Supporting food security for families affected by Hurricanes Eta and Iota

Since November, Superemos has been in touch with the local authority in Alamikamba, the municipal capital of the Prinzapolka municipality in Nicaragua’s Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region. We visited Alamikamba just after Hurricane Eta to deliver a doantion of clothing to families flooded out of their homes along the River Prinzapolka. Just days later, the area was struck by Hurricane Iota which caused even more severe damage to families in the area. The town of Haulover in the Prinzapolka municipality was completely destroyed by Iota’s devastating high winds, for example. Mercifully there was no loss of life, thanks to timely and efficient civil defence preparations, moving thousands of people to secure shelters.

Discussing the effects of the damage caused by the hurricanes with Prinzapolka’s mayor, Prodelina Bobb, she explained to us that, based on the previous census of some ten years ago, she and her colleagues had thought the population of their municpality was about 60,000. However, when they did the census to assess needs following the hurricanes, they found the true population of their municpality was around 90,000 people. Of that number Prodelina told us around 70,000 had been badly affected by the hurricane, both along the municpality’s coastal area and also along the municipality’s rivers, especially the main river, the River Prinzapolka.

In January this year, thanks to a donation sent from people in Belgium and a group of Nicaraguans in Madrid, Superemos was able to deliver a donation of cooking utensils to help about a hundred of the many hundreds of families who had lost everything during the flooding caused by the hurricanes of November 2020. Subsequently, in April this year, thanks to a donation from Quaker groups in Belgium and Luxemburg and from friends in Boston, USA, Superemos was able to donate around three tons of rice, maize and bean seed to help guarantee food security for families who lost their crops in the hurricanes.

We coordinated that donation with the local municipal authority and with a local minining company, HEMCO, based in the nearby town of Bonanza, about two hours drive from Alamikamba. HEMCO’s social programs director Gregorio Downs organized a donation from his company of about 5 tons of seed. So between both donations we will be helping over six hundred families plant sufficient basic grains in the forthcoming planting seasons to feed their families and set aside enough for the next planting cycle.

The seed is being distributed by the local municipal authority in 25 pound sacks and is of local varieities known to do well in the area giving a high yield per acre planted. The rice and maize seed is being distributed now in the month of May for the current planting season. The bean seed is being set aside, stored in well sealed plastic sacks, until the next planting season for beans which is in September this year. Prodelina Bobb, Alamikamba’s mayor, explained to us that this donation is an important contribution to the authorities’ overall effort to gaurantee food security for the municipality’s population, which also includes coordination with the World Food Program and other relief bodies as well as support from central government.

Thanks to everyone who made this important donation possible.