Things on my mind....

Slowly… very slowly… I am beginning to understand. This culture is altogether different. All together something I was not raised to understand. People here look you in the eye. They say good morning when they pass you on the street. Everyone says hola. Platitudes are prevalent. Even an offhanded invitation should be accepted. If you have an engagement but receive another invitation, you ditch the first and go with the most recent.

The poverty here is also something entirely different.

Sticks, sheet metal and corrugated board equal a house.

A child doesn’t go to school today because she doesn’t have glasses and cannot see the letters in the book.

An interesting piece of cultural news: this is a nation of 9 million people. 3 million of them live abroad. The biggest city in El Salvador is Los Angeles.

There are more cell phones in El Salvador than there are people.

The average wage in El Salvador is $154 a month. I can make that in 20 hours in the states, at minimum wage. Less than three days.

People are still afraid here. There civil war ended 30 years ago. People who experienced utter and complete violence are parents of this generation. People who had their rights infringed upon, who had no semblance of social justice in their lives, who lived in fear… They had to wonder who would be gone tomorrow, who would be found murdered next, looking for the Dark Mark over their homes next.

The United States funded the government, supplied arms and ammunition and missiles and bombs. All to terrorize a people who wanted food and water and medical care. Under the Reagan Administration, under the threat of communism, our government gave the label of terrorist to those fighting for sustenance.

Now, after peace accords have been signed for three decades, solidarity is still a common word, a common goal. How often do you use that word in the United States? Our meritocracy doesn’t allow for it.

How do you feel about all of that?

It gets better. No one blames the people of the United States. No one says that I helped to fund their war, or my parents helped. No one argues that I should be dishonored because of the American heritage.

How much better are they than we, then, those of us in the United States who judge every person of Middle Eastern descent, because of September eleventh.

Teatro! Day 1 !

I taught my first class in theatre yesterday… all on my own. It was scary, while at the same time, liberating. I molded my curriculum after Boal’s theatre of the oppressed, allowing the participants to guide what was happening on stage. This lasted for about 5 minutes, until I realized that I did not have enough language skill, no did these children know anything about theatre. I think that I was being a little too optimistic.

So, while still thinking of Boal, I taped some tongue twisters to the board and had each of my 8 rowdy 6-12 year olds read one, in a dramatic way (at least they could interpret it how they wanted to). I must admit that they were hilarious. One boy decided to sing the twister about chickens as if he were singing a hym. A little girl fell to her knees and almost cried about her mother spoiling her. Another boy, with a lot of potential, was an alien reciting a twister that is something similar to “if I can, I can, if you can, you can.” All in all, I laughed way too much.

Another anstonishing point to all of this, is that I had more boys than girls! How often does that happen in the USA? It was fantastic! They were pretty crazy a lot of the time, and a few of the more clam games I had planned were pushed aside for more communal, dramatic games. GO SOCIAL WORK FLEXABILITY. I think that those children went away with a sense of empowerment and a sense of self-expression, now I just hope they all come back on Thursday!