January 19, 2007
That Road's Meant To Be Safe
From http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/008735.html
Yarmouth woman killed in Guatemala crash
A woman from Yarmouth who started an organization to help destitute children living in the dumps of Guatemala City has died in car accident.
Hanley Denning, founder of Safe Passage, was killed Thursday as she rode with a driver from Guatemala City to Antigua, where the educational program she started had a residential school. The car she was in apparently collided with a fast-moving truck on a narrow, paved road, said a spokesman for the organization.
Denning started Safe Passage in 1999 when she was just 29 after visiting Guatemala to study Spanish and experiencing the harsh living conditions of children who scavenged for food and anything else of value in the city’s sprawling dump.
She sold her car and computer to start the program, which now educates some 600 children.
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She tried to hire my mother a few years ago, and called her a few weeks ago while my mother was in the States... this is one of those times when Guatemalan life seems to be all about those who die.
Posted by chantal at 09:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 25, 2006
Bo
My mother just phoned me to say that Bo has died.
Bo was the manager of the tequila bar at Café No Sé – almost an exclusive area, given how often I’d take people there who knew the Café but not the tequila bar. When the juice bar – Y Tu Piña Tambien – opened across the road, they paid someone to slap flyers on every card, with about eight key points about Café No Sé. The only ones I still remember are Bad Advice, and Bo. One day I was there, and noticed a sign on the door to the tequila bar, listing the bar’s ground rules; I’m sure one of them said ‘No Ugly Women.’
Café No Sé is away from the centre of Antigua (Guatemala), so rarely attracts tourists except by word of mouth. Past flyers have advertised it with "Uncomfortable Chairs, Two Dogs, Great Coffee, Deranged Staff and Deviant Behaviour". An on-off regular, LaVon, is an artist, so his paintings fill the high walls. There’s an electoral map of the States on the wall, with ‘Dumbfuckinstan’ written over the Republican areas. A guitar hangs from the wall, with a small chalkboard underneath listing the songs which are banned from being played. A large sign on the wall says “For all your copyright infringement needs, please go to Mono Loco, because that is where we rip off all our music". The table nearest the door has a chessboard built into it. On the door which leads into the garden/seated area/tequila bar, there’s a random bizarre t-shirt hanging up for sale. According to my mother, they only started stocking dark rum after learning that that’s all she’d drink.
Bo’s story is a bit hazy to me – maybe as I’ve avoided thinking about Guatemala since I’ve been away from there. Apparently he met John, the owner of the place, in Belize, and was offered the job of managing the bar (John goes to Mexico frequently, and just so happens to stock up on tequilas while he’s there) – though that may have been more to give Bo a sense of purpose and groundedness than any likely candidacy for the role. And in doing so, he became a key feature of the whole place – maybe the great-uncle we never had, friendly and caring and almost always way over the limit, almost always wearing his red patchwork jacket. Apart from Cristina, he was the only person I’d always greet with a huge hug – then again, Cristina was usually behind the bar, and he rarely was. He’d always ask after my mother with genuine interest, and he always gave you the sense – maybe because of his age and the fact that he was in Guatemala – that he’d led a full life, however tired of it he was, although he always seemed happy and positive (and again, very drunk).
He was found this morning. Given Guatemalan rules, he’ll be buried today or tomorrow. No time to find out what got him in the end, although my mother said that from what she’s heard, it sounded like he knew he was dying, and didn’t have much longer left.
I want to end this by asking myself how I’ll remember best, although it’s not a happy memory, however appropriate it might be. It was only a few weeks after my grandfather’s death, and my mother’s first time out since then. Bo wasn’t aware, and made a number of cold statements about death, his views on it, and that loved ones dying was simply a process of life. His wife died from a simple accident in Portugal – slipping down some stairs or tripping on something – and has drifted for the several decades since. His comments were making my mother cry, and even when I told him about my grandfather, he ackowledged her grief, but did not change his stance. I felt closer to him after that night – the three of us were sat at the end of a long table; I don’t remember if I actually got a chance to say goodbye.
Bo was a fixture, and I can’t imagine Café No Sé without him. It’ll be something to experience when I return.
Posted by chantal at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2005
Sam Plank’s Disco
It’s taken me just over three months, and a friend going on holiday to make me realise that I can simply pick up a phone. Why yesterday? – this is the second time Brendan’s gone away since I’ve been here, and as I’ve essentially stopped using Messenger in the last two months, we’ve had little contact since then.
