone.
Funes placed a a full-page ad in the papers justifying why he signed Decree 743 into law. Here is one excerpt, in Spanish (see full article here at La Pagina)
Por su parte, constituye una injerencia inaceptable en la acción del Organo Judicial la confesión pública realizada por el partido ARENA, que ahora solicita la derogación del Decreto 743 y para ellos se fundamenta en lo que parece un acuerdo alcanzado con la Sala de lo Constitucional y, según el cual, ARENA expresa contar con “evidentes demostraciones” de que la Sala no declarara inconstitucional la Ley de Amnistiá. En efecto, según el comunicado hecho publico este juees por las mas altas autoridades del partido ARENA, miembros de esa Sala se habrían comprometido no solo a no declarar inconstitucional dicha laye, sino también “a defenderla”.
My best translation is as follows (apologies for the super long run-on sentence, blame Funes for that):
“ARENA has created an unacceptable interference in the actions of the Judicial Organ with the public confession it made, and who now solicit the repeal of Decree 743 and for them it’s based on what appears to be an agreement achieved with the Constitutional Court, which according to the announcement, ARENA is counting on ‘evident demonstrations’ that the court will not declare the Amnesty Law unconstitutional. In effect, according to the communication made public this Thursday by the highest authorities of ARENA, members of the Court have committed not only to not declare that law unconstitutional, but also to ‘defend it’. “
The Amnesty Law, or Ley de Amnistiá, protects members of both the former government militia and the guerrilla/resistance fighters of being prosecuted for war crimes. Although I believe it is a shame for people not be prosecuted for executing massacres, it is recognized that both sides of the civil war committed atrocities. If everyone were brought to justice, you would have utter chaos in El Salvador, and it could bring the country to the brink of war once again, as it is already very unstable due with constant violent crime, corruption, narcotrafficking inroads, and its people weary and frustrated living with a 30% or higher poverty rate.
As for Funes’ behavior, I can’t figure it out. On the one hand he bitches about ARENA committing ‘sabatoge’ in vandalizing ANDA main water pipes recently, and here he swiftly sanctions a piece of legislation they crafted which ties the judge’s hands behind their backs.
“One Nation, Two Economies” is a phrase that’s been tossed about prior to and during the recession (still going ON by the way, don’t let anyone fool you), and recently in a February 2011 article by Rainer Rupp on how the ‘recovery’ merely funneled up to gamblers on Wall Street.
While Americans enjoyed at least three decades of solid middle class prosperity during what many economists refer to as the Golden Age of Capitalism, and are getting accustomed to what may be a ‘new normal’, down here it has long been –
One Nation, Two Economies
Poverty in El Salvador has fortunately been declining; according to the U.S. department of State, ‘The economy has been growing at a steady and moderate pace since the signing of peace accords in 1992, and poverty was cut from 66% in 1991 to 37.8% in 2009.’ Improving, but still a ways from a thriving middle class. If you live in El Salvador and pay any attention, you can see clear distinctions between the classes, and easily observe those who participate in the Informal sector.
What are the “Formal” versus “Informal” economies in El Salvador?
Formal economy/sector: jobs which are part of the ‘system’ where tax collection takes place, public or private health insurance comes with it, and maybe other benefits like holiday or vacation pay. For instance, a person who works in an office, large restaurant or hotel, hospital, factory, school, clinic, government agency, etc. And the owners of such businesses.
Benefits of working in the formal economy include being part of the ISSS health insurance system (or private, if you’re lucky enough to be middle class or higher), and building up years of work experience in ‘the system’. If you look through employment ads in the major newspapers, many employers require would-be employees to have things like a social health insurance card or other requirements one won’t have if they haven’t built up time in the official system. Paying into the ISSS health system means you have access to clinics and hospitals that service this population. I thought everyone could go to ISSS facilities, but I learned differently. Apparently, there is a “lowest rung of the health system” set of clinics and hospitals for the poor. If you don’t have a health card, you will be turned away from the ISSS hospital, and sent to the hospital for the ‘poorest of the poor’. That’s where most of my in-laws go.
