El Salvador 2007

The Story of La Pirata

2007-07-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

This dog ran away from home, and I'm sad. Actually, this is Loki, but I don't have a good pciture of La Pirata (who was cuter). But still, I want him to come back. Maybe he would if my host parents stopped beating their animals.

I may be going home early

2007-07-17T02:28:00.001-07:00

I have been sick so many times, I may be going home early. More information to come tomorrow.

Earlier This Morning

2007-07-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

The Parable of the Starfish

I awoke early to walk by the ocean's edge and greet the new day. I saw a boy, bending and reaching and waving his arms – dancing on the beach, no doubt in celebration of the perfect day soon to begin.

As I approached, I sadly realized that he was not dancing, but rather bending to sift through the debris left by the night's tide, stopping now and then to pick up a starfish and then standing, to heave it back into the sea. I asked the boy the purpose of the effort. "The tide has washed the starfish onto the beach and they cannot return to the sea by themselves," he replied. "When the sun rises, they will die, unless I throw them back to the sea."

I looked at the vast expanse of beach, stretching in both directions. Starfish littered the shore in numbers beyond calculation. the hopelessness of the boy's plan became clear to me and I pointed out, "But there are more starfish on this beach than you can ever save before the sun is up. Surely you cannot expect to make a difference.

He paused briefly to consider my words, bent to pick up a starfish and threw it as far as possible. Turning to me he simply said, "I made a difference to that one."
-Loren Eiseley
So your probably wondering why I opened with one of my favorite parables. The reason is that I'm sick (6th time for those who are counting) and I'm tired of writing about that (and I'm sure your all tired of hearing about it.
So instead, I'll write about something that happened to me earlier today. I was walking to the supermarket to buy some cereal and soy milk (can't handle dairy when I have an upset stomach). I was approached by a middle-aged women begging with her young child in her arms. I usually do not stop for beggars and I never give money, but she was begging for me to buy her medicine. So I walked with her to the pharmacy where she ordered three medications for a problem with her daughter's lungs. She had a perscription for them so I assume that they were legitimately needed.
Afterwards, I treated her and her daughter to a meal of chicken and french fries at a local fast food joint. She told me about how the place where she was living did not have a roof or four walls, and that flooding and rain were a persistent problem. In a country where 4 out of ten people make less than 2 dollars a day and nearly half are not formally employed (selling things on the side of the road does not count as formal employment, for example), I realized that I should not be surprised as I was by her poverty.
During the meal, I couldn't help but reflect upon the futility of my actions. There are millions of impoverished people in this country, and as many as half a dozen can approach me on any given day walking through San Salvador, asking me for money.

But I made a difference to those two.

Don't You Love Diet Coke?

2007-07-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

But seriously, don't you just love Diet Coke? I love nothing better on a Saturday afternoon than to sit back and enjoy a cool one with lime (and with a slice of lime for extra flavor!). It's probably my favorite non-alcoholic beverage. And like thousands of other products, the artificial sweetener is a genetically-modified organisms.

Fine you say, you'd prefer a regular Pepsi. After all, Beyoncè drinks it. Enjoy the genetically-modified corn syrup, the very best the US government can pay farmers to grow (and sometimes not to grow).

And they say there's really no difference between Coke and Pepsi.

Genetically-modified organisms are not necessarily a bad thing. They were introduced to the market about 13 years ago, and Coke started using it because of the controversy over the harmful effects of saccharine. And I love Diet Coke with Lime, and I'm not going to stop drinking it anytime soon. And if Beyoncè offers me a Pepsi, you'd better believe I'd drink it.

But genetically-modified organisms can all also be a bad thing. Particularly for poor, Salvadorian farmers. And that is why the Archdiocese of San Salvador founded PEBA (Program of Basic Education), the organization I am working with in El Salvador through Christians for Peace. They provide instruction and material assistance to poor farmers who agree not to use GMO crops.

