In Santo Tomas la Union

This week Maria del Carmen and I are guests of CSJP Associate Sheila McShane, who runs the Clinica Maxeña (that's pronounced mashenya, more or less, and is the Quiche version of Thomas) in Santo Tomas la Union, Suchitepequez, Guatemala.  It's been great to connect with Sheila (working away on her laptop here, in the common dining room) and to see the good work this clinic has been doing for almost fifty years now. 

The Clinica Maxeña is a mission of the Diocese of Helena, Montana and Sheila has been part of it almost from the beginning, though she had to leave for many years during Guatemala's Civil War. Along with Father Kevin, who joined the mission this year, and BVM Sisters Mary and Anna (alas, I don't have their last names!) Sheila forms a small North American community in this very Quiche Mayan community.  Unlike Suchitoto, this is a town where you don't see any foreigners outside the Clinica group and visitors like Maria del Carmen and me. 

Today I toured a very beautiful and very special part of the Clinica Maxeña, the natural medicine garden.  There were some familiar plants - oregano, mint, marigold - but others that seemed fantastic, like this plant with long leaf blades and tiny flowers along the sides of the blades.  It's good for taming parasites, I was told.

Another plant with broad, flat leaves thrust up a group of delicate bell flowers (I didn't learn its purpose):

and the trees hosted their own communities of parasites and collaborators, including a white orchid in bloom:

It's no surprise that the garden was full of butterflies of many different colors, sizes and shapes.  Here's one that was kind enough to pause for a photo:

Indeed, an enchanted garden.  I hope those who work with the traditional medicines made from these plants will be able to keep the knowledge and interest alive among the people of Santo Tomas.

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.

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.

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.

Home time

I'm back in Bellevue for the month of June and for (again) some medical attention. I have an unexplained and - so far - undiagnosable chunk of gunk in my bronchia that shows up in coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and general discomobulation. There's a bronchoscopy scheduled Friday - following up on two of those in March. I hope for diagnosis and a treatment plan!

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the glories of late spring at St. Mary-on-the-Lake. The rhododendrons are in full bloom, along with azaleas, strawberries, dogwoods, salal and a Chilean Fire Tree. The view from anywhere, but especially from our chapel where you look out onto a 30 foot tall red rhody in full bloom, is spectacular. All the evergreens, the western red cedar and douglas fir and spruce and yew, have fresh new light green tips. I haven't been back at this time for two years, and I'd almost forgotten what it's like!

The special joy of this time has been celebrating our six Jubilarians - I was very honored to be asked to reflect on the readings for the Jubilee Mass, and very glad that Sr. Carmel Little kindly read the reflections for me, as I didn't want to cough my way through them. You can read a bit of them on our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace website.

The special sorrow of these days was the death of our Sister Rita Mary Lyons. I knew that she was receiving hospice care and was quietly taking her leave of us, but really wanted to be able to tell her how much I loved and honored her. I was able to do that the night I came home; she died the next day. Sister Rita Mary was a nurse and nursing teacher and supervisor for most of her active years as a sister; in Ketchikan in the 1970s (I think), she became a chaplain and offered her understanding heart and wisdom to staff and patients. When health forced her to retire to St. Mary-on-the-Lake in the 1990s, she saw the opportunity to do all the reading that she didn't have time for in her very active life. She must have read her way through almost every book in our fairly large library of spirituality and theology, as well as a few entertaining novels. She was a woman of few words and deep wisdom, a wisdom worn with great humility. I will miss her greatly.

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?

Amazing Amate

Today I drove early in the morning to the port of La Libertad, where some of our November patients from San Juan Opico were going through an eye clinic to see if they would qualify for surgery. There in the courtyard of the Casa Emiliani retreat house was this most amazing tree, an amate, that had put down a secondary trunk and flung up a main limb in midair. It's a tree with the lines of a dancer, a tree with circles and arches and great flowing lines of timber, a tree that hardly seems possible, and is surely unforgettable.

Alas, our three patients did not qualify for this surgery, but all did receive glasses and thorough eye checks. And I am glad to have made the acquaintance of this ancient and glorious tree.

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.

The work of our hands

Korla and I were talking the other day about work we've done and work we've loved. She said that when she was writing her college thesis and working she spent whole long and tiring days in front of a computer screen, but what she really loved was making theater sets, making something you could touch and see at the end of the day's work. It's the same for me: I do a lot of my work in front of the computer, but I feel more engaged, more complete, more myself when I'm cooking or gardening.

