A Trip To El Salvador

I wrote this to document what I had experienced and to share it first with friends and family. I’m posting this on TL because I figured some people might be interested also. If you don’t like walls of text and pictures won’t bid you continue, but what are you even doing in the blogs section if this is so?

Special thanks to those whose pictures I’ve used!

Arrival

A bit over a week ago, an Indonesian, 17 1/2 Koreans and half a White guy (me) made for San Salvador, El Salvador, veritable aliens on a plane otherwise replete with Salvadoreans. As we shuffled to our seats awkwardly as if our feet were tethered, bashfully dodging the intrigued stares of the other passengers, I was unsure of what to expect of the trip and if coming on it had been such good idea after all.

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Our plane had ~~antiquated, gimmicky and buggy~~ fun and interesting touchpad screens for every seat.

We were traveling on a package offered by Habitat for Humanity, an international organization dedicated to providing affordable housing solutions for those without adequate living space. All the student members of our group were connected by their having attended the same hagwon*. Not all of us knew the other, however; in fact, most in the group didn’t know more than a handful of the others. For this reason, I think the idea of entering into a strange land with strange people with still stranger natives was quite daunting to many.

*A hagwon is something many TLers should be familiar with, but put simply it’s a Korean after-school institution geared to give educational enrichment to students of all ages (at the high school level with things like SATs and APs); that is to say, it’s a devious contrivance of wicked Korean parents wrought to keep kids from their StarCraft. Not surprisingly, its name is jae il, which is almost homophonous with the English word “jail”.

Having left the plane and begun to run the usual gauntlet of duty-free designer clothing and electronics stores, it felt almost like America. The air was sickeningly sweet with perfume and our eyes were haunted by the images of brandname models plastered to the walls; the saccharine smiles of preened, suited salespeople and the pupilless eyes of unsettlingly humanoid mannequins followed us and bade us shop. But we pressed on, and almost too abruptly we had gotten past the façade. The building became noticeably more run-down and a bit too warm for my liking.

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Shops just outside of the airport exit.

The people waiting for friends and family at the exit gate were shocked to see a gaggle of Asians intermingled with the rest of the swarm of Salvadoreans, and so we began to get acclimated to the staring we would receive everywhere we went for the rest of the trip. We boarded a bus provided by the organization and met our coordinator, Erika. The bus itself was a piece of work; it was made by some Asian corporation, perhaps Mitsubishi, and could satisfactorily seat all nineteen of us all while being the size of a regular van (that is, the sort utility companies use). I wondered why I hadn’t seen buses like this and concluded it was probably so because all twenty-one of us would have been dead had we gotten into an accident.

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Vendors in shacks along the road from the airport to San Salvador selling coconuts.

As we drove to the hotel in San Salvador, the way a good part of the population lives was splayed wide and clear for us to see on the canvas of the beautiful landscape. Great, dirty masses of shacks made with corrugated steel and plywood along with the trash haphazardly discarded along the street clashed terribly with the wonderful verdure. It depressed me to see such a sight; even the clouds themselves seemed to churn in tacit disapproval.

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The countryside along the road to San Salvador.

That El Salvador has the second highest murder rate in the world (71 incidences per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009) became much more believable to us when we entered the city limits of San Salvador. There was hardly a building not constructed like a fortress; precautions had painstakingly been taken to deter crime; barbed wire, iron bars and high walls were ubiquitous. Still, the buildings ironically sported the pastel of bright colors Latin America is known for, and there was an almost surreal juxtaposition of gloom and grace.

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A building in San Salvador.

We arrived at our hotel, which was surprisingly nice. Our team leader had told us to expect the worst concerning our accommodations and food, but our first night was like a night spent in a sketchy part of New York. The hotel had all the comforts: a small television, good clean beds and linens, and hot and cold water as well as an excellent environment. It was arranged like a villa, a spirited departure from the boring and uniform rows of cloned rooms that characterize American hotels. It was also safely insulated from the streets, with only one entrance: a bolted steel door.

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A fountain in the tiled courtyard. Intriguingly, every fountain outside of the resort that I saw during this trip was not operating.

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Myself in the hotel, sporting my “cheese is bm” shirt.

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Guess the English movie title! I know #2 is Inception.

Almost every large business had an armed guard. Most had handguns or shotguns, and some even had assault rifles. It was a bit hilarious to see stern, sullen security officers with shotguns standing next to a logos of Pollo Campero’s affable chicken mascot. At first the sight of such big guns was unnerving, but as another traveler put it, “It sounds shocking; at first it is. In a few weeks, however, you stop noticing them; they become a part of the scenery, like a mobile phone. Instead of freaking out, you are often happy to see them.”

