Dollars to Donuts

I'm back from El Salvador.

Absolutely fantastic trip... I learned more about opinion polling than I ever would have thought possible in a mere two days! The folks at CS Sondea in San Salvador were extremely friendly, and unbelievably generous with their time, resources, and wisdom.

Of course I now face the uphill battle of putting that intensive, and highly-technical, training into use here at Incidencia Democrática. New programs to learn and more work to do. Which is great because I didn't know what do with all that spare "free time" on my hands.

(For those of you who may not know, the previous sentence was absolutely dripping with sarcasm.)

As for El Salvador itself, I was very glad to be back after a seven year absence. Like Guatemala, much has changed and yet much remains the same. Two brief examples:

The Changed - It was very difficult to get my mind around this one. Do you know what El Salvador's official currency is? The U.S. dollar!

It has been since 2001 when, in a process known as "dollarization", the U.S. dollar replaced the Colon, the national money named after Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón, in Spanish).

Many of the people I spoke to were unhappy about the change, saying that it resulted in much higher prices... especially for basic foods and services. Others mentioned that it was humiliating to have the faces of U.S. presidents on the coins and bills on the currency that they use every day as their national currency. ("Where are our heros?", asked one cab driver.)

For me it was shocking to be one country "further away" from the States and yet see the prices for everything listed in dollars. Gone was the thrill of doing the mental mathematics of currency conversion and the pleasure of using a foreign money (with its unquestionably attractive and colorful banknotes).

Sad to say that after my trip to El Salvador, I returned to Guatemala with a pocket full of U.S. quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Sigh.

The Same - Ok, this is a very personal confession. I like coffee and donuts. When I first visited El Salvador (many, many years ago) I was secretly thrilled to see a Mister Donuts shop. I always remember the chain as an air-conditioned oasis from the Salvadoran heat, with a menu that combined U.S.-style donuts with delicious local food (ie: pupusas and horchata).

Even though Mister Donut has disappeared from the United States (bought out by rival Dunkin' Donuts) it was evidently continues to do well in El Salvador. In fact they now have a Mister Donut - Paris, where the waitresses wear berets, the walls are covered with sepia photos of France, and a gorgeous stained glass ceiling lights up the room. Oh, and the donuts are yummy, too.

My only regret about the journey to El Salvador was that it only lasted a few days. I look forward to returning soon!

By the way, for those of you who might complain that "dollars and donuts" hardly reflects the beauty and complexity that is El Salvador... I agree. But I had to write about something.

And you should be mightily relieved that the something I chose wasn't a prolonged discussion of the work-related aspects of this trip (unless, of course, you're really into crosstabbing polling variables for qualitative data analysis.)

Tags: Guatemala, El Salvador, CS Sondea, Mister Donut, Travel

Posted by elcanche at March 26, 2006 09:35 PM