Arrival

1.08.19

(Photos Still to Come)

After an 11 or so hour journey from San Francisco to San Juan, we have arrived in our Puerto Rican home. We got very little sleep but agreed to Shawny’s non-negotiable terms that we would stay up at least until dark today despite our levels of exhaustion.  If we started to lean over or close our eyes, she would sing to us or poke at us or ask us questions until we raised our heads again.  

We had flown in over a very mixed landscape.  There’s something exciting about flying over water, water, and more water, and then catching the edge of the island that is your destination.  There’s something a bit different about finding that island covered by an unholy mix of super posh hotels and apartment buildings right in (birdseye) view of collapsed homes covered with blue FEMA tarps.  Those who were looking out their windows were immediately struck by this chaotic contrast.  

Our plan is to work with two groups: one community agency called SBP that was born in Post-Katrina New Orleans in Saint Bernard Parish (the namesake of SBP) and one community of refugees that are working with the local university (UPR) to try to establish some more stable community spaces, like perhaps a community garden (one of our specialties).  SBC has taken their show on the road outside of Louisiana and they believe that they have found a particularly efficient way to take families from disaster to recovery. We hope to learn their mysterious ways and add as much of our labor as possible to a series of houses that they are building here in our PR neighborhood of Loiza.  We have gotten bios on the families whose homes we will help build and we are eager to begin our labor right away. 

Our second group is the community of San Isidro, which is very near our Loiza home.  We met their leader Josie today and we can tell we are in for some excellent tutoring in how to make things happen.  She is smiling and talkative and relentless, all qualities that help her lead her community to new heights.  Our resources, labor, and fresh enthusiasm might just be the ingredients that will make for a new breakthrough for the community this month. We hope so. 

Our house is lovely and is technically considered a beach house, even though we are not on the beach. We are close, though, and we were thrilled to dip our toes into the warm Caribbean Sea as soon as we could.  We imagine a nightly walk to the waters just because they seem to be calling to us constantly.  

Some of us are sleeping on air mattresses inside and some of us have elected to sleep in tents outside. We look forward to finding out who stays cooler, drier, and more insect-free.  A bit of rain started to fall on the tents right when we went to bed, so we may have a clear set of losers on one of those criteria by morning. 

We are very happy and excited.  In the airport, Shawny was standing along watching our huge piles of luggage and realized that she was quietly singing out loud.  The song?  “Overjoyed.” 

That’s how we all feel at the moment.  

We meet with both sets of our community partners first thing in the morning so we are going to make oatmeal for breakfast to help ourselves get ready to roll as fast as we can.  We will post pictures and our first daily video as soon as we get our internet connection figured out . . .

When we landed in Puerto Rico, the bus was filled with as many of our bags that could fit, unfortunately the bus driver had to return to the airport for more bags.

On the way to the house, the driver took us on a detour of the ocean to see the beautiful beaches of Puerto Rico.