When It Rains, It Pours: a few thoughts on natural disasters

The fact that it's raining doesn't bother me. Actually, I have found the rainstorms here to be quite peaceful, a break from the sounding car alarms, the honking street vendors, the gunshots, and the oppressive heat. When it starts to rain, people retreat to the covered caves of the city: tarps are drawn over street-side shops, neighbors welcome in strangers, and at the corner of Ebony and Santa Barbara streets, the JVs are drinking hot tea (it's much cheaper than beer) and playing cards. There are no dogs barking, no babies crying - just the soothing sound of pelting rain on calm with a side of splash.

It also hasn't bothered me that the roads are flooded and that we are stranded in our house, without power. In fact, it has made this whole "battling the elements" adventure that much more exciting. I haven't even been frightened by the sharp cracks of thunder, chasing the perpetual flashes of lightning - even when I was sure the Earth had split in two below my very feet.

At one point this afternoon, when the downpour took a brief hiatus and the thunder had softened to a growling lull of background elevator music, Trey and I set out to investigate firsthand the damage of the storm. Since we had all been sent home from work early, we had watched curiously out our front window as our corner of Belize City transformed into a Venetian landscape with canals carrying driftwood, Styrofoam, and plastic bottles ebbing and flowing in clumpy currents. We noticed immediately that the lake our front yard had become was missing something vital: the wooden footbridge we use to cross what we call during dry times our "moat" - basically, the two-foot deep ditch that separates our lawn from the street for runoff drainage. This quagmire, always filled with stagnant water, garbage, and God knows what else, was now uncrossable - what were we to do? Trey and I rigged the front gate so that we could ride - a loose term, really - the hinged chain-link fence until we could feel solid ground beneath us. Think rope swing, but sideways on a swinging fence.

Once we were both standing knee-deep in water in the middle of our street, I looked at Trey through raindrops (it had started raining again) and watched him peel a plastic bag full of garbage off of his leg. We laughed.

People were coping with the elements in different ways. The first group we came across was a bunch of guys playing American football in a vacant lot turned kiddie pool. They were running, throwing, tackling, and sliding through the muddy water, laughing and slamming the ball down in screams of, "Touchdown! Boo-Yah!" They looked like they were having a blast - I was tempted to see if they needed to even out the teams, but then remembered that I had maybe seen shards of glass on that very ground, not to mention grasses that probably bred snakes and vermin of every type. As if they would have let a "white gal" play with them anyways.

The next group we encountered had the right idea: they were chartering a yellow blow-up raft through the streets, asking people if they needed rides places for just $2.00. Though it looked like fun, I preferred to get my aquatic workout on for free, thank you very much.

Besides these hooligans, I was surprised to see how many relentless folks were out biking in this mess! Talk about a work out. The best part: most of them were carrying umbrellas. I felt like snapping a picture of these people - pant legs pegged, pedaling up current on half-submerged bicycles into the slanted rain - to make one of those spoof posters (that usually involve college students and inappropriate activities) titled "STRUGGLE." Truly inspiring.

At that point, it was full-fledged, take your clothes off pouring again. Trey and I looked at each other as our t-shirts (his v-neck, of course) began to darken. We were about halfway between our house and the church, which is to say that we were about 50 yards from each. We drudged onward, nobly, towards the church and laughed. At least it wasn't snow, right?

When we got to the flooded church - my office building - we found Mrs. B, the secretary, parked in the parish hall snacking on some chicken wings with one inch of water creeping up under her chair. Nonchalantly, she asked us if it was still raining, without looking up from her Styrofoam plate. No help was needed here, she told us - the gracious Lord would be protecting her. But what about our computers? I was pretty sure a tsunami was boiling under the surface of St. Martin's Sea outside the church, and I'd be pissed if my "Cavalier King Charles Spaniel" calendar was ruined in its path (the calendar was a donation, by the way).

We walked through to the back of the parish where Mr. B (not related to the aforementioned Mrs.), the janitor, was frantically setting up sandbags in the door-less doorway - the seeming source of the indoor flood waters. His assistant, fearless Esidoro, was trouncing around in his goulashes, swinging a plastic bag like a little kid trying to catch raindrops. "What are you doing?" Trey and I asked in unison. "The 'roaches..." Esidoro trailed off leaping with the bag again. "They're drowning!"

Well, that was good news. Anything to get those God-forsaken pests out of my office and better yet, off the planet! But as we watched Esidoro try to collect the floating insects in amusement, we noticed how many dying cockroaches there were. One, two, three, four, six, eight, and another, and another... Where were they coming from? Trey and I followed the trail of half-dead, squirming insects to a corner of the storage room where, near the ceiling, I saw one of the more disgusting sights of my life. As the roof was leaking from the onslaught of rain from above and the water level continued to rise from below, a family of somewhere between 50 and 1,000 roaches (I couldn't really tell) gathered on a small ledge, resisting the slide down to a dismal - and wet - fate.

Upon closer inspection though, it appeared as though some of these roaches were jumping - even the ones with wings - into the water below. No little buddies, I caught myself saying in my head. Somehow knowing that Mother Nature's roar was pushing the roaches to take their own lives changed both my perspective on these creatures (they are still disgusting, but they do have a right to life) as well as my understanding of the storm.

