At Burning Man, Flipside, Critical Massive and lots of other places,
we build things, tear or burn them down, and then leave without a
trace. As a community, a big extended family, we spend a great deal of
time and energy making sure nobody can tell we were there. It’s
central to our ethos. It’s how we roll.
Patrick gives us an education in the art of Texas BBQ.
The 27th of April was perhaps the longest day of work I have ever experienced. It seemed that the hours at work stretched slowly as the phone never rang; no e-mails to speak of as everyone was pretty much on the road by that time to converge on a little place called Pearlington, Mississippi.
We converged on this small town from all over the country. The mission; to celebrate the second anniversary of the formation of Burners Without Borders. The call came from Project HQ in the form of an e-mail declaring the intent of the community to come together once again to render aid and entertainment to this group of hardy and resourceful townsfolk. I knew that I had to answer that call with run-on sentences and BBQ. I had been inspired at our regional event after having seen a 30 minute version of Burn on the Bayou. It was a revolutionary idea to me; I can help more than just my local burn community, using the gear and skills I have learned during my burn tenure to bring water, power, and basic infrastructure to the forefront of disaster, where the exigency of need breaks down social barriers, joining us in a common bond much like what I experience during my burn events. The situation is so powerful that we are able to look past the standard outgroup biases that color our perceptions. We are able to communicate on a level so primordial; hands helping other hands in labor, struggling against the elements with naught to see us through but our capability to act as a team.
Two years after Burners without Borders pulled out of Pearlington MS, we returned to where it all began last week to thank the town of Pearlington for hosting the birthplace of what is now a burgeoning international volunteer movement. Twenty-five volunteers representing 8 states showed up and worked for four days, put on a BBQ for the town, previewed the new BWB film about how it all started and most importantly, connected with old friends.
Why Pearlington?
Burners without Borders moved to Pearlington in January after having finished gutting and reconstructing the Buddhist Temple in Biloxi. The following 3 months in Pearlington were spent transforming the landscape of this small town by knocking down houses that had been rotting for five months to make room for the new houses that stand there today. BWB volunteers also built a house out of recycled wood recovered from the surrounding bayou and constructed the Pearlington town sign made of debris from the storm. This sign is a great pride of the town. The sign’s care is now in the capable hands of William, a 17 yr. old from Pearlington, who has learned the craft of woodworking from his father.
What was our Mission?
Sarah and Dani Painting the Piscante House cornerstone.
One of the projects I have spent a couple of weeks working on is the Piscante House Project. Its about 15 minutes outside of Pisco, on a hill in a area called “Vista al Mar”. It’s a really poor area where most of the people live in bamboo shacks, including the Piscante family. They have dirt floors and no showers or toilets. Cooking is done over small burners and water is either retrieved from the river or there are a couple of people who are attached to the water line so barrels are filled up by hose from these houses. There’s also a “hole in the ground outhouse” kinda toilet a couple of fields back.
Whilst there was some damage to the few brick buildings in the community the Piscante didn´t have a brick house. However Jesus and Edith have a young daughter, Andrea, who is about 2 and was born with a condition which has meant she has to have a colostomy. As you can imagine, living in a one room shack with dirt floors and no sanitation leaves Andrea open to all kinds of infections. So Edith, hearing about the work Burners were doing, approached the organisation for help.
Sandra and a fellow volunteer take a watermelon break after a day of busting up a concrete foundation by hand
Sandra here, reporting from Pisco!
During the last three weeks doing volunteer work with BWB, I did some interesting projects and some of the hardest work I´ve ever done in my life (and it felt great!). The first project I worked on was preparing a garden area and creating a tile mosiac on a hand washing station for an Jorge Chavez elementary school in downtown Pisco. It felt wonderful to so something that would beautify the place for the 300 or more students who would get to enjoy it. The school caters to some of the poorest kids in town, and doesn’t receive much federal aid. The school is built on what was formerly a trash dump site, and many people still call it, La Basurita, which loosely translated means Little Trash School. Since it is near the central market, many of the vendors still dump their trash just outside the school out of habit or something.
However, Maria, the school´s director is a visionary woman who has transformed that school into a leader in environmental education, a concept that is still almost unknown in Pisco. She instills the students with a sense of responsibility and the self-esteen that comes with that. Also, she has created some really nice gardens for them to play in within the school grounds so they can connect with nature. She is an inspiration to me! I hope that at a later date we will return to paint a beautiful mural inside the school with the help of the students. I only got to meet a small group of the students, because the school was on summer break, but they were so friendly and fun to interact with. To me, the children here in Peru are refreshingly sweet and innocent compared to what I´ve encountered in the US.
Nick is surrounded by children eager to learn english at the intercambio.
The first house in front of me couldn’t have been more different than the one next to it. It was white, gleaming, freshly built, with a brand new floor and no doors or windows. Next door, the neighbors lived in a tent surrounded by a wall made from a long sheet of bamboo tied together with pieces of cardboard, plastic, plywood, scrap wood, and old doors. Inside a baby coughed.
Sra. Lucia needed us to help her clean the huge piles of garbage that the government contractors left behind when they cleaned the beach. Just half a block away lies the beach, with once placid lagoons now festering with the sewage and waste that has accumulated in them since the earthquake. The military has been working around the clock with huge machines to clear the rubble that they put on the beach in the chaos after the earthquake. Concerns like rescuing people from collapsed buildings tend to create a “lifeboat ethics” that surpass values of convenience like conservation.
Ok, I admit it. I’m a big cry baby. And since arriving in Pisco, Peru, 5 months after a 7.9 earthquake leveled 80% of the city, I have done more than my fair share of it. While Pisco has always had a reputation for being one of the most dangerous towns in Peru, the level of chaos and crime brought on by the earthquake disaster conditions has grown exponentially. Poor people are even poorer now, with even fewer services functioning such as non-potable running water or bathrooms, thousands living in tents in the streets or the 9′ x15′ wooden, temporary (I.e. Permanent) structures made of 1×3s (I.e. - um……wtf?), pooping into plastic bags which line the street. Cry, baby, cry!
This morning I joined the BWB crew working at a school for children aged 5-11 in the central market of Pisco, which gave me the opportunity to cry for all the best reasons. The locals call the school Collegio Basura (Trash School), as this once served as the dump for all of the market’s detritus. During the last 9 years, it has transformed into the only schools in Pisco with an ecological bent. The school’s director is actively teaching her teachers and students about recycling (which doesn’t actually exist as such in Peru, outside of Lima), water management, sanitation, wise use of resources and organic gardening.
Pisco, Peru-photo by Morgan Stetler
It has been 3 months since the first BWB volunteer, Sam Bloch, arrived in Pisco, Peru. Sam began immediately assessing the needs of the people here who were still reeling from the 8.0 earthquake that struck just off the coast. One of the first priorities was setting up an infrastructure to welcome volunteers from the Burning Man community as well as international travelers who are looking to offer their skills to support our reconstruction efforts here.
BWB HQ-One of the few structures left standing after the quake
Because most of the town was decimated after the earthquake and there are no newspapers or classifieds, it was very difficult to find a suitable location to house volunteers. But by working daily in the community and making connections with the locals, Sam was able to find a house that 15 volunteers now call home. And when Hands On Disaster Response pulled out to respond to the aftermath of the cylcone in Bangladesh, BWB took over their infrastructure in order to house even more volunteers. We now have the capacity to house 50 volunteers at anytime. To date, we have welcomed over 70 volunteers from all over the world with new arrivals coming in everyday.
And the coolest part? People who have never been to Burning Man think of themselves as “Burners” here because of their volunter work with BWB. And of course, many people who had never heard of Burning Man will be attending the event this year for the first time because of the fine community they have found here.
What have we been up to?