Felix moves for gaia: Cooking for Guatemala
Part 4
Since the last blog post, authorities decided to transform the donation center (‘centro de acopio’) at Salon Municipal d’Escuintla into a shelter (‘albergue’). Félix and his collaborators therefore moved all boxes, bottles, bags and other stored items to another camp. The medicines, which they were almost finished classifying and packing, were brought to a place where local association Volunca set up a decent pharmacy in a center managed by local authorities. “We helped to transfer all what was inside the Salon Municipal while trying to help organizing the basics of the pharmacy, such as shelve disposition and medicine storage. This wasn’t an easy task to manage, I have to say, since a mix of locals, military and volunteers were involved”, Félix explains.
Thanks to some contacts and a lot of patience, Félix’s team succeeded to take some supplies from the acopio with the aim of giving it to people who need help but are unable to gain access to the acopio. “It’s all really bureaucratic. Managers of the acopio are strict regarding whom they give supplies to. People need to come to the Conred local basecamp and fill in forms and obtain signatures and stamps for identification and verification, in order to be able to get food and medicines from the donation center. Conred is a good institution, they’re helping a lot, but it’s also full of bureaucrats and therefore administrative and institutional procedures, which makes it hard to give direct aid to those who need it. I’ve learned that only people who rent or own land, or who live and work on land owned by wealthy people, are able to get supplies from the acopio. Some people - such as those left homeless due to the destructive effects of the volcanic eruption, those who decided to stay together with family instead of going to the albergue or those in other irregular situations - are considered too poor, ill-fated or untrustworthy to give donations to. They are not considered the priority of relief efforts and beneficiaries of the donations. This is totally insane because these people are the ones that need it most. And even if some people find themselves in a pressing, bureaucratic situation not directly caused by the volcanic eruption, the eruption didn’t really make thing better for them. The homeless and people in extreme poverty can thus only count on family and community. Also, some are not even aware of the location of the donation center. At the same time, there’s piles of water and food in the donations center left undistributed; some food even gets thrown away…”
In addition, some people live too far away from donation centers. Some live very close to the volcano, only accessible by a road suffering from landslide. “They have to walk between villages”, Félix explains. “It took us 2,5 hours to drive a distance that was supposed to take us half an hour. Some villages are completely unaccessible. Thanks to the volunteer shuttle, we brought many supplies such as medicines, water, food and first aid kits from the acopio to the hostel we are staying. We managed to find a pick up truck and a driver to drive to a barely accessible village a couple of kilometers away. On the way, we met six army trucks with supplies that were heading to the same location. We dropped the supplies at a drop-off point at the entrance of a road that leads to the village of Sangre Cristo, which is more or less 5 km from Yepocapa, the regional capital. We couldn’t really go further down the road and realized the road would be completely impassable in case of rainfall. The cops in the army trucks had announced the arrival of supplies. People from Sangre Cristo were lined up waiting to receive supplies and seemed to be truly thankful when we distributed what we brought for them.”
“When we drove back to the local main town Yepocapa after delivering supplies at Sangre Cristo, we noticed that while the military who control and organize the acopio were stocking the acopio with new donations, a bunch of villagers were watching closely what the military were doing. It’s sad and ironic, since some of these spectators won’t even be granted access to the donations.”
Félix stresses that what he’s doing with the team involves hours of waiting for drivers, waiting to get permission to borrow vehicles, being stuck in traffic for ages, and switching between three different languages with the help of many locals, backpackers and associations. It’s not easy, but he continues trying to help where possible and, while doing so, learns about the way in which aid efforts are currently structured and how they could potentially be improved.
Stay tuned to read more about Félix’s whereabouts and follow @felixcooksforguatemala on Instagram for more updates!
