Lorca after the earthquake

The life is slowly coming back to normality. It is Monday, for many the first day of work after ¨terremoto¨. There is a lot of people on the streets slowly moving in the direction of their working place. I am one of them. It is and it is not hot and cold in the same time. For the first time I take some of the small streets and as the majority I try to avoid the side walk. I have time to discover which houses are green and which red. Many roads are closed so I am walking around like the tourist who lost his way. I am talking out my camera to take a photo of the places I liked. I don´t enjoy taking photos of destroyed buildings, I prefer to picture the life on the streets. Almost everything is new, just the habit of drinking a coffee with friends in the morning didn’t change.

For me the proof that everything come back to the reality is when I see the people selling lottery, although there is not a big interests in lottery today. I guess we already used all our luck. Streets looks like ¨after the earthquake¨ but the people used to this view. There is only one place that is different, in each sense – acampamiento, that many of my friends call refugee camp.

Acampamiento it is the now home for over 2000 people, who lost their houses during the terremoto. Most of them are migrants with the few exceptions – gypsies. My first impression about his place is that it looks like the prison. From outside there are grating. People are communicating with their friends who are on the other side through them. Inside there is a fight for survival. Besides those lucky one who managed to get place in the tent, many people still live without the roof, making beds from cartoons and, houses from the blankets they got, which pretend to be a walls. No roof included and the weather forecast is not promising. Cold and raining.

It took them just few days in acampamiento to developed their new culture, and change the daily habits. Over there, there is a fight for survival. They sleep, pass their time in the queues for everything, and protect what they have (in case they rescued something from house, or got necessary things from other people). A friend of mine was almost robbed of shampoo, which cost only 1€ but over there is worth much more. Almost no one have tooth brush or past. People are afraid of each other. This place change people in the very strange way. And they are monitored by police, army, volunteers or people from red cross. That they are over there partly voluntary (they can leave, but they don´t have other place to go), they are watched, they have no privacy, and what they have is a bracelet with the number to be easy to identify.
To be continued…