I had decided to phone him, to wish him Bon Voyage, and then my father, but Brendan’s first words were to tell me that a mutual friend had died on Friday night. My first thought was to try and reach Julian and Kate to ensure they knew, but I don’t have a number for Kate, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to reach Julian, either. I couldn’t. I spoke to my father a few times – the second time to let him know we’d had a power cut, the landline was down, and to give him a cheap number for ringing me, the third time (once my English mobile had resurrected itself at last, for a second time) to give him the equivalent number for phoning my brother, and the fourth time for a longer chat once his video was over. On a whim, I tried Julian yet again, and managed to reach him - the first time we’ve spoken in about six months, despite our constant emailing. It was nearly midnight in England by that time, but I felt as though I’d discovered a new power, and was reluctant to let it go just yet; I needed more people to talk to. I tried Dave, admittedly concerned about how rusty my humour skills have become; got his answer machine, gave up. Got dressed, went to an internet café, and sent a group email to the friends I’d have phoned if I’d ever normally phoned them.
I probably wasn’t too coherent in the last few weeks before I left England, but I’d hoped that friends would be able to come here, to see this country which has been such a large part of my life; or failing that, caught a cheap charter to Cancun and hung out on the beach in Playa del Carmen for a week or two. With my 30th birthday a week and a half away, I still long to be able to ship my English friends and myself over there, but not only do I accept that that’s not going to happen, I also accept that it would be a very unsightly mess. John would probably enjoy watching it all fall apart, but then, he seems to get his kicks that way anyway. But I still want them to see what it’s like over here – what the country’s like, what life is like here – but instead, all that seems to happen is my losing contact with them.
When I first arrived, I’d joke that I’d lived in England for too long. Now I realise that I’m far more English than I’d ever appreciated, which should be alarming given how hard I’ve tried over the years to avoid exactly that. Mind you, given the strength of the American expat community over here, at least I’m glad not to be in any way involved with them (says the owner of a new, only slightly mangled American passport). My mother broods over why, after a meeting at the American Embassy with two women to organise a Life Coaching weekend, they concluded, ‘Well, she’s not like us, but…. ‘; similarly, an American at work mentioned an expat I’ve never heard of, who’s in a hospice, who reassured me, ‘Well, if you’d been here a little longer, no doubt you’d know who she is…’ Oh, for God’s sake. I know the expats I work for. I know the expats they hold informal tea parties with on a too-regular basis. I know the expats I used to work for, when I used to live here, and I’ve done a lovely job of avoiding them ever since. I know of the expats my mother used to be friends with, but Christ, when I go out, I’ll be babbling in Spanish till I can barely keep my eyes open.
Rant over. My alarm clock will go off in just over six hours. Weekends, wherever you are, are never nearly long enough. Either I grill up some sausages for breakfast, or it’s pretzels or plataninas for me tomorrow morning.
Work. I work for a magazine which I’ve been reading for at least eight years, if not longer. Since I discovered a year or two ago that they have a website, I’d usually read it online in England, but didn’t always remember to do so. Back in London: up, dressed, out the door in 20 minutes. Since I’ve never before had to get up early in this country – as I never had to work before 7pm as a rule, it now takes me almost an hour. Instead of an hour by train and Tube, the office is only three blocks away, two of which is spent gazing at my favourite volcano. The return journey is spent gazing at my favourite hill.
The main problem at work – besides the Californian luvviness – is that, in all my years of working and living in Central America, I’ve never worked with local women, and almost never had any female friends here. Except for a part-timer, a late starter, and three mostly-absent men, the staff is essentially female. And Guatemalan. For God’s sake, I don’t know the social niceties, and I hate wasting words. Especially on people I don’t particularly like. I far prefer a smile or a wave to having to say hello twice, their name, and ask how they are, all in one breath. I never call people by their names. You’re like the Antichrist if you don’t mention the other person’s name at least several times per sentence. You’re meant to say Bon Appetit when people start a meal as well as when they finish it, but I choose to overlook the latter. They’ve stopped saying goodbye to me at the end of the day (I’m generally the last to leave; Antonia came by one day at 4.45pm telling me it was 5pm and time to leave, not understanding why I was mildly harrassed by all the work I still needed to get through before I could justify leaving), so I’ve stopped bothering to say anything when I go for lunch. Officially, I’m meant to be on phone duty when the latest Elsa is on lunch, but not only have her lunches been lasting for up to over three hours while the owners have been away, I ceased to officially work with her the day before they left. They’re back now, and I’d like things to stay the way they have been for the last few weeks. Except that I’d really like to get paid. I’m meant to be paid fortnightly, and it’s been three weeks now.
