On Thursday afternoon I took a swing through Villa Obregon and San Patricio to see how the cleanup effort is going.
Quite well.
Over the years, I have noticed that my north of the border colleagues seem to have fallen into a rather neurotic state whenever nature gets a bit rough. Maybe most Americans and Canadians are not as emotionally distraught as the people interviewed on the nightly news.
I know that is not how my Mexican neighbors react. The areas of town that flooded were lined with household furnishings that families had brought out to discard or to dry in the sun.
No theatrics. No drama queens. Just people getting on with their lives.
And, no, I do not have any photographs. They may not be showing much emotion, but I was not there to document personal losses.
What I did photograph is the street in front of the new church palapa. You may recall it was a river just a day ago. It is dry now. But the force of the rain stripped the street down to the sewer and water lines. Our palapa may be done by early November. But it will be a bit tough getting there.
But everywhere I went, the cleanup was well under way.
Basic building supplies were delivered to this house near Ava’s to repair a damaged roof.
I stopped by Hawaii (my favorite grocery store) because I heard a lot of water had entered the premises. It had. Alex and his crew were mopping up mud and water. But he had the forethought to get some of the merchandise off of the bottom shelves before it was damaged.
The Oxxo did not do that. They taped their windows against the wind (an absolutely ineffective method to prevent breakage), but failed to move their merchandise. A good example of how local business owners often have better street sense.
This is the mud in front of the Oxxo store. It is everywhere. Fortunately, the sun is out to dry the mud and turn it into new layers to be dusted out of homes. Unfortunately, the sun is out and the humidity has returned. At least, the storm brought two or three cool evenings to us.
Not even the Catholic church in San Patricio escaped the flooding. The church still had a couple inches of water in it when I took this photograph.
And the sea. The Pacific Ocean is doing its best impression of Lake Pátzcuaro. The water is so murky it looks as if it is just one step away from being shilled by Bill Cosby.
And then there are the inadvertent moments that make me laugh loud enough that the neighbors of this sign looked over and started laughing along with me. They knew exactly what was funny.
If you look beyond the sign, what was once the laguna at the north end of Villa Obregon is now a gully of sand, gravel, and various trash items. Nary a crocodile to be seen.
Speaking of crocodiles, I received a couple of emails asking if I had seen my local guy (or gal). I hadn’t. My inlet is still dry. But as I walked along the main channel, I spotted a crocodile. Then two. Three. Four. That is the most I have ever seen in such a small area.
But, they are out there. Watching us.
