Supporter: Kevin Grubb

Photo: Ricardo Herrera/Mercy Corps

Over the weekend, the government of Guatemala confirmed 172 deaths as a result of Tropical Storm Agatha, which struck the country last week, flooding and wiping out an estimated £11 million in agricultural lands, destroying bridges and transportation networks, as well as homes, leaving over 100,000 displaced.

Since last week, Mercy Corps has been responding to the immediate needs of families displaced by the disaster, distributing food rations and water supplies for a week to 528 displaced families — almost 3,000 people — in the regions of Zacapa and El Progreso, hard-hit by flooding from the Motagua River.

Today, we are continuing to reach additional families with food and water rations, as well as distributing much-needed hygiene kits to over 600 families most affected by Agatha.

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This week's Tropical Storm Agatha has left 150,000 persons displaced throughout Guatemala as a result of flooding, damage and destruction of housing, roads and bridges, and mudslides and landslides.

Photo: Mercy Corps

The storm struck on day two of the so-called hurricane season, and, unfortunately, the rains — as the hurricane seasons is also the rainy season — continue to fall.

Overnight, flooding raged through another five villages and wiped out another bridge, washing away possibilities for these villagers to reach family, community centers, their crops and the market.

Our team has been working around the clock to assess the damage and get targeted assistance to those most in need. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Mercy Corps is distributing food rations, water and hygiene kits for initial survival support to over 600 families in communities of Zacapa, El Progreso and Solola regions.

Many of these families have lost their homes in flooding and mudslides and are in temporary camps in schools and churches in the area. In the mid-term, we are shipping three or four water purification systems to pump water from river, filter and purify it, and provide a more long-term, sustainable source of drinking water than bottles and water tankers driving from clean water spots farther afield.

While this initial support is essential for survival, the long-term interventions will be more crucial in engendering and building long-term solutions for these affected families and communities to rehabilitate crop fields, provide seedlings for replanting crops and land rehabilitation efforts. Infrastructure reconstruction will need to happen quickly to reestablish links between communities across rivers and for farmers and families to access markets.

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Croplands inundated and ruined by Tropical Storm Agatha. Photo: Mercy Corps Guatemala

Mercy Corps’ team in Guatemala is assessing the damage inflicted by Tropical Storm Agatha over the weekend.

The storm, arriving in the wake of the eruption of the Pacaya Volcano on Friday, left more than 150 dead with another 54 still missing, officially. It has also displaced more than 150,000 people through landslides and mudslides, flooding, destruction of property and washing out of roads and bridges, disallowing many residents from reaching their homes and their families.

The numbers, however, do not tell the whole story. Mercy Corps’ team is working closely with local government and villagers to assess the damage caused by the storm and determine where assistance is most needed and most effective for a long-term recovery. In regions where Mercy Corps works, entire fields of corn, squash and other vegetables are inundated. Many of the cornfields were only days or weeks from harvest. The loss of infrastructure such as roads and bridges severs peoples’ communication with — and ability to reach — their loved ones, as well as vastly hinders commerce in regions where small-holder farmers rely on this fragile transportation network to get produce to market for sale and income for their families.

While the immediate loss of life and property is tragic, the longer-term impact of the storm on peoples’ livelihoods, income and health is a slower tragedy already beginning to unfold that will need immediate and acute, as well as long-term and deliberate, support to those needing to rebuild their lives, and their livelihoods.

We will keep you updated on our efforts in Guatemala.

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The landslide removed the face of this mountain and took 40 lives with it a year ago. Now, the bulldozer clears the makeshift road — built along this muddy grave — every morning and every evening during the rainy season. Photo: Kevin Grubb/Mercy Corps

It's raining again in Coban, Guatemala. Driving out to visit some communities, we come upon the apparently eternal landslide bleeding from the rain the night before, and washing out the road with its rust-red mud and boulders.

Still tumbling down the bare mountain face, the rocks crash above, leaving puffs of dust, and we keep our eyes wide open for their trajectory. The initial landslide removed the face of this mountain and took 40 lives with it a year ago. Now, the bulldozer clears the makeshift road — built along this muddy grave — every morning and every evening during the rainy season. Several trucks carrying stones wait patiently but precariously on the road just before the wash-out.

After about an hour and a half, the road is more or less passable, but the trucks cannot maneuver their long and heavy cargo down the narrow slope, and the smaller vehicles weave between the trucks and the precipice which continues to erode before our eyes. As the buses and light trucks warily make their way onto the road, many stop to give the bulldozer operator a gift: a frozen chicken, mangoes, some cash. We take a break after successfully navigating the muddy obstacle course, stopping for a desayuno tipico, a typical local breakfast, at a roadside café — fried eggs, black beans and fresh tortillas, of course.

Walking through the overgrowth, making our way to visit farmers. Photo: Kevin Grubb/Mercy Corps

The leader of our small band is about nine years old. He carries a machete about half his height, slashing here and there at the overgrowth for effect. Mostly, the path is clear, though. Four of us are making our way to visit some farmers participating in Mercy Corps agricultural development programmes in the Alta Verapaz region.

Natural and mostly man-made disasters have pounded the inhabitants of this area since it was settled almost 20,000 years ago by the richest civilization in the world. The poverty is crushing, as the farmers make pennies to the dollar on high-value crops such as coffee and cardamom.

