This week I have learnt that, like so many things in life,
if you have a plan of action it needs to be more like a vague outline of
action...and even that will most likely end up being the opposite of what you
initially intended.
Our last donation delivery to the village of Las Lomas went
better than we could have ever imagined for a first run and although this
raised our spirits and motivated us to really get going, it may also have given
us slightly false expectations. However, nothing easy is every really worth
doing so onwards we plod.
Since we last spoke:
Last Friday I received a call from Cesar the newspaper
reporter who had come with us on the donation run the previous Wednesday. He
wanted to ask a few more questions about what we were doing and our
organisation. On the Saturday we found ourselves in a small article in the
local section of a national newspaper, the ‘El Quetzalteco’, as a ‘symbol of
friendship and support from England’, very happy to be this! Again, on Tuesday of
this week, I received another telephone call from Cesar informing us that the
newspaper office have now stopped taking donations from the local public and
would they be able to send any other donations our way to distribute on our
delivery trips. It is a shame that this was so short-lived, but happy if we can
provide our service to keep the in-kind donations coming in from people around
Xela.
In order to get our goods to the best places we are relying
on local information and as a result are working with a couple of different organisations
here as of this week. We have now teamed up with Krystal Werner who works for
Community Enterprise Solutions. The organisation works to support
self-sustaining local businesses and particularly works with a number of
families in rural areas of the San Marcos Department (the worst affected).
Through Krystal we were introduced to Juan Carlos Morales García who works
for Red Nacional de Grupos Gestores and Erick Navarro who works for INTECAP (Instituto
Tecnico de Capacitacion y Productividad), both capacity building national organisations
that promote initiatives for local and regional economic development.
Yesterday, the 21st November, we set off with Juan Carlos and Erick to head to
the Municipality of Tejutla, within the Department of San Marcos. Happy to
report we have now upgraded from a 4x4 to a pick-up truck, with more bags, blankets and boxes of water. After a quick show and tell session at the INTECAP offices in Xela we were on our way. We arrived at the rather
grand looking Government Buildings in the town of Tejutla, where we were now
introduced to Marco Aurelio Paz a senior official at the council and shown into a room with a number of other
council officials, and a member from COE (Centro de Operaciones de Emergencia), in charge of overseeing the organisations of shelters in Tejulta (at this point slightly regretting the multi-coloured
shoelaces in my walking boots and general looking like I have just come through a hedge backwards). 
The building itself is over 100 years old and
had withstood most of the earthquake damage, escaping with a few minor cracks.Marco Paz explained to us the situation in Tejutla. There
are 151 houses in total that have been completely destroyed. There are three temporary
shelters for families that have lost their home or been evacuated, however the
majority are living with neighbours or unofficial shelters near their homes to
look after what possessions they have left. 548 children and 271 adults in
total are living in shelters or with neighbours.
The map below indicates affected towns and villages, with red
being the most severe. This time around we took a different approach to our
delivery of donations. Rather than travelling to one severely affected village
and dropping off all of our provisions; we made our way between a number of smaller
settlements with varying levels of need. However, this brought with it a number of
problems.
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| Map of affected areas in Tejutla |
Setting off from Tejutla centre we first reached Caserio
(small village or hamlet) Los Solices. Again taking a steep dirt track off the road
we made our way to a small part of the village where 7 families were living in
the hills. We were shown around the houses here and the damage was minimal,
with a few cracks in the walls (not dissimilar to the giant crack in the wall
above my bed). These were farming families living off the land and food
shortage was not a major problem; what would have been more beneficial is help
with making their houses safe and we are not architects. However having been
shown up to this village it was not an option to leave without offering a bag
of food to each of the 7 families. Although they were thankful to us and happy to
receive nappies for the three babies living there, having seen the severe
situations that other families are living it was a difficult call to make.
We continued on to another Caserio called La Demogracia. Here
we were shown to a family home that no longer existed; all that was left was
the foundations. The pictures here show where the home originally stood and the
small room that now houses the 5 family members (who all sleep in one double
bed) and all of the possessions. A few minutes further down the road and we found a house with only a chimney left of what once was a kitchen. These
families legitimately needed all the help they could get and we were happy to
off-load bags of food, water and blankets.
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| Family Room |
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| Room with 5 people sleeping in one double bed |
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| The foundations of the original house |
The last Aldea (village) we visited was called Esquipulas. At
this point we still had the majority of our donations in the pick-up and time
was pressing on. We scrambled up a steep hill and reached the top to be shown
another two houses with a few cracks. In one of the houses I also noticed that
the Red Cross had already been as a box of bottled water was sat in the corner.
Here there were 12 families in the community and a senior member of the
community told us it was necessary to give to each of these families to avoid conflict (of course).
This is a perfectly valid point with such few people living here, but again it
was not the best use of our donations.
Feeling disheartened and 24 bags down we set off back to San
Marcos town, to the office of Juan Carlos to re-group. Driving through San
Marcos again put the day into perspective. With the majority of houses marked
for demolition in the process of being demolished there were gaps in the rows
of shops and buildings; heavy machinery and piles of rubble everywhere. The air
was a thick haze from the dust being blown around and when we arrived even our
donations were covered in a layer of the stuff. Even the building adjoining the office was in the process of
being demolished.
We sat down and discussed
the day and Juan Carlos agreed it was less than what he himself had hoped to
achieve. He made a number of calls and spoke to a planning officer from San
Marcos with more information about the local area and we were able to make a
decision based on this. Although it was a disappointing day in general, we have made some good contacts, been able to share resources, costs and ideas.
So the vague outline of action, now for Saturday morning, is
to head a village called Chayen where there are reports of a real food and
drinking water shortage. At present they are using water taken from the river
which is contaminated and not safe for drinking. We hope to be able to take
advantage of our partnership with Community Enterprise Solutions who as part of
their business initiatives promote the use of water filters. If we can get some
of these to the main focal points in the village, for example the school and
community centre in addition to supplies of bottled drinking water this would be much more beneficial in the long run as they
last for a year.
In other news....here in Xela fundraising is in full flow.
We have a fundraiser on Saturday. If you are in Xela and reading this it is at
Pool and Beer and there will be free vodka jelly and large amounts of ridiculously
cheap tequila...you know you want to! We have also started a donation collection
of food, clothes, blankets e.t.c at the local Spanish Schools, we will be round
to collect on Friday, or you can find us at Escuela Miguel de Cervantes (when
we are not hounding local market stall owners or ruining perfectly good cars).
Thanks also to everyone who helped us with the packing of
bags this week...the production line we had going on was definitely worth it
for the comic value! Special thanks to llsy for putting up with us taking up the hallway and generally getting in the way all the time :)
So Saturday is our next big day, up at 6.30am for the
donation run and fundraising party from 8pm till 1am – I promise to update you
all with how both of these go!
Thank you again for reading!
http://www.justgiving.com/GuatemalaEarthquakeAppeal
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