Plenty Belize Staff Reports Continued, Oct. 12 - Oct. 15 Friday, Oct. 12th Here is a summary of what we learned/did today. Tomorrow is a national holiday, but don't imagine that will make much difference to anyone in Toledo. Talked about an appeal to TEA guests for help to TEA villages. Reyes is planning an emergency exec. meeting on Monday morning to discuss the future of TEA, including the birding project. Two Peace Corps volunteers plus Greg, Christina, Stephen and another volunteer made about a ton of kashim! (corn/soy cereal) Met with Toledo head of Red Cross, Mr. Cruz, who seems quite competent, has a good team of volunteers, apparently without a lot of aid to handle just yet. A rep of American Red Cross had just arrived, Honduran Red Cross logistics people were in place already, and others are due to arrive from various countries to join their effort. They explained that their task is to receive and distribute private donations as well as donations through the international RC network, and they make their own decisions on which villages and how to distribute, though they are in contact with NEMO. They were pleased to hear of our ability to contribute food. They are doing food, water, and clothing at this point. At present they are vehicularly challenged, but are expecting 2 trucks shortly. We can possibly help them out temporarily in this respect. Kek'chi Council of Belize is getting people in the few undamaged villages to cut cohune and branches, and Ministry of Agriculture and CARD are transporting it to villages in need; Toledo Maya Cultural Council is apparently doing some food distribution. Laguna alcalde Faustino Cucul dropped in this morning, confirmed about 20 houses down, roof off community center, school intact, some food aid coming in, recommended more dry food than cooked meals, phone is out (have not heard of one village phone working), water is okay, crops damage is undetermined since the trails are so badly it will take days to make it through, about 200 cohune leaves are needed to thatch one average house. Never did get out of Punta Gorda today, though we did get gas this morning. This was because we identified Red Cross as a way to get food out to the villages, there were no water tanks for sale in town, and the fire truck turned out a no-go at least for now, since they are willing to help/volunteer but cannot do so without having a truck on hand in case of an actual fire! Teams from various government ministries are still going out daily conducting assessments of the damage in their own fields of expertise, will take some work to extricate those from all the parties concerned over coming days. Ministry of Works is designing some multi-family shelters, they have some donated plywood and zinc, are lacking other materials. CARD and MoA say that if we get communities to cut cohune and bring it to the roadsides, they will take care of the pickup and transport to needy areas. They recommend focusing on communities that are remote, either from resources like cohune or from PG. British Army has donated 5000 Ready-to-eat meals. Belize Defense Force is setting up tents in Big Falls and other villages to north. NEMO via CARD staff are encouraging organizations that want to help to just design a plan and present it to NEMO, saying "we are going to cover X and Y for villages A and B, is that okay?" rather than asking them for guidance on what to do. A group called Escuela Mexico is coming from Orange Walk to work on water treatment The fire dept. was delighted to be consulted by us, and we are trying to figure a way to work them into the equation for water relief. At a minimum, they are happy to fill any tanks that we bring by from their system. CARD recommended that we keep an eye on the situation a month or so down the road, when initial enthusiasm will die off, and real needs will perhaps be worsening. Suggested that if possible, we have unprogrammed or flexible funds to be spent according to results of community assessment and consultation, for that period of time. Nurse Donna mentioned that several communities need gas for generators, to solve their water system problems until the power is restored, so this is another way of addressing the water issues. Each village is really a special case for water, no general conclusions or solutions are possible. The villages with water systems mostly will be short term needs, just until they get power again presumably. But contamination will be an ongoing threat. Anyone wishing to donate to the relief effort via the International Red Cross should specify very clearly that they want to support Toledo hurricane relief - otherwise, it will likely be spent in Stann Creek and not make it any further due to the urgent needs there, poor Toledo being forgotten again! Red Cross staff listed the following needs in order of priority - food/water, medicine, shelter, clothing, cooking utensils. UNICEF and Pan American Health Organization reps arrived late in the evening. Fri, 12 Oct 2001 16:35:25 -0500 It is frustrating sitting here in the office, trying to focus on info gathering, coordination and fundraising when I feel like the work is out in the villages. Everyone is so disorganized still, that foreign volunteers as well as local are going largely underutilized, or being assigned to tasks that do not match their skills. And for actual physical reconstruction, there is a lot of manpower on hand in the villages since the injury toll was so low. Greg is mostly handling the food production end (we are using volunteers to make a roasted soy-corn cereal) and distribution of that and water. We have the two solar reps from SEI on hand too these