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Faith and Hope Return to La Guaira

Véronique Hoegger, a freelance photojournalist based in Switzerland, gives a first-hand account of how survivors of the worst flood in Venezuela’s history are receiving help to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

La Guaira, Venezuela — On their worn, lined faces, faint smiles break through. Sitting around me are Cielo, Douglas Martínez and Antonio Gómez, a few of the survivors of the terrible flood which came to Venezuela’s coastal state of Vargas on the night of December 15, sweeping away everything in its path and killing an estimated 100,000 people.

Bleak

At present the disaster-stricken countryside of the area called La Guaira, an hour from the centre of Caracas, is a bleak landscape broken by an occasional house roof or the upper floor of a building. Here a double bed can be seen, there a doll with no arms. Once a residential suburb, this stretch of coastline is now a desert 16 kilometres (10 miles) long. The few houses which escaped destruction serve simply to underline the scale of the disaster.

Some families have stayed put. In Carmen de Uria, the village which the disaster struck hardest, 1,500 of the 6,500 villagers turned down the offer of temporary accommodation in military camps, hoping they could rebuild their homes.

Florentino Antonio Diaz, 65, was one of them. He decided to start life again from scratch. His house had only been partly destroyed, and he continues to live there, with no water and no electricity. Hoping to make a new start, he took over the little kiosk bar in the village of Carmen de Uria.

Rubble

“Before this, I had a little shop over there,” he says, pointing out a pile of rubble.

With tears in his eyes he describes the tragedy: the chaos, the dead bodies, and his feeling of helplessness. In his hands he holds the New Testament which he received from the National Director of the Venezuelan Bible Society, Luis Magín Álvarez.

Expressing his gratitude, he says that reading the Bible lifts and purifies his spirits in the way that going to church used to do but the two churches in Carmen de Uria were both washed away.

We continue our journey. In the Jeep, Pastor Juan Machado says sadly that his church, too, was washed away. “For services now, we meet in my apartment,” he explains.

On the road, lorries drive along in single file, and our little Jeep is lost in clouds of dust. We make a stop at Macuto to distribute New Testaments to workers of the Bolivar Plan 2000. This job-creation scheme was initiated by the Venezuelan government with two aims: the social reintegration of the disaster victims by means of paid work and the cleaning up of the areas affected by the flood.

Douglas Martínez, 31, works on the houses which are still habitable, cleaning out the mud and restoring them. He himself did not lose his house but in those dark days he saw his village virtually washed away. More than 300 of his neighbours were killed, including a cousin and some close friends.

He raises his gaze to the sky: “During those hours when the sky was falling on our heads, I couldn’t help but look up and pray. I saw a mighty God who gave me the strength to survive. Yes, I really think that with him all things are possible.” His losses seem not to matter to him.

Essential

“When you have lost as much as I have, you realise what is essential,” he explains. “Now we are all equal. There are neither rich nor poor. We are all living in the same conditions.

“There is no longer any room for hatred, jealousy or egotism,” he adds. “People are much more sensitive now, they help and support each other. Violence has disappeared. We have realised that life is too precious to destroy it through stupidity.”

“Little by little they put their trust in us. They feel that we are not there out of self-interest and sometimes that allows us to have conversations which make them aware of the love which God the Father has for them.”

For the last few months Erik Montebougnouly, 19, has been a soldier. He tells us that this tragedy has changed him and given a new depth to his life. He says that now he appreciates the importance of respect for life and the earth. He refers to the passage in Genesis which says that God created Adam out of the dust of the earth.

We offer him a Bible which he accepts joyfully. Until now his only contact with the Gospel has been through Christian radio broadcasts. “I am glad to be able to carry God’s Word with me,” he says, “because I know that if I work with him, he will work with me.”

For some people the disaster bears the hallmarks of a divine punishment. Others, like Cielo Sarmiento Silva, 25, do not believe in a vengeful God. She describes how he was with her all through this period, and how he saved her from the water. Having come out of the experience, she is aware of the extent to which she herself is evidence of the existence of God.

Lost everything

“If I am still alive after that flood, it can only be thanks to God,” she says. Cielo has lost everything. “But I still have my son and my husband,” she adds. After being packed into a stadium with 3,000 others, she counts herself fortunate to be living in the Fuerte Tiuna military camp.

“Life in the stadium was unbearable,” she says. “We were crowded in on top of one another. Privacy was non-existent, and it was impossible to keep clean. I hadn’t wanted to go there because I thought I could stay and rebuild my house, but they said the district I lived in was uninhabitable.”

The Fuerte Tiuna camp is divided into groups of 50 families. All the space and the food is shared with the soldiers.

Captain Carlos Antonio Arroyo Alfonso, 34, describes how the refugees’ arrival ‘humanised’ the military structure. The civilians were not accustomed to the way of life in a military camp.

Hostility

The initial hostility and the difficulties disappeared, however, and the two sides settled into a friendly understanding, an outcome achieved thanks largely to help from social workers.

Anneth Rodriguez, 47, and Monserat Torra Solar, 47, are the ones responsible for co-ordinating care for 50 families. They describe the assistance program which involves psychologists, doctors, social workers and pastors living with the refugees and catering for their physical, emotional, material and spiritual needs. “The social workers have the chance of creating a privileged relationship with the refugees,” they explain.

Sharing

“They see us living among them, sharing the same conditions, and they can’t understand why we choose to live like this when we have homes of our own. Little by little they put their trust in us. They feel that we are not there out of self-interest and sometimes that allows us to have conversations which make them aware of the love which God the Father has for them.”

Leaving the military camp, we stop next at a village called Montessano, which has four private refugee camps. One of them, called Galpon, houses 40 families.

“Before, we were all neighbours in the village of Vistallegre Puente Tropical, but there weren’t really any meaningful relationships between us,” explains Juana Blanco, one of the three women who are the centre’s co-ordinators.

Community

“The experience in this community means we can get to know each other very well.”

The residents of Vistallegre have created a kind of miniature village in the heart of the camp, with its own shop and individuals with specific responsibilities. The majority of them are working with the Bolivar Plan 2000. Nevertheless, the living conditions in a warehouse are not the most practical: although there is electricity, there is still no bathroom or lavatories. We give a New Testament to each family and most of them are visibly moved.

With tears in her eyes, she describes the happiness it gives her to realise she has not been forgotten – that some people whom she doesn’t even know are thinking of her and praying for her. Above all she believes that the Word of God can be of help to her.

For Rheina Dacosta, 36, this level of concern exceeds all her expectations. With tears in her eyes, she describes the happiness it gives her to realise she has not been forgotten – that some people whom she doesn’t even know are thinking of her and praying for her. Above all she believes that the Word of God can be of help to her.

“At difficult moments, God eases my sufferings,” she says. “He never forgets me. When I have a day when I’m frightened I won’t have enough to eat, for example, on that day I receive and eat more. Miracles like this prove to me that God exists.”

Mirna de Rada, 46, receives her Bible in her own particular way. “In a situation like ours,” she says, “faith is indispensable. Without faith there is no hope. When you have lost everything, it takes an incredible strength to make you believe in the future again.

“In a situation like ours,” she says, “faith is indispensable. Without faith there is no hope. When you have lost everything, it takes an incredible strength to make you believe in the future again. ”

“God is my hope, my strength, my inspiration. He helps me in this mud which I and the whole community are sunk into so that I can be of help in the lives of some of my neighbours. Some have lost their faith and do not have enough courage to envisage a future in which everything has to begin again.