Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Last night we met some of the other people staying at the hostel. It’s been interesting. We were at a hostel the night before as well, but it was deserted, so except for the fact that we slept in bunk beds and our room was unlocked all night it was hardly a hostal experience. But now we have the whole thing with the people gathered around drinking beer and smoking and watching TV and whatnot.

No one stays at Ximena’s, we found out. Apparently our treatment last night was not a fluke. They talked about a grounchy one-armed woman and we told them about our grouchy woman. “Oh, the blonde one?” they asked us, and we had to say no, she had dark hair. So apparently there are enough grouchy women there that we need to distinguish them by their physical characteristics.

Everyone staying at La Estancia is with the Peace Corps except us. I’ve been wondering for a long time what the Peace Corps is like because what little I knew appealed to me… except for the two-year commitment. According to the people we talked to, the ratio of chilling in a hammock to digging wells is higher than we originally thought, at least, if you want it to be. And there’s no age limit. We heard about someone in someone’s group who did her stint from age eighty-two to eighty-four. So it’s not too late for us.

But there’s a thing to these Peace Corps kids. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Something in the way all of them needed to ask if we were volunteers or a travelers before proceeding with any type of conversation at all. And the constant, “Yeah, this is our place, this is where we stay” as though we’d walked into their actual home. It’s a hotel, kids!

I don’t remember anything similar from when I volunteered at Mother Teresa’s in Calcutta, even though we mostly all stayed at the Salvation Army or Maria’s along with lots of “just travelers.” Maybe it’s to do with the extreme long term of their commitment, or the fact that it's no easy feat to join the Peace Corps, whereas all and sundry can just show up at Mother Teresa's and start scrubbing.

Or maybe it’s all in my mind. But when the one girl said, “I just can’t help but see Peace Corps people as on a different level as other Americans, even though, you know, we’re American too,” I was like, um, ok. To be clear – I think it’s both normal and great that they feel a special bond with each other, just, like, tact?

I should add that Michael thinks I am being too hard on the kids. He loved them and thought they were great and didn't see anything wrong with anything they said. He even tried to convince me that the word "level" doesn't imply that one is higher than the other. So whatever, maybe it is just me. But he can always write more stuff in his own blog if he wants to.

So last night we also found out about the death of Schafik Handal, of the FMLN party. I’m not going to go into that history too much because I’ll just get something wrong and end up making myself look stupid. But we assumed his death would be a big deal, so we spend the day running around trying to find public demonstrations or memorials or something.

There was not much going on that we could find, even down at FMLN headquarters. Whether this is because Arena is now in control or because we just bumbled around the wrong places, I don’t know. Even on the news, the coverage is fairly limited, though we did see some footage of sobbing folks in red having a candelight vigil. (After one night in the dorms here, this morning we moved to a private room with TV.) We may try to stick around for the funeral and see what we see.

 

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Catedral Metropolitana, San Salvador.

Inside the Catedral.

The day after Schafik's death. FMLN supporters in front of headquarters, San Salvador.

More FMLN.