In search of the Escobar family

Unil, Gerson, Fernando, Ercilia

photo for Fernando's brother

During our five months stay in Copper Bank, Belize, we became good friends with one of the poorest families in the village. We shared joy and sorrow, and short before continuing our trip we found out that Fernando, the father of the family (originally from El Salvador), had lost contact to his family a couple of years ago. He did not know how and why the contact was interrupted, but he strongly hoped the communication between them would establish anew. This story touched me deeply, and as I knew that he planned on sending his oldest son Otoniel to school over there, I suggested to go in search for his family as soon as we would visit El Salvador.

This moment took one year to arrive, because El Salvador was the last country we visited on our tour through Central America. In April 2007 we arrived in El Salvador and spent a couple of days in the capital San Salvador. During one of those days we headed towards Coquiama, the village where we should be able to find Fernando’s brother Julio Cesar.

We took a bus to Sonsonate. From there it took us endless hours and special communication skills to get at least near Coquiama. With bus and hitch-hiking we finally made it to Cuisnauath, a small town about one hour by foot from Coquiama. There were no street signs available nor anything else in this mountaineous, agricultural area indicating if we were on the right track or not. Talking to locals turned out the only way to find the location. We finally were on the right path, and headed directly towards Julio Cesar’s village Coquiama.

Julio Cesar with his wife

About 1,5 hours later we appeared right in front of Julio Cesar’s house. We were welcomed sceptical. We introduced ourselves, and explained our coming in the name of his brother Fernando. Julio Cesar seemingly had expected bad news. Instead we talked with true affinity about his brother’s family, which made Julio Cesar begin to trust our mission. We presented Julio Cesar the photos of Fernando’s family. Proudly he showed them around. He was amazed that this really was his brother. Julio Cesar mentioned that they had not seen each other personally for 16 years, nor heard from each other over the last 4 of them. We explained him that our mission was to re-establish the contact between the two brothers. We asked him kindly for a letter, which we could send together with the photos taken at his house to Fernando. One hour later we held the letter in our hands. We gave Julio Cesar the postal address of our friend Scott, who would deliver from now on his letters directly to Fernando, as there was no other way to ensure the mail would arrive. Then we were given two different phone numbers, one of Julio Cesar, and one of a third brother. We attached those to the letter, too, and sent everything to Fernando.

We only can hope that our effort was fruitful, and has re-united the brothers at least by means of conventional mail and telephone. Unfortunately, we are not able to communicate with Fernando’s family directly, but we know from our friend Scott, who played the postman for us, that the letter including photos and phone numbers definitely arrived to the family.