Santa Marta

Friday was amazing. Absolutely fantastic. I have been truly blessed. Friday throughout all of Salamanca is a huge fundraiser for Manos Unidas (Hands United). Ingredients and labor are donated to make thousands and thousands of bocadillos (sandwiches) which are then sold. The money goes to provide potable water to people in Burundi. A friend from Adsis invited me to come join them for bocadillos in the afternoon. This is in Santa Marta, a small town (pueblicito) just outside of Salamanca. It was good to be in the community and actually talking to people. Just seeing children at play was very rejuvenating. I got a picture of them playing with a paracaídas (literally stop-falls or in English, a parachute). Later in the afternoon, we took the leftover sandwiches to some nearby gitanos (gypsies). They live in shanties built of seemingly whatever they could find to use, plywood, aluminum, cardboard, you name it. The ones I met were very friendly. They invited us in and asked us to have coffee or to eat with them, even when we were coming to bring them sandwiches. They pleaded also with the priest to bring them clothes and some blankets for the cold. We talked with one about finding a job also. Of course it was poverty on a level more rarely seen in the US, but what struck me most about the people were their eyes. They have the most amazing, variegated eyes. Once we left there, we found our way back to the Adsis house where 10 people, including 2 priests, live in community. Most of them I’d met earlier at the Centro Serranos where I’ve started volunteering. Still, I was touched by their way of welcoming me. Talking to them really has helped my Spanish, and I’m understanding conversation much better. I probably spoke more Spanish that day than in the past 3 weeks combined.

As I found out, there’s more to Salamanca’s tradition of selling sandwiches for Burundi. For the adolescents it’s tradition to buy the sandwiches, along with a liter (of beer, wine or whatever) and go to park. The park is huge, and they go in mass. The age here for buying alcohol is 16, and it makes for a scene very different from that found in the US. A few of us went just to see the scene. We did a decent amount of walking, and unfortunately it happened to be the windiest day yet.

After this we went to another house, this one actually in Salamanca. It’s the same community of people, just one more house. Here I met also a student from Italy who is finishing up his semester here. He, like I, came here to study and just ended up becoming part of the group. I really enjoyed talking with him, and he lives not far away. We were invited, or rather, forced into having dinner with all of them. Listening and talking with them over dinner, was definitely the most enjoyable time I’ve spent thus far in Spain. It was also good to be with ‘real’ people. At school there are students, and at church there are elderly people. Here there was a spectrum and children. Sometimes I miss seeing children. They also asked me a lot of questions about my home and the US. It felt good to talk about my home, and sharing it with someone made me not miss it so much. I’ll have to try to catch up on some reading tomorrow, but it was undeniably a day well spent.