My Visit to El Salvador (Apri 18 - 26. 2006)

And here we go, in El Salvador again! The last time that I was in El Salvador was in 2003, when I was facilitating an AIESEC regional congress (AXLDS 2003 indeed) when I was part of the national committee of AIESEC in Colombia. My first experience as facilitator of an international conference, so memories were quite special. Also professionally for me arriving to El Salvador promised to be a challenge since these guys for sure have been fighting for several years to become stable as AIESEC country, so here I was! Talking about the country itself, I found a much more modern El Salvador than 3 years ago. It can posiby be that 3 years ago I did not observe the country so well, but now I perceived a San Salvador (capital of El Salavdor) much more dymanic, commercial and funky. We did not do much tourism in El Salvador, however if I would have to present something very Salvadorian, I for sure will present you the famous PUPUSAS!

Pupusas are kind of flat jummy cakes or tortillas, done of sometimes rice, sometimes corn flower. In El Salvador there are many pupuserías (a place where pupusas are sold) and well, you can go there fore breakfast, lunch, dinner or whenever you want, specially because pupusas are extremey cheap, each pupusa can cost you like 30 UDS cents. Pupusas are usually served with curtido (a pickled cabbage relish) and tomato sauce or salsa. For people that have never eaten pupusas, in pictures they might look as 'arepas' - which is another very very typical latin meal - but they are very different. Pupusas are definitively softer, the consistency of the flower is different.

In the following pictures, you can see more and less a typical 'pupusa experience' : you go to the pupuseria, they do the pupusas in front of you actually, they make small balls with the 'masa' (the uncooked flower), the put the filling in each pupusa (normally beans, pork or meet), they flatten the pupusa and they finally put it on a kind of grill. Once done, you eat it as said with the curtido and the sauce.

Me at the entrance of the pupuseria

Coming back to the AIESEC related experience in El Salvador, the salvadorian guys made me learn a lot, I was stretching like crazy to try to accomodate the global solutions to their particular reality and to try to accomodate my working style to theirs. I was asking myself so often, my God Oriana are you a good director? Think, think what are the priority things that you need to lead them to put in place in these 8 days!? How to keep it simple but still complete? The most important thing is that even if there is a long way to go, the guys got the message that the AIESEC 2010 era in El Salvador needs to start, as soon as possible and that this requieres a complete reingeneering of the way they do AIESEC there. One afternoon was particulary very nice for me, and it was when some of their members came to a meeting where I presented an abstract of the global direction and I enjoyed seeing them amazed by all the things that the platform has to offer. We did "flash visits" to the dean of the university, another one in the afternoon (thanks to a phone call done by this dean in the morning!!) to a center for CSR promotion - too many good opportunities to grasp and, this was just a minimal bite of all the potential that AIESEC can have there.

The salvadorian MC members were very hospitable people and I thank you so much for that. Again, very familiar people, I had very good opportunities to eat "mama home cooked food" and see how much parents care of what they children are doing - this I felt specially in the house of Christian, one vicepresident.

Following the line of hospitality I need to name of course other two people that supported me A LOT during my stay in El Salvador.


Ethel and me

One was Ethel, former MC member of AIESEC El Salvador that not only invited me for a very nice seafood one night to go for 100% FAT (fucking AIESEC talk), but that also saved my life borrowing me for almost 2 weeks a DELL lap top power cord since I was so stupid and forgot mine in the last country - so she gave me one until mine was sent from the country I left it, by the way, also with a friend of her. She works in Dell.

The other person was Silvia. I stayed in Silvia's house for all my stay and I have no words to thanks. She is a romanian trainee in love with Latin America working in the marketing area of a salvadorian IT company. She was local vice president of one of the most sucessful committees in Romania in the outgoing exchange area and well, you can imagine how enjoyable was to talk to her on her views of Latin America, and of El Salvador. Something very cool was to make part of a celebration that Silvia did at her house to show to people the way Eastern is celebrated in Romania. I think she gave and is giving still a strong message of diversity and committment to AIESEC in El Salvador and I am very pleased to see the place that Silvia has earned in the heart of the the Salvadorian members.

I liked a lot the way she tought us how they cook, paint and eat eggs in Romania for Eastern. They have this tradition that two people take an egg each and they hit both eggs towards each other. Before doing this each person made a wish and the person whose egg gets broken after they hit the eggs, will get the wish become true. (Or is it the one whose egg does not get broken? uhmmm I eally do not remember!)

Eastern celebration at Silvia's house

TOP SALVADORIAN EXPRESSIONS!

1. "Que Chivo!" or "chivisimo!!" which means "cool". It is quite funny for me since in Colombia, well in spanish -chivo- means "goat" (the animal).

2. "Que ondas!?" which means "What's up"

3. "Vaya!" - it's like "well..." , I really can't explain how cool it sounds.

Would be cool to go to El Salvador again at some point and see how this small, yet fast growing country will be doing in some years. Ah forgot to tell before, as other Central American countries, volcanos are also everywhere. In the picture above, even taken from a car, you can see the San Salvador Vocano.