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Posing with a shotgun-wielding guard outside of a Super Selectos. This was taken later in the trip, but it doesn’t matter since this was a common sight anyway.

We ate at a local cafeteria a couple blocks away, having walked carefully as a group. Ordering our food was quite an experience since none of the workers knew English and only one of us knew Spanish fluently. Our impromptu translator (a Korean guy who had immigrated to Mexico, then to Virginia) had to bridge the language barrier for each person who wanted to order, and had to do so for the rest of the trip. He must have been quite tired of translating, I must assume, by the time we came back, but he never once complained. The food was astonishingly cheap to us as Americans and not half bad; Salvadorean food isn’t so different from the Tex-Mex I’ve grown accustomed to in Virginia. Next we visited a supermarket, and yet again the cheap prices blew us away. A .5L bottle of water was $0.34. (By comparison, a 20 oz. Aquafina in the states is $1.25).

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Only $3.70.

From there, we visited the mall which was even more upscale than the one closest to my house. We took only a brief look around the stores before happening upon the arcade, where we spent maybe a good hour shooting (arcade) hoops and playing Tekken. This was a great time for the team, since until then the ice still hadn’t been broken.

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A shot of the heart of the mall.

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Ballin’

We left the next morning, braced for the absence of luxury, for the town of Zacatecoluca in the province of La Paz. We were quartered in a Catholic community center named after “Maria Auxiliadora”, Mary the Helper. Very fortunately, the rooms were air conditioned and clean. There we met Don Juan Carlos, the caretaker of the center. Erika, our coordinator, had said that he was a very kind man. I took that as mere flattery, but he defied my expectations. He escorted us everywhere we went and always had an air of congeniality about him made manifest in his laughs and smiles that transcended the language barrier.

The Habitat for Humanity administration in La Paz held an orientation for us and we had the opportunity to meet the people for whom we would build the house. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting of the family to be receiving the house, but I was surprised at how normal they seemed. They had been recently wed and needed space to raise a family. Christián, I remember, said that he had been waiting a long time to meet us and there was mutual excitement between the group and the couple; we were anxious to begin our work.

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How many Koreans can a single parrot enrapture?

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Christián and Sylvia, the future homeowners.

We went to another supermarket on the same day. Security was even tighter here which probably means that shoplifting had been a problem in the past; there were an armed guard, two officers at the door and about three or four officers roaming the store. Those who were carrying bags had to leave them outside the store at a check.

The store was an equal mix and familiar fare and foreign food. There was an entire aisle devoted to ramen and cup noodles. Oreos and Chips Ahoy! stood next to more local snack foods. Pringles shared a shelf with fried pork rinds and local tortilla chips. Many of the local goods were fairly cheap, but premium American products tended to be more expensive; a case of four Red Bulls was marked up quite a bit and most hilariously a single can of Arizona Iced Tea was labeled for $1.46, right next to the 99¢ that is part of the can’s labeling.

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A guard keeping vigil in front of the supermarket.

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They like their Oreos.

After we had finished shopping, we went to the nearby cathedral, passing the marketplace. The smell of trash was profuse and the street was even dirtier here than it was anywhere else. The labyrinth of plywood and corrugated steel shacks wound on for blocks, a snake winding its coils around the cathedral. Entire packs of stray dogs (chucos, mutts) roamed the streets rummaging through the trash. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

We drew confused looks everywhere we went. The word Chinos, Spanish for Chinese, followed us around like the chuchos. One man put his index fingers to his eyes and imitated our slanted eyes, poking fun at us to those around him. I did the same to him, and we both laughed. Asians were obviously a rare sight in El Salvador, especially in the places not geared for tourists.

When we neared the cathedral, an impressive work with two crucifixed spires on either side of a tower with an effigy of Mary on the façade (picture below), we were surprised to find its doors wide open and adherents still flowing in and out of its capacious hall; every other building in the vicinity (or even the country) had been paranoid of crime, yet this cathedral which had ostensibly taken some work to construct had its doors open wide. There were even two doors open on either side of the hall facing the apse from the entrance which led down directly into the market. Perhaps there were guards around, but I can’t recall seeing any.

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Don Juan Carlos and our group outside of the cathedral.

We went back and spent a few hours talking and playing games before sleeping.

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Gonggi, a traditional Korean game of jacks. Since we only had an 8-hour workday, there was plenty of time to kill.

Work

We were shipped out bright and early to the work site on a bus. The work site itself was an interesting experience; the road leading to it was paved only with rocks, and hens, roosters, cows (vacas), and dogs roamed freely around the neighborhood. Buildings long past their prime lined the street and people would often peer curiously out of their houses to see us working, something that must have been a strange spectacle to them.

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The three masons in the background, from left to right: Champa (I think that’s how you spell it; perhaps Chamba?), Don Juan, and Don Leonardo.

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Our team leader chilling under the tent next to a chucho.

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After a brief orientation by the construction advisor who essentially told us to do whatever the masons told us to do, we began our work. Since the walls had already been erected, I thought that there would be little left to do, but the five days I spent working on this house with the others proved me wrong. Our tasks ranged from smoothing the surface of the walls, painting the walls, moving dirt, mixing cement and mortar, and laying cinder blocks for the roof, among other things.

Smoothing the walls was by far the most monotonous yet equally necessary task. This was accomplished by rubbing parts of broken block against rough parts in the wall, making a level surface. Being able to do this for extended periods required either an attention span made of steel or plenty of socialization; that might serve to explain why the girls got much more of it done than did the boys. We kept doing this until the very last day, and I don’t think it was completely done even then.

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The second most common task was moving dirt. There were mounds of dirt in the house and around it that had to be moved to piles. Breaking the earth with pickaxes was astonishing; trash of every kind, from food wrappers to shoes to plastic bags would be unearthed in mind-blowing density. Whoever had been on the land before had taken to simply throwing trash on the ground, and it seems that this is the way many people treat trash in El Salvador. Unfortunately I can’t find a picture of this, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Most grueling of all the tasks was mixing cement and mortar. This entailed moving wheelbarrows upon wheelbarrows of sand and mixing it with only--yes, only--shovels. Since we needed to cement the entire floorspace and make enough mortar to get the wall ready for the roof, we must have ended up mixing at least a hundred wheelbarrows full of sand and other aggregates. Don Leonardo, the one who led the cement mixing, had gotten it down to an art.

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Mixing cement. The sand was even heavier because it had rained not long ago.

First, we spread 20 or so wheelbarrows of sand around the area; then, we took one bag of cement mix and spread it along the top. After that, we shoveled all of the sand into one giant mound and then split it yet again into three smaller mounds and yet again shoveled it into one giant mound. From there, we shaped the cement like a volcano, with walls on the perimeter and a concave in the middle. Water would then be added and the mixing would begin.

It sounds like it’s not a lot of work, but I ask that you try it for yourself if you think this. As cement was mixed, the rest of the group would assemble to pass the cement buckets along to the house’s interior where the other masons would spread it on the floor.

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San Vincente Volcano, visible from all of Zacatecoluca.

As we worked, children from the neighborhood began to take an interest to us. On the first day there were only no more than five, but as we had been told during the orientation, the number of children multiplies each day. By the end of the week, perhaps attracted by our friendly conversation and strikingly different appearances, there was a throng of them. We’d come prepared, however; a Spongebob piñata lay in the shed, waiting for its time.

At noon, our work stopped for good. We gathered in the tent after lunch. The homeowners expressed their most sincere gratitude, our team leader almost broke down crying saying that although we had come to help others, we had helped ourselves the most, and the Habitat for Humanity representatives said a few words before presenting each team member with a parting gift: a t-shirt, an honorary certificate, a bag of traditional Salvadorean candies, and a sick fridge magnet.

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By then, the children were anxiously staring at us from outside the tent and so the piñata quivered and braced for its final moments.

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To say that it was a bit unsafe is an understatement. Each contender was spun for a count of ten seconds (children standing up, everyone else with his or her forehead on the stick touching the ground) before having a go at the piñata. The crowd would laugh at the terrible misses and in the same breath scream because the swing had gotten a bit too close for comfort. When a hit was landed and candy spilled out, the children would immediately bolt forward, even when the contender was still swinging; we were forced to hold them back, which proved to be quite a task.

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Saying goodbye to the children was the hardest part of the entire trip. Though it had only been five days, we had grown attached to them. They gave us the affection that only children can. They had given us nicknames which we all laughed at. Our team leader was Jackie Chan; another was Nacho Libre; another was Bonita; another was Kobe Bryant. All were heartbroken and many, both children and teens, cried. Some children didn’t even understand that we wouldn’t be coming back; hasta mañana, see you tomorrow, I heard a couple say. We exchanged last hugs and handshakes with the masons and the family and, of course, the kids. It must have taken 30 minutes for us to get everyone on the bus.

The Resort

The next morning, after one last night at the Catholic community center, we drove about an hour to an oceanside resort. It was absolutely amazing; it was well-kept but not sickeningly sterile like many resorts tend to be. Monkeys and toucans were in cages; turtles and crocodiles were in a pit; aptly-named “dog chickens” roamed freely. Hammocks were around every corner. Kayaking was free. A soccer field lay ready for us.

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The infamous dog chickens. Their crowing was like the wailing of a banshee.

