BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[nicaragua]](/editions/1998/11/15/mitch1_130x167.jpg)
Donald Aguilera of Rodeo Grande, Nicaragua, loads water for his village. The water came from Matthew 25: Ministeries in Loveland.
(Gary Landers photo)
| ZOOM |
|
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Donald Aguilera has the rice, beans, water and oil that the residents of his village, Rodeo Grande, desperately need.
Now all he has to do is get there.
In a country with more than 500 communities still stranded because of Hurricane Mitch, planning such a trip is a frustrating and often agonizing process. Nicaragua had only five helicopters when the tragedy struck, and even an influx of foreign helicopters cannot meet the need.
Residents in remote areas such as Rodeo Grande are working to repair roads, but the work is by hand and therefore painstakingly slow. All the obstacles mean continued hunger and perhaps worse for the stranded, even with massive aid pouring in.
"There are people (here) who lost everything when the waters came and they're living on what other people give them," Mr. Aguilera said Saturday as he prepared to move 6,500 pounds of supplies by truck, boat, donkey and foot. "The ones who feel it the most are the children, because we can't get things like sugar and milk, things that are basic for children."
The difficulties come in the midst of an unprecedented outpouring from world governments, private agencies and individuals to help the hundreds of thousands affected by Mitch. Food, medicine, clothing and water continue to land daily at Managua's International Airport, with one more planeload Saturday from the Cincinnati area.
![[nicaragua]](/editions/1998/11/15/mitch2_180x123.jpg)
Residents of Posoltega, Nicaragua, wait outside city hall for aid and housing.
(Gary Landers photo)
| ZOOM |
|
U.S. aid officials estimate that 1,200 metric tons of food will arrive in Nicaragua by air from the U.S. government and more than 10,000 metric tons by boat. That figure does not include private donations, or the aid from other countries now crowding the airport runways.
The Nicaraguan government emergency relief committee is the primary distributor of aid. They in turn put the country's Roman Catholic bishops in charge of passing out the goods in the individual towns.
The decision worries some Protestant leaders, who fear their churches will not receive as much aid. Nicaragua is 85 percent Catholic.
"The bishops have no experience with (aid distribution) in the past. And I am sure they want to do a fair and equitable job, but the religious rivalries make it difficult," said Dr. Gustavo Parajon, president and founder of CEPAD, an organization of evangelical churches. "The supplies are very slow in coming and the needs are very great."
Overcoming mistrust
As in most disasters, religion and politics have come to play a role. Some in the country were angered that officials from the Catholic Church were placed in charge of the distribution, fearing that Protestants would not receive as much help. Others are fearful that towns with mayors who belong to the leftist Sandinista party will suffer because they are the national government's ideological opponents.
But the government is avoiding a repeat of the aftermath of the 1972 earthquake in Managua, when the regime of then-President Anastasio Somoza diverted substantial amounts of international aid to itself, creating a public outrage that later helped fuel a revolution.
In the current disaster, it is infrastructure damage and a lack of resources that is leaving some without relief - a fact that does nothing to salve the frustrations of workers.
"We've already distributed thousands of pounds of food and clothing all over the country as far as we can reach," said Ray Schellinger, an American Baptist missionary in Nicaragua. "We've been lobbying since this happened to get out there (to the remote areas). We've had several flights canceled. We just keep asking and asking until they let us."
Rodeo Grande illustrates the problems of delivery in a textbook fashion. A community of 1,256 nestled between two rivers, Rio Negro and Rio El Gallo, in northwestern Nicaragua, Rodeo Grande was hit hard by the rising waters of Hurricane Mitch.
Although no one was killed, at least 35 of the village's houses were swept away, along with 25 acres of trees and countless animals. The neighboring village, La Pimienta, was completely destroyed, and the residents of Rodeo Grande took up a collection for their neighbors when they learned of their misfortune.
Rodeo Grande residents also formed two emergency committees to distribute the food and chlorine they had. The community's latrines and wells overflowed, contaminating the water and raising fears of disease.
