Friday, 4th June. It’s just under a week after Tropical Storm Agatha hit Guatemala. The roads between here (Malacatan) and Antigua have re-opened, and it’s time to make the trip back home. But despite all the stories that I have heard and the updates from friends and other organizations, I am not prepared for what I am about to witness. Although I have lived more than two and a half years here in Guatemala, I have never yet experienced first-hand the destruction and devastation of a natural disaster such as this. In a country where the infrastructure and services are already inadequate, Agatha took things from bad to worse in the space of 24 hours…

The first named storm of the 2010 Pacific hurricane season, Agatha bought 60-yr record rainfalls across Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. In Malacatan, I had watched the river rise and rise with the unrelenting rain, reaching up to the ruins of the old bridge that had been destroyed in 2005 when Hurricane Stan hit. Now as I drive back, I am awestruck by the power that those waters carried. It is a road that I have travelled many times, and yet this time so much of the landscape is unfamiliar. Entire trees and boulders half the size of my car lay scattered where they were left as the waters that carried them there receded. The river runs alongside and criss-crosses the road for a large part of the journey, and for more than 40% of it, it has completely changed course. Where previously I would look out onto a landscape of green vegetation and trees, I now watch a completely different view slip by: it is grey and brown – like a riverbed that has almost dried up – strewn with rocks and driftwood.

As I near Antigua, the road leaves the river and turns north-east, climbing into the rich and fertile volcanic foothills. As we start to climb, the awe and wonder that I had previously felt looking at the power of the river is replaced by another feeling. My stomach churns, and a feeling of dread overwhelms me. As we pass through the first mudslide, I am lost for words. Bulldozers have carved out a path to re-open the road, but on either side the mounds of earth still sit. In some places, it is higher than the car and the sheer quantity of mud and earth is tremendous. The second slide that we see comes out of nowhere, a 30m wide tract of bare earth that cuts through the thick vegetation and across the road. As we drive slowly past, I see the tops of coffee trees just barely sticking through the mud, the tops of their branches waving weakly like a drowning swimmer trying to signal to the lifeguard. Drowning…it is how I am feeling right now.
It is when we reach the third mudslide that my heart turns heavy, and my throat constricts. Here, it is no longer trees but the tops of houses that can be seen protruding through the mud. The reality hits home: it is not just the loss of possessions, the damage to roads and agriculture. What I am seeing is the loss of lives. Real and raw, right here in front of my eyes.
We pass five mudslides in total on the road back to Antigua – a journey that normally takes about 3.5 hours taking us over 7. I have seen landslides before, but never anything like this. The sheer quantity of mud is overwhelming; a slow, inexorable tide silently reaching its muddy fingers out across the landscape. Something about it feels almost sinister.
On the worst day of the storm, I had called home to ask my landlord if everything was okay. He had assured me that all was fine, that everything was “tranquillo”. However tonight, as I finally approach my house the headlights of the car flicker again over an unfamiliar landscape on what should be the very familiar back road behind where we live. I stare out into the night. The greenhouses beside our block are almost destroyed: nothing but dirty white plastic and mud. The side road that we normally use is impassable, making us go around and come in from the other end. We go around and drive down to our gate, seeing as we do that there no more than 10 meters from the entrance, the last tendrils of mud from the landslide have exhausted themselves on our doorstep. Shocked, I wonder how it is that I was told that here “no pasó nada” (nothing happened). And then I see the cultural difference: for me, having a mudslide come this close to my house is a big deal. For the people here, almost doesn’t count. ‘Almosts’ and near-misses are just too common here to get excited about.
The next day, we went to visit a few farms about a kilometer down from our house. We wandered through fields of mud, in some places walking almost 2 meters above where the path had previously been, passing cars and machinery that I don’t know will ever come back out again. As we waded knee-deep through mud and water, the seriousness of the situation was driven home again. It is not just the mud – of which there is so much that I can’t even imagine how to start to remove it. It is what happens after. With damaged infrastructure and no sanitary facilities, the risk of disease outbreak sits poised, ready to strike – placing under even more pressure an already inadequate public service system.
Cuidad Vieja – the town that adjoins Antigua – was one of the hardest hit in this area. In the supermarket, I meet friends who have been working for the last week excavating homes, and digging out the deceased. It is not easy work: mentally or physically.


With this event marking the beginning of the wet season here, I believe that we will face a year that is a stark contrast to the last. Whereas 2009 saw record-breaking droughts across Guatemala, I personally believe that this year we will see more rain, more flooding, more devastation at the opposite end of the spectrum. Even as I write these words, I pray that my predictions are wrong. Seeing the destruction and devastation is a bitter reminder of the reason that Seres is here doing this work. These communities need our help: to understand what they face in the coming years, and to become stronger, more resilient and better equipped to deal with these disasters.

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