Public Speaking

I hate public speaking. Hate it. I even hate speaking that is hardly public—like in front of a class of 15 classmates at a small, private liberal arts school—makes my knees shake. I consider myself a reasonable person and try to convince myself of the irrationality of my fear. I mean, I make an ass out of myself daily so what does it matter if I flub up a speech in front of a few people. I’ll forget about it 15 minutes after I finish. No big deal right? Well despite this very logical line of thinking, my knees still shake when my name I’m asked to talk in front of people. Very irrational, I know, but most fears are.

Last Thursday we held a community-wide meeting. Our town council is being sued over a piece of land that was bought 7 years ago to locate the pump that provides water to the community. The son of the owner of the land claims that the terms of the agreement were not met by the town council. As a result, he is suing for $20,000, a ridiculous amount to ask for the size of the land sold. Our council has documents proving that we met the terms of the agreement. It seems this person has no chance in court, but nonetheless he has caused an uproar. Running water is not a given in El Salvador, especially for communities as small and rural as mine. The water project is a sense of pride for the community, making this lawsuit a hot topic.

I sat in for the council’s planning of the general meeting. As the agenda was being set, one of the council members suggested that I be slated to say a few words. I explained that I know very little about the entire situation. It is true that the first Peace Corps volunteer in the community had a huge hand in the water project. “But,” I tried to explain, “I was still in high school at the time. I had no hand in the water project and know nothing about the original contract for the plot of land.” I convinced a few of the council members, but people still wanted me to speak. This is not abnormal as a Peace Corps volunteer. Political parties, churches, businesses, town councils, even feuding families try to align themselves with us. I always try to be as non-committal as possible—everything is nice…I like you but I like them also…can’t we all just get along?... etc. By the end of the council meeting I was under the impression that I would not be on the agenda.

Fast forward to last Thursday, the day of the meeting. I immediately check the agenda to see that I’m slated to give the closing remarks. It’s a good thing I still generally show up for things on time in a country where everything starts at least 45 minutes late because it meant I had time to think of what to say. Of course I wrote something down just to be ready for a potential freeze up on stage; something that’s not out of the ordinary for me.

The meeting went fine. About 100 community members showed up, a good turnout. The lawsuit was explained. A few members of the town council gave their commentary. The mic was opened up for questions and comments and everyone pledged their support to the town council. Then I was introduced to “offer my thoughts on the situation.”

I’m going to provide a basic transcript of what I said, but I must first offer a disclaimer. Public speaking here is always formal here. Even during the questions and comments section of a community meeting people still follow a set format. First you have to wish everyone a good morning/afternoon/evening. Then you have to thank the esteemed members of the government/policy/town council/school/business/etc. for showing up and offering their support. Next you have to compliment the organizers of the meeting/event for putting on such a beautiful meeting/event. Only then can you get to the point. 3 bonus points are given for each new way you can come up with to say what you just finished saying. 5 bonus points are given for every reference to God. Cheesiness is not a concept.

So what follows is a rough translation of what I said with some commentary in italics:

“I hope that everyone has a very good afternoon. First I want to thank the town council for including me on the agenda (actually, not really). I think it’s important for us to remember that the work they do is not for free. They don’t make any money (+3 repetition). They meet for the good of the entire community.
I also want to thank all of you for the support and friendship that you have shown me for the past 8 months. I feel so lucky to be in this beautiful community with such caring and f friendly neighbors. Every day I give thanks to God (+5 God reference) that I have found such a wonderful place to live and work.
I can’t speak too much about the subject at hand, because I was not here for the implementation of the water project. I can say that I know how hard everyone has worked on the water project and how important it is for the community. Water is life (remember, cheesiness is not a concept). Water gives life (+ 3) to everything: the trees, the animals, all of us. It is important that we keep working to ensure that there will always be water in our community. I hope we can find a solution to this problem that everyone can agree on, and if not, then a solution that is just.
Thank you for your attention and I’m going to sit down now because I hate speaking in front of large groups (polite laughter).”

After sitting down, one of the council members got on the microphone to say, “We know you weren’t here for the implementation of the water project. We put you on the agenda hoping you would say a little bit about the bakery project that you are working on.” He laughed, everyone laughed. Once again I made an ass out of myself. Oh well, just another day in the life.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Peace Corps is a life-changing experience. Or at least so I have been told from publications, recruiters, current volunteers, former volunteers, and even my friends and family at home. I have now been in the Peace Corps for over 10 months and I am still waiting (a little uneasily) to see how my life will be changed. Will I adopt the machismo culture and become a misogynist? Or will I abandon my reservedly agnostic beliefs in favor of Catholicism or Evangelism? Maybe I will take to spending my spare change on cheap moonshine and drink myself into a stupor every chance I get. Or I might fall in love with a woman and be engaged before the midpoint of my service.

Though I can’t predict the future, I think it’s a safe bet that my grand change (if I have one) will not be any of the previously mentioned. Yet, I have observed all four of these events (to varying degrees) in my fellow volunteers. Claiming these are changes is admittedly an assumption on my part as I did not know these people before their service. There is the possibility that for the 3 months of training, when I had regular contact with my fellow volunteers, they kept these behaviors on the backburner. This, however, seems unlikely.

I want to make clear that even though in this post I am and will be focusing on changes that I consider to be unhealthy, the overwhelming majority of personal development Peace Corps volunteers talk about and demonstrate is nothing but positive. And the examples I’ve given above are seen only through my eyes. Each situation could be defended or judged in a number of ways; I am simply offering my observations from my own limited perspective.

So why these negative changes? To borrow a line from Walter, John Goodman's character, in The Big Lebowski, “That’s just the stress talkin.’”* The Peace Corps experience, whether it be in a city in Eastern Europe or a backcountry African village, is physically, emotionally and psychologically stressful. Volunteers are alone. Even if they live with families and are warmly welcomed into their community, they have still left behind what they know and are comfortable with in the states. They are surrounded by a foreign language, a foreign culture, foreign foods, foreign diseases, and very little direction on what to do and how to do it. This is the nature of the volunteer experience, and being able to successfully overcome these stresses is part of what makes the Peace Corps experience so rewarding.

These stresses must be dealt with. Everyone knows recommended mechanisms for dealing with stress: exercise, talk to someone, yoga, etc. Nonetheless, everyone, at times, deals with stress badly. It is inevitable. Fortunately, stress is temporary, and hopefully the coping mechanisms used (if bad ones) are temporary as well. This is why it worries me to see my fellow volunteers making big changes in their lives in such a short amount of time. I think it must be recognized that we are living under sustained levels of stress, and for that reason, we must deeply examine changes in our behaviors, thoughts and beliefs. Looking at the examples I have provided, I wonder what will happen in each situation when the volunteer returns back to the U.S. Will the misogynist continue his ways causing a clash with a U.S. culture that is not nearly as accepting of demeaning attitudes towards women? Will the drinker continue to use alcohol as a coping mechanism, i.e., become an alcoholic? And will the religious convert and the fiancé retain such strong feelings when returning to the U.S.?

I hope I don’t sound as though I am resistant to change, because I am not. I don’t believe that any person or thing is perfect and could not benefit from positive change. I simply think that, especially given the volunteer’s stressful situation, we should be cautious when noticing ourselves changing—even erring on the side of conservatism.

In talking with others, my views have been met with the claim that my caution is preventing me from immersing myself into Salvadoran culture. To this I answer yes and no. There is no way of living where I live and not being immersed in Salvadoran culture (whatever culture really means anyways.) But, I think sometimes cultural immersion is confused with cultural adoption. I will not and can not completely adopt Salvadoran culture. Whether I want to or not, I will never be Salvadoran. This, I think, is important to remember. There are certain things Salvadoran that I wholeheartedly disagree with. I still, on an analytical level, try to understand these things, but that does not change my view of them. Likewise, there are things that I absolutely love and hope to adopt into my own life. This rejection of the bad and acceptance of the good, while always trying to understand why things are as they are, to me, should be the goal of cultural exchange. I don’t believe that, having grown up believing that misogyny and excessive drinking are bad things, one can take a two year hiatus from these beliefs under the guise of adopting the culture of one’s host country. (Insert quote by famous person about the need to stay true to oneself.)

