Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in sipdebbie's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
9:16 am	Hi all, I have been back from El Salvador for just over a week and I am readjusting to US culture. Some seemingly small things that I have noticed are that it feels very strange to drive especially on the highway. There is so much open space in this country seemingly devoted to nothing. In El Salvador,the most densely populated country in Central America, I don't remember any space without people, cows, buildings, houses, shacks, crops or something. I am gradually focusing on "getting things done" which is more apart of US culture than Salvadoran culture. I am very lucky to be able to stay with friends right now, a family with small children. This is a good transtition for me as I lived with a family in El Salvador and was part of a very community centered culture. I am glad I am not living alone or with one other person right now. Some things I did in El Salvador since my last email were; accompanied a talk the Defensora Populares did in one of the communities on General Violence in Salvadoran society (I actually spoke about DV in the US at this talk) and we tried to do another one in another community and when nobody showed we went from house to house and then shared our experiencs with this as a group. We took off in hurry because it started to rain and we had about a 30 minute walk home. I attended a rally/talk with some of the Defensoras in San Salvador that had people high up in Salvadoran society speaking against violence such as judges and as well as leaders of women's organizations. I also went to the another training meeting with two women from the Women's Association in my community. This one was at the beach; playing in the Pacific Ocean was alot of fun; a good back drop for talking about the serious topic of Salvadoran women's involvement or lack of involvement in politics and how to increase their participation. That night I asked the three other women in my room (at the beach); two from my community and one I knew a bit from a nearby community to tell me their experiences of the war. I believe they all were children when the war started and they talked about bombs, hiding, airplanes, starving, stealing chickens for food, not being able to sleep,walking during the day to evade the army and witnessing relatives being brutally murdered by the army. My host mom's mother was tortured and killed by the army because she was providng food for the guerillas. I got a sense of thier day to day fear, shock and perserverance under inhumane conditions. I felt honored they could and wanted to tell me about this and I hope I can help to make changes in the world that make war obsolete. Below is a piece I wrote for Crispaz that they asked me to write about what I learned in El Salvador. This will appear in the Salvanet the crispaz newsletter which you can get to from the website; www.crispaz.org. You might be interested in reading what the other interns wrote as well. The most important thing I did in El Salvador was build relationships. Everything I did involved an interchange of cultures. I eventually learned how to give up some of my sense of needing to get something concrete accomplished and realized that what I was accomplishing was witnessing Salvadoran community life and work. I learned about the civil war in El Salvador and how that affected the lives of women in a community that consists of guerilla fighters and families. I worked with an organization of women who are struggling to get their basic needs met. Many of the women in this community don't have paid jobs. The government of El Salvador provides very little of the basic needs for the people. The school and the clinic in the community in which I lived have been accomplished because of international funds. Although I know it would be better for the community and less paternalistic if a way could be found for them to take initial funds and help them to create a project that would increase their funds to meet their basic needs, there is no easy or quick way to accomplish this. I learned that despite living in a different country and being a part of a different culture, I am deeply connected with the women of the Cuidadela Ungo in El Salvador. I am committed to staying in the struggle with them to figure out a way to accomplish their goals. There is an inherent connection between what I and those in the United States have and what the poor in El Salvador do not have. I got in touch with this connection. I got a sense in some ways of what it means to be poor in El Salvador. The people in the community I lived in do not have a lot of variety in their food. They grow beans and corn and these are the staples of their diet; beans and tortillas. As my host mom said "beans are the favorite food of poor people." I quickly got tired of beans and tortillas and realized how much I like food and take advantage of being able to eat a variety of things. The second time I got sick in the community, the phones were not working and I could not get in touch with the Crispaz staff. This gave me a sense of what it is like for the people in this community when they get sick. The have a clinic with some medications and a doctor is there two or three days a week but if someone gets really sick and they have to go to the hospital in Suchitoto, a nearby town, they have to find someone with a car and often the bills are too much for them to afford. My experience of rural El Salvador was both challenging and rewarding. I feel more connected to my world and more committed to helping it become a place that is just for everyone. Thanks for your emails this summer they have been very meaningful to me as well as knowing that all of you accompanied me during my very rewarding and challenging summer in El Salvador! Peace and Love, Debbie (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 13th, 2004
