El Último de Doña Licha

My friend Martha's mother died the day after Christmas, after several months of increasingly painful suffering.  I think her given name was Maria Louisa, but I knew her as Doña Licha - people here in Suchitoto called her Niña Licha, but I haven't yet managed to get comfortable with addressing a woman of my own age, more or less, as a niña, child.  I used to meet Doña Licha in better days when she was on the way to market, and we'd stop and exchange hugs.  Martha sometimes brought me tamales her mother had made.  And one day, when our medical mission team was visiting Suchitoto, as we do on each mission, Doña Licha came to our house to have her ulcerated leg treated by Dr. Jon Dykstra, a specialist in wound care.  Here they are, Doña Licha in blue on the left:

Jon bandaged her leg and gave her some medication for it: the bandage didn't last long, because it was itchy, but the medicated cream was great - soon I was seeing her again on the way to market, and this lasted for several months until she began to suffer from pain in her hips, back, legs and soon everywhere.

The customs of death are very beautiful among Catholic families here.  The funeral mass and burial almost always take place the day after the death.  Then for eight days the house is transformed into a shrine with flowers and santos and a photo or two, and friends and neighbors and family come by each night to recite the rosary and sing - or just to stand by and be present.  On the 9th day, this season of intense mourning closes with a memorial Mass, and then everyone gathers for El Último, the last night of mourning, and some stay with the family all through that night to the next morning.

I was able to join in on one Rosario after I returned from Guatemala and the small house was crammed so full of people that you would not imagine it could hold any more.  When Maria del Carmen and I returned for El Último, there were people sitting in rows of chairs in the street outside the house and more people inside.  Martha and her sister Orbelina invited us to come in through the side door which usually leads to a yard full of chickens and ducks and dogs and a green parrot.  All the animals were elsewhere (I wonder who does the duck-sitting?), the yard was swept and neat, and huge, really HUGE iron bowls of tortillas were waiting.  Martha and Orbe and a few friends had worked all morning to make an unimaginable number of tamales, the traditional food served in El Último, and soon we were sitting with tamales and cookies and coffee or hot chocolate.  Meanwhile, in the main sala of the house, the singing and prayers continued, as they were to do all through the night.

What a rich religious tradition this is!  The rosary is beautifully at the center of these nine days of prayer and mourning, and all around the edges of that murmur of ongoing prayer people share memories and condolences, connect with the family, remember Doña Licha.  For over a week the family is held and upheld, even as they work so hard to prepare everything.   It may be a relief to come to that 10th day when the house can slowly come back to normal - but as Martha said to me, it will also be very lonely. 

It's about time

I'm in New Jersey for 5 days this week, for a meeting of the editorial board of Living Peace, our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace magazine, and I can't help noticing that everyone here is on the same time.  Check the clock in my room: 1:50.  And my cell phone: 1:50.  And the computer: 1:50.  And so on and on...we are always clear about what time it is in the United States.  You might say we're as obsessed by it.

It's not that way in El Salvador.  I don't quite understand it, because I always assumed that all the electronics set themselves automatically to some electronic beam of perfect timing sent out from Greenwich, but there if my cell phone shows 1:50, the computer is likely to say it's 1:58, while the clock on the wall says 1:49, the iPad claims 1:53, and the clock in the car pushes ahead to 2:03.  Every once in a while, I try to reset everything so it's all pointing to the same time (blindly choosing one of those possibilities as the correct, true, Greenwich, gringo time).  Works for a few days, and then they drift apart again. 

Time is just a more flexible concept in El Salvador.  The electronics know it.  After about a year in El Salvador, I stopped apologizing if I was 5 or 10 minutes late for a meeting, because I slowly realized that the meetings usually started about half an hour after the stated time.  Here, as in so much, for Salvadorans relationships matter more than efficiency.  It's hard for a gringa to accept, but I've come to like it that way.  Whatever time it may be in El Salvador, it's always time for a greeting, a conversation, a connection.  In the U.S., it's too often time to run off to the next urgent event.

Chepe y Chui y Chincha y Chita y Chana

I love nicknames here.  To my (gringa) ear they have even less relation to the original name than is usual in English.  For example: the nickname for José is Chepe (or Chepito); Jesus is Chui (sounds to the gringa like Chewy); Geovany is Chincha; Felicita is Chita, and I was delighted to learn that Susana is Chana.  You'd notice a preference for the "ch" sound - and somehow that makes sense to me, all those "ch" names sound friendly.  Of course there are nicknames like Rosy and Mari, and if some of the popular English-sounding names, like Marvin and Nelson and Wilson have standard nicknames, I haven't heard them yet.   I'm tempted to try Charvin or Chelson, but that's probably wishful thinking. 

Gracias, Hermana Paquita

It's been a very long week - I've been restocking groceries, getting the car serviced, working on arrangements for our February health mission, and visiting people who get scholarships or family support from PeaceHealth staff. Every errand means a couple of hours of driving time, so the days have been long.

Today the driving time was even longer, but for a couple of very good reasons. In the morning I went to San José Villanueva - our February mission site - with Clelia Estrada from the Caritas office in the Archdiocese. We had a good meeting with Padre Mario Adin, parish staff and volunteers, then stood in the back of the church, standing room only, while lots of beautiful girls and boys made their first communion.

Then I went on to the Bajo Lempa area where a very special Despedida (farewell) was in progress. Providence Sister Fran Stacey, known to her community in the Bajo Lempa as Hermana Paquita, was getting a full-hearted Salvadoran thank you and farewell. Fran retired to Seattle about six months ago, but has returned for a few weeks to visit her many friends, and they - being Salvadoran - decided to put on a full-scale despedida. There were speeches and proclamations and thanks for the remarkable work Fran did during her 16 years in El Salvador, which included founding the Fundación Tierra y Esperanza para el Campesino (Earth and Hope for the Farmer Foundation), working to provide scholarships for local students, and helping raise funds for health emergencies. It seems like she's been a key part of much that's happened in the coastal zone for all those years, and now it was time to say "thank you!"

