San Vicente

Last weekend I ventured outside Suchitoto.  I was mindful to stick around here on the weekends my first four months but now I'm ready to explore other parts of El Salvador.  My friend Rachel invited me to crash her weekend with the Fulbrighters (and Brazilian UN workers).  We visited Luke in San Vicente who spends most his time researching volcanoes and organizing communities in landslide areas.  

We celebrated the weekend with Luke's Brazilian friends who work for the UN organizing groups, activities, and education for youth in San Vicente communities.  This is an important movement as gangs are very attractive networks for youth in this country.  The UN sponsored organizations encourage purposeful action and support networks.

We attended a sugarcane festival, where they kicked off one of the new youth groups.

 
Below the Brazilians are dancing to the drum beat in celebration of the new youth group!  Our weekend was full of dancing, singing, eating, and drinking.  We had a blast together!

Above is a traditional sugarcane harvesting dance.

This is the machine used to squish the sugar out of the sugarcane plants.  The juice is then boiled in a huge vat where the water evaporates and the liquid turns to syrup.  Then it's poured into a wooden form to dry in blocks.

These women are packaging the blocks in the dried sugarcane stalks.

Brent, Rachel, and Julia rocking the Pupusas.  We eat pupusas for dinner two to three times a week.  A pupusa is traditional here and is similar to a thick, heavy corn tortilla with cheese and/or beans inside.  The ingredients are not wrapped inside, like a burrito, but cooked inside the thick corn tortilla.  Pupusas are on every corner in El Salvador.  Yum!

Fire kites are a common way to celebrate festivals.  Our day at the sugarcane festival concluded with a wildfire.  One of the fire kites landed in the field of dry, cut sugarcane.  The field caught fire.  People ran with buckets of water.  Others stomped the ground.  After ten minutes or so, everyone just stood back and watched the fire claim acres of land then spread into the unharvested crops.  It was devastating to watch.  When the firemen arrived a half hour later, they also stood and watched.  The fire was bigger than they could handle.  Winds guided the fire in all directions.  After an hour, we hitched a ride back to the town of San Vicente.  I'm unsure of the final outcome...

Flavio (Brazilian friend) and San Vicente's Governor trying to coordinate ways to persuade food vendors to move their propane tanks away from the fire.  Isn't it crazy?  Could you imagine the Ice Cream Man ignoring Jerry Brown, Governor of California, when he tells him to move his ice cream truck because there is a wildfire ten feet away?  Their food stands were full of smoke from the fire but they still wouldn't move.  Logic is often missing here as is governmental power.

Luke and Flavia on the way home.

Rachel, Etel, and me.