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Guatemala

Rebuilding after Stan

© Mike Kollöffel

Provisional rehousing financed by DCA and ECHO and distributed by the DCA-partner Pastoral Social in San Marcos Diocese in the province of San Marcos, Guatemala.

By Linda Nordahl Jakobsen and Heinrich Ludwig Stachelscheid

The hurricane destroyed homes, crops and other property, putting many poor people already at risk before the hurricane, under further threat.

Especially Guatemala was hard hit by several hundred landslides and floodings that followed hurricane Stan.

In the aftermath of the hurricane many of Guatemala’s poorest citizens were desperately hoping for assistance. The majority of the population in the worst affected areas in the highlands and southwestern departments of the Pacific coastal area is indigenous people living in extreme poverty.

In the small rural communities of Ixchiguán and Tajumulco high up in the mountains in the province of San Marcos the scars left behind by the enormous amounts of rain from "la tormenta", as the villagers call the tropical storms here, can still be seen everywhere: Deep gaps are now where little creeks used to flow, rocks as big as cars lie in what used to be the maize fields of the poor peasant families, bridges have collapsed, roads are halfway gone, and many houses - especially those close to river beds have been totally destroyed.

Doña Ana, a widow, and her seven children now live in the small kitchen, next to the place where their house once stood. Only the stone floor has survived.

"The rain wouldn´t stop for four days. And when it eased off eventually our house with all our belongings was just gone," she recalls.

Relocation in the mountains

Like doña Ana and her family some 500 families in the municipalities of Ixchiguán and Tajumulco (named after Guatemala´s highest volcano Tajumulco with its 4.220m) have lost their homes. Some of them have found shelter in barns or remaining kitchens, or now live with their relatives or neighbours.

© Mike Kollöffel

Locals building new houses after the hurricane Stan, Ixchiguan, Guatemala.

The local partner, the Pastoral Social of San Marcos’ Diocese, supported by DanChurchAid and ECHO, has started to rehouse doña Ana and another 359 families with provisional, but firmly built transitory homes, while 175 new latrines are being constructed as well.

The whole project is funded by the EU Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) with 215.000 Euros and with 23.889 Euros from DanChurchAid (DCA), a Danish ngo, that has been working in Guatemala for more than 20 years.

The project team is also helping to improve the precarious hygienic conditions in the area by delivering water tanks and jerry cans as well as chlorine for the preparation of safe drinking water. Besides, the community health workers from Pastoral Social are helding training sessions on water sanitation with the villagers.

All together 4.275 persons in Ixchiguán and Tajumulco will benefit from new provisional shelters, water and sanitation.

“We want to thank the European people for their generosity and the Social Pastoral of San Marcos for having shown them the way into this abandoned hills”, says Nery Daniel Gomez Perez, the vice mayor of Tajumulco.

Doña Ana adds: “It is good to know that people, in parts of the world I will never be able to travel to, are thinking of us.”

A rough challenge

The transport of the building material puts a considerable challenge to the project team. Not only are many roads destroyed, or there have never been a real road to reach the small farms that lye totally dispersed and often cling to the steepest hills.

Often the trucks have to stop miles away from the original destination and the team then has to unload timber, roof sheets and cement and call the villagers to these improvised “distribution centres”.

The villagers then carry the sacks with concrete, the timber wood, the roofing and other materials on horseback further on – sometimes it takes three-four hours walk up and down the steep hillsides.

Fortunately, solidarity is not an unknown word in this area: Doña Ana, whose husband passed away eight years ago, can rely on her neighbours who don´t mind to carry the materials on their back towards a new building site on a safer plain, where her provisional house is going to be..

It take them three-four hours before they arrive, totally exhausted. Some of her elder children have prepared a simple meal for them; “tortillas and frejoles”, the typical round maize cakes with mashed beans and a spicy sauce.

One of the two comunities where the Pastoral Social is rebuilding with the DCA- and ECHO-funding is the highest placed municipality in Guatemala and the second highest in whole Latin America: In Ixchigúan the villagers live in the altitude of more than 3.000 m.

There are few and very bad dust roads that lead to the houses, that lie scattered out on the steep hillsides of the volcano. As rough as nature is here, as rough is the weather and living conditions: In the afternoon clouds and mist rolls in and cover the area and its inhabitants in a wet and cold blanket, that reduces visbility to ten-fifthteen meters.

The sun sets around 5.30 p.m., and night temperature often falls below zero, in the mornings a thin layer of white frost is covering the landscape.

Members of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International in Guatemala are: Christian Aid, DanChurchAid, Guatemalan Evangelical Churches Conference, Lutheran World Federation, Norwegian Church Aid, Swiss Interchurch Aid (HEKS) – they are working together as the ACT Guatemala Forum.

Linda Nordahl Jakobsen is a journalist for DanChurchAid (DCA), a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.
Heinrich Ludwig Stachelscheid is working as a logistic coordinator on the DCA-ECHO-funded project in San Marcos.