In the midst of disasters where so many people have lost so much, why does Oxfam make providing soap such a high priority?
First and foremost, it’s because washing hands with soap is such an effective way to prevent the spread of diarrheal disease–which, under the difficult conditions of camp life, can be debilitating and even fatal.
But in emergencies, people have the right not only to health and safety but also to dignity. Soap enables a family to bathe and to wear clean clothes–simple acts with the power to restore a measure of well-being.
In the Pakistan flood emergency, Oxfam has distributed hygiene materials to more than half a million people. They include towels, water-purification tablets, sanitary pads, water buckets, and–no surprise–soap.
]]>For the past ten days, Oxfam has been responding to the flooding in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas.
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Skin diseases have leapt from 260,000 to 860,000 cases, acute diarrhea has leapt from 200,000 to 610,000 cases, and acute respiratory infections have leapt from 200,000 to 670,000 cases.
The UN appeal was hastily prepared when the floods began and does not reflect current needs. Since it was launched, the number of people affected by the floods has increased from 14 million to 21 million with 10 million displaced and eight million in need of immediate assistance as the floodwaters have flowed south and inundated much of Punjab and Sindh provinces.
Oxfam warned that the two most important areas for disease prevention and treatment are the least funded. Just 30 percent of the money needed for water and sanitation and 50 percent for health have been received.
Neva Khan, head of Oxfam in Pakistan, said:
“Just in the past week, the estimated number of people affected has increased by three million. But funding levels have stayed the same. More people have gotten sick and more people have fled from the floodwaters. If we are to avert the spread of waterborne disease, then clean water, sanitation, and medical supplies are vital. It is shameful that these essentials have attracted such paltry levels of donor funding.”
So far, only 2.5 million people have been provided with clean water, which is vital to prevent the spread of water-borne disease. Lack of funds are preventing agencies from scaling up. The World Health Organization warns that if the affected population is not immediately provided with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene materials, we may see as many as six million new cases of acute diarrhea in flood-affected areas.
The current UN appeal is due to be revised in the next week and is likely to be triple the amount of the initial appeal, which stands at $459.7 million.
Although some donors have been generous, others are lagging behind. The United States leads donor countries with $185 million pledged for the crisis. The UK has contributed over $64 million to the flood appeal and Australia pledged more than $31 million. However, countries like France have contributed less than five million dollars to date. European ministers are due to discuss the crisis in Pakistan in Brussels tomorrow.
Khan continued:
“It’s essential that donors step up to the plate. The people of Pakistan are depending on them. Those who have been generous will need to be more generous still, and those who have not given their fair share must do so. The levels of funding are not commensurate with need and compare unfavorably with other crises. Even counting pledges outside the UN appeal, the aid money only works out at $40 per affected person. By contrast, after the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, commitments in the first month amounted to $570 per affected person.”
Ibrahim and her family of six are from Mardan, in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Four weeks after they were forced from their home by rising waters, they are living in a tent in an overcrowded camp with four thousand other flood survivors.
She knows they are among the lucky ones. Since the Ibrahims arrived at the camp in the town of Nowshera on 4 August, they have had a tent for shelter and access to clean water and food. But she’s worried about what the future holds for her family
“Before the floods came, life was hard but good,” says Ibrahim. “We had our own home. My husband worked as a watchman for a local company, and we had some livestock that brought us some extra money.
“Then the rains started and the river began rising. We had never seen anything like it. We got up for prayers at 5AM, and the water level was higher than we’d ever seen it before. Then it started coming into the house. By 12PM, we knew we had to leave.
“Now, even the office where my husband worked was washed away, so he has lost his job. There is nothing we can do but stay in the camp and wait. We are thankful for help, but it is very hot here all the time. We have tea and bread in the morning and curry in the evening. But at home, we all ate three times a day and we had tea 24 hours a day. At night, we only have two camp beds and some plastic mats for the eight of us.”
The Ibrahims’ story is typical of many of those affected by the floods. Some are living in government-run camps; others are making do by the side of the road.
“We can rebuild our home but it will take time,” says Ibrahim. “There’s no water or electricity, and all the rooms are filled with mud. Every day, we go to clean and to make sure no one has taken whatever has been left.
