El Salvador Delegation 2025: Random Photos

June 17-24, 2025

Just photos this post...stuff that didn't end up somewhere else.

The pila (concrete water tank) where clothes and dishes are washed by hand. At the left end is the propane gas griddle where the cacao beans were roasted and tortillas are cooked. The stairway at the right leads up to where my room was.

The Casa is surrounded by a profusion of plants and flowers. These are outside the door to the chapel.

The peak in the distance is San Vincente, one of 6 active volcanoes in El Salvador.

The price of eggs in the store where I got my Coke Zero. They are sold by the flat (30 eggs) for $4.75, half a flat (15 eggs) for $2.40, or a half-dozen for $1.00. And yes, those are U.S. dollars, it's the official currency of El Salvador, since about 2001.

An oriole nest. We saw a number of the birds, but the nests hold still for photos much better. At least some of the orioles we have in the States overwinter in Central America.

This tree/shrub in the foreground is oregano. If it doesn't winter-kill like it does in Iowa, oregano can turn into a tree. I did not know that. Blanca took a small branch from it and said that she was going to stick it in the ground around her house and it would grow. They use oregano in traditional medicine, less so for cooking.

Idalia making tortillas.It's not a Salvadoran meal without tortillas, so they always need them.

There are so many plants here that I'm used to seeing as houseplants. But here they grow wild or planted outside and reach sizes I've never seen before.

Mary bought a machete at the market on Sunday and encouraged this photo op.

Another mural from around town. Too many times I'd see a lovely one but it's impossible to get a photo of it from the back of a moving truck. I walked by this one.

Ditto the mural pic above.

This is a cafe in Berlín. I didn't go in but I liked the way they'd painted the wall outside.

A closer picture of how the palm fronds had been decorated for the procession Sunday.

Walking on our house-to-house visits. The community people did most of the carrying of the bags.

A kitchen inside one of the homes we visited. The round comal leaning against the wall on the left or the pot with the lid is placed on top of the round or rectangular support. A fire is built under it to cook whatever you're making. The grind stone on the right is used with a sort-of cylindrical stone to grind corn.

Cecilia saying hi to some pet birds at one house. A number of people have these little birds (conyers?).

Alejandro, the Team's mechanic and driver, among other duties as assigned.

This is a latrine I used. I didn't realize the "door" didn't actually cover the opening until I got inside. I am standing on the concrete floor of the latrine. It was a lot nicer than some.

No idea what this flower is but I just loved them.

A woman carrying the 2 bigger bags of stuff.

This was at one house that didn't have water tanks. They store water in these. They need to take them to be filled, then carry them back to the house. It's time-consuming labor, and expensive if they have to pay for the water.

It's a tropical country. You can often hear and/or see the geckos on the walls or ceiling. This one decided to crawl on the light fixture of the ceiling fan in the dining room.

2 of the 3 tortoises that wander around and through the Casa. I had to get into the habit of looking under the table before I sat and where I put my feet down. More than once I didn't pay close enough attention and almost stepped on one.

 

 

 El Salvador Delegation 2025: Days 8 & 9

June 24 & 25, 2025

June 24

I woke up at 6 and decided to shower before breakfast, rather than after. At some point after breakfast, I had another piece of my birthday cake. It was the last opportunity! I stripped the linens off my bed and brought them down to the house, paid Idalia for the pound of cacao beans I bought, texted with Al, and brought my bags down.

Alfredo arrived a little before 9:30 and we were on the road by 9:40. It's about an hour and 45 minutes to the airport. I called "Escopeta!" and rode shotgun in the front.

Me and Alfredo getting ready to leave for the airport. Luann and Natalie were in the seat behind us; Mary and Flossie in the next seat back.

As with previous trips, when I sit up front with Alfredo, we talked and laughed all the way to the airport. An hour of conversation with Alfredo and my Spanish gets exponentially better. He is so good about speaking slowly and simply, checking often if I understand what he's saying, and explaining what he means when I don't. Too bad it only happens on the way home.

Natalie and Luann were talking about what it might be like to spend a few days on one end or the other of a delegation trip and what they might do. I asked Alfredo for suggestions and translated them back to the women. Luann is a former corrections probation officer and she was curious about prisons in El Salvador; she wanted to know if we were going to drive by one. I asked Alfredo and he pointed it out when we did. He said there were hardly any prisoners there anymore...they'd mostly been  moved to the really big prison Cecot (Center for Terrorism Confinement). Cecot is the biggest prison in all of the Americas, built to "house" (using the term very loosely) 40,000 people under maximum security. We talked about our families, and when I would be back again.

