Hammocks, Horchata, and Hope

We have been back in United States for three days and I feel like I am only starting to come back to reality. As we were driving home from the airport, I was listening to my travelling companions tell our driver (the mother of one of the teens on the trip) what we did in El Salvador. I was struck at how little the words can actually convey. It sounded like "We saw some people", "We visited some villages", "We ate some Pupusa", all very true but it felt like the words didn't capture anything of the essence of the trip. This is my second visit to El Salvador and I am convinced that it is impossible to describe in words alone.

El Salvador to me is more than a place, it is an experience. You can't just see it in pictures, or hear about it in words. You have to taste it, smell it, breathe it in and cry it out. You need to feel dirt floors beneath your feet in a church (as described by my wife). You need to hear the sun rise. It brings not only light, but also dogs barking, roosters crowing, insects chirping, and the whistle of a bird that sounds an awful lot like the first twenty notes of "the girl from Ipanema". You need to feel your clothes soak up your own sweat as you sit in a metal building, baking in the sun and then just as quickly feel it evaporate in the cool mountain breeze only inches outside the door. You need to laugh with the children as you try to communicate in different languages. You need to hug new friends and sit and talk for hours about what you have in common and also how very different your lives are. You need to experience what it feels like to be in the middle of hope and desperation at the same time. Your ears have to ache from the thunder claps in the mountains only to be soothed by the rain on the bamboo and palm leaves.

To know what it is like in El Salvador you need to sip coffee that was off the bush and into your cup before it ever hit a refrigerated storage unit. You need to taste honey flavored by those same coffee plants. You need to sway along to Latin rhythms that are unfamiliar to you yet remind you of something you can't quite put your finger on. You need to be made dizzy by the butterflys that rise up from the flowers as if the enitre flower bed were rising and falling and dancing to those unfamiliar (to you) Latin rhythms.

The experience of El Slavador is impossible to get over. That stunningly beautiful country, those incredible warm and honest people, all part of a sensory experience for me. I am begining to get reacquainted with my life here in United States and working toward bringing the gifts I received from El Salvador into my everyday life here. I am missing some of the experiences though.

I will hang a hammock on my porch and sway to the rhythym of my life here. I will prepare a glass of instant horchata, a flavor not completely authentic but reminiscient enough to stoke my memory of meals shared with friends in El Salvador. I will do these things and I will be filled with hope. Hope for our two countires, hope for our two peoples, hope that I may be able to bring the passion I feel to love and serve others in El Salvador and put it to good use in United States, hope that I will return to El Salvador in March and that God will continue to bless the relationships forming on both sides of the border.