6:27 pm	I am in San Salvador as part of a two day meeting with two women from the Women´s Association in my community. We are doing self discovery and sharing stuff which reminds me some of SW school except it´s in Spanish. This workshop is fun and funny (when I understand the jokes) and interactive. It´s getting easier to speak Spanish in front of a large group. I often get put on the spot being a foreigner and a USer with specific questions and it is getting easier. The day before yesterday I came to San Salvador with the Defonsoras Populares (the women working against DV) for a meeting in the Institute of the Woman. Next week is our last get together with just all of the crispaz summer interns before our final retreat and then I have more meetings in the community and in San Salvador. There is a women's conference which we were late in finding out about which involves 800 women from across Central America and Mexico which I may be able to attend for a day and I am still trying to go to the Free Trade conference. We will see how my Spanish holds up in a three day long conference. I am finding ways to connect with the kids in my house by playing hangman (a challenge for me in Spanish), dancing and being plain old silly. I finally found a deck of cards after a bit of a hunt and I will teach them some card games next week. Tomorrow night there is a dance in the Cuidadela after a fesitival at the school that I will miss b/c of the meeting but I am looking forward to the dance. The father at the house I am living, works all day everyday but Sunday, when he is home and we went to his parents house last Sunday for a visit and had an indepth discussion (he and I)about the war in El Salvador, the war in Iraq and US government "policy". He like everyone I have met is clear about the goodness of people from the US and thinks it´s great that I and others want to accompany the poor in El Salvador. He is also clear about the harm of the US government policy in El Salvador and lots of places and is hopeful that if the administration changes in November things will get better all around. He was an FMLN guerrilla fighter during the war like many in my community. There are a number of people in the community that have lost limbs during the war. One of the women I came to this meeting with; her partner works with an organization that employs people without limbs, as he lost his arm during the war. Other than that I am enjoying the slow pace in the campo. I like the rain which is very consistent lately and it cools things off quite abit in the afternoon or evening. During the day and with any movement I am regularly covered in sweat. Yes, the heat is probably very comparable to Durham right now. My first few days in the campo, I felt like the two and half months was going to be a loooong time and now I am scrambling to make sure I get everything done I want to before I head back to the States which I know will be before I know it. Thanks for all of your messages. Que to Vaya Bien (I hope all goes well with you), Love, Debbie (Comment on this)
Monday, July 5th, 2004
3:16 pm	Hi everyone! We had a long day yesterday. We went to one of the communities where there are some summer interns called Los Espinos. It was great to see a different rural community then the one I am living in and meet the people and hear about the work they are doing. In this community there are people working to educate people about different types of garbage and help them sort garbage by organic waste and nonorganic waste which is buried in the ground every three months instead of left on the ground. There is no trash removal in the campo. This community was also very clean. There were beautiful flowers at one of the houses. People had started a small green house and they have hopes to plant several thousand trees. They also have a worm farm to produce fertilizer for their community garden. They are working to get funds to repair the water project and keep it out of government hands. It would be alot more expensive for them to pay the government for water use then the community. In the community where I am living, they are finshing up a two year long water project which puts pipes under ground and would allow all of the communities to have water from faucets spread throughout all year round. Right now they only having running water during the rainy season which we are in now. All of the work is accomplished by voluntary labor of the community. One of the things that I am having a hard time realizing is that the government actually does very little for most of the people of the country. The organizations in the community in which I live have gotten all of their funding from foreign governments and people. The women's organization and the Defensoras Populares (women working agnst DV) are constantly coming up agst the issue of not having funding to accomplish their goals such as providng food and some economic reources to women who are experiencing domestic violence. Despite these difficulties at least 7 women show up every week to get training on how to respond to issues of DV in thier community and big topics are discussed such as how the issue isn't just one of the particular family but of the society and that it is a smaller replica of the government which is run by a party that includes a few rich families and doesn{'t provide the most basic services for the majority of it's people such as sufficent jobs, education and health care. Another thing I am learning about in my community is the civil war of the 1980's and 1990's. Where I live is land that was taken from rich landowners and given to people who had worked the land before the war. Most of the people living here fought or had family who fought as revolutionaries during the war and many were killed by the government army. I am proud of my ability to keep up in Spanish and to ask questions when I don't understand something. The people here are very welcoming and glad to have me in their presence. Some of the harder things to deal with are bugs in the outhouses, trash on the ground everywhere, mosquitoe bites and beans and tortillas all of the time but the sense of international community and understanding I am helping to build here makes all of the smaller inconveniences well worth it. I will email again soon. Debbie (Comment on this)