I had to leave while the thanks were still being spoken, so just got a chance to talk briefly with Fran and tell her thanks also from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. I didn't manage to get a photo of her, but here's one of the dancers getting ready to delight everybody.

Just for the enlightenment of you norteamericanos who may be reading this: the despedida began at 1 PM (more or less, I think it was really just getting under way when I arrived at 2) and was scheduled to go on until 4 PM, with pretty much all that time filled by speeches and presentations. Now that's a serious thank you! Gracias, Hermana Paquita!

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.

It's been a long blog silence, for a couple of reasons. I've been really, really busy this past week, getting ready (I hope) for our cataract surgery brigade, and that process has been more complicated than usual. But the real reason is that I've been shocked and deeply saddened by Gema Rodriguez' death. My usual reaction in such times is to go inside - which may be helpful to me, but doesn't do much for anyone else.

So I'm breaking silence to tell you a little bit about how Gema was lovingly waked and buried. It's hugely different from death in the U.S. where an undertaker shows up in a black suit and whisks the body away. Here the undertaker - not sure if there's a comparable term in español - showed up at Hospital Bloom in a pickup truck, wearing jeans and a tight shirt. She and the pickup and Sonia, Gema's mother, went in together to reclaim the body and put it in the coffin - which must have been, like everything that day, a nightmare for Sonia.

Meanwhile, other family members had come to Bloom to be with Sonia. They and the pretty white coffin rode together in the back of the pickup, while I drove Sonia and a couple more folk back toward San Juan Opico. Thanks to the great generosity of one of the donors who has been helping Gema and the family, we were able to pay for the funeral and burial expenses. It's not much from a U.S. standpoint, but it would have been a crushing and impossible burden for this poor family.

Gema was waked together with an aunt of Sonia's who had died on the same day in Hospital Rosales, the San Salvador national hospital. The two coffins sat in state for a day and two nights in a room in the community where most of Sonia's family lives, and people came to pray and visit and drink coffee and sit in the plastic chairs supplied by the funeral home, while the turkeys and geese and ducks wandered around outside. The larger family, like many here, is a mixture of Catholic and Evangelical, and the prayers and music were various.

When I arrived on Tuesday, the yard and house were packed. All the schoolchildren from Gema's school had come to say goodbye to their friend, all the family and neighbors were there, including Gema's sisters Julia and Kelly and her brother Jarrison. Two pickup trucks had been transformed into hearses by the addition of glass-sided catafalques and holders for flowers. Family members carried out the two coffins, and we processed slowly to the graveyard. Normally, it's a true procession, with the mourners walking behind the coffin, but the distance was a little too great for that, so we - the two pickup hearses, a large number of pickups and trucks full of people, and a couple of cars, including mine - drove, but at a funereal walking pace of about 2 miles an hour.

At the graveyard the coffins were arranged for a final viewing, prayers (Evangelical) were said, the coffins were lowered, and young men took on the work of shoveling as we all stood in silence.
This week Sonia's mother, who represents the Catholic side of the family, has been holding the nightly rosary that will culminate in the ultimado, a night of mourning and celebration, on the 8th day.

These final rites are very direct, very beautiful, and very matter-of-fact in El Salvador, where death is so much more frequently a part of a family's life. The richer folk in this country may be buried in one of the grand new cemetaries with astroturf carpets available to hide the earthiness of the grave, but most Salvadorans will come to country graveyards followed by a procession of those who loved them. To my eyes, these ceremonies are fitting and loving, but nothing takes away the sorrow left by the death of a beloved child.

Ironing

My favorite get-ready-for-the-mission ritual is ironing: 10 shirts, a few pairs of pants. Korla, who's 23, told me she's maybe used an iron 5 times in her life. This is definitely one of those generational things, but I love the ritual and the smug satisfaction of having a clean shirt ready for every day of the team's visit. I have the additional advantage of not having to pack my ironed shirts - I can just take them over to the retreat house we're staying in on Saturday. Tonight the perfect accompaniment for ironing was a good episode of Law and Order, which runs just as often here as it does in the U.S.

But the best part of today was taking a copy of our franquisia to the customs office at the airport. This is the first time I've ever had it early enough to give them a head start, and we were all pleased. I don't know if this will mean less time standing around on Saturday night, but I'm hoping so.

Meanwhile, up in Oregon, Washington and Alaska, folk are packing up, ironing (or not), Kathy is checking over the tubs and duffel bags, car pools are assembling for the trip to Seattle. Tomorrow night (Friday) is packing night, when everything gets put together at the SeaTac hotel, and on Saturday our team will begin a very long day before the crack of dawn - a day that will end in Candelaria, El Salvador, probably close to midnight. We're all ready!

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.

Corn for the mill

I realized the other day that I didn't know exactly how Salvadoran women process their dry corn before they take it to the local mill (even small villages have a corn molina) for grinding. Martha was happy to fill me in: you put the dry corn kernels in a big pot with water and lime, and boil them for about an hour. The kernels open and soften during this time - it's the same process that's used to make hominy. Then you have to rinse them carefully, several times, to get rid of the lime. And then, if you're a Salvadoran woman, you put the corn in a huacal, a plastic tub, and you balance it on your head, and you take it to the mill. After it's ground, you take it home and make the family's tortillas, or perhaps make tortillas to sell. Here the tortillas are thick and they're always made from white corn, very unlike the Mexican corn tortilla. They are filling and healthy - the staff of life.