Where in the campo are Adrianna & Will?

This past weekend we experienced what is called Immersion Weekend. What is it? Well, in few words it’s basically where trainees are sent to live in a cantón (a rural village of sorts) for two days for the following reasons:

* to use Spanish exclusively for 2 days
* to experience Salvadoran rural life where little contact with foreigners has taken place
* to feel the ‘aloneness’ of being a Peace Corps volunteer
* to get to know more parts of the country and the transport system

I’ll be honest, I don’t have anything positive to say about my experience. I was sent to Managuara, a small village on the outskirts of the pueblo Sesori in the department of San Miguel. I didn’t bring my camera along due to security issues and wanting to maintain my level of humildez or humility. I didn’t shower for two days and my meals consisted of 50% biscuits (cookies) and 50% of the saltiest beans on the planet and rice.

When the mayor of Sesori was driving me out to Managuara in his air-conditioned pick-up I found myself holding back uproarious laughter and heart-wrenching tears as I gazed out the window at the endless vista of green rolling hills. When the alcalde stopped his pick-up on the dirt road we has stopped at the entrance new home for the next two days: a crumbling mud brick house with a dirt floor. Almost immediately the man of the house apologized for his near poverty level life-style. No apologies needed, I replied.

The family consisted of 9 kids and the parents. One child was one the way, as it was still being carried in the mother’s belly, 1 lived with the grandparents and two were unaccounted for for the time I was there. The youngest child didn’t wear clothing and spent the majority of his day crying and having hissy fits that entailed rolling around in the dirt. Due to the fact that campo Spanish differs from standard Spanish (read: basically incomprehensible even to native speakers), goal number 1 listed above was not met. I spent my two days there reading in a hammock and having the children stare at me and whisper amongst themselves. The mother and I ran out of conversation after I said that I didn’t have any children of my own and was not planning on having any soon. Periodically she would pull up a chair to where I was and just stare at me. By the end of the second day I was so starved for conversation in ANY language that I began talking to myself in my journal. I finished reading a book in 1.5 days and began to read it again due to the lack of conversation and the stifling heat that prevented one from moving about.

For some reason or another there wasn’t any electricity and for another reason altogether the father used 90% of the family’s water supply for work purposes. The water remainingin the pila was covered with a slick film of some sort of unidentified substance, which prevented me from wanting to shower with it. The main reason I didn’t shower was that I’m not one for showering al fresco in front of construction workers or strangers in a puddle of mud – the same puddle of mud that the family’s pigs bathe in. A latrine was also absent from the property, as their garden was their toilet. The world was their rubbish bin and their garden was their toilet. The few times I went to go do my business I was followed by a gang of pigs who waited for me in the bushes until I was done so that they could rush in for the “gold”. This is the same gang of pigs that would hang out inside the family’s house and rummage through the kitchen. There was no separation between inside and outside and the family practically lived and slept with their chickens, pigs and dogs.

The last things I’ll say is that while the family did not have running water or electricity, they did have a television and a cell phone. Basic hygiene and proper food handling procedures were absent in the household.

I didn’t enjoy my experience, nor will I say it will be a highlight of my experience here. I will, however, say that it’s unacceptable that people should have to live in such poverty. At the same time, yesterday I questioned my reasons for coming here.

How is living this way going to help anyone’s standard of living? It won’t, but it will make you appreciate what you had and what you will have when your time in Peace Corps is over.