That conversation tugged at me, and I remembered the visible joy our PazSalud doctors have in doing hands-on medicine - touching, looking, listening, asking questions - old-fashioned physical medicine without the computers and machines and tests available that are so much a part of their life as doctors in the United States (that's Dr. Anne Welch in the photo from our 2010 medical mission). Those machines and tests are amazing tools, and so is my computer, but there's a hunger we begin to feel when we've spent too much time in front of the screen and away from real bodies, real substances, real work. That's the kind of medicine Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of the astonishing novel Cutting for Stone and chair for the theory and practice of medicine at Stanford teaches: the old-fashioned and necessary arts of the physical exam and hands-on medicine.

Handwork - building theater sets, making quilts, practicing yoga, gardening, making music, drawing, tending patients - seems to me essential to our sense of well-being, of being human. The work of our hands is real work - messy, essential and holy.

Kale

On Monday, I'm happy to say, my doctor, Anita Shaffer, listened to my lungs and pronounced them clear. It's a joy to be up and about again, doing some of the things I treasure during my trips home. One of them is cooking kale - with garlic and pinenuts and olive oil, braised rapidly, it's a glorious dish, all the better because kale never, ever shows up in Salvadoran markets. I cooked that tonight along with a bean soup that I learned to make in El Salvador - roasted tomatoes, onion, garlic and jalapeños pureed with red beans, ancho chiles and stock, served with avocado, sour cream (or crema in El Salvador), and chives. This was for my sister friends in Prospect House, a community on Capitol Hill that I used to live in, and they loved it. I even found coconut ice cream for dessert, which has always been the PazSalud specialty.

I haven't found a source of chives in El Salvador, so I'm bringing some seeds back, along with seeds for a cherry tomato suited to the tropics, basil, amaranth and endive. It'll be fun to see how it all does, growing in pots up on our sun deck/clothes drying deck. Got to be a sign of good health, creating and rejoicing in favorite flavors. I'm thankful to be enjoying it all.

Lemons

Last year the lemon tree in our patio gave us something like 35 lemons, spread out over quite a few weeks. It looked like a dying tree, with some kind of infestation curling its leaves. During the dry season I watered it a few times and gave it a bit of fertilizer.

And this year it has been producing about 35 lemons every day. What can you do with 35 lemons a day? I've been making and drinking lemonade in quantity; I've frozen lemon juice cubes; and I have a big bottle of lemon juice in the refrigerator. Each day we put that morning's lemon harvest in the black clay bowl on our table. When I pray in the morning, looking out into the patio, there's a scent of lemon everywhere. The lemons keep coming and when I look up at the tree, it still has lemons beyond counting.

So we've been doing what people in the Northwestern U.S. do when the zucchinis ripen: every day, we try to figure out who we can give lemons to. Margaret Jane takes them to the Centro Arte para la Paz, I take them on all my trips to the capital. What a glorious excess! And for years I imagined how wonderful it would be to have a lemon tree in my yard. It IS wonderful to be bombarded with this glorious excess.

Springtime

Springtime in Seattle is glorious, a four-month-long extravaganza in which each week has its specialty and each bush and tree and flower finds its moment to unfold in splendor. A pleasure to be back for three weeks of this long season: we're in daffodil and forsythia and cherry blossom season, shortly to be followed by the tulips, magnolias, rhodedendrons. Lenten festivities of the warming earth.

Springtime and fall aren't part of the seasons of El Salvador. We go from the rainy season, winter (May through October) to the dry season, summer (November through April). I haven't figured out the rhythms of the plants yet, when different plants lose their leaves or put on new growth. The nance tree in our patio seems to lose leaves all the time, and puts out flowers and new leaves while it's losing the old ones.

Here, I understand the rhythms, and I can name the trees and I know which flowers to look for next. What a gift at this time in my life to be learning a new rhythm and order of this planet. And what a gift to come home to the familiar beauty of the cherry trees.

Sopa de Gallina India

I said that yesterday was a day of lights and shadows. The lights, most of the day, came from a visit to some of the campo villages of San Juan Opico with Gabina (Dina) Dubón. After the drive to Opico, by now familiar, we took a dirt and stone road to Chantusnene, where Doña Carmen Orellana welcomed us to her house. Here, as always in the country, all the visiting and eating happens on the deep front porch. On Carmen's front porch a hen, tied to the table leg, looked up at us. A pot of water was boiling away on the outside hearth, and I understood that the hen was destined to be dinner, perhaps the best loved dinner in El Salvador, sopa de gallina india, Country Hen Soup. Here's a photo of Carmen with the hen.

