[Inez] Transcribing: Day One post-El Salvador 2012

On our trip to El Salvador last week we met six new madres and one lisiado (I am still not sure how to properly translate this; it means roughly "injured," "crippled," or perhaps "handicapped") of the civil war from the general population -- that is, he was not a member of the guerrillas or the armed forces. We recorded 9.3 new hours of interviews, more than doubling the amount of transcribing that remains to be done. In this one week we recorded approximately as many hours as we have in past trips of 2-3 weeks each. It was an extraordinarily productive trip.

I'm so thankful to have been able to spend a week with Pati/Patty, who has been suffering terribly from cancer for two years now. I am also extremely thankful to have had the opportunity to meet new members of the organization, who are not active on a daily basis due primarily to a lack of funds. Ruby is on her way back to Minnesota now, and I'm sure she will have a lot to say about the trip.

I've been home for a few days now, myself. I really want to work on transcribing these new interviews while they are still fresh in my mind. It will be easier to pick up hard-to-hear words, and I may be able to add some notes about body language and gestures that will be lost in the recesses of my memory in a couple weeks.

There was one testimony that affected me greatly. I felt physically ill as I listened to her story and in fact had to excuse myself to splash off my face and let the sweat that had broken out over my entire body dry a bit. I knew I wanted to start transcribing soon after I got back to the US and I knew I would have to transcribe this testimony. The question was whether I would start with this testimony and get it out of the way, or end with it and know that after I finished it I could take a break before tackling the older interviews. I decided to go with the rip-the-bandaid off method and started transcribing this particular testimony this evening. I hope you'll wish me well. The testimony is nearly 75 minutes long, which means it will likely take me at least 450 minutes (7 1/2 hours) to transcribe, if not (likely) longer. I'll be hanging out with this testimony for a long time. These stories need to be shared.