Edison's Ramp

"Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sound. By such means awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master

We landed in Pisco, Peru five days ago and I already find myself scheming up ways to stay longer or to return to this struggling, dusty, confused city. 85 volunteers from all over the world are living in one compound - complete with a very large kitchen, several dirty dorm rooms, a common room, and outdoor patio. The site is a strange combination of reality tv meets hippie grassroots organizing. Yet the drama is kept to a minimum and the nights are passed drinking beer and listening to kumbaya around the campfire blazing in a busted steel drum.Some people are here for a few weeks . . . and others meant to be here for a few weeks and just never left, finding themselves still in Pisco months, or years, later.

While the compound is a complete social experiment worthy of extensive study and examination, the reason everyone has arrived is quite simple. To help people who simply want a roof over their heads and who are unable to support themselves after the devastation that claimed so many lives and livelihoods.

There are countless projects happening every day with crews working to make doors and walls, pour concrete floors, brainstorm cheap and effective earthquake proof construction techniques, install toilets, bring in electricity, the list is endless.

Monday I joined a team of 6 to work on renovating a house to make it wheelchair accessible. A brick wall fell on Edison, now 22 years old, and crushed one of his lower vertebrates, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Pisco, a city with only 1 half-paved road, is not exactly the easiest place to navigate in a wheelchair. And neither was his dirt-floored home where he lives with his single mother Blanca. The group had already laid a concrete floor within the crumbling walls of their home, and Monday I joined in time to lay a concrete ramp that spans from the street up into the house. Building a ramp with rudimentary tools and no one that really remembered 10th grade math or how to calculate slope proved to be a new sort of challenge.

We are currently installing interior walls to create 2 separate bedrooms so mother and son will no longer need to share both a room and a bed. The walls are built from scrap wood ripped off donated pallets and turned into 2m x 1m modules. (Click here if you want to know more about this building idea.) Edison and Blanca have rudimentary electricity, yet the only running water comes from the hose outside. The kitchen is a move-able stove and a few dishes. This is a middle class family in Pisco.

And at first I thought: Great! the two of them will have a huge space once we finish; they will each have their own bedroom (9' x 9') and will be able to transform their old bedroom into a living area. Then Blanca told me that once we finish her sister and nieces and nephews are going to move in as well, making the living quarters even more stressed.

As I write this, Edison and Blanca are traveling to Lima for the weekend to visit the doctor. After the earthquake, the doctors installed metal rods in Edison's vertebrate. Three years later, the metal rods are now broken and causing him agonizing pain. All the money the family has is being poured into surgeries, medical bills, and travel expenses.

Edison's story wrenches my heart. And what is even worse is that this is just one of countless.

Pisco is more than far from recovered from the earthquake. Construction workers flock the streets, the hardware store is always full, and piles of rubble mark every street corner. Many people were left homeless immediately after the earthquake, especially those who were renting their homes. Landlords could not afford to rebuild their rental homes and those who were living there were left without options. Other landlords who had lost their own homes moved into their rentals thus kicking their tenants out. And where did all these people go? To make-shift communities made from tarp, metal scraps, and leaning wooden planks.

At times it seems so daunting. When will this city recover? Will this city recover? And then you see Blanca push her son across the new level floor, and even though her heart hurts too much to physically smile sometimes, you can see her eyes sparkle.

"If we don't encounter pain, ills, we won't look for the causes of pain and ills to find a remedy, a way out of the situation."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh