One month in!

By now many of you have probably lost hope that I will be the faithful blogger that I aspired to be in my first post. Sorry about that!

On September 17th I moved to a little community in north-east El Salvador to be an actual volunteer instead of a trainee. I'm about 5 weeks into my time here and I'm loving it. I work here as a youth development volunteer, so I've been spending considerable portions of my day in the school here. As expected, my work here has been unpredictable and different than I thought it would be. Thankfully, I'm a big fan of surprise so I've gotten along just fine.

Believe it or not, one of the biggest things I've been working on has been a robotics course for teens in my school. I definitely didn't see that coming. I guess we received a grant from Microsoft before I arrived that provided us with a 2 lego robot kits and some user-friendly programing software. The kids learn about basic mechanics, problem-solving, and teamwork by building and trouble-shooting these robots. The programing software is in English, so I can be of help here and there. It's a very interactive classroom, so it's been a great way for me to get to know kids here.

Getting to know my community is a full time job, if it can be considered a job. When I'm not in the school, I try to walk the street of my town slow enough that people invite me in for coffee and bread. It's a great strategy as far as I can tell. My community has been extremely welcoming and inviting. I've made good friends here, and though many of them are old enough to be my grandparents, we seem to get along well enough. In the last two weeks I was invited to come watch a cow get slaughtered at the top of our hill. Talk about a quick course in animal anatomy. In less than 2 hours the whole thing was divided up into it's different pieces. By 5 am nearly all the meat had been purchased by people passing by.

I was also invited over to make some of the most delicious tamales that this world has tasted. The corn was picked by us, schucked by us, milled by us, and poured into the corn husks by us, steamed by us, and eaten by us. I enjoyed being a part of the whole process. Locally based agriculture isn't a fad here like it is in the states. The reality here is that you eat what you grow and what your neighbors grow. I like it.

There's another school about an hour's hike from my town that I've started getting to know. It is a much more impoverished community, and it's one where I hope to spend time and energy helping the community develop as much as I can. The school has 3 classrooms and three teachers for 6 grades. The young ones come in the morning and the older kids come in the afternoon. Unfortunately, since the school only goes up to 6th, anyone who wants to study further has to walk an hour (depending on where they live, maybe more) to my town. Many of them already walk an hour through the mountains to get to this school in the first place.

Obviously, my work in the two schools will look very different. In the town where I stay, I can teach employability by means of resume workshops and typing classes, but in a village where many people don't have an 8th grade education, a resume is not a very effective tool. My work there (I don't have a clue what it will look like yet) will start by thinking about how they can leverage the resources they do have (active parents, good laborers, lots of outdoors) to form programs and projects that benefit the community. We may try and reorganize the village council to be more active in the community as well.

Since I'm running out of time, I'm going to be more concise about the things I like most here. Keep in mind that these are broad generalizations that, of course, don't always apply. Either way, I appreciate them.

1. You don't need teeth or clean clothes to be well respected. The leaders in the communities here are not the people with money, they are the people that have their lives together and are interested working for everyone's benefit.

2. The mountains.

3. Roots. The elderly in my community don't know how many generations of their grandparents have lived in my village, but they assume all of them, and rightly so. Families have deep roots around them. They know everything about the history of their town. They know who their third cousins twice removed are. Family is family.

4. Knowledge of the land. The people know how good a harvest will be by how the corn sways in the wind (they say the corn sways more if the roots are loose, and if the roots are loose the corn doesn't grow as well). Everyone knows exactly how many days it's been since it rained, and they're darn good at knowing when it will rain again.

5. Peacefulness. On my walk home yesterday I stopped at 2 houses for milk and coffee. What should have been a 75 minute walk turned into a 3 hour tour through the mountains. Less things are rushed, and smaller things are appreciated. It's okay to be quiet for a long time in a conversation. There is little to no sense of awkwardness.

I miss home quite a bit. I miss fall and I miss my family and friends, but I'm happy here. I'm at home here and I like my neighbors. I hope you all are well and I look forward to hearing from you when you have time to write. I'll write you back.

My address is:

Jesse Flanagan
Voluntario de Cuerpo de Paz
Lista de Correos
Nueva Esparta
Departamento la Union
El Salvador, Centro America

Much love,
Jesse