The extent of my attempt to bond with my colleagues has been to bring the newspaper in every day. Theoretically, it’s so that I can read it during my fag breaks, otherwise I’ll never get around to it. Sylvia likes to read it over lunch, and doesn’t seem to particularly like me, so that helps too. What doesn’t help is Elsa bloody nicking it so it’s not around when I want to read it. I started bringing it in during the hurricane, so she could see the latest statistics. During the hurricane, the Accounts people had the radio on, and would give us the latest updates, or at least I assume they did, as I have a separate office. If you’re in a country where the phones and roads are down, and the cloud cover is too low for helicopters to get any visibility, it takes a long time to get any news during a major national disaster. Even now, over a month later, when I mention to people that I went to the Lake last weekend, they anxiously ask me what it’s like there.
Part of what I love about being here, is how much more simple and basic life seems to be. In uni, I’d go to France or Holland at least once a month for the same reason; since then, I’d come here, or Fuerteventura, once I found out about it. This is a country with its last President in hiding in Mexico, with an extremely high crime rate, even higher mortality rate, frequent earthquakes, even more frequent road accidents, far greater social inequality than in Europe, but stronger sense of acceptance. Life is cheap: about a year ago, there was a robbery wave, but when people went to the police station to report it, they found themselves reporting it to the robbers themselves. The Highway Code is a myth here, where half the country is mountainous and there are few straight roads; there’s not many people who will wait for a straight stretch to overtake, or even anything resembling visibility. They just assume that whoever’s behind them will get out of the way when needed. There’s a broken-down car I pass on the way to work every day; after a few days, someone spread an advert across the windscreen. A few weeks later, I saw someone shoving it down the street, trying to start it. Since then, it changes the side of the street it’s on, and sometimes it’s not even there. Several of the windows are missing, and most of it’s caved in, but apparently it’s still roadworthy. Friday morning, as I walked to work, I noticed that every house and building had strips of red plastic tied to the windowframes. I’ve not yet asked why, but just thought ‘Oh,’ and admired them fluttering in the wind as I passed.
It’s 2.30am, so I need to wrap this up. And then find a floppy and save it, as my mother went to the Lake with the modem but left the cat. Poor substitute. The internet cafes aren’t open nearly late enough here. It’s gorgeous here. It’s stunning here. I love being able to speak Spanish again, but hate that I don’t get to use it often enough to improve it in any way. It’s mid-November, but I still roast while walking between the house and office, and start grumbling it’s cold when it drops to about twenty degrees Celsius. Of course, I grumble a hell of a lot more when there’s no water every evening, and I can’t have a sodding shower, and I’ve stopped being online after work due to the mosquito parties around all the laptops; but it only took me about a month to find out when my current favourite TV show is actually on: only three hours before the advertised time.
I really miss having my own home. I won’t let myself miss my garden back in London, due to how screwed-up that’s become. For some bizarre reason – the night I was stranded in Texas on the way here, or since then – I’ve been missing France a lot, so I’ve thought at length about moving there, not least so I could be on a more compatible time zone with the friends I’ve left behind. But with the recent rioting, and my recently-dead hard drive, I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. The whole point of moving here was for it to be a stepping-stone to the States, a stepping-stone to better jobs, better money, better opportunities. Better ability to return to England from time to time to annihilate people’s livers. When I was gearing up to leave London, my mother was sick, my grandfather was sick, and my grandmother had been diagnosed with Menieres disease; my mother’s fully recovered now, my grandfather died, and my grandmother has fully confirmed all my reasons for never wanting anything to ever do with her. I get occasional emails from English recruitment agents, puzzled that they can’t reach me by phone for yet another SQL Server DBA or other such ludicrous role, but it wasn’t till I chatted with Matt recently that I remembered how vile and brainfree such recruitment agents are.
