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Hurricane Stan
Guatemala had a hurricane of its own last week. It will certainly be much longer before they recover from the consequences. The huge influx of water from tropical storm turned Stan caused landslides across the country, thousands of deaths, and rivers flooding endless acres of crops, often families' only source of income. Homes were swept away, along with the few possessions people had. Homes that withstood the force filled with sludge instead. Roads are now rivers and bridges have washed away. But the greatest problem of all has been the mudslides. My wife, my sister and I visited beautiful Lake Atitlan only a month ago and came within walking distance of the indigenous village of Panabaj . A mudslide buried its 1400 residents during their sleep last Wednesday night. Aid workers could not get to the scene until two days later. The mud was 15- 40 feet deep. There was nothing they could do. The village will never be rebuilt or recovered but instead declared a mass grave. A whole town, its own small world, gone in an instant.
New rivers formed to accommodate all the water from Hurricane Stan, sometimes directly under churches and village buildings for communal use. Photo by Mark Younger.
The scene has been similar across western and southern Guatemala . Towns we've set foot in have collapsed. Others where we visited the local market or stopped to transfer buses are fighting six feet of water carpeting the city, water which has now begun to stagnate. People we passed on these streets may never be seen again. Solola, Sacatapequez, Quetzaltenango, Chimaltenango. The names are all more familiar than they used to be.
And unfortunately, the longer I leave my ears open, the more reports I receive of the destruction. A hospital reopened by two Durham doctors in Santiago Atitlan has mud riding six feet high on its walls. Supplies are low and access impassable. Children are being admitted as patients who, once part of a family of fifteen, are now orphaned. Women search piles of recovered clothes for any sign or scrap from their loved ones. A Peace Corps friend of mine helping near Antigua watched bodies float away in the flood. He spent this week digging, digging through layers and layers of mud to make homes usable once more. Digging for signs of life or just memories. We went to do the same last weekend.
Mudslide destruction from Hurricane Stan. Photo by Mark Younger.
And yet only a few weeks ago we were celebrating. We had reason to be joyful because Guatemala had reached its anniversary of independence. For one day, people came out of their shells, renewed from the exhaustion and drain of life. Blue and white flew proudly from every building post. Masses arrived early in the morning to pack Cotzal's tiny square while sheets of butcher paper listing the day's events flapped from the town's two main intersections . We amused ourselves with events like band competitions and bike races. Women carried baskets full of arroz con leche (hot rice-milk drink) and chuchitos (tamales wrapped in banana leaves) for sale. Teenagers played soccer while adults elected the town's Miss Independencia in keeping with Guatemalan holiday tradition. The music of drums and xylophones filled the streets. Through the rain men told stories from the past, and old women sang songs. We danced, laughed, and expressed our gratitude for freedom. One barefoot grandmother took center stage to perform the traditional Mayan marimba dance with a young dance partner of no more than 18. The crowd roared with applause to show its appreciation. All the people were united, and while the air of playfulness may have been partially alcohol-induced, we had a reason to celebrate together. Night fell, and the fireworks started. Ashley and I returned home to watch them from the roof, several accidentally shooting off sideways towards distant hilltops. We could hear laughter and dancing the rest of the night coming from the town square.
Pride for Guatemalan Independence in Cotzal. Photo by Mark Younger.
Memories of the fiesta lingered on for several weeks as kids put their instruments back into storage but continued to tap the drumbeat of Rocky on buildings and boulders. Balloons began losing their bulge but still hung high from unreachable branches and lampposts. Then rumors of a hurricane spread through the country. With the U.S. still reeling from the Hurricane Katrina disaster, few international news sources picked up on developing Stan. Perhaps the earthquake in South Asia made for a bolder headline with its monstrous death count. Maybe the world was just tired of hearing about another hurricane, and news watchers preferred instead to debate the newly elected Supreme Court justices. But the news hung like a weight in everyone's chest here in rural Cotzal. Celebration was a feeling of yesterday. The people began to remember what it feels like to suffer. Habitual joking, which helps Cotzalenos to forget the sorrow of poverty and war, dulled to a whisper. Soccer games that would determine Guatemala 's qualification for the 2006 World Cup took a temporary backseat. The air grew more serious, the calm before the storm, and we stood waiting. The chaos surrounded Ixil country but never engulfed us. The storm passed over our hamlet and nuzzled into the Cuchumantanes mountains while we remained glued to television coverage between frequent power outages. Our very own department of Quiche declared a state of emergency that week along with seven others. Our neighbors are still suffering, people I have known only for the short time I have been here and yet feel strangely connected to in this time of need.
