From yesterday...
It has been a week since I have seen the the slightest hint of sunshine. An entire week with the constant drumming of rain drops, the deafening roar of churning rivers, and the lingering question of when will the rain ever stop? Saturday I was to leave my community for a Peace Corps conference in one of Panama’s central provinces, but by Saturday morning the flooding was severe. The same peaceful river I normally cross a half dozen times a day was wildly carving out a new path, undercutting banks, carrying away trees, rolling the boulders I used to wash my clothes upon, and sending the people living near its banks fleeing to their relatives’ houses. I put my travel plans on hold, came to truly appreciate living on a hill, and resigned myself to being mother nature’s prisoner.
Saturday came and went, but the downpour stayed on until the wee hours of Sunday morning. I woke to the din of rain diminishing suddenly unable to sleep in the absence of the white noise that had filled my ears for the last week. After a sleepless hour of mere drizzle, I sought my ipod to lull me back to sleep. By 8am the rain had returned, cell phone service was out, but the river had gone down to waist and chest level and some of my neighbors were crossing. It was my chance! Although taxi service into my site had stopped when flood waters became too dangerous for the vehicles’ electrical systems, I was still eager to get to my conference. I would make the hike. I grabbed my plastic covered pack filled with my double-bagged travel necessities and slipped on my very loved rubber boots. One treacherous river crossing, one washed out bridge, one swim across what was once a path, a half mile walk through knee deep water, and four rainy, muddy, dreary hours later I arrived to the road, flagged down a pickup, and settled in the back, happy to have put that part of the journey behind me. I was only an hour away from boarding a bus to David in Changuinola. I was home free!
Almost. Upon arriving to the bus terminal I heard that there had been come landslides that took out sections of the only road in and out of the province. The bus boy said they couldn’t get me to David, but they would take me as far as there was road. Other buses would be waiting on the other side. He said he didn’t know how long it took to pass through the washed out portions of the highway. Maybe twenty minutes he guessed. Would I be getting on the bus? The last one would leave in a half an hour. I told him I needed to think about it. And eat. If he didn’t know how long it takes to cross, did than mean that no one was crossing?
After changing out of my dripping clothes and eating warm food, my adventurous spirit returned. I boarded the bus and started asking other passengers what they had heard. Two hours of hiking. Six sections of highway affected. Someone mentioned a five hour hike and sixteen landslides. It was still raining. We would be arriving to the troubled stretch about an hour before dusk. Red flags went up. I got off the bus.
I would call up Peace Corps Panama to check in and see what was really going on. My cell phone still didn’t have service, so I tried a pay phone. No luck. I tried another. Again, no luck. After four more, I found out there was only local phone service. At the internet cafe I tasted defeat. The province was completely cut off. No road. No means of communication out, only radio. No Peace Corps training conference. No Thanksgiving day celebration with other volunteers. Just rain.
A day later the rain continues through its seventh day. The little news that makes it here says that a stretch of 15 kilometers (9 miles) of highway was affected by about 60 landslides. It will be days before they can open the highway for emergency supplies and personnel and months before it can be reopened to traffic. Meanwhile in Changuinola, the largest city in the province (pop ~50,000), people have been collecting rain water since water stopped arriving to the tap on Thursday. The gas stations are out of fuel. Parts of the city are out of power. Communication lines are still out, but reports of missing and dead and more landslides and flooding are trickling in. My community has been evacuated. I have stocked up on food, and collected gallons upon gallons of water. I am feeling caged and going little nuts, but I hear that there is a relief effort going on, maybe they could use me.