For much of the day I was buried in my summer reading; call me crazy, for the others in my group certainly did, but I was content just to enjoy good writing in a relaxing atmosphere.

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”I LOVE SEAFOOD”

We all enjoyed a day of being pampered after five days of hard work. We gathered in the evening to sign each others’ handbooks.

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Taken just before leaving for the airport.

The flight back was uneventful. Everyone was exhausted physically and mentally. I remember being overwhelmingly happy to have my feet back on American soil. We posed one final time to flaunt our certificates.

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Reflections and Observations

There are some things I didn’t go into detail above which I wanted to address separately for fear of going on a winding tangent. These are general things that I observed or reflections upon what I saw.

Happiness (or at least contentment) where I wouldn’t expect it

Repulsed at first by the grime of El Salvador, I began to wonder how people could live like this; the trash, the crime, the poverty, they all seemed unbearable to me. For many, of course, the situation is unbearable; the crime rate alone speaks for that. Even on the first day in El Salvador, however, I began to conclude that the average person was not unhappy, but at least contented. Everywhere we went people were more than happy to take pictures with us and put up with our non-existent Spanish. People smiled. While I cringed at the surroundings they seemed not to take notice, and why should they have? For better or worse, El Salvador was their home.

Salvadoreans, like most Latin Americans, are very pious Christians. The irony of DIOS ES AMOR (God is love) spray-painted onto a plywood shack struck me like a brick when I saw it outside of the supermarket. I wondered to myself, how could such a message exist on so crude a medium? Christian graffiti was everywhere. Buses would have phrases like Christo te ama (Jesus loves you) on their windows.

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After the second day of work, Sylvia’s family invited us over for dinner. Their casa was only a few blocks away, so we walked there, unsure of what to expect. I was slightly annoyed when our translator told us that it might be a tight fit and that food might be a bit short, but that night was one that I will remember for a long time to come.

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We filtered into the room one-by-one. There were just enough chairs and space to seat all nineteen of us comfortably close to each other. It felt cramped , but in retrospect the physical closeness aided in the closeness of our friendship as well. We met Sylvia’s parents and brother, who was attending college, and conversed with them and amongst ourselves while our dinner was cooking. Sylvia’s parents and brother were very happy to have us, the builders of their daughter’s and sister’s house, as guests, and their efforts more than made up for the lack of space. The people in the home make it home; the quality of the home does not make the home. Sylvia’s family shared their gratitude with a sincerity that would be hard to find in an American McMansion.

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Salvadorean enchiladas.

Soon the Salvadorean enchiladas came out of the oven, and there wasn’t even a shortage of food as we had been warned; there were leftovers! After we finished (I won’t even mention the suicidal chili pepper eating session some of the guys took part in), we went outside and took at least a hundred photos with the family before reluctantly trekking back to the community center.

Sylvia’s family and other Salvadoreans alike showed us that, as unbelievable as it may seem to us as Westerners, happiness is not solely dependent on how much “stuff” is available. I would even go so far as to say that the hardship many Salvadoreans endure strengthens their families and friendships.

The proper response to fortune

When I arrived at the resort I felt almost guilty for indulging in such blatant luxury while just the day before I had seen the difficulties that others were enduring. Even before this trip I had felt this sort of guilt; I remember sitting on my leather sofa and watching my widescreen LCD TV when an ad for Feed The Children came on. I watched painful footage of impoverished children in Sub-Saharan Africa and was powerless to do anything more than shuffle uncomfortably where I sat and wonder why people didn’t give more money to causes like these.

I thought then that throwing more money at a situation through programs like Feed The Children and Habitat For Humanity would always improve it as a rule, but it is critical to realize that this is not so. Programs like these only treat the symptoms of an unhealthy system, not the causes, and what help they do provide is limited. If a country’s infrastructure is bad, money is spent inefficiently; if a country’s government is corrupt, money is caught up in bureaucracy and money-grubbing officials; if bad habits in the population are not corrected, money is wasted. It’s a classic case of feeding a man a fish instead of giving him a fishing pole. One of the most meaningful parts of the trip was when we gave our shoes and hats to the Salvadoreans, signifying that we as foreigners could only do so much and that they would have to do their own work from here. Many among us even went barefoot, having only sandals to last us for the rest of the trip.

The proper response, then, is to be thankful for good fortune and share it willingly with those who do not have it while also helping to drive change. Organizations like Feed The Children and Habitat For Humanity are great, but ultimately change that only the people of a country can bring about must be wrought in order to make these organizations unnecessary; drowning a problem in money can only accomplish so much.

I wasn’t sure if this trip would be worth the $1800 ticket when I first signed up, but having gone through the experience I’d choose this over having a computer that can run SC2 on ultra any day.

A Trip To El Salvador

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