Yesterday I was thinking about the lack of beans, which led me to think about the lack of rain, which led me to think that we have been amazingly blessed there are not more forest fires. There is NO water around here. The rainy season simply never came. It sprinkled a little at night a few times in June and July, but it was never the rainy season as I know it. (Last year the rainy season lasted from May until late January, I swear.)
Today started pretty normal. It was free day at the Breakfast Program. I really enjoyed working with Marlin in the kitchen. She and I have not been as close as we used to be. We have both made efforts to fix things, but... Anyway, she and I had a super good day cooking and talking.
Then my friend Jose called. He said he needed me to be quiet and listen. I could hear panic in his voice. His 6 year old daughter had been left alone. The bus is supposed to make sure her babysitter is there before it drops her off. But the new babysitter wasn't there and the bus left Dana on the side of the road!
At one point I had Jose talking to me in one ear by phone and his wife talking to me in the other ear while I stood outside the gate of the church and a man I never met before said, "Are you Mary Lynn?" That caught me a little off guard until I saw Dana and her sister Valery in the car with the man. He let them come to me and we relaxed at the church for a while until the whole situation was resolved. To put this in context - imagine, I am not allowed to walk alone outside. And the bus left a 6 year old girl all by herself on the side of the road.
Okay, so after that I was a little out of sorts. Something didn't feel right. I was supposed to go teach swimming, but I wasn't officially obligated to do it today. Something was pulling me to go straight home. So I did.
As I was driving up the road I saw smoke. This happened once before but the smoke was on the other side of the mountain. Today I knew it was our property. I knew it with no doubt. So I opened the gate quickly and left it open (which you never do, even for a few minutes) in case the firemen were coming. I still couldn't see the fire, I could just tell the smoke was coming from above on the property and it was heavy.
I pulled up the driveway more quickly than I have ever driven on that road. As I pulled into my parking spot I could see the fire above me. And there was Guillermo, my landlords' son. He is 17. He was fighting the fire with a shovel. Bashing it down.
There were no other cars and I could see no other people. I yelled to Guillermo what can I do. He said come help. I said I have to put on shoes. So I ran into the house and put on my heavy hiking sneakers and socks. But I left on the tank top I was wearing. (Note to self, next time long sleeves and take out the contact lenses.)
I grabbed 2 hand towels and a bottle of water, thinking Guille and I could put the towels over our faces and drink the water if we needed. I learned when I first moved here, fires are not put out with water. But I never really learned how they are put out. We have had several fires, but I have never been home for one before. Once as I was leaving the day after a big fire there was a spot burning on the side of the driveway. I tried to stomp it out, but it just got bigger. So I had no clue what to do.
I also called my Mom and asked for prayer, then sent texts to my friends Jody and Kim asking for prayer too. My Mom said to please call her as soon as I got done fighting the fire. I said I would.
With my mountain climbing shoes on I ran as fast as I could for where Guillermo was and cursed myself for not going to the gym since June. This whole property is perched on the side of a steep mountain. There are goat paths to walk along, but in the last fire someone fell, slid down the mountain, and tore most of the skin off his leg and stomach. I live in a beautiful place, but it is some serious terrain.
Meanwhile Guillermo's grandmother spots me and starts calling to me by name. She said her phones were disconnected and she was locked into her property, which is part of our property. She said I needed to call her sons. But Guillermo yelled that he had already called his father and his Uncle. He said they are not coming and neither were the firemen (unfortunately that part is not surprising). I didn't want to tell her that so I yelled something to her, but she told me she couldn't hear me. She is very hard of hearing. I turned and ran up the mountain, feeling terrible that she kept yelling to me and I was ignoring her, but I couldn't answer her anyway.
When I got up there I had no idea what to do. I had 2 towels, a broom and a bottle of water. Just then a man came along. He was moving along the fire line beating down the fire with his shirt. He was wearing sandals but moving like a mountain goat. I watched him for a second, put down the broom, grabbed the towels that were supposed to be for our faces, and started beating down the fire.
The hard part is that actually you have to beat the fire up the mountain, back into itself, which is a hard angle. I went along the line of the fire and whacked at it with the towel. The man was behind me saying "FUERTE! FUERTE!" So I whacked harder and harder. He had this shirt, I swear it had to have been magic. One whack and the fire all around him went out. My little towel was putting it out inch by inch. But... we were making progress.
