Not just a tourist

Last night I returned, after 14 hours by bus, from a week-long vacation in El Salvador. Ely and I left last Saturday with a tour book and the phone numbers of a few friends we would meet along the way. Now being used to the way things are here, we didn’t waste any effort beyond that on planning. And I really don’t think that more planning would have made the trip any better. Not that it was bad. We enjoyed a great dinner at the home of volunteer friend Matt in Ocotepeque (on the extreme western border of Honduras, just before entering El Salvador) with Brittany and English teacher Ellie our first night of vacation. The next day crossing the border we met two fun young Israeli women, fresh out of the Israeli army and on a carefree year-long journey through North and Central America, and traveled with them through El Salvador for the rest of the week. Via multiple phone calls to the American embassy, Israeli embassy, and a San Salvadorean rabbi, we managed to arrange to be placed for an evening with a very sweet, extremely wealthy Jewish family in the capital to celebrate the beginning of Passover, exposing us humble volunteers for the first time to the filthy-rich business side of Central America. And on Good Friday, Ely and I saw exquisite and numerous examples of the famous colored sawdust “carpets” being designed on the streets by families of our hostel’s neighborhood in the capital, as well as took a day trip to the city of Sonsonate in western El Salvador where we saw a spectacular procession of hundreds of men in purple robes and head scarves and white lace shawls and gloves take turns struggling under a heavy wooden float of Jesus on the cross.

But I broke a record two months without getting parasites by achieving a new personal best of getting sick twice within a single week with two different stomach infections. We almost got mugged coming out of an ATM a block from our hostel in San Salvador (we escaped). There was no room in the hotels on the coast because everyone in the country was also traveling to the beach, so we didn’t go. There was no hiking allowed on the most famous volcano in the country because it is erupting. I was treated exceptionally rudely by the males of the small tourist colonial town of Suchitoto, where we stayed for two days before we visited the capital. I couldn’t tell that San Salvador, supposedly the nicest capital city in Central America, was really any more attractive than Tegucigalpa except that the mall was bigger.

I sometimes think that I should travel more while I’m here in Honduras, while I’m a volunteer and have the time and the connections all over Central America. But the truth is that I don’t like being a tourist here. The long dusty bus rides make me nauseous and dehydrated. While most people are very helpful to strangers, as a white woman I am a still inevitably a target for negative attention. The big cities are dirty and dangerous and without the redeeming qualities of nice parks or architecture or museums of the cities in less corrupt countries where governments actually cultivate their historical treasures. We really tried to enjoy San Salvador: we went to the central plaza, which had a well-kempt church but was in a terribly deteriorated neighborhood. We tried to go to an art museum, but the taxi driver didn’t know where it was. He took us to the Army museum instead, saying that all museums in the city display the same things. (or maybe weapons are art for salvadoreños? In any case, the museum was the most orderly thing I have seen since I left the States. Our American tax dollars at work.) And even the national parks are difficult to access and lack basic maintenance.

What I really like about Central America is living here. I like being part of a community in Olanchito where people talk to me, smile at me, and even take me in without requiring anything of me. They say that the true measure of a person is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. And maybe that is the true measure of a culture as well. I wouldn’t say that I’m doing no good here, because it fact it is my job. But the people who do the little things for me everyday here, the people who make me want to stay here, are not the people I am working for. They are the market lady who I only see twice a month but who always gives me free vegetables and hugs me and says she loves me. They are the old poor men with machetes at the bus stop who give me detailed directions to wherever I need to go and warn me against the bad people who might try to “rob” me. They are Sandra and her family, who continue to feed me and invite me to do everything with them and never ask me for anything in return. And really, though I try my hardest to pay them back in my own way, I really can’t give back to them what they give to me. It is not the buildings, or parks, or technology, or cuisine or art or music, that is the beauty of Latin America. It is the people.