Suchitoto No. 3 (or: How to Conduct Your Lovelife Over Social Media)

Hello everyone, 

So, as you know, I'm going to be teaching a meditation class here, and the whole debacle will be starting tomorrow.

Here is the flyer - it took me two hours to write this, so you can imagine how long it has taken me to write eight weeks worth of meditations into Spanish. 

I had to ¨sell¨ meditation a lot differently than the way it is sold in the west. In Australia/USA  it´s all about connecting with universal energy and finding a union with your true, authentic, spiritual self etc etc (eye roll).  I couldn´t get away with any of that stuff here, because people would probably think it was a cult. So, the flyer says that meditation is a simple type of relaxation practice that can help you to reduce stress levels and feel calmer. 

                                                  

I was putting the flyers up today in a few places around town. When I went into the women's sewing cooperative they asked if I could come and run a special little "grupito" for them once a week, at 7.30am! 

That class should be VERY interesting; I will be rolling out of bed, half asleep, to teach something I have never taught in a language I can't speak to a group of rural women whose conversation is made up of 99.9% El Salvadorean slang. Someones stress levels may be lowered, but they certainly won´t be mine. 

In other news, I got a three-month visa extension and went to the capital for the day, which looked a bit like this...

                           

And this (very like the USA)...

                         

I also bought a restaurant then went on an acid trip and painted it... 

                         

Then I went to the beach for a week to hang out with my little friend. I'm not sure what is in that bottle, but I suspect it's something a bit stronger than milk...(undies on the outside of tracksuit pants is always a bit of a giveaway).

                      

My spanish conversation teacher, Marvin, has turned out to have a crazy love life that is carried out primarily through email, text and Facebook. After spending 2 months practicing my Spanish with him, I've realized that El Salvador is the only country in the world whose soap operas are an understated reflection of what  goes on in daily life.

 A few weeks before Christmas he got on Facebook to make a passionate declaration to the love of his life, saying that he would be with her FOREVER, for ETERNITY, and would be buying a house with her in San Salvador where they would live together FOREVER for ETERNITY, etc etc.  

I thought she had hacked into his Facebook account and written it as a joke, but no, it was all him. (What better place could there be to declare your eternal love for your girlfriend of three weeks than on Facebook? There's no way that can backfire.) 

Then, a week later, around Christmas I was on Facebook and read, ¨I cannot believe that the love of my life is prepared to travel this world alone, and without me.¨  And, the next morning: ¨I have come to a momentous decision in my life; I will continue on with my family and my new baby.¨

A casual reader of Marvin´s facebook page might think, ¨Wow, the love of his life is all over the shop! First she´s buying a house with him, next week she´s traveling the world without him, and the next day she´s having his baby?! WTF?¨   

The ¨love of Marvin´s life¨ was all over the shop, but that is because she was three seperate women. Here is the crazy rundown, in a very brief synopsis...

Week 1 Marvin is in love with Ilsia, his girlfriend of three weeks and planning to buy a house with her. 

Week 2 Marvin´s ex-partner, Carly, announces she is 4 months pregant (to him). Ilsia dumps him...

Or does she?

Week 3 

Day 1 Ilsia tells Marvin (on Facebook) that she is pregnant to her ex-boyfriend. But, she doesn´t want to marry her ex-boyfriend, she wants to marry Marvin.

Day 2 Marvin finds out that Ilsia is lying about being pregnant to someone else to try to force him to get back with her. (WTF? How does that even work?)

Day 3 Marvin falls in love with Sarah, a beautiful American backpacker. I know this because he sends her an email asking to be her fiance (after knowing her for 24 hours) and she screams and shows me.

Day 4 Sarah rejects Marvin and the perfect place to share this rejection is on his Facebook wall: ¨I can´t believe the love of my life is content to travel this world alone, without me...¨

Day 5 Marvin gets back together with his pregnant ex, Carly, resumes his ¨family life¨ and announces it on Facebook.

THE END. 

Or is it...?

Week 7
I am at the beach and receive an email saying that a certain person is in love with ME. He gets avery curt email back saying that I am five years older than his mother (to be fair to both of us she had him at 13), and please $%&/ off. 

THE END

In other less dramatic news, I´ve been doing a bit of decorating in my bedroom...

¡Feliz navidad!

Merry Christmas! 

It´s Christmas Eve here, but tonight is the big night of celebration so I will be having my big meal about the same time as you in Australia.

Tonight I´m heading to the house of Edy, the woman who manages the place where I´m living. Here´s a photo of her  in the garden of the house next door to mine. Awesome view...they grow corn in front of their million dollar view and have the house facing the street. ???