Residents took up a collection to send Mr. Aguilera to Managua to seek help. The gaunt 40-year-old, who works as a health promoter for a Christian organization called Provadenic, crossed five rivers and walked 11 miles through mud and rocks just to reach a bus line. The trip, normally four hours, took him 13 hours. Admitting to his own hunger, he said he was compelled to act.
"We have nothing to eat. We have nothing to buy either," he said. "The basic food we eat, there's nowhere to buy it and the rivers are still high, so there's potential danger."
Busy makeshift roads
Provadenic arranged for a helicopter to transport Mr. Aguilera and the 6,500 pounds of supplies, including 184 gallons of water from Kroger, back to Rodeo Grande. But the arrangements fell through about eight hours before he was scheduled to leave. Instead, he cobbled together a route of trucks heading west and hoped a patchwork of donkeys, boats and walking would bring the food close to the victims.
In less remote areas, assistance is pouring in as fast as the makeshift roads allow. In Posoltega, where a massive landslide created Nicaragua's greatest single tragedy of the hurricane, trucks laden with supplies choke the region's roads.
The bridges on the roads collapsed at seemingly regular intervals in the storm, and trucks circumvent the gaping holes via sloping detours fashioned of mud and gravel. Construction crews are at work on nearly every span, and villagers help clear debris where they can.
Nicaraguan Vice President Enrique Bollanos arrived in Posoltega Friday bearing supplies - including some from Loveland-based Matthew 25: Ministries - for the area's stunned population. The death toll from the mudslide has risen to 2,000, with 500 people still missing.
Hundreds of people crowd Posoltega's City Hall, where the vice president spoke Friday and where the Nicaraguan flag still flies at half-mast.
Others live in tent cities hurriedly erected in neighborhoods such as La Virgen on the town's outskirts. New Italian tents stand side by side with tin-and-cardboard shacks that somehow withstood the deadly storm.
"It's an incalculable pain," said Felicita Lucilia Seledon de Cortes, mayor of the town of 17,000. "There are some people who have lost 74 relatives, others 50 - fathers, mothers, grandparents."
Supplies brought to Nicaragua on Thursday through Matthew 25 need to be inventoried so agencies can assess which areas need which supplies before they start transporting them, the Rev. Wendell Mettey said. Some had been ready to go out Friday, but two helicopters promised them were sent elsewhere.
Meanwhile, four-wheel-drive trucks act as scouts to find out which roads are passable for the bigger supply trucks.
"We recognize that there is a problem with the distribution, but we feel it is imperative that we keep the flow of supplies going so when the roads do open, we're able to get it out as soon as possible," the Rev. Mettey said.
It's also important to stockpile the medicine, as disease is bound to begin spreading because water supplies were contaminated by dead animals.
Iraqi crisis interferes
The cargo plane arriving from Dayton on Wednesday dumped supplies that were distributed almost immediately, he said. Adding to their problems, though, one Air Force cargo plane to be used for the next trip was pulled because of the Iraqi crisis.
It is in Posoltega that hundreds of bodies came to rest after tumbling several miles through rushing mud. The mud that buried most of the nearby houses is pockmarked with the spots where emergency crews burned the bodies they found. Jose Ramon Acevedo went looking in the Posoltega neighborhood of Via Sandino for some of the 20 relatives he lost in the landslide.
"I was trying to recognize my relatives, but I couldn't because they were all white as paper, white, white," Mr. Acevedo said. "It was impossible to recognize any of them."
Posoltegans were encouraged last week when farmers found a 10-month-old boy playing in the deadly mud, six days after the landslide. They plan to adopt him and have christened him Moses.
Relief trucks, doctors and television crews now crowd the streets of Posoltega, and it will be a long time before things return to normal. As relatives grieve, others in the country remain struck by the numbing toll.
"When we heard about six people dying, we thought it was a tragedy," Mr. Schellinger said. "And suddenly we started getting these incredible reports about what happened in Posoltega and what happened in Wiwili, where 500 people died. . . . Suddenly numbers don't make sense anymore, but that's the only way people define anything anymore.
![[nicaragua]](/editions/1998/11/15/mitch1_429x550.jpg)
![[map]](/editions/1998/11/15/reliefmap_150x169.gif)
![[nicaragua]](/editions/1998/11/15/mitch2_600x411.jpg)