As most of you know, we are in the process of ‘building community’ up here.  I apologize for the term, though.  It smacks of jargon to me.  Nauseating, I think. But I must admit that normal words don’t describe what we are doing quite as well as community-building.  Still……makes me gag.

Mind you I am starting to gag over ‘sustainable’, ‘holistic’, ‘synergistic’, ‘environmental’ (don’t even mention, ‘at the end of the day’) and a whole lot of other over-used and diluted/compromised words corrupted by marketers.  But that is just me, I suppose.

Sorry.

Anyway……………there are about 250 people on the nearby islands that associate or relate to our ‘village hub’ to a greater or lesser degree.  They shop elsewhere.  They work elsewhere.  They live a good distance away by boat.  And many never even get to the ‘hub’ in any given year.  But, it is where the school is (two rooms) and it is where the post office is (100 square feet on a floating barge) so, if you are looking for a ‘centre’, our ‘hub’ has to do.

It used to be more of a hub in the past.  We had a store.  And the people were younger and more inclined to promote their personal offerings to the gene pool so social mixing was pretty regular and evident.  Young people can stay up longer, too.

But, over the years, the youth went to the city and the residents just got older. and older.  And they became a bit ‘set in their ways’.  Society, such as it was, diminished somewhat despite regular gatherings at Xmas and such.  The store closed.  Some people moved away.  Some became single. A few passed away.  Others got ‘isolated’.  The hub almost stopped turning.

One of my neighbours had a near-death experience a couple years ago and it inspired him to a renewed sense of ‘love’ and ‘community’.  He was waxing lovingly about all sorts of things for a few months even going so far as to start hugging me and stuff. 

Really nauseating (but kinda funny).

After awhile, he got that particular and peculiar strain of madness under control and redirected his energies to preaching community. He started saying “Community building! Community building! That is what we gotta do!”

I am disinclined towards community at the best of times and, to be fair, the feeling as a rule is reciprocated by any community I have been near.  We just don’t need each other.

Well, as I have learned, we don’t need each other much. 

Once in awhile we do need each other and, when that happens up here, it is like herding demented cats (are there any other kind?).  Organization is impossible.  The best you can hope for is people showing up at close to the right time on  hopefully the right day.  Forget giving or getting directions.  Plans are anethma.  Efforts at supervision are taken as insults.  If we all happen to be there and we all happen to feel like it, we may, if no one bugs us (which is almost a sure thing) actually do something together for the good of the community.  Maybe.

It helps if there is lunch provided but that, too, is another coordination challenge.

But it does happen now and then and, over the last two years, we managed to make it happen enough to restore the old school building and turn it into a community work-shop.  Trust me – it was a miracle. Since I was part of that effort, I had a taste of community-building and it wasn’t all bad.  Crazy.  Goofy.  Unpredictable.  But kinda fun.  We did good.

The trouble with that kind of nonsense is that it goes to your head.  It is like finally hitting the golf ball just right………..you now have sense of what ‘just right’ feels like and you keep persuing it.  And, like golf, you rarely ever ‘hit it right’ again.

Community building is hard.  It is easy to trip up.  The ‘man-hugs’ alone put many of us off.  Mind you, we are currently on a bit of a roll.  We have, over the past few years, undertaken a few significant chores and they seemed to have worked out pretty good.  Some of the more isolated and reclusive types are even showing up.  My loving friend can hardly hold himself back from hugging people.

“How nice for you all. What’s the point?”

Glad you asked.

As you also know, we bought the contents of a woodworking shop that specialized in making wooden toys.  I posted some pics of a few of them last year.  And while I was away, some of the guys started moving the tools to our new shop.  This, of course, has incurred some expenses that are greater than we anticipated.  We are running a bit low on funds.

Yes, of course, you can send money!  Don’t think twice.  Just pump it.

But that is not why I am writing.  I am writing this to say that I may post an ad alongside the blog that advertises toys.  Just so you know, all proceeds from the intial sales go to SNCA (our community non-profit organization) to help with our $5,000 debt. After awhile – when we get operational, some of the proceeds will go to SNCA but most will go to the maker of the toy that is sold.  Our community workshop is intended to ‘support’ some kind of piddling income stream for the locals.  Artisan stuff.  It is our JOBS CREATION program.

You know, like what the government does ‘cept we’re hoping to do it better?

If this ‘advertising’, ‘promotion’ or ‘agenda’ idea annoys you, please let me know.  BEFORE I do it.