A few days ago I had lunch with Edy's extended family. Here's a photo; tortillas and steak were on the menu, along with delicious freshly-made watermelon and mandarin juice. 

I made one of those classic language mistakes during the meal, and I´m sure they now think I´m a total jerk. Edy´s family are all from the capital, San Salvador. We were talking about how peaceful Suchitoto (this town) is, and I meant to say, ¨Yes, it is, but I haven´t been to San Salvador yet.¨ Instead, I got my words a bit messed up and said, ¨Yes, it is, and I will NEVER go to Sal Salvador.¨ Oopsy. 

Rule no 1 for making friends in Central America: don´t insult anyone's patria chica (home-town)...even if they are so crime-ridden that police dealing with gang violence have to wear balaclavas all the time in case gang members identify them and target their families. 

Yesterday I felt good for the first time in a couple of weeks, so I and my Spanish conversation teacher, Marvin, went on a walk down to the lake. He is a passionate bird-watcher, so here is the one-and-only photo of me as a twitcher, and a few photos from the walk.

The Christmas festivities have been ramping up here; last week they had a big parade of all the local beauty queens who each had their own extravagent float. Check this one out - there is a fully-functioning concrete ¨water feature¨ on this float!! 

And here´s a photo of me with my lovely Spanish teacher. After an hour with her I feel like my head is going to explode. She already has a degree in English and is now studying public relations, so she´s really interesting to talk to. 

Feliz Navidad! 

Suchitoto - El Salvador

I've been in suchitoto for a week and am really liking it here. It's a small town of about 20,000 people an hour's drive from the capital city. I can't believe there are that many people living here because the town is so quiet - there is hardly any traffic. I think everyone walks everywhere, except when they have weddings, when they all cram into the back of a truck! (The bride gets to ride up front though...)

Maybe they´re going to be sold at market, or maybe they´re going to a wedding reception. Who knows?

Suchitoto is often called the cultural capital of El Salvador. It has the best preserved colonial architecture, lots of cultural events and is also quite left-wing and very organised. (It was one of the left-wing guerrilla centers during the war.) There are almost no tourists here, but there are a handful of US volunteers here working on different kinds of community projects.

This stencil is painted on the outside of almost every house in town. It says, "In this house we want a life free from violence against women.".

The woman who's living in the same house as me is a volunteer who is here for a year running workshops on non-violence. There's also a beautiful ex-convent next door to where I'm staying which is now a centre for arts and peace. There's a nun who runs the centre and has all kinds of classes there - everything from harp lessons to yoga. I just took this photo yesterday at the opening of a photographic exhibition at the centre.

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The old convent

The gang violence that is such a big part of life in other parts of the country seems to be kept at bay here. You can see that the locals are putting a lot of energy into diverting kids from becoming involved in the gangs.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case in the rest of the country. Last week, I did an interview with Gilles, a Belgian guy who lives in the surf town where I stayed for a month. He and his family run the hotel where I stayed. I interviewed him about his experiences being an immigrant to ES for the travel website I write for. 

Playing with Gilles´CUTE son 

He was telling me that tourists are almost never impacted by the gang warfare, but he has had extortion threats and has had plenty of friends who've been caught up in it in some way. He said that because tourists buy drugs, they are fairly protected from any violence. This is because if tourists are harmed then they will stop coming and the customer base will dry up. So, they aren't targeted. (So, a big shout out to all those dope-loving US surfers who are keeping the rest of us tourists so safe.)

But he said that, particularly for young men here, they are lucky if they don't get caught up in it in some way. He has an 17-year-old nephew who is living with him because he comes from an area of the country where there is a lot of gang activity. The gangs often try to recruit from schools, and the boy's father sent him away because he felt like he could get caught up in it. The boy's mum lives in the US and he hasn't seen her for years because she's there as an illegal immigrant and if she leaves she won't be allowed back into the US! 

Even though the war ended twenty years ago in some way it is still continuing because the war led, in different ways, to the big gang culture here.  This is the sign outside the local Internet cafe. 

What? You can't pack heat while surfing the net!? Weird...

Here are a few photos from the house I'm staying in and around town. I don't think I've ever had such a huge bedroom; this photo shows 1/4 of it. (And, I´m only paying $175 a month!!)

This is the view from the garden next door to my house...not too shabby!! 

El Tunco Photos

Hi all, 

I have been putting together some photos from here for the travel website I write for. They wanted a photographic essay of the town where I´m staying. I´m still not quite sure what a ¨photographic essay¨ is, but this is my attempt at one! 

