At work, at play

Two days into our eye surgery mission and we are at work and at play - with such a fine team it's sometimes blessedly hard to tell the difference. As is often the case, we lament the patients who were too afraid to show up, and rejoice in giving new sight to those who come to the hospital at 6 AM in the parish bus, driven by Padre Mario. Eye surgery is the focus of this mission, but we also found time to give vision checks (and reading glasses for those who need them) to staff at Hospital San Raphael. This afternoon nurses and janitors and cooks and x-ray techs lined up until we had to cut the line at 35 people. Those 35 waited with Salvadoran patience, laughing and joking and approving the new glasses of each one who emerged from the consulting room. It was a little fiesta. And we came back from the hospital to talk and laugh and play cards and share stories and eat mangoes and have our own fiesta here at the Centro Loyola. And now it's time to head for bed, to sleep until the little green parrots come flying and calling in the morning sky - and then back to work.

The curious case of the grackle

Some time ago, I blogged about a grackle (a female grackle, brown where this male is glossy black) who had adopted our handwashing sink as a toilet and was leaving heaps of grackle-poop there on a daily basis.  We set up various keep-aways, including a mosquito net which was quickly pooped through and plastic bowls which were a bit more successful.  She abandoned us for a while, but returned to old habits from time to time. 

A couple of weeks ago, she came roaring back, up to her usual tricks.  And Patti Moore noticed that she was cleaning odd streaks and scratches off the mirror over the sink and theorized that our grackle had seen her reflection, attacked it, and pooped in triumph or sullen defeat (hard to guess whether she'd have thought she won). 

This was an easy theory to test.  We covered the sink and mirror in black plastic for a couple of days: no poop.  Then we just covered the mirror: no poop.  Then we took the mirror away and have been poop-free for many days now. 

Brilliant deduction, Patti!  Thank you for freeing our grackle from her rivalry and for freeing us from the results.

Free

I've been meeting this mare and foal in various places in Suchitoto, running freely through the streets - for me, a city-bred gringa who loves horses, an amazing sight. The other day I saw them as I was driving in to Suchi, and for once I had my camera with me. Then last night I heard hooves passing our house and looked out to see a mounted horseman herding the mare and foal down the street. So apparently they do belong to someone, and their days of mooching around in town are over. I'll miss them!

July in the woods

Next Monday I return, joyfully, to El Salvador. But these two months at home have been wonderful, both in recovered health and also in a chance to spend time with friends and family and in the beauty of western Washington in July. I've been celebrating my improved breathing with long walks - these photos are from a walk with Patti Moore on a river trail near Orting. We'd thought of going to Mt. Rainier, but even though it's July, the snow is reported to be still high there (the northwest has had an extra cool spring and early summer). So we walked the river instead, ate salmon berries, watched a crow kill a garter snake, rejoiced in foxgloves in full bloom, and listened to the river, white with glacier runoff, sing its song. One of many lovely days in this beautiful country before I return to that other beautiful country, so different in every way.

rhodys and rabbits

A little rabbit colony has found St. Mary-on-the-Lake - a very natural locale for them, except for the bald eagles that often sit at the tops of our trees and warble their strange cries while - no doubt - looking around for the odd rabbit. I hear there's a coyote in the park that's almost next door. But meanwhile the rabbits are roaming around, the rhododendrons are in glorious bloom, and it's OK if the sun is not shining that often - it's still a paradise here!

Strange to think that this is equally a blooming time in El Salvador, though now that the daily rains are well established most of the blooms will be swept down the drains.

Sweet retreat

Lately our mission groups have stayed in retreat houses during the week, a choice that gives us an unbeatable combination of good food, quiet (except for the critters, see below), beautiful surroundings, and simple lodgings. Our eye surgery group, like the February General Medical Mission volunteers, stayed at the Casa de Retiro Santisima Trinidad - the Holy Trinity Retreat House - in Candelaria, about 20 minutes away from our work place, the Hospital Nacional de Cojutepeque.

Santisima Trinidad is run by the Carmelite Sisters of Saint Teresa, the same community that runs the Hospital Divina Providencia, the cancer hospice in San Salvador where Monseñor Romero lived and died. They're a lively and friendly group of Sisters and we've enjoyed getting to know Sisters Mari, Paty, Francesca and Amparo.

