Abba's visit

Last weekend my dad came to visit. It was only when he arrived that I realized how strange it was that I’ve been living in this country for over a year (longer than I’ve lived anywhere continuously since I was 15 years old) and that neither of my parents have been here yet. Though he was really only here for a very short time (not even four days), it meant a lot to me to have him here. In that short time, we managed to fit a lot in – beach, city and of course my site. We only spent the day here in my site, but it was interesting to see the community through his eyes.

By showing someone else where I live and work, it gives me ownership and appreciation over this crazy life experience that I often take for granted. Moreover, it touched me to see how my dad seemed really proud of what I was doing and respected me for it. He often describes these sort of adventures as “goofing off” (Elian is “goofing off in Barcelona,” etc.) and for that reason I had it in my head that that was the conclusion he would come to about my current situation. I do after all have electricity and running water and I have not yet managed to build a bridge or enact some other concrete change, which sometimes makes me wonder if I am just goofing off. Instead, for the short time he was here, my dad was very interested in learning about this country, this community and my life amidst it all. For someone who is not the most social person and speaks no spanish, he sat very patiently as we did the obligatory house visits and even treated my counterpart and his wife to dinner. It was funny because for the first time in my life people said my dad and I looked identical, “like two drops of water” – I am not sure if this is a commentary on my deteriorating looks or just that all white people look the same to them! Just kidding Abba :)

One of the insights into my town my father had that I keep thinking about is how much it is a community in transition. My town (like most other Salvadoran rural towns) is caught between the poverty of their past and the legacy of the Civil War and the riches that emigration and remittances have brought and these two worlds are caught in almost every aspect of the community where one sees mud huts next to fancy, newly built, modern houses, kids without shoes playing with kids with video phones, and oxen pulling carts behind the latest Toyota Hilux pick-up truck.

Indeed, the place I’m writing this piece in is the perfect illustration. I’m in the new house I just moved into, a grand (for rural Salvadoran standards) compound, with three large rooms around an open yard. One of the rooms (not mine) even has air conditioning and there is even a laundry machine (the first I’ve seen in my town), though my new host mother, Teodora, doesn’t know how to use it. At the same time the house shows signs of the poverty she just managed to escape. There are chickens and a cow, flies everywhere, there is still an outhouse, and my host mom often cooks over an open flame instead of the stove. Not to mention my host mom and her sister and brother-in-law are all illiterate. Moreover, she lives in this grand house all by herself, as seven of her nine children now live in the United States (with varying levels of legality), and the remaining two are studying at the university in San Salvador. Indeed, she actually left for the U.S. the day after I moved; lucky enough to actually get a visa, she is off for two months to visit her very pregnant daughter and take care of the baby after the birth.

My host mother left the house in the care of her sister and brother-in-law. Unlike Teodora, this couple is childless and has thus been unable to tap in to the gold rush of the post-war emigration. They live now as Teodora once lived, poor and in a rural community. They are so sweet though and I can tell are at once delighted and baffled at my existence in their world. The little old woman shyly peeked in to my room today and looked in awe over all my things that I had; though all my stuff fits in several big suitcases it far outweighs the little backpacks she and her husband brought along for their two month stay here. I say old because she seems that way, but she is probably in her late 50s. As a side note, beside just saying how alike my dad and I were, everyone kept commenting on how young he looked! But they really do have a point, people here look and act decades older than their American cohort.

I remember thinking before I left for Peace Corps that I probably wouldn’t change much over the course of my time here. I thought since I had previously had opportunities to travel and be exposed to different lives, I kind of “got” how the rest of the world worked. And maybe I haven’t changed fundamentally as a person, but the world I know now is truly different than what I knew before. The experience of living in this community, knowing these people from a world so different than mine, is something I never could have been exposed to in this way outside of this program. Though I miss the U.S. more than ever, I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to learn so much about this little corner of the earth, and through the close study of this tiny community understand so much more about the world at large and my place in it.