Journal, February 13, 1976 PM (Friday the 13th)

It wasn’t a bad day for being unlucky in the U.S. Maybe its only unlucky up there where folks believe in it - nobody’s heard of it here.

We moved today & I am sitting on my tijera {cot} writing this in Kikilita, our new home. It has lots of plants & nice tile floors. It is painted red & yellow. But the mosquitoes are eating us alive! Getting screens up is our first goal.

Blanca made 3 trips with her car to bring our stuff over & Jay and I tried carrying his bed over between our bikes. I took a spill & we gave up on it. He almost lost it when we left it alone 5 minutes, and some enterprising campesino {peasant farmer} took it home, hoping we’d forget to come back for it. You can’t leave anything unguarded in this country - people everywhere and most of them poor.

I brought my tijera {cot} over from El Maizal in Profy’s { Profy Gomez, director of the El Maizal demonstration farm.} pickup. It was only the third time I’ve driven in El Salvador (in 1 year 6 months). Jay says I should rent a car while Jan’s here to show her around. That would surely up my driving time.

Jay & I taped 2 chapters of a shortened version of Huckleberry Finn for the two CREDHO lawyers to study. They already know a good deal of English, but say they have trouble understanding when people talk fast. It seems like a reasonable method to improve their listening ability. The lawyers are one of the most important services CREDHO offers the peasants. The two lawyers (husband & wife) impress me as intelligent and very dedicated, decent people. I often ponder on the idea: What motivates such people? I have no single answer. It seems they just fit into a situation where they have their lawyers’ prestige & salaries, but can be helping folks who could never get this quality of legal service on their own. They’re somewhat noble, but certainly not martyrs.

Jay’s got Radio Canada on the short wave. They say there have been lots of irregularities in the distribution of relief supplies in Guatemala. How disgusting! People starving & homeless, and the rich & the military are hording the food & supplies. Hopefully international exposure of these incidents will force some action, but people with power seldom get more than token castigation. The inhumanity of we humans never ceases to amaze me!