Harvests

New Year's Eve is as good a time as any to look back on the harvests of last year (in Suchitoto, a great year for corn and beans) and forward to the harvests of next year.  The coffee harvest has begun - and on our way back from a trip to Lago Atitlán we saw coffee trees loaded with ripening berries.  Cutting the berries is just the first step in a very long process that ends in my morning cup of strong coffee, but it's the part of that process that brings a welcome bit of money to highlands communities.  Here's a tree ready for cutting:

Further down the road we saw a man who'd been collecting the berries and paying the workers:

I imagine that some of those earnings turned into the firecrackers and fireworks that are about to brighten the skies here and terrify all the dogs, but surely some also will become tortillas and beans and rice, food for the new year.

Just for the joy of it, here's another kind of 2012 harvest, Sheila McShane with a 3-month old baby.  She helped this little girl's disabled mother through her pregnancy and now gets to cuddle this small charmer - part of the rhythm of life in the Clinica Maxeña, Santo Tomas la Union.

Of compost and drainage and trees

I visited the Permacultura demonstration farm again last week with Maryknoll Lay Missioners Peg (Margarita) and Darren and with Peg's colleague Reynaldo.  Peg and Reynaldo are working with farmers in Monte San Juan, a colonia of Cojutepeque, not far from Suchitoto. 

We had a fine tour through all the careful, ingenious and beautiful arrangements that make this steep and challenging site fertile after only four years of soil improvement.  Angelica showed us some of the many preparations that are used as natural fertilizers, including this barrel of fermenting ooze (the process is sometimes smelly, but the results are great).

At Permacultura, everything is captured and used: the droppings of rabbits and chickens, leaves, weeds, friendly bacteria, the products of the composting outhouse.  Instead of chemical fertilizers that deplete the soil, their compost enriches and strengthens it.  Instead of insecticides, aromatic plants help keep insects away.  Instead of cutting down trees to plant corn and beans, they plant these traditional milpa crops (using heritage seeds) around and among the trees.  The rocks pulled out of the slope are re-used to create drainage basins and pathways.  And nothing of this comes from the store or from a catalogue: it's all work done with local knowledge, local plants, the shape of the land and the changes of the seasons.

Peg and Reynaldo left, saying that they'd be back with more of the farmers from Monte San Juan.  I'll hope to bring more visitors to this place, which always gives me hope for the future.

Fiesta de Maíz

Here in Suchitoto, and in many other towns in El Salvador, we celebrate the first corn harvest with a Fiesta de Maíz, which is also a celebration of the many farming villages and communities that are part of the Suchitoto municipality.  Kings and Queens of Maíz from the villages and women carrying baskets of fruit on their heads are part of a joyous procession that winds its way through the town to the church for the main Sunday Mass, after which we all pour into the parque central to stuff ourselves with elote, or fresh corn: tamales de elote, atole (hot corn drink), roasted corn-on-the-cob, elote loco (cooked corn-on-the-cob with decorations of, I think, ketchup and mayonnaise (among others), and riguas, my favorite, corn pancakes wrapped in banana leaves and grilled. 

A glorious party, and a festival that speaks to the central importance of corn - hard, white Salvadoran corn - in everyone's life here.   From the daily tortilla, which is the daily bread of every Salvadoran, to these festival foods it's clear that corn is the staff of life, as it was for the Mayan ancestors centuries ago.  ¡Que viva la Fiesta de Maíz!

RAIN!

There's rain and then there's RAIN, the serious, drenching, thunderous, crashing rains of the El Salvador winter season.  Everything here is built to handle RAIN - people who visit during the dry season must wonder at the number of ditches around buildings and on the edges of roads.  During winter you don't wonder, you're just glad that they're carrying the water away from your home or school or town.

Our house - like most here in Suchitoto - is built flush to the narrow sidewalk, but we are about three feet above the grade level, for which I'm grateful on nights like this one.  Water surges down both sides of the cobblestone street, on its way to Lago Suchitlan.  My personal criteria for "this is getting really serious" is when the two streams meet and cover the center of the street.  It's almost happening tonight, but not quite, and the electricity is still on (thus blogging becomes possible): a storm, but not a catastrophe.

