The Farm Life

Who knew so much could happen in such a short time! Since my last post, we have met with Pastor Cruz, one of the nicest, most generous people I have ever met. He has transported us the 2 hours to Santa Clara where we will live on his family’s farm and has arranged food, transportation, and laundry for us as well with the help of his niece Dr. Cruz who is our Site Preceptor in DC. After our wonderful meeting with USAID and my lounging in the hotel, Pastor Cruz (to be known as Leonel) came to the hotel from his home in San Salvador to meet us and have dinner. He drove us up one of the many mountains surrounding San Salvador to a town called Los Planes. On the way we passed a famous location called “La puerta del Diablo” (the Devil’s gate) where we hope to go back to one day during daylight to see the view of the city which is said to be spectacular but dangerous at night. We had dinner at this place with some of the best Papusas! We ate while gazing down on the city lights! It was beautiful.

Yesterday was much slower but in the afternoon we made our way to Santa Clara. On the way we picked up coconut to drink and had some banana ice cream. Both were delicious! I am not a huge fan of banana flavored products but this was softserve with just enough hint of banana flavor and lots of cream. YUM! On the road we also passed 2 maqillas (sweatshops) owned by Japan and China. Other maquillas are run throughout El Salvador by other countries but these were the ones we saw. Leonel told us that hundreds of women work long days there to bring home $6 per day with no employee rights. These places need to be illegal everywhere. This frustrates me so much.

We arrived in San Rafael Oriente just past 5:00 to meet the mayor at his office which will also be our office while we are here. The town center is cute, in the shape of a square with the mayor’s office on one side, a church, and a few local businesses. The mayor’s office is one large room with a few desks along the walls and LOTS of air conditioning! Wow did we get lucky for the time we spend in the office! The mayor was at another meeting so we traveled to the farm in Santa Clara. Prior to our arrival here at the farm, we were told there is a horse, a cow, a shower, a farm house, etc. The Farm itself is beautiful, probably (as I have not seen other homes) the nicest in the community. The landscape is amazing, flowers and fruit trees. There are avocado, tamarind, lemon, cashew, and almond trees on the property and more that I am not familiar with yet. The property itself is not very big by American standards but here it is very large. The family used to grow sugar cane years ago.  At any time we will have up to 5 people living on the Farm with us which will be nice for companionship and to continue to practice my Spanish. Our room is the largest building in the Farm. It is one large room where we have put up camping style cots and bed nets to sleep under (photos coming). We have electricity and extra space where we plan to exercise. The room has a roof but we definitely are exposed to the elements here with 4 sets of doors and spaces between the walls and roof for bugs and creatures to enter. In fact we thought we saw a bat last night in our room. TERRIFYING! I was freaking out quietly to myself that it would somehow get us in our sleep, which for those of you who know me translates into periods of silence with the look followed by incessant talking about the situation. Turns out it was only a leaf…and that bats do not randomly attack so phew! to that one. 

Dinner was delicious; we had queso which I am obsessed with, homemade tortillas, avocado, and rice and beans which was made by Silvia, a nice lady who will be cooking most of our meals for us while we are here. Then we met the Mayor! We had a long conversation with him about our projects and his expectations. We will begin working on Monday when we will meet the community health workers in the town who we will shadow for several weeks to assess the needs of the community!  So I was off to sleep in a bat free room (thank god!) Guess I better get used to the outdoorsy life!

Nicoley

PS: for those of you who know me well and have lived with me… we have begun the talks (aka Shells' fave)