First days in Suchitoto, El Salvador

The Main Square in Suchitoto

Clothes being sold on the sidewalk, in the square

The first couple of days were a flood of new sights and impressions. Leaving Dolores´s, we pass two women in aprons chatting in a doorway, an old guy in the next one with a cup of coffee and no shirt. The walls of the houses are right up to the sidewalk. All the windows are covered with metal grills but, with no air-conditioning,  during the day, many windows and doors are open.

We walk by a dark room with lots of boys and young men in front of computers, one of many little shops in the town where people can get on the internet. The next shop has a prominent sign:

Funerales
La Resurreccion
Servicio 24 horas

Maggie, Currin, Adele, Claire and Iris, eating chocobananas
on those crazy sidewalks

A funeral home with 24 hour service and it is called the Resurrection. Inside are stacks of gaudy caskets, some red, blue or even pink, with gold filigree. I am imagining the possibility of burying and resurrecting the same customers over and over when I nearly trip .

The streets are very roughly cobbled in stones of varying sizes. Yet the sidewalks are not always a good alternative, as they are capricious affairs varying greatly in height, suddenly broken up by steps, crossed by a gutter to direct the water during the many flash floods, or ending unexpectedly as much as two feet above the street.

 They do make nice places to sit, often being at about the height of a chair. And this is a very good thing, as sitting on the sidewalk and watching people pass by is a common pastime in Suchitoto. Wish I could show you a photo of that, but I have not mastered the art of photographing people without fear of insult.

As we approach the center of town the sidewalks are crowded with locals selling food, clothes and trinkets by the sidewalk, or just sitting about chatting and staring at passers-by. A woman sits nursing a baby, quite unconcerned. Four men in cowboy hats are playing cards. There is a line of 6 people and two dogs at the Carniceria where two men hack at chunks of meat.

I am struck by how unguarded people´s stares are. I don´t think I have been anywhere where it was so acceptable to simply stare at people. It is a whole new stare from other places I have been where I have been a foreigner, or of a different race or socio-economic strata. It is not, for example, like being in a town overrun by tourists where you get the oh-christ-not-another-one sort of stare. Nor is it the look I would get in Morocco, the daughter-of-satan-do-not-consider-lifting-that-foul-camera-in-my-presence sort of stare, and it is not what I am prepared to receive in some neighborhoods of Boston, the white-bitch-get-your-ass-outa-my-hood sort of stare. Nor is it the typical Spanish stare where they quickly glance away with a look of- What you thought I was staring at you? Of course not, I care nothing about you.

Here, they just plain stare. And if you look back, they will often smile and say Buenos Dias. Now, this is coming from a woman just over 50. For the girls it is not so simple. As we walk along, I am usually behind them, so I see how the men´s stares follow their long white legs in American standard shorts, which show a lot more leg skin than local attire. This is definitely not Miami. I thought the girls were being less hassled than usual because I had not heard any catcalls. Turns out the men are just quieter about the way they go about it. Many make kissing sounds at them, or quiet whistles, the sort that you would make to call a dog, or tch-tch sounds like when you tell a cat to get off a table. Surely this does not win the hearts of the women of El Salvador! 

You know those ads encouraging you to donate your old car to charity for a tax deduction? When I see them, I think, that can´t make sense to give your car to someone if it is not worth more than the tax deduction. That can´t be a favor. Only a burden. Not so! Those cars are alive and kicking in Suchitoto. Here you often see a site I vaguely remember from my childhood, or maybe it is just movies from the 50´s, or is it my brother Bill, who is such an anachronism, anyway, you see this site which seems so nostalgic- guys standing around the open hood of a car, passing the time, and maybe fixing the car.

I am pretty sure the maple leaf, which does not grow much south of Connecticut,
was put on the car before it traveled south to El Salvador. But probably not the sticker on the rear window, "Jesùs vive"

There is not a lot of traffic in Suchitoto. Much of it is old pick ups with the family, or groups of friends, sometimes with a cow, standing and sitting in the back, and old school buses that have been converted to city buses. Each one is painted differently. Our street is the main road out of town. The buses pass by with doors permenantly open. Often 2 or 3 men are hanging out of them as they roar by with clouds of black smoke billowing behind. On the back they typically have a painting of a religious theme – Jesùs es me Salvador, or hands clasped in prayer. Better than seat belts. I guess.

Stay tuned. More to come!