10-4-10
I was in San Salvador for a couple days this past week. The first day that I got in, my friend Andrew and I decided to grab some lunch from a little café up the street from our hostel. As we were walking, I heard a scream from someone behind me. I didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to look, because I knew what was happening before I saw it. We had just walked past a storefront where two men were standing on a small ledge about 10 or 12 feet off the ground, fixing a sign. I knew that the only reason one of them would scream like that was because he was falling.
The man who screamed was pinwheeling his arms backwards as he tried to regain his balance. It really seemed to take him forever to actually fall, as the weight of the sign pushed against him and slowly shoved him off the ledge. I kept saying to myself, Stop watching, Emilie, you don’t want to see this. And I really didn’t. But as anyone who’s ever witnessed anything like this can tell you, you really just can’t make yourself look away.
He couldn’t regain his balance and fell from the edge, and gravity took his upper body, the heavier half of him, down first. His upper back and head took the impact, and the rest of his body doubled over him, bending in half. He bounced once and then lay still on his side. The noise it made was actually physically sickening – it wasn’t a pop or a crack, but a solid, resounding thud, like the sound of a sack of corn hitting the ground. You could actually hear the weight of his body slam down on that one point of his spine. I turned to Andrew and screeched, “Shit, that man just broke his back! There’s no way he didn’t break his back! We have to call someone, we have to do something!”
I ran up to the group of people gathering. The other man who was working on the roof (his father, I think) landed right next to him; I think he may have jumped from the roof in some desperate attempt to stop his son from falling. He landed on his hands and feet, though, and wasn’t hurt. As several people rushed out of the building to help, the man turned his son onto his back. We all yelled at him, No! No lo mueve! No! Don’t move him! I threw my umbrella on the ground, groping desperately for my phone. I held it out, yelling that we needed to call the police, the ambulance, someone. I didn’t know the number, though. I knew there was a 911 type number, and I had no idea what it was.
A woman inside got on the phone, apparently calling for an ambulance. After she did that, they lifted up his head to put newspapers under it, despite our cries not to move him. Then we could see the blood streaming out from under him. I saw his body stiffen out and his eyes roll back in his head, and I thought to myself, Oh God, we’re going to watch this man die. He’s going to die right in front of us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Any kind of first aid or medical training I had ever had meant exactly nothing. His father was grabbing at his chest, wailing, crying, and shaking. I’ve never in my life heard a cry like that man was making. But then, I’ve never come so close to seeing death.
Miraculously, the man on the ground opened his eyes, and looked up. He started to move his harms…and then we saw him move his legs. I couldn’t believe it. Given the impact, the way he hit the ground, with all the weight of his body folding over him, I was sure he would be paralyzed at the least. But he started speaking a few shaky words and telling the people there what hurt. After a minute or two, Andrew and I checked one more time to make sure an ambulance was on the way, asked if there was anything we could do, and continued on to the café.
We were both really shaken up. I kept seeing the guy falling, over and over. I really couldn’t get it out of my head. But what was so scary is that it was such a complete, sudden, unexpected accident. It wasn’t even really preventable, just a horrible mishap. The man was only 10 feet in the air; even in the States most people wouldn’t bother with any kind of safety equipment. I see a lot of bad, unpleasant things in this country, things that would never happen in the US. But this wasn’t like that. I couldn’t get mad, and swear about how this or that could’ve been done differently to prevent it. I didn’t have any anger to distract me from the terrifying truth: that this could happen anywhere, to anyone. As volunteers, we so often think of ourselves as beyond the dangers that lurk in this country for its residents. We avoid certain bus lines and parts of the city to avoid gang violence. We’re vigilant about our wellbeing, and have the benefit of excellent healthcare. We boil our water. We go for check-ups. We use medicine when we’re sick. We have an emergency action plan in place for natural disasters, riots, and civil unrest. We send a text message whenever we’re out of our site, so the Peace Corps knows where we are at all times.
And somehow all these special measures make us feel safe, secure, invincible. Like nothing’s going to happen to us because of how careful we are. Like we could never fall off a ladder, or get hit by a car, or slip on the concrete in front of our own houses and break our neck. It’s so scary to think that in life, no matter how careful you are, no matter how safe a country you live in, bad things, unexpected, sudden things could still happen. It’s so easy to go through your everyday life complacently, calm in the knowledge that those bad things happen to other people, not you. That they happen to other people’s families and friends, but not yours. But it’s not true, and since nothing bad like that has ever really touched my life, I’ve never really been able to wrap my brain around that fact. Not until I saw that man hit the ground I front of me.
It’s an absolutely terrifying reality check.