Courtesy of ElSalvadorAhora.net - click for link and story
The Informal Economy: A LOT OF PEOPLE. According to the International Labor Organization, nearly a million Salvadorans in 2009 were employed in the informal sector, totally over 53% of non-agricultural employment. Most of these people make their “own” economy using the resources at their disposal. It consists of all types of vendors and small businesses, from people with roadside fruit and veggie stands, vendors at the markets, selling door to door or at traffic intersections, and owners of small restaurants and hot foot stands. The boy who sells peanuts and cashews at the gas station, or the hammock and blanket vendors. Maria’s Pupusas. Joes Juice and Liquados. The ‘muchacha’ who tends to house and children for the more well off.
Why? If they work in a Maquila (textile mill), or retail position at the mall, they are likely to come home with a little over $5 in their pocket after working 10-12 hours and paying bus fare. A girl I met at the mall in 2010 made $6 to work an 11 hour day. My husband worked as a baker for over 10 years when he was a young man. In the late 90s and early millennium, he made $15 a day working 12+ hours in a bakery. He interviewed at a bakery in San Salvador last year. If he took the job, it would be Monday-Saturday 9+ hours (however many to bake 7 sacs – a lot – of flour), and ‘a few hours on Sunday’. Based on his monthly salary, we calculated it at $8 a day.
People in the Informal economy are their own boss, they set their own hours, fulfill their own inventories, and often come home with better than the average laborer’s 6 to 8 bucks a day. Fed up with serf wages, people have taken to the streets, and vendors abound in El Salvador; they are anywhere and everywhere. As I stroll along the main street in Los Planes de Renderos, several women sell fruits and vegetables, while others sell pupusas. Cross the street from WalMart in Soyapango to the Plaza Mundo mall in Soyapango, and you ‘walk the vendor gauntlet’, ambushed by dozens of people selling clothing, small electric items, batteries, toothbrushes, you name it.
Mercado Central: Shopping mall for the poor. One of the best examples of the Informal economy in El Salvador. Located in downtown San Salvador, the main, or “central market” is literally a grocery store and shopping mall for the poorest people in this region. It’s a sea of people taking up several city blocks; at the height of the day, literally hundreds, if not a few thousand customers and marketeers flow in waves, buying and selling to one other. There is at least one official building set up for market vendors, but the majority of vendors are spread out in various ways throughout these blocks. Sometimes as small shops in buildings, but more often stands set up along the streets on top of sidewalks, or vendors who sell produce from wheelbarrows to those who carry items strapped to their waistline, hanging from their shoulders, or propped on their head.
It’s a fantastic solution to resist the symptoms of poverty, because they CUT OUT the middle man. On the seller’s end, there is no boss or distributor taking the large cut and paying them a salary or commission; as direct sellers of their products they are able to offer a good discount and thus, sell a lot. From the buyer’s perspective, a person of poor means is delighted to buy a product with a better price tag than the mall or local super can offer. Fruits and vegetables in the cheapest grocery chain, Super Selectos, can be double what they cost at the market. One can outfit their home with most produce and food goods, home products, grooming items, clothes, shoes, and electronics. I’ve even encountered a “hair salon alley” – hair salons along both sides of the first floor of two buildings along an alley connecting two main streets of the market.
Downsides to the Informal Economy:
a) Streets are chaotic and disorderly. People are so accustomed to vendors selling on the sidewalk that most pedestrians don’t bother using sidewalks the way we do back home. Main streets in large towns and cities are nuts to drive through, and one feels as if they are driving through a human anthill recently crushed by a giant foot. Two-lane streets are reduced to 1.5 lanes, or sometimes 1, as pedestrians and cars share the road in transit.
Both the federal government and the municipality of San Salvador have taken their own (separate) measures to ‘re-order’ the city and historic districts. Resulting in continued protests (manifestaciones) by the vendors.