We got to the airport and unloaded, said goodbye to Alfredo, and headed inside. We had bags to check then on to security. We got through security in record time; I've never been through so fast. Our gate was 15 and we had to go through another security checkpoint before we got there. Everyone got lunch and I bought a bottle of water for the flight.

Weird thing...I was sitting in my seat before takeoff when a flight attendant came up and asked if I were Sue. I said yes, then he asked to scan my boarding pass. He thanked me, then left. I've never had that happen before and no idea why it did. 

The flight to Dallas was uneventful. There is a large group of kids on the plane with us...40 of them. They are from a church in Urbandale and Flossie knows some of them, since she just graduated from there.

In Dallas, we took turns watching luggage while people went to get supper. Then, we got the news that our 10:18 flight has been delayed to 11. Then, delayed until 5am tomorrow. Ugh!

We got in line at customer service. We'd been rebooked on the 5am flight but wanted to change that. The 3 older women wanted to take the hotel vouchers and a later flight. The 2 younger ones wanted to stay in the airport all night and keep the 5am flight. Since we're all on the same reservation we needed an agent to take care of it for us.

We got that all straightened out, Flossie and Mary went to find the Urbandale kids, the rest of us went to the shuttle stop to get the shuttle to the hotel. Another couple was also heading to the shuttle stop to go to the same hotel, so we walked together. Others collected...a guy from Spain, a mother with 3 or 4 small children (the maybe-10 daughter was the only one who spoke English and I could tell it was the end of a very, very long day for her...poor kid), an older man, some other women, etc. The airline agent said that if a shuttle didn't come soon, we could call the number on the voucher. Everyone waited, but no shuttle came. A woman called and was told there would be one in about 10 minutes. We waited 15 and someone else called..."just 10 minutes." Another 15 minutes, another call. All in all, there were probably 5 calls and we waited an hour. By then, there were at least a dozen of us waiting. When the van showed up, there was no way all of us were going to fit. I got on the van and went all the way to the back. Natalie and Luann put their bags in the back and by then, there were no seats left. They told the driver they would be standing in the aisle, whether that was allowed or not.

It was 11:30 before I got to my room. I set my alarm for 4:25 and went to bed. 

June 25

I got up, took a quickie shower, and put on my clothes from yesterday...since I had packed all my clothes in my checked bag, along with my chargers. Luann and Natalie's room was across the hall and they heard me open my door so they opened their door and I went into their room while they finished packing up.

Luann called a Lyft and we  headed to the airport. We got to our gate and saw some of the same people we'd seen in the customer service line last night. We took turns getting something to eat with our $12 food vouchers. Then it was time to board.

Uneventful flight to Des Moines. Al picked me up at the airport. I took a nap when I got home. 

 El Salvador Delegation 2025: Day 7

June 23, 2025

After breakfast, the Heartland people had a short meeting with Blanca and Elmer (as members of the Pastoral Team) about El Tablon's priorities and needs. I was there but not participating because Heartland's partnership with El Tablon is their relationship to manage. I'm not a member of either group. I'm on this delegation in my capacity as an Our Sister Parish board member and officer.

We loaded up the truck one last time for the drive to El Tablon. We drove to Antonio's house in Tablon Centro and unloaded the packages to deliver and the people going house-to-house. Then the truck and the rest of the supplies went down to the school at Tablon Cerna, where we would have lunch and party with the community in the afternoon.

My group visited 8 houses, all down the mountain from where we started. We eventually caught up with the other group at their last house.  Then, we all continued our walk down to the school for lunch.

This was one of the men who got so choked up when we gave him the health, soap, and food bags. I'm giving him the health bag.

At the school, the morning classes were just finishing up. We had some toys and games for the school but they were on the truck, which had to go back to the Casa to get the party supplies and wasn't back yet. We didn't want to keep the teachers and students longer than we had to so the Heartlanders went to meet with them to tell them about the toys. But then the truck arrived and they could actually show them the soccer balls, frisbees, smaller play balls, jacks sets, jump ropes, etc. They explained that these were for the school to keep and the kids to play with during play time while they were there. One of the teachers got down on the floor to demonstrate how to play jacks. He was really good at it!

One of the teachers showing the kids how to play jacks.

We had lunch, which had been prepared at the school kitchen by Cecilia and some women from the community. With Cecilia in charge, we could trust that the food would be safe for our North America digestive tracts.

Cooking our lunch inside the school kitchen.

Preparing the "snacks" for the community members in the school kitchen prep area.

