I know and love the community generally, but in my time there I also formed a few individual friendships. One of my friends was Plinio. I read in an email a few days ago that Plinio is dead, washed away by the flood.
I am sad. I am shocked. I disbelieve. I wake up happy in the morning thinking it was a bad dream. There are a few things to say about the death of Plinio, now a part of my life.
No one knows Plinio in my community. There are a lot of people in Austin, where I am now, with whom I am as close as I was with Plinio. If I was to lose anyone of them, I would feel others around me grieving. We could talk about it, hug each other, go to the funeral. Almost no one who knows me knows that my friend has died. I want to tell them, but they would just feel sad and scared - they don't know Plinio.
My friends who also know Plinio, the Ngobe people who live in the comarca, are devasted beyond anything any of you can imagine. Medo, the organization founded by Plinio's brother, my shining leader friend Adan, of which Plinio was also a member, has worked diligently creating miracles, bringing in talent, support and money from more developed places and slowly, with great vision hope and promise, developing the poor communities of the Comarca.
We in rich cement cities can't understand what the destruction of infrustructure means to poor isolated places. All that work, all that hopeful development - so much of it washed away. Who knows how many years, or decades, it will take to get it back. Entire communities are isolated from schools and medical help by impassable rivers that used to have bridges.
The one everyone is relying on - the Ngobe, though they might not know it, and the westerners who want to help -that person is Adan Bejerano Rios, the brother of Plinio. I am always cc-d on Adan's Medo related correspondence, sometimes I translate for him, and I have to say, this is my biggest heartbreak. Someone so good, who has worked so hard with such integrity and generosity, had his BROTHER, who he loved so much, washed away in a flood, his home washed away and his life's work set back. He's still working. He's coordinating the distribution of relief money and supplies. He's getting people temporary shelter. He is asking his outsider contacts for help. He didn't deserve this. Everyone who's ever worked with Adan wants to help him -he's that kind of an inspiration. We want to lighten his load. I feel so helpless. He's been hurt so irreparably.
I don't have many people who've died. Mostly they have been elderly relatives. I can't say I was prepared but I did know they would die in my lifetime. Plinio wasn't that much older than me.
He died by being washed away in a flood? He must have been so scared... I didn't want my friend to die in a flood.
Plinio was a special character, a kind of serial entrepreneur. He started the Ngobe botanical garden and got a bunch of German and Austrian scientists supporting him. He even got to visit Austria's botanical gardens. He visited Gardens in Costa Rica and was about to study in the USA. This set him apart in his community. He and Adan are the only members of their community who've ever been to other countries. Few have even visited bigger cities in Panama.
When I last saw him, he was telling him about his men's coffee growing cooperative, brought me to a meeting, discussed marketing, and sold me two bags of his finest. He was ambitious, involved in lots of things, eager for his big break, struggling to find ways for his work and interests to earn him money. He was not married but he had a girlfriend. He just always seemed to be so eager for his great future, when he would be wealthy, well traveled, owner of a respectable botanical garden, owner of a house with a family.
He was also humble and respectful. He had a great mind, taking joy in discoveries. He had a bigger vision of plants and culture and ecosystems. Anyone who's ever been to a really poor rural place in a developing country should appreciate the kind of person who is from there and poor also, but wants to preserve and educate people about native plants, because it's right and important.
So this takes me to my next thought: I live my life on the assumption that I will live to be 80, that I am exploring now, trying to raise money, soon I will buy a house, then I will have a family, then I will be a leader in a field or in a community and change the world. But that is not something that is, in fact, necessarily the case. I can't know when the flood will wash me away. I feel like I am working towards something. Like this moment is not life - like it is preparation for what's coming. But that is not the truth. This moment is life. It is folly to lend my current happiness on credit to the "greater worthiness" of the future.
In my culture, we see people who live life for the present and we judge "irresponsible". If I rent a $1200 apartment that I think is beautiful, without saving for the future, or trying to buy a house, etc, I am judged badly. I should scrimp and save and suffer for a few years to "build my future". If I want to have a family-husband, kids- I should wait, put it off, keep wanting it but not having it, until I have enough money to be sure I can support them. These are the values of my culture.
I don't know when the flood is coming for me. I remember parts of my past, I can conjure them clearly, but there is no sense of chronology. It is just snapshots of different incarnations of me in worlds of their own unique hues and smells. And as far as my honest experience of life, there is no future. I have no EXPERIENCE of the future. So it seems to me there is no time. There are just many different tiny experiences of "now".
I don't know if this mentality will be mine to carry forever, or if it is a natural part of the sudden shocking loss of a peer, and will eventually dissolve. But these days, "Now" is the only thing that matters to me.
I wish there was some way for me to grieve for Plinio. I can see his face in my memory, but I haven't found any photos, even. I think this is one of the reasons humans live in groups - to help each other grieve. It's so disorienting, because the fact is, my daily life is not changed by the absence of Plinio. I would not even have to face the truth of it until I go back to Soloy.
Going back to Soloy... I was going to go in October. I don't know now if I am welcome. I don't know if it would be a good time, in that I could bring aid and help, or a bad time in that there would be no place to stay, no one to host me, no clean water and perhaps embarassment to show the destruction to an outsider.
Here is the project I worked on with Plinio, the website for his botanical garden. I see it now and I notice so many little flaws. But he was grateful and proud of it. soloy. pueblerino.info
Here is the blog post about my first meeting with the Ngobe, Adan and Plinio: http://sarahsight.blogspot.com/2007/10/week-in-another-world.html
EDIT: I just searched the Panamanian newspapers. I learned that Plinio was pulled away while trying to rescue an 8 year old girl. He was missing. Then they found his body. The girl died too. I could not imagine Plinio watching one of his village girls drowning and not try to help. But I just wish...
RE-EDIT: I got an email from a friend telling the story of a peace corp friend who is part of this community and is there helping to rebuild. The Panamanian newspaper got it wrong. He said that Plinio was saving children who were trapped inside a wooden house during the flood. He saved several of the older children, making trips back and fourth. He went back for the 8 month old baby, and the house collapsed on top of them. He was carried away in the flood inside the house, being trapped beneath it, and could not struggle out.