I should have seen it coming, from when I was out here a decade ago, but I never realised how much I’d miss my English friends. I rarely saw most of them anyway, so I assumed we’d continue on email etc as before. Then my grandfather died, and I stopped emailing; then the hurricane hit, and I was too angry at the media’s indifference. I’d anxiously awaited the clocks changing, as Guatemala doesn’t bother, and not only would it be 11pm, not midnight when I finished work, but I’d also have two whole hours at work before people went home – but I got used to people not being online at midnight, and have become too used to reading for a few hours now when I get home (as I said, I *really* miss having my own home!) to arm-wrestle my mother for her laptop. (Can’t be bothered to set up my own). Once people are in bed, there doesn’t seem to be any real urgency to email them, so I’m severely backlogged on email.
I’ve spent the last six and a half years trying hard not to get sucked back into this town, which is severely addictive at its mildest. I’ve made few friends here, put few roots down, which is no doubt partly why I miss my English friends all the more. Sure, I’ve exchanged phone numbers a few times with people, but have since learned that if you do so at about 3am, you’re almost certainly not going to hear from them again. (Mostly I get wrong numbers. Here, they phone you and ask who you are. Next time someone does that, I’ll ask them why the hell they’re phoning me if they don’t bloody know who I am). A few weeks ago, I proudly announced that I’d made three friends so far, outside work, old friends and family friends: Dikla, who works in the second-hand bookshop I’ve been caning, whose boyfriend looks like the lead actor in one of my favourite films, and whose band I want to join; Mariela, who works with them, and Cristina, who works in the bar I usually end up in. I’ve not seen any of them for a week and a half.
As I said, I assumed my friendships would stay the same once I was over here, as it’s all internet-based anyway. I never accounted for how little free time I’d have here, or how lazy I’d get. But, oh God, the other thing I miss that I never thought I’d be deprived of: humour.
I remember back at RCN, Neil coming into the office to ask how I was settling in. They replied fine, but I seemed kinda quiet. I told Martin A., who replied, ‘You?! Quiet?! Any office with you in it quiet?!’ When I managed to switch offices for a few weeks, a few months later, my two chief memories (besides taking most of a day to update my CV, because I’d done more or less sod all in that job) are of cranking the music up louder and louder, even when the manager’d returned; and of innocently turning the volume up while Fil flicked through a .pps with a loud revolting noise at the end, specifically not warning him. Before he left the RCN, when I changed from Southwark to Waterloo East on the way home every day, I’d chuckle at the jokes we’d swapped during the day. Afterwards, I’d chuckle at Forum jokes of the day, at Julian’s or Brendan’s posts.
Now, I sit in a small office, mostly by myself, signed into Messenger as Offline, discreetly checking email, the Forum and the Forum chatroom – especially as almost nobody talks to me, life is too short to be adopted by the female clique – and I’d never thought I’d survive this long in an office all by myself. Martin A. seems to be caught up with his new job, Matt and Jenny are the only ones who send me jokes these days, now that Kate’s in Fuerteventura, and about the only humour to be gained these days is from laughing at the cat. I never realised that humour might be optional.
It’s probably just a phase I’m going through, but I’m severely missing my friends, and that’s creating a dark shadow over my life here. Maybe I miss them enough to fly back for a short visit, but surely never to live there again. Sure, I’d rather they all came here – not that I have any confidence I could get that much time off work – but given how little I sleep at the best of times, I seem to spend way too much time thinking about Happy Ever Afters.
Either I need a strong sleeping pill, or a sledgehammer.
Posted by chantal at 03:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 15, 2005
Worse Than Mitch
It hasn’t rained now for two days.
The fact that Hurricane Stan hit a week and a half ago doesn’t mean that this country is less at risk now. In one night alone this week, the number of landslides shot from 400 to 900, and with every day that it rains, the damage becomes greater, and the more lives and homes are lost. Although in Antigua, we’ve been relatively unaffected, to the south of this town, there’s a very large and beautiful volcano called Agua (Water) – and for over a week now, we’ve received warnings that its crater is full, and any further rains will make it overflow. When that happened a few centuries ago, the then capital of the country was destroyed. The villages around Agua would be evacuated, but even still, we’re really not that far away, here in Antigua.
