My reason for going to Nicaragua was Hurricane Mitch, which happened at the end of October 1998. While a lot is written and said about the destruction Mitch caused on infrastructure, and efforts are made to aleviate the human suffering, one doesn't talk much about the longterm reasons for the desaster. Why can a tropical storm cause so much damage? Why did people live so close to the riverbanks? Why are there so many landslides?
There is an altogether other aspect to this desaster,
which requires actions that go far beyond any short-term, 6-months emergency
relief. Actions, which don't just focus on the short-term needs of the
human beings living in the affected area. But actions that address the
long-term environmental changes and destructions we have wrought onto the
land in Centralamerica over the last centuries.
Read Eric Holt's Article
Crisis
or Sustainability? Central America's choices for recovery in the aftermath
of Hurricane Mitch
and Mike Lanchin's arictle
Ecological
Plots survive Mitch
on the Oxfam GB/I Nicaragua site at:
www.oxfam.org.ni/mitch/english/index.htm
**
My pictures of the seeds distribution on 16-Dec-98 in nothern Nicaragua and some photos of the situation in downtown Tegucigalpa on 24-Dec-98:
