Santa Marta, El Salvador


My time in El Salvador is almost over, with this ghastly revelation one must suck the marrow from every moment till at last the plane door shuts and my time here is finished. As departure comes closer though, it’s necessary to reflect in writing and try to make some sense out of this place, how ever impossible that task seems to me now. How can one understand El Salvador when the towns we pass by are either strewn with bullet holes or have disappeared, burned back into the jungle by ruthless government soldiers? What is reality when the old woman you are living with sits in her chair at night and talks, eyes glazed, of pregnant women thrown on spikes by armed men?

I’m writing this in a hammock, somewhere in the North East near the Honduran boarder. Appropriately I’m wearing my green Che shirt open to the heat, machete on the floor beside me as I listen to the sound of cocks crowing in the growing twilight. My memories are fragmented now by a need to sleep, flashes of mountains reaching far into the gathering dusk, a cow wandering dusty streets with a perplexed expression on her face, political slogans and bullet holes sprayed across whitewashed walls. Through this sea of thought I see Kyle, clinging to the back of a pick-up truck as I film him talking about guerillas he has known. If images can stay with you forever then these might. There was a church as we drove through the jungle to La Mora, it’s roof gone, the edges of it’s windows stained black with soot. It’s crumbling façade caught my eye and wouldn’t let go until the church finally disappeared around a bend and was gone.

I viewed all this through the viewfinder of the video camera I carried slung over one shoulder. Filming in the heat and dust was hard. I remember keeping focus on the person I was interviewing while a team of builders knocked down the house behind me, trying to be able to hear as a hoard of insects started their singing in the tree above a meeting I was trying to record. Every morning Roy would toss me the film bag as I’d check the batteries and grab the tripod. Sometimes we’d have to run to capture a moment on time, stills cameras bouncing up and down on our chests, laying the tripod just as an ex-guerilla, a teacher, a doctor began talking. Sometimes it was incredibly moving, the camera rolling as a man describes how he'd been tortured during the war and a doctor tells of his struggle to prevent AIDS and HIV. In the end perhaps we're wannabe war reporters, slugging beers and talking to girls at night, fingers clicking on camera triggers during the day, a constant stream of footage carving it's way into our tapes.

Sometimes though, there's a time to stop. I remember now hanging with one hand onto the back of a pick-up truck I’d haggled hard to use, finger far away from the film button as Roy crouched down trying to light a cigarette. The sun was going down, the sky rosy, orange, blood red all at the same time as if in mourning for the past day. My lens cap was on, I'd tried to get the sunset on camera at first, but there are some things you have to see for yourself. Around us all was still as the light fled over the horizon, leaving only the truck, the wind and us.


Are you sitting comfortably?


Roy and Camera, San Salvador


Arrival at the Airport



Camera Rolling...



The Suffolk Documentary Team Setting Up Shop, Santa Marta

Santa Marta, El Salvador

A man once told me that, roughly speaking, El Salvador has one doctor for every six thousand people. His name is Aristides Peres and for him the above isn’t just some mindless statistic, it’s an every day reality and job description. Dr Peres is one of a six member medical team in the remote village of Santa Marta, a two-hour long pick-up truck ride from the nearest town along pot-holed tracks almost impassable in the rainy season. We went there to interview several men who’d once met congressman Joe Moakley during the 80s and ended up staying three days. The first time I met the doctor he stood tired, stethoscope draped over his shoulders, a dog walking aimlessly along the floor of the medical centre as we interviewed him about AIDS (SIDA in Spanish.) His English was good and he reminded me of another man a long time ago, a fat doctor in Cambodia who played the violin every Thursday night and educated tourists about T.B between every song.
After Dr Perez had finished speaking and Roy had began to pack up our equipment I approached him. Our initial conversation was short and to the point:

ME: Hello, I enjoyed your speech. I was just wondering… I’m a wilderness paramedic by the way… I was thinking that I’d really like to help you in any way I can.

Dr Perez: Ok, can you come in five minutes? I’m must do a government health check on children at a school in the mountains. You can help me?

Me: (slightly taken aback, having expected to be given a job scrubbing the floors at best) Yes, of course…

I bounded up to Judy seconds later, a massive smile on my face as I asked her permission to accompany the doctor. She smiled and told me to get going. Ten minutes later I was walking out of the centre with a medical team that consisted of the doctor, a young looking dentist with long hair and aviators, a ferocious female nurse and another man with a stack of files under one arm. Together we climbed high up a dusty hill above the village, weaving erratically around docile cows lying in the middle of the road. The sun was out and the air hot and dry with the ever-present smell of animal dung. As we passed old men taking a break from work each raised their cowboy hat slightly in greeting, nodding their silent respect to the doctor who seemed to know every one. Eventually the village disappeared behind us and ten minutes later we’d arrived at the blue walled complex that was the school of Los Rodeo. As we entered through a massive steel gate Dr Perez turned to me, ‘remember to lock it. The children see us come and think we give them vaccinations so they run away.’ This I did as the others set up shop in the schools open air atrium, tables dragged out, dentist tools set up and piles of forms disgorged from bags. All the children lined up in front of us, laughs and smiles contrasting with limbs thin from malnutrition and arms riddled with ringworm. They took great sport in sneaking like tigers to pounce from behind and slap me over the head before disappearing behind a wall of their friends, everyone giggling shyly. The doctor pulled out a chair designed for a six year old and turned to me, ‘If I tell you what to write can you record each child?’

Three hours later I’d seen dozens of children, most with some small complaint like a common cold though a few had intestinal parasites. We worked like a production line, each child stepping forward to have his arms, mouth, eyes and ears examined before being given a slip for medicine and sent to the next area to be measured. I took down information, name of patient, age, sex, complaint in Spanish. My shirtsleeves were rolled up and sweat poring off my brow by the time we finished. There were other things I’d see working with Dr Perez, disturbing things I’d rather write about later when they are not so vivid.


Cow in the Road, Santa Marta


Mural on the wall of a school, Santa Marta


Kids


The Dusty Roads of Santa Marta

San Salvador, El Salvador

We were walking down an empty street when I noticed the policeman. He stood, high above us on the edge of a small park, a mountain bike resting against one blue-trousered leg. He wore a cap and carried a truncheon, his face indistinct in the near dark of the El Salvadorian night. We’d seen him earlier when we’d wondered down a quiet avenue and spotted the police station, two officers sitting listlessly by the forever open door. Both Roy and I had been drinking so, camera at the ready we sauntered up smiling and I introduced us in pigeon Spanish, “Hola, nosotros es Journalistas de una periodico en de Eustados Eunidos, donde es graffiti political por photographia?” This translates vaguely to ‘hello, we’re journalists from a newspaper in the United States, where is the political graffiti we can photograph?’ It was a harmless lie, more likely to get us an interview than admitting we were two college students on spring break.

Perhaps it was my Spanish, maybe they didn’t believe the story, it could have even been that the policemen were taken aback by two hairy gringos with a paparazzi style camera and the stink of tequila on their breath suddenly appearing from the night and demanding directions. Whatever, they gave us bull-shit instructions and waved vaguely towards the entire village before returning to the more serious business of putting their feet up on desks and looking bored. Disheartened by this sudden failure we slouched off up the hill towards our guesthouse, buildings pitted with bullet holes all around us, mangy dogs slinking from shadow to shadow. It’s an odd feeling to walk through a sleeping town and know that ten years before the entire place was filled with flying bullets and explosions, I can never put the past together with the future in places like that.

As we crossed the park, almost home now, the policeman appeared on his bike. He sat looking at us for a few seconds before signaling that we should follow him through the strands of palm trees towards a grubby red pavilion, it’s paint chipped and tile floor dirty. Just by its entrance he stopped and put the bike down, pointing above our heads at something. Looking up I could see what appeared to be the tail of an aircraft, olive green, stuck to a pole in the middle of the park. “American” the man said in Spanish, “from the war.”

For the next half an hour we talked to the policeman, who was soon joined by another. Roy set up the tripod and camera, snapping pictures and searing the darkness with his high-powered flash. Every so often he’d glance up from the viewfinder and ask me to translate for him, then something would catch his eye and he’d return to the camera, trying to photograph the plane. The tail section was definitely that of a military aircraft or helicopter we decided and the writing in English stenciled all over it seemed to confirm what the man had said. The conversation between our new friends and us went something like this, all be it with many mistakes and awkward pauses due to the language barrier:
Me: American, you’re sure?
Policeman: Si, a warplane. The Americans fought in the war.
Roy (to me): The Americans were actually fighting here? They must just mean the plane is American.
Me: (to the policeman) Only American planes or also American pilots?
Policeman: Si, pilots too
Me: You’re sure the Americans we’re here?
Policeman: Yes, and the Israeli’s.
Me (Half miming): The Americans were on the ground and in the air?
Policeman: Yes, the Israeli’s trained the troops and the Americans also fought.
Me: And the American’s dropped bombs (miming an explosion) here?
Policeman: Many bombs, in the hills there is a village the Americans destroyed. There are unexploded American bombs there. (He writes the name down)
Me (to Roy): I might be getting the translation slightly wrong but he seems sure that American pilots and troops we’re actually fighting here during the war. Did anyone ever mention that before?
Roy: S***. He seems sure?
Me: Yes. He also says they destroyed a village.

Afterwards, lying half asleep in my hammock I thought about what the man had said. My own countrymen dropping bombs on innocent people for the greater good, it reminded me horribly of Cambodia and the two 50 ton bombs turned into the pillars of a gate, marking the entrance to Aki Ra’s landmine museum at Siem Reap. It seems tragic that in the countries I love the most the people who are so amazingly kind to me have the least reason to be so. I should feel ashamed when they welcome me into their house and give me their food, after the damage the western world has done they should with every right lock their door and turn me away.


Unexploded Bomb in Northern El Salvador

San Salvador, El Salvador

El Salvador is a mess, from it’s shit strewn streets to the crimson-rimmed bullet holes in the clothes of long dead priests. The roadside advertisements are faded from the sun, by the entrance of every bank there is a man leaning languidly on the barrel of his scarred pump action shotgun. For the past few days all I’ve witnessed here are signs of conflict, from the blood stained robes of Arch Bishop Romero to stories of rebellion and torture told to us by a former guerilla. The worst part is there is little to balance these gruesome sights, the Capital San Salvador is a bleak eyesore of decay and cat piss that winds it’s way across the land in a series of malls and highways. There is no real center like the ones in most Central American cities, only dirty streets and the plush tennis courts of the American Embassy.

What seemed to have affected me most are the symbols at the Jesuit University here in San Salvador, the UCA. Walking through the airy, tropical campus I can’t make sense of the fact that on these well-manicured lawns six priests were executed by the El Salvadorian army less than thirty years ago, rose bushes now guarding the plot their innocent blood one stained. On your way to the universities museum one passes a fence that the hit squad scaled to access the compound and a small rock that marks where the Jesuits housekeeper and her young daughter were slain by a vicious slew of bullets to the head. Kyle leads us around the compound and tells us about the men who died, how they came from Spain to help El Salvador and ended up face down in the mud. To back up what he’s saying an American Jesuit showed us piles of photo albums taken the day the priests were murdered. The bullet holes in the walls, bodies slumped in never-ending sleep, those photos I will never forget, should never forget.

Confronted by the sight of such brutality and lost goodness I am filled with an immense sadness and sense of futileness that I don’t think anyone of conscience can truthfully ignore and put out of mind. In this strange land emotion runs wild and the most surprising people in my group cry without warning, probably trying to rationalize the incomprehensible. Later, sitting in an air-conditioned room in the American embassy I wonder why those responsible for El Salvador’s decline seem so unrepentant. Three U.S representatives in almost identical suits talked to us for an hour about GDP growth and political polarization, not once touching on the history of American involvement in the area. The question is of course, if I was in their position would I do any different, could I do any different?



