We had the monthly audit and inventory about a week ago in the medical dispensary and everything went well again. No medicine or money missing J It had an extra twist as well because we had a surprise for Don Mauricio for his bday. Well, cake and coke and 4 people haha.
Me, Margoth (COSALCO Treasurer) and Don Mauricio (my counterpart and Presidente of the ADESCO)
The audit in action by key members of ADESCO and COSALCO (our Health Committe creation)
My important people and some of my Salvo fam
My promotoras!!! tear.
The big news though is the 4th of July events. I continued in the tradition set up here by Aaron in the cooking of hamburgers and hot dogs. I had Jose and Kevin and Oscar helping make the lettuce and tomatoes and all that stuff so that was pretty funny. It actually turned out ok. The only problem was that apparently they wrap their hotdogs here individually as well in plastic. Oops…..hahahaha. Jose (Don Raul’s youngest son) gave me the first two already unwrapped so I didn’t think anything about it, but then when I threw a bunch on to cook hurriedly to finish up, it took him coming over and noticing and saying something for me to be clued in. So that was fun cleaning up a bunch of burned up plastic off the hot dogs and griddle thing. They all turned out well in any case. I had Mauricio (Don Raul’s eldest son) and Rosa (his wife) come through the buffet line first putting on all the condiments, then the kids and I took everything over to Don Raul’s house to feed everyone there. Very tasty.
The kid's too cute. This is William, one of the neighbors twins.
You are witnessing part of the race between the twins on the day of exercise at my house. Our goal is to have them walking before the end of the year.
Jose helping me out with the cooking.
Yummy. I bough too little meat.
My neighbor Rosa, the mom of the twins, posing in my house with my yumminess.
Dona Amalia, my host mom, prepping the table for hamburgers and hot dogs.
The next day, July 5, was the American party in the capital. A lot of my group came in to play in the Peace Corps and American Society soccer tournament in front of the Sheraton Presidente in San Sal. They had 4 teams from Peace Corps, split up by the programs, then an American Society team. Everyone played everyone in 20 minute games and at the end, due to time, it came down to the three teams with the most points in penalty kicks: Youth Development, Rural Health and Sanitation, and Agroforestry/Environmental Education (us). We lost that part, but it was fun none the less, if nothing else enjoying the fact that there was grass on the field was something.
Watching the tourney.
GRASS!!!
Afterwards we grabbed showers in the Sheraton and snacked to avoid buying food until dinner time when we opted for appetizers instead of meals, hahahaha, oh volunteerism. That night was a peace corps bash at some discoteca/bar deal which was fun. Although, the place where we stay was booked up and I got one of the last beds in the hallway apparently, but when I got close to it I was told that the owner lady gave it to another girl from my group. So I slept on the couch, but wasn’t too happy about paying the full 6 dollars for a couch without a pillow or blanket haha. Then, apparently, I was told by other volunteers that she was mad that I left without paying, when I clearly paid the night before as usual so that I can leave early. Good times….I have to go by this week for some meetings in the capital so we’ll fight it out then :)
I was up early the next day to head back for my ADESCO meeting in my canton, missing apparently a group that went to the beach….jerks.
buggers.... they built a nest under my printer
The meeting of the ADESCO board.
Anyways, the last deal was yesterday, the first round of taking the people who needed more in depth exams of their eyes from the FUDEM eye consults we had in town, to the capital to get them checked out too see about surgeries and all. I was really scared about the whole process and who would come and not come and if the transportation would work out, but it actually all went more or less well. The mayor showed up and drove us himself, we fit most of the people inside the pickup, so only three of them were in the bed and got wet, and they all passed through the complete eye consultations and have a better idea of what is necessary. The only ‘bad’ part is that I’m realizing the amount of work that is going to be implied for me in this whole deal now. We are going to be going for every Monday for two months to get all 46 people that were referred through the process, and then we have to get the hospital in the capital to somehow not charge my people for all the preliminary exams for the surgeries, and then barter our way through the FUDEM system for my people who can’t pay for the surgeries (which is all of them). So the next few months should be interesting in that regard.
I was surprised though, FUDEM was packed with people the whole time we were there. They do reduced cost eye consultations, eye wear, medicines, and surgeries. From what I have seen so far, they do a lot of good work.
Finally, two announcements. First, I am looking or advice on how to transport a number of donated computers/laptops from the US to El Salvador without paying a billion dollars in taxes and customs. If you have an idea please feel free to email me with it at rhettbwilliams@yahoo.com. Or as usual, feel free to post it in a comment.
Second, this is a timely post in that it falls between two important dates. First off, Happy future Bday to my mom on July 18, she will be turning 35! Also, congrats to the sis and hubby for completing their first decade of marriage on July 11.
Padre Tino took me up to the top of the facade of the church reconstruction and I took a few pics
The top of the facade, I'm standing where the bells will go. Padre Tino has been joking in Mass about the people asking when the bells are going to go in because they are afraid they are going to die before they get put up. They have been down eight years, and plan to get put up at the end of August.
View of the city from the top
Chesterton the “Prohibition” Mentality: (after discussing Communism, the Prohibition, vegetarians, conscription and disarmament)
“And modern notions of the sort are not only negative but nihilist; they always demand the absolute annihilation or ‘total prohibition’ of something.
Now I am as adamant against Mr. Murry in this notion of mutilating our whole culture in a frenzy of moral renunciation. I admit that a saint may cut off his hand and enter heaven, and have a higher place there than the rest of us. But a plea for the amputation of the hands of all human beings, the vision of a Handless Humanity as the next evolutionary sage after that of the tailless ape, leaves me cold, however much it is commended as a splendid corporate self-sacrifice. These things are an allegory, in more ways than one. We may say indeed that the inhuman industrial era did really abolish the Hand, since it did abolish the Handicraft. I admit that monks have their own reasons for shaving their heads or nuns for cutting off their hair; but my advice to humanity outside such ecstasies would be to remain calm and keep its hair on. That a man should surrender his luxury is one thing; that mankind should surrender its liberty to deal with the problem of luxury is quite another. It is one thing to impoverish oneself; it is quite another responsibility to impoverish a whole cultural system of its culture. I might or might not be the better for giving up wine; I am absolutely certain that the world would not be better for giving up wine. Mr. Middleton may be moved by a noble impulse to give up private property, but I do not for one single moment believe that humanity would be happier for giving up private property….
Capitalism was actually founded by urging a new realism against an old romanticism. The answer is that it was not necessary for a whole society to give up beauty; and it is not necessary for a whole society to give up liberty. And if we look back at history, we shall see that these sweeping social renunciations have done nothing but harm. Over all America lies like an incubus the cold corpse of Puritanism, because on fervid generation thought that man must say farewell for ever to priests as well as play-actors, to sacraments as well as feasts. In short, men were asked to sacrifice everything for Calvinism as they are now asked to sacrifice everything for Communism. But though man may sacrifice everything, Everyman must not sacrifice everything. Individual men must sacrifice their own liberties, but only to restore liberty. And it is a grand irony that, while the cultured Communist (with all respect to him) is rending everybody else’s garments and scattering ashes on other people’s heads, away in many quiet places, on the hills of Lanark or deep in my own Buckingham beech-woods, priests and friars who have themselves renounced private property are rebuilding the farms and families of Distributism.”
G.K. Chesterton, The Ascetic at Large, from The Well and the Shallows, p. 94-95
No comments:
Post a Comment