Conflict Resolution Camp

Last week (February 24 -26), with the help of Selena, five fabulous UWC-Costa Rica students, and 10 Peace Corps volunteers, I helped stage a conflict resolution camp for 26 Salvadoran youths.

The idea for this project originated when I started a girls' soccer team in my community. The team was having so many problems just getting along. There were fist-fights on three separate occasions, and after the last one I decided to disband the whole thing. People quit the team all the time because they decided they didn't like another player and couldn't stand to be around them. When I talked to other volunteers about it, they all related similar experiences with a variety of different groups.

I decided to talk to Selena, my teacher from high school (UWC) who worked with us on conflict resolution in hopes that she might have some advice on how to teach the Salvadorans in my community basic conflict resolutions skills. Selena is Salvadoran herself and was very concerned with what I was saying. She explained that she thought that the civil war had in many ways deprived the people here of developing constructive ways to deal with differences. The generation of youths I was working with had grown up with no good examples of managing conflict.

We brainstormed a way to deal with it and in the end decided to organize it as a camp. In addition, Selena convinced the United World College in Costa Rica to send five students to El Salvador to run the workshop. I organized everything on this end, including inviting Peace Corps volunteers to apply to bring 3-4 youth leaders to the camp. Additionally, I organized three days of touring in El Salvador for the UWC students to help teach them a little bit more about the history of the country and the context for the workshop.

In the end, the camp was a great to success. That's not to say that there are not things that should have been done differently, but overall, everyone involved walked away with a really positive experience. For me, the most powerful part was really seeing these Salvadoran youth have an opportunity to talk openly and honestly about themselves and their lives. The youth here really have so few opportunities to talk candidly, and are for more the most part quite reticent. I, and the other Peace Corps volunteers, were all so impressed with how much they opened up.

Also, it was so exciting for me to work with UWC students again. The experience at UWC was one of the most important in my life, and spending time with the kids from Costa Rica really brought me back. It was great to share my two worlds (Peace Corps and UWC) and bring them together in this productive and special way.

Hopefully, this camp will become an annual collaboration between Peace Corps and UWC-Costa Rica. It was a very powerful experience and I am so grateful to Selena for all her support!

salvadoran pedicure

yesterday bernadette and I got salvadoran style "pedicures" from a women in Ilobasco who paints artisan works. I was very impressed with the result! can you tell which foot is mine and which is hers??

pictures from mimi's visit

mimi finally visits!

After a year and a half, my little blister has finally come to visit! Having Mimi here has been really wonderful.
Our trip didn't start off so well, however. On the way back from the airport, I made sure to introduce Mimi to the famous Salvadoran food the pupusa. As we were eating, I also ordered an horchata, a local delicious drink, though I warned her not to drink it because of the ice, and I know she has a sensitive stomach. I, in my hubris, bragged that I was "used to the water" and fine to drink it. At 2 am my words came back to haunt me as I vomited violently over the toilet. I tried to play it cool but by the 5th time I prayed at the porcelain god, I decided that this was not, in fact, normal. We rushed to the hospital, where the admitted me. I sent Mimi home, but then was stuck at the hospital for the next day, eating nothing but IV fluid and broth. Mimi was a good sport though and went by herself on a tour of San Salvador, where she learned a lot which she shared with me over the next week.

I know she will probably think it's annoying that I say this, but I am really so proud of the person she is becoming. It's amazing how much she's grown up even just over the past year. Though she denies it, her Spanish is really quite good. Good enough for her to participate in translating at the Eye Care campaign I took her to in Perquin, my friend's site (see the pictures). We spent two days there working with a group of American doctors and Lion's Club members, who brought down thousands of pairs of glasses to El Salvador to give away. In addition they did surgery on cataracts. This year, I organized for 30 people from my community to attend as well, and it was a great success. My site is very sunny and almost everyone suffers from damage to their eyes and no one seems to have glasses. Everyone was extremely excited to finally be able to read the bible again or thread a needle. The entire experience was very inspiring because it was amazing to see these American retirees, who spend their retirement doing such amazing work and truly making a difference in the world. The amount of work and coordination the program takes is enormous. I hope to be involved with activities like that when I am older!

Mimi also had a chance to spend a couple days in my site, meeting my friends. She outshone me at making tamales. Everyone thought she looked very young and was very thin, and everyone said we looked nothing alike, which is funny because they say I look exactly like all my other friends who have visited.