Santisima Trinidad is set on the hills above Lake Ilopango, and the chapel and dining room look out on the lake. The gardens are full of flowers, especially at this season-changing time of the year. And the beautiful fountain - it's the trinitarian fountain of St. John of the Cross - is home to toads with some of the deepest, loudest, and most demanding calls I've ever heard. There was also a nightly dog chorus...but after the first night, we mostly slept through it all.

Indeed, a sweet retreat, and a perfect home for our mission team.

Bird brains

We've had quite a few interesting animal visitors to our house in Suchitoto, but nothing quite as strange as the latest. When I came back from time in the U.S. earlier this week, I noticed that poop (of a bird or bat or small animal) was appearing regularly on one side of our hand-washing sink.

Our hand-washing sink is out in the patio, but it's covered by an open high roof to give us protection during the rainy season. Naturally I looked up, but saw nowhere where a bird or bat could be perching. The poop kept appearing, each time in exactly the same corner of the sink.

I began to listen for suspicious sounds, and heard some high-pitched whistles and notes that're familiar to me from the San Salvador airport and the capital, but new in Suchitoto. And then, hearing some noise from the patio, I looked out and discovered a female Great-Tailed Grackle perched on the side of the sink (the photo above is not mine, but it does look like our new friend).

Now who would imagine that a bird would choose a pooping place, and choose one where the resultant mess could easily go down the drain? That may not be her motivation, of course: I can't quite imagine what her motivation may be, but I know that this bird is eating all too well - possibly eating the nance berries that are falling in great quantities right now - and producing extravagant amounts of grackle-poop.

The next question was how we might change this behavior (cleaning bird poop out of your sink repeatedly is not fun). I thought I had a brilliant idea, and put a mosquito net over the sink. Woke up this morning to find a very messed-up mosquito net, some of the mess falling through to the sink. Alas.

Any other good ideas?

Birds of stranger feathers

I went to the nearest mini-mall on Saturday to cash a check and had to stand in line for a while outside the bank. A little come-and-look was set up across the parking lot, with appliances and a large inflated chicken holding balloons for the kids. At first I thought the chicken was simply a balloon itself, but no: on closer inspection, I could see signs of a human form inside. Now it was about 92 degrees and the guy in the chicken suit was standing in the sun, and it didn't seem to me that he could possibly be getting enough money to make it worthwhile to bounce up and down inside that rubber chicken suit and give out balloons. Got my check cashed, did some shopping, came back to take a photo, which I got just as Mr. Chicken was being led away from the pavilion and into the appliance store. If you look closely, you can see that his chicken suit is drooping and looking a bit pathetic. I peeked in the store just in time to see a young man, still alive, emerging from this bird of very strange feathers.

Speaking of chickens, do you know that they like to climb trees and perch in them for the night? Margaret Jane and I sometimes go to a favorite spot for pupusas, the ultimate Salvadoran comfort food, where we can watch the chickens in the next yard climbing up and disposing themselves among the branches of a small tree. Probably a place of greater safety than the ground, as long as a tree-climbing garobo (male iguana) doesn't come after you.

Birds of the sky, singing

Today at the 5 PM Mass at Santa Lucia, Padre Juan Carlos was reading from Mark: "To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade."

At that very moment, the setting sun was shining through the west windows, setting the big 4-lobed pillar in front of the altar ablaze, and at that very moment the community of English sparrows that lives in Santa Lucia burst into rapturous song, cheeping and chittering at top voice through the sermon and through the eucharistic prayer. I have to confess that I gave up trying to follow the sermon and contented myself with following the birds as they flipped from pillar to pillar, singing vespers.

As we walked up for communion, the sunset light faded, the birds quieted and settled in for the night, and the service came peacefully to a close. Alleluia, and thanks be to God.