We didn't stay to watch the beheading and de-feathering of the gallina india, but continued up the road to San Antonio, where we found Don Erasmo talking to a large group of local people about our coming jornada medica. Then Erasmo climbed into the car and we bucketed off on what's probably about the worst road I've ever driven on to visit an extraordinary pair of farms where he and his family are trying new ways of growing food in Central America. They have tomatoes and huisquil and basil and pepián and many herbal remedies growing in pots that are watered from a wastewater pond being cleaned by water hyacinth and fish. They have an orchard of bananas and mangos and papaya and oranges and lemons, and they have a poultry pen and a rabbit hutch built from the bamboo in their bamboo grove. The chicken and rabbit droppings go to fertilize the crops. There's a pig and a goat as well. It's part organic farming, part permaculture, and all very, very impressive, an excellent model to show other Salvadorans what the possibilities are - and part of the Pastoral de la Tierra, teaching people to honor the spiritual reality of our earth. Don Erasmo's daughter sent me off with a bottle of shampoo made from their herbs and two lumps of a very strange smelling brown soap that's supposed to be excellent for the skin.

Then we went back to Carmen's, and to the sopa de gallina india, now ready and glorious. It's probably the first time that I've ever looked my dinner in the eye before eating it, and I will confess that it didn't slow me down at all. The soup was served with large chunks of pepián (a local squash) and carrot, with grilled gallina india on the side and, of course, tortillas. Dina and I ate every bite, along with Carmen and her fellow health promoters, Carmen Galdámez and Fátima Cruz. Carmen sent us off with with bulging bags of oranges and with pepiáns; her neighbor Fátima added bulging bags of mandarin oranges.

The car was getting full, but we bumped on down the road to San Juan Opico, and then headed south to meet with the third Carmen of the day, Maria del Carmen Aviles. Carmen and I talked menus, as she will be doing the cooking for our medical mission group. She asked whether the local volunteers would be eating separately from our group, and was happy when I said no, that the highlight of the week for our group would be getting to know them.

Menus set, we settled in for coffee and quesadillas (totally unlike Mexican quesadillas, this is a cake made with cheese, and it's rich and delicious) with Gumersindo and Felicita, two other health promoters who will be volunteers for our week. And Carmen Aviles sent us off on our way back to the highway and our homes in Apopa and Suchitoto with a quesadilla each, and a loaf cake, and cookies.

Experiencing the overflowing generosity and warmth of these health promoters, being welcomed to their homes and sent home with their bounty gave me a way to balance the terrible news of the massacre at Milingo with what I know of the joyous and generous spirit that is the true reality of El Salvador. Thank you, Carmen and Carmen and Carmen, Erasmo and Gumersindo and Felicita and Fátima, for your welcome, your gifts, your presence and your grace.

Critters

Living with your garden in the middle of your house, as most do here, means living with a few more critters than most North Americans are used to. Tonight Pat and I came back to the house and found a toad sitting in the dining room. How he got here is a mystery - I can't imagine a toad climbing the roofs to get into the garden, and the drain openings seem a little small for this good sized amphibian - but here he undoubtedly was. Pat turns out to have experience in toad removal, fortunately, and trapped him under a yogurt container before decanting him onto the street.

Last night our visitor was a gray and white cat - and she, I know for sure, came and left via the roof tiles. Meanwhile, there are a good number of permanent residents. Among them, when I first moved in, were black bats - and they liked to find a quiet, dark bedroom at about 4 AM and take up residence. We found a little machine that puts out noises that are said to repel bats, and plugged it in. It's worked like a charm, but now a cricket has taken up residence next to the bat repeller - it's probably attracted to the noise, perhaps it's an interspecies romance - and chirps there all through the night.

There are always ants and bees and small bugs (including some that look exactly like green leaves with legs) and no-see-ums around, and because of them we're happy whenever we see or hear one of the family of geckos who live here and snack on them. Birds and butterflies come and go, to my delight.

And then there are the critters who are only heard: the dogs who enter into huge barking contests at night - last night they were howling, the cats who sometimes stage battles on the roofs, the cocks who start calling for sunrise at 2 AM. I'm more conscious here than I ever was in Bellevue of being part of a shared world, one among the creatures who use this tropical space.

