There are eight calendars in the house where I live. You might think the people I live with have very busy schedules or are very concerned with efficiency. But then you would remember that this is El Salvador, not Germany.
On the porch, one calendar bears the smiling faces of Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez-Cerén, the presidential ticket for the leftist FMLN. It is from 2008. There are two others from this year – one commemorating people killed during the civil war, small portraits where the large scenic picture would normally be and a massacre or assassination or battle written on almost every individual date box. The other is from Brisbane, Australia, where my host grandmother’s daughter lives. It was on the current month for a while, but the little hole where it was hung on a nail ripped out, so they flipped it to the back and hung it upside down. The calendar hanging over the small gas stove is from some mental health organization and is from 2004. It has a picture of a group of kids apparently sitting on a rock on some sort of scenic overlook. I have no idea where it came from.
Inside, alongside a portrait of my host grandmother’s late husband and another of Jesus, some snapshots of various grandchildren, a ‘recuerdo’ from someone’s funeral, and a small painting of flowers, is another calendar, this one with a picture of the Australian grandchildren from 1994. There’s a war-martyrs one from 2005 over the small fridge, and one from Conacaste, the closest thing to a real restaurant in the vicinity, next to the window in my curtained-off section of the room. It’s from 2006 and for some reason has a picture from Guatemala. Hung directly over that one on the same nail is a calendar that is suspiciously turned to the current month and even has things written on it, the days crossed off as they go by. It is my calendar, a freebie from a Salvadoran restaurant in Woodbridge, Virginia, that I picked up before leaving.
The year is almost over. Soon there will be at least nine calendars in my house.
