Derrumbe Day

Many of you who were fortunate to grow up in the good ol’ Midwest know very well what snow days are. Well, I guess that actually the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains, and Alaska also know what snow days are, but I digress. Well, you can bet dollars for dimes that nobody in Costa Rica has had a snow day. What they have I learned, is derrumbe days (I’d translate it all to landslide days, but I can’t lose that alliteration). On November 3rd, I was awakened a bit after five by one of my host brothers, Manuel. As I groggily listened, I thought he asked if I had class today. I looked at the clock and responded that yes, but I wasn’t planning to get up for another hour. He then made it clear that I didn’t have to go to class today (He did so a few times, as my responses were probably reflective of both my rough Spanish and early morning thinking.) So, I got myself up, threw on a t-shirt, and tried to figure out why. He was able to explain to me that Peace Corps had called, and that with all the rain over the last few days due to Tropical Storm Tomás, there were landslides blocking the route from our training communities to Tarbaca, the town where our Tuesday and Thursday training sessions were. Of course, Manuel already knew this. Manuel and Jason, two of my host brothers, both work in the San José area. Manuel manages the early shift at a supermarket, and usually leaves for work around four thirty. So, he had already driven up to the landslide blocking the main road, driven back through town, tried the other route down to the valley, and met more landslides. So, as he so enthusiastically put it: “all the roads are blocked, there’s nothing to do today.” And returned home to spread the news to Jason and I, who normally leave later.

Well, in fact, there was one thing to do: visit the landslides. The three of us, and Mauricio, a brother that lives up the road a bit-who works with Manuel at the supermarket, piled into Manuel’s Toyota Tercel and went to see the main landslide blocking the way. We passed plenty of small landslides, only blocking half a lane, or so thin that they could be driven over. There were plenty of fallen limbs strewn across parts of the road as well as a few dangling in very precarious positions overhead. When we turned one corner I quickly realized that we wouldn’t be going anywhere today, or maybe for a few days. This landslide was huge, sloping from twenty or twenty five feet high on the right side of the road, to still waist height on the left edge of the road. A telephone pole had been taken down, and the lines were hazardously crossing the road at eye level. After the three brothers chatted and joked with some friends and neighbors who were also checking out the landslide (or just then realizing they didn’t have to go to work), we got back in the car and headed to Rio Conejo, a neighboring community, because Jason’s girlfriend had invited us for breakfast. I thoroughly enjoyed the cheese tortillas dipped in sour cream (freshly made tortillas with about a sixty-forty mix of flour and cheese), fried eggs and coffee.

By now the day didn’t really seem much like a snow day-I remember sleeping in as one of the main benefits of snow days. But, Costa Rica is an early morning country, so on landslide days you don’t go back to bed, you just head to another town to get breakfast with friends and family. We ended up having classes cancelled on Friday as well; activities that weekend were cancelled, as were classes on Monday. Needless to say I caught up on reading, and enjoyed a couple of movies with some of the girls in my training community. I’ll be honest; at first I didn’t really believe my host brother Haiden when he was talking about how much it was raining. Throughout my first month in the Costa Rican central highlands it would rain almost every afternoon or evening. Yet, it was always bright in the morning, and seldom rained overnight. Well, the storm in the Caribbean blocked the clouds from passing over the central mountain ranges, and Haiden was right, the three straight days of rain overwhelmed all the rivers, brought about devastating flooding along the Pacific Coast and huge landslides and flooding in the Central Valley. A number of lives were lost in neighborhoods built dangerously close to rivers, where entire blocks of shanty houses were washed away. Peace Corps put the entire country into an emergency stage, and a few volunteers and many trainees were without electricity or water for a number of days. In fact, the emergency precautions would forbid the trip I took to see the landslide and have breakfast, but weren’t in effect at that time. We only lost electricity for 18 hours or so at my house, so it wasn’t too serious of an experience for me, but I can say that it was certainly my first landslide day.