Remember El Salvador
A daughter travels with her father to El Salvador, where he's her tour guide for both the country and his life
By Melissa Navas
Frijoles and huevos churn in my stomach as the van winds along an El Salvador coastal highway.
I'm sleepily counting the seconds until the drive to our hotel is over, wondering whether the beans and eggs will survive this steamy, sickening ride.
My father's voice from the driver's seat jostles me awake. Not the tone -- the words. Words I had never heard.
"So you want to know about the past?" he asks. Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror.
Just as I had hoped, joining him in his native country for the first time opens the pages of his story. I sit upright and listen.
I let him do most of the talking as his words sizzle in my brain. I'm shocked, but mostly saddened to discover war hitting so close to home. Maybe I would have known this sooner if I had asked or if it had been safe to travel to El Salvador as a child.
Growing up, I didn't hear much about my father's childhood and adolescence. I remember fuzzy conversations about how he walked his German shepherd, Soliman, loved eating coconuts straight from the trees and played soccer in the streets until he wore holes in his shoes.
I didn't ask enough questions then. He must have had a good reason to keep quiet, I always thought. Now I ask questions for a living, but it's not so easy to prod parents.
Now is the perfect time to learn about him in this country: how El Salvador looked, tasted and felt to him growing up. If I don't, I'll feel guilty and forever curious.
Boyhood home
In our week touring El Salvador and visiting family, each place we travel draws a story or hazy memory.
On a stormy night, we visit Dad's childhood home in San Martin, a once-small village of 10,000 in the Departamento de San Salvador. My grandmother Josefina, or Mama Fina as we call her, still lives in a modest 100-year-old home with no running water or functioning toilet. The home's harsh fluorescent lighting reminds me of an interrogation room. White, handmade crocheted runners cover her coffee table.
We sit in her small living room and talk with Tia Violeta, her younger sister, and Amelia, the petite housekeeper who cared for my dad as a boy. Family portraits of my siblings and me adorn the walls and shelves. Copies of my father's college degrees hang in polished frames.
I imagine Dad as a boy running across the tile floor, playing with his sister, my Tia Myrna, or doing his homework after school. I'm humbled by the poverty he grew up in and how life has taken him so far.
Dad points to the street corner and talks about what his neighborhood used to look like. His home bordered the town's edge, and the old view from his doorstep was coffee plantations as far as the eye could see.
I look out the door and see only houses but visualize the picture he paints.
As we leave the house and head back to San Salvador, the capital, we get lost.
"I don't recognize anything," he says as he maneuvers the unfamiliar streets. I sense a little frustration in his voice but we find our way.
A pyramid's lessons
Our adventure takes us to Chalchuapa to see the Maya pyramid, Tazumal.
Around this looming piece of history, life has moved on. Souvenir shops selling statues, masks and other wares line the street block in front of the pyramid. A teenage boy offers to sit by our car and protect it, he says, from thieves.
Within the site's walls, time stands still. My dad and I sit under a tree and gaze in wonderment at the pyramid. The last time he was there was for a high school project. He says he climbed on the same pyramid steps that I climb that day.
I imagine him taking notes and drawing sketches as a teenager. Tia Violeta says he was a good student, always burying his head in a book. Before the war, his dream was to become a doctor. But when his university was shut down as a result of the country's conflict, that bubble burst.
At 24, the same year he was shot at, he had already spent six years as an accountant and eventually became the head accountant at El Granjero, a poultry and egg producer.
Growing up, he would say to my three siblings and me, "You are the architect of your own destiny."
He lived those words in 1980, when at 25 he left El Salvador without his family, creating a new future.
Tastes of home
The home-cooked meals placed before us on this trip taste like a buffet across the country.
Even better than savoring the cheese- and meat-stuffed pupusas and fresh papaya myself is watching Dad's eyes roll back as he makes the "mmmm" sound.
At breakfast, he takes his first bites of a rice-and-beans dish called casamiento, which means "marriage." He uses his pan, or bread roll, to push the casamiento and cheese -- queso fresco -- together onto his fork.
The streets and buildings may be different, but not the food.
On another day, as we drive back from the coast, children no older than 15 line the sides of the dusty road hawking the day's catches. They hold up plastic bags of jumbo prawns and other foods. We pull over and my dad and his best friend, Carlos, who is traveling with us, get giddy.
"Cuanto cuesta?" my dad asks, to determine the price. The young boy sells us two bags of what look like white golf balls.
They turn out to be tortoise eggs, or huevos de tortuga, something I've never seen my dad eat or heard him talk about. I learn he and his friends would buy them while at the beach, boil them and sprinkle them with Worcestershire sauce, salt, hot sauce, chopped tomatoes and avocado.
We go home, but before we can unload the car, he's already taking the eggs to the kitchen to be boiled.
Later, he rips open a hole the size of a quarter in an egg's soft shell. After dousing it in sauce, he holds it to his mouth and slurps the cooked egg out.
