When you visit Panabaj, there is nothing to tell you that you are standing on a mass grave. All you see is half a square mile of flattened, dried mud, with the occasional tree still standing. Yet under your feet lie the bodies of three or four hundred people who were buried alive in the middle of the night two months ago.
This village, near the shore of Guatemala’s spectacular, volcano-fringed Lake Atitlán, was pulverised by the mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan on October 4. Surreal sights remain, such as a basketball hoop in a school playground that is now only shoulder-high because of the several feet of mud that swamped the village on that desperate night. By the lake shore at Jaibilito, a house sits at a 45-degree angle, straddling a chasm that used to be a little stream.
Most inhabitants of these lakeside villages had no idea that theirs was a dangerous place to live. To the casual visitor, the three volcanoes around the lake look the most menacing natural features. In fact, though, it was the innocent-looking hillsides behind the villages that funnelled the hurricane’s devastating rain towards them. Streams turned into rivers and rivers into torrents, bringing tons of mud down with them.
The villagers had no warning and very little time to escape. The mudslides at Panabaj came hurtling down in the early hours of the morning. A few, who happened to be awake, heard the sound of tumbling boulders and managed to run. The rest were probably still asleep when the mud completely submerged their houses. Only 77 corpses were recovered in the first few days, after which the rescuers gave up. In Panabaj alone more than 300 people are still missing, presumed buried.
The Atitlán area bore the brunt of Hurricane Stan but other parts of Guatemala were hit too, particularly the Pacific coast. The human toll is terrible: more than 1,500 dead, 130,000 forced to abandon their homes, nearly two million acres of land damaged and a third of Guatemala’s population — 3.5 million people — affected in one way or another. Now the World Food Programme says that 285,000 Guatemalans are at risk of going hungry over the next six months, and that only a third of the $14.1 million food aid that the country requested has been received.
Why? Because of a sorry accident of timing. Hurricane Stan hit in the same year as the Asian tsunami, which had already used up most of the world’s compassion. Stan caught the world’s attention for a day or two in early October but was soon eclipsed by the Pakistan earthquake, then Hurricane Wilma, which damaged a holiday resort — Cancún — that was much closer to home for most Americans.
Go to the affected villages, though, and you find hundreds still living in shelters. In Panajachel, normally the most touristy of the lakeside villages, the shops selling woven fabrics are empty but the school is full: it has been commandeered as a shelter for 165 people from 23 homeless families. Three extended families share each classroom; the playground is strewn with washing. When the school term resumes next month, they will have to move out. But where will they go?
Visiting a disaster zone makes you realise how fickle are our news appetites. Like a searchlight that settles for a moment on a suspicious object and then moves on, we in the media spot a story but rarely stay around for long enough to follow it up. Something else takes its place within days.
These poor folk, their crops destroyed and their livelihoods lost, who have nowhere to live and little to eat, are no longer interesting to the rest of the world. Nor, probably, are the victims of the Pakistan earthquake. But they can’t be left to starve.
So what can we do? Well, we could spread a little of our Christmas cheer to Guatemala, for a start. Aid agencies such as Plan International and CARE are trying to help these people to rebuild their lives and would welcome donations.
Most of all, though, we must not stop going there. Tourism is Guatemala’s biggest industry, and the hurricane’s legacy would be cruelly redoubled if there were a sudden fall-off in visitor numbers.
The country is still gorgeous — even Lake Atitlán is as breathtakingly beautiful as it ever was. The tourist infrastructure has barely been affected, and determined travellers who refuse to cancel their trips are rewarded with gratitude and friendship.
So, if you are planning next year’s holiday and want to visit a country brimful of colour, culture, colonial architecture and natural glory, you couldn’t do better than Guatemala. You would also be doing good, for its poor, noble people need you badly.
No Santa? I'm so de-stressed
There are many things I miss about home — and others I don’t, not least the cold and wet. But one of the biggest boons of being away at this time of year is to be released from the burden of preparing for Christmas.
It is sad that a season we all adored as children and up to which my daughters still count the days should fill us adults (particularly mothers) with such dread. But there is so much to do in advance, and so little time to do it. Evenings are packed with unavoidable Christmas parties, which become a chore rather than a pleasure and make you feel tired and liverish the next day. Lunchtimes are spent snatching an hour to seek out presents for children, nieces, nephews, godchildren and countless other relatives and friends.
Even the traditions that are supposed to cheer us up can fill us with gloom because of the reciprocal duties that they entail. The first Christmas card of December is about as welcome as the first day of sleet. And somehow the onus of sending cards, buying presents, cooking and provisioning seems always to fall disproportionately on women.
This year there are no cards and no parties. Presents have been confined to tiny items that we can carry in our backpacks. We have bought one box of crackers, which is stowed away in our boat, and two strands of tinsel. That’s it.
And boy, am I making the most of it. For next year, of course, it will be my turn to host the extended Sieghart family Christmas for nine adults and ten children . . . I can’t wait.
maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk
