Emergency missions

I’m still a little tired. My eyes are closed. I didn’t sleep well last night. Still not used to sleeping in a hammock.. I’m thinking about last night. The night was good. Luckily there were not so many mosquito’s, and the sky, the sky was beautiful last night. The view from my hammock couldn’t be better. I saw the clearest sky filled with millions of stars, even some shooting stars. It seemed like being in paradise. And all was so quiet, so beautiful. Except for the snoring of my neighbor that started around 2. But hey,  it could have been much worse. And the breakfast, same as yesterday, and the day before, rice with fried banana, but made with love by these two wonderful ladies of that community. It was good. What an experience, a smile appears on my face. I take a deep breath..

Suddenly I hear a man saying: “look, an alligator!” I open my eyes and across the river I see a 5 meters long alligator bathing in the sun. Wow. It is so breathtakingly beautiful, pure and untouched here!  I again realize that not many people come to this place and I feel privileged to be here. We are still on the Rio Coco. The big river in the north of Nicaragua that defines the border between Nicaragua and Honduras. I’m looking further upstream. We are approaching another village/community. It’s our next destination. I’m looking at the other guys in the boot and I see that everybody is ready. Me too. Let’s go!

This is more or less the experience I had during one of the mornings of our two emergency missions in the Alto Rio Coco zone and the Rio Coco Abajo zone in Nicaragua. Beautiful images. We were traveling by boat to visit 7 communities in each zone to get an idea about how the situation in these zones was after heavy rainfall and a hurricane came over that area. We wanted to gather information about the food security and the level of malnutrition in the area and see if there is a crisis. Together with people from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the government (MAGFOR), and the local Mayors office (Alcaldia) we held interviews in each community with at least seven households and the leader of that community. Next to that we measured the level of malnutrition of the pregnant women in each community and also that of the kids in the ages from 6 months old to 5 years old.

We were travelling by boat, because the communities are only accessible by river. There are no roads and travelling overland is impossible there. You can imagine that these communities are very deserted. Electricity is not available, water is hard to find (mostly they use rainwater and water from the river) and some scarce visitors or a radio that runs on batteries are the only ways of getting some information about the “outside world”. We slept in hammocks and brought our own food and water.

Inside the communities the images were less pretty. The hurricane and the heavy rainfall destroyed almost all the crops, some houses were severely damaged, there was mud everywhere and the people didn’t look healthy to say the least. Most kids with swollen bellies, some with yellow hair (a sign of malnutrition) and a number of kids without clothes. The adults look much older than they actually are and it is clear that the knowledge about family planning, personal hygiene and communitarian organization is very little. It seems like there are more kids than adults in the communities, the average number of pregnant women is much higher than in western countries, and there are almost no old people. After measuring the kids and pregnant women, and talking to the leaders and the households, it became clear that we can talk of a crisis in that area. There are many malnourished kids, the food security is very low and without help there will be trouble. What is the right thing to do here? Although we came to the conclusion that there is a crisis going on in the area at the moment, we also came to the conclusion that the situation in this area is not temporary but chronic. Every year it is more or less like this. That fact makes policy making a little more complicated. Does one just need to bring food now because of the crisis, or is it better to imply policy for the longer term? Or both?

After having visited all communities and having gathered all information we reported it to the Nicaraguan government. It’s on them to decide what will happen next. Hopefully they will do something..

At the moment I am in Matagalpa again. Eating good food, drinking quality coffee, sleeping in a big bed, having a nice shower every morning, watching the news on my television, using my computer to communicate with friends and family all over the world and if it gets dark outside I just simply switch on the lights. This is the life I am so used to but I sometimes think back on the two weeks I had near and on the Rio Coco. No electricity, no luxury and no communication with the rest of the world. Only the group I was with, the beautiful landscape, good conversations, being on the river doing useful work during the day, and sleeping outside in a hammock under an amazing sky during the night. Knowing what I've got I don’t think I would be able to live that life forever, but what an amazing experience it truly was!