The Gender and Sexuality Workshop

Part of the work that we do at CFO is planning workshops around important issues for youth like human rights, nonviolent communication, self-esteem, leadership, sexuality, etc. Some of these topics interest the youth we work with more than others. Nonviolent communication, for example, seems to be a pretty hard concept for a lot of them to grasp, understandably so as these communities have a very violent history which has shaped the way people live and interact. Sexuality, however, seems to be one of the most popular themes and once the kids get past the initial embarrassment, they REALLY want to talk about it. Which is good, because not many other people are really talking about it with them. According to the kids that I have talked to, public health workers come into the schools about once a year and give a quick overview of basic sexual health. At home, it is often not talked about. But this lack of atention to something that is so much on the minds of teenagers is a big problem in a country where 1/3 of babies are born to teenage mothers and the number of new HIV cases is rising every year.

In talking about sexuality there are a lot of myths and taboos to break down, and not surprisingly, a lot of them relate to women. For that reason, gender workshops for men and for women have become very needed. In one community where we work, Community Raul Rivas Vasquez, all of last year was dedicated to learning about sexuality. This year, in trying to continue some with the theme, we have started a girls group to meet seperately from the guys and to have a space to talk about gender, among other things, in a space that is safe. About a month ago, we did a half day workshop on gender and then went on a field trip in the afternoon to Los Planes de Renderos, a famous scenic lookout about the city. We took twenty-girls as well as three kids who are children of the partipants, two little sisters who were being babysat and couldn't be left alone, a woman from the community who helped us organize the group, her grandson. It was quite an adventure.

The workshop agenda was to briefly touch on sexuality basics and then look at the gender roles in Salvadoran society. It was really interesting to listen to what they thought and ways they all thought alike and the things the disagreed on. The girls have a ton of energy which made the activites fun, though sometimes a little hard to get under control. Overall though, it went really well. Here are some of my observations about the day
1) Almost all of the girls felt that they were trapped in their homes to run the house while their parents worked while their brothers were free to roam the streets and live as they pleased
2) The situation for women in El Salvador, though still very poor, has changed a good deal in the past few decades, so for these girls some of the gender rules do not feel as strong as it does for older Salvadoran women
3) Though all from the same community, a few girls have higher levels of education (they have been able to attend high school or the university, something that is not very common for young people in their community). The ones with higher level of education were more critical of objectification of women.
4) Most of the girls (including the three mothers in the group) did not see men as reliable when it comes to helping support a family

I feel as if I am constantly learning more and more about Salvadoran society through what I see everyday. This workshop was fascinating for me and I really hope that the girls took something from it as well. The field trip to Los Planes was a lot of fun, despite some slight rain and the fact that we had to cram ourselves into a pickup to get there. We took a ton of pictures and you can check them out on my facebook account. Just click on the link below. The second half of the pictures are of a mural that we did in the same community a few days later.

Click to see pictures!!!

Hope you enjoy!

pic of some of the girls from the lookout at El Puerto del Diablo (the Devil's Door), the lookout point in Los Planes de Renderos

Food in El Salvador

About two months ago I got inspired by my brother's Argentina blog and decided I was going to write a blog about food in El Salvador. This is me actually getting around to doing that.

So here it goes... food in El Salvador. There are somethings about the food here that I absolutely loved from the start, then there are some things that took me awhile to come around too. There are also those things about Salvadoran food that I really don't like. Seeing as I can't possibly touch on all of it, I will try to hit the highlights.

Comida Tipica
This is the term you to describe typical Salvadoran plates, or the food that Salvadorans most often eat, which would be: rice and beans, Salvadoran tortillas (made from corn, smaller and a lot thicker than Mexican tortillas), sour cream, avocado, Salvadoran cheese (fresco which is softer or duro which is harder, both VERY salty), fried or boiled plantains, scrambled eggs with vegetables and of course COFFEE!!! A few comments: 1) the coffee is served with a ton of sugar and everyone including children drink it, usually its very weak 2) it has taken me a really long time to be able to get used to the sour cream and cheese 3) when the rice and beans are mixed they are called casamiento which means marriage. Everything is seasoned with salt and lime.

Fruit
I've already written a whole blog entry about fruit in El Salvador so I won't elaborate too much, but its definitely one of my favorite things about the food here. Mangoes, oranges, jocotes, mamays, anonas, zapote, mamones, papaya, pineapple, coconut, arrayan, bananas, etc. The can all be bought from street vendors and in markets like the Mercado Zacamil close to my apartment. On street corners and family run cafeterias all of the city you can buy smoothies, called licuados which is any of these fruits mixed with milk, orange juice or carrot juice. It's one of my favorite things for breakfast. Another favorite fruity treat is natural ice cream that is sold mainly by men pushing carts through neighborhoods and parks.

