Friday, January 27, 2006

Last night I had my very first sexual harrassment of the trip. I don’t know if it’s because I’m almost always with Michael, who is very large, or if the men here just don’t find me attractive, but no one has done a single untoward thing to me until last night. (Not that I'm sad about that, I’m just mentioning it for context.)

We were walking back to the hostel from a trip to the Esso station (they have a really good convenience store that even serves fried chicken and such at little tables). Some drunk guy was weaving towards us. I moved to the other side of Michael, away from the spot I thought he was lurching towards. He changed his trajectory and headed for my new spot. Micheal and I tried to get out of his way and it seemed we were passing him by – he was grinning drunkenly in my face - but in a bizarre ninja-like bowling move, he had swung around and grabbed my butt.

And not just grabbed it, but slurred, “buuuuueeenoooo,” as he did it. Michael, not knowing at that point that he’d actually made contact but wanting to chase him away anyway, made to swing his bottle of water at the drunk, who stood swaying in one spot and held a hand in front of his face, palm in.

Moving on down the sidewalk, we passed a middle aged couple headed towards him. “Cuidado,” Michael tried to warn them, but they studiously ignored us as though we were the butt-grabbing drunks.

Michael was furious when he found out that the guy had actually touched me, and I’m glad he didn’t know about it sooner, because no good would have been gained from hurting that guy, he was literally minutes away from passing out cold in the middle of the sidewalk. We've seen a couple like him already, just sprawled out on the concrete in broad daylight, getting stepped over or walked around.

So today we went to the museum, the Museo De Arte De El Salvador, which coincidentally was featuring a month-long exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photos of Mexico. This was nice because Michael is a big fan of Cartier-Bresson and we were just in Mexico a few weeks ago. The museum, which cost us $1.50 each, was great. I love museums, especially in the summer when it’s hot and miserable outside, but inside it’s cool and clean and echoey silent.

After perusing the exhibits we sat in the elegant little museum café and had a drink. Museum café’s are expensive and this one was no exception, but it was expensive by Salvadoran standards, so it was not so painful for us to sit and have a glass of wine and feel all sophisticated.

Then we had dinner at, of all places, Tony Roma’s. But they had WiFi! If we had known earlier, we would have gone in and just sat at the bar and updated our blogs for the price of a couple of drinks. But we had ribs and they were good. It was Karaoke night, and the singers, all local, sang songs in English so well that we didn’t realize it was Karaoke for a long time.

On the way home we had to dodge several glue sniffing kids. These kids are filthy. It’s no joke how dirty they are. And the glue does something to them, makes them twitchy and weird, so you can tell them a mile off. It's extremely disturbing, especially how young they are. Michael has been very affected by them. He gave one of them a dollar, saying, “comida!” The boy happily said, “si!” But as we walked away, Michael regretted giving the money, saying there was no way that kid would spend the dollar on food.

So when we got to the Esso station to get water, he bought a roll of Ritz crackers and some juice for the one panhandling outside the door, hoping the food would actually be eaten. He is really unhappy about the situation of these kids. I guess it’s pretty much the worst thing we’ve seen. No matter how poor and uneducated you are, with luck and hard work you still have a chance, slim as it may be. But the glue just destroys your brain. We have seen no adult glue sniffers.

 

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Museo De Arte De El Salvador, San Salvador.

The security guard kindly allowed Michael to take a photo of this sign, though he seemed afraid that Michael would go berserk and start shooting the exhibit as well.

Me having a glass of wine in the museum cafe.

I liked this phone booth. (San Salvador)

A glue-sniffer takes a rest under a bench in front of Metrocentro mall, San Salvador.