Time to refocus on being off-the-grid in an isolated island sense.  Mind you, being in Central America was definitely off-the-sane-grid.  They are off-the-hygiene-grid, the safety-grid and the desirability-grid as well.  So, in a way, I have been kinda true to the title of the blog if you’ll allow a little (or a lot of) slack in the definition…………….

…………..regardless, we are back and ‘off-the-grid’ in the more conventional sense and I have to say, “It does not get any better.”

Garden is starting to grow.  Which is weird since nothing was planted.  But Broccoli is still producing, onions are poking up and parsely and rosemary are pretty prerenial, anyway, and ‘lookin’ good.  Crop of garlic is on the way.  Even the carrots are still looming in the loam.  That’s very good.

We’ve had a woofer (two, actually) ask to come and visit and help and so we have our first working guests scheduled already for April.  They’re coming from England. Could be good.  I need some help with the never-finished funicular and the greenhouse I want to build.  Hope to work ém like dogs.

More like rented mules.  The dogs out here live the life of Riley.

We’ve had woofers from Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, The US and, of course, from Canada.  They were all good but the French.  What a couple of useless doofuses they were!  And so, natch, they are the focus of this blog post.

It was two years ago when A and F showed up to ‘woof’.  The chores at the time were simple.  I was gonna put in a new window in the boatshed (and wanted some assistance) and we were going to carry boulders from one pile to another.  Each boulder being beween the size of a cabbage and a bowling ball.  Heavy but still an easy-to-grasp, one-person job.

They were beyond useless.  Couldn’t walk and carry a boulder and chew gum at the same time and no inclination to try, either.  The window installation was rocket science to them – beyond their conceptual grasp.  They looked at the tools I gave them as if they were ray-guns from the Planet Zorg.  They stood dumbstruck the whole time.  They were very pleasant to be with (except when working) and they loved the wine and food.  But labour was not only beneath them, it also seemed too intellectually challenging.  They just didn’t seem to get it even as we were doing it.

A and F, of course, were teachers back in France.

We share our woofers around and they eventually made a similar impression on a few others but a favourable one at one of the local lodges.  Seems A and F liked working in the kitchen.  So, that was good.  And, I guess they ‘hung around’ the islands for a month or so before returning back home to France.

I didn’t miss them.

Last night at a dinner party, J asked, “Have you heard about F and A?  Seems they went back to France, felt they needed to grow more independent in some way and so emmigrated to Canada last summer.  They are working on a cattle ranch in the Chilcotins!”

“WHAT!!!  They are the last people I thought would ever get it together!!!  OMYGAWD!  How are they doing?”

“Well, they are riding horses, chasing cattle, mending fences and building buildings.  Really into alternative energy, too, I gather.  I saw a picture of the cabin they had to build for themselves.  It was pretty good!”

“What the hell happened to them!?”

“Well, F wrote to tell me that their time on our island taught them that they were lacking in real life skills and they were very impressed with all of us and how independent we were.  After a time in France, they decided that they preferred to live ‘our’ way and made application to come – not to Quebec – but to BC.  They got another woofing gig at a ranch and are now employees.  They are really into óff-the-grid’ learning and are picking up skills wherever they can.  They seem pretty pleased with themselves.” 

I picked my jaw up from the floor.  I stammered.  I was stunned to say the least…………“those guys were the least capable people we have ever encountered and bear in mind that we, ourselves, are barely functional out here.  I would never have guessed that happening in a million years.  That’s astonishing!”

“Yeah, me too.  Pretty cool, huh?”

Both the US and Canadian governments have proposed legislation that allows the ‘authorities’ to read your e-mail.  For ‘security reasons’, of course.  Many people in both countries replied to an internet call-to-protest with an emphatic ‘hands off!’.

We just don’t trust the bastards.

But bear in mind, they don’t trust us, either.  And, if you think the lack of legislation has kept them from reading your e-mails, you are gullible beyond words.  “But, Dave, they can’t read all the e-mails and 99.99999% of them are boring anyway!”

That is true.  Most aren’t worth reading, I am sure.  But they don’t have to read them in the sense that you think of reading.  They data mine them instead.  They have search engines that look for key words, word associations and other weird math-based technigues to ‘flag’ your perhaps-suspicious e-mail for continued follow-up.

Whenever I write ‘Allahu Akbar’ as a suggested exclamation of frustration when encountering delays at the airport (it is a joke), I am being ‘read’ by a machine that sends the e-mail to another level for analysis.  Presumably, after however many security levels it takes, I am deemed just another idiot who thinks he has a sense of humour and I am pulled off the Guantanamo list.

“What’s your point?”

“Be patient.  I’ll get there.  Just hafta ‘set the scene’ a bit more”.

So, the RCMP and the FBI (respectively) cannot legally read all our e-mails, right?  Wrong!  They can if they get a warrant.  And, over the past few years the warrants have been ‘fast-tracked’ so that they can read hundreds of thousands of them and they do.  As I write this, e-mails are read all the time.

“Do I care?  I am just asking dearheart to pick up a loaf of bread.  We aren’t plotting anything!”

I’ll get back to that.  But, in the meantime, consider this: the CIA is allowed to do virtually anything it wants outside the US.  Presumably so can CSIS (Canadian equivalent) do what it wants outside of Canada.  So CSIS can read US e-mails and the CIA can read Canadian ones.  And they do.  All the time.

“Geez, think they compare notes?”

When we were in El Salvador, Sal and I sent at least a dozen e-mails over the week we there.  Likely more.  Not one of them reached their destination.

“So, Dave, you just had a bad internet connection.  Don’t be paranoid!”

Well, firstly, my blog posts all went through.  So the connection was fine.  But, more to the point, El salvador is virtually owned and operated by the US.  They may not be able to easily data mine everything in their own country but they can sweep all of El Salvador with impunity. And they do.

“But why would they?”

Drogs, senor.  Central America is a conduit for drogs.  And we fit the ‘profile’.  If you were going to use an algorythm for ferreting out suspicious characters, we don’t fit such profile perfectly (too old, I think) but we at least fit it enough to be ‘vetted’.  And I think we were.

We also stayed at a ‘cheap, low-profile’ guesthouse that was frequented by eastern European males of a sketchy nature.  They wouldn’t respond to greetings, they wouldn’t look you in the eye and they were in and out in a couple of days. Quite unlike the ‘usual’ travelers one encounters in hostels and pensiones.  They just looked like drug dealers to me.

We fit the profile and we may have also been guilty by association.

And that is why I don’t trust the bastards.  I should not be guilty by association. Guilty by a crime?  OK.  But just by being in the same hotel?  Absolutely not!

“But, Dave, you just made up the story by circumstantial observations.  None of it may be true.  The sketchy guys may have just been shy missionaires.  And, anyway, you were pooping your brains out.  Maybe you were just a smidge ‘mental’ at that time?”

Yeah.  You are probably right.  I can’t imagine the US interfering with the rights of a Central American country before they could legally interfere with the rights of their own citizens.  What was I thinking?

There was a hole in the huge stone breakwater at the Campbell River ferry terminal large enough to drive a car through.  Seemed the weather did it.

We get several weather systems up here in the winter.  The almost prevailing winds are from the Southeast and bring rain, warmer temps and little threat – although the seas can get pretty lumpy.  The second direction is a westerly and it can give a healthy blow and the temp usually drops some. But, because of the layout of the islands and our place in it, we usually remain pretty much unscathed.  I like the westerlies.

It’s the BUTE that kicks butt.  Coming from the northeast out of the fiord-like coastal inlets is a bitterly cold hard wind that often reaches hurricane force.  It’s a real punch in the guts and more than one family has had to move out for a few days or, more often, go without something due to the almost instant freeze up.  Turn on a firehose pumping out a strong steady stream and it will freeze in mid-flow when the Bute hits.

While we were gone our area took a Bute on the chin a few times and it seems everyone had some freeze or storm damage.  We lost a cute little brass water pump and a small plastic water line fitting but that was it.  We were very fortunate.

Having said that, we are also at least 80-90% prepared.  Despite what WorkSafe BC says, you can never be prepared for every eventuality.  Poop happens.  (I’ll get back to that in a minute).  We drain pipes, put things away, have systems that are simple and keep the batteries up with a wind gen.  After schlepping two weeks of supplies and all our luggage up from the beach, we loaded it on the funicular and I pressed the button.  Hummmmm………everything went up the hill perfectly.

Relief.  Delight.  Happiness.  And just a little ‘smugness’ after it all went well.

Yes.  The ravens were on the railing cawing and screeching.  It was not so much a greeting as it was an admonishment for having neglected them for 7 weeks.  At least they waited til we got home.  They actually ‘discovered us’ at the end of the road on the other island and watched us load and travel across first.  Then they went to our place to await our arrival.  We got an earful then.

Surprisingly, Megan and Fiddich had already been re-united with us at that point.  J, our neighbour who cared for the dogs when we were away, had somehow intuited out our arrival and, as we were just loading stuff onto the dock, she showed up with the Supremes.  Lots of wiggling and jumping around.  Dogs, too.

Our great neighbours – the ones who picked us up at the dock to bring us to our island – had set a fire in our wood stove and left dinner for us.  Everyone should have neighbours and friends like we do.

Now – what you’ve all been waiting for – pooping.  Yeah, well, with this kind of pooping, there is no waiting.  It comes, it goes and then it repeats.  Willy nilly.  All day long.  Night time too.  It was not hard keeping the fire going all last night.  I was passing the stove every hour as it was.  Felt like I was passing everything else, too, now that I think of it!

I’d like to give El Salvador a piece of my mind.  I’ve already given them a piece of everything else.  If Jared Diamond is right (author of Guns, Germs and Steel), the next super power is El Salvador.  They are going sneak up on us from behind!

I won’t apologize for the ‘message’ yesterday.  A promise is a promise.  But I won’t be doing that again anytime soon.  Too hard.

I normally write a blog in about half an hour.  Then Sal hands me back the pieces after her savage/vicious/sadistic/Nazi-esque edit and I take another 15 minutes to patch it up.  Basically, it is a quick, what’s-happening-now kinda thing.  Yesterdays took forever.  I am still feeling it.

I don’t have what it takes to write about serious issues.  I gotta keep it light.

Wanna hear about the ‘runs’?  Monty at his finest and most tenacious?

Probably not.  Even I am bored with my own bowels.  Enough already.

Wanna hear about our long slog to get back home?  Nah…..it is much like a blog about a ‘town day’.  The logistics are demanding, the timing, especially so.  Weather is a huge factor.  It is winter and the day light hours are short.  But you know that.

Wanna political rant?  Boy, is there a lot to choose from, eh?  But I’ll save that for time when I have enough energy to vent.  I’ve been venting from the rear vent for too long to have much energy right now.  So, I’ll just promise a tirade in the days to come.  Might even get in two.

Fact is: we have just re-entered our ordinary, everyday-living phase.  I have to do a construct shift from Indiana Jones to Farmer and Mother Jones and I am just in transition.

A friend of mine has MSA.  Multiple Systems Atrophy.  It’s a disease.  Kinda.  The name is really just a descriptive rather than a proper noun-with-medical-science-Latin-roots.  It just puts a name to the symptoms.  It doesn’t describe the cause or even, for that matter, whether it is a disease, a syndrome, a condition, a disorder or what.

The name bugs me.

And, like, what the hell is atrophy anyway? Just aging spelled differently?  Aren’t we all just atrophying in one or two organs or systems as we age?

Regardless, I think MSA is very misnamed.  At the very least it should be called Rapid Onset Systems Atrophy.  It is more accurate and ROSA is a better acronym anyway. 

“He’s got ROSA!” 

Helps with the denial, ya know?

And that nomenclature thing is just the first thing that bugs me.

The second thing that irritates, of course, is that this horrible thing has been inflicted on a friend of mine and his family.

It is gradual, relentless and incurable.  So it is terminal.

It takes about three years, give or take, for things to deteriorate enough for everything to just up and quit.  But systems are noticeably deteriorating on a monthly or periodic basis during that time.  Grieving, suffering and adjustment-to-something-that-cannot-be-adjusted-to really starts upon hearing of the diagnosis and it just doesn’t let up.

It is a special kind of hell.

This is clearly one of those things that one immediately exclaims, “Geez, that is so unfair!”

‘Course, mature people like me might (if they are stupid!) immediately follow that up with, “Yeah, well, life is not fair.”  Glib.  Stupid.  Inadequate.  Insensitive.  Cruel. Definitely non-empathetic, but mature, I guess.

‘Cause life is definitely not fair.

And, worse, it is much too easily said if one is not the sufferer. Or their partner.

So, don’t ever say that.

Having said that, anyway, M and D are being as brave and stoic as anyone can possibly be.  More, actually.  He invented an assistance device for himself and had it built. As I write, he is looking to see if it can be manufactured to help other ROSA sufferers.

It may not seem like it from my description so far but, once you see this disease, you can’t help but see their efforts as heroic.

What can I say?  What can anyone say?  How can one be empathetic?  How can one relate?

And, let’s be honest……….trying to relate or be more empathetic is brutal.  There is a natural reluctance to even try to ‘get close’, ‘to feel his pain’.  It is just too horrible.  I really don’t want to share that pain.  I really don’t want to know.

M is a nice guy, a good and longtime friend.  He doesn’t deserve this and, because of his discipline in caring for himself over the years, no one expected that he would even show his age at this point.  Put bluntly, I fully expected him to outlive me by twenty years.  The tall, skinny abstainers of booze, tobacco and excess usually do pretty good on the longevity sweepstakes.

We Celtic, druid-types, shaped like a potato and inclined to excess in everything but exercise tend to extinguish a bit sooner.

Which is fair, I think.

Think – pasty, white Brit eating ‘crisps’, smoking and drinking beer while watching sports on the telly and you’ll have a sense of my family tree. We don’t deserve to live a long time.

And what would the point in it, anyway?

M, in stark contrast, is more like a tall, white, Clint Eastwood-spirit-shaman, almost-vegetarian type, with a Willy Nelson kind-of-thing going on.  Easy-goin’.  Funny, too.  Smart.  Creative.  And cerebral- if not just a smidge eccentric on that score.

He deserves better.

We’ve known him forty years and, it seems, we met a couple of times even before the early onset of friendship.

Sally and I are both close to him and his wife even tho, because of our lives, our previous jobs, our interests and now the distance between us, we only connect maybe twice a year.

And I am ashamed about that, too.

“Geez, Dave, why are telling us all this?!”

Sorry.  It is just that I promised.

M showed me a u-tube last night about MSA and asked that I ‘pass it on’ to raise awareness.  I said I would.  Please – if you can handle it – watch the video presented on http://www.msaawareness.org.

I understand completely if you choose not to.  This is a bigger challenge than I am capable of handling.  Or even understanding.  One viewing is enough. One friend is too much.

Flew out of Guat City at dawn in an old, flaccid 737 that just felt limp and worn out.  I empathized.  It was a Delta flight and it was only about one-third full.  There was us and, maybe 60 or so Guatemalans.

Five hours later we were in LA.  Just in time for our 4 hour layover in a terminal building that literally vibrated like it was a BC ferry.  I have no idea why this huge concrete monolith hummed and jiggled all the time but it did.

And I was not the only one who felt it.  When I inquired with the ticket taker at the gate, the young woman behind me said, “I feel it too.  I thought it was a minor earthquake but it didn’t stop!” 

No answer.

At 2:30 pm we boarded a brand new, packed-to-the-brim 737 that, comparatively speaking, was like sitting in a new Lexus compared to an old Corolla.  It was pretty sleek.

I am sure it is just a coincidence – as in new vs old.  But there was also a micro-culture shift that was hard not to notice.  We went from one plane to the next and the differences were stark.

In the first, it was a chicken-bus version of an airplane.  And, in it, were the Guatemalans.  It wasn’t clean, the announcements were in Spanish and an accented English and the in-flight service was bare-bones minimal.  I half-expected chickens and really loud Latin music to play the whole way.

On the second leg, the plane still had that new-out-of-the-showroom smell, the service was good, the only language spoken was English and about a third of the passengers were Asian.  I don’t think a single Central American went North with us.

It felt like I was in Vancouver already!

“Dave!  It was just a new plane going somewhere else.  No big deal.” 

You are probably right.  It is just that I am kinda seeing things from a Central American perspective and it just feels like they are getting ‘second hand, maybe fourth class’ treatment.

It’s not like their flights are any cheaper.  They paid the going rate.  And it was Delta/Alaska all the way.

And, apropos of nothing, I suppose, there is a huge contingent of Guatemalans in LA. I dunno…………….you’d just think they’d get better attention………ya know?

I dunno…..call me crazy.  The airlines/airport treat you like dumb cattle-on-the-hoof the whole way but I felt like Grade A Prime on the second leg (LAX to YVR)  and stringy, old cow-for-dog-food on the first (GUA to LAX).

Put another way, Central America seems like it is running on ‘old American infrastructure’ from hand-me-down school buses to really old Boeing planes, from bloated and ugly fast food franchises to even the currency itself.  (El Salvador has officially adopted the US currency as its own and all the other Central American countries accept it as a ‘sister currency’).  I have to say their so-called Democratic system is pretty fourth rate, too.

“Central Americans don’t get no respect, man!”

We landed in Vancouver and literally breezed through the formalities while strolling through the cleanest and most beautiful airport building in the known world (defined as known-by-me).  We were picked up efficiently by our hotel shuttle and marveled at clean air, clean streets, signs-that-worked and roads that were smooth.  We were in awe of the modern, efficient, safe, attractive, smooth, civilized non-militarized beauty of it all.  We were star-struck like hill-billy rubes in New York.

When we got to the hotel I reached over to open the large sliding door that allows egress for us passengers and the driver said, “Sorry, sir, please wait for me to open the door….for safety reasons, sir”.  He came around and placed a little plastic step-stool so that I could alight ‘safely’.

Sally and I burst out laughing.  I said, “We just came from El Salvador, for Gawds sake!  There isn’t a sidewalk in the city that isn’t pockmarked with enough unmarked holes sufficiently deep and large to break your leg and even going to a convenience store is literally putting your life in danger.”

It would take you all day to find one spot in Richmond that might constitute a danger to a blind, deaf, completely-mad octogenarian.  And I am saying that an NHL team walking anywhere in Sal Salvador for one afternoon could not escape unscathed.

Our sense of what constitutes ‘risk’ in Canada is way out of proportion to what risk really is.  You are safer running blindfolded down the Trans Canada freeway here than you are drinking the water or buying a quart of milk down there.  We are safe here.

And it is good to be almost home.

Glad we came to Guat City a day early.  We planned to do so because we were going to check out the city and pick up some gifts for folks……you know…….but things turned out different.  The ‘bug’ hit us again just as we were leaving El Salvador and we need the extra day to re-fill the hollow void that results from an ‘adios’ bout of Tourista.

It’s OK.  It’s unpleasant but it’s OK.  Here’s why…. I don’t fast.  And I never do any of those weird health-food-store-sold enema-type things to ‘cleanse’ my insides.  Basically, I just go traveling every once in awhile.  That does the trick every time.  Trust me.  I’m as clean as a whistle right now – inside and out.  In fact, I am so clean I am pretty close to being able to whistle from where the sun don’t shine.

Travel: a natural way to broaden the mind and cleanse the insides. 

OK.  Sorry.  A bit too much information?  It is just that I think I can get away with all this today because Sal is in no position to edit.  This is my day to say what I want!   Look out!

Well, actually, the graphic image of my insides will have to do.  I don’t really have that much to say…………..well, not much, anyway.

We’re in Casa Quatzelroo a small ‘hostel’ not far from the GUA airport.  It’s clean.  It’s cheap. The people running it are great.  It’s a good place to ‘hole up’  (pardon the pun) and get our…….uh……stuff…together.

And, once again, get a sense of deja vu.  Ya wanna remember what it is like to be young again?  Go stay at a hostel.  Of course, you’ll feel old in the process but all around you are young people doing young people things and, in our case, deferring to the ‘old guys’.  It’s kinda fun.  I half expect to be called ‘sir’.

Denise is helping to organize youth conferences to empower women to blah, blah, blah and to realize the potential of the earth in sustaining us…….(blah, blah)….and, well, a whole lot more stuff described in modern jargonesque type conversation.  She’s a sweetie ‘tho, and I am sure that she’ll get it all done and do a good job.  Seems her project is called Project Seres.  I’ll have to look it up.

We may even collaborate on a few things………

………..but I am too old for youth conferences.

Met ‘traveling Dave’ from Toronto.  Closer to my age but better preserved and spends a great deal less time in el bano than I do.  He’s fun.  Seems that he and I had coincidentally met last year!  On the net!  He runs HitTheRoad.ca, a company that pairs drivers with cars that need delivering.  I wanted to do that and contacted him but they are out of Toronto and so a Vancouver Island vehicle destined for Florida (which is what I was looking for – preferably an RV.  Why not?) was not likely going to happen.  But we exchanged e-mails.  He remembered.  And here we are…………in Guatemala.

As it turns out, we may drive a car to Florida next year.  Sal and I have always wanted to see Kentucky, Tennessee and ‘Bubba’ country.  So now it may happen.  We’ll see.

Strange how things work out, eh?

Diego is the room cleaner and general attendant at the B&B we are staying at.  He’s 21 and more than a smidge over 300 pounds.  Diego works at Casa Clementina every day, most of the day and seven days a week.  He resides there.  The landlady gives him a couple of days off every now and then to go see his family.  His salary is $50.00 a month plus he gets room and board.

He’s a nice guy, friendly, accommodating and always smiling.  I like him.

The other day he heard us trying to find out about which bus, which bus depot and what the schedule was for getting to Guatemala City. “No worries, senor, I’ll take you there.  The landlady has given me two days off and I am going home but I can show you first and help arrange things for you.”

On our way there I asked this big gentle bear of a guy where he learned English.  “I taught myself, senor.  I watch TV and read the books the travelers leave behind.”

So far, Diego’s English is the best I have encountered in the country.  I tell him that with his ability to speak English so well and without an accent makes him a pretty valuable employee.  “Yes.  I am very helpful to the guests and to the landlady.  But I cannot get a better job because I do not have a degree.  I do not have the education.”

