A Drop In The Ocean

I have so many thoughts spinning around right now! Just as a warning, this gets progressively less positive and rambles a lot more as it nears the end. I needed to reflect. All the quotes are from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. On feeling helpless, unprepared, and totally at home.

I keep saying I'm totally ready to leave El Salvador and never live here again. Sure, maybe I'll come back to visit for a few weeks every few years, but live here? This isn't home. Then I go back to my first host family and we start imagining the improvements Roberto can make to the restaurant and the dreams he has for the next five years. I sit for hours across from the newly built library, watching endless rounds of kids jump off the swings and spin each other on the carousel in the park. I gorge myself on weekend food from the restaurant and imagine the creations I could sell there each week, and all that I could learn if I sign up for classes with the artisan collective next door. Behind the house I play with the two two-month-old german shepherd puppies - the last not gifted of a litter of twelve - and think about training those adorable creatures. At the same time I realize that in a few months I will have to leave my own puppy behind. Everything mentally falls into place and I start making plans to spend eight months working in the restaurant, living in Nuevo Cuscatlán, keeping my dog, and learning all about running a small business. For those few days I spend in Nuevo, it all seems totally reasonable; then I return to site and I go back to my normal sane self.

Rambo and Rocky. I wanted to take one home with me so badly.

When I get back to site, though, there are the gardens. Elemeni’s garden looks so good right now, and I’m so happy for him. Every time I pass his house he invites me in and loads me with cucumbers, which, incidentally, are really really good right off the vine. My tomatoes are growing well, one jalapeño has sprouted, and the peppers are growing a little bit every day. On Thursday we will learn to make organic insecticide, which is awesome. That’s one of the things I have been hoping for since the beginning. It's crazy that I came here with nothing and now I have a veritable arsenal of knowledge to grow my own food.

cucumbers!

There's also the women’s group. Thirteen women worked almost a five-hour shift on Friday and another four hours on Saturday, of their own volition, each making a different piece of clothing that they will present at the little event we have planned for the end of June. They helped each other and had a leader overseeing the work and did it all themselves. I just showed up and watched. This is what I was hoping for! Leaving for a month gave them the chance to take over their group and plan for themselves, and that’s what’s happening. It’s awesome. Sometimes I feel like nothing has happened in these two years and this desperate country is headed for disaster, but sometimes I watch the women almost crying with laughter as they sit together bent over their sewing machines, carefully fitting one piece of fabric with the next, and I think that this is enough. This space where women are teaching each other and planning a future where they are their own breadwinners and champions is enough.

making patterns and cutting fabric

It’s enough to sit every single day that I can with Alfonso, just becoming better friends and sharing dreams. We’re learning Italian together now, just because we can. When I got back from taking the Foreign Service Exam, I ran into him and we spent a few hours talking. That conversation keeps nudging me, and after I took a few hours tonight to read Paolo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, it feels more important than ever. We ran the gamut of conversation topics, alighting on a few that we always do - trying to get in shape, pop music, chocolate and desserts - but settling in only once we started to contemplate the future. I will be gone in a few months, but in the meantime I’m learning Italian to hopefully have a basic knowledge when I visit my sister in Italy. I told Alfonso this about a week ago, and he took it upon himself to start learning too. We’re at the very basics (“La donna mangia la mela”), but it’s fun and not far removed from Spanish in structure and pronunciation. I have a lot of goals and some dreams, not the least of which are to travel Europe, get a pilot’s license and work at something I love. Sometimes I think I’ll try to become an ambassador. Sometimes I think I’ll start a bakery or my own NGO. Sometimes I really want to be proud of my future children and the dreams they will follow. None of these things are mutually exclusive, and I think any one or many would bring me joy. I get excited about the future, and Alfonso is a great audience. As I talk about getting my pilot’s license, he says, “That’s what I like about Americans; you tell me your dreams as if you will accomplish them. You tell me you want to be a pilot and an ambassador, and you will be someday. It’s not a hope, it’s a statement. You are optimistic. It’s not like here, where a dream is constantly suppressed and ridiculed. You tell your dream and people say, ‘Don’t be crazy,’ or ‘That will never happen.’” 

“Your eyes show the strength of your soul.” 

And suddenly it's not enough. There it is: one of those moments when our present feels like a drop ready to fall in the vast unsettled ocean of the future. No one here doubts I will achieve what I set my mind to. They are equally certain of the impossibility of their success. This fatalism is oppressive and painful, especially in someone I want so desperately to live a joyful, fulfilling life. Alfonso tells me he wants to be a politician or a singer. He wants to learn languages, visit Alaska, see the leaning tower of Pisa. I see his eyes light up and I don’t understand why he discards these dreams before they can germinate. It’s not easy, but learning languages is free online, and that same money everyone is saving up to trek to the US could just as easily buy a ticket to Italy and avoid the prison sentence or death. 

