Guífiti Time

The signing ceremony went fine this morning. Tim DeVoogd from the State Department showed up as planned, and Reina and I got to have a short but fruitful talk with him about opportunities to fund the exchange between UDB and HSU.

In the evening I went out with René, Kiriam, Eduardo, and Claudia. Francisco and Kyle were going to join us as well, but Kyle got sick. We went to Yemaya, the restaurant that used to be in our neighborhood. They had to move because the security gates that went up on their street made it impossible to do business. The move to Santa Tecla seems to have played out really well -- the new location is much bigger but was packed with people, mostly a hip young crowd. Kristina the owner seems very happy with the outcome. René says this neighborhood is getting really trendy lately.

A shame Francisco didn't make it, because the origin of this outing was a conversation we had about guífiti, the Garífuna liquor/medicine. I told him about this and promised to bring back a bottle from Triunfo de la Cruz. So this was meant to be our night to party it. It wasn't a total loss -- we enjoyed sharing it at our table, and Fulbrighters Chris, Anne and Beth were at a nearby table along with Teresa and Lorenzo, a pair of visiting medical researchers from Marquette University and Beth's novio Jonathan. So the guífiti found many willing tasters.

There was a jazz fusion group called Brujo that rocked the house starting around eight. It wasn't til I'd been watching them play for a few minutes that I realized I know the guitarist -- José Luis Flores from Unidad Nacional Ecológica Salvadoreña. He´s quite a good guitarist. The bassist also really impressed me. The hip atmosphere of the restaurant and the music made me feel far away from the San Salvador I know. I'm sure this sort of thing is happening every night somewhere in this big city; I just haven't been getting out enough to find it.

Brujo at Yemaya, with Eduardo and Claudia at far left