By this point Guillermo was shot. He was exhausted. The man told me, "Quemado" (burned) and sat down for a second at which point I understood it was HE who was burned out, not the fire. Ten seconds later he was back up and at it. He told Guillermo where to work and kept me with him, yelling, "FUERTE!" the whole time. We both slid down the mountain once. I slid a little less far than he did. We chased the fire to the property line and then he disappeared over the fence saying he needed water (to drink). I went back to where I had left my water. I think I took forever. I could hardly walk. I was so tired and it was so steep, but I desperately wanted to get water for the man who had saved us.
I got the water and made it most of the way back, then stopped and told Guille I had the water. He knew I couldn't walk any further. He had been in my shoes several times over the past hour. Without saying anything Guille came to me and got the bottle, climbed over the fence and took it to the man.
The woman who cleans for my landlords had been working at the other end of the property. The three of us met up in the laundry room where we grabbed water. She vomited from inhaling too much smoke. I felt horrible for her. At that point I had inhaled what I thought was a lot of smoke. But little did I know, I had not experienced what it really is to inhale smoke.
Let me pause here to say there are several stages, or at least for me there were several stages to fighting a fire. The first was I can't get to it fast enough. The second is, okay, I am here. Now what do I do? The third is Wow. This is working. But I am getting tired fast. And the sparks are flying up and burning me. And every time I cock my arm back to hit the fire really hard, my towel whips back hits me in the back and it is full of burning embers that burn me. And if I stand facing this way the smoke gets in my eyes, nose, mouth. But if I stand facing this way my shoulder and arm are going to burn off from the heat of the fire. Shockingly, I became desensitized to the heat of the fire eventually. But never to the smoke.
And there is the stage where you stand there. Because you can't move. Although you want to. And eventually you learn not to feel guilty as you stand there with the fire burning around you because you have seen others just standing there too. Now you know why. Sometimes all you can do is stand.
I fell. I got burned. I scraped up my knees. But we beat that darn fire.
Guillermo said he needed to drink water. I did too.
I went into my house to drink water. But I was so shaky it took two hands to hold it to my lips. I was at the point of tears for a minute. Completely exhausted. I drank and drank. The water slid out the sides of my mouth but I didn't care. It tasted so good. I couldn't get enough. I felt guilty thinking I should go back out and check to see how everything was but I wanted more water.
I watered down my towels, which were now covered in soot, and found that Carlos was now home. Guillermo was back up on the mountain and yelling that his Uncle's property was burning fast. We needed to come up there in a hurry. We had to go the long way, climbing steep trails because the house was all locked up. But finally we made it inside. After checking on "la abuela" (the grandmother) as we call her, we climbed the mountain. Guillermo was right. The fire was burning very close to the house. I said I think we should start here and pointed to a spot.
Carlos agreed, but his manner of fighting the fire was different than the miraculous shirt man. I started beating it out and he started "cleaning" to prevent it from spreading further. He sent Guillermo up one side and he went up the other side cleaning all of the dead pine needles out of the way.
I should have said this a long time ago. We live at the edge of a rain forest. The trees here don't burn. I think they are too moist or something. They only smolder for days at the roots. But they don't actually catch fire which is a huge blessing in a forest fire. So what we are fighting is really a ground fire. Everything that can catch fire on the ground. Dead fallen trees, lots of pine needles and this one kind of wood that you absolutely cannot extinguish. It smells delicious when it burns, but it is the worst hazard of all. For some reason there are small pieces of this wood scattered everywhere.
Okay, so Guille and Carlos are climbing up the sides of the fire and I am below, only a few feet from the buildings of Guille's uncle. Trying to stop the fire from spreading down the mountain any farther. I cleaned away the pine needles below and beat out the fire to the best of my ability, but it was not going out. So I started cleaning. At several points the smoke enveloped me until I absolutely could not breathe. Carlos kept calling out to Guillermo and me to make sure we were still okay. I understood for the first time in my life how it would feel to die in a fire. All I can say is it would suck. Your lungs hurt like you can't believe and your eyes and your nose. But I always felt God with me. I was never scared. Sometimes I wondered if I was stupid not to be scared. Especially in those moments when the smoke seemed like it was never going to let me breathe again.
Finally we controlled the fire. We stood for a second looking at what we had done. I saw another part that had spread below and again, I couldn't move. I pointed it out to Carlos and just stood there. He looked at me and said, "You're tired." I said yes. He went and put out the fire.
