Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
People entertain themselves creatively. I joined one gang of men gathered around a
rustic checkerboard. There was no table—they were holding the board up together. It was
a spirited gang, using bottle caps—turned either up or down—for pieces. With the end of
the game, I was invited to play the winner. It was fun…until my opponent got a “queen,”
and I learned that in Central America, the queen has vastly more powerful moves than the
“king” where I come from. With his Salvadoran queen on the rampage, I was swept from
the checkered battlefield…and finished in no time.
Member-supported checkers game.
In the midst of relative affluence, Americans seem to operate with a mindset of
scarcity—focusing on what we don't have or what we might lose. Meanwhile, the Sal-
vadorans I met, with so little, embrace life with a mindset of abundance—thankful for the
simple things they do have. They're extremely generous, considering their tough econom-
ic reality.
Our group dropped in on Beatriz and her daughter Veronica, who live in a miniskirt
shack on El Salvador's minimum wage. The place was as clean and inviting as a tin-roofed
shack with a dirt floor can be. Beatriz sat us down and told of raising a family through a
Civil War: “The war moved into the capital, and our little house happened to sit between