GMO crops are bad for Salvadorean farmers, and the country as a whole, for three reasons. The first is foreign competition. About 4 out of 10 farmers in El Salvador make $2 a day or less. They cannot afford GMO seeds. But large, US corporate agriculture can. And they use this technology to increase their yeilds flood the market with cheap corn and throw small, poor Salvadorian farmers out of business. Ironically, their children will then migrate to the United States (There are three million Salvadorians in the US, and only 7 million here) and probably will end up as a day laborer on a large corporate farm in the United States. And then my conservative friend David will complain how illegal immigrants are destroying American culture. To which I reply that "America" is more than just the Unites States, and that they are "American".

The second reason is that those making more than $2 and hour sometimes can buy GMO seeds. In the past, they got their seeds for free from the foods they planted. But now they have to buy seeds every year, because yes, giant corporations like Monsanto kindly remind the farmers that any seeds in the crops that they grow are the property of Monsanto and not the farmers. Which leads to less money for farmers for every crop they produce, and more for US corporations. Who only have our best interest at heart. That is, if your a shareholder, which most Salvadorians aren't.

And finally, there is the environment. There is a concept of biodiversity, of various breeds of the same plant and other plants (yes, weeds). I`m too lazy to explain why biodiversity is good for the environment, take Environmental Science if you really want to know why (or look it up on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiverse)). And in a place with as many environmental problems as El Salvador (89% of rainwater is acidic and unsafe to drink) and important plants and animals (tropical rain forests), biodiversity might just be a good thing for here. I mean, the campo is gorgeous, and I don't want it to look like Nebraska.

Whew! All this talk about GMOs make me thirsty for some more Diet Coke! If they only had Diet Coke with Lime in El Salvador...

Photos!

2007-07-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! Since I'm back in San Salvador, I've been uploading photos. I figured it would be a good idea to tell those who don't know where they are on the internet.

Here's where they are:

Life in the Campo, Part 2: http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016161&l=9959a&id=31600236

In El Campo:
http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016156&l=23d9b&id=31600236

Market Day:
http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016159&l=0a9fb&id=31600236

Back from the Campo:
http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016160&l=9d60a&id=31600236

San Salvador, Take 3:
http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016155&l=c2c66&id=31600236

Fotos de San Salvador:
http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015525&l=dd830&id=31600236

Fotos de El Salvador:
http://lclark.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015430&l=6ee4a&id=31600236

Enjoy!

Happy fourth of July!

2007-07-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I’m finally back in San Salvador again on a beautiful independence day. I had planned to celebrate with Salvadorian beer and a Cuban Cigar, but it looks like that will no longer an option.

Like I said in my post two days ago in Cajutepeque, I am sick again. It's been quite an adventure.

I was feeling much better in Cahute (the city's nickname), so I declined to visit a clinic. Big mistake. I started feeling much worse later around five, and when one of my host mother's friends suggested medicine, I thought that was a great idea. Little did I no that the only place to get medicine at seven o'clock, when we arrived in Cahute, is the hospital. We were there for two hours, and I felt like vomiting while I was there. I eventually did vomit, which made me feel a little better. The doctor gave me some medicine for my stomach and the vomiting, and told me to return at 7pm with a stool sample.

Trying to sleep that night was all but impossible. My stomach still hurt, and I was drinking water and peeing frequently. And then the animals started to make noise at about 11:30. Dogs barking at one another, and roosters crowing every hour. When Doña Maria, my host mother, got up at 5am, I figured I may as well too. At 6am I was on a pica to Cahute.

I was very tired when I got there. I did my best to leave a stool sample in a toilet that had no seat, which is very awkward. I gave it to the labratory, and checked into a hotel room for some sleep after calling my parents.

At about two I was awoken by Sally and Javier, who had just returned from the G-8 summit in Germany, where he was giving a presentation against a proposal to encourage the use of genetically modified foods in Africa. The ride made me feeling, and I almost felt like vomiting at points. To make things worse, we got a flat tire (don't buy Firestone), which took too long to fix, since Crispaz's good tire iron was stolen. When I finally returned to the Crispaz offices, I walked up to my room, and sleep from 4pm to 6am. It felt amazing.