I´m staying right next to the beach in a very quiet place and really like it here. The locals are friendly, but not overly-so, and there are no hawkers or annoying hassling sales people everywhere. Hardly anyone speaks English, so I am being forced to speak in Spanish, which is great and was just what I was looking for.   Here is the piece...

Located just thirty-minutes drive from El Salvador´s airport, the village of El Tunco offers swaying palm-trees, some of Central America´s best waves, and a laid-back welcome from its friendly residents.  During the weekdays, El Tunco is tranquil; surfers from all over the wander down to the sea to catch waves whilst women stoke wood fires and fry El Salvador´s national dish, the pupusa. On the weekends, the village comes alive as residents from San Salvador escape the heat of the capital city and enjoy a few day´s break by the sea. Here is a photographic essay — From Dawn to Dusk — which features this quiet beach-side pueblo.

Tijuana Paranoia

Hola!

I thought I´d put up a few photos from Tijuana. 

I crossed over  the US border with no problems, except for a woman on the tram asking me if I was homeless. (Maybe it was the pillow that I carry Linus-style everywhere with me, and the fact that it was filthy after being dragged (also Linus-style) across the floor of multiple airports.)

Once I was across the border, a woman stopped me and asked where I was going. I told her the area and she said she was going to her dentist in the same part of town (yes, she comes to Mexico to go to the dentist). She suggested that we share a cab, because she was worried about getting one by herself. I couldn´t believe that she was afraid to get a cab in the centre of town, at 10am, for a five minute ride! I´d only been in the county two minutes and even I could see that this was carrying the Tijuana paranoia a little too far. 

The view from my hotel 

I stayed in a little hotel near the entertainment and surgical centre of Tijuana. It quickly became obvious that tequila and giving anaesthetic is the primary source of income here.

The tequila part is obvious: heaps of young American gringos come here to party.  But, there are also dentists, optometrists, doctor´s and medical-supply offices everywhere. Having dinner one night I saw two Americans wearing pyjamas, with little IV bandages on the back of their hands. I started listening in and realised they'd both had lap-band surgery. I'd feel fairly confident going to the dentist in Tijuana, but I'm not sure I´d be undergoing stomach surgery in a hurry. 

Turns out, for all its bad press, Tijuana is pretty safe. The manager of my hotel was telling me that from 2006 until 2010 there were fifty murders per DAY in the city! (Which has about two million people). It was all a drug turf-war; the cartels in Tijuana wanted to charge other cartels to transport drugs through the border region. Eventually, they all reached a settlement amongst themselves, and now there are ´´only´´ around two murders a day.

A revolutionary-style mural opposite my hotel with the heading - Mexico and Cuba are brother countries.

Of course, when I told the manager that I was heading to El Salvador he said, "Are you crazy? It´s so dangerous there!" And I said, "Ummm...do you know what the rest of the world thinks of Tijuana!?" "Oh, that's rubbish," he said. I  said that maybe it was the same for El Salvador; unless you attempt to take over another drug cartel´s territory, you aren't likely to get into any trouble at all.

Overall, I really liked TIjuana. Despite everyone looking as though they´d been clothed by the drug lord section of Target (c. 1985), the people were very friendly and happy to let me inflict my creche-level Spanish on them.

I´ll do a post with a few photos from El Salvador next week, but here´s one of the Mexico City airport, which I´m thinking was built for the Mexico City olympics. It has  60´s architecture, with the walls and ceiling of the whole airport constructed with these holes cut through them. Don Draper would feel right at home!

Ethiopia II - (not as long as the first one!)

Hello again, 

I am back in Addis after another few weeks in the countryside so I thought I'd post a few more photos and have a bit more of a whine about proselytizers. One of my friends here, Yared, says I must have 'please save me' written across my forehead because every second person is exhorting me to embrace Jesus with all my heart.

This is a conversation i had with my cleaning woman, Emabet.

Emabet: why are you lying on your bed Emma? Are you sick?
Me: just a headache.
Emabet: But Emma, are you Christian
Me: (trying to head this off at the pass) Yes! I certainly am a Christian.
Emabet: but what kind?
Me: ummmm.... I am Catholic?
Emabet: (gives me a shocked look) Oh Emma, you are not Pentecostal? I ask you to please, please start reading the bible. Jesus Christ can do anything, he can heal your headache, pleeeease look in the bible...

At this point I was wondering what she thought Catholics read - Playboy? 

