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Even though my own page is published under a pseudonym, not so for the Facebook page of Perquín's upcoming Winter Festival or Festival de Invierno. The Festival, held every August, celebrates the region's considerable bounty: August is the middle of the rainy season and everything's idyllically lush and verdant and—thanks to sufficient rainfall—the crops are thriving. Here's the Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Festival-de-Invierno/539044709537713

The Festival was initiated in 1992, at the end of El Salvador's long and bloody Civil War, which lasted through the '80s and into the early '90s. Let me refresh your memory on that war—another of the many leftist rebels versus military dictatorship confrontations that characterized Central America during that era. Remember Archbishop Oscar Romero? Members of an army death squad assassinated Romero in 1980 while he was celebrating Mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador. Later that year, four American churchwomen were raped and murdered. In 1981 the Salvadoran army massacred 800 civilians in the village of El Mozote. In 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were gunned down at the University of Central America. No matter what your views on the FMLN and Marxism, I think you'd have to agree that we were on the wrong side in that one. Finally, the Moakley Commission and Moakley Report (remember them?) came to that same conclusion and through U.S. and international efforts the civil war was brought to an end in January of 1992. The Winter Festival in Perquín—where the first negotiations that led to the Peace Accords took place—was also initiated to celebrate the Accords and encourage reconciliation in a bitterly divided country.

Perquín, 1992, the two sides surrender their weapons.

Now that I've cheered you up, let me tell you about the festivities. There's lots of food, not an insignificant amount of consumption of alcoholic beverages, live music, dancing, parades, a bicycle race, a five-hour walk from Perquín to Mozote (conducted by Padre Rojelio, the local Catholic cleric, to commemorate the aforementioned massacre), the election of a Lenca Princess, and many boisterous appearances by La Gigantona de Jocoro and her entourage. La Gigantona is a 12-foot-tall puppet on stilts, wearing an intricate and grandmotherly homemade dress, whose presence is a homage to Perquín's preColumbian population, supposedly a race of Giants. This year the Festival runs for five days, August 2–6.

There are plenty of places to stay in Perquín and nearby communities—from beautiful "hoteles de la montaña" with wooden cabins to basic hostels and even camping options. 

I did mention the Facebook page, right? Again, here's the link. Go to the page, "like" it, follow it, talk about it and—if you dare—come to Perquín and enjoy it.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Festival-de-Invierno/539044709537713

Traumatic Brain Injury

So far this blog has been relatively content-free, probably a relief for many of you who’ve perhaps taken about as much sharing as you can stomach from bloggers, myself included. Like it or not, I’m weighing in on the occurrences of the last three months (but don't worry, I'm not covering all of them in this post). It was three months ago that I first arrived in El Salvador.

The most recent occurrence was that I fell on my head. I had diarrhea and eating and drinking were making me nauseous, so I decided to try getting by without doing very much of either for a couple of days. Bad idea. I was walking home from a meeting, passed out on the street from dehydration and gashed my head.

When you’re diabetic they don’t let you off with a few stitches and a bag of electrolyte formula. They sent me to San Salvador for an MRI of my brain, an electroencephalogram, electrocardiogram, heart sonogram, and battery of blood tests. I spent two days in the hospital but when they released me they said I had the brain and heart of a twenty-year-old. I could tell from the expressions on the doctors’ faces that they were disappointed and felt that in some way they’d failed.

Nobody really knows what happened to me. Each specialist has a theory that—predictably—focuses on a malady closely associated with his or her specialty. The neurologist thinks it was “syncope”—a sudden drop in blood pressure that causes one to faint. The endocrinologist thinks it was low blood sugar. I myself insist that it was dehydration and can muster some convincing arguments to support that diagnosis: food wrappers in an otherwise empty wastebasket that indicated I’d eaten prior to going to the meeting from which I was returning when I collapsed; also witnesses who came to my assistance when I fell and who say that I was never unconscious, plus witnesses who spoke with me five minutes before I fell and report that I was completely lucid at that point.

I’ve been here, there and everywhere, up mountains, down rivers, cross country to see if I’d faint again and I haven’t. Nor has low blood sugar caused me to keel over on any of these strenuous outings. On one adventure a friend of mine—you guessed it—slipped on a rock while crossing a stream and whacked his head! That leaves dehydration as the most probable explanation for my fall and I have no intention of attempting to recreate that condition in order to test my hypothesis.

As if to prove my point, less than a week after my accident a friend from Maine was preparing for a colonoscopy (which requires fasting) and passed out in his kitchen.

I wouldn’t recommend falling down and whacking your head on the sidewalk to any of you. I’m still dizzy when I get up in the morning and have trouble remembering some of the many new names I’ve learned since moving to El Salvador. These symptoms can last for up to three months but are nothing to be alarmed about—routine for anyone recovering from a head injury. Mine was “mild” on the mild-serious-severe scale. I didn’t even suffer a concussion so theoretically I’m better off than Troy Aikman. (10 concussions, God bless him.)