The UCA


The fence the hit squad used to acess UCA



Roses Mark the Spot of the Killings


The Priests are Buried in the Chapel of the UCA

Suffolk, Boston

Making my way up Tremont Street today I bumped into Barry, an old Shackletonian who once worked in the Boston Office and was one of the last to walk away from the school. It felt odd speaking to her there outside the Suffolk buildings, dressed in my grubby suit jacket with a computer bag slung over one shoulder, a high school student no longer. We gossiped for a few moments before parting and, as I walked across the infernal wind tunnel to class I was struck with a sudden sadness. It’s the same feeling I always get when thinking of Shackleton, a sense of regret now the doors of Base Camp have closed and the busses finally put out of commission and left to rust in a junkyard somewhere. Though I am often overly sentimental when writing about my old home on spring hill it still seems tragic that no one else will have the opportunities the few of us experienced. I’m still only twenty-one and yet thanks to that school I’ve seen hundreds of miles of America, Central America and Asia, talked to a myriad of people and been given some of the most important life lessons one could wish to have.

Thinking back I remember Liz and Nikki standing laughing by a trail in Maine with backpacks on, Simon leaning against the temple of Angkor Thom with his camera out, Steve talking Spanish in Nicaragua with an complacent border guard. I don’t think I’ll ever again have the honor of working with such a committed group of educators and mentors, only a handful of whom I’ve mentioned above. Though I didn’t always respect or listen to them and was at times quite rude they were literally my parents away from home, my guides through the wilderness and at times both my biggest critics and largest supporters.

As I interact with students here and listen to what they have to say, I feel deeply that what this country (and perhaps this world) really needs are schools where the students are given an opportunity, whether they take it or not, to step away from everything they’ve known before and develop an expressed thirst for learning. Shackleton was by no means perfect but to this day I’ve never seen nor heard of any institution that comes as close constructively breaking the hard mold of humdrum normality and unoriginality as much as Shackleton did. I hope that somewhere there are other people like Luke O’Neil, making huge sacrifices so as to pursue their crazy dreams and that one day I’ll have a school like Shackleton to send my children to.

Mum’s been on at me for a long time to start writing again. Occasionally I glance at Student at Large, gathering electronic dust as my life moves on and leaves it behind but the effort to write, edit and proof read always seems too much. In my defense, a lot has happened over the past year and a half that’s affected my entire family and me and made writing difficulty. I’m hoping that I just needed a break from the blog scene while I sorted things out and picked my way through a haphazard first term of University. Now the snow is melting on the common, transforming it from a winter wonderland to something that resembles a ravaged park in downtown Sarajevo. People’s mood seems to reflect the increasingly volatile weather, tempers fray more easily than before and I’m increasingly pressed to provide all the requests of alcohol runs now I’m finally twenty-one. I find myself thinking more and more of El Salvador, waiting for Sunday when I’ll finally be shouldering my backpack once again and boarding a plane heading south. I think it’s this next adventure down south that’s spearheading my renewed attempts to journal again and I’m hoping that this entry isn’t merely a one off.

It’s probably best that for once I actively explain why I’m heading out from America in a flash of hiking boots and backpack instead of having the reader guess from the occasional dropped hint. The trip I’ll be taking next week is different from anything I’ve had the opportunity to do since I left Shackleton. I won’t be doing anything stupid for one thing; chances are there will be no machete strapped to my pack and a severe lack of bizarre Nicaraguans with rifles sharing my bus. In truth I’m not even traveling by public transport, this expedition will be by mini-van, a luxury that fills me with trepidation. Several months I was selected to take part in a Suffolk trip to El Salvador that would follow the footsteps of a Suffolk Law graduate, Joe Moakley. Former congressman Moakley is famous in Central America for his role in uncovering a conspiracy concerning the deaths of El Salvadorian missionaries and their housekeeper. We’re going down, video camera in hand to gain insight into the political events that has left El Salvador one of the most scarred places on earth.

Now preparations are nearing completion, the date of departure nearly upon us. I’ve been growing a slight beard so an El Salvadorian barber will have something to shave off with his close edged razor and thick brush. In the Moakley institute where the aforementioned congressman’s files are stored I checked over piles of equipment and wrote down a list of camera parts I would need. After a great deal of nagging I even managed to persuade my best friend Roy to sign up and join the small group of fifteen though I’m worried slightly at his enthusiasm concerning the machete he hopes to buy the minute we land. Now however the sun is setting in Boston, dinner waiting in sickly heaps in the dormitory cafeteria and Roy and Freddy returning soon from a weekend in Maine. I’ll leave thoughts of Central America behind and return to the mundane task of doing homework, something that never ceases to fill me with dread and is unfortunately never as interesting as procrastination.