3/23-3/29/2009 - Last full week of project MANI and El Salvador

3/23/09-3/27/09

This week entailed more of the same project MANI related work.  Monday and Tuesday we had around 20 kids each of those days. Wednesday we only had around fifteen or so.  Yesterday was the most exciting day of the week. We did not have many kids but I was recruited to drive along with Marvin to our site since we had two small trucks and it was such a long distance.  The ride out went really well and was uneventful. The ride back however was a different story.  As I have said before, the roads here compel you to drive cautiously as you usually have a cliff to one side or the other of your vehicle to which you can plummet off of if you do not watch the road. As we were heading back, and we were almost into a town we were heading down a steep hill, and picking up speed, as most the time when going down hill you are using breaks because you cannot go much over 40km/h as the roads are to bad, I went to hit the break and nothing happened. I panicked a little and thought “duh, maybe you hit the gas” but I hit it again and nothing.  So I tried again and finally it caught a little and slowed down, which was good. So we kept continuing down and it happened again, again I tried and tried and finally it braked a little.  At this point I was in town and decided to let everyone know we did not have breaks as they no longer did anything at this point.  At this time a picture came into my mind and I started thinking of the two boxes of new brake pads I had seen earlier in the week in one of our other trucks and wondered if those were meant for my truck.  I slowly went in first through the town pulling the E brake as needed with the clutch down and then had to drive cautiously the rest of the 2 miles to Santa Lucia.  Of course as we came into town a heard of cattle was being moved down the road, not uncommon however ironically inconvenient, though this time the breaks worked just enough. I made sure to “communicate clearly” the brakes did not work and found out that indeed those brake pads were meant for that truck but no one had gotten around to it, go figure. The good thing was no one was hurt.  I did not sit down for more than ten minutes when Yanire wanted me to take the promoters out to some of the towns to do a final promotion to attract more people. So I took a different truck and we went to a bunch of small towns, including one that brought me more wonderful 4 wheel drive experience, the truck barely made it up the hill, a hill I think even a hummer would have had a rough time with.  An interesting day of driving but not too bad.  Supposedly we are done Monday, that is if enough kids come but now we have to work Saturday which was not originally in the plans… We also went to Friday night mass for two stations of the cross.

3/28/09-3/29/09

The weekend went well. We had about 15 kids Saturday morning in the clinic and also a lot of patients so I worked in between the two. Sunday we went to El Salvador, which was really awesome. We went to San Miguel, a larger city there and also the beach. It was about a three hour trip there, and the roads were actually paved, it was nice. It was interesting riding in the back of the truck going like 60 down the roads there.  It was a lot nicer there, the roads, the buildings, etc. I was told partly this was because they had a lot of family working in the states sending back money to help their relatives.  I was looking forward to spending US money again as Salvador operates under the USD. Unfortunately my new bank card was not working so that put a halt on my plans which was better anyway as I really have no money to spend.  We went to the mall for a bit, then the girls decided to leave for the beach so we went there. It was another hour drive. The beach was ok, not that nice but there was a ton of people there. The sand there was black as well, like Monte Rico in Guatemala.  We parked on the beach, but our price for parking was that we had to eat/drink at this little restaurant made under a tent so we had a beer and some people had some fresh sea food. I tried Pilsener, the beer of El Salvador, $0.70 a bottle, price was right and it was really good.  We walked around the beach for a while, watched the people, and headed back to the mall. I had dinner at the mall, the girls did some shopping and then we headed to the cathedral.  The cathedral was really nice, but mass was going on so we checked it out and tried not to interrupt. I found enjoyment in watching a crazy guy outside of the church. He had a pack full of mangos he threw in the church and on the stairs. Then he took is shirt of and shoes and traipsed around the middle of the street. After that he climbed the ten foot walls of the church and tried to throw his book bag and shirt on the power lines with no luck. He then proceeded to climb down and get his pack and this time was able to get his pack up on the line. Then he walked back to the front of the church and started drawing pictures on the street with a mango.  There were definitely a lot more different people in El Salvador.  Transgender, drunks, people that you don’t see as much of where we are at and were not used to seeing after being away from the states for so long.  We got back in town around 7:30, in time to wash up and go to bed, it was a long day.