>> An entire blog post is needed to discuss the ongoing eviction of street vendors throughout the downtown area of San Salvador, and in particular from Calle Arce (Arce Street) and Calle Ruben Dario. <<
b) Taxes? Who needs ‘em? A fair source of tax revenue must be lost by those who employ themselves in the informal economy. The improved income they experience is not translated into tax dollars. Three of my close family members have been selling pupusas and tortillas for years. They can make up to ten bucks on a good day, and have never paid taxes in their life. The government is not going to ‘hunt them down’ for that income. But it might be a case of 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other. The money which informal economy participants pocket tax free is used to buy goods and services in both formal and informal sectors. If they were making 20-25% less at a job in the formal sector, and paying taxes from those lesser wages, that sharp loss of income would see them buying less things; meanwhile the maquila owner looks for every way possible to dodge tax payments. So instead of the ‘government’ getting that money as taxes and spending it however un/wisely they wish, it goes back into the economy directly.
Carlos Slim / Askmen.com
Can El Salvador integrate informal vendors into the “Formal” economy? Obviously, not without participation of serious capital investment, along with a willingness to pay a wage that encourages people to cross over from informal to formal. One of the biggest complaints heard on the group talk-news programs is the ‘abandonment’ of capital investment in El Salvador. That people with large sums of capital take their money and run, preferring foreign investments instead. Hmmmm, sounds FAMILIAR.
There is hope, however. Carlos Slim (gotta love that name), a gentleman from Mexico and as of 2011 the richest man on earth, is planning on investing over $300 million over the next three years in Telecommunications here in El Salvador. Now that’s a start.
It was a regular day in our neighborhood and house today. After morning coffee I charged full speed ahead on a two hour cleaning whirlwind. After sweeping every floor in the house, ‘our’ side and the in-laws side, I mopped our front ceramic patio, then dug out some items for the laundry, when I was firmly interrupted by my mother in law. She reminded me to “eat now,” the work will be there later, and directed me to the table for a welcoming bowl of fresh chicken soup.
Irene making Tamales, 2010
After cohabitating for 6 months, I’ve settled into my role of mega-cleaner, as Irene is most definitely the house cook, and not a big fan of house cleaning. She won’t let me get away with skipping meals, and I take her generosity with a pang of guilt, eating from a poor woman’s table, but I make it up to her as often as I can.
Irene feeds everyone and everything in her midst. Starting with the chickens first thing in the morning to the mid-morning second breakfast of ‘beans with tortillas” (and cheese if there is some). Breakfast number one is coffee and a sweet bread sold by one of the major snack vendors in El Salvador. Midday a warm almuerzo (lunch) is usually made – or at least every other day, often a soup or “Guisado”,which is a saucy chicken or meat dish.
As afternoon progresses, it’s time for cooking maize and pupusa preparation. The maize is cooked daily, whether or not pupusas are made, as it’s also used to make tortillas, which accompany every meal. The maize is boiled in a big pot over firewood, then washed thoroughly and ground up in a molina – a large electric grinder. There is always at least one person in a neighborhood with a “molina” and they charge 25cents or more to grind a small batch of maize into corn meal.
The pupusa preparation consists of heating the tomatoes for the sauce, and cutting cabbage and carrots for the curtido (marinated cabbage eaten with the pupusas), which is done every 2 days. My mother in law prepares the pupusa filling once a week, sometimes twice, by grinding up cooked red beans and fatty pork meat (chicharron) with tomatoes, onions and spices.
Finally, sometime around 5:30pm, this 69 year old veteran makes her daily trip across the street to cook the pupusas on a hot griddle for two to three hours, feeding a clientele ranging from teenage neighborhood boys, many of her regulars, to various women from the caserio (hamlet) who aren’t cooking that day or, blessed with American remittances, have the luxury of eating take-out often. Just before closing, Irene makes the biggest pupusa of all, a small pizza sized one made especially for our family dog, Oso (which means bear in English).
Parakeet gets lucky, Irene gives him Mamay fruit (1/2009)
Throughout the day the parakeet is treated with various fruity delights and crackers, Irene often cutting mangos for herself and handing pieces to him. Children of all ages eat fruits and sweets at various hours, and last but not least are the cockroaches and flies whose very existence at our house might not happen if it werent for the constant cooking, wafting of food aromas, and scraps forgotten on tabletops or dropped on the floor. Our uninvited insect friends take advantage of Irene’s ‘hide it for later’ technique of squirreling food for future use and often find it before she does – a pot on a shelf with melted panela to sweeten something later, or the coveted piece of cheese meant for an afternoon treat wrapped in newspaper (Irene has spent most of her life without a refrigerator so hasn’t gotten the hang of when to use it yet).