Then we listened. The fire had originally come from the other side of the mountain, above and behind the houses. It climbed the mountain on the back side, summited, and came down on our side. It was still burning so loudly on the other side of the mountain, I was worried it could pass through areas that hadn't already burned on our property.
I said, "I hate that sound." Carlos said, "That is my mountain, where I walk. It is burning." We all climbed up and looked around. The fire was burning hard on that side. They didn't clean as well as we do. My landlords spend lots of time cleaning dead debris from the property and pay a boy to come every Saturday to clean the property from anything that could burn. That is part of life in the mountains of Honduras.
I started at the fence and went around the property line raking all of the pine needles away. As I did that, and actually a few times before, I felt the presence of my father with me. I knew he was proud. My Dad was a fireman. My brother is a fireman.
One really strong memory I have of my father is entering a burned down hotel (bar with rooms for rent) that kept reigniting for days after it burned. I was really young. We went inside together and looked around at the skeleton of the building. I remember the stairs were still leading up into nothing. And I felt a sense of life in there, even though the place was far beyond repair. There was a sense of life from the time that people had spent there and memories they shared. I don't know why I will never forget going inside that burned/smoldering building with my Dad.
So I raked and enjoyed my father's presence. Tears came, but I pushed them back because I didn't want to freak anyone out. It would be hard to explain in the middle of this whole experience that I was crying because I felt close to my Dad at that moment. They would think I was scared. But I did tell them later and they took pictures. Of me, the Honduran fireman. They said I worked hard and they were grateful for my help. I said God wouldn't allow me to move down into the city without this experience. It is a part of living in the mountains.
We went back and talked to "la abuela". She is hilarious. She is always hilarious. Even in the middle of a fire. She was very angry because her son and daughter-in-law had left her with a huge list of phone numbers she should call in case of emergency. She was more upset about the innavigable amount of numbers than the fact that she said the phone was disconnected. She had no idea which number to call and this was a "grosero" she kept saying, which means it was very rude and unacceptable. Oh boy. That was funny.
I went home and called my Mom as soon as I walked in the door to tell her I was safe. Then I took a shower and blew my nose repeatedly. I kept thinking I heard thunder, but it was really loud and long. So I wondered if trees were falling down or something. The sun was shining brightly through my sky light.
I called Guille to ask if that was thunder. He said yes, it might rain. I said I hope so. He said don't take a shower. I said too late, I already did. He said you are going to catch a cold. I said no, that is a wives tale and when I don't get sick we can tell everyone that I took a shower when I was sweaty and hot and I didn't get sick and then everyone can know the truth - that it is okay to shower when you are sweaty and you won't get sick. He laughed and said he hoped it was going to rain. I said I hoped so too. And then, with the sun shining brightly, it rained.
God was with my today in a way that He isn't always. He was right there. Walking with me in the fire. Sending rain when the sun shone bright. Letting me feel the presence of my father when I needed to. It was a hard day, but a beautiful one.
Carlos made rounds of the property throughout the rest of the evening. At one point I opened a window and asked how it was going. He said the fire was completely out. There are a couple of areas that he thinks might spark up again, but everything is under control, thanks to the rain.
We talked about fighting the fire. He told me the man who passed through was a professional soccer player for the Honduran team. (That explains why he can climb steep mountains in his sandals and why he kept pushing me to fight harder.) The man has kind of been outcast because he got caught with drugs in his system before a big game. He went from being famous to being an outcast. I told Carlos that he seemed like a good man to me. He definitely saved a lot of our property. I am not sure what would have happened if God had not sent that man to fight the fire with us.
I told Carlos I was glad I experienced that. I told him about feeling close to my dad. I said it was exciting at the same time that it was exhausting. Carlos said yes. It is exciting when you are beating the fire. It is not so exciting when the fire is winning.
Thank you God for rain. Thank you for strength to fight. Thank you for not just walking with me today, but for letting me intensely feel your presence. And thank you for allowing me to spend some time with my Dad. Thank you that everyone is safe and the homes are fine if you don't mind a little smoke.
I am now officially a Honduran fire fighter.
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| This is AFTER the fire. What you can't see is that I am covered in soot literally everywhere |
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| Cleaning - you can see the smoke from the fire on the other side of the fence behind me |
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| Groundfire |
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| Smoldering |
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| Descending after the fire It's steep! |
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| Burned ground :( |
