El Salvador

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- A Salvadoran lady pushed past my wife Chaya and ran up to the grill in front of the pupusaria. My wife just stood back and let the lady pass. Maybe she was a little nuts? She wasn’t. “Are there still pupusas!?!” the lady asked the pupusa cooks with a touch of urgency. [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- Within the tender span of a decade, the cellular telephone has wiggled its way into just about every social crevice on planet earth — becoming the new patchwork technology that now holds the social fabric of the world together. As of 2009, 60% of the humans on earth are reported by the [...]

Paypal is a revolutionary tool that helps make running a small location independent business a strikingly easy reality. Paypal is a conventionally accepted way to send and receive money, it is a way to pay employees, buy goods, and receive payments from anywhere in the world. That is until they shut down your account. I [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- Yesterday was Earth Day, it was Earth Day all over the earth. I would not have known it if it were not for a dancing artist with a bad rock and roll wig painting an Earth Day slogan from sidewalk to sidewalk, across the entire surface of the main road in front [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- Petra came down with a fever a couple nights ago. It was a stressful night and morning for the Shepard camp — doctor visits are generally pretty gruesome ordeals, much more so when it is your baby that needs to go. The situation has now stabilized, Petra’s fever is now gone, she [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- I must admit that prior to traveling in Central America I would never have thought to use a plastic baggie as a receptacle for a liquid. When I was on an archaeological excavation at Copan in Honduras a few years ago, the work crew would take Coca-Cola breaks throughout the day. They [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- “There are not that many countries where it is completely socially acceptable to lay around in a hammock all day.” El Salvador is a hammock country. Hammocks swing from doorways, inside living rooms, on porches, in outdoor courtyards, and from trees. Just about everywhere a hammock can be hung, there will be [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- There are no secrets in Central America, the communities are too closely knit for this. If the white baby in town goes to the hospital, everybody knows about it. “How is your baby?” the girl at the liquor store asked with intention as I tried to buy a beer to wash down [...]

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- My wife, Chaya, has a cankerous round growth coming out of her right eyelid. It is the size of a pea. It has been living there for the better part of six months. At each suggestion that she should go to the doctor to get it looked at, she would just squirm [...]