Aftermath

As you may have heard, the rain last week turned out to be more than dreary weather for the people of Central America. In addition to the flooding that the lowlands experienced, landslides throughout the isthmus caused our president to declare a national emergency as much of the Costa Rican infrastructure was damaged, cutting off transportation and communications throughout the country. Beyond damage to highways, power lines and water pipes, hundreds of people lost their homes and at least 23 Ticos lost their lives. This is considered one of the worst disasters in recent Costa Rican history. Just before the rain finally let up, I received a call to be prepared to evacuate within the hour, due to the landslides that cut off my community and those beyond it. Fortunately, we did not have to be evacuated as the weather let up.

Most volunteers were without water, electricity and telephone services for at least a couple of hours. In my community, we lost water for about a week and a half. Melana’s home only recently got power and water back. It was an experience to have to physically gather all the water that I would be drinking, cooking with and bathing in for the time between. Much of the water was collected from containers we put out in the rain, however, extra water for dishes and toilet flushing was gathered from humanitarian water trucks that were sent up the mountain to help out the isolated towns. For my town and those beyond it, there is a single highway that had to be dug out by hand in order to let the relief vehicles up the pass. For more immediate support, helicopters surveyed the areas by the river to search for missing persons.

In addition, Ticos have been on edge due to the recent tension on the Nicaraguan border. You can read more about that here.

So, an eventful week for those of us down here in Costa Rica. Most of the roads are busted up pretty badly. My bus basically needs to go down steps to get me back to my community from the training site. Today, my friends and I were waiting for the bus for about an hour and a half before we learned that there had been a crash up the road and that no buses would be running for the rest of the night due to the fear that the road would collapse. So, we hired a taxi.

To end with a positive story. This weekend Melana and I also hit up the local farmer’s market in the somewhat larger town of Assari and had a great time. Shopping in the farmer’s market reminded me that soon Melana and I would be pretty much on our own as full fledged volunteers.