There is not a creature within a ten minute walk of our house who hasn’t received a meal by my mother-in-law. She is the lean, mean, Salvadoran cooking machine.
On Monday afternoon I decided to cook a nice, fresh “Sopa de Chipilin” – soup of Chipliin, which is a leafy vegetable here in El Salvador. The vendor lady came by in the morning, and the bunch (manojo) of chipilin was so inviting, I couldn’t resist.
We begin with the individual chipilin...
I’ve never cooked Chipilin soup before, but had a good idea how to make it: flavor it with chicken bullion, and add chopped onion and tomato. I was cruising along with the tomato and onion, and decided to sautee the onions translucent first when it occurred to me – oh! Must de-leaf the stems completely and clean the Chipilin first BEFORE going any further. Can’t just chop it up and throw it in like Cilantro. Arg!
So we begin with this exercise in patience.
a bunch of chipilin
The chipilin plant has plentiful, and small – flat oval shaped leaves, about the size of your thumb.
Stems are not pleasant in the soup, so all leaves must be removed from the stem and cleaned. I prefer to de-stem before rinsing as the water makes the leaves limp and more difficult to remove.
and end up with all these individual leaves
It wasn’t too time-consuming, but lengthy enough that in thinking of my fellow Americans back home, say coming back from work, rushed and blood rushing from fighting traffic, I thought “Nah….most Americans would neither have the time nor patience to deal with this Chiplin cleaning activity.” The soup is better left for a Sunday off.
Throughout all of this, I am reminded of many lessons in patience one learns while living in El Salvador, lessons that are aggravating at first, but become old hat and quite normal over time.
Waiting in line at the bank to pay bills, make deposits, anything. Waiting for people to get a task done – say a construction job or other service. A construction task on American time will take 3-4 times the length and many interesting meanderings along the way – “ohhh we ran out of saaaand. Ohhhh they didn’t have sand at the Ferreteria so we had to go to the other/will have to wait till tomorrow….Oh….well we had a problem with… (pick a flavor).” Fortunately, we have done all our own construction tasks ourselves, but we witnessed with much humor the dynamic duo who worked on the house we rent. Well, if anything, it gave 2 men a job for almost 3 months. Getting a document notarized. Going to the attorney’s office and working with his assistant. ‘The lawyer is not in and he’s the notary, but I have papers with his notary seals here – only thing is we must print out your document on one of these papers with the seal, because I’m not authorized to notarize anything myself’…. Trying to figure out which DAY the garbagemen come. Oh, that’s right, they don’t have a particular day. You listen carefully for the sound of the garbage truck and run like HELL with your garbage bags when you hear them coming. Getting almost anything done with a bank teller or cashier. The amount of time they spend in paper shuffling, checking/re-checking something, making small talk with another employee in the middle of your transaction while you sit there, waiting. Confusion about which procedure to follow, announcing “permiso” and checking with the manager for several minutes before returning to finish. And the STAMP. That ridiculous STAMP. In almost every money-exchange transaction beyond a grocery receipt, the notorious STAMP has to come out, and often several pieces of paper must receive its inked impression. Cashiers in El Salvador are so deft with the stamp, and it appears they take pride in how fast they can stamp several receipts between merchant and customer before happily handing you yours. OK…………
Generally, waiting is a common activity here, but now that I’m part of the “we” here, I can say – we all take it in stride.
I am reminded of a funny moment I had nearly 20 years ago in Charleston, South Carolina. My good friend Kristy had flown to meet me in Charleston and accompany me on my U-Haul trip up from SC to Boston. Before we left, I told her “I have to pick up my shoes at the cobbler on the way – almost forgot”. It was autumn of 1992. My friend was absolutely RAVING about how gorgeous and wonderful Charleston was. Would love to live here, she said. I had been living there for over 5 years, so was accustomed to everything Charleston offered, including its Southern ways. We walked into the shoe shop, and I asked for my loafers, which had needed re-soling. The thin, beyond middle-aged black man I always worked with there walked up to the counter. “Let me see if I can find them,” he says. “Sure”, I said, taking a seat in the waiting area. Kristy and I were the only customers in the shop, and there may have been 1-2 other people behind the counter besides the gentleman working with us. We sat. And waited. And waited. I think the shoes weren’t “quite done” when I arrived, though I’d dropped them off at least a week earlier. In fact, perhaps they re-soled them entirely while we waited. I didn’t know and didn’t care. I sat waiting patiently, no worries, while my friend, with every moment that passed, began to get more, and more, and more IRRITATED.
