Summer

The terrible rains and flooding of this past weekend have left so many families grieving and homeless, so many communities isolated, so many crops lost. I remember Eleanor Gilmore saying that the last rains of winter, the rainy season, were often the worst, and this was the worst of the worst.

Winter has now given way to summer, the dry season. Skies are blue all day, and it's the coolest time of the year, relatively speaking - nighttime temperatures go down to about 70, and it's about 82 at midafternoon, very pleasant. Families gather on the plaza in the afternoon, and everyone enjoys the evenings. It's usually a time of celebrations and fiestas, but the floods have cast a long shadow over our pleasures.

Pat and I went down the steep street to the lake yesterday and watched the lanchas maneuvering through the thick growth of water hyacinth at the Puerto San Juan, with the boatmen using machetes to cut a way for the boats. At least we think it's water hyacinth, after consulting on-line resources. Here it's known as lechuga, lettuce, or nimfa. This lake, created by a dam on the Rio Lempa in the 1950s, is heavily polluted. We're told not to even think about swimming or eating any fish caught in the lake. So perhaps the water hyacinth, although it's an invasive introduced species, does bring some benefits: it's efficient at taking up heavy metals and other pollutants. No wonder it's doing so well on Lago Suchitlan.

Delivering the beans and rice

I've never had quite so much fun in PriceSmart (the El Salvador equivalent of Costco) - Pat and I went up and down the aisles, loading up three huge shopping carts with purified water, diapers and the basics - beans, rice, cornmeal, oil. Margaret Jane was cheering us on from her Spanish class in Suchitoto. All the purchases just barely fit into our old Toyota 4-runner. Then we delivered them to the Archdiocese, and these great guys unloaded the goods and took them to the storeroom where Dina, Margarita and Clelia from the Caritas-Pastoral Social office were sorting donations. They'll know where to put all those beans to best use.

Thanks to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and PeaceHealth for making this donation possible. I just wish it wasn't necessary: there are too many people homeless and grieving tonight in El Salvador. International aid has begun to arrive and the government is trying to respond to the needs that extend all the way from beans and rice and diapers for tonight to bridges and houses to rebuild over the next many months. To add to all these troubles, the enormous rainfall and flooding destroyed many crops, particularly the beans that were just being harvested and the second harvest of corn, so the prices of those staples are going to climb in the next few months. It's more than people here, already fragile, already stressed, can bear.

In time of need

Yesterday we asked Dina Duvon de Garcia, long-time friend of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and one of the Caritas staff at the Archdiocese, how we could help in this time of emergency (there are 14,000+ people in emergency shelters all over central El Salvador at the moment). Today we got an answer: buy basic foods and clean water and diapers and deliver them to the Archdiocese. So we are off on this mission of mercy: we'll use funds from the Sisters and from PeaceHealth to fill the car. It feels wonderful to be delivering some concrete assistance!

Storm and flooding damage many

A tremendous rainstorm and damaging floods caused great damage in central El Salvador Sunday morning. There was a huge rainstorm, caused by a low-pressure system linked indirectly to Hurricane Ida, that stalled over El Salvador and let loose an unbelievable amount of water - President Funes said that San Vicente, the community worst hit, had as much rain in four hours as had fallen in four days during Hurricane Mitch. There were terrible floods and landslides, many people were killed (at present more than 130 are reported killed, with 90 people listed as missing) and others are now homeless. The photo above is from La Prensa Grafica

We are all fine in Suchitoto and there was no damage to our house or to the Centro Arte para la Paz, but the nearby city of San Martin was hard hit. I was in Morazan for the weekend with my friend Pat & we waited over until today (Monday) because so many roads were closed. As we came home today, we saw lots of damage - collapsed houses, giant flood plains, trees toppled, rocks and earth spilling out onto the highway. When we got back to Suchitoto, Margaret Jane and Pat and I put together a couple of big piles of towels and sheets and clothing and took them down to the Mayor's office here to help those who are left homeless.

If any of you would like to help, a cash donation will help relief organizations provide the supplies and food and medicine so badly needed. Organizations doing good relief work include:

Caritas

International Red Cross/Red Crescent

Lutheran World Relief

World Vision

For links to other reports, photos, and maps, go to Tim's El Salvador Blog, always an excellent source of up-to-date information here.

It has been very sad to see on television the faces of those who've lost family memebers or houses and all their possessions. As you can imagine, and as is always the case here, it has hit the poor communities hardest.

Visiting with Nubia

I recently went to Comasagua for a visit with Nubia and her mom, and to bring them the assistance that, thanks to my friends, has made life a bit less precarious for this family. Here's Nubia in her school uniform entering my number in her family's cell phone - like any kid, she can do it twice as fast and accurately as the adults around her.

Nubia has grown a little, but is still very small for her 11 years. She is finishing 2nd grade, three years behind where she's be if she had started school at the usual age, so it's probably helpful to her that she is not much larger than the younger children she sits in class with. It's good to know that she can safely plan on beginning 3rd grade in January. Thanks to all whose donations have helped give Nubia a better present and more hopeful future!

St. Christopher's busdrivers

Today is St. Christopher's Day, at least in El Salvador (Wikipedia lists May 9th in the East and July 25th in the West as his feast days, so I'm not clear why the November 5th celebration). Christopher, the saint who's imaged carrying the Christ Child across a river has long been the patron saint of travellers, though his name is no longer in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints (since he seems to have been a somewhat legendary figure). In El Salvador he's the patron saint of bus drivers, and tonight the bus drivers in Suchitoto had a long and wonderful procession, with their buses dressed up with balloons and filled with kids throwing candy. We didn't have the equipment to capture this grand nighttime parade of buses in clear photos, but at least this impressionistic image may give you some idea of its cheerfulness. We stood out on our front stoop and applauded every bus as it passed. It's another Suchitoto festival - I never imagined a town could find so many reasons to throw a party.

There was a serious purpose to this parade and to a gathering of bus drivers in San Salvador, calling attention to the dangers bus drivers and passengers face during this crime wave. There have been too many murders of bus drivers, apparently because the owners of the bus lines refused to pay extortion money, or didn't pay as much as was demanded. Families of bus drivers worry every time they go to work. May St. Christopher protect them.

Día de los Difuntos

Here's Pat D'Andrea's wonderful image of the Suchitoto cemetery on All Soul's Day, el día de los difuntos. Everyone in the town carried flowers, both real and artificial, to the cemetery, where they spruced up the gravesites and painted the tombs and attended Mass. Blue, pink and green are among the favorite colors for tombs, and the flowers are all the colors possible plus a few that aren't. With the cemetery full of Suchitotans visiting, praying, working and full of the colors and life they brought with them, this was a wonderfully cheerful sight. Outside the cemetery gates flowers and food were for sale, and the party continues tonight on the plaza.

I thought about my family, whose graves can be found in three Western states and many different cities. We could never have this kind of gathering of the living and the dead. It's something we lost when we moved away from the small towns my parents were born in.

I said something in my last blog post about the beginning of summer - today I learned from Marta, my new Spanish teacher in the Pajaro Flor Escuela de Lenguajes (and a different person from Martha, who's been mentioned in this blog), that it always rains on November 1st and November 2nd, and that's the end of the rainy season. Indeed it did rain yesterday, and looks like raining tonight. We'll see what tomorrow brings.