Together We Achieve More; Helping Flood Victims

Jan

21

Together We Achieve More; Helping Flood Victims

≡ Category: Costa Rica, Staff Stories | ≅

Two volunteers, Robin and Breanna, and I are about to take the bus for a fun weekend excursion in Nicaragua. It is October. It is the rainy season. It is raining again and since the six am bus never came, we enjoy chatting an extra hour until the next bus comes while trying to stay dry. It poured so heavily this past week a bridge was washed away. We were a little upset because we have to get off our bus, walk across to the other side of the small river, where another bus is waiting to transport us the rest of the way to Liberia, Costa Rica. Here, we are in the back of the line, and when we get on there are no seats available. We will be on foot for the following two hours, where we will find a legit reason to get upset.

Being on foot, we had great views out the windows of the bus, where a serious matter gave us a better reason to be upset. We are in the Santa Cruz and Filadelfia areas where we see cars on the sides of the road with standing water up to their windows. Homes have waters up to the handles on their front doors. I overhear someone mention that her friends’ mattresses were washed away into the river, along with their kitchen table. Houses are evacuated and look a complete wreck. Water is everywhere we look. Turns out, thousands of people were displaced from their homes, and are living in the community salon. These people didn’t have food to eat, nor pans to cook rice in, much less salt or oil to put in their rice.

Once back from Nicaragua we decide we want to help collect donations for these people affected by the flooding. Alex, a local Tico who is free during the day since he works nights, borrows the truck of a friend, and offers to drive our three volunteers and myself around to collect canned goods, toilet paper, diapers, clothing, anything really that people were willing to give. Another local offered to lend us his big speakers to help advertise as we drove by, but that fell through since he ended up needing to repair his speakers. However, our very fun and diverse group representing Italy, Canada, and the US shone through and sang out, “Help the people of Santa Cruz and Filadelfia!” except in Spanish! They were so cute! Breanna didn’t know any Spanish when she got here and Robin came as a beginner, but after a couple weeks of classes and practicing in the community and with their host family, they were able to go door to door and communicate our proposal. I am so proud of them!

Most of the donations came from Estrada, about a 25 minute car ride from Samara, since this is where we spent the morning plowing a field and planting grass seed with local community members so their children will have a soccer field to play on. Even in Estrada families showed us that they too had some flooding, but donated none the less. We were turned away by only one or two houses, who said they had already donated. Small houses with many family members who hadn’t gone grocery shopping, who said that they too were poor, still donated money so that we could buy something to donate in their name. Bags upon bags of gently used clothes, rice, beans, oil, salt, coffee, sugar, bottled water, canned goods, pastas, soaps, detergents, diapers, toilet paper, paper towels, other bathroom goods were donated as if the people never wanted them in the first place. These people I think would have given the clothes off of their own backs if we had asked them. Almost always when I went to a house I would suggest three or four specific items to possibly donate; they would give me each item asked for, not just one.

Since there is only one bus that runs from Estrada to Samara in the morning, and only one other in the afternoon, we of course said yes to the American guy leaving the turtle conservation camp wanting to go to Samara to use the internet. He too went house to house with us and helped us load the items in the truck.

We had planned on collecting from Estrada back, including the two towns in between Samara and Samara as well. However, after three and a half hours of going to houses spread out in the country side of Estrada and the beginnings of Carillo, our truck bed was full! The local police men helped us load up the Doctor’s large SUV since it started to rain again so that the goods would be kept dry. The doctor went straight to the affected areas that same day to help the Red Cross sort out the items and allocate it to the families in need.

Thanks to a group effort between international volunteers, teachers, various Samara community members, and the entire community of Estrada together made a very large, generous, heartwarming contribution to people in a sate of immediate need. I learned so much by the generosity of these people. The people who had the least gave the most, and were the happiest in doing so. It is amazing how much good can be done to make the world a better place if we all simply pitch in what we can. Little by little, stone by stone, tremendous castles are made.