In a way, it’s been frustrating being here – effectively trapped here in town for most of the time, with the main roads damaged or submerged under landslides – away from the damage and flooding. News can only reach us once people manage to reach an affected area, which means that it’s been very slow to receive information about the worst-hit areas; worse still has been the lack of media coverage, which is primarily what we’ve had to depend upon to find out how the rest of this country is faring. In the meantime, we’ve had electricity, phone lines, internet access (less functional than normal, admittedly) – the devastation of Sololá, Xela, San Marcos and the coast are so remote from our own experience.
I’ve been anxious for my London friends, my brother and father to understand Guatemala better. I came across a 47-page story I wrote ten years ago, describing working in Costa Rica and then travelling across Central America to spend a few days here, and I’ve been so tempted since I moved here to email it out, to help bring this region more to life for them. Better still would be if some of them would visit – flights to Cancún are cheap, and I’d settle for that – but essentially, this region is so different from England, Europe or California, that I want them to see it and appreciate this country for its beauty and character, and to understand why I’ve always been far more at home here than ever in England or Ireland.
Part of the appeal of this country has been the simplicity of life – rather than investing in new stock, we instead use retired American school buses for public transport; houses are built simply, roads are hacked out of the sides of mountains, and the jungle is never far away. And that has been the problem. This country is mountainous in the south, flat in the north, and the majority of the population live in the former; under heavy rains, the mountainsides give way, and suddenly fields, houses and even entire villages are no more. The other problem is the hurricane season in itself; whenever a hurricane is formed, we suffer the effects of it, either dry storminess or unnaturally heavy rains. And with this year’s hurricane season being far stronger than any preceding it, the issue has not so much been Hurricane Stan as the week or so of heavy rains beforehand.
Every week we go to Lake Atitlán. Before I started working, we’d go there on a Thursday or Friday – one week, after a lot of hassles from London, I decided on the Wednesday that I’d had enough of reality and wanted to go there – returning on the Monday. It’s a beautiful house, very peaceful and relaxing. Since I started my new job, my mother would leave early Friday mornings, and I’d catch the last shuttle of the day. And we’d drive back on Sundays, risking the rain and cloud as an alternative to a bloody early start on Mondays.
The road to the lake is stunning, and yet perilous. Our first drive there, after my mother bought her car, was so scary for both of us, that not only did we have to stop part-way to have a stiff drink to fortify ourselves, but I started counting near misses, acts of stupidity and dead dogs (since renamed ‘ex-dogs’) in an attempt to distance ourselves from the many times we’d nearly end up in an accident each time. It’s a journey through the mountains – for almost the entire journey, there’s a mountain to one side and a valley to the other, and although the road surfaces have been significantly improved over the years, there are no barriers on the valley side of the road. Or anything to restrain the mountains on the other side. The newspaper recently reported it as the bus route most affected by attacks and shootings, and given how tourist shuttles have become prime targets, you’ve got to really want to go there to risk all that. Also consider the near absence of any straight roads over a 3 hour drive, and the typical Guatemalan impatience when it comes to overtaking.
A week and a half before Stan hit, I’d counted thirty-one landslides of varying severity between Panajachel and Antigua. There’d been a major landslide between Panajachel and Sololá – an incredibly steep and narrow road – shortly before I arrived, and thankfully none of these approached its dimensions. A week later, on returning to the lake, the shuttle dropped us off at a restaurant ‘for ten minutes’ which became longer, and longer, and longer still, without any explanation for why. Finally, after an hour, the driver told us that there’d been two major landslides, and he was awaiting notification that it was safe to continue. By the time we finally left, it was long after dark, so I couldn’t see how bad these landslides were. It continued to rain all weekend; though I slept for about half an hour on the drive back to Antigua, I still counted over 130 landslides (I stopped counting rigorously after about 100), 5 – 10 of which were extremely serious ones.
And that’s before the hurricane ever hit.
Tuesday was the day that the hurricane hit; Wednesday was so very reminiscent of the London bombings. Several colleagues couldn’t make it into work whether due to flooding or landslides; others were meant to go to the capital, the lake or other areas, and couldn’t do so for the same reasons. The Accounts department had their radio on, and someone would often pop in with the latest news – Jocotenango, the town immediately outside Antigua, was flooded; Pastores, the next one along, was under water – and so it continued. People left work early, either having to tackle drowning houses, or difficult journeys home.
