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Puerto Rico: Long live Mami and mango tree

Puerto Rico

It’s been nearly a month since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. There’s limited water, food, fuel, cell phone service and Internet access. Restoring power is expected to take months.

While problems persist, the people are coming together, saying, “Puerto Rico se levanta.” Puerto Rico rises.

The rallying cry has brought comfort to Denise Lopez and her husband, who is from Puerto Rico.

“It’s not just about the devastation there, which is real and it’s huge, but it’s so much about people coming together and taking care of one another,” she said. “I really need to remember that myself too.”

Living in Sioux City, they’ve felt helpless in the aftermath of the storm—at times losing communication with his family for days.

Puerto Rico

She recently received pictures of her mother-in-law’s home, which was once a place of peace and family and love.

“That was a really tough day,” she said. The cement house was still standing, but everything around it is brown and barren. Hurricane-force winds stripped the tropical trees and swept away her mother-in-law’s potted plants.

“There’s a jungle surrounding the backside of her house, and it’s gone,” she said.

An outdoor stone table is the only remaining sign that this was once a lush garden getaway where family gathered.

When her husband looked at the photos, he said, “That’s not my mom’s house.” Lopez told him it was, but he couldn’t believe it.

“We had to pull up a picture of before and after, and then there was just this silence when I think the reality sunk in,” she said.

Puerto Rico
Mami.

His 100-year-old mother, who they call Mami, is still in Puerto Rico. She’s trying to convince her children that she should go back home even though there’s no water or electricity. Food remains in limited supply, too.

More than 3.4 million United States citizens live in Puerto Rico. In Yabucoa, where Lopez’s in-laws live, there’s only one grocery store open in a city of nearly 40,000 people.

“This is a grocery store that now is open probably 4 or 5 hours a day because they have to run generators to operate,” she said. “And then, you can’t buy whatever you want. Things are rationed. It’s possible you could wait in line all day at the grocery store, get there and not be able to purchase the things that you really need.”

Lines are a part of daily life on the island now. One brother-in-law waited 13 hours to get $30 of gas. Road conditions range from damaged to congested. In many places, the stoplights aren’t working because there’s no power.

“To have the desire to go there and to help is so strong,” she said. “We’ve talked ot brothers and sisters there and they just say, ‘Don’t come. Do not come. There’s really not a whole lot you can do to help us right now.’ They don't have the materials they need to start rebuilding and you just add more mouths to the population that already doesn't have food and water.”

Lopez described houses that have no roofs but people continue to live in them because they have nowhere else to go. Everything is more complicated than it was before Maria.

“A huge concern for people in my family, because they’re all diabetic, is insulin,” she said. “Like my sister-in-law said, they stockpiled insulin, but how do you keep the insulin cold?”

They don’t have any refrigeration. Ice is hard to find, and the prices have been inflated.

It’s a daunting road to recovery in Puerto Rico.

When Lopez and her husband started seeing family photos of the damage, they were devastated. But there was one surprise. The big, old mango tree by his mother’s home.

“We kind of have a chuckle about that tree,” she said.

Her husband’s threatened to cut it down. He was convinced that, one day, a storm would blow through the island and the tree would fall on his mother’s home.

Once again, he looked at the photos in disbelief.

“That damn tree is still there,” he said.

It’s become a symbol of Puerto Rico rising.

“I really don’t know why that tree is still standing,” she said, “except for she still has a message for us. That’s all I can say. It’s just a message of resilience and hope.”

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