The Cost

Part 1:
My friend Erika is one of the most amazing people I know. Her four kids are full of energy, enthusiasm, and snark. She manages them with so much calm, so much cariño. She works ungodly hours to be able to provide for them. She can scrape together the most delicious meals on a very tight budget--a little of this, a little of that. She speaks with me honestly about the violence in her neighborhood, and I feel trusted and respected and at home, but I have trouble believing in her fear; she seems fearless. She is a five-foot-two Amazon. She worries that I will have to spend important holidays alone, and tells me she's not sure what they'll be able to eat that day, but if I'm lonely I should come over and at the very least we'll dance until we collapse with exhaustion. She always remembers that I'm allergic to hot dogs, and that I don't like soda. She makes my favorite sweetened pumpkin dessert when she knows I'm coming for lunch.
When they first arrived in la estación, their house was made of cardboard and scrap tin and billboard plastic. She and her husband put up concrete blocks one wall at a time. He made all of their furniture by hand. They have just one room, one bed, for all six of them, and their four kids are growing like weeds.

Part 2:
I never understood floods--maybe because I've never seen it. I remember conversations my parents had about flood planes and homeowners insurance when we moved to South Carolina, and feeling baffled. I remember a vague terror over hearing about floods on the news, but it was a terror I reflected from my parents--it was not mine. "It was just water," I once said to my father. "What's the big deal?" The whole worry seemed silly and over-blown and far-away.

Part 3:
Erika's house sits at the bottom of the only hill in la estación. They tell me they've always had a little trouble when the rainy season hits, but that most of the water has been able to flow into the barranca, or ravine, without much drama. This year, people started throwing their trash behind their house because the other dump sites have gotten too full.
Last week, their house filled up with a meter of water, which churned around and around in their living room/kitchen/bedroom for a while before the rain died down and it was able to drain out. When the water left, it took with it almost a foot of the packed dirt that had formed their floor, the kids' school uniforms and good shoes, their school books. It ruined their simple but beautiful wood furniture, their stove, their mattress. It was just water.

This is the cost of being poor. Because land titles aren't being recognized in this community, the government refuses to help the community figure out appropriate solutions for waste management or drainage (despite all the promises during campaign season). My friends can't afford better land. They can't afford to build their house in such a way that it won't flood. They can't afford to protect their few belongings, and they can't afford, now, to replace them all. It was just water.

When I stopped by unannounced on Tuesday, Erika was at work. Her husband was mixing sandy concrete to try to put down a new floor. A few muddy books were hanging on the clothes line. Some of the kids' toys were sticking haphazardly out of a pile of dirt that had been shoveled off into the corner to clear the floor. The kids hugged me fiercely, brought me a chair, offered me the last dregs of a two-liter Coke. They dragged their puppies out from the corners in which they were hiding to show me how big they've grown. Their father mixed concrete. I had nothing to say. Nothing to offer. It was just water.