Myette.org

Friends-

The last two weeks have been amazing and packed with so much I want to share with you. Though the story doesn’t really have a beginning we’ll join the action in progress with the arrival of Erika’s family on January 8th. I took a bus 6 hours to San Pedro Sula to run some errands in town (we needed car parts that we couldn’t get except for in the big cities, or as it turns out in all of Honduras) and meet Erika’s parents, her sister Katie, and Katie’s boyfriend Ben. I met them at the airport and after another long bus ride we made it back to the Finca that night.

We had a great visit and spent lots of time together and they got to see the Finca, play with the kids, meet our fellow vols and probably most importantly spend lots of time with Michael. We had great weather and were able to work in a hike to a nearby waterfall, swimming in one of the swimming holes on the river with the kids and a visit to a remote mountain village to see what life is like in rural Honduras. Aside from Katie being sick with the flu the visit was perfect. We celebrated Michael’s birthday on Friday night because they would be leaving early Saturday morning (his actual birthday). During the afternoon the winds shifted and started blowing from the northwest which usually means a storm is coming and just after dinner the rains came.

Now when Erika’s parents had made their plans we had talked about the remote possibility of the trip being somehow interrupted by a storm because January is the heart of the rainy season. Even Friday night we had no idea what we would find Saturday morning when we drove out to the river at 5am. An educated guess is that we got 10 inches of rain in 10 hours and it was still raining. The river we had crossed on foot Friday morning that had been 4 inches deep had risen almost 5 feet in 12 hours and was rising toward overflowing its banks with full blown rapids rushing through our river crossing. Whole trees had been ripped out by the roots and were floating down the river. There was no way we were crossing.

Our cars are tough but they can’t swim. To make matters worse our cars were pretty sick. It had been a rough week and one landcruiser had a battery that needed to be replaced, the other landcruiser had a bad starter and on Friday we busted the suspension on our pickup truck. So we were using the pickup with the busted suspension to pull start the landcruisers.

Blessed with another day with Erika’s family we made the best of it and sat down to breakfast when we discovered that we had no running water. Our best guess was that the storm had knocked out one of our water pipes which carry the water from a different river up in the mountains. Fortunately we are prepared for this eventuality and have a supply of drinking water stored up and of course plenty of rain water that we collected for washing dishes etc.

We spent the day indoors playing board games with the kids, reading and generally spending some quality time together. There’s something magical about rainy days and the fact that we were stuck and couldn’t get across the river just made it that much more of a rainy day. We walked down the beach in the driving rain to see where the river emptied into the ocean and just be amazed at nature’s great power. Erika’s family had already missed one flight but was pretty calm and hopeful that we would be able to get a trip out in the morning and they would be able to make a later flight on Sunday. We had dinner together as a community and in the midst of the great storm we ate in silence. Beau and Lindsay had cooked dinner and read a passage from Thicht Nat Han (a Buddhist monk whose name I probably spelled wrong) that reflected on breaking bread together and the mindfulness of eucharist in our lives. We ate in a very comfortable silence, grateful for the food we have been given, the work we have been called to and happy to be stuck here together. After dinner Beau pulled Andrea aside and shared with her that a call had come earlier on the radio from one of the houses in town. News had come from the states that her grandmother, who had been sick and in hospice, had passed away.

The challenge of living so far from our families is very real. We are separated by miles, bus rides and plane flights and sometimes by rivers too high to cross. Every day we are separated by the difficulty of communication and Saturday night, with Erika’s family here with us, was a difficult reminder that if the rivers ever receded they would go home and that distance would return.

But of course the storm had a few more tricks up its sleeve before that would happen. We went to bed Saturday night with the plan to head to the river at 5am to clear debris in the hopes of getting a trip out at 6am. As Erika and I lay in bed at 10pm talking about the day the lights went out. We found out later a landslide had taken out a pole and all of Trujillo and the surrounding areas (probably much of the north coast of Honduras) were without power. The night was the deepest black I have ever known with no moon and the rain continuing. We have a generator to power our meat freezer but unfortunately we had leant it out to a neighboring village for a prayer service and it to was stuck on the other side of the river. To add another element our night watchman had not been able to cross the river and the other one had quit earlier that day so were without a watchi (the other watchman would quit later during the weekend). So Saturday night we had sick cars, no water, no electricity, and no watchi. And the rain continued.

The rain continued overnight but by morning had slowed and we hoped the river had dropped enough the make a crossing attempt feasible. At 5am we went down to see that the river had dropped almost enough to cross on foot but not enough to try getting a car across. I think I’ve explained before what our plancha (the river crossing) is like, but briefly it’s a concrete slab poured into the river that the river runs over. Basically it just gives us a smooth place to cross without having to worry about what lies beneath the water. The main danger in crossing is the force of the water, definitely a rushing river with lots of current and push to it. We worry that the water pushing against the sides of the car will push us off the plancha into the river itself. This is why there are times when we can cross on foot but can’t cross in a car. Needless to say we’re super cautious about putting our cars (our most expensive asset) and our people (our most precious asset) at risk.

