Writing with my right hand while giving blood with my left arm, here at the social security hospital in San Salvador. I invite anyone reading this letter to give a unit this week in our friend's honor, no matter where you are. As I told our intubated but very alert Salvadoran friend, I prefer to give my blood for his country unit by unit, rather than all at once as so many of our other friends were forced to do. We are very lucky, indeed. Many of the families who lost their homes were relocated to new one-room structures built on a thin layer of soil that was laid over an industrial waste dump.
Tubes leading from the waste to the air just above head-level allow fumes to escape.
Sometimes the municipality throws a match in the tubes to provide a combination of torch-light and toxic smoke. I hope these are neither idle nor rhetorical questions. I want practical ideas for concrete action. Maybe I want too much, but I am betting you want that much too. Thank you to all of you who have made our work possible so far.