“I am scared about the winter. We think it will take two or three months at least to make our house so we can live in it again. We need to go home before winter comes. We have no winter clothing or bedding. What will we do if we have to live in a tent? We need to be back in our home.”
“These people don’t want handouts,” says Neva Khan, Oxfam’s country director in Pakistan. They want to return to their villages, rebuild their homes, and recreate their lives. Oxfam is among the agencies working to provide them not just with emergency short-term help but with the resources they will need over the long term.
In order to do this, she adds, we need much more help from supporters.
For those living in the camps, uncertainty is a constant companion. “I don’t know when we will be able to go home,” says Ibrahim.
Today, she is speaking for millions.
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On August 16, Oxfam's Qasim Berech set out from the city of Mangora in Lower Swat with a team of five people and 100,000 packets of water-purification powder. Their destination—the city of Bahrain—had been cut off from aid for two and a half weeks, so there was no time to lose.
The water-purification powder he and the team are distributing in Upper Swat is a high-tech substance that in less than half an hour can remove dirt, pollutants, bacteria, and viruses from a big bucket of water. But the method of delivering it is distinctly low-tech: walking, with a few short rides along the way.
At 9:00 AM, they headed off in a van, but after an hour and a half came to the end of the road—literally. Faced with washed-out bridges and roads, they had to unload their cargo, hire local men to help them carry it, and set out on foot—in the rain.
When the roads improved, they hired a car again; when they hit another collapsed bridge, they shouldered the cartons and began walking—over and over throughout the day.
"We're not alone in our travels," wrote Berech. "We stop and ask some men that we pass where they're from. Most have come from remote parts of the Upper Swat and have walked for at least a day. They're heading for Fatehpur to collect food being handed out by the aid agencies. For most of these people, this will be the only food they will have had for days. They're hunched over and carrying sacks of wheat flour, oil, rice, pulses, sugar, salt, and biscuits on their backs—enough to keep their families going for a week or more. There are women, too, collecting water from the river for their families. They know they shouldn't drink it. It will make their children ill, but they have no choice."
It rained throughout the day, and the steep climbs became slick with mud.
"It's difficult to keep your footing in this kind of mud. Everyone is struggling, but no one complains," he wrote. "There are frightening moments, too. Because many bridges have been completely swept away, locals have done the best they can with whatever is to hand. We cross several bridges that are just pieces of wood held together with rope. They’re pretty dangerous. I cross holding on tightly as the bridge shakes from side to side."
The team finally reached Bahrain at 4:00 PM.
"We're all tired and soaked but we know it was worth it. We manage to distribute powder sachets to nearly 3,000 households. At 30 sachets per family, that will give them clean water for 15 days." He added, " We will go back again as many times as we need to."
]]>The Layyah district is among the worst hit in Punjab. Some 364 villages are completely destroyed, displacing 300,000 individuals, according to an assessment by the Doaba Foundation, an Oxfam partner providing relief to the affected communities in the district. The district government here has established 22 relief camps for displaced people.
With an Oxfam team, I visited a camp that houses 2,600 people in the Karor sub-district. It's a well-managed camp: there are water pumps and 16 latrines, eight each for men and women. A local philanthropist provides cooked food. Two police officials keep watch at the entrance.
In and outside the camp premises, we saw all kinds of animals: buffalos, cows, goats, sheep, and camels with their little ones. People were arranging fodder for their animals and were sitting close to them. "They are very poor people to whom a loss of a hen is unbearable, and they have lost everything, including their homes," said a relief worker from the same district. Most people living in the camp do not own any land, and animals are all they have.
The Doaba Foundation is doing wonderful work in coordination with the district government and rescue agencies. They have also helped to register 937 individuals in 20 camps and have distributed 445 hygiene kits. Each kit contains:
Zubair Iqbal, the camp manager, said that the heavy rains during the last three days have created difficult health and hygiene conditions.
According to locals, faulty building practices have contributed to the damage. Nazeer Ahmed, a volunteer working in the camp, said: "Traditionally, there were 10 tributaries to the Indus River that now stand blocked, thanks to building on that land. And since there had been no floods in years, people had moved into the river bed. The damage was inevitable."
Donate to Oxfam's flood relief and recovery efforts in Pakistan.
