On September 19, 2017, Hurricane María crossed our island, leaving havoc and horror stories that we’ll tell our children and grandchildren about suffering and despair, about discouragement and perhaps some corruption. Seven months have passed since Hurricane María crossed our island and left a wound that will be felt every time something small, but significant and already characterized by experiences that we remember in silence, happens.
As we all know, in recent days we have experienced failures in the Electric Power Authority, which remains essentially vulnerable to any phenomenon that occurs, and this has been anything but pleasant.
A natural disaster has made us aware of our inevitable mortality on a daily basis–something that we might not have contemplated before. Now, the fact that it will be raining for multiple days acquires other meanings, such as possibly getting stuck in the train on the way to college, or that the water currents near our homes decide to visit our living rooms. Every time the light goes out, we go back to the small routines that imply the lack of energy and we remember all those who can’t imagine the day when the electric services in their homes will be restored because they haven’t taken a hot shower for more than half a year, and they study and work in the dark.
Hurricane María’s winds swept away the hope of many and we can’t blame them. The situation of living under pressure and with tension on our shoulders is terrible. No mother should fear for the lives of her children with special conditions that merit the constant use of energy. No citizen should live in fear of losing their home and everything they know. However, the world is changing and we often think “we can’t do anything”. We don’t know who to point our finger at.
The feeling of helplessness seizes all our emotions while others start disputes and debates over who is to blame, who should take charge of the scare. Seven months have passed since the hurricane and the next season is just around the corner, and with two blackouts per week we have no choice but to think “this will be our life from now on”.
“Puerto Rico, the island of enchantment that stumbled upon reality, the one with bruised knees that cries for its mother,” is something I often hear gentlemen comment in the bakery in the morning, and as a student who is just beginning to learn about the world in its fullness, it makes me ask questions and include new variables to the equation of our life. We are young people who are in the process, not only of academic but also of humanitarian preparation, and we have in us the desire to save the world, but how? What can I, a young eighteen-year-old girl, do to heal people’s suffering?
I think of small acts and what the solution might be. Starting from something little and moving towards big would be utopian. Finding hope again, wherever we have left it–it is in us to understand what we could do. We have to seek reflection and understanding even if circumstances dictate despair. Our emotions can be the motor that helps our beloved island to flourish, the fear must be turned into new hope; that will be what we’ll see in the eyes of children who, with confusion, try to understand what is happening. The changes continue to flow like river currents, the waters always different but always the same river. As I said, starting from small and moving towards the big would be ideal; it would be utopian.