“I think you speak well enough to get any number of good paying jobs.  And I should know.  I speak English all the time.  I’m pretty good at it.”

He laughed at my little joke and insisted that no one would hire him.  “Those people (who can speak both Spanish and English) can get good jobs making as much as $500 a month if they work hard.  They would not hire me.  I know that.  No degree.” 

I encouraged him a bit more but didn’t push it.  We got our business done and parted.  I’m never going to see ol’ Diego again.

Later in the same day, I encountered another young man who spoke passable English (not as good as Diego).  Jose’ William was a ‘higher class’  El Salvadorean, also 21 and he went to the university.  We got to talking and he revealed that he made $300 a month at a call centre translating with buyers and sellers of ‘stuff’ from the US and from various parts of Central America.  I gave him some tips, some information that he wanted and asked a small favour in return.  “ Say, Jose’, how ‘bout you do me a small favour?”

He agreed on the spot without knowing what the request was – typically friendly and accommodating response that we have come to know in El Salvador.  I told him Diego’s story.  And I asked him to ‘pop over’ to the Casa Clementina when he had the chance.  “Tell Diego that you are a friend of mine (the old fat Canadian) and tell him about your job at the call centre.  He’ll need you to encourage him to apply.  He doesn’t think they’ll hire him.  He needs your help.” 

JW laughed and promised to do it.  He was very keen to ‘do me a favour’.  I am sure that he will do it.  I am not sure that Diego has the confidence to seize the opportunity.  We’ll see.  I hope.  I left JW my e-mail address.

Still later, when Sal and I had finished dinner at a restaurant that we had frequented before, I discovered too late that my wallet was empty.  I had spent what I had earlier.  The rest was back at the hotel.  I told the young man who was our waiter both times that  that we’d been at the restaurant that I’d leave and come back in 20 minutes to settle up.  He said, “Si, signor.”  And we left.

Remember – Diego’s monthly salary was a paltry $50.00.  And I owed this overpriced-but-convenient neighbourhood restaurant almost half of that ($21.00).  I can’t imagine what that amount meant to our friendly young waiter who lives in an armed encampment for a city.

I got the money, left Sal at the B&B and returned just a bit later than I had estimated.  I looked through the window of the restaurant as I approached.  My waiter was looking a bit worried and his two waiter buddies were scowling at him.  I thought that it might be about me.

As I approached the door I saw that the two others immediately headed off and my guy turned to look at the kitchen as if he wasn’t giving it a moment’s thought.  When I tapped him on the shoulder, he was grinning from ear to ear.  The tip was generous, too.  I am pretty sure this guy is walking around the staff looking pretty smug.

And I, for one, really appreciated the trust he showed us in a city that is clearly lacking a lot of it for each other.

Point of the story: once you’ve seen one big church, you’ve mostly seen ‘em all.  Same for volcanoes (but I admit that they can still get one’s attention when they want to).  A pretty little town, a chicken bus, a few trinkets and a beach……….?  Been there, done it all.

It’s all good.

But, somehow, in some way every trip is memorable and almost always it’s because of the people.  And in that way, the most meaningful way, El Salvador did not disappoint.  Those three young men are not my friends.  I’ll never see them and not likely hear from them again either.  But I’ll always think of them when I think of El Salvador.

It was an interesting day.

As I am sure I have demonstrated sufficiently in past writings, I am extremely fair and open-minded.  Enlightened, almost, ya know?  So, it is with a heavy heart but a clear conscience that I feel obliged to report that the city of San Salvador sucks.

The BIG one!

El Salvador may, indeed, not suck completely if taken in a greater context but, frankly, I have seen enough, I think, to paint the whole of the country in the same bleak terms.  I can’t recommend it.

Put more succinctly, I almost hate it.

The reasons, for me, are many.  But the biggest deterrent is that it is just plain, stinkin’ bloody hot.  Like Burning Man hot.  Like the Sahara-with-trees-hot.

By comparison, Toronto in an August heat wave with full humidity is a walk in Stanley Park in the springtime.  The truly amazing thing is that one of the locals told me, “Oh, this isn’t hot!  March, April and May – now that is when it gets hot.  This?  This is good”.

Bear in mind that we are in the ‘cool’ part of El Salvador – the mountains.  And it is winter.

The other thing I am not enamored with is the impression of violence.  It is not the violence. Seen none of that.  In fact, the El Salvadoreans are amongst the most welcoming and friendly peoples we have ever encountered.  They are gracious, helpful and, to a person, considerate and pleasant. Especially the young people.  It’s not the people.