As I’m lying here in my hammock thinking of all the possible grand changes that I might experience, I hope that my change will be more of an evolution. A stronger conviction in my previously held beliefs, a fortification of the good I have developed in the first 23 years of my life, and an adoption of all the good that I am experiencing here in El Salvador.

*The Big Lebowski reference seems completely unnecessary, except that it is always necessary to refer to The Big Lebowski.

Nathalia's Post

Last week I visited Mike at his site in Las Trancas, Usulutan. In one week I had great experiences which are going to be difficult for me to put into words, but I'll try.

I had a red eye flight so I arrived on Good Friday morning pretty bleary eyed but very excited. I hadn't traveled to a different country other than Canada in something like 6 years, and I was a bit nervous about just the process, but I made it.

After a very windy and loud (windows down, radio up high, driving between 60-70 mph) car ride by a very nice neighbor, I finally got to see Mike's house and the much revered hammock.

The house is small and about as rustic as I had thought, but nice. It's the dusty season outide and in the house too, and it was quite hot, about the 90s all day. I'll complain but I really do prefer the heat to the cold.

Anyway, to keep this from growing to extreme lengths, I'll give a few highlights:

-going to the church for a procession my first night there and being invited to go up to the altar to get a piece of scented cotton. I couldn't really say no but didn't want to go alone, so I made someone walk with me, much to his chagrin.

- going to Alegria, a small pueblo on a volcano. It was a bit cooler here and we ate at a restaurant with an amazing view but the best part was the zoo they had on site that had a parrot, a racoon, two foxes and some rabbits.

- I fell in love with one of the dogs that came to Mike's backdoor.

- learning how to make pupusas with Fatima who lives next door and is incredibly nice.

- the cheese pills; my mother asked me for cheese pills, after some jokes, we found them but had no idea how they work and my mother didn't explain well to me, so I asked the Fatima and she showed me how to make it, which was amazing. Although we thought we lost the pills on the bus and Fatima got us one, they showed up a few days after I left.

- the neighbor kids were hilarious and came over almost every day wanting to play Uno which Mike's mom had sent with me, a stroke of brilliance on her part because they couldn't get enough.

- making pizza with kids from the school which was chaotic and a great time. There were about 20 kids all under 12 and about 5 of the little girls were latched onto me somehow, but I was pretty interested in looking at the animals around the yard (pigs and cows and a cat, definite attractions for me) so they were all trooping around with me. It was a crazy afternoon but a lot of fun and I felt very popular with my fans.

We spent the last two days in a comfy hotel in the capital. On the last day there was a peace corps soccer game fundraiser about an hour out and Mike basically was the team, with one assist and one goal, so everyone was pretty stoked.

I had an absolutely amazing time and it is obvious to me that Mike's community is really appreciative of his presence and just plain old happy to have someone to chat with and get to know. I'm looking forward to my next visit, slated for July. I highly suggest making this trip if possible, it was great to put images and places and faces to things I had heard about and it was also just really great to see Mike.

Nathalia's Visit

I’m going to keep this post relatively short because Nathalia will be making her own post about her visit, and I also just posted a way too long post below.

As most of you know, Nathalia came out to visit me from the 21^st-29^th. It being holy week when she got here, I paid a guy in my community gas money to take me in his car to pick her up. On the way out there, I got to hear all about his courtship of his now wife, which was limited to 2 hours a week of supervised visits for the first few months. (Know that this is not normal. This man is a very religious Evangelical Christian. Very nice man, but also very, very religious.) I started getting very nervous about how to greet Nathalia. I decided on a firm handshake, but she blew it by hugging me and kissing me.