A rougher night

Last night I woke up at about 11:30 - the music was still booming over from the disco next door, but I seem to have learned how to sleep through it - and walked down to the bathroom, which is outside in the patio. Sudden stabbing pain in my heel. There outside the bathroom door I had managed to step on an alacran - that's the name for the local scorpion - and it had stung me. I yelped and carried on enough to wake up Margaret Jane (Korla was out at a local festival) who sat down with me at the kitchen table while we checked out Donde No Hay Doctor (Where There Is No Doctor), the invaluable first aid / health education manual. Alacran venom varies a lot in strength, but it's rarely dangerous for adults. That was the good news, but on the other hand, the pain and swelling can last for weeks or months...

I was beginning to feel altogether strange. My mouth started buzzing, then fingers, arms and legs. Korla got back, and told us that a Salvadoran friend had said to cut off the stinger, soak it in alcohol, and apply that to the wound. We'd killed the alacran by then, so why not? Soaked the stinger in a bit of the very nice brandy my Christmas guests had left and bathed my heel. I stumbled off to bed and spent the next five hours in chills and sweating, staggering when I tried to walk, my skin buzzing with electricity. My body felt light, unfamiliar, unsettled. This had definitely been an alacran which, in spite of being only about 3 inches long, had plenty of strong venom.

Now, twelve hours later, the buzz is still with me, but is lessening. My heel doesn't hurt at all, which suggests that the brandy soak was a good idea. I will definitely be putting shoes on in the future when I head to the bathroom in the dark, and I'll probably carry a flashlight with me for a while. I'm just mostly grateful that the alacran got me, and not Kathy Garcia, who is about half my size and would have had an even worse time with the venom.

I'd like to settle down now for 24 hours of uneventful peace, quiet and recuperation with no wildlife attached.

One rough day

I put Kathy Garcia on the plane this morning after what has to have been just about her worst day ever in El Salvador. It began with digestive upset & stomach cramps, which left her drinking Gator-Aid and eating toast for the day. Then, when she was lying down in the afternoon, she heard a scrabbling, and looked up to see a couple of rats running along one of the ceiling beams. The usual furor ensued: Kathy yelped, the rats fled, we moved her into a different bedroom. This was a little discouraging for us, as we hadn't seen rats for months and were happily convinced that they'd gone to live elsewhere.

This would have been more than enough, but then at 8 PM our neighbor started up the disco music at top volume, playing until after midnight. Not unreasonable on a Friday night, and usually I would just curl up with year one of The West Wing, which Korla has kindly loaned me - but Kathy and I had to get up at 3 AM to get her to the plane on time. We each got perhaps two hours sleep, but luckily there's no one on the roads at 3 AM, and after dropping her off I dozed for a couple of hours in the airport parking lot, in a blissful quiet interrupted only by the squacking of the grackles that live there.

At about this time, Kathy should be reaching home in Oregon, very, very tired and very, very glad to see her husband and daughter and quiet bed. I hope tomorrow will be perfect enough to make up for Friday.

Horseplay

Horses are a familiar sight around Suchitoto, especially on the country roads, so I wasn't surprised to hear hooves clopping by the house last Saturday - but when it was dozens of hooves clopping I ran to the window and found lots of horses, and their riders, moving past my house.

I've been sure that there would have to be some version of a rodeo here, some games involving horses in this Latin country, so I followed the trail of the horses and found a competition under way on the grounds of the Casa de la Cultura. There was a rope strung up at a level just above the heads of the riders, and what looked for all the world like red plastic clothespins were hanging from the rope. The goal was to grab a clothespin (or whatever it may have been) at full gallop, and this turned out to be pretty hard to do. Each rider took a turn, spurring his horse to a gallop (I'm sorry to say the riders were all men, and my friend Doña Ana confirmed that only men ride - at least in these games), lifting his hand as he approached the rope and grabbing for the prize. Prizes -wrapped gifts - were awarded to all who came away with a clothespin.

This was great fun to watch and great fun to try to photograph - try being the necessary word, because I came back with about 56 photos of blurs, tails, noses and dustclouds. The one horse I got a half-way decent photo of wasn't moving fast, thank goodness: this beautiful white horse had clearly been well schooled, probably in dressage, and both horse and rider were a joy to watch.

The horses I've seen in El Salvador are small and neatly built, not unlike the American mustang, perhaps a close relative (though the information I've found on the web deals mostly with South American horses). Some of the racers were working horses, some were weekend horses - you could tell, pretty much, by the tack and saddles - and they were all a joy to watch.