Inside the house, it's easy to see the wisdom of building houses with interior courtyards.  All the rain - a decent small river of it - runs down the stairs from our deck, runs off the roofs, drips off the trees, and finds the lowest point - the drain that leads out directly to the street, where our contribution of rain joins the rain of every house along the street, and floods the gutters on the way Lago Suchitlan. 

Most houses have their leaks, and ours did too, until yesterday: a drain pipe that made an L in our kitchen on its way to the main drain dripped every time it rained.  But yesterday Darren - who was building us a great new set of shelves for the tubs in our bodega - attacked the problem from the inside with something resembling tar, and the pipe leaks no more.  Another thing to be grateful for!

Farmers with their milpas of corn and beans rely on rain to keep the crops going and growing.  There's been a serious drought in the eastern districts of El Salvador, several weeks without rain and the loss of a lot of the corn crop that will mean a serious shortage in the country in the year ahead.  So I bless the RAIN in its glory and drama, the lifegiving RAIN of winter.

Friends in Agua Escondida

Last week Darren Streff and I visited some of our friends in Agua Escondida - Darren's a Maryknoll Lay Missioner who's volunteering with PazSalud, and I wanted to introduce him to a few favorite folk.  We started with Doña Carmen Aviles, who has been a community volunteer, chef extraordinaire, hostess and ranchera singer for our two missions in San Juan Opico (Agua Escondida is a colonia of San Juan Opico).  Carmen gave us a tour of her family's farm, which included a charming young goat and a pelibuey (a tribe that's explained as half-sheep, half-goat and prized for meat) and a very fruitful orchard, where we found some little red peppers.  Were they hot, we asked? Oh yes, said Carmen.  Darren tried a small bite and said they weren't very hot.  I tried a small bite and went up in flames at about the moment that Darren said "oh, on second thought..."  They are extremely hot, and I can't imagine how Salvadorans, generally resistant to anything too picante use these - perhaps on a one part per million basis in a salsa?  I never leave Carmen's without gifts for the kitchen, and this time we left with peppers, ginger root (Darren's going to start a new plant in his patio) and a pineapple.

Then we went with Carmen to visit Gloribel and her mother Hortensia, who live next door.  With Carmen's help, we've been sending the two of them to a special school for the deaf in Santa Ana, where Gloribel has been able to learn both Spanish and sign language for the first time in her 11 years.  Gloribel was delighted to see us and to show off her notebooks, her certificate for completion of the preschool program (she's now in first grade) and some of her new signs.  And Hortensia added a beautiful squash to our stash in the back seat. 

We followed up with a visit to Iris and her family.  Iris, daughter of Gumersindo, another of our great San Juan Opico volunteers, is headed for two years at North Central Technical College in Wausau, Wisconsin, thanks to a U.S. AID scholarship.  It turns out that Darren grew up in Stevens Point, about 30 minutes from Wausau, so he was able to tell Iris what a beautiful place she'll soon be living in.  Iris' mother, who makes the best tamales I've tasted in El Salvador, had tamales ready for us to eat - and a big bag to take home. 

Our next stop was a quick one, to visit Sonia and her family.  They usually live in a different colonia, Arenal, but they'd all been sick the past week - sounded like a flu - and were staying with family near Agua Escondida. 

Then we headed up to Huisisilapa (I'm very proud of being able to spell that!), a colonia of San Pablo Tacachico, where we visited with Ylda, who arrived back from a new security job in the Government Center just a few minutes after we got to her house.  (I was relieved to know that she didn't have to tote a gun.)  She, too, had to feed us - tortillas and beans and cheese, with apologies that there wasn't a real almuerzo (lunch) ready.  A good thing, since we were already full of tamales. 

And so we headed back to San Salvador, where I dropped Darren off, full of tamales and tortillas and beans and cheese, with good things for the kitchen and garden.  Altogether, a day full of gifts.