Anyways, it's been a really wonderful visit and I am lucky to have a sister who is interested in coming to see my life here!

more on migration

I thought I'd share this article with you:

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108697


I think it's sad that El Salvador is 5th in the world for numbers of would-be migrants, only behind such places as Haiti, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and the Congo. Unlike these other countries, El Salvador is relatively politically stable and much better off economically, yet the American Dream is still so infectious here, which results in broken families and drains small towns of their talent.

Being a gringa in a foreign land

I'm re-reading one of my favorite books, The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski and I came across a passage from his reporting in Africa. Though the context is obviously different and the racial tension in Africa is much more severe than here, the passage really struck a chord with me about what it's been like to be such an obvious foreigner all the time and I thought I'd share it with you:

"... I had a wolf ticket. You get that ticket when you cross a certain parallel. When you reach a place where you find out that you have white skin. This is a discovery, a sensation, a shock. I had lived for twenty-five years without knowing about that skin. A hundred children play in the courtyard of the townhouse I live in back home, and not one of them has ever given his skin a thought. They only know that if it's dirty, that's bad. But if it's clean and white - that's good! Well, they've got it wrong. It's bad. Very bad. Because white skin is the wolf ticket.

Books about Africa used to get on my nerves: so much about black and white in them. This color, that color, and all the hues in between. When I finally went myself, I understood. Right away you find out what's assigned to you, which line you're supposed to stand in. Right away that skin starts itching. It affronts or it elevates. You can't jump out of it, and it cramps your style. You can't exist normally. You will always be above, below, or off to the side. But never in your own place..."

(Kapuscinski 62)

saying goodbye before the journey north

I am just coming from saying goodbye to one of my best friends in my community, Orbe. Most of you who have come to visit me have met her. She is beautiful and elegant, one of those people who always looks so well put together despite the hot weather and the dust. With her wide, tan face and trim figure, she is often mistaken for her daughter´s sister though she is about 40 years old and has three kids.
Orbe stood out from the beginning by reaching out to me and because of her desire to improve her neighborhood. She was one of the first people I met who was like, "you're here to work? great! let's get started!" She is an obvious leader in her community. She organizes things like trash clean ups and petitions, things that no one does here. I immediately liked her and would go over to her house to cook things together. She taught me how to make beef stew, I taught her how to make fried rice.
Until last year, Orbe ran her own clothing store in the center of town. Her brother, who worked in the U.S., would buy stuff at discount stores like Ross, where his wife worked, and ship them down here. Orbe would then sell these "American" clothes (often made in China or Vietnam) at a mark up here in town. I think she liked the responsibility of running her own small business. Nonetheless, when her brother's wife came back from the U.S. (after 12 years), Orbe had to yield control of the store to her, since it was technically her brother's business.
Orbe seemed restless and frustrated after losing her business. Luckily, she was offered a position on the incoming mayor´s city council, something that kept her busy during election season. She did well in her job. She has great ideas for the town within the first couple months in office she organized the Christmas display in the park and convinced the mayor to get street lamps for several streets in the town. She's definitely the most outspoken female on the city council and is a good example to the girls here.
But the work with the city council hardly pays, and Orbe has become increasingly worried about her kids futures. Their father is in the U.S., though sends money rather irregularly and has found another girl there. For a long time, she thought about opening up a restaurant (or comedor) here in town and I tried to support the idea. I even brought her to a small business workshop with other Peace Corps volunteers in hopes that it would help realize this dream.
In the end, however, Orbe's ambitions for herself and her children cannot truly be achieved here. Today, I went over to her house to say goodbye to her and her daughters before she leaves early tomorrow morning to meet the coyote who will take her across the border to the U.S.
I am so sad to see her go. First, the decision affects me very personally since I know I will miss her presence here a lot. But also, more generally, it makes me so sad that the situation of this country is such that the brightest, most motivated people, the people that want to make something of their lives, have to leave. As much as I didn't want Orbe to go, I knew she could not be persuaded to stay.
Just now, as I was saying goodbye to her, she told me that her experience at the small business workshop had changed her life. Seeing all the Peace Corps volunteers, who were all so motivated, worked so hard, and had traveled so far had made such an impression on her. She said she saw me as a role model, if i could come here, across the world, she knew she too could make something of herself in a foreign land. Hearing that was so bittersweet. The last thing we want to encourage here is emigration, but when that is your only opportunity to really make something of yourself, what is the alternative?
Anyways, it was a very emotional and sad experience to say goodbye. I will be thinking of her all this week as she makes the dangerous journey and I pray she makes it safely and securely. One day, I hope to see her again in El Norte.