“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

One of the young men who left two months ago from the town is missing, abandoned in the desert. His traveling companion just made it to the States and called home, confessing that they abandoned him in Mexico when he could go no further. Coyotes don’t let them stop, he said, they give them a gallon of water and a few apples to survive five desert days. If you drink too fast, you die of thirst. The body can’t go more than three days without water. The journey was littered with bodies, he said, some skeletons and some recently dead. He doesn’t know if anyone found him, if another group passed by the next morning and saved him, or if he made a meal for the animal form of his former guide. It happens, my host mom says. A few years ago two daughters left and only one arrived. The other was sent home as ashes, cremated after she washed up drowned from a terrified flight into the Rio Grande pursued by the flashlights and shouts of border guards. I can’t help but think that that boy could be Alfonso and that girl could be Nayely; that one day someone I know from here will never make it there and never make it home. I can’t believe that it’s worth their lives. 

This is when thoughts start spiraling out of control. What can I do when I feel so helpless? It feels like the country is falling to pieces around us, each jagged fragment impaling another innocent Salvadoran trying to cobble together something from nothing. El Salvador appears again and again on the international news, each report more openly speculating whether the country is in the midst of fighting a new civil war. Bodies pile up and no one investigates the deaths, just adding another nameless tally to the ever-growing list of homicides. March hit the highest murder rate since the civil war, and May just broke that record. Volunteers are leaving the country or changing sites because murders hit too close to home, and it feels like we’re all on edge. You can’t wear red, can’t wear blue, can’t wear animal prints, can’t wear numbers. Don’t leave the house and don’t let your boys out of your sight, much less your girls. 

Some of it is rumor and scare tactics, but some of it is all too real. It’s not just gang members who are in danger, it’s everyone. It’s the cute girls walking back from the tienda who get gang raped and murdered. It’s the fourteen-year-old boys, the ones who we’re trying desperately to keep in school, to instill a sense of self-worth and to break down generations of machismo, who turn up dead in the street. I ask the teenagers if they will go to high school if I get a scholarship for them, and their hope is smothered by a pervading fear. Even the pueblo is starting to feel far from home and a dangerous proposition to travel each day. 

Someone tagged the bridge with MS a while ago. My community is pretty far from violence and I bet it was one of the dumb teenage boys thinking he’s all that, but there’s something wrong if gang tags make you think you’re cool. 

“It’s not what enters men’s mouths that’s evil. It’s what comes out of their mouths that is.”

Peace Corps is a roller coaster of highs and lows, but I didn’t bank on the low feeling so desperately helpless. When we were traveling in Nicaragua, people asked me whether I would recommend El Salvador and I honestly could not. It’s not that it doesn’t have its beauty, it’s that it doesn’t have the infrastructure or the security to make it worthwhile. Most anything you could see in El Salvador you could see similar in Nicaragua, and without the intense deforestation, the worry of running into gangs, or dealing with roads that collapsed into sinkholes because no one bothered to prepare the path before slapping asphalt on top, and they’re only just starting repairs after a year of one narrow lane inching around the drop-off. I want things to work out for people here - I want them to learn business skills and improve their self-esteem and take charge of their education - but I only see things spiraling downwards. I started helping the new volunteer with the community census, and two of the first graders near me have been pulled out of school for fighting too much. What will their future look like? 

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

I fear that it will never be enough. I know we can never save them all, but is it okay to learn Italian with Alfonso and hope that soliciting weekend adult learning classes will give him the education level he needs to be the one to escape? Is it okay that I think escape is better than staying his whole life in that small town? Is it enough to change just one life? Is it enough to be changed myself? 

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

Is it selfish of me to have personal dreams of flying when others can barely stand? I don’t know. I hope not. I want it to be true what Paulo Coelho wrote because then my own dreams can improve everyone’s. I hope my journey will be one of more revelations and wonderful people. I hope Alfonso keeps the light in his eyes that I see in his dreams and that his journey leads to paths that cross mine again and again. Reading The Alchemist felt a little like reading The Little Prince: like realizing someone else understands what your soul is trying to tell you. I particularly liked the phrase “Love without ownership.” It feels honest. It feels like love should be - a shared experience that opens up life, not one that limits and creates weight. I understood thinking about the limitations to living life that we impose upon ourselves - fear of the unknown, fear of acknowledging our dreams despite what others may think, love that holds us back rather than pushing us towards our goals, fear of being at a loss when the goal is achieved - though I don’t know if I agree that the world conspires to help us on our journey. I did like that the entire trip in The Alchemist ended with God essentially shrugging and saying, “But the Pyramids are lovely, aren’t they?” It was the journey that mattered, and the appreciation and realization of it in every moment. I want to force myself to have journeys and change myself. I don’t want to fall into a trap of taking what’s comfortable because it’s what I know how to do. If I do that, I’ll never learn anything new. I'm not trained to deal with violence or to tackle huge infrastructure projects. It's scary to think about the future of this country. I'm learning as I go about the things my community finds important, from plants to sewing to education to conflict resolution. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't, but that's the journey. I have to live now, change now, focus on what I can do, because I don't know the future and I can't let myself get overwhelmed by my own or that of those around me. I don't know if this is the crest of the wave or just the base, but either way I'm here now and that's what I can control. If my drop in the ocean shifts the tide or is swallowed by it, at least it fell.

New books read: 93

Total books read: 134

Recommendations: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It's short, is really quotable, and a good book for introspection without feeling like a lecture. The Princess Bride by William Godman, which is also a very quick read and a fantastic adventure story. You've seen the movie, so you should definitely read the book

Currently reading: Solo en la oscuridad by Ramón Diaz Eterovic, Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton, The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch