| Apr 17, 2006 - A series of strange events
| (click to enlarge)
 | | En route to San Salvador in the back of a pickup |
| We arrived in San Salvador early in the afternoon on Monday after a long travel day. We left Copán at 5:30 in the morning and took a series of short bus trips through Guatemala before entering El Salvador. One of the band members arranged for a friend to pick us up at the border and drive us directly to San Salvador. This sounded fine until we saw the small pick-up arrive at the border station, and we realized that six of us would be riding in the back with lots of bags. Let's just say that the 2 ½ hour trip into San Salvador was a bit cramped, but we were grateful for the generosity of our friends to arrange transport from the border to the front door of the hotel of our choice.
Sunday and Monday were filled with events that seemed too bizarre to be real. When we met up with the band in the afternoon, we learned that the mother of the youngest member had died unexpectedly in a motorcycle accident on Easter Sunday morning. As you can imagine, he was very shaken up. We spent much of the afternoon keeping him company in the central plaza in Copán. While we were talking with him, a guy walked by whose right arm was bloodied by a gunshot wound. He didn't seem too bothered by it, though, as he was showing off the wound to anyone who would look at it. Like I said, Sunday was a strange day.
In the midst of talking to our friend about his mother, he invited us to attend her wake in San Salvador on Monday evening. How could we say no? Monday evening, one of the other band members picked us up right on time (Latin time, anyway - he told us 8 and showed up at 8:30), and we drove out to the wake. We arrived at a non-descript public housing complex just outside of San Salvador. We felt very awkward at the wake, with our limited ability to speak Spanish and no idea about what to expect from a wake in El Salvador. As we arrived, we received a number of mostly curious stares from other people. After a few cursory introductions, we were led to the coffin where we were introduced to his mother. The open coffin was a surprise and startled us, especially when we saw that little effort had been made to 'reconstruct' her appearance. The small concrete block meeting room was full of folding chairs and people sitting around quietly. Candles were lit and people occasionally walked to the coffin, looked inside and prayed, then silently walked away. We did not stay long, barely 30 minutes I suppose. When we were chatting in broken English and broken Spanish with a young woman, our driver appeared and abruptly said "vamos" (let's go). Without apology he said that he was very tired and that wakes here can go all on night. So, we said our farewells, cried a bit, and left. That was our introduction to Salvadoreño life. |
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