Week four of my stay in Nicaragua is drawing to a close, which has left me reminiscing about what we have been doing so far. My personal highlight of this past week must be our Hurricane Mitch Tour of the Platanares community, which was an educational experience that I thoroughly enjoyed.
The tour was guided by the Nicaraguan volunteers, who all grew up in the area and thus suffered the hurricane that occurred in 1998. I learned that the hurricane's primary effect on Nicaragua was heavy precipitation; floods completely destroyed the buildings in the village, so much that the only ghastly indication that a hurricane actually took place were the ruins of a couple of buildings. We were taken to a school and a health centre where the exterior walls remain partly intact, but aside from that, the properties of our national volunteers and their grandparents, siblings, uncles and aunts, were all vanished without trace. There are now flowers, plants, and trees growing on their properties.
Five people died in the community, whilst the people who survived the hurricane decided to move from Platanares and reside in the community of Parcila instead, as this was deemed a safer area.
Written by ICS volunteer Vilde Riise Hamre
