Menos el Oso y El Salvador

Last night I went to see the band Minus the Bear play. This is a band that Morgan's bro-in-law turned me on to in NZ. In fact, it was he who alerted me to their playing last night at the Vera Project, Seattle's only (I think) all-ages music venue. It had been a long time since I've been to a place that small, actually maybe never. I do have to point out that I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore- you're embarressed about everything, including dancing in front of others. I made a large space with my insane dance moves, since no one else wanted to touch me....they rocked out though.

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I got an email from my dad. For those of you who don't know, he's been travelling since the beginning of the year in Central America, mostly for pleasure, but has started volunteering with this community in El Salvador. I want to publish that email here, since it's a story worth knowing.

"Hello everyone. Time for another travel update. This one starts off with a bit of political education so hope you are up for it. I have been living for the past 3 weeks in a tiny farming community called Ciudad Romero in El Salvador. The city was named after the former archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated in 1980 (I think) in the capital city while he was giving mass. Monsignor Romero had gotten the ruling families of El Salvador ticked off because he was advocating for the rights of the peasant farmers to such outrageous things (heavy sarcasm here) as food and water and health care and a piece of land. All the land was owned by a handful of powerful families and they weren't in the sharing mood. His murder sparked a civil war that lasted about 11 years. The people in the community where I live were living in a rural community near the border with Honduras at the time of Occar Romero's murder. The peasant farmers loved Oscar Romero and he became a martyr to them after his death. A rebel force called the FMLN took up arms and started a revolution against the government. The kind of revolution where one side has sticks and rocks and 22 caliber rifles and the other side has tanks and bazookas and semi-automatic machine guns (most of which were provided of course by the US government). Not exactly a fair fight. The FMLN did have numbers on its side and a pretty tenacious spirit. But I digress.

The people in the community weren't really fighters. They were just families caught in the cross fire. About 500 of them fled their community and crossed the border into Honduras. But Honduras didn't really want any refugees as it was really poor itself and surrounded the refugees and wouldn't let them go any further. One of the people who related the story to me said at one point all they had to eat was mangoes for 3 days. The women couldn't produce milk to feed their babies. It was a rough scene. The international community took notice and sent some aid and the president of Panama agreed to take the refugees into his country. But the negotiations took months to work out so the people slept on the floors in community shelters and churches. Kind of like Hurricane Katrina only longer and even poorer conditions. Finally they got transportation to an area near the town of Colon. They lived in the middle of the jungle in palm thatched huts along a river. They had no cars. Their means of transportation was boats on the river. They hacked a town out of the jungle and lived on fruit and fish and whatever else they could grow. They stayed there for 11 years. Finally the war ended in El Salvador. As part of the peace settlement some land was set aside for peasant families to settle and farm and gain title to as owner. Not the nice land of course but at least land. So they were transported by boat along the Atlantic coast (Colon is on the Caribbean side of Panama) and deposited in Honduras. From there the whole group of them walked by foot for four days over the mountains and into El Salvador and down the Lempa River to where they thought they were going to be allowed to resettle. Well the government still had some reservations with the deal so the community was stopped along the road by tanks and had to wait there for three or four more days before they were allowed to pass. But finally, after about a 12 year exodus they resettled in El Salvador in this area near the Pacific coast in a valley along the Lempa River. They created Ciudad Romero and have lived here ever since.

By our standards in the US, the community is dirt poor. They live in cinder block houses. They do have electricity and most houses have a TV and stereo. Three years ago they got potable water that is relatively clean and safe. They don't have toilets, just outhouses. They cook over wood fires though some homes also have gas cook tops. The streets are dirt. Everyone has chickens. Some people also have pigs, cows, and/or horses. The men carry machetes and go to work most days in the fields or on projects around town. The women of course pretty much keep the whole thing going. They do the cooking, wash the clothes, buy the food, clean the house, mend the clothes, etc. Only a few people have cars. They get up about 5 every morning and work all day in this incredible heat (95 to 100 degrees) without airconditioning or fans. Any activity between about 8 and 5 in the afternoon makes you sweat. The nights are a bit cooler and everyone hangs out on the por ch in their hamacas. The kids play stick ball or whatever else in the streets. There isn't much in the way of activities so people do a lot of talking. They chatter away about anything and everything. Everyone knows everything about all the folks in town. I don't understand all of it as my Spanish is still not up to stuff. But I think you get an idea of the scene. People are asleep by 9 or 10 at night.

The thing that is hard for me to get my mind around is that the way they are living now is the best they have ever had it. I have only been here 3 weeks now and have to take trips to the mountains on the weekends to cool off and escape for a bit. The heat is really difficult to get used to. I am lucky because I have the resources to have these options. It is a hard life they have, to say the least. But because of their history, they are really strongly bonded as a community. The story of their exodus gets told a lot. They have a mural in the church that captures it and they tell the story to any of the volunteers who come to live here. They are extremely proud and incredibly well organized as a grass-roots organization.

On the work side of things, it has taken me a while to figure out what I can do to help. I started out with the idea that I would be helping them build a web site for the organization here. I approached it like any project in the states -- we identified what content they wanted, figured out an organizational structure, came up with a design. I created a simplified version of a design document showing what we were planning to build and presented it to an executive body. If we could get the okay to proceed, I was going to start building the pages. We hit a snag though. It turns out they already have a rudimentary site and thought we could simply modify that site with our proposed content and design and go down that road. But I looked at that site and it is based on a whole different design model where the site design is pretty much fixed and they don't have to know anything about html code or anything but just use an "admin" feature that allows them to update messages on the home page or add links to documents or photos they want to add on some other pages. So anyway, doesn't look like I'll be building the site as we talked about. So I have been talking with them about other options for things I could help do and we came up with a plan that I would create a basic user manual to provide as a handout to people in classes. Real basic stuff like -- the parts of a computer, how to turn it on and off and use a mouse, how to open Word and write a letter, how to go to the Internet and do a search on google, how to create an email account and send an email. The folks here are pretty much computer novices so we have to start real basic. The other issue for me has been their equipment is old donated computers from the states that must be 10 to 15 years old. I don't really have access to the tools I need to create the website or create this user manual here. So I am relocating to San Salvador to be able to have access to computers and tools I will need for this work.

So that is where I head next week to start working on this user manual. I will be incredibly relieved to get out of the heat and up into the mountains. But I will miss the people in the community of Ciudad Romero as they have been incredibly warm and open and kind. A fellow here has done some interviews of people telling their stories about their exodus and has written it down into a lenghty, rambling document. If time allows and my understanding of Spanish permits, I hope to also try to take this document and apply my editing touches to see if I can capture the story of this community. That is a bigger undertaking than I can complete in the last few weeks of my travel, but maybe it will happen later. It really an incredible story and one worth capturing.

I have started to write some stories of my own about my journey so far and have been in contact with the editor of an online travel magazine who has published one already and wants me to send more. Here is a link to the site with the first of these articles if you want to read it. (http://www.offshorewave.com/offshorenews/not-your-regular-9-to-5-in-antigua-guatemala-by-brad-andrews.html) You can check back to this site again later to read other stories as I get them written.

Hope all is well with everyone. I miss my friends and family back home. This has been a long journey. I am looking forward to being home again and am wondering what culture shock I will go through upon returning. Probably having to face the political environment back home will be one of the first challenges. Anyway, take care and let me hear from you if you are so inclined. "

That's all.