Editor's Note: Here's a letter I received from Helen Shears, a friend and development worker living in Condega, Nicaragua. The titles are mine, but the very powerful prose is hers.
Condega is a small town (approx 29,000 inhabitants; 10,000 urban, 19000 rural) in the poorest region in Northern Nicaragua, which borders onto Honduras. The climate is dry tropical, which reaches very high temperatures from January to April, the dry season, and has a rainy season from May onwards. Agriculturally speaking it is a very tough, high risk climate, every year brings its surprises for better or for worse. The town lies on the Panamerican highway in a valley where 2 rivers, Rio Esteli and Rio Pire, meet, it is a cross roads for many campesinos and for national and international traffic. It is an area of high unemployment - agriculture and small industries and commerce exist - but many people look to Costa Rica for more "stable" possibilities in spite of the illegality and risk; also people aspire to work in the USA, entering legally or illegally, to bring and send back money to their families.
This year has been full of surprises to add to the vunerability of the general situation for most people. An extremely hot dry season, followed by 3 weeks of smog, a slow start to the rainy season and then the big one, Hurricane Mitch. It crept up on us, seemingly; at last we were going to have a decent wet season, a week of constant rain seemed normal, though in Managua there had been a week of tremors at the beginning of October and some of this was blamed on severe saturation of the earth. During the early hours of the 28th [of October 1998] people living nearest to the River Esteli started the alarm and the church bells were rung, this was no longer normal, the river had risen by 2 metres and water was lapping up to peoples doors. A nearby bridge was resisting a strong force of water, a truck with 4 men got stranded in the middle of the river by now three times it's usual size, trees were falling over from the pressure, bringing down electric cable, people began talking, this was real and potentially frightening. Reports came in from nearby farms of people already stranded, also on the radio of what was happening in Esteli, Limay, Chinandega, Honduras. This was supposedly the "tail" of the hurricane, no wind just rain and more rain.
The Emergency Commitee, made up of local government members, NGO representatives and individuals, was set up on this first morning as people started leaving their houses, with their few belongings, refuges were needed, vehicles started helping people move more and more possessions as the situation became more serious. This went on for another day, slowly picking up more momentum and involving more people, a collection of food and clothes was made for refugees, never thinking that we would all be stranded. Bridges began falling in all the affected parts of the country, we heard of the landslide in Posoltega and of other deaths, tragedies and victims in Nicaragua and Honduras, the services (electricity, water and telephone) got cut off, all we had was the radio to measure our situacion by, to hear of the next wave of water to come from Esteli. The army was called in from the local base, and sirens were put into use to get people to evacuate. The Committee meetings became more frequent, other news coming through the army and police radios, the situation was alarming, people started packing food and clothes parcels for refugees, the vehicles never stopped going round and round, full of furniture, children, bags of clothes, televisions, tape decks, books, chickens, rabbits, pigs, people walking, taking all they could or waiting for the next lift.
Here in Condega the Rio Pire broke its banks and started taking a short cut across 3 barrios to meet Rio Esteli taking with it whatever was in its path; houses, workshops, factories, land, trees, crops, animals and unfortunately 3 children and 1 adult got caught in its by now violent flow. By Friday afternoon 30/10/98, when we thought the worst must have occured by now, the 2 rivers pushed harder and the water level rose, suddenly, the people who were sitting tight thinking that it would not reach them, were forced out with the water up to waist level already. All the 4 wheel drive vehicles, trucks and tractors stepped into action, driving into the streets filled with flowing, muddy water which was looking for its way out on its journey to the Rio Coco and on to the Atlantic Ocean. It was already night time, dark and people were still moving. And it kept on raining, a form of torture when the sound on the tin roof and the breakers of the rivers sounded so near, never seemed to cease, all our clothes soaked from changing so many times in one day, the smell of the muddy, dirty, water which infiltrated everything. The next morning Saturday, there seemed to be a pause the rivers had gone down but people where saying that it was going to rise...again. When was it going to stop? Sure enough it rose again only a little above its previous level and it was daylight so at least we could watch the water take its course.