Bugs

Our PeaceHealth group visited Parque Cuscatlan in San Salvador last week to see the memorial wall which gives the names of more than 36,000 Salvadoran civilians - men, women and children, priests and sisters, trade unionists and sidewalk vendors - who were killed or disappeared in the Civil War (1977-1992). It's a sad and beautiful memorial, a fitting end to the group's week of experience and discovery in El Salvador.

We got distracted as we walked along by an amazingly colorful bug that was working hard to climb the wall by the names from 1989. I've never seen a creature like this, and when I showed the image to a Salvadoran friend he said that he hadn't, either. I can't quite imagine the evolutionary purposes of his flamboyant markings - I'll just have to say, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Glory be to God for dappled things."

Flo among the grasses

Last night, during halftime in the El Salvador - Honduras futbol (soccer) game, I went back to my room and startled a visitor who flew about while I shrieked. First I thought it was a bat, but she settled down, and I could see that I was entertaining the largest grasshopper I had ever seen. She (ah yes, an assumption, that) was about 6 inches long, brown, peaceable, and apparently very contented in my room. She settled on the edge of my night-table and Korla and I took photos. Then we suggested a move to her, and she flew around the room again while we both shrieked. Finally I enticed her into climbing on to a newspaper, which I put on the other side of the patio. And I closed the door.

After El Salvador's loss on overtime penalty kicks (the game itself was a lively 2-2 tie), I found our visitor lurking in the patio outside the bathroom door. "Goodnight," I said, "and go home." But when I woke up this morning to a shriek from Margaret Jane, it was clear that Flo, as we'd named her for her Flojo leaping legs, was still around. She'd tried an assault on Margaret Jane's room that led to upset coffee and Flo sitting peacefully at the foot of our stairs.

After such long acquaintance, we wanted to find her a safe home, far from our house. Korla trapped her in a box and took her to the Centro Arte para la Paz, where there will be actual grasses for her to lurk in. Or if that doesn't entice Flo, there are all the hostel rooms to visit...

In the midst of danger

In looking through the photos taken during our missions this year I came across this amazing image, a photograph by Mitch Costin of a dove nesting in razor wire.

Razor wire is used all over San Salvador to keep out thieves, and perhaps the dove chose that spot because she would be protected from raptors. There she sits, making a nest in the midst of danger, in the midst of wires that say "keep away," that say "mine, not yours." In the midst of all this danger she is creating new life.

An image of peace creating justice.

On retreat

This 4th of July, Independence Day, I begin a week of retreat at home. I'm taking the computer and other electronic toys to the Centro Arte para la Paz, unplugging the TV, and settling in for a time of quiet and contemplation. I'm planning on practicing my dependence on God and my interdependence with all creation. I hope to witness creation in the patio, like this glorious butterfly who landed on our ficus one morning after a heavy rain, and stayed there a long time to dry out and get photographed. I hope to witness the presence of the Holy Spirit.

If I blog this week, it will probably be with photographs as a witness of the holiness of creation. I will be mindful of you, my friends, my family, my CSJP community in the prayers of this week. ¡Que Dios nos bendiga con paz y justicia! May God bless us with peace and justice.

Guests, expected and unexpected

My expected guests this weekend were Dra. Ana Vilma de Burgos, her husband Ernesto and their daughter Camila. Ana Vilma has been our host ophthalmologist (there's a word to spell!) for our eye surgery missions in 2007, 2009 and 2010, and she has been wonderful and generous to us and to our patients. It was great to welcome them to the house for lunch and to Suchitoto - though every fly in town seemed to have decided to visit as well, probably because I had been cooking through the morning and had put all these interesting smells in the air. We waved one hand in the air to keep the flies away and ate with the other, and enjoyed conversation, some of it in English, as Ana Vilma is fluent and Camila is studying English in the American School of San Salvador.

My unexpected guest showed up later that evening, during a downpour. I looked out from my bedroom door and saw the unmistakable shape of a frog or toad hopping across my patio. I have no idea how he could have got there - the patio's surrounded on all sides by high walls - or where he could have gone, as there was no sign of him the next morning. But there he was, beyond question, part of the wild life that keeps reminding me I'm living in the tropics.

