I like to eat eat eat apples and bananas!
Yesterday, I taught my 30 English students this song from my childhood. Its very true as well, hahaha. I most definitely love fruit and Ive eaten a lot of it here, especially mangos right off the tree next to the house. yummy. But the taste of fruit is not as sweet as the look on Delmis face when she invites me to play bate (baseball) with her and her classmates. Let me try to explain what Ive been up to and why I feel so close to the children.

Mainly, because I feel like a child here. Every minute a new experience, a new word, a new smell, a new feeling. Thats probably why I hang out with Necta so much. Hes about 6 and loves to play chibolla (marbles) and build houses out of cardboard cards, while he sings. Im getting better at both. hahaha. Thats after we go to school, if there is school. Yesterday was somewhat of a typical day, even though everyday is different.

At 430 or so, when the first bit of light reaches the sky, the rooster starts to crow. The noise gets louder and is accompanied by the chicken jumping down from their beds in the trees. The dog will probably bark a few times too before la Niña Berta, the mother of the house, wakes up by 530. She starts the fire and begins breakfast because Anabel and Don Salva will leave at 6 to go milk the cows. Some of the milk will be used to make cheese and the rest will go to the cooperative they are a part of. Gris is getting ready for high school and when she turns off the radio at 630, I get out of bed. Necta is usually up with Niña Berta because they share a bed, while I have a huge one all to myself. I shower under the spout in the back and later Niña Berta brings me a breakfast of beans, cheese, tortillas, fried platanos, and pan frances (white bread rolls). Were off to school by 8 and there singing, playing, dancing, counting, and learning until 1130. I think the teacher enjoys company. She tells me about how hard the life is and how hard it is for the students to have the money for notebooks and other school supplies. They were collecting money at the school for a sick woman in the town, but she died on Friday. So sad. The children here are just like those in the States. They want to be loved, to see, and to play. We go home for lunch of salad and eggs with tomatoes and peppers and tortillas, and a little rest. This is when I plan a little for my English class at the school that is from about 130 until 3, after prayers and welcome with the older students. I dont know what Im doing but we laugh a lot, espcially at me. hahaha. Then at recess, we play bate while they have snacks they buy from a vendor who comes to the school. Then after more class and cleaning up the school because they dont have a janitor, they go home about 5. This is just enough time to put my things down and go to the prayer. During the month of June, they say the rosary and sing at a different house everyday to celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus, just after the men return from the fields and before the women begin supper. Its beautiful to hear their hard but soft voices sing of forgiveness. Then after a supper of pupusas, which Niña Berta said she would teach me how to make :), I talk to my sisters and her about the cultural differences and we laugh about everything and nothing and my Spanish. I go to bed pretty early. It seems 9 is my bedtime, like when I was a kid.

I feel more useful when it comes to the investigation of the contamination in the river. Ive come back to the capital twice for meetings with APROCSAL, the health organization Im working with. Last week, Javier, Nelson, and Chris from CRISPAZ came to visit and help me along in the investigation. We talked to a worker and since then, Ive talked to another. While they dont know much about the chemicals they are using or when they dump them out into the river, they do know about the conditions and pay they receive. The factory is owned by Israelis and 8 other Salvadoran companies. They are hydroponically producing Beef tomatoes, for use on those juicy hamburgers, and peppers primarily for exportation to Canada and with CAFTA, to the US as well. The workers do not receive any form of protection from the chemicals that kill fish when they are dumped into the same river they bathe and wash their clothes in. They receive $4 for 8 hours of work without water and many times when they go to the bank to cash their checks, the money isnt there. Its enough to make me yell.

Its nice to be able to just be. I dont know whether to laugh or to cry or to smile or to offer a face of stone. But its nice to just sit and be here, learning and offering what I can, which isnt much. Ill close with two reflections from the book Im reading, One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta. It "depicts a typical day in the life of a peasant family caught up in the terror and corruption of civil war in El Salvador." At one point, the National Guard has come to Lupes home in search of her 15 year old grandaughter who went to town to buy a few items. While they are waiting to "ask her a few questions," which really means beat out the desire to ask questions, Lupe offers them some water. She says, "Water is sacred and one shoudnt deny it even to the devil." Amen, sister. While I dont feel like I can offer more than my prayers and my presence sometimes, I hope my efforts can one day provide cleaner water for my neighbors. I have learned the sacredness of water, and of light. At another point, Lupe explains that "Not to see another persons mouth moving, not to see their eyes, its like talking with the dead.... The dead are made for that, to live in the shadows. We living people are something else." Yet I have had many conversation in the shadows with my family, since they dont have electricity. They are not dead though there are many people who choose to think they do not exist, that their lives are less valuable.

I have no idea what the rest of my time here will bring. I hope it will bring more understanding, so that a fire can be ignited within me that will spread light on the faces here for the people there to see. I want to learn to be in the fight like Niña Berta, to laugh like Griselda, to be humble like Anabel, to smell like earth like Necta, and to live in peace and revolution like Jesus. I love and miss you all.