A Long Two Weeks

For those of you who have been paying attention to Panamanian news (I have a feeling there aren't too many of you) you might have notice that the Panama Canal was shut down for the first time in 100 years because of rain. The rain that shut down the Canal was impacting Boquerón in a big way as well. We came back to our house on Monday (12/6) after a meeting. We knew that there had been rain up in Bocas Del Torro, but we had a dry ride up to site and were not thinking about anything more than your average wet season aguacerro (hard rain) coming our way. All of the wet season we had seen had been reasonably dry..we would have a few days of on and off aguacerros all day but most days were pertty sunny with one aguacaerro, usually in the afternoon and then more sun.


On Tuesday we woke up and it was COLD. Now, I know what has been going on in the states weather wise so I won't even pretend that this was actual cold, but for Boquerón, with an average daily temperature of 90 degrees, it definitely qualified as frio. The wind was in full force, blowing our sheet/wall all over the place and causing me to put on a...wait for it....sweatshirt. And pants. No joke. So far nothing more than a light drizzle, but around ten o'clock in the morning the skies started darkening and we decided to hole up in the house for what we knew would be a hard enough rain that no one would out working (otherwise we would be feeling guilty holed up in our house with people out there getting things done!) . Then the rains started.



They started like any other aguacerro, really intense and incredibly loud on our zinc roof (the zinc sometimes makes you think its raining really hard and then you walk outside and actually it has only been sprinkling...but this was definitely loud). But after a little while it became apparent that this wasn't your average aguacerro. For starters, the rain didn't slow down. Normally we excpect a loud, heavy burst of rain, a slow down,maybe another burst and another slow down (maybe not) and then completely ended. But this storm kept going and going and going. Instead of slowing down it got louder - at one point Sean and I , in our tiny house, could literally not hear each other talking. It went on like this for 36 hours. No exaggeration at all. 36 straight hours of the most intense rain we had ever seen in Boquerón.



When the rains finally stopped and people started coming out of their houses, Sean went out to pasear (visit with families), I hung out in the house and played cards with some of the kids. As the kids showed up they started telling me about what Sean would be finding on his trip to visit families- there was major destruction throughout Boquerón. Landslides that pushed mud and dirt down the one road in town, preventing any form of transportation from coming up. Landslides and flooding that destroyed nine houses to the point that the families cannot live in them.Other houses, while not completely destroyed, did suffer damage as a result of the flooding/landslides- not only to the houses themselves but also to the things inside them. The electricity went out in Boqueron and the neighboring communities. This meant that the cell phone tower everyone relied on was not working- communication is always difficult in Boquerón, but it proved to be even more so immediately following the flood.  

Looking up the road towards our house, clogged culvert

Same clogged culvert as above, different angle...in front of house that luckily saw no serious damage



A little further down at the half way point between Boquerón Arriba and Boquerón Abajo



Still halfway point...example of debris thrown around in the flood

This six foot wall wasn't here before the storm...

Landslide in middle of road



The state of the roads made it The state of the roads made itimpossible for food delivery trucks to make it to the stores in town, leaving the sotres with the limited food they had before the storm. Right now, the families who cannot go back to their homes are living in the school in Boquerón Abajo, where most of the physical flood damage occured. There is one family in Boquerón Arriba that is out of their home, all of the rest were in Abajo. This does not mean that Abajo is seeing more of the suffering than Arriba, as of this moment Arriba still has no water and it doesn't look like we will have it anytime soon.



Sean stayed with this family during our Site Visit Week...the dark part of the wall shows the waterline of the flood

Same house from back

Inside the house

Another house destroyed...the concrete slab on the left used to have a house on it

Man surveying the destruction of his house

The hike to the next community...

mud, mud and more mud

Birds-eye view of some landslides

 

We have  been very impressed with the government response to the flooding...Boquerón has seen a large number of donations and many visits from various government agencies who are checking in with the community and seeing how they can help. The response was extremely fast and the citizens without homes have a place to stay and plenty of food and clean water to get them through. They also have received clothes and toys for the children. The outpouring of support is very comforting for us and for the members of the community as they prepare for the next steps.

One organization coming by (this is from the door of our house)

Interviewing a store owner on his experience with the flood

 Encoutnering all of this destruction and each of the many problems that resulted because of two days of heavy rain was very eye opening. Watching families go through the wreckage that was their home, watching people who I had previously thought of as having nothing lose what they did have, experiencing the loss of communication, transportation and water all showed me, yet again, how lucky I am.  Sean put it really well  one night after he had spent the day helping clean mud out of one of the flooded houses and he was really dirty, dying to clean up, but we had no water to bath with. At first he was frustrated, but he said "It's kind of hard to be frustrated about climbing in to bed filthy when we have a bed and so many people don't". We are so lucky on so many levels...we suffered nothing during the floods and we already have so much more than the other people in our community. Stopping and realizing what other people do not have really makes it apparent what we do have.
Our Peace Corps experience is always presenting us with new moments of reflection, usually in regard to how good we have it, how many things we take for granted in our everyday life. I feel this especially on the days when I feel like I need a break from it all. We are only a few hours from the city and it is easy for us to head to Panama, take a hot shower, eat some junk food (or healthy food, sometimes all I am craving is fruits and vegetables!) have a glass of wine, check the internet, watch tv and sleep without the sound of bats overhead.  One day like this and then back to site and I am a new woman, newly energized with (which at least feels like) a fresh set of ideas, some of our favorite food packed to get us through the next few weeks in site and a positive attitude. When I am down in site I think about the fact that I have this reward coming,this chance to rejuvenate. And it seems innocent enough...but other people in our site don't have that at all.  It is not just the physical things that they don't have, it is that they can never take that moment to clear their minds...they can't take a break from campo life because their life is campo life.  Panama is an isthmus and hardly anyone in out community has seen the ocean...many have never been to Panama City. I take these 'small,local' trips for granted, it is only $2.30 for us to get to the city, I forget what a huge deal it is for people in our community to do something like 'go to the city for the night'...I throw it out so casually because it feels like nothing compared to vacations I used to take back home.

Peace Corps has given us an amazing opportunity to live and work with the people of Boquerón in the way they live and work, giving us an increidble perspective of what it means to be poor in rural Panama, but we can never take away the fact that this is only 2 years of our life.  27 months is a long time, sometimes it seems very long, but we all know how quickly two years will go by (8 months is already gone by tomorrow!)...I think I can never truly know what it feels like to be poor if I have a light at the end of the tunnel..with a specific date attached. It is easy for me to see tomorrow, the future in general, because I know that it comes with many changes in store. It is a totally different thing to plan and hope for the future if you have questions about where your next meal or sleeping place is coming from.The trials and tribulations that they face day in and day out are always there, they never go away. Even when they do get something new for their communtiy or something to improve their quality of life, they are still experiencing what can only be described as a hard life

I am sorry to be rambling here, but I have been reflecting on this a lot lately. I was on my 10th packet of Ramen in just as many days, a week without having had peanut butter, two weeks without water, two weeks without bathing, one week without any clean clothes at all, who knows how long without clean sheets and I knew I wouldn't get to see my family on Christmas and I just wanted to get away and take a break. I felt like complaining about all of those things. But then I started thinking that those complaints werejust really me saying "I have food, just not the kind I want right now. And I have clothes. And I have sheets, and a bed to put them on..they're just not comfortable enough and I have people who love me that are only a phone call away"  I mean really, when it comes down to it, what could I possibly be complaining about?

This is the picture of the area I want to leave you with