Rats, begone!

This morning Higinia - my landlord's sister and stand-in - arrived with Rene and Francisco and her son Jonathan in tow to tackle the back door. This has been a door in name only, at the back of the kitchen, locked on our side and up against a plywood wall on the other side. There was a little opening at the top, and we've seen rats escaping through it. I asked Higinia if the opening could be closed up, thinking of something simple like another plywood covering.

Instead they took down the door and the plywood wall on the other side - revealing the rat's nest, which looked just like a rat's nest should, messy. Three rats escaped, but Francisco got one. I hope they're moving to another neighborhood altogether, though that's perhaps just wishful thinking on my part. Meanwhile, I got to see what's on the other side - a long, narrowing corridor that's been usefully converted into two long, narrowing bathrooms. On the other side of the bathrooms is a little restaurant and a beauty salon, and a family lives there as well.

Rene and Francisco and Jonathan built a new wall of concrete block filled with concrete (mixed in the patio), closed up the wall, leveled the floor which used to have a 8-inch dropoff in front of the door, cleaned up and left, promising to return to give the new wall a finish coat and paint in January.

While all this was going on, two of Rene's daughters and an almost-a-year-old grandson came by and talked and checked out the work - like everything else here, building this wall was a family affair. It's one of the things I love about El Salvador.

Creatures

A family in our block has been making some revisions to their house, and it seems that in the process they've stirred up the status quo: recently we've been seeing rats, and last night I heard and then saw two or three running along a ledge at the top of my bedroom wall. Alas! I changed bedrooms for the next few days as we try to figure out rat-discouraging strategies. Currently we have rat-annoying noise machines working in three rooms of the house. We're putting away all food with great care, and are going to try to purchase some steel wool to put on top of the ledge. We are delighted when the little wild yellow cat comes around.

Our neighbors have recommended poison and traps, but we are resisting. Rats, too, are part of creation and they've lived with humans for a very long time. We want to discourage them from making their home with us, as we've discouraged the bats who were here when we first moved in. We want that, in fact, very much!

But creatures, both the delightful and the disagreeable, are a part of life here. I am currently studying Spanish for a few hours each week at the Pajaro Flor school here, and today I visited my teacher Marta's home in the campo, where her father keeps his small herd of cattle. As well as 12 cattle, including the magnificent and very pregnant Brahma cow in the photo, Marta introduced me to their dog, her two puppies, a large group of chickens, and two shy cats. The farm includes a milpa, now growing maisillo (sorghum) and zacate (a tall grass) for winter feed, an orchard of banana and marañon (cashew) and mango trees. Green parrots fly among the trees. Roses bloom in November - Marta's holding some white roses in the photo above.

All this glory of life doesn't come without the odd rat. And we are creatures, too, Marta and Margaret Jane and I, part of the whole along with the little orange cat who is dancing on our roof right now - in pursuit, I hope, of the rats.

Going to the dogs

Last night Pat took me to La Fonda, a famous restaurant just off the parque central here for a birthday supper. We´d eaten glorious cake earlier in the afternoon, so just shared a big appetizer, a plate of sausage and chicken bites, beans and guacamole and salsa. Grand! But there was more than we could eat. Pat decided to take the remaining sausage with her, just to be sure it wasn´t wasted: four sausage bites in a little plastic sack. When we got to the parque central, we passed two dogs and Pat dribbled out the sausage, which they inhaled.

Then we walked on, and a block later noticed that we had aquired two canine companions. They weren´t begging or whining or doing anything but following very politely but rather closely on our heels in the clear hopes that more sausage would fall out of Pat´s hands. For eight blocks we howled with laughter, imagining Doña Thelma´s house beseiged by our two friends, and for seven blocks they walked just a shadow behind us. Finally, to our relief, they must have decided that further sausage was unlikely, and they peeled off in the last block before Thelma´s house.

These two dogs are typical of the many dogs that live on the streets or in the campo here. They´re always respectful of people, and usually not very interested. They live their canine lives scrounging where they can. And when sausage falls from the heavens, they´re inclined to follow the source.