After leaving the shop, my friend announced “That’s it. I could NEVER live here.”
In parts of El Salvador, a tradition from Indigenous times is fishing with a “Nasa”, or trap. The Spanish word nasa is used for many types of fish traps. The one we refer to is made of bamboo, and incorporates rocks and the current as part of the design.
A small nasa in a creek. CLICK a pic to enlarge…
see the basket-style shape of the "Nasa"
note the 'V" shape of the Nasa
hubby with some of the 'catch'
closeup of fish - and from a small creek!
Now let’s move onto the big time Nasa. Much bigger, it needs 2-3 people to carry it. Note how the trap is set up in the river. Two lines of large rocks are set up in the water, in the shape of a “V”, wide at the upstream end, and narrowing to the point where the nasa is placed. Once fish swim between the rock lines, the current helps guide them into the trap / nasa. Water is always running through the trap, so the fish stay alive until you come get them for dinner.
These photos were taken shortly after 6am on July 13, 2011 in Los Planes de Renderos, San Salvador, El Salvador. The fog is typical during rainy season and appears early morning and late afternoon.
CLICK on a pic to enlarge:
street in front of the church/school
Fog blankets bamboo, guarumo, other trees
Veranera (bougainvilla) in front of backyard trees and fog
bamboo fence inside the school children's play area for the church school
ferocious dog guarding the house
looking out over back fence into the fog
One normally sees clouds flowing over them where they live. Because we are so high up here in Los Planes de Renderos, the clouds flow ON us. They get ‘caught’ by the mountain and scrape over the top, giving us fog, rain, and lots of humidity. It’s like living in a giant terrarium.
Due to the tropical weather, numerous mountain ranges, and often close proximity to the coastline, Central America has a wide variety of regional micro climates like the one here.
“Only God Can Judge Me” – In English, seen on the back of a Route 12 bus.
* There are numerous religious and biblical quotes on buses and private cars in El Salvador. Some quotes are seen painted on walls or sides of buildings. As I see them, I’ll jot new ones down for readers.
Colonia Quezaltepeque in Santa Tecla has been without water since the weekend and it’s Thursday now. A video clip today on Channel 33 (Canal 33) shows people waiting in line with buckets and containers of all sizes to bring home. Some waited in line for 3 hours. A woman in line with a small bucket is interviewed:
ORIGINAL Text, in Spanish:
Periodista: Este poquito de agua para que le va servir. Mujer de la colonia Quesaltepeque: Aunque sea para lavar trastes porqu ni para ir al bano ay. Todos tenemos sucio, y los trastes anda un gran mosquero alli.
Periodista: PARA tomar anda, como estan haciendo? Comprando bolsitas.
Periodista: Es un gasto extra… Mujer: Para comprar la garaffa grande
TRANSLATION into English:
Journalist: So what is this little bit of water for? Woman from Quezaltepeque neighborhood: Even if it’s only for washing dishes..because there isn’t even any for the bathroom. Everything is dirty, and the dishes are full of flies. Journalist: What are you doing for drinking water? Woman: Buying little bags [of it]. Journalist: It’s an extra Cost Woman: To buy the big water bottle.
Seeing reports like this of citizens suffering from water outages and shortages is disturbing when we are aware of mass corruption within ANDA, the public water company – we’re talking millions of dollars embezzled; its former President did finally serve time after hiding out in France. Then we hear about a company, ALUVIAH, taking water from a creek illegally in the community of Berlin, and bottling it for sale outside of the country. The residents of two different communities use this same creek for all of their water needs – drinking, bathing, washing.
