A man living in the country who earns 3 dollars a day will likely eat a tamal with coffee for breakfast. This will fill him for most of the day. While this man is eating, it is quite possible that somewhere in San Salvador, a wealthy business man is eating the exact same breakfast: tamal y cafe.
Tamales are an integral part of the culture here in El Salvador, so much so that they trump class divisions. One tamal costs about 60 cents: it is a corn meal patty steamed inside of a plantain leaf or corn husk. Tamales are eaten by all sorts of people at all times of the day. They are especially popular for religious celebrations, funerals, and during Christmas/New Years. Tamales are a cheap and convenient source of food for the masses.
The world of tamales has two hemispheres: tamal de huerta, and tamal de elote. The latter is sweet and is wrapped in a corn husk. The former, tamal de huerta, is savory and comes in several different variations: pisque (black beans), gallina (hen meat), and chipilín (filled with cheese and made with yerba, a traditional herb). All variations of tamal de huerta are cooked and served wrapped in a plantain leaf.
That leaf is the subject of the market research that I am conducting as a Volunteer Technical Assistant (Consultant) with Winrock International. Thanks to a grant from the UNDP, the Salvadoran Chamber of Commerce will investigate the market for plantain leaves in order to expand access to national and international markets for plantain leave producers.
After three meetings with the Chamber of Commerce (and two presentations in which I managed to convey my proposed research design in very awkward Spanish), we have agreed on a plan for our study: we will conduct interviews with plantain leave producers, wholesale market vendors, supermarkets, and export companies. We are interested in the demand, prices, and quality characteristics valued by the market. In order to collect this information, we will recruit university students to conduct the interviews with the plantain leave farmers and wholesale market vendors. I will be leading a workshop in order to train the students in best practices for qualitative research. I am very excited about this! I used to be an SAT/ACT prep teacher. it will be lovely to be in front of a room of young people again.
The export company and supermarket interviews are being conducted by myself and by my fabulous colleagues at Winrock International. We conducted the first interview this morning with an export company, Crio Inversiones. Although our interviewee did not have the more complex quantitative data on hand, we were still able to collect useful information regarding quality characteristics, market prices, and producer-processor arrangements (in this case, there was no written contract: the arrangement was ‘by word’).
Tomorrow we will interview another export company. I will keep you updated on the noteworthy developments!
I leave you with a joke:
A gringo walks back to his hotel after having a dinner of tamales for the first time. The hotel owner asks him, “So, did you enjoy your tamales?” The gringo replies, in his best gringo accent:
“Si, payrow low kay me gustow mas fue la leh-choo-guh.”
“Yes, but what I liked best was the lettuce!”
Volunteering in El Salvador 
Reblogged this on Winrock Volunteers and commented:
Ariel is volunteering with us in El Salvador for two and a half months. She chronicles her time in country on her personal blog. Check out her most recent entry!