Pueblo Life: The Tiendas

We’ve been in El Salvador for 1 week exactly. Why does it feel like we’ve been here for ages when we only left our life in Australia 2 weeks ago? I’m closer to my family than I’ve been in years, but somehow I feel the furthest away from them than I ever have. I must be going through City Life Withdrawal Syndrome. I must admit the pueblo life seems quaint for the time being. To get your bread you go to the panaderia or bakery. However, if you should need to find napkins, bath soap or milk you don’t head over to the supermarket because there isn’t one. Many families here in San Rafael have little tiendas or shops that are part of their houses. Some own chemists where you can get your prescription filled, some own librerías where they sell school supplies and others own food shops where you can get packaged bread, biscuits, toilet paper and other items. The trick to pueblo living is knowing where to go to get what you need because they don’t have signs that say the name of the tienda. You can, however, guess where one might be by the collage of posters advertising a better life if you eat a certain brand of yogur or a speedy recovery from your gripe and it’s cold symptoms if you purchase some effervescent tables. I haven’t visited any of the tiendas in my town but I have gone to one of the panaderias to purchase a biscuit for .15 centavos.

The pueblo where the Peace Corps training centre is located, San Vicente, on the other hand is blessed with a supermarket called Supermercado de Todo where you begin to melt as soon as you step inside. It’s quite difficult to get excited over finding canned garbanzos to make hummus when kidney beans seem to be the only beans they eat in this country or finding powdered soymilk in various flavours when you thought you’d never see it again while you feel like a piece of bread in a toaster!