It sprinkled a couple of times while we were at the school, but never enough to be a real issue. We had the shelter of the school roof, if it had.

Around 1:00, the community members started arriving...all of them from both Centro and Cerna. We had a wrap-up meeting where people could say something if they wanted. There were a lot of thanks and expressions of gratitude for visiting their homes. That was a really big deal for people...that we had gone to the effort to come to El Salvador and meet with them personally, talk with them individually, see them as people living their lives. We thanked them for opening their homes and lives to us, taking time away from the fields (in some cases) and sharing their stories and realities with us. 

Then there was a covenant signing. The partnership model for communities and their partner churches calls for a covenant to be signed at the inception of the partnership and then again every 5 years after that. It was time to re-up the Cerna partnership with Heartland and the Centro group was new so it was their first covenant. There were 4 copies of the covenant for Centro and 4 for Cerna, 1 copy of each for: the community, the Pastoral Team, Heartland, and Our Sister Parish. One representative of each group signed all documents; I signed for Our Sister Parish.

Our translator, Oscar, read the entire covenant aloud so that everyone knew what they were agreeing to. The covenant spells out the responsibilities of each group and when it is due to be signed again. The table in the foreground is where we signed all 8 copies.

Once the business was taken care of, it was time for the party! We brought 4 piñatas, one each for the girls, the boys, the men, and the women. The kids weren't blindfolded, but the adults were. As the piñata would move up and down, people would yell out "Arriba!" (up) or "Abajo" (down) to 'help' the blindfolded person find it. Mary represented the delegation in the women's category and cracked open their piñnata.

This little girl couldn't get enough of a whack to do more than move the piñata a little, but she had a good time trying.

Some of the little kids can really whack it.

These enterprising boys decided to check the discarded piñatas for any candy that may not have fallen out. They were well rewarded for their ingenuity.

Elmer "drove" the piñatas for the kids.

After all the piñatas had given up their contents, all the community members got a sandwich. I didn't see what was in the sandwiches but they were made with a long lozenge shaped roll that had been slit across the top and stuffed with something.. They also got a bottle of pop (the big flavors are grape and orange, although I saw some strawberry, too) and a package of Oreo-type cookies.

Then it was pack-up, clean-up time. A guy with a shop broom swept up the detritus of the piñatas. So many people wanted to have their picture taken with one or more of us. So many people wanted to say "goodbye" and hug us. It took a while to actually get into the truck and on the road.

The truck was packed, as many of the Centro people wanted a ride up the mountain to their community. There was a woman standing behind me holding an infant. It was all I could do to hold on with 2 hands on the rough, very bumpy road. I couldn't imagine how she was hanging on with only one hand and holding a baby with the other. I was so afraid of lurching into her that I had a death grip on the bars and my hands started to tingle.And then the baby fell asleep, so the woman was pretty much holding inert weight.

 

When we first go in the truck, the baby was alert.

But he very quickly fell asleep. The photo was taken during a brief stop to let off some people. She continued on not only hanging on with one hand, but standing on one foot.

Almost all the people got off somewhere around Cerna. The exception being 2 grade-school age kids, a brother and sister. They stayed on long past any Cerna houses and we wondered if they were going all the way to Berlín with us. The answer was, "Yes." Apparently, their mother works in Berlín and they were going to ride with us. We stopped and they got out around the cemetery.

We got back to the Casa around 4:45 then left again for Alegría at 5:00. It's traditional for delegations to take the Team out to dinner on the last night. More standing in the back of the truck... At least this time, we're on paved roads so it's a whole lot smoother. It spit rain on us a little on the way there but I was standing behind Mike and he blocked all the wind and rain for me. Thanks, Mike!

We went to a restaurant called Finca Margarita that sits very high over Alegría and has a phenomenal view down the mountain and into the valley. If the weather is clear. It wasn't exactly clear for us, but it's still a very cool place with good food.

At Finca Margarita, this is an overlook point called the Door to Heaven. Great views but those of our group who don't like heights, declined to climb the stairs.

 

The path down from the Door to Heaven. There is a little cafe up there where you can get coffee and sweets, but we didn't partake as we were waiting for our food down at the restaurant.

Back at the Casa, Luann (our group treasurer) figured up how much budgeted money we had left and then we, as a group, discussed what to do with it. It's always the group's choice what to do with it. We could choose to divide it among the delegates or contribute it to some purpose locally. We had $390 left and decided to give $100 to the Heartland Health Fund (which was nearly empty) and the rest to Heartland's general  fund for future food packets.

I went to my room around 9 and got mostly packed. Home tomorrow!