Movin' to Morazan

Safety and security remain to be a hot topic here in El Salvador. After getting home from my lovely vacation with the family, my host family told me that 2 women had been shot on one of the pickups that does transportation for my community. That, paired with a couple other robberies and shootings in the area, has led me and Peace Corps to make the decision to change my site. I am not thrilled about this. I really like my community a lot, and was excited to get to work. However, where I was living just wasn't safe.

This decision coincided perfectly with a big Peace Corps announcement yesterday. Peace Corps Washington is going to do an investigation on safety and security here in El Salvador just like they are doing in Honduras, but they aren't going to send us home while they do it. Instead, we are all on temporary hold in our sites, unable to travel, until we have a volunteer conference at the end of January. After this conference, Washington will announce a restructuring plan for El Salvador to ensure our safety. What does this mean? We're not sure yet. Some of the things we know will happen are: the capital is off limits now and forever, it is just not safe there; use of public transportation will be severely limited; we are all able to claim interrupted service and go home whenever we want, possibly to get reassigned to a new country.

Yesterday I got a call from Claudia, my project manager, asking if I would be willing to move to Morazan. Morazan is a department in the north east of El Salvador. It was where the guerrillas were stationed during the war, and due to the ramifications of the war it is one of the poorest departments. I am taking over the site of my friend Morgan, who has decided to take Peace Corps' offer of Interrupted Service and return to the US.

So yesterday I went back to Santa Paula, told my host family, and started packing. It was a sad and stressful day. I really liked Santa Paula as a community, and loved my host family. I was starting to get excited about the new year and the work I could accomplish. However, almost every person I said goodbye to told me it was the right thing to do and that it had become too dangerous in the area...so I know it was the right decision to make.

This morning one of my bosses picked me and all of my stuff up and we headed east to Morazan. We got to my new site at about 12, and I moved my stuff out of the car, into the house, and greeted my new host family as well as the teachers from the school (who came over to meet me). Morgan packed her stuff into the car, and she was off!

I'm still getting my feet under me, but so far this seems like a great community and my host family is very nice. Hopefully I will be able to live in my very own house here, which would be awesome.

I will update more as soon as I can and as soon as I have more information...definitely with pictures, too.