I’ll let her tell what we did during her visit. What she probably won’t say, due to modesty, is that my town absolutely loved her. Maybe more so than me. It was a blast having her here, and people are already asking me when she is coming back again, and why she doesn’t just move here. Yesterday, I had a lady in my community tell me she was upset with me because I didn’t introduce her to Nathalia. She then gave me a bag of mangos. I wonder what I would have gotten if I had introduced her.

Fiestas Patronales and Semana Santa

I recently learned that March, in my community, is the greatest month of the year. The main reason for this is we have our Fiestas Patronales in March. Every Catholic church in the country has a patron saint, and each patron saint has a time of the year in which they are celebrated. Our saint is San Jose, and our time of the year was from March 11^th-19^th. Most churches are located in pueblos, so Fiestas Patronales are generally big celebrations with tons of fireworks, dances in the evenings, contests, etc. Since our Fiestas were celebrated in our canton, things were on a much smaller scale, which to me, was a lot more fun.

Each day, from the 11^th-19^th, there were processions in the afternoons followed by mass. The processions start from a designated house, follow the main road through the canton, and end up at the church. At the front are four men carrying a statue on their shoulders as you would imagine an ancient Roman goddess to be carried. Behind them, everyone else follows, singing songs about Jesus and San Jose led by three women on a megaphone and a man accompanying them on the guitar. In the very back (where I usually hang out) are men with fireworks, shooting them off every 20 yards or so.

At mass, 75% of the people sit inside, and the remaining 25%, again mostly men and again including me, hang out outside, joking and talking about futbol and women. Throughout mass, fireworks are continually set off for emphasis during various parts of the sermon.

This is how things went the 11^th-18^th. The 19^th, being the last day, was different. The day’s events started with a procession at 4am (I did not attend) complete with singing and fireworks. Then, I assume everyone went back to bed until 2pm when the festivities at the church began again. The main attraction was the crowning of the reina (queen) of the Fiestas Patronales. The crowning of the reina is a common Salvadoran fundraiser where a number of candidates will sell votes (a quarter a piece), and the one who sells the most votes is queen. In all the crownings of reinas that I have seen, the candidates are young, attractive, single girls between 15 and 20 years old. For our Fiestas, the candidates were all women over 60. It was one of the neatest things I have seen since being here. They were all dressed up, people were cheering the hearts out for all of them, and there was nothing but smiles. The winner was hugged by everyone and received a scepter and a crown to wear while sitting up front in a seat of honor during mass.

After mass, was the final procession (this time at night) with a number of fireworks, and nearly the entire community walking. People kept talking about the torito (little bull) and asking me if I was going to manejar (drive) it. I wasn’t completely sure what they were asking me, but I assumed there was going to be some bull riding. I actually convinced myself that I’d give it a go, and was even kind of looking forward to it with some adrenaline pumping. When we arrived at the church, the announced it was time for the torito. Turns out, the torito is a bamboo structure that can be worn over someone’s head (think a Chinese dragon.) The torito is covered with sparklers, so when it is lit, sparks are shooting out all over. “That’s cool” I thought, “but I don’t see what all the fuss is about.” Ah, how naïve I was. As the sparklers burned down, they began to ignite fireworks that shot out in all directions from the torito. So, here you have someone running through a crowd of a couple hundred people (old women and young children included) with fireworks shooting off of it in all directions. It was nuts. I was crouched behind a wall laughing as the torito ran away from me, and praying as it was running towards me. 4 people were burned and it was not lamented or unexpected—just a risk of religion I guess.

Semana Santa, which starts the Monday before Easter and lasts for a week, was not nearly as exciting. Once the Fiestas ended, there were still daily masses, but not nearly as fun.

This month, I attended more Church than I have in years. And you know what, it was worth it. I’m willing to attend mass all year, crossing myself when I enter Church and the soccer field—basically, I’m willing to be Catholic—if it means I get to laugh at and hide from the torito again next year.