The Flood and What I Did About It

Semi-recently, that is, a few weeks ago, the Coatzacoalcos River and all the towns along it were flooded. One of those towns is Mina, and, while I hardly saw the water at all, my parents' store and my aunt and uncles' house were both flooded, so they are now living here with us, and the store was closed for a couple weeks. More importantly, however, many people lost there homes, and in some places, the roads, the only source of clean water and adequate food, were also flooded. Because of all this, our Rotary Club started working to help these people. The exchange students helped, to a greater or lesser extent, including myself.

Starting Monday, September 29, Claire, Marlene, and I went to a makeshift collection center and helped sort donated clothes, made bags of food and toilet paper to be distributed, and asked donations in front of the supermarket. Claire and I continued to do this the rest of the week. It wasn't until the next Saturday, however, that we actually got to help in a real way, or at least a visible way. On Saturday, we rode in the back of pick-up trucks and drove to the poorer areas of the city, which had been hit by the flood. We gave food, water, mattresses, and giant boxes of clothes to churches and schools, where people would distribute them to communities. I don't know if I can give any good description of this, but it was extremely gratifying and wonderful. We visited one church, and as we were unloading, there was a faint, ghostly church choir singing in the distance.

Later, we went down the riverside. There is a road that runs along the river, and after a certain point, that road was the only thing above the water. People apparently still live in or near these flooded houses somehow; at least, they were there when we drove by and gave them things. There were animals everywhere on this road, including one bone-thin black dog that got chased away violently by some healthy-looking bigger dogs. There was a family of horses as well. The most striking was a situation where all the animals of a household, including puppies, turkeys, chickens, and pigs, were all standing just below the road, on the narrow, steep strip of land left dry. They weren't moving, just milling about there. Later, we saw a family catching these tiny fish in the river, and they showed us a tiny crab they'd caught.

The next day, we took a boat much further down that same river, to communities that had been completely cut off from the roads. We had to wait a while to leave, something about gas. . . while we wait, I'll describe the area. This is a staging point for boats, just past a bridge. There are big army trucks here, and milling soldiers. They all carry weapons, which they shouldn't really need for this kind of work, should they? Upstream from the bridge is what looks like a swamp, or a meadow. No water is visible. However, downstream, you can see that the water is clearly flowing. There is a gigantic field of sod and plants that have washed up against the bridge. There was a giant backhoe clearing it out, however. I wondered if this interferes with an important natural process, but then I realized that there are no natural bridges. Though the question stands if this kind of material can be blocked by other things; I have no idea. On the field rested close to 50 white herons. There were probably thousands of these herons along the river; you could describe this place as having a lot of herons. Their flight is sublimely beautiful. Finally we left, in a tiny, uncomfortable boat. The morning was really beautiful, full of sun and clouds and herons and underwater trees. The river has many islands around, but they were all completely flooded, leaving only the treetops showing. These were uniformly full of herons.

After two and half hours of uncomfortable small boat travel, we arrived at our first destination, a village called Hidalgotitlan, of some 10,000 people, approximately. We scarcely left the dock area our first time there, just enough time to unload the cargo and eat. They served whole fish and tortillas. I had some beans and tortillas and cheese, which is about what I normally eat. Even if you are not a vegetarian, is there not something repulsive about a whole cooked fish, with head and scales left intact? I believe they ate the scales as well, but I can't be sure. A few of our Rotarians stayed behind to see our cargo up the hill to its final destination.

We consolidated into two big boats after this, which were faster and a bit more comfortable. Our next stop, two more hours away, was an extremely small and poor (at least, it looked poor) rural town. All the men there carried machetes and wore wading boots, and there was no pavement or sidewalk anywhere. The women had rough, worn hands and skin. One man wore a funny shirt. An aside on funny shirts in Mexico: they are all in English, but they aren't the bad-English funny shirts you apparently see on everyone in Japan. They are grammatically correct, they just have silly things on them. Like Mr. Square. While we're on a tangent, does anyone else think it's funny that there's a chain of pharmacies called "Farmacias Similares" or "Similar Pharmacies." It's as though they are acknowledging that each one of their chain locations will be slightly different due to staff, layout, stocking, etc, if nothing else. We handed out bags by family, and had them empty our jugs of water into theirs, things that included buckets that I wouldn't have thought were safe to drink from. This was so we could have them refilled, which I guess is pretty cheap? Mayo, a loud man who is very friendly and warm but is sometimes boorish and rude (he whistles for the waiter at Rotary meetings) fell in the mud twice getting into and out of the boats.

We then returned to Hidalgotitlan, ostensibly to pick up our comrades. However, we ended up staying much longer than I had anticipated, with many Rotarians taking some time to beer and relax. This was only worth mention because we were tired and had school the next day, and already we weren't looking to be home until at least 8-9 at night, if not later. Anyway, Claire, Mayo and I went walking into the town and discovered it is extremely sleepy and beautiful. Claire and I both fell in love with it. We got some delicious "Tortas," which I guess are just hot sandwiches? They have buns, but aren't hamburgers. Mine was cheese, of course.

A couple days later, I was still going at night to help the Rotarians, though there was less and less to do. Claire quit after Sunday. Monday night, I was talking to Pepe, a Rotarian, and he decided to take me to see his work. He works at a dog food factory a few blocks away from our collection center. I suppose there's nothing morally wrong with a dog food factory; it's certainly better than wasting all that shit, and of course it's no factory farm or slaughterhouse, but that doesn't mean it's pleasant to see. Essentially, they take the bones and fat from delis and butchershops and such, and grind them up into a powder. This powder is presumably made into pellets somewhere else, I guess. The entire plant smelled terrible, and in the back, they kept barrels and barrels of animal fat. I saw an entire skinned carcass of something, which looked like a dog but was probably a bird of some kind sitting at the top of one. They load these barrels into the crushers with a conveyor belt, and at the bottom of this conveyer belt sat a pile of grisly bones, focused around the horned skull of a bull. They also keep gigantic tanks of tallow around, though I'm not sure what they use that for.

Thursday was the last day I went; I was told they were going to finish by Sunday, but I don't know if they're still going. The last few days I went I did nothing, so I stopped going. This blog will become much more interesting when I have pictures, I hope. Sorry they lack now.