El Salvador

Last week I had the opportunity to accompany my first CEDEPCA group. I traveled to El Salvador as one of the interpreters for a workshop for women on domestic violence. We left Friday morning and arrived in El Salvador around dinner time. El Salvador is much warmer than Guatemala (than Cobán at least!) and a lot flatter. We stayed in a retreat center that was actually a former home for children that were “lost” during the war. The history of the retreat center kind of set the pace for the rest of our time, as the majority of El Salvador’s people still remember the atrocities of the war.

Saturday we did some sight seeing in the morning and planned for the workshop in the afternoon. We visited the UCA, the university where several priests were assassinated for speaking out against the war, and we also visited the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was also killed for having a voice against the injustices of his country. Sunday we went to Suchitoto, a small touristy town about an hour from San Salvador, for church. After a very moving sermon given by one of the group members, we put on a puppet show for the kids. It was so much fun and they seemed to really like it! Then we had lunch, did some souvenir shopping, and went to a lake. It was so nice to be a tourist!

The workshop started on Monday and ended on Wednesday. It was jam packed with emotion as the women (and we) dealt with the troubles related to violence of all types. The women responded well to the information that they learned and it was really awesome to see them building trust and coping with unexpressed feelings. I could get really deep here, but I won´t. I´ll just say that violence and war are very dark aspects of our human reality but spending time with these women helped me relate, if even just a little, to what the people in El Salvador and most of Central America have lived through. We all got pretty close during the workshop and even stayed up late talking "slumber-party" style the last night. So, although the topics of conversation were pretty dense, it turned out to be a lot of fun and I learned alot.

I discovered that I really enjoy interpreting, although, in retrospect, it was a tad on the frustrating side in that the interpreters did most of the talking but never actually said anything themselves. And it´s tiring! I felt like I never shut up! It was still a really cool experience, though, and I´m looking forward to the next time I work with CEDEPCA. We got back to Guatemala City late Wednesday night and after sleeping in and a fabulous last breakfast with the group, I made my way back to Cobán.