Student At Large

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.