From Sue
On Friday morning, I got up to go running and when I left the apartment, water was dripping down the stairwell. I realized that it was misting since it never actually rains here apparently. I waited until 9:30 when it stopped and there was cleanup going on all over, especially at the park.
Workers had brooms and squeegees and were cleaning up the standing water. Yes, standing water after misting. On the way home, I thought, I wonder why the storm sewers don't take of all the water and then I realized that there are no storm sewers. The water has no where to go.
When we watched the news that night, we saw that there was flooding in the city. In the poor community of Collique, homes were collapasing. (For those of you on the first mission trip, we went there to the community center.) Many of them are built on the sides of mountains that are essentially shale and there is nothing keeping them in place. I just couldn't believe how such a small amount of water could cause so much damage. It was also quite sobering to see the way many Peruvians live-in squalor. Poverty is definitely a vicious cycle.