Fruiting season

Yes, the rains have come, it's officially winter, and along with the rains comes the ripening and plopping of millions (I'm not exaggerating here, or only a little) of the nances that grow on the tree in my patio and fall, sometimes with an amazingly loud plop, into the patio.  I have yet to meet a Salvadoran who doesn't adore nances and rush to pick them up.  I have yet to meet a gringo who likes them very much, so it's a joy to give them away.  Lately we've been filling a gallon bag each day with these cherry-sized fruits.  Here they are, making a wreath around our rain drain where they were blown in a huge tormenta last Thursday:

It's not just nances that are ripe right now.  I had lunch today with Alex Hernandez, one of the students to whom we've given a scholarship for university studies, and he brought me a huge bag of fruit from his mother which included zapotes, a wonderfully rich tasting red-orange pudding inside a dull brown skin; marañones japoneses, a cashew relative without the nut, red-skinned with a white, mild interior; and uvas salvajes, wild grapes, deep purple-black round fruits with a tart-sweet pulp inside.  Ah, and it's also the season for avocados, mangoes, lemons, oranges, and who knows what else.  So it may be the case that in this climate fruits tend to ripen at the beginning of the rainy season, with the tree or vine beginning its next cycle during the rains.  Someone who knows the biology and climatology of Central America could probably explain this.  I'm just enjoying the results.

Chickens, eggs, and the Guacotecti women

I've been waiting for quite a while for the Guacotecti women to get their chicken farm up and running - and so have they!  They found a great property and were able to purchase it with help from some Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace (you know who you are!), but then they had to wait to get the paperwork completed, and wait to negotiate electricity, and wait to be approved by the appropriate government agency.  It's been a long slog, but today I visited them with Leslie Schuld and Iris Alas of CIS, and there's a real chicken farm rising up from the dirt, soon to be home to some 600 cackling hens.  The foundation and walls of the henhouse are in place; a man is coming today to erect the metal framework and roof that completes the structure.  A new well is being dug for the community just a short distance away, and piping will bring water to the farm. 

The women were all there working hard as we bumped up the road - working with pick and shovel and wheelbarrow in the blazing sun, with a couple of guys helping out.  The guys are being paid.  The women have to wait until the chickens come and start laying and the eggs get sold, and they'll keep working hard together every day to make their dream a reality.

We had a short meeting - in the shade by the side of the road - to go over progress and next steps.  They'll be purchasing the hens next week.  It's going to be a real chicken farm.  And I promise to go back for more photos with actual hens involved.  Meanwhile, here's the whole gang, including Leslie and Iris and me and a few kids -

Permacultura

I've been a fan of permaculture since the late 1970s when I learned about the concept from the work of Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.  It's a concept that calls for designing with, not against, the natural condition of the land; for agriculture based on trees and perennial shrubs instead of cleared land; for respecting and incorporating biodiversity into farmland design.  I've always wanted to see permaculture in action, and at last I have, not more than 10 miles away from my Suchitoto house. 

I'd seen the sign about a permaculture site on the highway, but had just been hoping that somehow I'd connect up.  The time for connecting came when one of the volunteers for our health mission in San José Villanueva, Tomás Chavarria, turned out to work there and visited me to tell me about the farm.  Through Tomás I met Reina Mejia, the coordinator, and arranged a tour for Andrea, Judith and me.  In the photo above, Reina is introducing us to the farm's rabbits, whose pellets become fertilizer for the crops, a typical permaculture natural recyling.

The permacultura farm is on a very steep hillside, which I'd have thought almost impossible to adapt for organic permaculture.  I would have been wrong.  The entire site has been designed very carefully with dikes and catchponds and tree rings to hold rainwater and allow it to soak in, so the ground can continue to be moist even during the dry season (now).  When the NGO acquired the farm, it had been used for a monoculture of citrus trees.  The citrus are still there, but now other trees are planted among them that will eventually create the high canopy that is the natural condition of land here.  The land is further enriched by compost, mulches of dry leaves and plant materials, and the contributions of rabbits, poultry, and composting toilets.  They've been working on it for only five years, and already it looks amazingly fertile by comparison with nearby lands.  The group of men and women who work with this land - I think about 12 people - have all been through a year-long course in design, and are all committed to teaching others how to use the permaculture principles in El Salvador. 

The planting areas, around and under trees, included corn during the rainy season, and now includes beans, but there are a myriad other plants, medicinal or nutritive, planted in small patches, with butterflies dancing among them.  When the group has built structures, they've been simple and ingenious, like this shelter for seedlings, shaded with a thatch of grass.

