Another tragedy

Yesterday, I found out that yet another youth (in this case, a man probably not older than 25) died in the nearby town in a tragic accident. This guy was speeding downhill on a bicycle in the dark when he lost control and flew over a ledge, landing on a shingled roof below. The clay shingles pierced one of his lungs, and he died before he even got to the hospital.

What is is about El Salvador that makes so much stuff like this happen? A girl in my town already drowned at the beach; another boy in my friend's site was decapitated while thrown from the back of a pickup truck speeding around a curve. Are people just more careless here? Sure, there are so many deaths by car accident in the States, but I wouldn't be surprised if the overall percentage was higher here. A while ago I heard a news report about a driver in the city center of San Salvador who was driving recklessly and ran over some pedestrians...while they were on the sidewalk. And while the streets here aren't as chaotic as Bangladesh or Vietnam, I would still be scared to drive around in this country.

It just seems like so many of us in the Peace Corps are exposed to these freak accident tragedies at least once during our service here. Maybe it has something to do with poverty -- the town might have been poorly lit, leading to the cyclist's fall. Poor Salvadorans don't get swimming lessons, hence the drowned girl. And the kid was decapitated on a barbed-wire fence, which you mostly see in poor rural areas. And maybe American streets are more orderly because we've all been able to afford cars for decades. I don't know. Maybe poverty has nothing to do with it at all. Theories are welcome.

Paz y amor.