I thought then of all the animals I have seen around the city since I have been here: the crabs that dug their homes all over our front yard, the rats that lived in our "moat," the homeless dogs whose food supply of garbage was now sufficiently soggy, the birds - where in the heck did they go? - and most importantly, the humans; their businesses that rely on good weather, their precarious living arrangements - wooden homes with no foundation, tarp roofs, and drowned vehicles. Now, I realized, I am bothered by this storm.

Because Hurrican Dean seemed to overlook our neck of the woods (luckily), I suppose I never really had the chance to consider things like this. Even in my visit to New Orleans and Gulfport, Mississippi post-Katrina, the immediate effects of the storm were not, and should not have been, so visible to me. Perhaps the impact of a natural disaster isn't the number of homes ruined or the cubic volume of water that, well, sinks everything. Maybe the true impact of a natural disaster is in the expressions of the people who are living it, while they are living it: Mrs. B relying on the "Good Lord, my Saviour," or the disappointment in the face of our neighbor when she saw that the clothes she accidentally left on the line were strewn and blown around the muddy yard, or the car engine that gurgles and smokes but just won't turn over in two feet of water, or the kids in the raft, the suicidal cockroaches, and the umbrella-carrying cyclist. Or maybe, it's just Trey and I - the token Americans - sludging back from the church through fecal canals (we were informed later that a sewer pipe a block away from us had exploded) and swinging over our "moat" into our garbage filled lagoon of a front yard.

Now, as the rain subsides again, I hear voices crawling out from the darkness of the unlit homes on our block. Gaping at our Venetian landscape, people point and gasp, laugh and cry. The lone radio station of the city closed down some hours ago, and so, without a TV or power, we don't know if this is the end of it. Technically speaking, Belize City is under sea level - it may take a while for the streets, lawns, and moats (especially) to drain. But that's okay - it doesn't really bother me.

While it looks and feels like God and all of Her angels, saints, and fellow parishoners of Heaven have been bawling their eyes out all day and night, I'd like to believe that amidst this chaos, they were, in fact, crying in a fit of hysterical laughter as their game of strobe light 10 pin bowling got out of hand on the rowdy scale. If, as we were told, Trey and I were really traipsing through the "mud" of an exploded sewer pipe, I have to believe that God has a sense of humor.

update numero uno

Greetings from the birthplace of the mosquito,

I hope this tiding finds you well! I am here, in Belize City, Belize where it is hot, hot, hot...City life is not unlike my experience in Boston, however: bad drivers, strange accents, and of course, a dirty ocean. As I have attempted to navigate my way over the course of the past ten days here, I have made some keen observations, which I would like to share:

1.) In Kriol (the kriol spelling of creole), "right now" means "hold on" - for example, if you are on the phone and you need to grab a pen to write down a number, you say to the person, "right now." does this make sense? apparently, yes, it does. If you're ever in a Belizean doctor's office with a sick roommate and the nurse says "right now, right now," as if it's an emergency, you may have to wait two hours. Hmmm...I guess that's not that different than the States...

2.) People love to guess where I'm from. I'll be riding my bike down the street and people will just be shouting out states and random cities that I haven't heard of since fourth grade geography - how does someone in Belize know of Whitefish, Montana?

3.) There is one traffic light in the whole city. Enough said.

4.) Especially when they are trying to guess where I am from, the people here are very friendly. There are certainly some dicey neighborhoods around these parts (I'm sorry, mom - we live in one of them...people even steal our trees out of yard! i mean, come on! and apparently, underwear is a hot item off the laundry line), but even so, people are friendly...For example, there is a guy who lives next door to us who wakes us up every morning banging on his car - now, this man owns an old Chrysler with no wheels, with a smashed windshield, and with two and a half doors...but he still bangs away at it with an old hammer. In a passing conversation, I asked him about said car, and his smiling response: "da caa di fi mi fren, but he's shiit outta luk" ("the car was my friend's but he's S.O.L.). See, he was a friendly thief...

5.) I have had the chance to visit the homeless shelter "out of town" (which actually means "downtown" - another one that will throw you for a loop), and while it is essentially just a big park where people can come to get free food, it is a fun place to hang out. I am pleased to say that I won my first game of dominoes ever, albeit against Emilio, who is blind, and Sr. Puerco, who is 80 years old...either way, I won.

6.) Lastly, I had an interesting interaction with some Mormon volunteers yesterday...I was on a four day homestay with a family nearby and upon passing the Latter Day Saint's church, we noticed a free eye-checking clinic. The daughter of the family I was staying with thought it would be best if we went and got our eyes checked - and so we did. The over-enthusiastic volunteers there took our forms (as we tried to stuff our laughter) and after we were both diagnosed with 20/20 vision - which is weird, because I don't have 20/20 vision - they gave us a balloon (seriously) and we left. As we were leaving, I thanked the volunteer who gave me the orange poodle balloon and asked her where they were from - her response: "the United States!" with a huge grin. I was like, "duh," but didn't pursue the conversation...I guess I already fit in here?

Okay, I suppose that's all for now. After just ten days into this experience, two years seems like a long time. But as a little girl at church yelled at the end of the homily the other night, "We are too blessed to be stressed!" and I agree wholeheartedly. I am far too blessed to be stressed.

Much love and peace,
Molly