On Monday, Ashley, Jeremy, and I shadowed my host dad, Zeniff, at his job as a health promoter. Health promoters serve the most rural villages. Every “big” town has a health center, and from that center promoters disperse into the nearby villages where they take care of pregnant women, monitor weight gain etc of newborns, and do various health campaigns. We did a rabies vaccination campaign for cats and dogs.
We left Tecoluca at 6:30 am. At some point (not sure where) we got off the bus and got pupusas and Coke for breakfast (my need for caffeine outweighing my need to not have soda before 8 am…) After breakfast, we got in the back of some guy’s pickup truck and he took us to the health center. Pickups are a form of public transportation here, but the public transport pickups are bigger and have reinforced bars all around the bed of the truck. This pickup was just some guy’s personal truck. It was terrifying riding in the back of it, even though the road was straight and paved. We were very happy to arrive at the health center. At the health center we collected the materials and boarded a public transport type pickup to take us to La Pita. La Pita is a tiny caserio (rural neighborhood) of about 25 houses on a stretch of dirt road that runs parallel to the Rio Lempa as it opens out into the Pacific Ocean. The houses were mainly of laminate or mud, although all of them had electricity (we saw one mud hut held up with sticks that had a TV!) Vaccinating the animals was really cool, and we were even allowed to do some of the vaccines ourselves, although I preferred not to since the animals cried pitifully. One thing that is great about El Salvador is that basic medical care is free, and so were all of these vaccines, even though they were for animals. Only 1 family refused to have their animals vaccinated, because really why not let us do it? It cost them nothing.
The last few houses of La Pita are literally right at the tip of the land. To get to them we had to cross a very rickety bridge over a little finger of the Lempa. When stepping down off of the bridge and onto the sandy ground it looked as if the sand was moving. The ground was covered in tiny holes, and into those holes were scurrying millions of crabs. You literally could not put your foot down without landing on a crab. It was very very cool. Apparently, they eat some of those crabs, but only the ones that are big enough. We also saw a snake (of the garter variety), and one man owned a bright green bird (cockatiel?) that he let us hold. And, of course, tons of puppies!
Funnily, there is a hostel/restaurant in La Pita. Since it is the tip of the department of San Vicente (there are 14 departments in El Salvador – they are the equivalent of the US states), and right on the ocean, La Pita is a popular departure spot for anyone trying to get to the islands on the mid-eastern stretch of the El Sal coast. We ate lunch at the restaurant attached to the hostel on a wooden dock protruding out over the river. I ate an entire fish grilled and it was delicious. The view was very beautiful, although the river was brown due to the intense rainfall the night before turning up the riverbed. According to Zeniff, the water of the Lempa is fairly clean (I’m not sure how true that is).
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| Main (only) street of La Pita |
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| Vaccinating a puppy |
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| Where we ate lunch |
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| Crossing the bridge |
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| Crabs |
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| Zeniff |
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| Cutest puppy |
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