Following up

Today was dedicated to follow-ups of various kinds. Kathy Garcia and I drove up to Suchitoto to take a look at the new house and discovered that LOTS remained to be done before a move in would be possible. I sent the landlord a list and we had a good conversation about it all via Skype (he lives in San Diego) and I'm expecting a lot of action in the next two weeks.

Writing a follow-up report on our work for the year to date was a lot easier, except that it's April, the hottest month of the year here, and I kept dripping sweat onto the keyboard. We had a brief, intense rainstorm this evening without much cooling. I'm eager for the real rains to begin. I'm a bit homesick for the tulips and rhododendrons that should be blooming around St. Mary's now - but a strange and beautiful flower, a lily relative, has poked its head out of the earth bed in the patio of my soon-to-be-home, and a handsome lime tree shades the patio. New things to learn to love.

Garbage and flowers

For gringos, maybe especially for those of us from the west coast where clean streets are the norm, the amount of garbage found on the streets and sidewalks and by-ways of El Salvador and Latin America is an initial shock. When you've been here a while, even a little while, you begin to see a little more. First of all, you see that Salvadorans must be just about the cleanest people in the world when it comes to their persons and their homes. Clothes are washed and hung out to dry daily; people present themselves in the very best attire they can manage for an occasion. Houses are swept and mopped and picked up daily. People may be very poor and have only torn clothes, but those clothes will be clean.

So why all the garbage in the streets? Here's what I've noticed -

• There are almost no public garbage containers.
• Garbage, like graffiti, piles up in areas that don't seem to "belong" to anyone.
• The structure of houses, with walls enclosing all the private space, makes it easy to ignore the sidewalk and planting strip outside, which can easily begin to collect throw-aways.
• Almost everything anyone buys - including soft drinks - comes wrapped in plastic.
  
• I'm guessing there's an attitude among some that the public spaces, streets and sidewalks, are fair game for dumping rubbish.
  

Garbage collection now is much better than it was in 20o1, when I first visited El Salvador, and you do now see men collecting rubbish from the streets and public places. El Centro is much cleaner than it used to be - that's not to say it's clean!

But if there's more garbage to be seen here (particularly in the dry season - in the wet months, the rain does a great job of street sweeping) than in Seattle, there are also the flowers, amazing flowers. Just down the block from me on the other side of the street are two trees and a vine - yellow and lavender and fuschia flowers. And in the other direction, just a few houses away from ours, this house with its gorgeous clusters of vines: what could be more beautiful?

Miscellany

Tonight I am present in prayer with the delegates to our Congregation Chapter, and especially with the Sisters who have been nominated for leadership. Tomorrow the process of election will begin with the election of the new Congregation leader. May the Spirit be hovering over Elberon, New Jersey, and over each of these women! We will be blessed in the outcome.

On a much more mundane note, my friend Pat wrote to ask who the Próceres are and how they march. She's referring back to yesterday's blog about El Salvador history. A Prócer, my dictionary tells me, is an important person, a great man, a leader. And Los Próceres are the founding fathers of El Salvador. They are memorialized, in the Boulevard de los Próceres, by very large, blocky head-and-shoulder statues without much individuality or expression. I would have tried to photograph one, but stopping on the Boulevard de los Próceres would be a suicidal act.

And on a more joyful note: I went to the La Laguna botanical gardens today with Ana Lazar, who is down here from the University of Southern Maine on a teaching Fulbright. Getting there was quite a challenge, as it's down in the middle of an industrial district, and there are no signs to guide you, but it's a beautiful place where the city feels far away. Above are flowers from the garden, a purple orchid and a red vine flower, colors to make you sing.

Goodbye to the garden

This week I found a few rain-free hours to tidy up the garden outside my little cabin - pruning, transplanting, cutting down the dahlias and japanese iris. It's an annual ritual, but this year I'm also saying goodbye to this garden, which I've tended and planted happily for five years. Now I'm heading for a tropical garden. I won't see the trillium bloom or the English daisies come back to life or the hosta poke up from their garden bed. I'm going to miss the astonishing scent of the sarcococus (I don't think that can be the right name) in January and the time in January-February when the varied thrushes pay an annual visit and the tiny daffodils that pop up in March. I'm going to miss this garden.

Instead I'll be learning new garden rules (do you plant in the rainy season, or in the dry?) and learning what to plant in El Salvador. The possibilities of a garden are so entirely different - even the grass in El Salvador looks completely unlike grass in Bellevue - that it will be a continual surprise to learn the garden. I don't think I'll have much time to miss the Bellevue garden next year, so I'm missing it in advance right now.