Just after U.S. vulnerability was exposed by its lack of response to Katrina, Guatemalans were asked to learn from those lessons in an exercise of their own. Whatever the States claim as a bad reaction time, I can guarantee that it was worse here. A Guatemalan law halts the search for trapped victims after 72 hours for fear of infection from everything decomposing under the mud. Several towns remained unreachable for 48 of those 72 hours. Dogs that were promised to sniff through the wreckage were never delivered. Villages once part of the vast route network for camioneta buses and pedestrian paths became islands in a sea of mud, with their residents prohibited from either coming or going. Their only hope was the helicopters lent by the U.S. to transport aid and rescue stranded victims.
It is easy to ask during desperate times why it had to happen. What's the point? Why do the poor always get hit the hardest? Does nature have to exploit their vulnerability? Haven't Guatemalans suffered enough? You can see it in their faces, in the way they sit quietly while daredevil bus drivers fly down mountain roads at death-defying speeds, passengers' heads bobbing back and forth in humble acceptance because this is their only form of transportation. Their hands are tired. They work the fields, fields which are no longer. A year's salary washed away. Only time can heal wounds like these. Only time can answer the questions, or provide enough space to forget -- space this country was just beginning to get used to after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
I watched an interview just the other day before the majority of the population had become fully conscious of the extent of the damage. A reporter asked passersby in the capital city, "Do you believe this hurricane was simply an act of nature or a message sent by God?" The clips showed near unanimous responses, sometimes without much thought and sometimes in all seriousness, that the destruction was a divine punishment against the people. 3.5 million were affected in Guatemala alone, many more when estimates include the Chiapas region, Mexico and El Salvador . I thought to myself, "Do they really believe this is another Sodom and Gomorrah ?" It is truly remarkable to watch the guilt surface during a time of need. Guilt at what could have been or should have been. For some, guilt from the past answers the question "Why me?" For others, amidst all the questions and confusion, the challenge is avoiding despair. Perhaps there is no reason at all why this happened here and now. It just did, like it rains one day and not the next.
However, the most impressive surprise of all has been the lack of despair. The response by Guatemalans to the crisis has provided a grand glimpse of hope. A massive nation-wide relief campaign is now underway. "Purified water, clothes, and medicines" -- the emergency needs of the hour constantly flash across television screens as kids and adults peer in from the street. Several channels have dedicated themselves for over a week now to exclusively covering the floods 24/7. Our little town of a couple thousand blares these same needs from rented loudspeakers all afternoon long as Red Cross volunteers collect and sort through piles of donations. The homeless pack school buildings and churches volunteered as temporary shelters. Fellow coworkers at Agros felt empowered to act and took up an offering last week, managing to pull 700 Quetzales from already thin pockets.
Perhaps this comes from a nation accustomed to suffering and pain. A nation tired of waiting for the end of a brutal 36-year civil war. Or maybe Guatemalans know better than I how interdependent all of humanity really is. Men who found themselves on solid ground after the mudslides hit neighboring villages, gathered their hoes and strength and began to dig with ready determination. Their courage re-raised the flag of Guatemala during a desperate hour and gave the people another reason to celebrate independence and claim pride in their rebounding nation. Perhaps that's the most we can do too -- in Southeast Asia, in New Orleans , in Iraq , in underserved areas of the world. Try to remember that some are looking at death square in the face. To some, it is a reality this very minute. And then awaken our hands to action, as best we can for the sake of those who can't.
