Of course much is new because I haven’t posted anything for such a long time.
Every day is completely different, but I’ll give an account of a relatively average recent day, starting with the morning, will post about the second part of the day when I get the chance to write it.
I wake up at around 5:30 as the sun rises. I do so not because the roosters are crowing or dogs barking (they do so regardless of day or night) but because I go to bed at around 8:30pm like the rest of the town. Besides, if I want to go running I need to get an early start before it becomes dangerously hot. The town starts to rouse itself around the same hour— the kid who delivers bread calls his customers out by ringing his bicycle bell and I can smell the tortillas being prepared- and I listen to the BBC over shortwave while I get myself good and roused. Once ready, I grab a handful of rocks to throw at angry dogs and get running—I’ve three or four routes I usually take, but one of my favorites is up a mountain to canton Ocotillo, seen while standing in the pueblo by the cell phone towers .
It’s an hour run up to the towers, 30 minutes back down, and I stop halfway through the run and eat a mango from the ground to refuel. Plus, near the top there’s an avocado tree, so I carry a pair of avocadoes on the return trip. Once I get back to the pueblo I stop and buy requeson (a dairy product whose closest equivalent is cottage cheese, made by boiling the milk protein left over after making the cream and cheese) from one of the ladies that make and sell it every morning. Like many of the homemade goods available in the community, there are no signs or advertisements proclaiming a product for sale, everybody just knows where to go. I try to buy from everybody that sells it so as not to offend— in the same small- town, word-of-mouth way that everybody knows who sells what, everybody also knows who’s doing what, and word would spread pretty quickly if I only frequented one vendor. Further, I’ve gotta do so for political reasons—the mayor’s mother is one of the requeson makers, and from what I’ve gathered, the other vendor near me is from a family that supported the other party in the last election. To many in the community, buying from one or the other can be a relatively political act.
Once back to the house, I stretch and eat some requeson with toasted tortillas. BBC news only comes across the shortwave radio for an hour or two every morning, but flip through the channels because sometimes I can pick up English language-news from China or Ukraine (yes, they broadcast in English)…yet this morning the only news on the shortwave in my native language comes from a fiery preacher announcing judgment day near.
Today is Tuesday, so I go to the Unidad de Salud (local health clinic) to make my weekly nutrition presentation to patients in the waiting room. Some stare at me blankly as I speak, others nod their head, still others giggle, but everybody pays attention. The presentation basically states that “being obese is bad because you get diabetes and hypertension and have heart attacks” and “food is energy, and energy you consume but don’t use makes you obese,” and “sugar and oil are concentrated energy,” and “soda is pure sugar and can make you fat (drinking one can of soda is the same as eating two tortillas!!!)” and “grape soda and orange soda is soda, not juice,” and so on. All of which, surprisingly, is new information for most people. I then pass out a sheet of easy, healthy, recognizable, and culturally appropriate recipes— from my experience, Salvadorans are VERY hesitant to try new foods and don’t tend to like unrecognizable flavors, so I actually spent a lot of time assembling the recipes and trying to get the Spanish correct.
After leaving the Unidad de Salud, I stop at the post office to send a letter. As often occurs, this ends up being a 30 minute ordeal because the postage price is inexact and there are a limited number of stamp denominations available, so we have to run a series of addition equations with the available stamps to find the appropriate combination. All the stamps come in odd denominations of “$.87” or “$.04,” despite the fact that sending the letter costs $1.03. If El Salvador would only print one or two cent stamps we wouldn’t have this problem… or perhaps it’s just that Nueva Esparta’s post office guy doesn’t go to the central office enough to update the stamp collection.
I then head towards the Alcaldia, of course having to stop a few times on the way to make niceties with people… the conversations usually consist of people commenting about the weather or about how far I ran in the morning, both of which usually inspire a guttural, exclamatory “hahk!” (not a word, but a sound many people in my town use to accent conversations, similar to a “whew!” or low whistle, usually uttered while quickly turning the head as if spitting over the shoulder).
So I eventually make it to the Alcaldia, where I don´t have anything particular activities to carry out today, but I always try to make my appearance to find out what´s going on in the town and local government. Usually meetings and events just seem to pop up without any forewarning, and informal conversations can really reveal a lot about what people aren´t telling me directly. So chat for a few hours with the employees, find out about upcoming meetings, head to the house for lunch…