We’re not even a footnote!

Our street is flooded again this morning. It rained last night, a drizzle stopped about an hour ago, and it will rain again tonight. Compared to what is happening right now all up and down Peru’s coast the condition of our street is not even a minor inconvenience. In dozens of cities, towns and villages in a 600 mile span their streets are not only flooded…they don’t exist anymore, including sections of Lima. Instead there are 5 to 10 feet chasms filled with water rushing toward the Pacific Ocean, occasionally carrying with it a car, bus, semitrailer, house, animals and sometimes people.

All schools in the Lambayeque Region are closed and I assume other regions have done the same. The official reopening has been pushed back to April 3^rd. Even if they weren’t closed there is no way we could get to the smaller villages we normally visit. We are very worried that some of the schools we’ve visited in the past may have collapsed and no longer exist. Perhaps entire villages are gone. We don’t know. The devastation happening in Peru at this moment is incredible.

I turn on the television and watch CNN or BBC. On the internet I look at Google or Yahoo news. The headlines on all four are Trump’s latest executive order; Nadal’s defeat at Indian Wells and a mail bomb in France. The situation in Peru is not mentioned…we’re not even a by-the-way. How can that be? It’s mind-boggling…just mind-boggling.