After a few minutes of this  just pretended to get a phone call from an imaginary friend to stop the tirade and get Emabet to focus on what she was supposed to be doing - cleaning the bathroom of a rich white woman for 5 cents an hour.

That's no joke about the 5 cents, which is why the cleaning ladies at this hotel are well known for stealing. I am trying to bribe Emabet into not stealing from me by giving her bananas and other extremely cheap things, but one of my friends here tried that and said they just stole more, because they thought she was so generous she wouldn't mind! Amongst other things she has lost two iPhones, a cashmere jumper, deodorant and her underwear. I have locked up my passport but I can't quite work out how to lock up my deodorant and undies. Maybe I just need to start reading the bible.

The street outside my hotel

 Speaking of the Bible, it is Lent here now, and all the Ethiopian orthodox Christians stop eating meat for the duration. In the run up to Lent they get ready for two months without protein by eating a tonne of raw meat. I went to two lunches of raw meat over a couple of days and found it quite psychologically disturbing to see people slicing up meat into big chunks and popping them into their mouth instead of into a fry pan. 

 

This is actually how they serve the raw meat - just a big platter of...raw meat. 

On Easter Sunday the two month meat fast is broken and there will be so much raw meat around I think the whole country will look like an abattoir.

I am staying in Ethiopia's oldest hotel which looks quite nice from the outside, but I think the bathrooms are the worst I've ever seen. Mine is doubling as an Ebola breeding laboratory. 

This part of the hotel looks OK, but...

...the footpath outside is another matter.

The good thing about the hotel that it has a piano, which I am loving, except that I think it was tuned about the same time my bathroom was last cleaned.

 

There are some really interesting people staying here, also long-term, like me. So far I've met a photographer, a film-maker from the UK who is writing a screen-play, a weird guy who is making a documentary on Armenians in Ethiopia (yes, that topic is as obscure as it sounds) and a German novelist. It is a little bit like living in an artist's colony - not quite what I expected from Ethiopia, but extremely interesting and I'm enjoying it a lot. 

My news is that I am doing a bit of marketing work for Salayish (the place near the lake where I was staying). The idea came when they showed me an ad they had in a local magazine which must be pretty much the worst ad I have ever seen (apart from Brad Pitts Chanel no. 5 ad).

This is what the ad looked like:

If you are saying, "what IS that?" You are certainly not alone. None of us could figure out what that photo actually was or where it was taken. It looks like the light of a steam train heading straight for the building. (I think it is actually the sunset).

So, I approached the owner with some marketing ideas, and Yared (the owner's nephew) convinced them that they had to try some proper marketing. Which resulted in the following conversation:

Me: so I'll need to get into your email account. What is it?
Ayelew (the owner): ummm... I think the password is xxxx.
Me: ok, but I need more that the password, who is it with, google? Yahoo?
Ayelew: I don't really know, my daughter in the USA checks the email when she has time.
Me: wait a minute - so no-one here has email? Derese, can't you get email on your smart phone?
Derese: not at the moment.
Me: does 'not at the moment' mean 'not this morning but it will work this afternoon' or 'not ever'.
Derese: yeah, not ever.
Me: but you have an email reservations form on your website! Who is responding to those emails?
Ayelew: my daughter in America, when she isn't busy. But she is quite busy at the moment.
Me: whaaaaat?
Yared: I think the form is really there because it looks good. It's just something nice to have on the website.
Me: whaaaaaat?

Up until this point I had been worried about my marketing capabilities, but now I realise that absolutely anything I do will be an improvement. 
 

Ayelew and one of the Salayish staff members.

Yared and me, having the MOST delicious roast chicken evah!

Yesterday I helped set up what I hope will be a nice little marketing deal for Salayish. One of the film makers staying here is going to make a short promo video for Salayish, which we can put up on their website, and we are also going to team up with a local tour company who will put an ad for them in a really stylish brochure that is going to travel agents and travel trade fairs in Europe. All for $250, which I think is a great price.

The owners of Salayish freaked out about actually spending money on marketing (they are paying me with free accommodation), so, in the typical Ethiopian way, there were days of protracted discussions with every member of the extended family having their say, and finally the owner said yes. 

The tour company owner came to see me after the meeting and offered me a job, which was nice. Marketing and managing - full time or part time. I will think about doing a little bit of part-time, after I've finished with Salayish. It is a nice little company and I know someone here who is already doing some marketing work for them who says they are great to work for and very chilled. Also, their office is about twenty steps from my bedroom - very convenient! So, we'll see.

Little donkey, little donkey, on the dusty road...