WATER IS A SCARCE RESOURCE in EL SALVADOR. Anything you can do to help citizens of El Salvador have better infrastructure and less corruption is welcomed.
Last week I got into a conversation with my neighbor Mary, over the fence. Since she has a new baby (a surprise) along with her 11 year old daughter, we talked about child-raising. Oh, it’s old hat for me, she says. I took care of my brothers since I was very young. I was 13 years old when my parents both left for the United States. Mary was left all alone to care for her 6 and 7 yr old brothers. This sounds unheard of in the U.S., but remember El Salvador was at the tail end of a horrible civil war. Mary didn’t know how to cook, she had to learn. They were living in a different neighborhood at the time, and the water only ran once a month. In between you had to go to a small creek to wash clothes or haul water back home when your water ran out.
Stories like these are often told by our grandparents (or great-grandparents, depending on how old you are). It sounds like something from 50 or 75 years ago. But this story comes from a woman who is only 33 years old – it was 20 years back.
Since then, Mary’s parents have been able to send money to help their children move to a better house, and were even able to save for her two younger brothers to attend school at university level in the states on a Visa, a major accomplishment for Salvadorans.
The house she lives in is pretty nice, so before today I figured her parents were U.S. residents, probably with a professional type job. As Mary’s story unfolded, I learned it is the opposite. Her parent’s are ‘mojados’ – they are illegal aliens. I was very surprised to hear this. I wonder how hard they have worked these last 20 years to give a better life to Mary and her brothers.
Things are much sunnier for Mary’s family now. We talked about how maybe one day her mom will come back to live here. Here in a house she helped build, but has never seen, with her daughter, whom she cannot visit in El Salvador.
Yes, times were hard then, and it wasn’t that long ago.
My husband had a cooking adventure today. But not the kind he was looking for. We have a bag of hard-as-a-rock shells from the Marañon fruit, which have cashew nuts inside of them. In order to eat the cashew, you have to heat up the shell to the point where its slightly charred, so you can crack it open and get the cashew out from the inside.
You cannot heat the Pepa (shell) too much or you’ll char the cashew inside of it. It’s something you learn with time.
So today, instead of putting the Pepas into a little fire in the bowl of the grill, my husband decided he’d cook them on the stove, in a plate made out of ‘barra’ which is a type of earthenware made in El Salvador.
All began well, but within moments a haze began to develop in the kitchen. The haze grew into a cloud, with a nasty aroma that makes you cough. I exited the kitchen. The smoke became so thick I had to move around the corner, as the patio outside the kitchen became engulfed in the toxic fumes.
I peeked around the corner just in time to see flames coming off the barra plate (they ignited!), which my husband quickly doused with water. In the end, it still turned out well, and we had a couple of tasty handfuls of freshly toasted cashew. Yum yum.
The anona is a delicious fruit grown in El Salvador. It is green on the outside, and looks like a distant cousin of the artichoke, with bumpy skin.
On the inside, the anona is not like any fruit I can describe from the U.S. but perhaps a combination. If you can imagine a sourish type of apple whose texture was not firm when you bit in, but smushy. That’s as close as I can get, but so you have come here and try one to experience it.
The fruit is slightly pasty, with a grainy texture, and sour. It has hard seeds inside of pocketed sections of the yummy fruit.
When in season, which it is now, women can be seen on the roadside selling it, and walking around neighborhoods with them, for usually .50-.75 or $1+ each for larger anonas. Click any picture to enlarge.
This post is an update on the events taking place during a long rainstorm (which is still going on) that has caused major flooding, destruction, and deaths in El Salvador.
Two days ago in the morning I read the number of Salvadorans in shelters was a little over 2,000. Twelve hours later that number had climbed to over 4,000, and last night it had reached 7,000. It has been raining almost non stop in El Salvador since Sunday night, October 8, 2011. We’re now 6 days into this storm/temporal and they are predicting the rain to continue through possibly Wednesday.
The news is now on all day long. Almost no other programming is being shown and throughout the day we see video footage of people being rescued from their homes by the Red Cross and Green Cross, families in shelters (often schools), and others setting up camp with tents or plastic to cover their belongings that were pulled from their homes, and grateful citizens accepting help from organizations providing water and basic staples.
