This post goes out to my father Harold Lee Flanagan III, who throughout my childhood and adolescence drilled me with the phrase "if you`re early you`re on time, but if you`re on time you`re late". In light of the fact that I have not posted here in more than 6 months, despite the proddings of friends and family, it seems fitting for me to mention my dad who has never liked the procrastinator´s proverb (and personal mantra) "it`s better late than never".
It would be impossible to summarize the last six months of my Peace Corps service. That`s probably why most people post more often. I`ll try and re-cap some things I did, diverging into rabbit trails and loosely related memories whenever I feel like it. I`ll start with August because to be honest... I don`t really remember July.
August- Towards the end of the month I worked with a volunteer from the southern region of my department to organize what we called a "Skills Exchange". We invited 6 schools to 2 events and where we provided craft materials purchased with money we received from a USAID grant. The 6 schools were invited based on skills that they were able to share, be it hammock making, belt weaving, wallet stitching ect. Each school taught their individual skill and (hopefully) learned 5 new skills. Money from the grant provided each school with the materials necessary to reproduce the workshop upon returning to their community. So far, I consider that to be one of my most successful projects.
September- My college roommates came down from Chicago! They flew into El Salvador, and from there we took busses to the eastern coast of Honduras. What I learned: Honduras is huge, and it takes a long time to cross. We took 3 or 4 busses for a total of close to 15 hours to arrive at the coast, from which we took a ferry to the island of Utila. Utila is known for being a grungy but hip backpacker haven, as well as the cheapest place in the world to receive scuba diving certification. We spent 5 days scuba diving in beautiful coral reefs. We saw thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of fish sporting shapes and colors that I would have thought were beyond the relm of reality. I grew up reading old national geographic magazines that my grandfather had stashed away and in that sense I was aware of the existence of strange creatures, but seeing them first hand was a whole different experience. Aside from the natural beauty of the trip, it was great to be with my roommates again. College facilitates a unique opportunity for particularly close friendships, and I am thankful that they have lasted through graduation.
October is kind of a blurr. At some point in the year I took over responsibility for teaching computer classes to high school students. We had a computer teacher, but she immigrated to the United States. By October I was working with the high school students three times per week, and I was really beginning to enjoy it. We worked exclusively in microsoft office, practicing typing, document creation, resume writing, spreadsheets, the whole shabang. I discovered two important things. 1) High school students are too cool for school 2) teaching is pretty fun. The fact that my students thought that I was old and lame was beyond strange. I am 23 and like to tell myself that I am not overly uptight. It was a challenge to engage students; to gain their trust without loosing credibility as a professional or as an educator.
I continued my business class and it only got more fun as time went on. I only had 8 girls in the class, and the fact that their participation was voluntary made everything easier. We became a virtual shampoo factory, producing loads of gooey aloe based material, bottling the stuff in an assembly line style with admirable efficency. They never quite mastered the art of sales, so by the end of the class we had aquired a gargantaun amount of shampoo, which was distributed among the girls for them to sell at their lesiure. Of all of my students, I am most proud of the participants of that class.
I had previously mentioned that I started a choir here, but I don`t know if I ever wrote of its terrible demise. It turned out that nearly every single child in the group was either totally tone deaf, or unable to recognize the difference between a high note and a low note. Even the obstacle of repeating a tune that I had sung seemed insurmountable. Soooo..... we switched to recorders! My mom sent me some plastic flutes, and we began music lessons on the instrument which, if held correctly, is completely fail proof! My class has progressed significantly since the switch. We haven`t met in a few weeks due to summer vacations (it is summer here), but I expect to start again as soon as classes begin next week.
In December, the big news in town was the impending visit of my parents (los padres de Yesi). In the time leading up to their arrival, people were asking daily when they would come. When they finally arrived, we rented a car and traveled across Central America, seeing everything cool that time would permit us to see. We stopped at Las Ruinas de Copan in Honduras, which is a huge cultural site of the Mayans. We took a tour through the pyramids and temples with a great guide. Next, we drove to Antigua, Guatemala where we spent 2 days exploring the 2nd Spanish capital of Central America. The city is magnificent, full of old spanish cathedrals, great artisan markets, and cool colonial architecture. It was a once in a lifetime trip.
Our next stop was the largest national park in El Salvador "El Imposible". We did some hiking and saw a rare "anteater-bear". I took a swim one of the most beautiful (and cold) rivers that I`ve ever seen, and marched through the largest virgin forest in the country. Giant mahogony trees 15 feet in diameter tower along the river. The ojuste trees that I mentioned in the last post are scattered through the forest, some as high as 150 feet tall! Suffice to say, it was cool.
On a more recent note, I took a sweet hike last weekend. I hiked from my site with a volunteer neighbor, and went from my site in the north east corner of the country to the municipality of Corinto. The hike was a bit grueling, but the landscapes were beautiful. I`ll try and post a photo or two sometime. We passed through 3 or four small villages on the way and were continually told that we were crazy for trying to walk so far. At one point in the hike we decided to climb a particularly beautiful mountain/rock formation. The formation is about 500 meters across and forms nearly a perfect cilinder with a rouned grassy top. Picturesque. We tried to climb the formation, but hike had taken a lot out of us, not to mention that we had trespassed and were afraid of being mistaken for cattle theives. We gave up, but fortuitously found a cave at the base where we rested in the shade. Upon arriving in the house that I was to stay in I passed out in a hammock, not waking until morning. We made the return hike the next day.
All in all we covered more than 40 kilometers in just over 15 hours. Upon the request of my aching feet, I stayed in my hammock for the better part of the next 24 hours.
We hung out at the beach for a day while I made some failed attempts at surfing, and we headed back to my site to hang out with my neighbors. My parents were instantly famous. During the time that they were there I had more visitors in my house than ever before. People were coming to the house to bring us tamales, bananas, and a whole lot of uncooked beans. I took them to meet many of my favorite neighbors, who clearly took it as a great honor to be visited by "los padres de Yesi". I think they liked being famous. We took a trip to the river where and grilled some meat, and we visited a cave with some petroglyphs made by indiginous people in the past.
It was super great to hang out with my folks. I enjoyed playing tour guide, taking them around the country, translating, and seeing the sights.
The reader, after hearing about the trip with my roommates and then my parents, might think that all I do is vacation. That would not be entirely untrue. On the whole, the last 18 months have been so vaired and exciting that it`s hard to mentally separate vacation and work. That`s not to say that there have been no low moments, just that my experience, now mostly complete, has been generally fun and fulfilling.
I`ve probably mentioned that I work on a committee that promotes youth development through a program that provides mentoring and scholarships to high school and university students. Now that I`m farther along in my service, I`m the president of the committee and I have a few more responsibilities than I did before. We give $250 dollar scholarships to 22 teenagers; an amount that allows even the poorest students to go to high school for an entire year. We provide $450 to university students. The cost of education is unbelievably low, but unfortunatly it is still out of reach for the vast majority of students in my town and across El Salvador. If you would like to learn more about the program, you can visit our website by clicking here and if you would like to donate to our program you can do so by clicking here.
I revised the comments on my blog for the first time today... I probably should have looked at those earlier. If you leave a comment, I`ll try to look at it sooner this time!
I hope all are well! I`d love to hear from you. My address is on one of my first blog posts.
My very best,
Jesse
