Opico friends

I'm still in Guatemala on holiday, but I'm leaping back a few days to remember a grand Saturday excursion with my friends Dina and Darren to visit some good friends in San Juan Opico.  We brought our medical mission to Opico in 2010, and Dina was the world's best coordinator, helping me get acquainted with people she had been working with for decades.  I invited her to come along with Darren and me on our Saturday excursion to bring Christmas baskets and PazSalud calendars to Opico friends, and, being Dina, she organized the whole day beautifully.

We started out with a visit to Gumersindo and family in Agua Escondida and left with three heaping bags of Antonia's wonderful tamales.  Then we visited Reyna, Sonia, and Sonia's children in Arenal -  here's Jarrison unwrapping a Christmas gift -

The next stop was Chantusnene where Carmen Galdamez and Carmen Orellana, two remarkable women, were waiting for us with a delicious lunch AND sent us off with mandarins and lemons - that's Dina and Carmen O at the table, with Carmen G. below -

Finally we swung back to Agua Escondida to visit the third Carmen, Carmen Aviles, and found her and her family getting ready for what was clearly going to be a very special birthday party for Carmen's granddaughter Andrea - there were TWO enormous piñatas waiting to be bludgeoned and a big crowd of family and friends gathering -

Carmen happily found time to talk with us while the crowd gathered, and fed us some of her glorious quesadilla (not the Mexican quesadilla, this is a sweet, moist cheesy cake) and gave us more to take home.  We were about to go next door to visit Gloribel, Carmen's goddaughter whom we've been helping to get to a school for the deaf in Santa Ana - but then she showed up for the party with her sister, and we happily exchanged presents (that's Gloribel on the left):

As always has happened when I've visited San Juan Opico, we were welcomed like long-lost, sought-after friends and we returned to the city with the car full of good food and grand memories. 

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!

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.

Richard at home

The last few days have been full of wonderful events and meetings, material for more blog posts than I've had time to write (they'll come along later this week). One of the best times was visiting young Richard Stanley and his mom Mari in their home in San Rafael Cedros. I went with Iris Alas, our San Rafael coordinator, her daughter, and Sergio, one of the community volunteers and Mari's uncle. Richard's new heart valve seems to be behaving well, though getting the medications right has been a challenge. He looks good - more color and more energy than before - and he continues to be a truly squiggly 3-year-old with no interest in having his picture taken. I sneaked in this one when he wasn't looking at me. Mari told me that when all the kids in the hospital were having their pictures taken, Richard was the only one who would have none of it.

Richard and Mari live in the midst of a big Salvadoran family, with Mari's mother and three sisters and a brother and a big bunch of cousins, mostly boys. The family put together the classic almuerzo (luncheon): sopa de gallina india (country hen soup) with a bit of the grilled gallina and salad on the side, with fresh tortillas. It was glorious, and we ate until we could hardly waddle. A great way to celebrate Richard's new life!

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.

Almuerzo in Aguas Escondidas

Angie Wolle, PeaceHealth's Director of Organization Development, has been visiting me this weekend, in preparation for the PeaceHealth leadership group which will be coming to El Salvador in November for a week of service and experience.

On Friday we visited San Juan Opico, where the service part of the November mission will take place, and were invited to lunch at the rancho of Doña Carmen Aviles in Aguas Escondidas, one of the villages of Opico. Carmen cooked for our February mission group, so I knew the food would be wonderful, but it was beyond wonderful. She presented us with plates of chicken in her own special sauce, rice and steamed vegetables; there was a huge platter of salad, a pot of beans, a plate of cheese, tortillas; and we had homemade horchata (a delicious drink of moro seeds, rice, cinnamon and vanilla). Along with Dina Duvon, Reyna Peña, and Gumersindo and Ana Hernandez - our key volunteers in the February and May missions - we feasted like queens until we could barely waddle, but we weren't done. The new corn, elote, is harvested in July and August, and there are a number of special dishes that are made with elote: for dessert Carmen served us atole, a hot, sweet new corn porridge flavored with cinnamon and other spices, and gave us each an ear of elote to eat. She also had made a quesadilla, which here in El Salvador is a flat cake made with cheese and milk, and had fruit ready, but we had gone beyond capacity, and ended up taking the quesadilla home for breakfast. Each dish was delicious, perfectly cooked, beautifully presented, and Carmen (and her daughters and friends) cooked it all with no electricity, as a tree had knocked out the power line, using her gas stove and her huge adobe horno, or oven.

For Angie (she's the blond in the photo), this was a great introduction to the joy and generosity of Salvadorans. Our November group will be going to Doña Carmen's house for lunch on their first day in El Salvador, to experience a little bit of life in the campo - and to eat some of the best cooking in El Salvador.