days, plus Christina our midwife trainer and Stephen, so they along with Peace Corps volunteers have been the production line. Right now it looks as if our approach will be focused on the school feeding program, and health/sanitation education. As for reconstruction, it remains to be seen what supplies/funding will be come from the international appeal, which will determine what kind of volunteers and equipment will be useful. Fri, 12 Oct 2001 19:02:39 -0500 We got Pablo's 450 liter (about 120 gallon) water tank today, took one load out already to San Marcos, will take another tomorrow morning to Santa Elena. But its still pretty small scale. The fire dept. is really delighted to work with us, and Cherry-Mae/Jericho Road has gotten a load of silver nitrate purifying drops from the Mexicans, that she will make available if we need them in a program for delivering water. One idea is to get an other fire truck allocated, use it to haul water, buy communal tanks to install in the villages most in need, and distribute drops with instructions to ensure purity. Fundraising letter sent out Friday, October 12, 2001 6:38 PM Sat, 13 Oct 2001 17:10:27 -0500 Met the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) rep today at Cherry-Mae's, they are working together on some public health messages and announcements for the radio, asked me to review them. She was very supportive of the School Feeding Program rehabilitation idea, especially the education and training side, so I will work those funds into the SFP proposal that we will do for UNICEF. More on that - met with Unicef yesterday morning, they say 8 schools in Toledo have been completely destroyed. They are Punta Negra, Crique Jute, San Marcos, San Pedro Columbia, Medina Bank, Jalacte, Santa Elena, and Na Lum Ca. The Ministry of Education is asking them for money to build prefab schools, including furnishings and books, this amounts to about $1 million BZ ($500k US). He wanted to know what we had been doing since the hurricane struck, and sampled our pinole, which he had not had since childhood. He then asked about our ideas for programming, and I described briefly our SFP rehab concept. He seemed interested, and this fit into one of the priority areas that they have identified : education (reconstruction, supplies, SFP and teacher training), shelter/household effects, psycho-social assistance and health/sanitation education. He also suggested that we would fit in well with the health/sanitation education component, since we are already doing training in the health field and working with MOH, and encouraged us to develop some programming in this area, perhaps with CNAs and TBAs playing a role. He mentioned the need for income-generating projects, to combat the looming food security crisis. They are appealing to the UNICEF national committees and ProMaya for funding. We agreed to share whatever info either of us comes across, in this confusing time. He said that World Food Programme would be arriving on the noon flight, and he would bring them by to chat with us. He said we should prepare a proposal to them soon, setting out our plan. Later in the day, about 6:30 pm, he came by with WFP and someone from UNICEF Panama. The WFP rep (based in El Salvador) had lots of good questions about the situation, what was needed to address it and for how long, the different levels of need among villages, pre-hurricane vulnerability, NGO capacity in Toledo, etc. It was clear that they are used to dealing with the "big boys" like CARE etc. He seemed very interested in working with NGOs in general, in addition to the necessary gov't role, and in particular sounded keen to use Plenty in the operation. He asked whether we would be willing to work with NEMO on such a project, and I said I thought we could manage. Sat, 13 Oct 2001 17:42:17 -0500 Brief rundown of today - met PAHO in morning briefly, contacted Red Cross for any new directions after big meeting last night with NEMO - nothing has changed, they just agreed to share information. Greg and I took promised load of water as well as 80 pound bags of kashim to Santa Elena, where it was gratefully received. Santa Cruz looks worse, so Greg and Christina and Stephen headed out there this afternoon with more water. We transported a little girl who I noticed had a bad rash or skin infection on her face from Santa Elena to San Antonio clinic, where Dr. Marenco is filling in temporarily. Saw our mobilizer Alex while in San Antonio, he is pitching in with the relief effort, house is not in bad shape. Saw Cresencio's house and Beekeeper's building, or rather the remnants of both. Downloaded and emailed more photos. Our cooking operation dried up today, with volunteers being pulled away or simply taking a day off to recuperate. Peace Corps has told their volunteers that Red Cross is their assignment, and as they are gearing up, the need for their time is getting greater over there - which is fine. We figure we have sent out 930 servings of kashim, and 800 soy fritters. Plus three 120 gallon tanks of water. A drop in the proverbial bucket. However, hands-on real-life assistance. As an aside, the traffic in PG is ridiculous, semi trucks are roaring past at regular intervals, the whole town is transformed. Mon, 15 Oct 2001 13:02:24 -0500 It is becoming clear that the efforts of our environmental mobilization team will be required, sooner rather than later, to combat the farmers' urges to burn the trashed crops and trees that litter the ground rather than let them decompose, to disseminate info and facilitate access to reforestation resources, to try dry-season farming, etc. So that work is probably not on hold after all.