Hey guys,
So have you heard anything about El Salvador in the news? I’m gonna guess no. But man we have had two weeks of horrendous tropical rainstorms where it rains for days on out without stopping. It has been miserable and it has put my community in dire straits.

Ok, so the last time I posted I told you about how there was supposed to be a big huge party at the Instituto with rodeo and everything and the president of El Salvador was going to come, but that it got canceled due to rain. So it rained all that day, Oct. 12, and the next. It was a miracle that the bus actually made it out of the community and back on Saturday, Oct. 13th. The bus was driving through flooded streets where the water reached the second step of the bus, about three feet deep of water. I was worried we were going to get stuck and then we’d all have to walk in the nasty dirty water.


A house, flooded with water. Thank goodness that didn't happen to my house.



Upon returning to Mendez, we came to a point where there was a big crack in the road and a few cars were stuck in the mud there, so we pulled them out with the bus. Well by the end of the day, that crack turned into at least a twenty-foot wide hole. Basically the road split in half and there was a river running through the middle of it. From the street level to the water level it was about three feet and if you were in the water in the hole it was chest deep. It was insane, to say the least. There was so much water flowing through this river I couldn’t believe it.

The river of water flooding out of the fields that swept the street away


The water came from all the fields on the up side of the peninsula and drained into the bay, where it had found a small canyon; but since there was so much water, it took the whole street with it as well. So that became the event of the week. The whole week people were going to “the hole” to check it out, watch it get bigger, debate about how they were going to fix it, and watch as they tried to fill the whole and divert the flow of water. What they ended up doing was putting down big huge boulders and two big tubes so that the water could still filter through and into the bay. Then on top of that they laid smaller rocks and sand. Eventually it looked like a dam, except that the tubes allowed for the water to flow through the bottom.

The giant hole in the street.

So Saturday, Oct. 13th is when the street fell apart and by Monday, they had started bringing rocks to fill the hole, newspapers and television stations were there to report on what was going on, and you could see me in one of the news reports, and apparently in a photo in the newspaper, but I never was able to get a copy of the picture….DAMNIT! Anyways, so it kept raining but not as hard.

The street flooded with water.


However, in other parts of the peninsula the roads were even worse, which I can’t even imagine. But on Wednesday, Oct. 17th, in the evening, the big huge trucks that were bringing the rocks to fill the hole in the street, got stuck in a huge mud puddle farther up the road, which in turn created a huge traffic jam, because no one coming into or leaving the peninsula could leave. These poor people, friends of mine included, ended up sitting there until 2am, until the trucks were pulled free by tractors. With the hole in the street and the roads still really messed up the buses didn’t leave for more than a week, people couldn’t get to town to buy and few cars selling anywhere from produce, to soda to bread could enter.

The beginning of what it looked like when they started throwing in boulders and then dirt to lift the road back up again.

So on the Monday when they started filling the hole with rocks is when I went to check out the hole with a few friends. We went on our bikes but there came a point when we couldn’t pass anymore so we got down and started walking. But I didn’t want to walk in the dirty water, because it’s really common for people to get fungus or growths on their legs and feet, or on any body part that comes into contact with the water. I mean cows, horses, pigs and who knows what other types of animals walk through, swim through these waters and poop in it and everything. So I was trying to walk on the edge of the street where there was some grass but then all these ants starting biting me, and these ants bite really, really hard. I was screaming it hurt so bad and I had no other choice but to run into the water. And on the way back I was standing on one side of a huge puddle trying to figure out the best way to cross without getting too wet and three cars full of people passed by and all offered me a ride because I’m sure it looked like I was terrified to step into the water. But I returned on my bike and then washed my feet with bleach to kill all the bacteria that could have possibly touched my skin. YUCK.

The river continued to carve more out of the street as they started filling the hole with boulders.

So the rains lightened up and by the end of last week the street was finally fixed, temporarily. But on Saturday night, the 20th, it started raining again and didn’t stop until Monday morning. Once again the streets were flooded and the water was practically overflowing the makeshift “bridge” they had build to cover the hole in the street. On Monday I went to Instituto for a meeting and we drove through puddles that reached up to the seat of the car…a good three feet deep. And once, we got stuck, so we tied a horse to the car and it pulled us free. So crazy….I’d didn’t think it was going to work, but damn horses are really strong. And then when we crossed “bridge” where the whole was, it was all muddy, earlier that morning one of the buses got stuck there and made a huge whole trying to get out, so when we crossed I thought we were going to crash off the side and into the water.

The road now that the rain has stopped and they have widened it a bit. But at the beginning of the week the road bridging the water was only wide enough for a car to pass.

The students that go to the Instituto could only be driven until a certain point and then they had to walk the rest of the way, through knee deep puddles of dirty, black water. There are two streets in the community that completely flood, which means all the houses on those streets flood as well. Inside their homes, people were walking through a foot of water. And there are SO many mosquitoes here it’s not even funny. And my fan broke so I can’t use it to try and keep them away. What people do is smoke out their house with burning coals mixed with this stuff that smells and is supposed to kill the mosquitoes. But ouch it hurts when they bite you. I’m so ready for the rain to stop and the mosquitoes to go away. Anyone want to come visit me right now? hahah yeah right.
Where they re-built the street.
The tube under the rocks t hat funnels thew water out of the upper part so it can drain, eventually into the bay.

There’s also another problem. About 100-150 families in my community rely on curriles, which is a type of shellfish here, for their income. It’s very hard work because this shellfish burrows into the mud in the mangroves and the people go digging and tromping through the mud to collect these shellfish. But rain water kills these shellfish, so they either die, or they burrow about two feet down into the mud, making it practically impossible to collect them. It has been consistently raining for about 15 days now, which means that the majority of these people who usually go to collect shellfish now have no source, or a significantly smaller course of income. On average, a person can collect between $4-10 daily of shellfish, but right now no one is able to collect more than $2 worth and that almost isn’t worth going to work for 8 hours. So all these families are short on food and what’s worse is that the stores in town have been raising the prices since accessibility to the pueblo to buy or for cars to enter Mendez to sell has become so difficult. The situation is really messed up and I was talking with a group of people the other day, the majority of whom go to collect shellfish and it came to my attention how desperate these people are. So right now I am in the process of soliciting help from The World Food Program to have them come and give out food. But if that goes through, here is a warning: I will be asking everyone I know and churches in the States for money so I can go buy the food.

Anyways, I guess that’s all that’s really going on. We were supposed to have another trash campaign but with all the rain and the street inaccessible, it’s been pushed back until this Tuesday. Hopefully it doesn’t rain.




The inside of my house. But I'm thinking of moving to another place that's bigger, nicer, has a bathroom and a place to bathe, is closer to people and probably isn't over'populated with spiders.




My back yard.