]]>As we approach Row 1A—one of the neat lines of white tents that make up the Corail resettlement camp, two figures wave at us energetically. Marceline Philidor and her daughter Sabine are as welcoming as when I saw them last, over a month ago. Their family was among the first group of people to be moved from the Petionville Golf Club—where they faced an imminent threat of flash floods—to this site about 15 km outside Port-au-Prince.
Marceline is busy cooking some rice on a small stove, but she pulls up some plastic chairs for us under the awning in front of her tent - one of the few small patches of shade in this vast, sun-baked camp. I ask her what life has been like these last two months.
“Well, life is the pretty much the same here now as when we moved in. Not much has changed. We have our tent. We have enough water from Oxfam to drink and cook and wash. We’ve received food, too, and rice, oil, beans and flour from World Vision. We still have the latrines from Oxfam, and there are enough for everyone, although it would be nice to have our own toilet, or a toilet to share with several families, and keep them clean between us.”
Oxfam has been concerned since the Corail site was selected in April that the area is isolated and doesn’t have markets close by. I ask Marceline what they have been living on and whether they’ve been looking for work outside of the camp.
“I’ve done some work - digging the trenches for drainage here in the camp, making them deeper—so we will have a little money soon. I’ve been the one working, because I had my identification with me when they offered the work, so I signed up. My husband goes out almost every day looking for work. Sometimes he takes the tap-tap (Haitian mini-bus) that goes from here to town, and costs 15 gourdes. But we don’t have much money, so often he has to walk.”
Marceline’s husband, David Deronoil, joins us and tells about his search for work.
“I go regularly into Delmas, to all the old places I used to work before the earthquake. I was a metal worker and then a driver. Often I have to walk, so I leave here at 4:30 in the morning, and I usually arrive around 11.” He pauses. “A man shouldn’t stay at home and not work. He should be able to go out and work to support his wife and child. But there are no jobs.”
Marceline once sold goods at a market stall, and she would like to re-open her business. “But I wouldn’t start it here,” she says. “I would go to one of the markets nearby, in Bon Repos. People say they might create a new market there so people here can work. I don’t know if it’s true. We’ve been asking to have a market and a hospital and a school for the people living here in the camp.”
School is an important topic for David.
“Aside from getting work, our main priority is Sabine’s education. Education is very important. I don’t want my daughter to grow up sitting around here, not learning anything. I want her to go to school and learn. To get an education. There’s a good school in Bon Repos; I would like to take her there, but we would need money. Like before the earthquake.”
I ask David and Marceline what their thoughts are about the future. David shrugs. “I wouldn’t mind having a house here. We like it here; we don’t hate it. And we don’t want to go back to Port-au-Prince. It’s too crowded and there are no homes there. I wouldn’t mind having a home here, or even building one myself.”
He smiles, looking around his tent. For now there isn’t much around their little home—just one or two plants sheltered by the side of the tent—but it’s clear he’s picturing what it could be like.
“We would like a little place to plant trees, so that they could give us shade and we could have mangoes to eat. And some space to keep chickens. Then we could have chicken to eat. We need a real home. We need some privacy. We also need to be able to have fun sometimes, have some kind of recreation.” He laughs. “Maybe watch the world cup on TV!”
He becomes serious again. “But we don’t know if there will be homes. There are rumors that they might be moving us again. So we don’t know.”
Although Corail is designated as a temporary relocation site, nobody knows how long people like David and Marceline will live here. These families need—and have the right—to start earning a living again, to send their children to school, and to have a clear idea when they will finally have a home again. The government of Haiti, with the support of international and national organizations, has the responsibility to develop and implement a housing, resettlement, and job-creation strategy that will get people back into homes and communities, and earning incomes. This is the crucial next step to help Haitians rebuild their lives for the long term.
