El Camino
This past summer, I spent nine weeks in Central America and eight weeks in El Salvador courtesy of the International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP) run by the Center for Social Concerns of the University of Notre Dame. During this time, I lived and worked with a medical team from the non-governmental organization FUSAL (http://www.fusal.org) in two programs, Libras de Amor and CASSA, which provided healthcare and nutrition support to rural underserved areas. Every weekend, Gene Palumbo, El Salvador's New York Times corresponden who has an extensive knowledge of the country and its people, was kind enough to introduce us to the country's history through interviews with figures who had lived it out first hand. These ranged from the head of the Chamber of Commerce and Judge Sidney Blanco of the Supreme Court to former revolutionaries and guerrilla fighters, or squatters in the process of being evicted from their land just outside San Salvador. I lived and worked on the Western side of El Salvador, in Santa Ana, the second largest city in El Salvador, and San Julian, a small town near Sonsonate.