I eventually made it to Mirogane, the main city in the department, which had also been severely affected by both Gustav and Hanna. Here things got interesting. As I made my way along Route Nationale #2, I began noticing trucks full of produce lined up on the side of the road. They were carrying avocados, bananas, and other fresh produce from the South and Grand Anse to be sold in the markets of Port-au-Prince. However, they would not make it to those markets because the bridge on the highway was 1.5 meters?or nearly five feet?under water. The women who had purchased the merchandise in order to resell it, were clearly distraught as the fruits and vegetables had already begun to rot.

As I neared the bridge, or where the bridge should have been, Haitian police officers were posted to prevent vehicles from attempting to cross. A few days earlier, the Haitian government formally closed the highway.

Already in the days following the closing of the road, a group of entrepreneurs had organized alternative transportation for foot passengers and small loads. A shuttle-ferry system had been established. For 15 Haitian gourdes—roughly 38 cents—a man carries you on his back or shoulders and puts you in a "chario," a small wooden boat. Once full, two or three men push the boat across the 229-foot stretch of water to the other side, where for another 15 gourdes, another man takes you on his shoulders to dry land. Here I was able to get on public transport into Port-au-Prince.

Despite this alternative transportation, the road closure combined with the extensive damage caused by the storms will have a great impact on the area. The inability of aid groups to use the road means that help will be slow to reach the isolated areas most affected by the storms. There are great public health risks and food security issues that will need to be addressed in the coming days, weeks, and months and access to the area is critical.

Almost one week after Tropical Storm Hanna descended on Haiti, getting food and supplies to Gonaïves has been virtually impossible. The main road from Port-au-Prince was cut when a bridge collapsed just outside of St. Marc, and the road is cut off from the north, as the bridge in the neighboring town of Ennery was washed away. The alternative route through the Central Plateau proved difficult for large trucks carrying supplies, and rough waters have delayed planned shipments of humanitarian aid via boat.

According to UN estimates, 60,000 people are said to be in temporary shelters. "The conditions of those in shelters are horrific," says Rowley. "There is no food, water, cooking materials, basic toiletries or medical supplies, sleeping mats, or latrines. People are in desperate need of anything and everything. Many people have injuries to their feet, he adds, because they are having to wade through the water without shoes.

People are fleeing the town by the hundreds—on foot, in cars, whatever way they can. Some are moving up to the small plateau to the north of Gonaïves, others are going south.

Ogè Léandre, a 45-year-old father of six, explains how he and his family barely managed to get to the shelters in time. "The waters from Tropical Storm Jeanne [2004] did not reach us, so we did not think that we needed to evacuate this time. We packed up everything off the ground and stacked it on top of tables and beds. But then the water started to rise, and it did not stop. So we decided to go to the shelter. But the water was already so high and strong that I could not hold onto one of my children, and the water swept her away. Luckily someone was there to grab her. We got to the roof of the shelter, and about an hour later watched as our entire house was washed away."

In the meantime, Hurricane Ike grazed the northern coast of Haiti early Sunday morning, bringing more rain to Gonaïves and other towns in the Valley. The rain washed out the bridge in Mirebalais, and massive flooding and deaths are being reported in the town of Cabaret, just north of Port-au-Prince.

"We cannot wait for the roads and bridges to be repaired," says Oxfam's Humanitarian Coordinator Kone Amara. "We must get supplies into Gonaïves now. We are in contact with the United Nations' peacekeeping mission here to see how we can begin delivering aid with helicopters. The World Food Program is also preparing shipments by boat once the seas have calmed."

While Oxfam continues to evaluate the damage caused by Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna in other parts of the country, the agency is scaling up its first-response efforts to Gonaïves, where it has a shipment of drinking water and relief materials ready for distribution.

Oxfam is simultaneously assessing the needs and distributing essential supplies in the department of Nippes, and we are coordinating with local authorities to provide support for six emergency shelters in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. In the hard-hit city of Gonaïves, where lack of access initially thwarted relief efforts, the agency is now supplying families with basic household items and five-gallon containers of clean water.

"We lost almost everything," he said. The floods arrived at the end of the second maize harvest. Some of the farmers were able to save a little—half, at best. The unlucky ones lost everything.

The question is commonly heard: How long has it been since something like this happened? "It was around ten years, since Hurricane Roxanne. That one flooded everything," says Alelia Ricárdez. "My children built this house a little higher to avoid the same damage happening again."

So this time she was able to help: the families of her five sons took refuge inside her new house. They lost some animals and a big part of the milpa crop, but they saved most of the furniture. "We lifted it and tied it with ropes to the roof," she said. They couldn't save the refrigerator. No time.

But the problem comes now. It's time for the second maize harvest, but the fields are flooded so the farmers can neither harvest this crop nor plant the next. Moreover, there are no seeds. Normally, farmers harvest enough to save seeds for the next season, but in Tabasco this year there aren't any.