By Sunday it really did begin to calm and we could begin to assess damage, loss, try and contact the outside world. We were 12 days in all without power, water, telephone. The roads were blocked on all sides, bridges down, avalanched mountain roads. Condega was not even reported on the radio until 2 or 3 days afterwards, we did not exist for many people, along with other towns and small communities, but people started arriving, having walked 3 days crossing rivers, sheltering in houses, witnessing the damage and death caused in other places. The first helicopter came on the Monday 2/11/98 to take urgent cases from the health centre, 3 people went, no food was brought nobody knew what we were going to do. The government had done nothing, not recognising the urgency of the situation. Time went by as we made sure we had clean water from the nearby wells, had candles for the night, there was a curfew to minimise robbing, alcohol sales mades illegal and attempts at controlling food prices as shops began to run out or stop selling. Condega was closed, people saying that even the war in the 80s and the earthquake (77) had not had such a huge impact.
The first figures were, in urban Condega: 4,215 people directly affected by the hurricane, 55 communities isolated, 541 houses destroyed, 150 seriously damaged, 19 refuges, 17 known rural refuges,; small and medium industries and 90% fertile land destroyed, also 12 bridges and 190 km of road destroyed. New figures are coming in as we realise the extent of damage in rural areas. Some places are still inaccessible, almost a month after the start of it all. The Emergency Committee is still working hard and has been very well organised; Condega has a Sandinista council which has been cause for the national government not to recognise the existence of the Committee and its work, and it insisted that the Liberals set up its own Committee, confusing and politicising the work that is being done to support victims and priority need cases.
As from tomorrow [25/11/98] the Emergency Committee is formally going to move into a secondary phase to one of being a Reconstruction Commitee, giving priority to long term plans, as other large organisations and the government take care of the food crisis and the refuges. The Committee is made up of Work Groups/Commissions which are pressure groups working in different priority areas such as: Infrastructure, Production, Environment, Information, and Health to make sure that the local authorities are taking responsability for their duties but at the same time giving them support and ideas from the civil society in a time of pressure and increased workload in suddenly new and unforeseen emergency context.
The total now is 541 families which need new housing in urban and rural Condega who lost their homes to the storm. Also new figures are now coming in from the rural areas of Condega, for example from 45 of the 65 communities:
The damage is extensive and worrying as the main sources of employment have been lost, poverty will increase and large amounts of the population will leave Condgea to look for work.
To focus on what we are doing as women in the community in the light of the emergency; I am a carpenter/development worker, for CIIR/ICD (Catholic Institute for International Relations/Cooperation for International Development) in a women's non traditional trades training workshop, Colectivo de Mujeres Constructoras. Our priority, in conjunction with the Red de Mujeres Condega (a legal and psychological advise centre for women fleeing violence who also train women from the local barrios and communities) is to build houses for women affected by the disaster and involve women in the whole process of rebuilding their community, in block making, selfbuild and carpentry and joinery. Also we are part of the environmental working/pressure group to guarantee that action is taken and natural resources protected. We are looking for funding for the construction of 30 houses (US$ 3,500 per unit) and for reforestation. We also know that there are people interested in working on building brigades and are very interested in receiving a group probably around February/March 1999. We particularly need Spanish speaking forewomen and women with basic building or carpentry experience.
The scars will take a long time to heal; the trauma for everyone varies to different degrees, from bringing up previous memories of similarly tragic experiences to that of hearing and seeing the rain and the rivers in a diferent light, forces against which we were obliged to fight to survive. We stil grit our teeth when there's a rain shower, the incessant noise of rain on the tin roofs, the slight rising of a river enough still to prevent people crossing; it's all so recent - the sad sight of the landscape completely resculptured, so many trees pushed over and huge beaches of stones and sand, potential deserts. People who can are returning to their homes but most of these houses are a health risk due to the humidity until there is a sign of hotter drier weather. Those who lost their houses never thought it would happen, stare in disbelief at a void where once stood their home, but life goes on, attempting to "normalise" itself again.
This is a good chance to support Central America and bring it to the world's attention, although we know that news focuses change fast. Keep up the pressure to cancel debts, that is one thing we can thank the hurricane for, it seems to have worked in our favour in some cases, these successes have to repeated as much as possible.
If you or anyone you know are interested in supporting our work specifically I can send details of how to send money directly or if you have other interests/activities that you feel more appropriate or affiliated to I can help make contacts with other projects.
Last updated: Wednesday, 12-Jan-2000 21:27:41 EST
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