The Garden of Eden is Guarded by Dogs @ Night

Bueno. Aquí estoy en la oficina de OIKOS. Yesterday I arrived in Piedra Azul, a rural community in Usulután. First Tedde and Sally took Judith and I to OIKOS to meet the people there and find out what we´ll be doing. It seems we´ll be helping with various projects in my community, from one where the women will be planting fruit trees in their yards, to a chicken raising project and various others. We´ll also be helping with workshops on disaster prevention and control in various communities and in the schools in my community.
Afterwards we took Judith to her family - her mom could talk the hind leg off a donkey and ¡que rápido! and they have un montón de hammocks and then we went to my home in Piedra Azul. I swear it´s like the Garden of Eden there, even if it is ridiculously hot y hay un montón de zancudos (mosquitos). My host parents own a fair bit of land and they have all sorts of mango, avocado and coconut trees as well as a ton of other plants - corn, papaya, pineapple, stuff that´s like alfalfa, and a ton of stuff I´d never even heard of before. My host parents are really friendly, especially my Papá, Carlos. He showed me all around their land this morning telling me the names of all sorts of different plants, more than I could ever remember and what they´re used for, from insecticide to herbacide, to medicine, to food for animals and food for people. He also showed me how he lets out the chickens in the morning and feeds the fish. That´s right, they have a couple of rectangular cement structures filled with water where they raise fish. They also have goats, cows, turkeys, and guinea fowl. Tedde seemed to think turkeys are gross/ugly. I think they´re the funniest thing ever. In my community in the DR there was a flock of them and the kids would chase after them and clap and the whole lot of them would gobble all at the same time.
My host mom´s name is Daisy. She´s an excellent cook and she makes cheese from their cow´s milk and she´s going to show me how to make it :D She made me some delicious mango juice this morning, and they have a bucket full of mangos that I can help myself to whenever. It kind of blows my mind.
Their kids are grown already and they have seven grandkids, one of whom was visiting last night and will be here until tomorrow. Apparently she comes to visit often. Her name is Eva Marina (Almost like Eva María in the popular Bachata song) and she´s two, small, absolutely adorable, with large eyes and a mind of her own. She was really shy at first and would only stare at me, finger in mouth, or run and hide, but quickly enough she started playing and chattering. Her favorite thing seems to be following around her grandpa, whom she calls Papá Carlos. He always calls her Corazón. Ven aquí Corazón.
Yesterday afternoon my host dad´s sister and brother-in-law were visiting. He laughed when he heard I was majoring in Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies and said aquí no hay ni paz ni justicia. He could care less for Bush and Reagan, although they seemed to think Carter and Clinton were okay. A neighbor girl who´s nineteen and has two children came over to visit. They told her not to have any more kids at least till she´s older so that she can take care of the ones she has. Her little boy had an engorged stomache, and my host dad´s sister is a nurse and she told her all sorts of things to do.
For dinner last night we had rice, beans, cheese, tortillas, and whole cooked fish. It was all quite good. They asked before giving me fish. I´ve had whole cooked fish before and well I like fish and I don´t really mind if the head´s still attached so long as it´s well cooked. In fact I prefer it to breaded and fried fish stick style fish.
My host parents typically go to bed around nine, nine-thirty and get up around five, five-thirty. I did´n´t get up until nearly seven today, but I imagine I´ll adjust little be little. Judith and I have gotten up to go running at 5:30 a couple of times this week, so... It gets dark here around 7, 7:30 and it´s plenty bright by 5:30.
I have my own room with a hammock, which is really nice. There´s also a treddle sewing machine in my room. The door to both of the bedrooms and the outhouse is a curtain. The one unfortunate thing is that I have to let my parents know if I´m going to the bathroom at night and one of them has to walk over to the outhouse with me, because they have several dogs, and if one of them doesn´t go with me the dogs will start barking, even growling. So last night of course I had to go pee really badly in the middle of the night, so I had to wake up my host mom. Well they both woke up but my host mom came with me. They wanted to know if something was bothering my stomach, but no I just had to go pee really bad. I found it all rather mortifying. I hate asking people for things, and it took me a while to gather the courage to wake her up, but well I really had to pee, so...
This morning after the grand tour of the grounds, we went to a meeting at the next door neighbor´s, donde Patti, where Carlos, who is a leader in the community, and Hector who works with Oikos spoke about the chicken project to a group of women who had gathered donde Patti. Afterwards I came here to the Oikos office, where Guillermo talked to Judith and I about the schedule for the next couple of months. Next week we get to help with a puppet show in a couple of the schools. He also gave us various booklets to read about disaster prevention and control and planning fincas, which the women in Piedra Azul will be doing. We read over various power point presentations that they use as a basis for their workshops and we ate lunch nearby. Judith headed for home, and I´m waiting for Guillermo to be able to take me back to my house and aprovechando el tiempo para escribir este blog entry.
Last night there was something in the news about thirty immigrants in Oregon getting released to return to their homes and my host Dad got really excited and gave me a high hive. ¡Oregón! He thinks that those who come and work hard should be given their place. Dice que los ladrones claro que no pero la gente que es trabajosa...
Well this´ll probably be my last update for several days as tomorrow we´ll be doing a workshop in my community and I won´t be coming into the office then or at all until at least Tuesday. Hasta luego, que nos vamos ahora.