]]>“Things were difficult right after the earthquake, but we’re Haitian, so we have to get up and move forward,” says Marie Carole Boursiquot. “There was the community canteen, and that work really helped me; I was able to set some money to start my business back up. Now I have my own stall again. Every week I had the canteen, I would put aside some of the profits—1,000 gourdes here, 1,000 gourdes there—and I would send the girls out to buy things for my shop. I also borrowed a little money so that I could buy the rest of the stock. Now I am selling all kinds of things: rice, sugar, beans, pasta, coal…”
I ask her to show us her stock and she is happy to oblige. She shows us the beans and grains first, lined up neatly to one side, in canvas sacks. She scoops up little handfuls of each for us to inspect; kidney beans, black beans, little green beans she calls French beans, Miami beans, wheat, corn meal, and corn kernels. (The corn is for chickens, she specifies, not people.) Then she delves into a box on the floor and pulls out blue sachets of coal, little bags of washing powder, and sugar that she has wrapped in little plastic packages—two sizes: one worth 5 gourdes and one worth 10. For such a small stall, there is an impressive variety of stock.
She puts the boxes back in place and sits down. “I went all the way down to Croix Bossales to buy the stock at the market there. My brother came with me and helped me. With the canteen and now this stall, at least we can all eat. There are ten of us still living together since the earthquake, in the same shelter with a metal roof. But now we have some plastic sheeting—some from Oxfam and some that we bought—so when it rains we don’t get wet like we did before.”
We are momentarily interrupted by the arrival of a customer, a little girl of five or six years, sent to Marie Carole to buy some snacks—chips or crackers of some kind. She is a little shy around us and rushes off without waiting for her change. Marie Carole laughs and lines up the coins on the counter—the little girl will be back.
"The problem now is that this shop is not mine. I have an arrangement with the owners; they have let me set up shop outside the bottom floor [of the building behind us] because they can’t use it anymore, since the top floor collapsed in the earthquake. But the ceiling is cracked and leaks so some of my stock got wet.”
"People from Oxfam [the market support team] came to inspect the site of my old shop. They saw that it was destroyed, and they are going to provide me with a shipping container that I can use as a shop and to store my stock securely. That will be much better for my business. I will be able to buy more, and I will be able to manage my stock better then.”
I ask her what her biggest needs are now, but she is reluctant to answer. She shrugs.
“Oxfam is the only organization helping this whole community. Many things would help me, but I don’t want to ask for too many things. You can’t constantly ask for others to give and give. I am satisfied with what God gives me. But with more money or the container from Oxfam, I would be able to get on even better than now, expand my shop, sell more, and make more money to improve our shelter and to improve our life.”
“There are always needs, but as long as we are healthy, and we have two hands and two feet, we can find things to do, and we will continue living. Things will get better.”
]]>Like hundreds of thousands of other survivors, they fled the ruins of Port-au-Prince to seek shelter in the countryside, squeezing in with family and friends and relying on them for support in the weeks—and now months—after the disaster.
It’s early May, and the girls are among the 17 relatives and friends Jean Claude and Rose Marie Perard are hosting in their house in Saint Michel, a four-drive from the capital. The household numbered nine before the quake. Now, 26 people—many of them children—crowd the Perards’ small dark rooms and courtyard.
“Day by day we cope,” says Rose Marie Perard.
It’s a refrain repeated across the rugged provinces as Haitians, living in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, open their doors and share what little they have.
But here, on a sweltering afternoon in the main room of the Perards’ house, the strain for some of the family members is beginning to show and the target is NGOs, the non-governmental organizations that offered a patchwork of basic services—education, health care, agricultural support—before the quake and have now ramped up, with billions of dollars at their disposal, to help meet the needs of some of the three million people affected by the disaster. Some locals charge that the NGOs have long been in Haiti to help themselves more than they are to help the Haitians—and they question whether there are lasting benefits to the projects aid groups launch.
Oxfam’s goal is to make a durable difference, one that leaves people with the skills and knowledge to ensure their own growth and success, and that means a long-term commitment that empowers communities to meet their own needs.
Cereste Perard has been waiting, grim-faced, for his turn to talk. He’s 27 and was in Port-au-Prince when the quake hit, along with some of his siblings who were studying there. About 81 percent of Haiti’s schools are private, and many of those at the upper levels, including universities, are concentrated around the capital. Parents often send their children there for better opportunities, which means covering the added expense of room and board along with school fees—a commitment that can severely strain finances, forcing kids to drop out until their families can marshall the resources to allow them to return.
Sinking into an empty spot on the sofa, Cereste Perard offers his opinion about Haiti’s recovery.
“What we need is for us to be independent,” he says, with bitterness in his voice. “The international community is giving us orders on how to live our lives.”