In conclusion:

1) America is the greatest nation on earth! We may have our faults, but we were the first modern Democracy. Except for Iceland, which doesn't count because it is small and cold, and nobody wants to live there.

2) Don't buy Firestone tires or Subway sandwhiches.

Sick and Homesick

2007-07-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

So I found out that there are a few internet cafes here in Cojutepeque, a small city that is a twenty minute ride in a pica (a very large pickup truck packed with people and covered with a tarp in case of rain). So I will be able to post a little more often than I thought I could, although I'll try to limit my time in Cojutepeque so that I am in my community.

As it turns out, I`m sick again. I went here to buy gatorade and apples, as well as to check my email. I`m going to head back to the supermarket though because I found a recipe for apple sauce. This is the fourth time I have been sick with a stomach-related problem (or possibly fifth), and I`m pretty tired of being sick.

My host sister, Claudia, asked me if I what I was preoccupied with this morning. I told her it was nothing, but then my host mother, Maria, asked me if I was homesick. I replied yes, and she theorized that I may have been adding to my stomach problems. I think she might be right.

When I left for Ecuador last summer, I was very homesick in the week leading up to the trip and when I got here. But on this trip, it was so much more familiar to me that I wasn`t very homesick leading up to the trip and the first week or so after. But once the newness and excitement wears off, one gets homesick.

So I figured that taking a few at an internet cafe and then treating my stomach to some applesauce and gatorade was a good idea!

Why I believe in God

2007-06-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

So much to my dismay, I`m still here in San Salvador. My diarrhea got a lot worse, so I couldn´t go with my trip leader, Sally, to the campo. She`s going up to Berlin to check in with Amanda, whose feeling a little homesick. My health could be worse though, Michael got diarrhea around when I did, and two other women in the office are sick.

I was up too late last night, not because I wasn´t tired, but because I had a splitting headache. I had just finished watching Dogma (my fourth favorite movie), and began to reflect on religion. And I began to ask myself, why do I believe in God?

Given my background, it seems unlikely I would have come to this conclusion. While I was raised Catholic, and still am, I was all but atheist for about a third of my life (7-14). Before I returned to the faith, I was fare more interested in the girls at my Catholic youth group than discussions of theology. And of the members of my immediate family, none attend Church more than a few times a year, if that.

And despite all this, I´m a pretty religious person. While I certainly have doubts from time to time, and certainly do not except all of the teaching of my denomination, I pray and attend church at a somewhat regular basis. What happened?

I`m generally a logically person, and do not tend to believe in things that are logically fallacies. But it is my belief that the existence of God is not a logical fallicy, but if anything, the absence of God is a logical fallacy.

There are two pieces of logic which I feel more or less prove the existence of God.

The first reason is the trilema, penned by CS Lewis, the author of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. To paraphrase, this is how be proven the existence of God, with three possible realities:

1) Jesus was a liar.
2) Jesus was a fool.
3) Jesus was the son of God.

When one analyzes the historical evidence of Jesus (and yes, historian all but unanmimously agree he did exist, albeit not as the son of God), it becomes clear to me that the most likely answer is c. I don't think that Jesus was a megalomaniac, lying to everyone and sinning on the side; nor do I think that he was a crazy fool, because he is the wisest man that will ever live.

But the second reason I belief in God is faith. And that came with help and prayers from a friend, mentor, and pastor named Father Gary Thomas. He was head pastor at St. Nicolas Church in Los Altos, and he changed my life. On a warm winter night my sophmore year in high school, I confessed that I had serious doubts about the existance of God to a man who had been my pastor nearly my entire life. When he spoke, it was like the words of Christ, and I was born again in Him. He said, paraphrased to the best of my memory:

"Well Matt, you have two possibilities. You have a beautiful world here, and all of the wonderful things in it. Your mother and father, who I know love you very much Matt. You have all your other family, and your friends at Bellarmine, her at this retreat, and elsewhere. You have all the wonders and the mysteries of this universe.

Now, there are two options. This could all be a random chain of events. Or, there could be an almighty God who loves us, no matter what. And I believe in that."

And that's why I believe in God.

Life in the Campo (Countryside)

2007-06-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

So I´m back in San Salvador now, because I have diarrhea (again). I went to the doctor today, and while I feel a lot better, they assured me that I was still sick and prescribed two pills I have to take every day for the next five days. I`ll probably go back to the campo tomorrow or Wednesday.

I figured this was a good opportunity to describe my life in the campo thus far. I live in the tiny town of San Antonio (where no one knows how to hook me up with Spurs tickets!), which is a hamlet of the larger town El Carmen in the department of Cuscatlan, and about an hours drive from San Salvador. I will be working with the Program for Basic Education of the Archdiocese (PEBA), which educates farmers on methods for organic farming and sells food cooperatively in San Salvador.

My host family consists of seven people who live at home. The mother runs their small farm and is active in PEBA and with the community, in addition to keeping house. She is a very busy woman! The husband is a security guard in San Salvador, and works shifts as long as 20 hours! Do to their hard work they live a decent, middle-class lifestyle. They´re home has electricity (for lights only), a concrete floor, and a tin roof. None of their major appliances are electric though, and we use a hose for bathing and laundry.

They have three girls and two boys who live at home, ranging from a 15 year-old high school student to an adorable four year-old girl. Another daughter attends college in the city and works as a domestic servant. Their oldest child has a farm in the same neighborhood. They also have another child who died when he was young. It`s hard for me to imagine having eight kids!

So far I have learned a lot from my host family. Every morning I get up (at 5:30am!) and help milk the cows. After breakfast I help move them to pasture about a 1/2 mile away, on the other side of a shallow river that is mostly dry in the summer. I have also learned to do laundry with a hose and iron.

Their four room house is not only filled with people, but often with animals. The family has two cats, three dogs, three cows, three sheep, about a dozen rabbits, and at least two dozen chickens. They also grows lots of different vegetables, fruits, herbs, and plants.

I`m going back to the campo tomorrow since I`m feeling better, but I`ll be back San Salvador to post on July 4th!

Is there a third way?

2007-06-11T17:32:00.001-07:00

There was a very good economic presentation today by an economic advisor for the leftist party here, the FMLN. For some background, the FMLN was the name of the leftist guerrilla uprising during the civil war, and after the peace accords they turned in their arms and became the second largest political party after the hyper-conservative ARENA, which has ruled the country for at least the past 25 years.

The thing I couldn´t help thinking about was a consistent problem that I feel is gripping Latin America. On the one hand, you have the United States and its neo-liberal allies (like ARENA), who are pursing an extreme form of capitalism. They are pushing a degree of privatization and deregulation that is surely a cause of the flood of immigrants that cross our border every day. These countries aren´t really even pushing free trade though, because of the subsidies that the United States has for agriculture and light manufacturing, which make up over 50% of Salvadorean exports.

On the other hand, the second most powerful leader in the Americas is arguable Hugo Chavez. His reliance on protectionism, bloated public sector, and political oppression hardly offer a decent alternative to neo-liberal policies. I worry that if the FMLN were to come into power, they would quickly fall under the influence of Chavez and Castro. While this is in many ways preferable to ARENA, it is hardly the best choice for the Salvadorean people. Why isn´t there a third way?

There needs to be a new party in El Salvador that rejects both of these approaches to economics, trade, and foreign policy with the US. It needs to embrace America as a friend and essential to the Salvadorean economy, but not as puppet ignorant and uncaring of American exploitation of third-world economies. It needs to provide Salvadoreans with the education they need to do more than grow coffee, make T-shirts, and migrate to the US for work. At the same time, it must be lean enough to be supported by the small tax base that El Salvador can provide. Is there another party that is pushing this moderate agenda? Perhaps I should do more research into El Salvador´s other parties.