Hurricane Stan Update

Plenty staff member Louise Hagler is now working in one of the areas most effected by hurricane Stan. This is her first report after just arriving in Guatemala.
This afternoon I attended a meeting of various non-governmental aid groups that are involved in hurricane relief in the area. I found a few good prospects for funding:

In San Pablo la Laguna, where there is no tourist action or services, there is a population of between 8-12,000. There are at least 150 families affected there and it seems to be falling through the cracks for aid. The major industry is growing coffee and corn, and almost all of the crops were wiped out by the rockslides. Where there used to be fields and coffee growing is now pretty much covered with rock, and they are negotiating for the government to send in bull dozers like they have in other places around the lake, to clear the rock so they can prepare the land for planting, which should happen in April.

There are a few women working together in a group they call Proyecto Traje (to help maintain and revive weaving in the area) who are also looking for funding to assist in setting up a seed bank for the farmers to start over there, which would be run by the locals. This one sounds like a good option to me, and has come highly recommended by several other people I have talked to here. A young woman from the project I talked to is going to get back to me after this weekends meetings with the people there to find out exact needs in numbers and dollars. She is the one working on getting the bulldozers in so they can clear the land. The rocks are big - were not talking gravel here - and many feet deep. They are going to need both seed and year old coffee plants that will take 3 years to give fruit.

I talked to a man who lives in Solola who is in the process of starting up a co-op in Panabaj (where several hundred people are still buried under the mud slides) for making jams and jellies. The men pick the fruit and 100 or so women make the marmalades. They use disinfected pineapple skins for pectin (ya learn something new every day) and are going to make different flavors from various fruits and berries to sweet peppers. They want to put together a kitchen for doing this. He is going over again this weekend to do set up paperwork and will send me their proposal. Since the town was virtually wiped out, no one there has a way of making a living and this would be a cottage industry start up.

Handing out food is a good thing in the short term, but creating jobs gives these people a way to move on with some dignity and hope. There are a number of people here who are involved in microcredit, helping people get started. I am going to try to contact one woman who has been doing this for about 8 years. She was recommended to me by another woman here who works for the UN as someone who could give me a good overview to pinpoint the greatest need. She says Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan and Nahuala were some of the most heavily affected areas.

1/20/06

Today 6 of us (Marion and friend Mona, the two nurses from Medicos en Ación from Canada, me and a driver) took a load of food to a group of 16 families in Patalul (pop 8-12000) , south of Atitlan toward the coast. These families all lost their homes and everything in them to the river during the hurricane, and since they did not end up in shelters, but rented small rooms with lamina walls and dirt floors in a slum section of Patalul, they have been unable to get any aid except a few bananas.

There was apparently massive international aid that went into this town, but through corruption, not all ended up in the hands of people in need and it is now gone. In general, only people in shelters receive any kind of aid. The families we brought the food and supplies to sleep 8-10 to a room, and although the husbands do work, they are starting over from nothing. They had asked the Alcalde's office (the mayor of the town) for help and to be put on the list to be relocated (they say there is going to be land made available), but were denied. The young women said they had been there several times, but had been turned away.

After delivering the food that we had brought, we went back to town and the nurses bough more food and supplies including 100 pounds of corn for each family. This might last 2 weeks to a month, depending on the size of the family - the families are large extended families.

After delivering the rest of these supplies, we picked up the young women of the family going to disperse the supplies and their babies, plus the woman who was the duena of the store where most of the supplies were bought, and all went to the Alcalde's office to petition that these families be put on the list for land and aid. The Alcalde himself was not there, but we all spoke with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in command. At first they balked and said there was nothing they could do, but after several rounds of our group speaking up, including the young women of the family who were very well spoken, they agreed. Each person has to come in to the office in person to sign up, so the rest will have to come back Monday. The duena of the store will let us know if it actually happens or not. If not another trip will be necessary to follow through. There are funds for 300 houses to be rebuilt, but we don't know how many people actually are in need for this.

Members of the community of Molino Belen, Soloa. 2-3 days afer hurricane Stan hit, people help to prepare food baskets for families in the Department of Solola who were directly affected by the hurricane.

ADIBE staff distributing food to families in the village of Maria Tecun, Solola before the holiday season. Donations sent to Plenty were used, in cooperation with ADIBE, to get more food supplies to families who had lost there houses, crops, and ways to make a living.

ADIBE distributed soy milk, soy ice bean and a toasted corn-hava bean-soybean cereal drink mix. Here a lady carries home a package of the drink mix on her head. ADIBE is a partner in Plenty's Central American Food Security Initiative. photos by Guillermo Alvarado

Read the next article about hurrican Stan relief from the Spring Plenty Bulletin.