Here we are in Iquitos for another night. We were supposed to leave tonight but bad weather forced the cancellation of the flight. This means that it will be 11pm tomorrow night before we can leave Lima. Out of 4 in country flights, we have had 3 that we missed, were bumped or got cancelled. Travel enough and it will happen. No big deal.
It has been good to see Sarah in Iquitos. She is doing very well. She wants to stay her. She interprets conversations both Spanish to English and English to Spanish. The Peruvians say that her pronunciation is very good. She has connected with alot of the church members and Bible School students. It is a blessing to see her do so well. I need to bring her back with me. She talks in Spanish to the leading pastors and their wives who come to the EQUIP conference. It breaks down alot of barriers and we are able to get to know them better.
In Iquitos they don’t have many cats. The reason. There was a circus that went up the rivers by boat to the cities of the Amazon region. They came to Iquitos and the river dropped to a depth that the boat couldn’t leave. The circus kept performing and anyone who brought a cat to the circus got in free. Well, I hope you get the picture. It is expensive to feed tigers and lions unless there is a ready supply of cats.
People are asking me about the relief effort. With 30,000 displaced people the relief effort is huge. The government is contacting agencies to develop refugee camps. Each camp houses about 1,000 people. People have to apply to live in the camp. The camp has a “mayor”, one of the refugees, who oversees order and discipline. In alot of cases this person is a woman.
The red Cross has 1 site. The nation of France has 1 site. Large insurance companies have 1 site. Our host church Camino de Vida has 3 sites. It will cost $200/person to run the sites for a year ($200,000/site). Each camp has a little different feel. The Camino de Vida camps have a fence around about 2 acres. The Healing Place Church from Lousiana built a common house with shower, bathrooms a cooking area, an infirmary and a meeting area. These building are designed to be dismantled once homes are rebuilt. The concrete pad will stay and the landowners can use the pad for whatevery they would like. The camps are also tied into city sewer or they have a septic system to prevent disease.
The families who are living in makeshift structures will live in 10X20 tents. Each family will have their own tent. Right now 6 families are staying in a makeshift structure about this size.
The Healing Place Church has a Disaster Recovery Team since Hurricane Katrina so they were able to mobilize quickly and get a team of 27 men on the ground within 2 weeks of the quake. They built a refugee camp in about 1 1/2 days. They worked well and they worked hard.
People ask about sending things. Right now most of the needed items are already in the country. The biggest thing that is needed is the money to build and maintain the camp. Camino de Vida is doing a great job of working with local businesses to get things done economically and quickly. $200 to take care of one person for a year seems pretty cheap to me.
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After writing about this tragedy, I need something to smile about. Nothing makes me smile more than
Appalachian State 34
Michigan 32
This apartment building remained relatively intact except that the it tilted. The back of the building is in the air.
This experience is the most intense picture of human suffering I have ever seen. These are good, hard working people. They are mothers and father. The are business people involved in the fishing and tourist trade. They are much more like us than we realize. The tears in their eyes drew tears from my eyes. Not one adult or child in Pisco or Chicha asked us for anything. They didn’t ask for money. They simply shared their story if we asked and thanked us for being there.
I will write more later about the relief and a few other stories that we have heard. This is enough for now.
When the quake hit, it must have done something to the water table. In Chincha, the people reported water rushing up through the floors of their homes. Then the tsunami hit. Most of the houses sank 2 to 4 feet straight down in the ground. Note how short the doorway is. Rebuilding will be very difficult.
By now, the earthquake is a distant memory in the news. Even when the news was covering the story, they missed the coastal town of Chincha. Chincha is a fishing village. In this photo you see a lady (on the right with a scarf) who is standing in front of her house. The story of Chincha is very severe. Chincha will be much harder to rebuild than Pisco because they encountered a tsunami as well as the earthquake.
Here is her story…
We were in the house. Suddenly the ground began to shake severely. The floor in our house began to crack and water rushed up through the cracks in the floor. I got my granmother out of the house, but she went back in to get my grandfather. I got the children out. We were screaming that it was the end of the world. My grandmother brought my grandfather out of the house. As they were going down the street, a wall fell on her and she died. We knew that tsunamis come with earthquake so we had to keep going up to higher ground. Then the wave came and totally submerged my house. I have lost everything.
