Suchitoto

In addition to taking on two EWB volunteers every summer, REDES also work with Imperial College on an earthquake-proof housing project, an initiative started after the 2001 earthquake that decimated the country. The upshot of this is that there's a group of 11 civil engineers from Imperial working in Colima, building these houses and with REDES they organise trips away each weekend to see different parts of the country. By Wednesday afternoon (ie my second day at work) Douglas and Domingo had decided that I was clearly bored (still waiting to hear the details of what I'd be doing on Thursday) and so we set off to Colima to meet the 'Imperials' - a friendly bunch who by the end of the afternoon had invited me to join them on Friday for their trip to Suchitoto.


Despite being the capital in colonial times, little remains of the architecture from that time (at least not in comparison to somewhere like Quito) - mostly as a result of the devastating civil war that ravaged the country between 1980 and 1992. Although I knew little beyond the fact that it had occurred before arriving here, the longer I stay the more I appreciate how important it is to know the place's history to start to understand the people.

For dinner we ended up in a touristy restaurant overlooking the town square that sells pupusas - tortillas stuffed with cheese, frijoles and pork, or a combination of all three and (rightly) described by last year's volunteers as tastiest thing in El Salvador! Saturday was spent visiting El Sitio del Cenícero (one of the communities with the new Rocket stove that we might be returning to as part of our fieldwork) which can only be accessed by boat across Lago Suchitlan - formed by a large dam in 1973, which along with two newer prjects provides nearly 60% of the country's power.

REDES are working with the community in a number of ways - providing hydroponic kits for vegetable growing, and water tanks that the village is now using as a fish farm - which provided the tasty Tilapia for lunch, and there are ambitious plans to develop it into a tourist destination with guided walks through the surrounding forest and a fully-functioning restaurant.
We also visited a cave up in the forest thats used as a roost for thousands of bats and a source of guano fertiliser by the locals, who wade in up to the knees wearing gas masks to fill their 50kg
containers before setting off down the near-vertical path back to
the village. This is all part of the rebuilding process following the war - El Cenícero was the site of a massacre by the army during the conflict and the church wall has a powerful mural depicting scenes of villagers being gunned down by helicopters while trying to flee.


On Sunday we visited Guazapa - a guerrilla stronghold during the war. As you walk around its forested hills amongst the remains of trenches and tatus (caves dug into the ground where the rebels would hide in the stifling heat for days at a time) with rusting lengths of barbed wire and discarded shoes everywhere, you can easily imagine how the guerrillas were able to melt into the darkness for every passing helicopter. We were guided by an ex-guerrilla (unusually there were almost equal numbers of male and female combatants) who told horrific stories of her experiences - quaking in terror hidden away in a tatu while thuds from heavy army boots passed overhead, discovering the body of a radio operator who was captured and tortured by the army before being skewered on a wooden spike in the forest and left for dead, the families of women and children who were herded up and gunned down in cold blood for feeding their guerrilla husbands.