But…………..well………..it’s the people.  Let me explain………………

Should you go to a neighbourhood convenience store (a tienda), you are likely to first encounter a man with a shotgun standing on the corner.  Similar to Guatemala.  The difference: the Guatemalan is in a uniform, has ID and likely looks half asleep.  Typically, they have a newish SUV nearby with Securidad or Policia printed on the side. The Guatemalan men chosen to sport these weapons of personal destruction are just as often benign looking and/or young.

The ones in San Salvadore, on the other hand, look like they came straight from Central Casting.  No uniform.  Grungy clothes.  Mean-lookin’, gun-totin’, suspicious, edgy and scary-lookin’ hombres.  Usually standing menacingly in the shadows.

Somehow they convey a threat to me that is more personal and meaningful.  Call me crazy.

Neighbourhood Watch

These guys are guarding streets, like city blocks.  It is Neighbourhood Watch but with real commitment.  12 gauge.  They might be backed up by a couple of removable pipes or barrels blocking traffic.  In one case the local ‘sheriff’ has a steel drop-gate stretched over the end of a public side-street.

But, by far, the image that instills in me the greatest fear is the tienda itself.  In some, you can’t walk in.  A large steel gate with a ‘pass-through-opening is used at the entry as the ‘front counter’ at which all transactions take place.  Sometimes you can go into the building but then the proprietor and all his or her wares are behind similar heavy duty steel gates.  The impression is that you are doing a deal through the bars of the cell of the inmate imprisoned there.

Our Friendly Neighbourhood Convenience Tienda

And they are.  It’s horrible.  The lady around the corner has just such a store.  She’s open later than other tiendas – most don’t stay open after dark.  She has two vicious dogs roaming around in the dark space behind the front-gate-cum-cell door.  You ask for what you want and then she goes to get it from an eclectic, disorganized pile of goods, personal items, garbage and odds and sods.  You pass money through the bars and she passes through your purchase.  The guy ahead of me bought one tomato and two single (removed-from-the-pack) cigarettes.  The transaction took at least five minutes.

Making a purchase (from a camera shy storekeeper)

These are not really convenience stores as we know them.  More like ‘stashes’ from a Mad Max movie.

And we are staying in the upscale university area.  The one that has the only park that is safe to be in at night.

Is it safe to come out?

Our pleasant little B&B looks like a fortress and it is.  You have to buzz your way in and the gate through which you pass is heavy steel capped with electrified barbed wire and would stop most vehicles under four thousand pounds from ramming it.  Only a tank could get through on it’s first pass.  Or, maybe a chicken-bus with a full-head of steam. The rest of the outside facade is high concrete walls topped with the ubiquitous barbed wire or broken bottles.

Front Yard in a Box

And it is not the only fortress.  In fact, just about every building presents a solid concrete wall with a similar steel gate with the same or sometimes extra security paraphernalia.  A lot of people keep dogs as well.  They are not seen but they can be heard.  Walking the streets at night is like walking past a prison.  It’s just plain ugly and, after awhile, it gets depressing.

The family of man, eh?

I must admit to not being too keen on the thriving American corporate presence here either.  There is nothing wrong with a Macdonalds and KFC and WalMart and all that.  They deserve a presence, I guess.  But where they are in poor counties, no more local businesses seem to exist.  Where they are, the American cultural influence overwhelms the local one.

And they are everywhere.  I have seen a KFC the size of  a small school with the Macdonalds/Ikea-type small children’s play area attached. American corporations may do a lot of things right but displacement of the culture is – in my view – wrong.  Well, boring at the very least.  The thing is – San Salvador has the largest American style shopping mall in Central America.  It is first or second on the ‘list of things to do here’.

Like I need more Gucci, eh?  Which I can purchase here with US dollars as that is, in fact, the official currency of this country.  That’s right.  The whole country uses only US currency.  And get this…the average wage is under $300 a month with our 7-day-a-week ‘cleaner’  at the B&B getting room and board and $60.00 for a months work.  It is hard to get by in San Salvador.  Very hard.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Even though I will never return willingly to El Salvador, I am ecstatic that we came.  The experience of having been here and done this is way more important than having enjoyed it.  Enjoyment is definitely climbing my list of priorities (along with cleanliness and hot water) but it is still trailing behind ‘something new, something different and a good learning experience.’  We learned a lot.  I am definitely glad we came.

And I am also looking forward to leaving.  So, it was good both coming and going.  Staying?  Not so much…….

The Ubiquitous Barbed Wire