Here's work that brings the hope for all our futures, and for three years I've been driving by and saying "I've got to visit someday."  Thank God that day came at last.  I know I'll be back.

How the beans grow

Visiting Sonia and her family a few days ago, I noticed that the milpa next to their house had changed dramatically. Half the corn had been harvested, and the rest was doblado, turned over so that the remaining ears of corn can dry on the stalk (this happens in the midst of the rainy season, and I can't understand why the corn dries rather than mildews, but the Salvadorans and their forebears have been at this for hundreds of generations, and they know). In between the drying stalks, the recently planted bean vines were popping out of the earth. In a few more weeks it'll be time for the bean harvest, for the vines to be uprooted and dried and threshed so that the small, beautiful red silk beans can emerge. And those beans, in their growing, will have fixed nitrogen in the soil for next year's corn crop. It's a beautiful and valuable cycle.

Fiesta de Maiz

Corn was king today, and queen too, as Suchitoto celebrated the annual Fiesta de Maiz. Truckloads of corn came in from the campo and colonias of Suchi, the church was decorated with corn stalks, and this morning a procession with corn princes and princesses made its way from the Capilla de la Cruz to the church. It's one of the days when the church is crammed with all the side aisles full of folk who stand patiently through the Mass.

Then we all went out into the plaza where food was waiting - elote (corn on the cob) and atol (hot corn drink) and tamales de elote and - my favorite, the thing I wait for all year - riguas, the best fresh corn pancakes imaginable, grilled in banana leaves. They're una cora (a quarter) each, and I restrained myself and bought only two. Wish they were sold every day!

The celebration felt especially good this year because the corn harvest has been excellent - this after two years when the weather interrupted harvests. There's a threat of bad weather coming from hurricanes in the Atlantic, but so far, at least, we've only had the normal pattern of sunny mornings with a downpour in the afternoon or evening. So we celebrated the harvest in bright sunshine.

Harvest

For the past two years the harvests of corn and beans, the staple foods of Central America, have been terrible because drought came at the wrong time or because the rains were too heavy. This year we seem to be hitting the "just right" that Goldilocks longed for. The rains started late, but they've been consistent and not too heavy (relatively speaking: a not-too-heavy downpour in the tropics looks like a deluge in the north). The harvests are already beginning to come in, and should continue through the month of August. Yesterday on a walk around Suchitoto I found evidence at this house where the beans have been laid out to dry on the sidewalk, hung over the open door, and draped all over the frame of the family pickup. It's a good reminder that Suchitoto is very much a rural community center as well as a tourist destination.

Gracias a Dios por la cosecha - Thanks be to God for the good harvest, for the tortillas and frijoles that are daily bread for the people. Thanks for the rain.

The chicken or the egg?

That old and worn-out question, - Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? - got new meaning for me on Thursday when I accompanied Leslie Schuld and Iris Alas of CIS (Centro por Intercambio and Solidaridad) to meet a group of women in Guacotecti, in the Departamento of Cabañas, who are about to start their own chicken-and-egg business, with the help of a grant from the Hilton Fund for Sisters. CIS asked me if I would be involved - the presence of a Sister in the program is a requirement - and I jumped at the chance to experience the beginnings and growth of a community micro-enterprise.

I surely wasn't there as a poultry expert! I learned a lot in a few hours: the women will be buying about 1000 young hens (they cost about $9 each) and those young hens will lay like crazy - an egg a day is the expectation - for about a year. Then they start slowing down (understandably) and it begins to cost more to feed them than than be recouped in egg production: then it's time to sell the hens for the cooking pot, get new youngsters, and start the cycle again. This is NOT a romantic business!

But it seems to be a very possible good business for the eight women who are the initial group. There are no egg producers nearby, so they should have a good chance to become the main egg source for their area. According to the women, Cabañas is a fairly poor district, with little economic opportunity. They hope that their enterprise will lead to others and to more at-home possibilities for women and families. They've taken courses in poultry raising, they've found land they can lease for minimal cost, and they're ready to go.