We meet two farmers who are collecting yucca, or cassava stems, to sell on informal markets as seed. They show us how the stems are cut and placed in the ground from which both roots and a new plant grow quite easily, the stems for future plants and the roots for consumption and sales. Mercy Corps has helped to develop the cassava root cultivation in this region, facilitating the purchase of the original stems for planting here from the south of the country.

A farmer chops off a bunch of plantains that are larger than the average banana, presenting them to us as a gift, but we make a purchase of them. Photo: Kevin Grubb/Mercy Corps

Traditionally, many farmers have grown cardamom here — which brings a decent price per pound, although a lot of labour goes into gathering that pound. More importantly, though, cardamom is not much in the way of nutritional sustenance. We pass fields of the cassava root in various stages of growth, and the farmers are proud to show off their crops. Even my rudimentary Spanish is of no use here, as the farmers all speak Qui’che, and all I got is “antioche” to every farmer we thank for their time.

The heat is oppressive — but I seem to be the only one suffering, praying for that rain of the previous morning, which could not have soaked my shirt through any more than it already was from my own sweat. We meander through pineapple groves with behemoth fruits, and the farmers are quick to boast of the superiority of their pineapples to their neighbors’, after they have implemented new plant care techniques learned with Mercy Corps.

Over the river and through the jungle, we meet up with a plantain farmer whose father had been a guerilla leader and had received over three manzanas (two hectares) of land from the government following the conclusion of the peace accords here in 1996. The plantains were also purchased with Mercy Corps support, and grow to full maturity in only nine months. He chops off a bunch of plantains that are larger than the average banana, presenting them to us as a gift, but we make a purchase of them.

A wooden shack spits smoke from its open doors, and we enter the small dirt-floor café where three women are preparing cassava root fries and ground cassava sweet cakes in grease over an open fire. Photo: Kevin Grubb/Mercy Corps

A wooden shack spits smoke from its open doors, and we enter the small dirt-floor café where three women are preparing cassava root fries and ground cassava sweet cakes in grease over an open fire. The smoke is a grim reminder of the billions of others around the world cooking hour by hour over open fires without any system of ventilation. The smoke, like the heat, bothers no one but the gringo.

The women are all shy laughter and proud to present me with a plate of food and a cup of warm coffee. The cassava fries are a hot and crispy, sweet and salty mix, rivaling any sweet potato fries in Portland’s hip joints. There is a Gallo beer ad on a poster across the way and I’m tempted to order the splendid local ale to go with the steaming fries. Kids peek around the doorframes, giggling and darting away when I catch their glance. A few of the farmers join us for some cassava cakes and we share expressions of equal joy at the flavour. The women slide the branches deeper into the fire’s embers.

The rain returns later.

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Mercy Corps has working in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan since 1994, and is now helping its children and families weather severe food insecurity. Photo: Colin Spurway/Mercy Corps

The paradox of development is when our work meets a need, but that need has arisen from an unforeseen event or conditions.

In Kyrgyzstan, Mercy Corps recently began a food distribution programme in coordination with the World Food Programme (WFP) — the first such programme in more than ten years in this former Soviet republic. With generous funding from USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, we're currently reaching over 40,000 of the most vulnerable, isolated and food-insecure people across the country.

In many ways, it's sad that the food insecurity situation in Kyrgyzstan has worsened to such a degree that, in the last few years, the United Nations would call for a flash appeal that would be worthy of disaster assistance from the U.S. government. After all, the country was once a small speck of hope for at least quasi-democracy and held potential for an economic system resembling a market economy. But last fall, a WFP food security assessment revealed that 36 percent of households in Kyrgyzstan — more than 1.9 million people — are food insecure. Furthermore, at least 55 percent of children in food-insecure households showed stunting (compared with 52 percent in Afghanistan) and 30 percent of the entire country's children overall are stunted.

But why?

The soaring cost of oil on the world market in recent years led to price increases in basic food items and household goods that have yet to stabilise — the price of flour, for example, skyrocketed 89 percent. Gas and diesel have increased by 42 percent.

Recent environmental shocks have also taken their toll on this already-harsh landscape. The worst winter in 40 years struck Central Asia in early 2008, and drought led to lower yields later that year. Now, the manmade disaster of the global economic crisis is beginning to take its toll on a country where 42 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Kyrgyzstan exports an estimated 800,000 migrant laborers abroad to countries where its young men can find work, primarily Russia. The remittances they send home account for a staggering 20 percent of the country's gross domestic product — although, unofficially, it is likely a much higher portion.

Now, with the economic crisis and the drop in oil prices, Russia’s economy has slowed to a standstill, which means that the primary industry in which Kyrgyz migrant laborers have worked — construction — is frozen. Not only are the men unable to work and send home the remittances upon which their families relied for so many years, they now face the prospect of returning to a homeland that provides them with no employment, no income and the stares of countrymen that imply their presence and lack of employment are a burden on society.

The point is this: the sudden shock and lingering turmoil of the global economic crisis has further exacerbated the food security crisis in the country and deepened the needs of the families we serve. Unfortunately, the worst may be yet to come.

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