"Right here there are fish and prawns instead." Emigrafio Domínguez from Ejido de Potreritos points at his maize field while he speaks. His farm is 300 meters away from the river, but the water arrived and covered everything. He still tries to salvage something: "I have to pick the oranges now, because the tree is dead."

To save some of the corn, he wades through water up to his knees. He gathers four or five ears and takes them to dry land. Though he managed to save his turkey, he lost his hens and watched his ducks go with the water. "The next season will be really hard."

In Ejido de Potreritos, the worries center around the crops - not knowing what will happen next season if the farmers cannot plant in November. "With a hectare and a half of maize, I had enough for the year," says Francisco Dominguez. "Not this time."

The sound of the rain woke him up. He nudged his wife, asking if she heard it too. Pregnant and tired, she told him to go back to sleep.

"When I woke up again, I opened the door and mud was everywhere. All the kids were screaming," Carlos recalled in February. "We ran from the house, with mud up to our waists."

As the Ajznels sprinted for shelter, the rain poured. Boulders tumbled. Mudslides cut through the earth. Hurricane Stan unloaded on Guatemala, reworking the landscape, and leaving some of its deepest scars on the country's small-scale coffee farms.

Many farmers, like Ajznel, lost their homes and the means to support their families. Coffee trees were infected by fungus, or buried under mud and rocks. Individual coffee farmers said the storm wiped out between 25 and 100 percent of their coffee production.

Five months after the storm, Oxfam America staffers traveled to Guatemala to assess the damage and determine what it would take to rebuild the lives of small-scale coffee farmers.

"Looking at the devastation, you realized what used to be there, that it was someone's income. Then you thought about what it would take to bring it all back," said Seth Petchers, Oxfam America's coffee program manager.

Homes buried, families displaced

Guatemala's volcanoes and rolling hills provided a perfect funnel for the rain and mud from the hurricane. Much of what was dislodged finally settled on coffee farming communities, located in the high elevations that produce quality beans.

Members of an Oxfam partner cooperative in La Unidad, a village at the base of a mountain in the Tajumulco region, found their community split down the middle by the hurricane. Two concrete bridges that had connected the village collapsed during the storm, taking some riverside homes with them.

"When it started to rain and the river swelled, we left our house knowing that something was going to happen," said Lidia Perez Chavez, 22, a member of the APECAFORM cooperative. "We only took the children and the clothes we were wearing. Afterward, we had lots of trouble. We could only eat once a day because we had so little firewood."

In San Lucas Tolimàn, a community near Lake Atitlan, Don Antonio Chavajay Ixtamer estimated that 80 percent of his land was affected. Walking through his property, he pointed to newly formed ravines, uprooted shade trees, and coffee trees buried under mud, boulders, and silt.

Ixtamer, who is the president of a coffee coop called La Voz, said he intends to replant. But it will take at least four years for the new trees to bear fruit. And while he and his family are doing the recovery work on their own land, they'll lose out on the supplemental income they would have earned doing off-season work in the city or on someone else's farm.

But at least Ixtamer has some coffee trees left to harvest. Some farmers lost everything and were forced to flee to Mexico and the United States.

Building it back

What will it take to recover? Farmers say they need to replace what was lost—and prepare for future disasters.

Oxfam America will use a $100,000 grant to help partners repair damaged land, provide technical assistance for rehabilitation projects, repair equipment, and offset the dues some coops can't pay because of reduced profits after the hurricane.

The relief work will be coordinated through partner organizations Manos Campesinas and CRECER, which will hire appropriate staff, help farmers plant coffee saplings, make and spread organic fertilizer, build drainage barriers, treat water, and repair coffee mills.

It will mean a lot of work during the next few months. But for many small-scale coffee farmers, there's simply no alternative.

"We need to replant," said Don Juan Tacaxoy Botan, president of ANMSI coop. "We don't have any other option."

Cuba is a case study in successful disaster risk reduction. At the national level, Cuba's disaster legislation, public education on disasters, meteorological research, early warning system, effective communication system for emergencies, comprehensive emergency plan, and Civil Defense structure are important resources in avoiding disaster. At the local level, high levels of literacy, developed infrastructure in rural areas and access to reliable health care are crucial for national efforts in disaster mitigation, preparation and response. Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction from Cuba presents a comprehensive overview of the Cuban model of risk reduction in disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, and explores what may be adapted from this model in other countries. The report focuses on specific recommendations for Central America.

Climate change has huge implications for security and terrorism, for diplomatic distortions, for the viability of the global economy—and ultimately for equity. It also contains enormous opportunities for developing countries. In this issue of Exchange, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ross Gelbspan writes about the impacts of climate change on the world's most vulnerable people.

Also in this issue, Oxfam America's Fast for a World Harvest turns 30; we revisit communities in Central America devastated by Hurricane Mitch five years ago; and shed light on the struggles of Peru's indigenous Quechua people.