“Si del cielo se caen limones, aprende a hacer limonada.”
Or in English, “If lemons fall from the sky, learn how to make lemonade.” Obviously very similar to the common proverbial phrase here in the United States, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, belaboring the point, an expression meant to promote optimism.
One of my iTalki Spanish tutors, Moisés, lives in El Salvador. He is an interesting gentleman, and our conversations flow easily and cover a wide array of subjects. He frequently speaks of his father with affection and pride, wonderful qualities to hear a son share about his father. During our last conversation we landed on to the subject of how rough a year 2001 was in the United States, the world and especially in El Salvador.
In 2001 Moisés was around 20 and working with his father in the family business, the selling and installing of glass and mirrors. On the 13th of January of 2001 an earthquake of a magnitude of 7.9 hit El Salvador. It does not take much imagination to envision the result to the inventory of their small business. While there is business insurance available in El Salvador, it is not affordable. I would presume that buying earthquake insurance there would be on par with buying flood insurance in a flood plain here, extraordinarily expensive and something almost no one can do.
After the earthquake, they rushed to the business, and as expected the entire inventory was shattered, converted to trash in an instant. I can picture their hearts in their throats as they surveyed their livelihood in pieces upon the floor. As they wandered around the destruction, his father was lamenting what had been new glass and new mirrors, but then he began to notice that many of the broken mirrors were in large shards, with many of those pieces it was easy to visualize forms, usually of various animals. Moisés especially remembered one that looked like a panda.
So his father made lemonade. He turned himself into an artisan and began to fashion mirrors to sell utilizing these animal shapes. And as it turned out there was a market for these whimsical creatures of a natural disaster.
I am conjecturing, but I suppose that after an earthquake there was also high demand to replace broken windows and mirrors. They restocked the business inventory directly out of their pockets. Moisés father then began to worry about aftershocks or the possibility of a new earthquake, and what that could do to this new batch of glass and mirrors. He devised a very simple, but elegant solution and as it turned out, a very effective one. In front of each bin of glass or mirrors he loosely strung rope, tight enough to keep their products from falling to the floor, but not so tight as prevent a small degree of motion, as might be expected with an earthquake.
Exactly one month after the first 7.9 earthquake, a second earthquake of the same magnitude hit El Salvador. Their inventory rode out this repeat seismic event. Unfortunately after the second enormous natural disaster in the span of a month, the economy of this smallest of Central American nations took a nose dove from which they have yet to totally recover.
As I visit with folks in this part of the world, it strikes me that many times their stories are stories of perseverance. Perseverance against natural disasters, wars, crime, corrupt governments, struggling economies, and somehow they manage to find ways to make lemonade and celebrate life and family. I think about this sometimes when I hear folks griping about putting $5 gasoline in their Escalade or full-size pickup 4×4, complaining about having to wait a week for a package, grumbling about the price of Netflix, moaning about not getting the exact time they wanted for a restaurant reservation, whining that their favorite wine was not in stock…
As an aside, it frequently amazes me how many parables and sayings that we Gringos share with Latinos, an example of our commonality, a common humanity that we should be celebrating rather than denigrating.
And so it goes.