Retraction and Photos

Since my last blog post I have learned that embassies don't have an obligation to let their citizens through their doors. The embassy also isn't Canadian territory. The host country forswears the right to enter foreign embassies on their soil, the people who work at the embassy have diplomatic immunity, and that's as far as it goes. So when the embassy locked me and Leah out last week they weren't denying us a basic right, but they were jerks and showed that they are terrible at PR (like, so terrible at PR). They turned what should have been a non-event into something news-worthy, and then they looked bad on the news later that day while Leah and I gave the anti-mining cause free publicity on the platform they created by locking us out. Maybe I should write them a thank you note and try to deliver it...

I've done a lot of really cool stuff since Wednesday! On Friday I went with Vivian, a FESPAD lawyer, to the informal settlements she works with. They're about thirty minutes to an hour from downtown San Salvador and they're in a very vulnerable position because they don't have running water or electricity and they don't own the land their houses are built on. Vivian is working with them to get them legalized. Until they own their land, the government can evict them at any time and won't help them with any of the problems that they face, whether they be crime or land slides. These people have built their homes from nothing and they are proud of where they live.Their streets are clean, their homes are organized, and they're close enough to the city that they can take the bus in if they need to. Nobody else wants this land and frankly, living on it is dangerous because they're mostly building onto steep, erosion-prone hillsides. They have nowhere else to go.

A home in San Martin

The community's elected leader explaining the dangers they face from landslides

A home in Comunidad Monsenor Romero

This man asked me to take a picture of his garden, which was lovely

On Saturday I chilled and watched a ridiculous amount of West Wing. And today I went with Beth, an American who founded her own environmental NGO down here, to one of the communities she works with that is next to Lago Ilopango, another volcanic crater lake. The community we visited has been there since the early '80s when they moved there to get away from the civil war. I'm sure it worked because that community is really hard to get to. When people are sick they have to boat a doctor in from the larger towns on the side of the lake nearer to San Salvador. When people need to evacuate, it's chaos. We hiked down into the crater on this really steep path that was washed out in some places from yesterday's monsoon rains. Hiking down took slightly over an hour, and hiking back up took slightly under two hours. I was dripping sweat while getting passed by these women in flip flops with bowls of mangoes on their heads. They looked like they had never sweated in their lives.

All I wanted to do when I got home was shower. I didn't care that we only had cold water and I didn't care that today was a relatively cold day. But I had forgotten that we only get water pressure in the mornings. There I was, so excited to get clean, but when I turned on the tap the water dribbled pathetically onto my head. For the first time in my life I longed for a Burkinabe bucket shower. When the water is in a bucket in front of you there may be dead flies in it or a thin film of dust on the surface, but you know it won't get turned off at the whim of a capricious water pressure fairy. I got as clean as I could and had a beer. I can get clean tomorrow. The whole experience was totally worth it.