Jocotes

Vegetables
This is mostly the same, but some special veggies found here are pipian-probably one of my favorite vegetables ever which is kind of like zuchinni and squash but sweeter. There is also guisquil, a big watery squash; ayote, another famous squash; and lorocco, which are tiny buds that grow on a vine. People also eat the national flower which is called Flor de Izote.

Pan Dulce (Sweet Bread)
Small bakeries can be found pretty much every couple of blocks in San Salvador though the quality of the bread sold at them differs greatly. For example the bakery closest to my house is not that great while the bakery by the Participacion Juvenil office is one of the best bakery's I've been too. At the bakery you can buy pan dulce which includes donuts, semita, maria luisa, empanadas, etc, etc. All different types of sweet bread that are oftened flavored with icing and filled with creme or pineapple jelly. My favorite and one of the more famous of Salvadoran pan dulce is quesadilla, which is NOT like a Mexican quesadilla. It's like a sweet cornbread that is made with cheese, its delicious.

Pupusas
This is its own category because its the most famous Salvadoran food. For those who don't know, a pupusa is a Salvadoran tortilla, which like I said is thicker and made with ground corn, that is stuffed usually with beans and cheese, porkrind and cheese, lorocco with cheese, cheese alone or my preference, beans alone. It is served with a watery tomato salsa and curtido which is like pickled cabbage and carrott relish. Pupusas are eaten primarily for breakfast or dinner and are EVERYWHERE is El Salvador. There is a pupuseria next too my house which we like to hit up at least once a week.


Maiz (Corn)
I am including this as a category because a large number of Salvadoran typical foods are made from corn. They say that corn was holy to the indigenous that lived around here and that it is understable why when you see how much food can come from it. I already mentioned pupusas and tortillas, but those are not the only things. Tamales are another popular food which is salty, soft, corn dough filled with veggies or chicken and cooked inside a corn stalk leaf rolled up. Tamales are also served sweetened instead of salty and fried. Atol is a thick creamy drink that is made from corn but is sweetened almost like pudding. Shuco is a salty thick drink made from blue corn and served with hot sauce and beans and eaten by dipping bread in it. Corn is also served toasted with lime and salt or as elote loco which is cooked corn on a stick slathered in ketchup, mustard, mayonaise, holaindaise sauce and sprinkled in cheese. I enjoy all of these foods except the last one which I think is disgusting.

Drinks that I have not mentioned
One type of drink I like is fresco which is juice that is usually served at lunch time and made by mixing fresh fruit juice, water, sugar and ice. Flavors include: Flor de Jamaica (made from a flower petal and also served as tea), tamarindo, arrayan, orange and pineapple. Horchata is also served at lunch time, this is sweetened rice milk. As for hot drinks, besides coffee, which is drinken by everyone at anytime regardless of age or temperature, the main other hot drink is chocolate, which is Mexican chocolate melted and mixed with hot water. I really like it a lot, though some people really don't (my friend dropped her camera down an outhouse toilet while trying to covertly dump out the chocolate that was given to her at an event).

Other highlights
Pasteles: veggies or meat cooked into fried dough and served with curtido (see pupusas)
Arroz con leche: hot rice with milk, cinnamon and sugar
Coconut milk: most often drinken by chopping off the top of a coconut and sticking a straw in it
Empanadas: stuffed pastry with veggies or meat
chocofruta: bananas, strawberries, pineapple or grapes on a stick dipped in chocolate
Poleada: vanilla custard
Churros españoles: fried dough covered in sugar and served at fairs (like funnel cake)
Dulces: coconut or tamarindo concentrate sweetened and served at fairs

Things I think don't like about Salvadoran food:
Sopa de pata: which is cow foot soup
Tortas: fried sandwiches with ham and massive amounts of mayo and ketchup
Lack of good salad (salad is lettuce with one tomato and salt on top)
The amount of oil used in everything
The fact that at lunch time EVERYTHING has meat in it
How often hot dogs are cut up and thrown in with pasta, eggs or beans

Those are my highlights and lowlights of Salvadoran food. There are other things that are okay that I have not covered but maybe for the next food blog. I hope anyone reading feels like they learned a little about food in El Salvador!

more than a statistic

El Salvador can be a very dangerous place, so they say. When people give overviews of the country to foreigners, they usually quote some statistic saying its the second most or third most dangerous country in the world with the most homicides per capita in Latin America. When I was a student here I was always so blown away with these facts and in every encounter I had with Salvadorans I would be thinking about how they have been affected by the war or poverty or violence. But since moving here and starting a life in El Salvador, the shock statistics have slipped to the back of my mind and my attention has gone more daily concerns like what to teach in English class, or how out of control the kids in certain groups are or even where I am going to buy the vegetables and cat food. Sometimes when reading the paper or talking to people in the communities, the topic of violence will come up by I find that I am less shocked by these accounts partly because as I did not see it nor know the person, they seem so far away, even if they happened within a five minute walk from my house. But, in a place with a homicide rate as high as El Salvador, it is inevitable that eventually you will know someone who is killed in a very violent manner.

