When I left Sacramento late in the evening, I had no idea that our arrival at San Salvador International Airport would find us flying into the sunrise.  As our plane descended, prior to landing, I could see through the window the sky’s early morning rosy gold and turquoise and the curling waves of the incoming tide  along the curving coastline.  

As we exited the air terminal, we were greeted with open arms by Maria Lorena, who would be our guide and translator for our weeklong visit. Her eight-year-old daughter, Maty, twirled and skipped about as she welcomed us with a flood of Spanish.  I realized, as I had when I first signed up for this trip to El Salvador, that I was completely unable to understand what this darling child was saying.  Even with Lorena’s help and our tour organizer Shireen, who spoke excellent English, I wondered if the language barrier would create insurmountable problems for the rest of us.  

Lorena introduced us to our driver, Giovani, a young smiling fellow whose English was somewhat reassuring, although he said he wasn’t really fluent.  Giovani, the microbus he drove, and the English lessons he had studied for the past year, all came from the English school, where Lorena also had learned English and taught Spanish to visitors.  Giovani stowed our luggage, including my overlarge suitcase and the guitar, autoharp, and box of flutes we had brought to donate to a local music school, in the back and various corners of the bus and we all piled in.  

Forty-five minutes later, we arrived at the Bahia del Sol, a beachfront hotel, where we would rest from our trip on the red-eye, and have time to get acquainted and talk over our plans for the week, as well as enjoy the ocean. 

Breakfast at the outdoor café was our main priority, and with it, our first Spanish lesson.  Shireen acted as teacher; we repeated dutifully and took careful notes.  

Buen provecho -- good day,enjoy your meal      
Pan -- bread                
Mas café, por favor -- more coffee, please           
Huevos rancheros -- ranch eggs
Ya -- enough, ready, all ready  
Sandia -- watermelon  

Aha!  Now I could order at least one meal; I wouldn’t starve.  

By mid-afternoon, fatigue set in, and we retired to our rooms for siesta.  I lay down on my sofa and fell asleep, only to awaken, startled by a large bang, followed by small metal objects flying across the room.  I jumped up and turned to see a strange man opening the door that connected my suite to the adjoining one.  He immediately addressed me in Spanish, but I could only answer "No hablo Espanol."  His broad gestures and his toolbox told me more than his words; he was repairing the lock and his screwdriver had propelled most of the doorknob into my room.  Relieved, but chastened I had not been able to converse with him, I retreated to my bedroom, closed the door and went back to sleep.  

Shortly after lunch on our second day, we rattled along the road to San Salvador, and I noted fields of sugar cane, flocks of ….  what were they called, these small bright chickens with the glowing red and black feathers?  

Gallo -- rooster    
Gallino -- hen
Remember the double "l" sounds like "y."

The savvy gallos scratched in the dust beside their gallinos; never did we see them stray into the roadway where the constant stream of primary colored, vintage buses flattened any stray dog or squirrel that got in their way.  Those same buses, as well as billboards and street signs became my Spanish dictionary.  Ads for beer vied with names of the local merchants and their trades.  

Pilsner -- a local beer 
Vento Cement 
Farmacia San Nicholas
Collegio Cristobal Colon  

These were self-explanatory.  Maybe Spanish wasn’t so hard to figure out, after all.  I learned that "meubles," a word I saw frequently in the shopping districts, meant "furniture."  So now, I could order the furnishings for my casa and perhaps own a flock of gallinos y uno gallo if I decided to stay a while in a rustic village.  

Four of us women came to El Salvador for various reasons: to bring musical instruments to a group of girls who had started a music school; to dialogue with local women who were grassroots organizers of medical, educational, and legal resources to the many Salvadorians struggling with poverty, ultimately to immerse ourselves as much as possible in the local culture during our short, ten-day visit.  But how to do so without knowing more than a few words of Spanish?    

We were fortunate that our party included two bilingual women, and Giovani, who delighted in learning more English.  He corrected our pronunciation when Leslie, Jav’y, and I accented the wrong syllable as we attempted to say those fascinating, melodious words on the billboards.  Giovani soon had us rolling our r’s with gusto!  I mastered "muebles nuevos usables," new and used furniture, and Quezaltepeque, the name of San Salvador’s volcano, but finally gave up on Cuscatancingo, a town near San Salvador.     

Webster’s Spanish-English Dictionary traveled with us, on and off the bus.  

On our road trip, we learned to initiate conversations, to introduce ourselves with "Mi nombre es Maggi (or Leslie or Jav’y)," to reply "Mucho gusto!" when we met a stranger, to negotiate with the mercado for lovely, handmade dresses, hammocks, and brightly painted toys.  

Early in the afternoon, we arrived in Lolotique, a small village, where the community organizers had invited us for a conversatorio between Leslie, an officer from the Sacramento, California, sheriff’s department, and the local police.  Lorena’s interpretation gave me the gist of the dialogue, but I wished I could have understood on my own.  When an attorney became confrontive with Leslie, asking questions in an angry voice, I could not follow his rapid words although it was obvious from his tone he didn’t agree with California domestic violence law. Leslie had several more conversatorios with police and Supreme Court Justices during the following days, and said women in El Salvador experienced great difficulty in reporting spousal violence, due both to the confusing laws and to cultural and religious beliefs that made the women feel shame for speaking out.  

Even Lorena and Shireen were exhausted after conversing and thinking in two languages by the end of the day.  Lorena said her brain felt like mush and sometimes she wasn’t even sure whether she needed to respond in English or Spanish.  We drove into the mountains to Perquin, a town in the department of Morazon, where many battles of the Civil War of the 1980’s were fought.  In the dark mountain night, the twinkling lights of our cabins, set high on the hillside, welcomed us; friendly porters carried our bags up the steep steps.  What a relief, to fall into bed and dream in English.  

Author's Biography

Coming from the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, I found much to surprise me in El Salvador;

E-mail Maggi at maggisg@cdepot.net

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