Meanwhile, they fed us lunch: would we like an avocado and a tortilla? they said, but what came out to the table was sopa de gallina india, (country hen soup) the afterlife of one of the local chickens that pecks around the yard - not one of their special laying hens, those haven't yet been purchased. Sopa de gallina india should be the national dish of El Salvador, next to the pupusas. It's delicious, full of fresh vegetables, and always served with the grilled gallina on the side. A true gallina india doesn't have a lot of flesh, and that flesh is tough - but delicious. This sopa was a good promise of futures to come from this venture and from these women.

Then and Now

When Margaret Byrne, CSJP lived in El Despertar, San Salvador, in 1991-92 and worked with Eleanor Gilmore and Jesuit Refugee Services, she formed strong ties with Estela Garcia, Rosita Ayala and Armando Ramirez. One of the joys of the past week has been visiting with each of these old friends and seeing that they are all doing well in the present realities of El Salvador.

Yesterday we visited Armando, his wife Blanca Luz and their daughter Erica in their home in Zamoran, close to the Pacific coast. Armando got to show off his entrepreneurial spirit, as he took us on a tour of the beautiful house he and Blanca Luz designed and built, and of his recently planted orchard, already yielding coconuts, oranges, limes, bananas and plantains, with young mangoes and papayas maturing toward their fruiting time. The newest element in his granja (farm) is a sturdy, cement-floored pen for his two new sows, who will be producing piglets as soon as he's able to introduce them to a boar. These were the cleanest pigs any of us had ever seen. All around us were other healthy animals, chickens, breeding dogs and a charming cat, all testimony to the care Armando brings to his farm. This year the fruits will be extra necessary, as will be the proceeds from Armando's other job, electronics repair, because in the heavy rains and floods his corn and bean crop - the staples of life here - were completely lost.

Armando and Margaret had a very joyful reunion, and we even got to visit briefly with Armando's brother-in-law Ramon before heading back on a very long drive to Suchitoto. This was the last big trip for my visitors, who head back to winter tomorrow, and a splendid experience of Salvadoran hard work and determined intelligence.

Bounty

Yesterday I picked up Dina Duvon and drove to San Juan Opico where we had a number of errands, all most successfully concluded. What I didn't expect - what was just bounty - was being invited to the home of Doña Carmen Galdámez, one of our volunteers in our Opico clinics, first for coffee and cookies, and then for lunch (sopa de gallina india, country chicken soup, with chicken and salad and tortillas made from corn Doña Carmen grinds herself with a metate), and then to receive enormous sacks of oranges, big calabazas, and huge papayas. I took a photo of Dina standing next to the Galdámez family's flor de pascua, which is what a poinsettia looks like in its native country when it's all grown up.

Then we took Doña Carmen Orellana - the other Doña Carmen - back to her house, and of course received sacks of oranges from her, and some huevos de gallina india, which came with a story. Apparently you can use the whites of the eggs of country chickens to improve your vision. You brush the egg whites on eyelids and over the eyebrow. Doña Carmen O, who is an immensely sensible woman steeped in the healing traditions of the people, used this remedy and had her vision improve greatly, to the surprise of the ophthalmologist. But only country chicken eggs will do: the tame variety are of no use. She also told us about barro, red clay, which Doña Carmen G. had used to cure a huge swelling in her knee. I got some to see what it could do for my arthritic fingers. Carmen O. presented us each with some of those precious huevos, which are the most beautiful pale cream color.

The car was getting heavy now, but Don Gumersindo, who'd been with us all day, wanted us to stop at his house, beautifully set at the top of a hill and quite a good climb from the road. When he came out with a very live hen wrapped in newspaper, I got worried, but fortunately it was a gift for Dina. The hen rode back with us to Dina's house in Apopa, quiet and perhaps content, with no foreknowledge of its likely future as gallina india. And I took my share of the day's bounty - oranges, squash, papaya, eggs, and happy memories of the most generous people in the world - back to Suchitoto.

Gente de la caña

Cane in flower is a beautiful sight, and at this time of year the graceful cane stalks topped by their white banners are everywhere in the lowlands of El Salvador. Cane and coffee are the two main cash crops in El Salvador, both harvested at the beginning of the dry season, from November through January.

Workers burn the cane fields before harvesting to burn away the dry leaves, leaving the stalk easy to harvest and the roots ready to push up next year's crop. The harvesting is said to be the hardest work in this country filled with hard-working people. A planted field will produce cane for 4-6 years, and then must be replanted.

