“Dad, I Think the House is On Fire”

It was a gorgeous day last Saturday, in the mid 70s, sunny and with a light breeze.  I was dealing with some car repair issues and called home to check on things.

I found it hard to believe the house was really on fire given the house is made from concrete and tile, and when the Wife got on the phone she explained that the finca next door was burning stuff and the house was covered in smoke.

I thought she might be exaggerating, but on my way home I could see the cloud of smoke enveloping the neighborhood from more than a mile away.  Naturally all of the windows in the house had been open to take advantage of the perfect weather, which meant now the entire house was filled with smoke.  I arrived home to find children coughing, crying, everyone with articles of clothes tied around their faces, and the smoke just hanging in the air.

My original thought was that it would have been better to leave all of the windows open, hoping the wind would carry it through, but the density of the smoke was such that it was unbearable, so they had closed all of the windows.  This kept most of the smoke out but also meant that all of the smoke that had stayed in was trapped.

I climbed on to the roof to evaluate, and sure enough, workers on the finca which adjoins our property were burning huge piles of the leftovers from their recent harvest.  One fire was literally at the base of our wall, another was about 10 meters away, and the third closest was only 20 meters away, and the wind was carrying the smoke right across our back wall, into our patio and into the house.

I yelled at the workers to move their fires away from the house, explaining that it was not safe and that my family was getting sick of the fire.  I observed that they all were standing up wind of their fires and hand their faces covered with cloth.  They talked amongst themselves for a moment and then resumed.  I thought about telling them I would call the police, but realized they would see right through that and know I didn’t have a clue how things work here.

The roof afforded the cleanest air for hundreds of yards so I contemplated my options.  What I really wanted to do was hook the hose up and drag it to the roof and spray the fires from the roof.  After calculating the distance, I realized my hoses aren’t long enough to reach up to the roof and be of use on any but maybe the closest fire.

My next thought was to arm myself and the teenager with machetes and approach the fires with buckets of water and rakes and hoes, to dampen and then spread them.  I thought for sure my action would send the workers running, and that whoever they brought back might listen to reason.

The longer I remained on the the more bizarre the ideas got, evidence of the effect the smoke was having on my thinking process.  My final strategy was to buy boombas across the street and shoot them from the roof down onto the workers, hoping they would scatter.

In the end, I abandoned my plans to adapt to a GuateApproach to the problem and instead chose the passive, gringo approach, opened every window in the house and put the family in the van and left for the day.  When we returned 8 hours later, the fires were out, the skies were clear again and the house was mostly smoke-free.  Of course, all the clothes, beds, linens and furniture smelled like smoke, and we still had red eyes, coughing and sore throats.

As readers know, I’ve got a collection of real estate stories, but one lesson I never thought of before now was to make sure you don’t rent or buy next to a finca, or you’ll be dealing with these occasional, unannounced fires and smoke that will ruin your day, threaten your house, and cause all your friends to think you’ve suddenly taken up an extraordinary smoking habit.