Cereste is pretty clear about how he wants to live his: his goal is to go to university and study industrial engineering, like an older brother, Jean Rodney Perard, who is now working toward a medical degree.
In the long hot months ahead and it’s up to their mother, Rose Marie, to manage the crowded household on a budget stretched by borrowing and pleading with friends for help. Rose Marie collects a small monthly salary from the ministry of public health for which she works five days a week as a technologist in a lab. Her husband serves as the municipal director for Saint Michel, an appointed post.
Having jobs puts the couple in the minority among Haitians who, by some calculations, face unemployment rates as high as 70 percent. But with 26 mouths to feed and a crowd of children to help educate, the Perards’ salaries don’t stretch far.
“I buy food on credit and whenever money comes in, I pay it all back,” says Rose Marie, adding the household eats just two meals a day. And when night comes, everyone stretches out wherever there is room: some in the beds, some on the floors.
As full as this house is, it’s not the only one in Saint Michel packed tight since January. After the quake, more than 11,000 people reportedly made their way to the town and the smaller communities that surround it, and a survey conducted in a month later found that 5,000 of them were still there.
A sudden downpour hammers the metal roof of a small mill in Verrettes, a few hour’s drive from Saint Michel. The rain drowns the voices of 13 men and women sitting in the hot gloom, but their raised hands tell the story: all but one of them has been supporting people from Port-au-Prince and the rice, and all the other seeds, the farmers had hoped to plant have gone, instead, to feed the newcomers. Rony Charles has four of his wife’s relatives staying him; Pierre Riguens had five, now four—sisters and a cousin; Simadieu Descombes is hosting seven.
With planting season upon them—and no seeds to sow—the farmers are hoping they can get access to some microcredit to tide them over. Raising agricultural production levels is the first thing people in his community need, says Charles. And creating jobs for the newcomers is also near the top of the list.
While some people appear to be returning to the capital, Anouce Myrtil predicts that plenty of others will find it easier living in the countryside.
“Even if Port-au-Prince had golden streets, no one’s going to live easy in Port-au-Prince because of fear,” he says, sitting on the site of a new sugarcane mill Oxfam is helping to build in the community of Lacedras, near Saint Michel. It’s part of a range of small-scale initiatives designed to support economic development and improve agricultural output in the region—objectives that are more important than ever as Haiti struggles to overcome the devastation caused by the earthquake and rebuild itself on a stronger foundation. In a country where agriculture employs two-thirds of the workforce yet produces only 28 percent of its gross domestic product, modernizing farm work and expanding production opportunities will be crucial for Haiti’s reconstruction.
And for farmer Elcida Estinat, the chance to learn new skills and expand her earning power are vital now that she is caring for young relatives displaced by the quake. Recently, she participated in an Oxfam-supported training on beekeeping. Equipped with a modern hive, she could potentially produce six times the amount of honey that she could using traditional methods.
And every gallon of honey that Estinat harvests from her hives could fetch as much as $24 at the market. Converted into school fees, that honey is better than gold: it will help her buy a brighter future for her kids.
“I know the value of a good education,” says Estinat.
]]>With the crack of a sledgehammer on concrete, Oxfam's water and sanitation program in Delmas, Haiti, got underway.
The earth was still shuddering with aftershocks when survivors began to dig, carving out latrine trenches 10 feet long, 10 feet deep, and three feet wide through every kind of soil and pavement. Others did their part by quickly shaping platforms out of rocks and earth to support their new source of drinking water: Oxfam water bladders.
It was a race against time, and against deadly water-related bacteria like typhoid, hepatitis, and cholera that can thrive in crowded, unsanitary conditions. And it is a race that—so far, at least—we are winning. After the quake, hundreds of thousands of people had no access to toilets, and the water available wasn't fit to drink; yet, thanks to an all-out effort on the part of the displaced communities and aid agencies like Oxfam, there have been no outbreaks of waterborne disease.
But there is more to water and sanitation programs than health.
"We build latrines not only because they help prevent the spread of disease, but because they should help protect the dignity and safety of disaster survivors living in camps," says Oxfam engineer Kenny Rae, who led the first phase of Oxfam's water and sanitation effort in Delmas.
