Three people died (including a four-year-old boy, his 14-year-old brother, and their father) and 80 people have taken shelter in the church in the city of Berlin. At the temporary shelter there is a pressing need for drinking water, dry and clean clothes, blankets, personal hygiene kits, mattresses, and medicine. As a first response to this local emergency, Oxfam directed a $12,000 to its partner organizations to provide clothing and hygiene kits, as well as water and sanitations equipment such as 20-liter water tanks for each family to store clean water.

Forecasts call for more heavy rains in the coming days. Oxfam’s partner organizations continue to evacuate communities at risk.

Each year people who live in conditions of poverty confront emergency situations. Because they lack resources, they are forced to construct their homes of weak materials in precarious places, where lands are cheap or abandoned. This makes them more vulnerable to heavy rains.

Oxfam works with organizations to prepare these communities to confront disasters and mitigate the damage they cause. In group training sessions they draw risk maps, form early warning, emergency, and first aid committees, and identify buildings in safer areas that can function as shelters. Once organized and trained, the communities can confront an eventual emergency in a coordinated fashion. Additionally, when organized and trained, these communities are more empowered to demand their rights and do advocacy work with national organizations to achieve changes in the current civil defense law, which gives communities a limited role.

"One part was washed out by the landslides," cooperative member Lucas Izapo told us. "Before Stan, the land was thick with coffee plants, everything was covered with coffee plants. When the landslide came, it took the coffee bushes with it. The hill was left bald, and covered in rock.

"Now I am fixing up my land, little by little. But it's not going to take a year to fix it, it'll take three, four, or more years before this part is back to normal. Because it isn't easy to build walls. This year I planted living fences with Yucca and Bower Vine. And little by little I am going to make a stone wall, to protect the coffee from the rain that falls [each winter]."

The cooperative was able to support its members with the donation of new coffee plants to replace the older ones, organic fertilizer, and $62 for each member. They needed to make this investment to care for the plants they still had left.

They cooperative also repaired the channel that drains the coffee washing stations. This was essential to renew their fair trade certification; without this certification their income would drop even more.

Like other places in Guatemala, farmers in Solola lost much of their corn. Lucas said it has been difficult to feed his family of 10.

"I had to work even harder to sustain us, because I didn't have my harvest which was lost the year before. I lost 160 to 200 pounds from that corn harvest. So I had to plant tomato and onion and sell it to buy the corn that I used to grow for myself. Little by little I was able to buy the corn—100 pounds, another 100 pounds—because I grew these other crops."

Recovering the coffee crop is not a quick endeavor. In the majority of cases it will be three or four years until the harvest is at its normal level. And cleaning up the destroyed plots of land also takes time. It is an additional task that the coffee growers had to undertake in the moments when they weren't tending to the crops spared by the storm.

The first cooperative we visited was ASUVIM, in the province of Quetzaltenango, where we spoke with the president of the cooperative, Daniel Balux. The principle problem this cooperative faced was that nearly 30 percent of its harvest was affected by black bean, a deformation of the coffee bean that cannot be seen when the coffee is harvested, but only once it is dried. It changes the color and the taste of the coffee, disqualifying it from the gourmet and fair trade markets.

Can you tell us about the black bean problem?

Actually, we detected it here at the mill. We saw that we had black beans, but we didn't think it was so extensive, we thought it was just the first beans. But as we continued with the harvest it was the same. It was the whole harvest. The coffee looked good as parchment coffee but if we look at them all—the ones with a different color, they are black beans. We can't say that our members brought in bad coffee, because the cherries looked good, they didn't even look a little rotten or anything like that. The coffee was good. You can't say to the people, look, bring us better coffee or chose it better—[but] of course when they cup this coffee the cuppers will say it is green coffee, coffee that didn't reach its full maturity. So the aid for the black bean was something necessary [to compensate for the low price]. So, what did we do after all this? Well, thanks to the help that came from you, at least the members got their normal price. At least we could say to them, 'Look, the coffee was shipped at this price, but we are going to help you a little bit and we are going to pay you this much.' The people saw that at least there was an effort behind all this."

In addition to this monetary compensation that was given to the members, what other actions did ASUVIM take to overcome the crisis?

Here 60 percent of what people earn comes from coffee. If there are problems with the coffee, there are problems in the families. Either there is little schooling, or people are unable to complete projects they had planned or there isn't much food. Here in ASUVIM we also helped out with corn. We gave each member 800 pounds of corn. Part of it we donated, the other part the members had to buy. Each family of six consumes about 1,600 pounds of corn per year. [They lost 80 percent of the harvest.] What happened with the 20 percent that they were left with? They ate it in January, maybe into February, but by March they had to buy corn. Then the problem is that when there is high demand for corn, the price rises. So we helped them with this, with 800 pounds. We think it's 50 percent of the corn they eat, we could now say that at least they had corn to eat.

The other damage we suffered as an organization is related to the landslide here next to the patio where we sun dry the coffee. With the rain, little by little, we were losing more of it. So we were faced with an emergency. Either we did something or our patio would collapse. And the more time that passed, the worse it was. So we received aid from Oxfam America because the construction is big. But it was necessary because if we lose the patio, it'd be an additional expense.. We are still constructing, but we are making the wall. We aren't doing something that is simply going to fall apart next year and then we would have to invest in it all over again. We want to invest, to spend and if that means chipping in ourselves, we do it.

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."

From flooding in Haiti to drought in Ethiopia, water has long been central to Oxfam's work. Our emergency water systems are a hallmark of our agency. And our efforts to help communities access water for farming and fishing enable people to realize security.

But in recent decades, some extraordinary water pressures have emerged, as water resources are being swallowed up by dams, mining, and other commercial projects. The result is that, for the villages along the rivers, in the watersheds, and on the floodplains of East Asia being swamped or dried up by dams…for the indigenous people and farmers of South America whose rivers, lakes, and wells have been destroyed by mining…water is quickly becoming a major issue—and a major issue for Oxfam.

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.

In any society, developing or not, women are likely to be poorer, less educated, and less empowered than men. Oxfam recognizes women should be valued equally and enabled to reach their potential. What’s more, research has shown that when women earn income, they are more likely than men to spend it on family welfare. And when women are educated, they make decisions that benefit their families and influence their communities.

In the pages that follow, you'll read about how Oxfam is targeting the laws in Mozambique and the gender violence in El Salvador that severely disadvantage women. You'll also learn how Oxfam is equipping women to mediate peace in West Africa and to grow the income of their families. In every case, when it comes to empowering women, men are an equal part of the equation. Oxfam is striving to shape societies that not only permit women to be contributors, but societies that recognize that if they don't seize upon what women can offer, they are failing to leverage one of their most valuable assets.

When's the last time a small-farm family called it quits and had to sell their land for development? Probably yesterday or the day before.

There's no coincidence here. The loss of truly fresh fruits and vegetables, grown for their taste, and the loss of farmland and small-scale farmers are two faces of the same coin. In this issue of EXCHANGE, we meet Michael Rozyne, founder and managing director of Oxfam partner Red Tomato.

Also in this issue, ethnic discrimination in Guatemala—and the Mayan defense. Plus, how community radio is engaging Senegal's youth, and the humanitarian imperative of land mine clearance in war-torn Afghanistan.