Celina's Story "Growing up in El Salvador"

A little background from El Salvador.

People from El Salvador are very humble and we live in a small country, we only have fourteen Departments and they are Au’achapa’n, Santa Ana, Sonsonate, La Libertad, Chalatenango, San Salvador, La paz, Cusctlan, cabaña, San Vicente, Usulutan, San Miguel, Morazan, La Union. El Salvador is located in the central American coast of the pacific ocean, and bordering on the north and east with Honduras, on the west with Guatemala. We have a tropical climate. Winter starts in May and ends in October, summer runs from November to April.

My name is Celina Yarbrough; I was born in Houston TX but raised in El ¬Salvador. My mother is Salvadorian and my father was American. He died when I was four years old. When I was little like four and half or five my brother, my sister, my mom and I didn’t have anything to eat after my father death. He died on May eighth of 1992. Our lives were very hard, because we had to work at an early age. My sister Claudia was the oldest. She was six, I was five and my brother Eduardo was four. I never know how to play with dolls, because I never had the time for it, and because we where really poor and didn’t have the money to buy one. We didn’t know anything about agriculture we were too little, but we had the necessity to eat.

At the time my mother, brother, sister and I started working in the fields. Our first job was to plant grass for the animals. My mother was making holes, my sister was putting the roots of the grass in the hole, I was closing the holes with the grass indeed and my brother was jumping on top of the holes that were closed to seal them up really good. When the grass grew nice and big, my mom gave it to some people for the rent and put animal inside of the parcel to eat the grass but, they were going to pay for month either with money, beans, rice, corn, or milk. That was the first year.

The second year we did a bigger parcel of grass, the same process. We also planted corn, squash, rice, sorghum, and beans. Let me tell you how little kids planted so much corn and a very straight line of it. My mom put a rope very tight tied to a tree from end to end so we don’t get the lines like a snake. I don’t know people grow the rice here but, I will tell you how we do it: by hand hoe or oxen drawn plow. After the plow passes there is a person that has the rice in a bowl that is throwing it in the ground and at the same time covering with their feet. When the rice is ready, we cut the plant close to the root. We put nylon on the ground, the nylon had to have a rock in each corner so the wind wouldn’t blow it away, and for the rice we put a plastic barrel in the middle of the nylon with a rock inside so it doesn’t move. The barrel was laid down so we can hit the rice stalks on the barrel to remove the grain. At the end of the day we pick up everything and the rice goes in the plastic sacks. After all the fun of work we had to chase the horse put the saddle on him and put one sack of rice in each side of the horse saddle.

You may laugh about my work experience being so little but, that is something that I know by heart. I might not know how to play with a doll but I know how to work hard.

The third year when I was seven year’s of age we still grew the same kind of vegetables and corn, and school was part time only from seven to noon and from 12 to 5 PM for everybody. Our classes were in the afternoon so in the early morning my mother used to wake us up so we can go to work. It’s true we went to work but it takes 45 minutes walking to field we used to put plastic sacks on the ground so we started sleeping under the corn plants close to the road. At 9:30 AM my mother brought food for us because we were “working really hard” but she always caught us in the field sleeping. Something we worked since the morning stars.

In the small town where I got raised there are people who are very kind and respect each other. The water that we drink we have to go bring it from the river in gallons, or water jugs. We don’t have washing machines, but we have good hands to wash it by hand and dry it on a rope. When there was no electricity we lit a candle at night or for the machine to make masa (dough) for tortillas we have like a shaped rock and hand rock to break the corn seed to make masa (dough). Instead of having are own vehicle for transportation we have buses or horses to ride. There is no stove for cooking but, we have wood to burn. The students don’t use backpacks to bring their books to school. They use plastic bags. If you want to take a shower, you go to the river. I am just giving you some tips on how people from El Salvador are very poor. You know the president is a person that doesn’t have a brain, because he exchange the colon money for dollars and the people that work in agriculture get really low pay for 5 hours they get paid 3 dollars and for 10 hours of work they get 5 dollars per day just imagine. But that includes breakfast and lunch for does that work the ten hours. To get pay in colones there is difference 25 colones per half day no food, 43.75 colones for ten hours that is all I can tell you for right now.


Made on November of 2007
Celina Yarbrough