There is a special focus on the safety of women and girls, because in the chaotic aftermath of disasters, they are particularly vulnerable to harassment and assault. The structure of a latrine—like the firmness of its latches and whether its doors open toward or away from the general population of a camp—has implications for safety, so Rae and his team listened closely to the concerns of women residents.
Shower construction was another important issue. Haiti's weather is so warm that shower stalls can be open to the sky, but where they were installed within view of multi-story buildings, women in Delmas had understandable concerns about privacy—which Rae and his team quickly addressed by adding roofs.
"When it came to sanitation facilities," says Rae, "women in the camps had the first and last word."
Helping survivors recover after disasters is not as simple as doling out goods and services: it requires attention to the many facets of community well-being.
For example, working for pay can help disaster survivors meet a range of needs, both financial and psychological. Oxfam offered wages to residents to dig latrine trenches, cover them with slabs of molded concrete or plastic, and build structures of wood and plastic sheeting around them for shelter and safety.
"We ended up employing more than 300 people to build latrines in Delmas," says Rae. "Their communities benefited from the project, and their families benefited from the income."
But in some cases, the need for community-building trumped the need for money. When it came to constructing platforms for water bladders, everyone worked for free, says Rae. "They treated the work as a contribution to their communities."
Caring for Haiti's fragile environment was another key consideration for the water and sanitation team, which needed wood for construction.
"From the outset," says Rae, "we determined that we weren’t going to use local timber poles because of the impact on deforestation."
The team found a source of timber imported from the US. It was more expensive than local wood, and at first it was hard to find enough of it. But, says Rae, in a country as deforested and as vulnerable to landslides as Haiti, the environmental cost of harvesting timber is tremendous.
When Rae and his team assessed the local water and sanitation situation, they found settlements where thousands of displaced residents had gathered. But Delmas is also dotted with tiny camps and informal schools, and it took time to understand the full extent of the needs. Oxfam staff kept their eyes—and their office—open, continually updating their plans and assessments.
"We had an open-door policy," says Rae. "Pastors, school directors, and other community leaders would bring their requests and concerns to the Oxfam office on a near-daily basis, and we were almost always able to respond."
After helping create water and sanitation facilities in 21 sites, serving 40,000 people, Rae has returned home for a rest. Sort of.
"Of course, I was pleased to get back to the people I love," says Rae, "but I was torn because the needs on the ground in Haiti are so enormous."
When he goes back to Haiti, it will be to work on another key issue in the recovery: shelter. His focus will be not only the homeless in Port-au-Prince, but also the tens of thousands of rural families that are hosting relatives who fled the capital and are now living in very crowded conditions. Rae will be looking for efficient ways to build temporary housing and house extensions to reduce the stress on families.
"Shelter is—and will remain for a while—a huge, huge need," he says.
As for the water and sanitation program in Delmas, says Rae, "I'm confident that the Haitian engineers I helped to train will be able to carry it forward."
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According to Peru's Civil Defense Institute, the rains have hit 18 of the country’s 24 regions, causing suffering to more than 190,000 people and damaging more than 28,000 homes. Particularly hard hit are communities located along the major Andean rivers in Cusco and Puno in the south.
With a $100,000 grant, Oxfam is supporting its local partner, PREDES, to help 529 families living in temporary shelters in the provinces of Anta, Calca, and Urubamba.
"At the moment, we're improving the temporary shelters to ensure they have clean water and basic sanitation, and so avoid major health problems", said Oxfam’s Elizabeth Cano, who is coordinating the humanitarian response for the organization.
Work includes the installation of separate toilets for men, women, and children as well as the distribution of hygiene kits equipped with basics such as toothpaste and soap. Oxfam and PREDES are also working with civil defense committees to help communities and local authorities improve coordination to be better prepared for future natural events.
"The only thing we haven't lost is our health and our lives,” said Eufemia Araníbar, a member of the Nueva Esperanza neighborhood committee in the district of Izcuchaca. "We haven't lost our children or our husbands. Everything else we can rebuild, because we have our health", she tells us firmly.
In Cusco, on Saturday, Jan. 23, people were already looking with concern at the clouds in the sky and the swollen rivers. Persistent rain had caused the rivers to rise, particularly at their confluence points. In a matter of hours, the Vilcanota, Jatumayo and Huatanay rivers and Huacarpay Lake had overflowed.