Burned cane leaves drift into everyone's house throughout the season, leaving little piles of soot in courtyards. Getting stuck behind a huge and very slow truck carrying cane stalks to the refinery where they are processed into table sugar (and molasses and rum) is another predictable misery of these months. Still, the cane is almost emblematic of El Salvador - a current advertising campaign - perhaps produced by the government (though I'm not sure about that) talks about Salvadorans as the gente de la caña, the people of the cane.

Between coffee and cane, and with the added help of yearly bonuses that most employers pay out in December, this is the rich time for Salvadorans, the time of fiestas and firecrackers, dances and gifts and parties.

Harvest and Celebrations

There's been a lot going on in Suchitoto today. This morning Monseñor Rafael Urrutia came to town as the Archbishop's representative to confirm 270 young people from the town and the countryside. Since each of them had at least one sponsor and most had family looking on, the church was packed - but I had a great seat up front at the side of the altar, since Padre Carlos asked me to be a communion minister. I had an eye out for Crisseyda, Martha's niece and my one-time computer student, and she was shining as she received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Later, I joined the family for a lunch celebration.

This afternoon it was the turn of the schools, with 9th grade graduations followed by a special dinner for 400. And in the evening a big dance was advertised outside the Alcaldia (Mayor's Office). Our neighbor with the disco has been going strong all evening, and I've been enjoying the alternative of listening to Carmina Burana on headphones - there may be a quiet place in Suchitoto tonight, but I don't know where it would be.

Meanwhile it's the harvest season here - not for corn or beans, those are harvested in July and August, but for the big cash crops, coffee and sugar cane. Lots of campesinos get most of their cash income for the year - not much - by working the coffee and cane harvests. Here's a photo of a coffee shrub with ripe berries waiting for harvest. Around here, there's more cane than coffee, because coffee is grown at higher altitudes - I'll try to get a photo of the cane fields, which are absolutely beautiful at this time of year, with the tall white blossoms swaying at the head of the stalks.

La casa de la abuela

This week I went with my godson, Alejandro, and his parents, Ani and Alex, to visit Alex' mother who lives outside the community of Santa Isabel Ishuatán, high in the hill country of the Cordillera de Balsamo. We had a fine time at la casa de la abuela, grandmother's house, eating our way happily through a continual feast of the best country life has to offer. Doña Francesca started us off with atole de elote, a soup of fresh sweet corn flavored with cinnamon and accompanied by ears of fresh corn. A little later Alex cut down some coconuts, and we enjoyed coconut water and meat. Almuerzo, the main meal, came at about 3 PM and featured a chicken who'd recently been running around, rice, vegetables, tortillas, a salsa de chile, and fresh cheese that Doña Francesca made as we watched.

Then it was time to make tamales de elote, fresh corn tamales, which are delicious. Doña Francesca is an old hand at these, and she taught Ani to make them. I tried the art, too, and feel a little sorry for anyone who got one of my understuffed and messy tamales. Along with beans and rice, the tamales were the centerpiece of supper. I fell into bed feeling like a stuffed tamale myself.

Doña Francesca's house and farm were full of flowers which attracted an amazingly diverse group of butterflies, fruit trees (mango, coconut, orange and many more), and fields - a small milpa for corn and a rice field. Like all the Salvadoran homesteads I've visited, her farm is a celebration of diversity where livestock (chickens, geese and a rabbit), grain crops, fruit crops and vegetables grow in happy abundance. According to the measurements of the U.S.A., Doña Francesca would be poor, and her life has been hard in many ways. But she has been a nurturer of life, both in her farm and in her family: 19 years ago, in her 50s, she adopted a baby whose mother couldn't afford to bring him up, an addition to her family of eight, and Wilson is now finishing his high school degree, hoping to study law at the University. That generosity of life and spirit, which I meet again and again in El Salvador, is a richness beyond economic price.

Oh yes, and I also had a wonderful time playing with Alejandrito, who likes nothing better than to go walking with someone holding his hands. Balancing: what a challenge! But he'll soon be off on his own.

Fresh food

In a recent meeting of a group of Sisters and Associates, we talked about our carbon
footprints and what we might be able to do to reduce them. It’s a conversation I’ve had many times in the United States, but the whole subject looks different when you’re living in El Salvador.

