From October 4 to October 9, 2005, heavy rains battered Guatemala, up to seven inches on just one day causing heavy mudslides that buried villages in as much as 40 feet of mud. More than 650 are confirmed dead, with hundreds missing and tens of thousands displaced and homeless with 80% of crops destroyed in the Central Highlands where the Mayan population already suffered over 50% malnutrition. It has been estimated that one and a half million people suffered greatly as a result of the heavy rains and mudslides. With the critical support of a grant from Onaway Trust in December, Plenty has been able to fund a number of important relief efforts.

The loss of life, property, and harvest to Stan will take years to recover from, if ever. The disaster came right before harvest, with the food that these communities count on for survival wiped out overnight. To begin tracking down hurricane relief projects, I was attended a meeting of many of the NGO’s in Panajachel, Solola, that have been addressing local hurricane relief needs.

Plenty staff members, Chuck and Casta Haren, had visited Panabaj on the south side of Lake Atitlan where some of the worst mud and rockslides had occurred and much of the international media attention had been focused on the loss of about 600 people to the slides. A fair amount of international aid has been focused here, and although Panabaj is still in dire need, I discovered that there were a number of other communities around that lake also in need that had had little or no aid coming their way.

Louise with ASCOM members

My attention was drawn to San Pablo la Laguna, where ASCOM, a volunteer group of citizens (virtually unheard of in Guatemala) had mustered around 200 locals to help clear the roads by hand when no help came from the government for this area. This is an area where there is no tourism and their main income and sustenance come from growing coffee and corn. They had lost at least half of their crops to the mudslides and were looking for a way to start over again. A permaculture institute, IMAP, in San Lucas Toliman on the other side of Lake Atitilan offered a scholarship to one of ASCOM’s members to learn how to start and run a seed bank to get them in a more sustainable position to continue in agriculture. Plenty has donated $1,000 toward funding the seed bank startup as well as the funding for 1030 pounds of ADIBE’s high protein pinole to 200 families in need of immediate food assistance.

The manager of ADIBE, Guillermo Alvarado, took me to a school in Peña Blanca, Solola, where hurricane Stan had torn part of the roof off and damaged many of the desks. In this area there are 500 or more children of school age, about 300 of which are actually enrolled in school with only about 250 of these actually attending because of the lack of desk space. The headmaster there is a very dedicated young man who has been there for 8 years. He says in this amount of time the government has come three times to look and take pictures but has done nothing to help the school. The current buildings they are in were built in 1996. Before that they were teaching in lamina shacks. Plenty has committed to buying 70 student desks, 9 teacher desks, 6 new blackboards, and 6 new shelf stands for student supplies in the classrooms. Plenty is looking for the funding to repair the roof as well. Four students from this school received scholarships to attend school from a donor-supported program through former Plenty Guatemala volunteer, Jeremy Sherman.

My first relief supply distribution experience was with our friend Marion Moore who lives in Panajachel, and experienced the hurricane disaster first hand. She has been doing what she can as an individual to distribute funds sent from individual Canadians. I accompanied her and a group of Canadian nurses serving in volunteer clinics in the area (Médicos en Ación) to deliver food aid to a group of 16 families in Patalul (on the road toward the Pacific coast) who had had their houses washed away in the floods. Guatemala got as much rain in three days with the hurricane passing through as they usually get in two years. Plenty’s contribution to this delivery was 80 pounds of high protein pinole.

When ADIBE distributes pinole to hurricane Stan survivors, they sometimes give out soybean ice cream cones as well!

We donated high protein pinole to an individual’s program to help feed the street kids in Panajachel affected by hurricane Stan. Every Saturday, with the help of volunteers, Kira loads pots of food into the back of her jeep and drives to the main street in town and feeds the kids on the street. Many of these children are sent by their families in other villages to vend whatever they have to help support the families.

Plenty will continue to support relief efforts in Guatemala with whatever funding becomes available.

Read previous article on hurricane Stan relief efforts.