At 25, cooped up in an office, I already felt like I was losing some of the idealism, the fire to change the world, I had felt only a few years earlier when I graduated from George Washington University. My priorities were shifting naturally towards finding a career and setting down roots.
Yet at the same time I also felt a persistent nagging as I watched the news and read the newspapers - why is there so much poverty and violence in the world and what, if anything, can I do about it? I joined the Peace Corps to explore these questions and get my stir-crazy legs out from behind a desk.
I landed in a small rural fishing village called Isla de Mendez in the middle of a peninsula off the coast of El Salvador. I felt too tall, too white and too English-speaking. It was hot and buggy, and I didn't know how to wash my clothes by hand. My task was to teach life skills and English to teenagers. I doubted that the young people of this village could ever take me seriously when on a regular basis I chased after them with panicked pleas to help me kill the rats and snakes in my house. During those first three months, that cooped-up office started looking better and better.
Luckily, after not too long, la familia Arevalo Claros, perhaps feeling embarrassed for me that the socks hanging on my drying line looked as though they hadn't been washed, adopted me. Leila, my new host mother, taught me how to get my whites white. She fed me well and boasted that she'd have me fat in no time. She succeeded. The three children Lucy, 15, Kenia, 9, and Edilson, 6, brought me into the social life of the community and made me laugh every day. My experience began to brighten.
Soon after becoming an honorary member of this family, I realized I wasn't really an alien at all. I was caught off guard by how much my host sister Lucy reminded me of myself. I noticed our personalities were remarkably similar. I don't remember the exact moment when I first saw it-might have been during basketball practice where her work ethic surpasses any bit of athletic talent or seeing her enthusiastically address the students at Centro Escolar Canton Isla de Mendez as student-council president. She was all the things I had been at Conestoga, and, to be truthful, more.
Right after that realization, I felt a heavy sadness. I thought about all the opportunities I'd had over the past 10 years, and felt sadder thinking that she might not even graduate from high school. Sad, that merit alone doesn't determine opportunity.
Lucy will face obstacles. She lives in an impoverished country whose stability is threatened by many factors, including what National Geographic magazine recently called the most dangerous gang in the world - the Mara Salvatrucha. Many of these gang members, Salvadorans who grew up in the United States, were cleaned off the streets of Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington D.C. and flown to El Salvador after being convicted of crimes as young-adults. In 2006 the United States deported over 10,000 Salvadorans. No one wants gangs in their city. But, unfortunately, the people who end up being terrorized are common folks in El Salvador, who are routinely victims of extortion and robbery, and who are often killed.
This month El Salvador celebrates the 15th anniversary of its peace accords, which ended a 12-year civil war. La Prensa Grafica, one of El Salvador's leading newspapers, reported that 78 percent of Salvadorans say they don't feel that they live in a peaceful country. Nearly 70 percent say they think the country runs the risk of another civil war.
Apart from the risks of violence, poverty shapes life for many Salvadorans. This economic need has forced a mass migration to the United States. Over 2 million Salvadorans, about a quarter of El Salvador's population, live abroad and send money home to their families.
Their remittances make up the largest component of El Salvador´s economy. In Isla de Mendez, the local economy failed and became dependent on remittances when fishing, once the staple of its economy, stopped yielding enough profits to keep pace with the rise in the cost of living. Fishermen working in Isla de Mendez make about $5 a day. It costs $2 just to get the bus to the closest market, post office or hospital.
As well as feeling sad for the obstacles Lucy will face, I felt something else that surprised me. I found myself wishing, if only for a short while, that my 15-year-old brother, Jordan, and my eight- year-old sister, Olivia, could live in Isla de Mendez. Life here seems a little sweeter at times. When a child walks down the street, she is greeted by almost every neighbor. She runs into family members, talks with teachers and plays with friends.
When one of my students' grandmothers died, school officials let the entire 10th-grade class out of school early to go and visit her home. This is the kind of community warmth I was wishing for my younger siblings.
The communities I've known in El Salvador are not only warm; they are strong. I'm not sure exactly what my perception of poor Third World countries was before living in one, but it certainly was not of strong communities.
I will finish up my Peace Corps service confident that many communities in the developing world have their own powerful internal resources. I feel that it is my responsibility now, and when I return to being cooped up in a cubicle, to collaborate and support the efforts of these communities.
This sense of responsibility doesn't come from the idealistic "fire to change the world" I was seeking to rediscover when I joined the Peace Corps. It comes from a more subtle understanding of how my choices impact the world. For instance, if I finance a student's high-school education in El Salvador, I not only help put her on the road to knowledge and self-esteem, but I also give the community a better-prepared leader. Before joining the Peace Corps I may have viewed this as a tiny victory. I now see that these tiny victories, in addition to larger political and economic policy decisions, are essential to securing a humane standard of living around the world.
Aid El Salvador is a non-profit organization that provides high-school scholarships to students in rural communities. The selected students must maintain a B average and complete community-service hours. They are provided a mentor. To help, go to www.aidelsalvador.org.
Sarah Edelman graduated from Conestoga High School in 1998 and from George Washington University, Washington, D.C., Phi Beta Kappa, with a major in history and a minor in sociology, in 2002. She also was an Americorps VISTA volunteer in Kensington, North Philadelphia in 2002-2003. Her family lives in Berwyn.