RATS!!!

Rats! You eat my oatmeal. You destroy my bags of flour. You tear open my sesame seeds. You chew the lid off my sesame oil. You wake me up in the night with your squeaking midnight machinations. You even rip a hole in the vegetable oil, starting a slick flood over my counter; my own natural disaster right here at home. CNN breaking news: Crisis on My Kitchen Counter, Day 42! Who needs BP when you have RATS? Yes, rats, you have done all of this damage, and I have not retaliated. But today you go too far. Today you find the breaking point of a Peace Corps Volunteer. Today, you ate my Nalgene bottle.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me inform you that there is one thing you never, and I mean NEVER do; that is get between a Peace Corps Volunteer and his or her Nalgene. Typically, we volunteers are the peaceful type, the tree huggers, the free lovers, the save-the-children type, BUT if you try to mess with a volunteer’s Nalgene you will have an unholy hell storm rained down on your head. Let me help explain. You see, the Nalgene bottle is a volunteer’s constant companion, our ever trusty source of purified water, our savior from diarrhea and dehydration. Nalgenes also make us who we are. Our Nalgenes scream to the world, “We are independent, outdoorsy, adventurers! No frontier is too final, no place too remote!” Let me put it this way, if this were the SAT you may encounter a question like this, “ is to Peace Corps Volunteer as the Holy Bible is to Christian missionary.” The answer would be Nalgene.

So rats, today when you decided to target my Nalgene bottle you did not know what you were starting -- War! I can only quote the immortal words of Scar as I bellow with clenched fists of rage, “Be Prepared!” There will be retribution…

Busy Again

June, what a month. I have really been through it all this month - from heart ache to stomach ache and back again. I feel like I have been through 6 months worth of emotions in the past 20 days. Time is funny like that, I guess. One emotion can stretch a minute out for an hour, and another can make an hour pass in a second. One of my most valued relationships in the States is undergoing a transformation now, and I am amazed at how easily life in the US affects me here; a single phone call from home and my life turns upside down. I spend a lot of time dwelling on the changes in my relationship, wrestling with my doubts, but I also have doubled my efforts at work. I am immersed in my job to distract myself from the problems in my emotional life (how American of me).

Even though it may be an escape, the work feels good. I have started new projects and feel optimistic about the next year. In addition to my English program with 1st to 6th grade, I began working with the High School students once a week. I started the second class in my community English series. I am finally having those important conversations with my informal youth group, discussing relationships and drug and alcohol abuse. I have the school principal's permission to start a mural on the school wall. I also want to help the cultural center create a tech classroom to help teach youth computation skills. Beyond my community, I am excited to work on the Peace Corps gender committee, GAD. I was recently elected to serve as President of the group and I look forward to a year of strengthening Peace Corps volunteer's awareness of gender issues in El Salvador.

Although June has brought me a lot of pain, it also brings a lot of opportunities. I finally feel like I can see a place for myself in this community. I see the work I can do, and I look forward to the challenges it will pose. I am almost one year into my service and I finally have an idea of what I can offer to my community.

Midnight meditations

The cement walls of my house, the silent witnesses of my constant drama, are a light aqua-marine. They are drab and inconstant, chipped in some places, stained with mold in others, and when it rains the lower half absorbs water. The water cuts the walls in half, etching a choppy line horizontally across the walls. It encircles me. I am on an ocean, staring at my walls; the lower half a deeper aqua cut off from the lighter upper half by a rolling line of water-stain waves. Every night I float alone in the ocean of my house. No direction, no land in sight, I float in the menacing uncertainty of my ocean. Isolated in the vast expanse of the sea, I run through my nightly routines to bail the water out of my fragile raft. Some nights I just stare at the stars and try not to notice the water slowly seeping in. Looking up, I think, “A person could get lost in all that beauty.” Only one problem, if you’re not careful you can drown in it too.

Some nights I want to throw myself into the water and get lost. Every day I watch pods of dolphins frolic in the waves, pausing briefly to play with me on my raft as they make their way through the sea. I smile with them and enjoy the moment, but at night I wish I could join them. I yearn to disappear into the ocean with a silent splash and roam the waves with the dolphins.

But I can’t.

I look down at what holds me back; my raft, a few mismatched boards salvaged from an old boat slung together with frayed rope. My raft carries me and my few possessions: an old hat, a water-logged book, a movie stub from a first date. Sadly my raft is only a memory of what it was. I have had to sacrifice much to the ocean, cutting off pieces of my raft to keep it afloat. I’ve watched pieces sink silently into the sea, disappear below the murky water. My raft is a hodgepodge flotilla, and yet it is valuable. This weathered hat, this soggy book, and this faded movie ticket are all I have to remind me of land. At night I look at these objects and try to connect myself to the land, to keep the memory alive in my heart. I stare at my possessions and imagine I am back on the secure ground of home, and yet I know I am floating miles away from anything I have ever known. Sometimes I resent these objects. They hold me back from diving into the sea, and yet I could never hate my raft because it is all I have to remind who I am.

