Pearl of the Orient

We are looking for a local Rotary Club partner to support a Rotary Agriculture project with Oikos Solidaridad in the volcanic range of the Oriente. A local Rotary Club is necessary as the host club in assisting in securing funding from Rotary International Foundation, managing the finances of the project, providing Rotary International with all the transparency needed to ensure the money is well spent.

In October we contacted two Rotary Clubs in the City of San Miguel. One invited us to join them in their monthly November social held at one of the Rotarians homes. We attended and learned much about their current projects and also about the City of San Miguel.

The City of San Miguel is known through out the country as the “Pearl of the Orient”, El Salvador’s third most important city. It’s the hottest place in the country and is located east of the active volcano Chaparrastique, also known as 1403-10 on the volcanic map.

It’s an hour drive from Batres to San Miguel. We pass fields where cane is being cut by hand. Empty old school buses used to transport the campesinos line the roadway. The field workers are hunched over lifting, baling, sorting and piling stalks of cane and cane waste into the appropriate piles. The piles seem insignificant until you notice a man standing next to one and he looks like a miniature figure from a diorama.

35 minutes out of Batres and our micro bus turns north heading to San Miguel. We pass by two major industries. One is a dairy processing facility and another is the sugar cane refinery. Large trucks are lined up to unload their freshly cut cane. They come to this facility from all over the 3 state area. They are a nuisance on the highway with their double trailers, making the passing of these road hogs a breath-taker.

These two processing facilities as well as many others not visible from the highway, a mall and the National University and 4 College/Technical Institutions provide the area with many employment opportunities. We asked local Rotarians if there is a middle class and they confirmed there is a large middle class in San Miguel.

The city of San Miguel also boasts of being “the carnival city”. In November and December, the environment is similar to Rio de Janeiro. Our faces reflect our internal reaction. Yes the locals confirm full and partial nudity is a part of the carnivals entertainment venue.

Now it’s January 2012. The carnival is now closed, school resumes in 1 week and we return to join the Engineers without Borders to finish the last phase of the 7 year Rotary black water project in La Granja. Then we return 100 miles to the east (our home community) to resume working with the 3 public schools high in the mountains of Alambre and to develop a future agriculture project with Oikos and our new friends in San Miguel.

David y Nancy