| Lunch in Santa Marta. We ate every meal together, having a "check-in" at least once a day, including answering such questions as, "How are you feeling?, what observations do you have on what we did yesterday?", and similar questions. |
| This is the home of a wonderful and warm woman who is also an excellent cook. Perhaps someone will remind Hugh of her name so we can include it here. She fed us during our stay in Santa Marta, and we were introduced to a nice hot chocolate drink, a cocoa bean extract, that substituted for morning coffee. |
| These are some arts and crafts items made by the Santa Marta residents. They were offered for sale to us. |
| This woman made the embroideried items held up by Virginia and Gwen. Lovely work! |
| Two girls who came by to see what these foreigners were up to. Aren't they beautiful? |
| Woman carrying her laundry -- on her head, of course. |
| Women doing their laundry at a source of water. The people also bathe at sites such as this one, stripping down to their underwear and pouring water over themselves with a bowl. There is no running water, although water is distributed throughout the village to many of the homes via a pump and piping system. The pump is turned on once every 4 days during the dry season (we were there during the dry season). |
| Woman in her "kitchen." Food is cooked outside or in open, sheltered areas over wood fires. |
| Christina with a local Santa Marta man. There was no place that Christina went that somebody wasn't hugging her! |
| Frequent form of transportation in the rugged area. This horse seemed to have an unusual shape, and a saddle that was different from what we are accustomed. Notice the FMLN sign in the background, which would suggest "no FMLN." However, the sign says "Vote for the FMLN," and the "X" represents the placement of the "X" on the ballot. |
| A typical street in Santa Marta. The houses are cinder block, or the older ones are wooden (logs or boards) and adobe; the roofs are Spanish-type tiles or corregated metal. |
| The water distribution project (sign above and picture below). The sign shows the groups that participated in getting water to homes within the village. They call it potable water, but we still drank from our water bottles or jugs that were brought by our hosts. |
| One culturally related commentary by Virginia, pictured here at the pump statuion, was that the village no longer had a central source of water, around which people of the village would meet to wash and exchange news and gossip. Progress... |
| Santa Marta School. The schools all seemed to be painted blue and white. A recent improvement is the barbed-wire fence (see the posts?) around the school grounds. This kept the pigs and other animals out of the school. |
| These are some of the wonderful, bright, energetic kids that we met. They are the products of the school and the "popular teachers" (which we found to mean, teachers of or from the people). These young people are well-educated, and are being taught to think, rather than simply learn by rote. As a Unitarian-based group, we loved that! |
| Here we are listening with fascination to the teachers and students, hearing of their experiences, goals, hardships, and optimism. They are an energetic and wonderful people. |
| Some of the teachers |
| We heard about the Lempa River Crossing and the massacre of innocent civilians during the peoples attempt to escape from the army, which was supplied with arms and helicopters by the US Government, a very sad thing to learn. |
| Sign displayed in the computer lab in the school |
| The computer lab. As noted in the sign above, these computers were donated and delivered to the school in Santa Marta by the River Road Unitarian Church. It was an amazing juxtaposition: outhouses, no running water, and computers! |
| Needless to say, the kids found lots of things to do on the computer. Unfortunately, they don't have internet access since there are no phone lines in Santa Marta. The only possible option would be for them to get 2-way satellite service. Wouldn't that be great for them! |
| Alphonso and the computer lab teacher and overseer |
| We had heard that there would be a vigil in the church to commemorate events during the war, so we approached quietly so that we wouldn't disturb the people. What we found was a spirited, singing, hand-clapping, arm waving group. |