The sea can be rough, sometimes threatening to capsize my small ship, and yet…there are moments. Moments of complete serenity, when I cast my fishing line into the ocean; secure on my raft, I feel the subtle tug of a fish nibbling at what I offer and I think,

“I will be alright.”

Maricón

Washing my hands in a crowded bathroom, a man walks up to the sink beside me. His friend is on the other side of me. The man glances at his friend:

Puta, hay bastantes gringos maricones en el país, ¿verdad?

Which translates to: Damn, there are a lot of Gringo fags in the country

My blood freezes, then boils. I want to say something, scream something, lash out, but I decide to pretend I do not understand Spanish. Somehow I find dignity in my feigned ignorance. I calmly rinse the soap from my hands, and leave the restroom.

Now let me back track a little bit. I have been in San Salvador, the capitol city, for about a week. I came in on Monday to meet with the doctors about my asthma, and they still have not authorized me to leave. Apparently I only use 80 percent of my lung capacity when I breathe. I feel fine, probably because I have lived with asthma my whole life, but the doctors want to see if they can improve my lungs. So, here I am with two days worth of clothes trying to make my volunteer budget last over an unexpected week in the capitol. Which leads me to Wednesday, the day of the gringo fag incident.

On Wednesday I decided to go see a theatre production in a Central American Theatre Festival. I was super excited to see some performance art. It has been about eight months since I have seen any form of theatre, dance, or musical performance, and I was praising my luck for being in San Salvador at the same time as a Theatre Festival. The theatre is inside of the Metro Centro mall, a shopping center catering mostly to middle class Salvadorans. There I was, washing my hands in the Metro Centro food court bathroom, when it happened.

It was the first time anyone had ever directed hate speech at me, and it hit me like a slap to the face. The word in itself did not bother me so much as the situation. Maricón is such a common word to hear. Just yesterday, I was waiting at a busy bus stop, idly watching a family of street vendors. They had an assortment of pirated movies sprawled out on the hot sidewalk. A little boy in the family was playing among the movies with his sister and somehow got glitter on his face. His mother notices and scolds, Mira como andas bien maricoñado con brillo en la cara. Brillo no es para niños varones. (Look how you are all fagged-out with glitter on your face. Glitter is not for little boys.) I frown. The mother notices me and sends a knowing smile, thinking I frown at the atrocity of a little boy with glitter on his face. A vast chasm of difference stretches between my dismay at witnessing the creation of gender roles in a machisto culture and the mother´s smile. The point is maricón is a word I am more or less accustomed to now. I am not accustomed to having it directed at me, nor to hearing it in the capitol.

I come to San Salvador to relax, to be myself, let down the act I put on in my community, to wear V-necks if I feel like it. I always imagined San Salvador as a safe zone for my identity, a place where I can be the Eric I was in the States - go out dancing, watch theatre, see movies in English, openly consume alcohol, sit in cafes with my legs crossed. Wednesday I had a major reality check. Even though San Salvador is significantly more cosmopolitan and diverse than my rural home, it is still in El Salvador and subject to all of the biases and prejudices that exist in the culture. It was a very sobering experience.

Skype Number

Today is a very exciting day! Last night I had the internet installed in my house. I almost can't believe it. Today I set up a skype number in the states. You can call this number and I will receive your call on my computer. If I am not available leave me a voice mail and I will call you back. The number is:

(602) 490 8442

Having the internet in my house also means more blog updates. So, in the infamous words of Scar, be prepared!

Señor Rogers (Or It Is A Beautiful Day in the Barrio)

A phenomenon takes place in El Salvador every time I open my mouth. I turn into a different person each time I speak Spanish.

Eric as I have always known him disappears and I become your favorite, kind, old neighbor rocking a sweater - Mr. Rogers. I had always hoped my Spanish alter-ego would sound more like Antonio Banderas or Gael Garcia Bernal, sleek, mysterious, with sexy dripping off of each word. But no, I transform into the polar opposite of Antonio and Gael, Mr. Rogers. My voice undergoes certain changes when I speak Spanish; it deepens and adopts a warmly formal tone, one that suggests images of cardigans, checkers with your grandpa, and a warm fireplace.

I have always thought of speaking a foreign language as a performance. The mimicry, opportunity to become a new personality, the memorization of vocabulary like lines for a play, always made me feel like I was on the stage. For me, being Mr. Rogers does not really come as a surprise. I always knew I was someone else in Spanish. What is interesting is that now I spend more time in the “performance” than I do as myself. I am Señor Rogers more often than I am the English speaking Eric I have known the majority of my life. The one thing Mr. Rogers and Eric agree on is that language and identity are intimately connected and we recreate ourselves each time we learn a new language.

The real question is would you be mine, could you be mine, oh won’t you be…my neighbor?