El Salvador Mission

Content from a letter to friends from Sr. Susan Dewitt

Hi, dear friends,

I'm sending this out as from my summer in El Salvador, but I am getting my e-mail here via my regular address and would love to respond personally to an e-mail from you! (peacewoman@mindspring.com)

Let me tell you about the buses here in San Salvador. They're an ongoing fiesta, fire sale and catastrophe, and I love them. These are not just ordinary, sedate buses - many are painted in a variety of psychedelic colors with waves, splashes, Stars of David, Biblical verses, and of course the bus number. Most have a name: Paty Ann or Josue or Lorena. And inside, they're even gaudier. I took a bus back to the city from the little town of Panchimalco whose inside was decorated with: a modern Jesus (stuck partly over the silhouette of a naked woman), a traditional Mary, Che Guevara, an El Salvador flag, a U.S. flag, pictures of an 18-wheel truck and a Ferrari, a teddy bear Valentine, a plaque with the 10 Commandments, several strings of ribbons, two horse heads, a pink rose, and a picture of the very bus itself (inside which I imagine a smaller picture of a smaller bus....).

The buses are everywhere and you never have to wait for one. I once had to wait for two minutes and thought I'd been stranded. The price is great - 1.5 colones or 17 cents for most rides inside the city - and everyone rides the bus, as many as the driver and his helper (all men) can possibly cram on, so that in the evening rush hour it is a bit challenging to breathe and almost impossible to move. At other times, skinny boys selling candy, men testifying to the power of Jesus in their lives, women selling fruit, and people begging will slip under the turnstile that records a ride and walk up and down, giving their pitch, getting off after they've collected all they can from the passengers. Music blares from the radio, syncopating with the thumps and roars of the motor. I want to get up and dance, but it would be dangerous.

The bus drivers must all be certified for suicidal lunacy, we said one day. They rattle around, beeping their horns at anyone who gets in the way, swooping down to pick up a passenger and then lurching off at top speed. Every gringo has the baptismal experience of falling down the aisle and into someone's lap: after that, you know to hang on with both hands as you inch your way back towards a seat.

There's no route map for the buses. Salvadorans know where each bus goes, where to pick it up and get off. For foreigners, it's a good challenge. I recently took a bus that said it went to Zacamil, the district where I'm staying with a family. Apparently it did go through Zacamil, but since it didn't go through the three blocks of Zacamil that I recognize, I never knew about it and ended up 20 minutes away in Ayutuxtepeque. It doesn't help to have a map, as street name signs are rare, and most Salvadorans know their way around by landmarks and bus routes, not street names. Most Salvadorans, including the highly educated and superbly competent people who work for the Center for Interchange and Solidarity (or CIS -where I take Spanish classes) look blank when presented with a city map. That's not how you find things here. You just have to learn where to find the right bus and which landmark to watch for (Mister Donut or the sign for Bery Good Food) to know your stopping place!

Many of the buses are also terrible polluters, belching diesel smoke that covers the streets in a gray fog. The little microbuses are newer and cleaner and pour out less smoke, and there's a rumor that someday all the buses will have to pass an inspection, but the date keeps being put off....

I've tried to find out how this admirable system works. Apparently most of the bus lines have a syndicate that jointly owns the buses and pools the profits, but then there seem to be some individually owned lines as well. Like many other things here, it's perfectly clear to Salvadorans and fairly foggy to me. But I love the buses.

This summer experience (or rather winter experience: this is the rainy season, the time that Salvadorans call "invierno") is as joyful and confusing and messy and wonderful as one of those bus rides. I'm learning a lot of Spanish, but still feel tongue-tied and mind-twisted much of the time: I seem to be losing my ability to spell in English as I gain Spanish (with its blessed phonetic spelling). I have Spanish class Monday-Friday from 8-12 - tiny classes, from two to four people and a delightful teacher named Silvia. In the afternoons, CIS students and volunteers go out on the cultural program with Oscar, who has taken us to talk to union leaders, feminists, former guerrillas, to groups working on community development and organic agriculture, to model villages and Mayan ruins. It's been a grand introduction to the good work many people and NGO's are doing here.

I've been staying with Esther Alvarenga, her daughter Erica, niece Lorena, and large dog Oso in their rented house in Zacamil. They've been great to me, especially Esther, a passionate, determined woman who's working for ProBusqueda (an organization that helps unite families scattered during the war), taking classes to become a social worker, and caring for her family and her international guests in what passes for spare time. Like all the Salvadoran houses except those of the richest and poorest in the country, hers is open to any passing breeze, with louvered windows opening on to courtyards. At the same time, it's cut off from the street, with a steel gate blocking visual access and wrought iron over outside windows. This may help the robbers and criminals, who are a very serious problem here. Since there are no eyes on the street, and everyone pretty much turns in by 9 PM and gets up at 5 AM, the night people have the dangerous streets to themselves. There are lots of kidnappings here, and women are seriously warned not to go out alone much later than 7 PM.

I've also been connecting with Sisters Eleanor and Grace who have extended wonderful CSJP hospitality to me. Grace is going to spend a month in Guatemala to work on her Spanish, so in about a week I will move in with Eleanor to keep her company while Grace is away. I'll be sorry to leave Esther and her wonderful stories, but will enjoy spending time with Eleanor (earlier I spent two weeks with Grace while Eleanor was in the U.S., so I've helped to keep the community humming).

What I've learned and seen here has made me unhappy about the U.S. influence in El Salvador - so many U.S. businesses and maquilas (factories) making clothes for the U.S. market with so little return to El Salvador. Maquila workers, mostly young women, are paid about $130/month, but a living minimum for a family here is around $500/month. And the MacDonald's and Pizza Huts pay minimum wage and import most of their foodstuff, so they rake in lots of money from Salvadorans, but put very little of it back into circulation here. The experience of the war years is still bitter and painful: the survivors from both sides are living together, but uneasily. Everywhere you go, the blood of martyrs and innocents has soaked the ground.

There's so much more I'd love to tell you, but you might not want to sit down for a whole evening of reading. I'm grateful to my community for giving me the opportunity to have such a life-changing and awakening experience, and I'm grateful to the bus drivers of El Salvador for making it such fun.

Peace,
Sr. Susan Dewitt, CSJP