When I lived in the U.S. I sometimes tried to eat locally – one summer I talked some friends into buying a farm share with me and we all drowned in greens. Another summer I decided to buy my vegetables only in the farmer’s market. Very satisfying, but costly!

Here, nothing is easier – or cheaper – than buying vegetables in the mercado, which happens to be in the next block. Tomatoes, onions, beans, broccoli, squash, huisquil (a pear-shaped green vegetable), cauliflower, garlic, cabbage, parsley, cilantro, carrots, and much more are available year-round. Mostly these vegetables come from Guatemala or Honduras, not quite local, but close enough. If you want to buy them at their freshest, you go to the market early in the morning, when the trucks have just come in from the Tiendona, the big wholesale market in San Salvador.

The glorious fruits – plantains, bananas, granadillas, oranges, lemons, watermelon, papaya, mango, coconut, nance, arrayan and many, many more - are more often local, I think. So are the local wild greens, mora and chipilín, ginger root, natural medicines. And the cheeses, eggs, chicken, fish and beef I’d guess come mainly from close by. You buy corn and beans, the staples, in the nearby farm stores.

The other possibility is a supermarket, which in the case of Suchitoto is a 40-minute drive away. The Supers have imported vegetables and fruits – like bell peppers, sweet potatoes, apples – that you can’t get at the mercado.

You’d think with such abundance close at hand (and very reasonably priced, by U.S. standards) Salvadorans would have super-healthy diets – but the other things that are available in the block next door pull in the other direction: potato chips and plantain chips, packaged snack foods, deep-fat-fried goodies, sugary confections. Hamburgers and pizza are beloved. Still, fresh local food is abundant here, and it’s easy to eat right.

In the Bajo Lempa

Armando Ramirez is a long-time friend of Sister Eleanor Gilmore - he spent a lot of time at El Despertar, a Jesuit Refugee Service center in the late 1980s for people coming in from the country for medical care. Eleanor was in charge of El Despertar, and Armando was one of her favorite patients.

Armando's war wounds still give him trouble, but he's built a good life for himself down in the Bajo Lempa area (the lower part of the Lempa River, just before it reaches the sea) with his wife Blanca Luz and their daughter Erica. I've met Armando many times, but I'd never seen his home or met his family - nor had I been to the Bajo Lempa. So when I had the chance to help him out by giving him a lift with a new desk chair he'd found, I was delighted.

When we got down to the Bajo Lempa area we found it, as I'd expected, hot and humid and still flooded from the downpours of Tropical Storm Agatha. The seacoast and the coastal plain are the hottest areas of the country - and also among the most beautiful. We got there via a road that's in the process of being improved for tourism - and it really needed the improvements, as navigating the road required swaying the car from side to side to avoid the baches, potholes.

Armando and Blanca Luz proudly showed me around the beautiful home they had built for themselves, and then took me out back, where the young trees of their orchard - coconut, mango, lime, orange, papaya, nance, to name just a few - are beginning to bear fruit. And I had my first chance to drink coconut water directly from a coconut (Armando's cutting down some cocos in the photo above). There's got to be an art to that: I was pretty messy, but I loved it all the same. Armando also sets up audio for festivals and dances, and fixes bum electronics - he's a smart and enterprising man - but their orchard and chickens and his nearby milpa mean that he's got that piece of earth that can sustain the family through the ups and downs of his electronic work.

Salvadoran farm/homesteads like Armando's make me happy because he has something we've almost lost (but perhaps are beginning to rediscover) in the United States - the family-sized self-sufficient farm. Food from home.

Hoping for rain

We've had some light rains this week, and are told to expect a little more, but the real rains, the daily downpours of the rainy season, should begin about the end of April.

Last year the rains started a little late, and there was a prolonged dry period in the middle of the rainy season when much of the corn crop was lost. The disastrous floods of November 8th destroyed most of the second planting of beans. Altogether, the climate variations, caused by an El Niño year, meant scarcity and high prices for these most basic food resources.

The prediction this year is for more normal weather, and a better crop. For the sake of the many in El Salvador and throughout Central America who get most of their nutrition from corn and beans, we pray that it may be so.