"Ahhhh," he coos.
Just like he remembered.
A natural life
Part of my reason for being here is figuring out why Dad is the way he is. I now have more understanding about why he was hesitant to buy our first Nintendo and why he dragged his complaining kids up the trails in Yosemite National Park.
El Salvador's lush, natural beauty is hard to ignore. He longed for the chance to feel the rough terrain beneath his well-worn shoes.
As a boy scout, he camped near El Salvador's Volcan de San Vicente. After delivering newspapers in San Martin, he'd take his dog on walks at a nearby lake.
At the coast, he points to a fenced property facing the Pacific Ocean. When he discovered that a businessman abandoned a project to build a resort with tidal pools, he and his friends made it their own and lounged in the pools on weekends.
He's all about adventure and thrill.
On our final days in El Salvador, we travel to El Pital, the highest point in the country. The common cloud cover leaves you feeling as if you're floating in the heavens.
We pass a coffee plantation along the highway, and a pungent aroma drifts in through our windows. "Ugh, what is that?" I ask. He explains it's a berry juice that helps ferment the coffee beans. Even the smells are familiar.
Pieces of the puzzle
At El Pital, he proposes we climb to its peak, which is more than 8,900 feet above sea level. The long trek up the unpaved dirt road provides good time to talk. As the drizzle falls, he opens up more about his life here. I ask whether he'd ever move back.
With four kids in the United States, his life is there, he says.
We end up in a beautiful rain forest and goof around by taking umpteen pictures under a canopy of trees. This is our little secret on El Pital, I think. And though we never make it to the top, I relish the accomplishment. This is just the beginning of learning and being able to document our family history.
Puzzle pieces are beginning to slide into place. There was only one tour guide I wanted on this trip, and I got him.
Now, Dad's stories and history won't become cobwebbed memories in the back of my mind. I saw what he saw and experienced a slice of his life in El Salvador. Those moments will be ingrained in my mind when I pass along the stories to my own children one day.
Somewhere between watching Dad eat tamales and tortoise eggs and listening to family stories, our history becomes tangible, something I can finally grasp. I refuse to let it fade.
-- Melissa Navas; melissanavas@news.oregonian.com
By Melissa Navas
Frijoles and huevos churn in my stomach as the van winds along an El Salvador coastal highway.
I'm sleepily counting the seconds until the drive to our hotel is over, wondering whether the beans and eggs will survive this steamy, sickening ride.
My father's voice from the driver's seat jostles me awake. Not the tone -- the words. Words I had never heard.
"So you want to know about the past?" he asks. Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror.
Just as I had hoped, joining him in his native country for the first time opens the pages of his story. I sit upright and listen.
- It's 1979, and Dad sits in the back seat of his friend's car. They're racing along a San Salvador road past a military checkpoint. The soldiers don't ask questions first. They unleash rounds of ammunition, probably suspecting the car's occupants are trying to evade them.
- Somehow, the three men in the car escape unharmed. When Dad gets out of the hole-riddled car, he realizes how close he was to death at 24.
- Something stirs in him. If he doesn't leave this country, death will stalk him. A civil war, which will eventually bleed his homeland from 1980 to 1992, is brewing. More than 70,000 civilians will die.
He sees his mother, Josefina, entangled in city protests where some are shot. A friend's death at the army's hands strengthens his resolve: He has to leave El Salvador behind.
I let him do most of the talking as his words sizzle in my brain. I'm shocked, but mostly saddened to discover war hitting so close to home. Maybe I would have known this sooner if I had asked or if it had been safe to travel to El Salvador as a child.
Growing up, I didn't hear much about my father's childhood and adolescence. I remember fuzzy conversations about how he walked his German shepherd, Soliman, loved eating coconuts straight from the trees and played soccer in the streets until he wore holes in his shoes.
I didn't ask enough questions then. He must have had a good reason to keep quiet, I always thought. Now I ask questions for a living, but it's not so easy to prod parents.
Now is the perfect time to learn about him in this country: how El Salvador looked, tasted and felt to him growing up. If I don't, I'll feel guilty and forever curious.
Boyhood home
In our week touring El Salvador and visiting family, each place we travel draws a story or hazy memory.
On a stormy night, we visit Dad's childhood home in San Martin, a once-small village of 10,000 in the Departamento de San Salvador. My grandmother Josefina, or Mama Fina as we call her, still lives in a modest 100-year-old home with no running water or functioning toilet. The home's harsh fluorescent lighting reminds me of an interrogation room. White, handmade crocheted runners cover her coffee table.
We sit in her small living room and talk with Tia Violeta, her younger sister, and Amelia, the petite housekeeper who cared for my dad as a boy. Family portraits of my siblings and me adorn the walls and shelves. Copies of my father's college degrees hang in polished frames.
I imagine Dad as a boy running across the tile floor, playing with his sister, my Tia Myrna, or doing his homework after school. I'm humbled by the poverty he grew up in and how life has taken him so far.
Dad points to the street corner and talks about what his neighborhood used to look like. His home bordered the town's edge, and the old view from his doorstep was coffee plantations as far as the eye could see.
I look out the door and see only houses but visualize the picture he paints.
As we leave the house and head back to San Salvador, the capital, we get lost.
"I don't recognize anything," he says as he maneuvers the unfamiliar streets. I sense a little frustration in his voice but we find our way.
A pyramid's lessons
Our adventure takes us to Chalchuapa to see the Maya pyramid, Tazumal.
Around this looming piece of history, life has moved on. Souvenir shops selling statues, masks and other wares line the street block in front of the pyramid. A teenage boy offers to sit by our car and protect it, he says, from thieves.
Within the site's walls, time stands still. My dad and I sit under a tree and gaze in wonderment at the pyramid. The last time he was there was for a high school project. He says he climbed on the same pyramid steps that I climb that day.
I imagine him taking notes and drawing sketches as a teenager. Tia Violeta says he was a good student, always burying his head in a book. Before the war, his dream was to become a doctor. But when his university was shut down as a result of the country's conflict, that bubble burst.
At 24, the same year he was shot at, he had already spent six years as an accountant and eventually became the head accountant at El Granjero, a poultry and egg producer.
Growing up, he would say to my three siblings and me, "You are the architect of your own destiny."
He lived those words in 1980, when at 25 he left El Salvador without his family, creating a new future.
Tastes of home
The home-cooked meals placed before us on this trip taste like a buffet across the country.
Even better than savoring the cheese- and meat-stuffed pupusas and fresh papaya myself is watching Dad's eyes roll back as he makes the "mmmm" sound.
At breakfast, he takes his first bites of a rice-and-beans dish called casamiento, which means "marriage." He uses his pan, or bread roll, to push the casamiento and cheese -- queso fresco -- together onto his fork.
The streets and buildings may be different, but not the food.
On another day, as we drive back from the coast, children no older than 15 line the sides of the dusty road hawking the day's catches. They hold up plastic bags of jumbo prawns and other foods. We pull over and my dad and his best friend, Carlos, who is traveling with us, get giddy.
"Cuanto cuesta?" my dad asks, to determine the price. The young boy sells us two bags of what look like white golf balls.
They turn out to be tortoise eggs, or huevos de tortuga, something I've never seen my dad eat or heard him talk about. I learn he and his friends would buy them while at the beach, boil them and sprinkle them with Worcestershire sauce, salt, hot sauce, chopped tomatoes and avocado.
We go home, but before we can unload the car, he's already taking the eggs to the kitchen to be boiled.
Later, he rips open a hole the size of a quarter in an egg's soft shell. After dousing it in sauce, he holds it to his mouth and slurps the cooked egg out.
"Ahhhh," he coos.
Just like he remembered.
A natural life
Part of my reason for being here is figuring out why Dad is the way he is. I now have more understanding about why he was hesitant to buy our first Nintendo and why he dragged his complaining kids up the trails in Yosemite National Park.
El Salvador's lush, natural beauty is hard to ignore. He longed for the chance to feel the rough terrain beneath his well-worn shoes.
As a boy scout, he camped near El Salvador's Volcan de San Vicente. After delivering newspapers in San Martin, he'd take his dog on walks at a nearby lake.
At the coast, he points to a fenced property facing the Pacific Ocean. When he discovered that a businessman abandoned a project to build a resort with tidal pools, he and his friends made it their own and lounged in the pools on weekends.
He's all about adventure and thrill.
On our final days in El Salvador, we travel to El Pital, the highest point in the country. The common cloud cover leaves you feeling as if you're floating in the heavens.
We pass a coffee plantation along the highway, and a pungent aroma drifts in through our windows. "Ugh, what is that?" I ask. He explains it's a berry juice that helps ferment the coffee beans. Even the smells are familiar.
Pieces of the puzzle
At El Pital, he proposes we climb to its peak, which is more than 8,900 feet above sea level. The long trek up the unpaved dirt road provides good time to talk. As the drizzle falls, he opens up more about his life here. I ask whether he'd ever move back.
With four kids in the United States, his life is there, he says.
We end up in a beautiful rain forest and goof around by taking umpteen pictures under a canopy of trees. This is our little secret on El Pital, I think. And though we never make it to the top, I relish the accomplishment. This is just the beginning of learning and being able to document our family history.
Puzzle pieces are beginning to slide into place. There was only one tour guide I wanted on this trip, and I got him.
Now, Dad's stories and history won't become cobwebbed memories in the back of my mind. I saw what he saw and experienced a slice of his life in El Salvador. Those moments will be ingrained in my mind when I pass along the stories to my own children one day.
Somewhere between watching Dad eat tamales and tortoise eggs and listening to family stories, our history becomes tangible, something I can finally grasp. I refuse to let it fade.
-- Melissa Navas; melissanavas@news.oregonian.com
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