"Since Saturday 23, we've been in a state of alert, protecting ourselves, putting sandbags along the edge of the river. But it overflowed upstream, where we didn't expect it, and the houses have collapsed,” said Urbana Huamán, a 43-year-old single mother from Anta Province, as she showed a team from Oxfam the curved shape of a nearby river and lamented the miscalculation.
While in some areas residents stayed on the alert, elsewhere they had observed a reduction in the turbulence of the river and, instead of going out to keep watch and put up barriers, they went to bed, assuming they were safe.
"During the night, the water came and caught us unaware,” said 34-year-old Eufemia Araníbar. “Some people were awake, digging ditches, but some of us were asleep. Suddenly we were woken up by shouting and whistling. When I stood up, I felt water on the floor. My shoes were already wet.”
The first thing she did was to get her children out.
"We couldn't save anything, just a few clothes,” added Araníbar. “The water took everything. It took my pigs, my guinea pigs, my chickens..." And with them she lost she lost her savings.
Since that January night, the rain has not stopped. In March, the Quesermayo, Antarhualla and Kitamayo rivers in Calca Province broke their banks. There have also been landslides and more homes have been destroyed.
]]>Now, it’s all gone—their home and their livelihoods--destroyed in floods triggered by heavy rain in the mountains of southern Peru. Across the country, the rains have affected more than 190,000 people. Eighteen of Peru’s 24 regions have been hit, including Cusco, which has experienced unprecedented amounts of rainfall.
"Suddenly we found ourselves with no house, no business,” said Salinas, as she showed an Oxfam team the plot of land on the river bank where her house used to stand and where now there is only debris.
"I didn't want to leave. I had to be carried out,” Salinas said, describing how the river water rose hip-deep in her house. She wanted to save her goods and her husband's work tools. Three days after she was evacuated, the house collapsed. Now the couple is living in the temporary shelter in a stadium, thinking about how to start over again.
María Gutiérrez, 50, from the district of Izcuchaca in Anta Province told a similar story.
"I used to be a storekeeper,” she said, using the past tense because the disaster has left her with no capital. She would buy corn, wheat, and beans, and store them in her house to sell. But all of that was washed away by the river.
"Even if I had the money, I couldn't set up my business again because I used by house for storage and now I wouldn't know where to store the goods", Gutiérrez added.
While shopkeepers wonder how they will recover their losses, a larger worry for the region may be the harvest. According to Peru's Civil Defense Institute, 21,730 hectares of crops, or more than 53,000 acres, have been destroyed and more than 130,000 acres have seen a partial loss of crops, mostly in the Cusco and Puno regions.
"Nearly 100 percent of the crops have been lost,” said Juvenal Durán, mayor of the district of Yucay in the Sacred Valley. "The farmers have lost their crops: the corn and cabbage are rotting. Agricultural insurance only covers 400 soles ($141), and there are people who rent their land, so what are they going to do when the crops fail? Yucay is dependent on agriculture. What are we going to eat? Where are we going to live? How are we going to be able to send our children to school?"
The communities in the upland regions have also been affected.
"In my community the crops are riddled with pests, late blight. What's more, as we farm on slopes, the soil is being washed away,” said Alejandro Huamán from Andahuaylillas. He’s worrying because farming is how his family makes a living.
The local authorities are aware that the focus must be on how to safeguard the next harvest.
"We've got a plan to ensure the next harvest: seeds, fertilizer, training, river defenses. In addition, we need to rebuild the bridges to improve trade and the irrigation channels,” said Gilberto Gil, a councilor in Urubamba.
At the same time, officials know that they need to think about how to help local communities adapt to unpredictable weather.
"This is going to be permanent due to climate change. We must prepare for rains and droughts. We have to address the immediate problems but also plan for the long term,” said Gil.
"One of our biggest concerns is that these disasters will increase poverty", said Elizabeth Cano, Oxfam’s humanitarian aid coordinator in Peru. "One of the main sectors that has been affected is the small-scale farming sector. Unlike the tourism sector, many small-scale farmers live in poverty, so it takes them longer to recover. We are appealing to the central government to increase support measures for this sector."
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