El Salvador Overview

My plan is to write several posts about my experiences in El Salvador, focusing on what the trip meant to me and what sorts of things I learned and took away with me when I left.  First, though, I think it makes sense to give a sort of overview of the trip to give my readers some idea of what the trip entailed.

I got involved with the university delegation in December when a friend from another department called me.  She had decided to join the delegation in the hope that doing something so different and out of her normal comfort zone would help her cope with some of the stress and depression that had been dragging her down lately.  She knew that I had been having a rough year as well (she is a psychology professor), and, when another faculty member had to drop out of the trip, she asked if I was interested.  I immediately said yes.

The university has been organizing these trips for something like fifteen years as an expression of our commitment to service learning in support of the school’s mission.  Since a large part of the Catholic mission is to help those less fortunate than ourselves, a trip to a third world country perfectly fits.  The service we perform shows several different faces: charitable donations, infrastructure support, and cultural exchange.  Students and faculty gather donations, both money and supplies, to take down to the center where we stay.  I solicited from my bike club, and ended up with bags and bags of clothes, art supplies, shoes (very needed, for reasons I’ll talk about in a future post), medical supplies, and other things.  Once down in the country, the delegation usually works on some sort of labor project, building something or clearing a field, for example.  The delegation also spends a lot of time visiting different communities and listening to the stories of the people and getting to know them as real human beings instead of distant case studies.  From all accounts, the cultural exchange is appreciated by the people more than anything else, for it makes them feel as if they are appreciated and understood; it means something to them that wealthy people from the United States (and believe me, everyone reading this is very wealthy by Salvadoran standards) are willing to take the time to listen to their stories and show they care.  The human connection is the most valuable treasure we have.

We left very early on the morning of Friday the 29th and arrived at San Salvador international airport a bit before eight o’clock.  We met Sister Elena, the nun who runs the center where we were staying, and piled into the back of a cattle truck for the 90 minute drive to our home for the next nine days.  The road, CA-2, is a major highway through Central America, but it is only two lanes, and would hardly rate highway status in the states.  Nevertheless, it is paved, a quality we would come to appreciate in the coming days.

Upon arriving at the center, we went to our rooms, unpacked, ate lunch, and napped for a short time before the first round of visits.  We were scheduled to work at two different sites, so we piled back into the cattle truck and drove to both sites, where we met some of the people we would be working with during the week.  After that we returned to the center, where a couple of women from the church had organized some of the children from the town to perform some dances for us in traditional costumes; they were followed by some of the women, in full, flowing Spanish-style skirts showed some more dances.

The next day, Saturday, was our first work day.  We took Sunday off from the physical labor, but went back to it on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I’ll talk more about my pick and shovel slinging skills in a later post.  On Thursday we traveled back to San Salvador to make our pilgrimage to UCA, where six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter were brutally, brutally murdered by the Salvadoran military in 1989.  We then went to the chapel where Archbishop Romero was assassinated and the National Cathedral where his crypt lies.  Friday was for fun, with an excursion to the beach and the warm Pacific ocean.  Saturday saw us back at the airport, ready to fly home, exhausted but somehow happy.

This, as I said, is just a quick overview of the trip.  I will spend a lot of time in the next week or so adding flesh to this bare-bones sketch, adding more of my feelings and opinions along the way.