I spent all of last week in a small community called Nueva Trinidad in the department of Chalatenango. Meg, Tom, and I stayed with a woman named Lillian who lived with her friend Rosalina. They each had a daughter, ages 16 and 17, that trickled in and out through the week as well. The week was definitely a highlight of being here so far, and it is not a week I will soon forget. So many things happened, but just to highlight a few, here are some of the more fun things we did: rode a horse, ate fresh mangos and jocotes, cut Tom’s hair, climbed a mountain at sunset, played soccer with the neighbor kids, salsa-danced, sang the Beatles, ate mountains of beans, rice, and tortillas, successfully made my own tortillas, walked on dusty roads seeing incredible mountain views, drank iodine-stained water, shared a tiny bed with Meg, woke up next to a cockroach, rode in the back of the mayor’s pickup at night, stargazed, and ate choco-bananos sold by our neighbors. There were many fun moments, but also a lot of sad ones. Poverty, both physical and emotional, pervaded the community. Some people really deal with a lot of sadness in their lives, and that has yet ceased to amaze me. I heard stories of people remembering details from living in the mountains, sleeping on rocks and dead people during the war, memories of the murders of family and friends, missing family members that made it to the states, witnessing relationships of abuse, and living day-to-day in a state of physical poverty.
