DAY FOUR

I tried the newly found shower. The water heater is part of the shower nozzle. A wire runs from the shower head to a ciruit breaker with a sign which reads: “Don’t touch the shower while this switch is turned on. You may get shocked.” At the end of my shower, I reached to turn off the switch so I could touch the metal valve. Zap. Apparently I had the order of operation backwards.

Today we traveled to Barra de Santiago, taking the Supremeo from San Salvador to Sonsonate. This bus had individual seats, AC and a Wesley Snipes movie playing.

I’m not feeling great today, I think because the amount of grease in my breakfast, almost certainly lard. I try not to confirm such things.

The second bus from Sonsonate to Barra de Santiago is an old school bus, but Jason and I suspect they push the seats closer together to get another row in.

The final leg is on the back of a pickup 7km to the center of town.

I’m staying with a family in Napo’s room, (short for Napoleon.) Napo is a bombero (fire fighter) in Sonsonate so he’s gone for a few days at a time. My room is quite large and has an attached bathroom, which seems quite rare. Community water is on in the morning and evening, but sometimes can be off for a few days. Every sink and bathroom has a pila (water reserve) and a guacal (scooper) for the dry spells.

Later in the afternoon was a town meeting of the Development Association. Jason presented a project to build town bathrooms and a kiosk to promote tourism. These structures have been designed by an architect in San Salvador and now needs the support of the association to be funded.

The first order of business was to decide when to meet again. This took about a half an hour to settle on the next time. I caught some of what was going on, but my Spanish is not good enough yet to catch everything. Although, in any public forum, no matter what the language it’s often difficult what people are talking about.

It’s 8pm, but I’m falling asleep in my bed writing this so I’m turning in. There’s an internet café in town that just opened a month ago. If you’re reading this, I guess it works.