Below is a video of what the rain looked like yesterday morning at about 8:00am. The rain continues to ebb and flow, sometimes falling as hard as the video footage you will see.
Two hours ago we heard a crashing sound, and my husband went out to check what it was. A large tree limb fell into the street that runs below our house. During dinner the lights went out, and we expected to hunker down for the night, but luckily they came back on. We resumed our news-watching, and learned that Panchimalco, a town just 10 minutes away, is incommunicado – landslides have blocked them in on the road entering into it. There are now 13,000 people evacuated from their homes (it’s a country of over 6 million people, the size of Massachusetts).
There are now 8 deaths related to this storm in El Salvador. My husband believes this storm is worse than Hurricane Ida, which hit El Salvador in the November 2009 , and some affected people interviewed on the news say they have not seen it this bad since hurricane Mitch.
The news that affected me most was the death of a 16 year old boy in San Marcos, just 10 minutes from where we live. He was killed when a wall in his house caved in and the wall and earth collapsed on him. Landslides are prevalent everywhere now; the young man was resting in bed and it was morning; who could have ever guessed that this would happen?
This sight brings tears to your eyes. This is the aftermath. We're living it. Farmers wading in waist-high water trying to salvage their crops. Families drying maize and beans on roofs, the roadside, anywhere, to salvage what they can.
from La Prensa Grafica. Click to link
PLEASE DONATE towards relief for Tropical Depression 12E in El Salvador. Here are a few organizations.
Habitat for Humanity – long after the disaster is over and forgotten, they will be rebuilding
Sister cities: helping with immediate relief effort. Cities in the U.S. sponsor/sister with towns here.
There are words you learn in a second language you literally do not know the name for in your own because you never encountered that “thing” in your mother tongue.
I thought it was a lychee, but apparently its a close relative called a Rambutan.
Mamon ( Mamones – plural ) is the Salvadoran word for a tropical fruit I never ate or remember seeing back home. The ones I’m eating now are golfball size, and I’ve never seen them any bigger than that. Lisa Dang’s post shows Rambutan’s a lot bigger, though.
The skin of this exotic fruit comes off by breaking it with your finger or using a knife if its stubborn. I think they are not quite ripe if the skin is tough; the flavor is more sour on those whose skin breaks easier. The flesh is a white cream color, and it tastes both sweet and sour. This pic from last year in October shows them at 5 cents a piece, and yesterday I got 20 in the market downtown for 50 cents, a full year later.
Prices of fruits and vegetables vary in the market, as well as for maize and beans, depending on if they are in/out of season and how well the crop turned out, so they can down just as soon as up. Funny thing, I’ve never seen a Supermarket drop the prices of fruits or grains. Hmmm….
Courtesty of Wikipedia - click for page / link
Another Mamon fruit worth mentioning is the Mamon Verde (Mamones verdes) . In El Salvador, the word Mamon is used for two different fruits – the Mamon Japones [Japonese style Rambutin] depicted above, and here on the left, which is the Mamon verde (green) [ known to us as a Spanish lime, or mamoncillo].
This Mamon has a smooth shiny green skin, and its flesh is a peachy color instead of whitish with the red spiky one. The green Mamon is quite sour and makes you pucker up. I have been walking in the country with people and we picked and ate them, but was never lucky enough to pick the spiky cousin in the wild before.
Here is a treat I got to see recently – someone grinding Salvadoran-style “coffee” made of toasted maize, also called “cafe de palo,” or as my mother in law terms it, “cafe pusungo”. Our neighbors in Chalatenango, Lupita and her brother Cristian, came by my mother-in-law’s house to borrow her “molino” or grinder, to finish making a batch. Lupita says her mother likes to drink it because “no le hace dano” (it isn’t bad for her health).
comal/griddle, and was grinding away. Her arm was getting tired, so Cristian jumped in and started winding the grinder like it was a kid’s toy – he did it like a pro. Take a look at the results: doesn’t it look like coffee? I had to sample it, of course – didn’t taste much like coffee, or anything I’d want to drink, but then, coffee is an acquired taste.
