downcast faces as they balanced a child’s white casket on their shoulders. A small bouquet of yellow orchids had been slid across the lid, covering a hand-painted image of a soccer ball.
The dead child’s family followed, weeping openly despite words of comfort offered by the townspeople.
Elise tracked the entourage until they disappeared around a bend thick with foliage. The town’s tiny cemetery lay on a small hill just beyond.
She ignored a black Jeep that skirted the funeral procession as she turned and followed a worn footpath in the opposite direction. She walked past a handful of low-roofed, white stucco buildings that were home to the village’s thirty residents. The path ambled downhill and opened onto an expansive view of a shimmering blue lake.
Cerrón Grande was a reservoir, the largest in El Salvador, built to supply hydroelectric power for the region. Hundreds of families had been resettled when the Lempa River was flooded in 1976, some to the hastily constructed village of Copapayo. Elise glanced at the lake. A fisherman in a canoe and a small workboat cruised across the waterway. To the right, a powder-gray concrete barrier marked the upper lip of the Cerrón Grande Dam that had created the lake.
Elise descended the path nearly to the water’s edge. She stopped and wiped her brow in front of a large awning made from gnarled tree roots and covered with palm thatching. A half-dozen red tents were pitched in a semicircle around the awning’s opposite side, facing the shaded interior. To either side lay a large tract of farmland, bursting with rows of green cornstalks.
Under the awning, fellow scientists from the United States Agency for International Development sat around makeshift worktables, performing experiments or computer analysis. The group wore shorts and T-shirts in the steamy climate.
A lanky man with thick glasses and a straggly beard looked up from a microscope. “Why the long face?” he asked in a heavy Boston accent.
“There’s a funeral in the village today. The procession just passed.”
“For the little boy?”
Elise nodded.
“Very sad. Rondi told me there was a sick boy from the village at the Suchitoto clinic. I didn’t realize it was serious.”
He shouted to a local teenage boy sorting stalks of corn from a bin. “Rondi, what happened to the little boy?”
The teen hurried over to the scientists. “He was enfermo for a short time. A doctor came and took him to the hospital last week, but they could not help him.”
“What was the diagnosis?” Elise asked.
Rondi shrugged. “Un misterio. The doctors, they don’t say. Just like the others.”
“What others?”
“Three other children from the village have died in the past few months. Same thing. They get enfermo, and it is too late for the doctors to help them.”
Elise looked at her colleague. “Phil, do you think it could be related to the food crops?” She pointed to the bin of corn Rondi had been sorting.
“Due to the genetically modified seeds we provided the farmers here last year?” He shook his head. “Not a chance. This variety is only engineered to withstand drought, and has been safely used all over the world.”
She nodded. “It’s just heartbreaking to see children get sick.”
He shrugged. “We’re agricultural scientists, Elise, not doctors.” He glanced at the thriving cornfield. “And tomorrow, we need to pack up and move ten miles north.”
He saw the disappointment in Elise’s eyes. “Okay, maybe we can do more. I’ll email our country manager and have her make a request to the World Health Organization. They have an established presence in El Salvador. I’m sure they can send someone to investigate.”
“Thank you. The people here deserve to know what’s creating the illness.”
He nodded. “In the meantime, I need you and Rondi to assess the yields in Plot 17.” He pointed to a diagram of the fields around the village. Plot 17 was a narrow field close to the lake.
“Sí, I know which one that is,” Rondi said. He grabbed a canvas bag and looped it over his shoulder.
Elise followed him down a footpath through a neighboring cornfield. As they hiked, she kept thinking of the funeral procession and the small white coffin.
“Rondi, have there been sick children in the other villages, too?”
He nodded. “A cousin named Francisco. He died a short time ago. He lived in San Luis del Carmen, across the lake.”
“How old was he?”
“Four, I think.”
“I don’t recall that village. Did we provide seeds to the farmers there?”
“No, they always have strong crops. But I did see the científicos there last week.”