Two weeks ago tonight, on October 3rd, in the community Sierra Alta, two guys from our group in that community were shot and killed while playing cards on the steps in front of the park. At 6:30 at night in this community it was not at all uncommon for young people to hang out on the main corner in front of the little park where all of our group meetings are held. This night it had just started to rain as it so often does at nighttime in October, so most of the kids had headed back to their homes and only two stayed to finish their card game. They were doing exactly that when five young men with guns walked up from around the corner and shot them to death. Maico, his mother's only son, had just turned fifteen and died right there two blocks from his home. Noe, a twenty-one year old with a wife and a three year old son, was rushed to the hospital with nineteen bullets in his body and he died on the operating table. When I visited the following day with my coworkers to visit the stunned, grieving and terrified kids and families of Sierra Alta, there were bullet holes in the wall and blood still on the concrete. On the ground there were a few remaining bloodstained playing cards scattered on the ground.

That night I attended the "vela" along with a number of others from CFO. Traditionally, a vela is held in the homes of the deceased on the night before their burial. Friends and people from the community come to the house to sit with the family and the body all night until the funeral. There is usually coffee, food and praying. This vela was night held in the community due to the fear that the people who killed the boys would take advantage of everyone being in the same place and return. After all, no one knows why it was these specific boys in this specific community on that specific day, they don't know if there was a reason behind the killings or if it was just to instill fear, if it was gang related or not. Some even mentioned that they thought it could be political since these guys were more into the FMLN and soccer than anything else. But, as it was, not many of the young people showed up to the vela anyone due to that fear. The vela, held in a funeral home close to the Center of Mejicanos, was mostly attended by family members and older people. The bodies were laid out in coffins covered with flowers and the jerseys of the guy's newly formed soccer team. Looking into the coffin was a surreal experience as I don't think I have ever seen a dead body before, all the other funerals I have been to have been cremations. I could hardly recognize either of them. It was almost impossible to connect my memories of these two guys joking in meetings, playing soccer and talking about work or girls with the vision of these two lifeless bodies soon to be buried into the earth. impossible.

I didn't know Maico or Noe as well as I know some of the kids in our other groups but I did know them. Maico was quieter but always came to the meetings, he loved to play soccer and my last memory of him is at a soccer tournament they played at about a month ago. He was freaked out to leave to community and his mom was really protective. Noe was really outgoing and was always making jokes, but he was also opinionated and always participated in meetings. He was good a drawing and creative, the other guys looked up to him and it helped in getting them involved in meetings.

When I found out that they were killed I felt nauseous and my head hurt, I cried and couldn't cry. I couldn't stop thinking about their mothers, and family members, or about their friends, the other guys in the community. I couldn't stop thinking about what the last minutes of their life must have been like. I played through all of my memories of Sierra Alta and tried to make sense of the whole thing. As I babbled on to Cesar, half crying, half dazed, I asked him if he knew people who died violently. Of course he did, he grew up in El Salvador. What would it be like to grow up with some one, go to school with them, watch them have kids and then hear that they were stabbed, shot and yes, even decapitated, two blocks from your home? Or to have grown up with kids who became gang members? Or to lose a family member and know that their murderers were still alive and living in your same community? What kind of country is this that people have to get used to hearing about these kind of things. What kind of place is this that the death of these two boys didn't make the press because it is so common? That it most likely will not get investigated by the police. That Maico and Noe will just become another number in the statistics of violent deaths in El Salvador.

Life goes on. Though it will never be the same for those families and for those kids in that community. But it still goes on. For me, this tragedy brings the statistics closer to home. And I now see more clearly how fragil life is. Sierra Alta was a small community on top of a hill overlooking the Salvadoran countryside north of the city. On windy nights, young kids would fly kites. There is a family that sells empanadas, yuca frita and papas cooked over a wood stove. Who knows when it will be that again, right now they are too afraid to leave their homes. But, who knows when life will be snatched from any community in Mejicanos, in El Salvador, anywhere. In El Salvador, you just continue with the violence hanging over your head, never knowing when it will manifest. As I visit communities, and get to know more young people I try to stay conscious of the reality of the injust situations that exist in places like this while at the same time taking in the life and energy that young people can offer. As they would say here: seguimos luchando adelante. we continue to fight on.