Hoping we could do something, really anything given our proximity to the victims, Ashley and I called the volunteer fire department to ask if there was any way we could contribute. They gave few specifics, just told us to come to Santiago Atitlan and ask at the municipal building how we could help. It was entirely a last minute decision, and we left at 4:00 the next morning. We arrived in Panajachel by noon , three buses and one pickup later. The road was still in poor condition, but taking the crumbling slope down to Panajachel and then a boat across was still the only way into Santiago Atitlan. You could tell no one had been able to access any of those lakeside villages for some time. Parts of the road had caved away, leaving less than a lane. Dirt lined both sides, piled four to five feet high, mixed with boulders and trees that had stood their ground until heavy machinery arrived. The bridge was no longer, but a temporary one had just been constructed. About twelve guys worked hard on it through the lunch hour, and another ten women and children scattered the hillside cutting free wood for their cooking stoves. Whole mountainsides above us had eroded down the hill. The sidewalk where Kelly, Ash and I had ridden our bikes just a month ago was nonexistent. Most of the boat docks had either submerged or washed away, but Lake Atitlan was even more beautiful than I remembered it.
We made it across the lake by 2:00 and found the municipal building in Santiago Atitlan. The market was in full swing. Microphones announced the relief effort, and potable water and vaccinations were being distributed without much order to the locals and refugees crowding the square. Almost instantaneously, we were motioned over and roped into the massive water distribution effort. I was controlling a mini fire hose, Ashley filling plastic jugs. A giant Canadian flag marked the inflated tent that held our bags and highlighted the emergency response organization that had set up the equipment (www.dmgf.org). Long lines of women snaked through the square the rest of the afternoon and evening while onlookers stood on the park structure to watch. Women were pushing each other from behind hoping to get selected sooner. It was easy to see how New Orleans could have gotten so out of hand. There was an urgency in the victims' eyes that Saturday more than on Sunday. They still had their lake water, but with all the rains of Hurricane Stan, the mudslides that buried people, houses, crops and animals, the situation was beginning to worsen as everything was already decomposing and much of the disease washing into the rivers and lake. The threat of cholera was rampant, and we were vaccinating for tetanus. Stray dogs, famished and homeless, had started digging up the bodies, so there was a concurrent effort to poison them before they started biting children or passing along disease.
Crowds of hurricane victims and refugees fill the square of Santiago Atitlan. Photo by Mark Younger.
Exhausted, Ashley and I walked to Panabaj the next morning at the break of dawn to remember the reasons we had come. The small town of Panabaj made international news because its residents and all their possessions were buried on the night when a giant mudslide came crashing down. Our footsteps sounded extraordinarily loud as they echoed through the silence. Silence was all that was left in that ghost town. Houses and stores had mud at least halfway up the walls, inside and out. Most roofs had been torn off by the fast flowing water. Forests were turned to barren fields, and you could still see broken vegetation, clothes, and other household items still scattered across the mud. The Guatemalan version of caution tape marked all the danger zones that we weren't allowed to enter, and lime covered every doorstep. Women who passed through covered their mouths to avoid breathing in the air. We saw several dead dogs, cold and stiffened, but people had more important things to do than move them.
The main center of Panabaj roped off for safety reasons. Photo by Mark Younger.
A house caught in the path of a Panabaj mudslide. Photo by Mark Younger.
The rest of Sunday we dedicated to vaccinations. I filled syringes with refrigerated tetanus while Ashley gave the intermuscular injections. I was also assigned the role of odd-job man, changing the oil on the generator, connecting the new six-faucet distributor, pumping and filtering and filling. Injections stopped after 1:00 , after which we were both doing water. We also medivacked a girl to the capital, found more kids who needed immediate surgeries, and distributed $40,000 in medicines.
Organized lines of women wait for potable water on Sunday. Photo by Mark Younger.
Without knowing the physical reality of it all, it is too easy for me to distance myself from natural disasters that seem far away. But finding myself in the midst of one, the painful stories were no longer just coming from news reports. The whole trip painted a very real picture of destruction and suffering, one that goes beyond the thirty-second soundbites of attention-grabbing headlines. We were affected, and we will remember it.
-- Mark Younger, October 2005
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