As I said earlier, you can only get news when there’s someone there to report it; word of mouth has almost been more useful than the news itself, especially when the foreign media hasn’t deemed this important enough to pick up. For obvious reasons, I’ve been frantically looking for news of the lake, and decided one day to search blogs for information. I found one (it was American) which said, ‘Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been badly hit. Where are these places?!’ The magazine I work for has contacts throughout the country, so if I manage to hijack the main computer often enough, I can see photos of the devastation in various parts, or read updates from the lake, where isolation has led to obscene inflation for basic commodities such as pure water, vegetables and cooking gas.
Each day, little by little, more news has seeped in. The newspaper – Prensa Libre – is delivered every morning, and after mentioning a particular article one morning when I arrived at work, I’ve been bringing it in every day, for me to read while I smoke, for Mercedes and Silvia to read while they have lunch, and for José to read if and when he has the chance. When I couldn’t find information on Prensa’s website, I started reading another national paper online – finding out about the State of Emergency, among other things – and then, as BBC News wasn’t interested enough, reading Google News, both American and Mexican versions to find out whatever I could. Eventually I found the link on Prensa’s website for last-minute news, but even still, in a country such as this, when it’s raining every day, and it gets dark at 6, there’s only so much information you can get. Watching the news on TV has only confirmed why I prefer getting my news online – apart from the odd clip, it’s a very long time to wait for not a whole lot of information.
Thinking back, the only real news has been the ever-changing death toll; I was chatting with a friend a couple of days ago when I read that the death toll in Guatemala alone is now 2052, although that has yet to be recognised as the official figure. The news has been about the damaged roads – 52% of this country’s main roads (17 of them) have been damaged; the statistics for deaths, ‘damnificados’, houses destroyed, villages affected, bridges destroyed, villages at risk continues to increase daily – as the rains continue. The information from the affected areas is as scarce as ever – four zones in Xela (Quetzaltenango) have been collapsing, Pana is isolated and the north part of town has been badly affected; San Marcos La Laguna has been partially buried; the road to San Lucas Tolimán, where my mother has long wanted to take me, has been destroyed; fourteen people died at the turn-off to Pana and Sololá, Los Encuentros; the ruins of Iximché, where my mother took my sister for a picnic but has never found the time to take me, has been ‘badly affected’; the port towns of Puerto San José and Puerto Quetzal, in addition to other towns on the Pacific Coast, have been under two metres of water since before the hurricane hit; our extended family lives in Tapachula, Mexico, but the nearest border crossing has been – understandably – closed, and the only other border crossing has been taken over by gangs, charging $100 to let people cross. And still it continues raining.
And while it continues raining, we risk a major landslide courtesy of Agua, which is around 3,000m high. Because of the damage to the fields and roads, we only had our first delivery of fresh produce on Wednesday after a week and a half of ever-rotting vegetables. Prices are at least double now for basic vegetables, and where certain crops have been badly hit, we won’t see them again for a long time. On Tuesday, we went into the capital to stockpile food – being fresh food junkies, my mother and I will be the first to starve – reluctantly eyeing up frozen and canned food to sustain us until either the prices stabilise, we leave the country altogether, or adapt. Although the capital has more food than a smallish town like Antigua, because of the condition of the roads, the produce wasn’t much fresher, and with the ports being drowned, we’re unlikely to be restocked for some time.
Because Antigua wasn’t badly hit, life is going on as normal, but we’re among the lucky few. I only felt the hurricane lightly at work; it was stronger here at the house; Antonia, who I work with, didn’t even notice it, but nevertheless, we got off very very lightly indeed. The editorials in Prensa say that this country – trying so hard to progress – has been set back twenty or thirty years alone by the storm damage, and that by the social conditions alone, it can be classified among the world’s poorest countries, and have its debt cancelled.
It’s been a very long fortnight. At least with the London bombings, we were being overwhelmed with information, however inaccurate, unlike the lazy trickle here. So far, I’ve only been to the capital, but having heard Antonia’s mother talk about boulders in the road, and nearly being hit by a falling tree, I’ve appreciated how slight the damage is on that road compared to the others in this country. I’m anxious to get to the lake, to see how badly affected that road is, but as another section collapsed last night, I’m unlikely to get there anytime soon.
Since the sun returned, I’ve not been reading the newspaper as thoroughly during my fag breaks as I normally do, but yesterday the cartoon was of a man pinning up a sign about Hurricane Stan; a little boy pops up, and says, ‘I think you’ve missed something.’ The little boy scrawls an ‘a’, turning it into ‘Hurricane Sa
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