como si fuera poco

"It's like we're reliving the 7 plagues," someone commented today, and truthfully, the recent series of disasters here in Nicaragua is of a magnitude that rivals the old biblical story in Exodus.

First, as anyone who follows this blog or Nicaraguan current events knows, Hurricane Felix hit the Atlantic Coast with a vengeance in early September. The short term crisis is being handled, but thousands of people remain without homes or an independent food source to sustain them when the aid runs out, never mind resources for medicine, school, etc.

Then, of course, the rain did not stop. The government statistics say that in some parts of the country, it rained 52 days straight. (In fact, I think we've had one 24 hour period without rain in the last 2 months.) The ground became saturated, laundry became impossible to dry, the streets turned to rivers, and on the Pacific side, large portions of already planted seed was lost due to flooding. Last week, the Rio Grande in Matagalpa rose above its banks and flooded a whole section of the mountainous region's capital city, leaving a muddy mess, and hundreds more homeless people in its wake.

Then, 3 days ago, an outbreak of leptospirosis was reported in the northwestern region of the country, Chinandega. One young man died in a rural community called El Ojoche, one of the very first places I visited as part of my work here--and a place where I have friends---within 48 hours the whole region was quarantined by the health department as more than 50 potential cases were identified--mostly youth or young adult men--who were then brought to nearby hospitals, given antibiotics, etc.

Today I was up in the capital of Chinandega doing a couple of interviews for future stories I will be writing, and there was another big storm. Later I found out, through a health educator who visited Ojoche today, COMO SI FUERA POCO (as if all of this wasn't enough), that two nights ago a tornado had passed through--and took their entire harvest with it. All of their basic grains and beans for the next 6 months that had been harvested. Gone. Months and months of labor, lost in one night.

Houses, roads, harvests, forests--dessimated. Women, men, children--homeless.

What can I even say in the face of so much destruction and tragedy?

This country and its people need the support of the international community now more than ever--money, medicines, and especially seeds to replant the fertile ground of this beautiful land. But more than all of that that, they (we) need to find that place deep within where the most important seed--the seed of esperanza--still lives, despite the despair that is closing in on all sides.

Esperanza that can only come from God.