By 9am we decided the river had dropped enough to attempt a crossing, but the big unknown was that our river was just the first of 3 major river crossings and we had no idea what the other two looked like. We loaded up Erika’s parents and everyone else who needed to go to town. Erika stayed with Michael on the finca and I went on the trip with her family to make sure they made it to the bus safely. We got both landcruisers running and at the river, the second one to have on hand in case of an emergency. At this point the river is still up over our tires and about 20 yards across. We cross in 1st gear in 4-wheel drive and as we reach the middle our back end starts to get pushed out. Nicolas is driving and is able to correct and get us across safely, but observers on the bank said we got pushed about 4 feet across a 12 foot wide plancha. We drive to the second river crossing and as we pull up it’s almost immediately clear that we aren’t going to be able to cross. Andrea and I get out and wade into the river to get an idea of what our prospects are. The river isn’t that much higher here but this plancha has a 4 foot drop on the downstream side with a 5 foot deep pool of water down below so the danger if we get pushed is that much more acute. Andrea, as sub-director, makes the call that we’re not going to cross. We also decided not to cross back to the finca in the car (the river had started to rise again). We would cross the river on foot and leave the car at a neighbor’s house.

We all, including Erika’s family with all their luggage, cross the river on foot. After we get everything across we realize that the elderly mother and sick brother of one of our house fathers is still on the other side of the river scared to cross. Some of us waded back across the river and helped them across. Three of us walked with this man who had suffered some sort of brain injury and had symptoms similar to Parkinson’s. He was terrified and all I could think to do was start praying in Spanish in the hopes that it might reassure him somehow. The crossing went safely and we returned to the vol house to regroup and come up with our next plan.

On our way home from the river we talked to one of our gringo neighbors on our marine radio and found out that even if we had made it across the river we wouldn’t have been able to make it to town. Further down the road a mudslide had washed across the road covering it in 2 feet of mud and washed out part of the road. So as we got back to the vol house we had to decide what to do next. By this point Erika’s family has missed the last flight on Sunday and the last bus out of Trujillo leaves at 1:30pm. Other people in the community also need to get to town for various reasons and the house fathers are convinced they can dig out the mudslide and make it passable. So a group of us heads out to walk to town with the house fathers and their shovels and pick axes and Erika’s family carrying all of their luggage.

We are able to walk the beach part way and miss two of the major river crossing due to some quirks in geography. When we saw the mudslide we thought our neighbor had overreacted until we stepped into it and sank in to our knees in mud. We leave the house fathers with Becky and Rafael (the vol in charge of maintenance and construction) to work on digging out the road, a task that looks impossible. I continued on with Erika’s family and Andrea toward town. After about an hour walking we cross the last major river crossing. I pass off the luggage I’ve been carrying and leave Erika’s family with Andrea who made sure they made it the rest of the way and got on the 1pm bus to San Pedro. I didn’t want to risk getting stuck in town in case the rivers rose again.

I returned to the mudslide to find that the house fathers and some other guys who had driven up in a truck had dug out enough to make the road passable, a huge accomplishment. We walked home to talk with the other vols and make plans to get our first trip out since the rain started Friday night. By 2pm we were able to send a trip to town to pick up Andrea and drop off vols and kids who were heading on vacation to visit their families. At 5pm I drove a trip that went the other direction (away from town) to pick up Daniel and Kristel who were with Franklin, Carlitos and Jimena visiting their family in a mountain village a 3 hour hike from the nearest dirt road. They had been there during the whole storm and we had no way of getting in contact with them so it was important that we be there to pick them up even though we didn’t know if they would be able to make it down off the mountain.

Lindsay went with me and it was a fun trip to drive because I got to use the landcruiser for what it was made for. I used its 4 wheel-drive and high clearance to get through the mud and drive into a creek to get around where the road had washed out and all sorts of cool stuff. I even needed to use our tow chains and pull another car out of the mud. We met up with Daniel and Kristel successfully and headed home for dinner after picking up our generator.

The worst of the storm was over but we still had no power and no water and weren’t sure if the rain was really over. As we ate dinner the lights flickered and went back off, though they would eventually return for good in the middle of the night Sunday night.

By Monday morning it was time for things to get back to normal. A trip went in to take our 7th graders to their entrance exam for school which is scheduled to start the first week of February and the teachers headed to school to prepare for our new student meeting on Tuesday. I spent all day Monday walking around to the surrounding villages and neighbors telling them about the meeting and when school was going to start and by the time I had returned to the finca we had running water back after almost three days.

Spending Monday on foot with my fellow teachers was a good time to think and talk about the weekend and how amazing it was that things were getting back to normal when just a day ago it seemed like the rain would never end. I like living in a place where nature plays an active role in my daily life and I like how comfortable and happy to be stuck here I was. If Erika’s parents hadn’t had been trying to get home it probably would have been one of the most fun weekends of my life even without water, power, cars, or the ability to do anything about it.

Last I heard Erika’s family had made it to San Pedro and were hoping to get a flight Monday or Tuesday, though in truth tonight will be my first chance to check my email so I’m just hoping things went smoothly on the rest of the trip. But today we can cross the river, tomorrow who knows!

Michael-John