Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras: Hurricane Mitch Updates
by Warren Post

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Amigos,

This is the first of monthly reports the Santa Rosa de Copan Rotary Club will be sending to account for funds donated to the Rotary Mosquitia relief effort. If you do not wish to receive further reports, please let me know. I apologize for the lateness of this report and will try to get future reports out sooner.

The Rotary Mosquitia relief effort began on November 3. Realizing that ours was the only city of size in all of Honduras untouched by Hurricane Mitch, and wishing to help in the recovery effort, our club adopted a devastated area unlikely to receive substantial outside help: the isolated jungle villages of the mid-Patuca River valley in the Mosquitia. Within days special accounts were opened in Honduras, Canada and the U.S. and fundraising began in earnest. Many thanks to the Rotary Club of North Sacramento, California, and the clubs of Districts 5360 and 5370 (Alberta) for their invaluable and continuing help with fundraising. Dr. Charles Masur, District 5370 Governor and long time friend of Honduras, quickly secured a timely and important pledge of CDN$20,000, arriving at just the right moment to buoy morale here and give our team the can-do spirit we retain today.

More invaluable assistance came from Ron Mader, author of "Honduras: A Natural Destination" and tireless Hondophile, who posted our original appeal for help for all to see at his high traffic web site (http://www.planeta.com/), and likewise Bob Lewis on his disaster relief bulletin board (http://www.mtgroup.com/lewisbd/relief/). Thanks Ron and Bob!

While our friends in North America got to work, we did too. Many hours were logged by ham radio operator and Rotarian Felipe Morales, HR5FAM, making contact with the far flung Mosquitia villages to obtain an early assessment of needs. One of Felipe's most daunting tasks was to try to make sense of the incomplete and often conflicting reports from the field. Meanwhile, others in our club worked with the Honduran government's regional emergency management committee. Committee president Colonel Alberto Oyuala become an important ally of the Mosquitia relief effort, promising Chinook cargo helicopters and five tons of food aid from western Honduras -- this despite the fact that the Mosquitia lies far outside his committee's zone of responsibility. Col. Oyuala is being reassigned to southern Honduras in early January to direct relief efforts there; he will be missed.

Still others spent hours daily on the telephone and Internet helping to forge the small band of organizations and individuals world wide with an interest in the Mosquitia into an effective and coordinated relief team. A major step in this direction has been the formation of an email distribution list, in which most of the key players participate, share information, and avoid duplication of efforts. (If you would like to subscribe to the list, drop me a line.) Muchas gracias to Raquel Isaula Peralta of the Honduras Sustainable Development Network (http://www.sdnhon.org) for generously donating the technical expertise and Internet list server necessary to make the list a reality, and to Torsten Mark Kowal for the original idea and list of contacts. Many of us work together now due to Torsten bringing us together.

With donations accumulating, a communications network coming together, and a promise of helicopter transport, what could go wrong? A waylaid bank wire, that's what. A critical donation from Alberta was misplaced by our bank for nearly three nail biting weeks. Had this donation arrived on time, we would have had the money needed to fill two Chinooks (12,500 pounds each) and make a relief flight in November. Sadly, it was not to be: our bank didn't find the money until well into December. We have since changed banks.

Looking to the future, our most immediate goal is to complete our "November" airlift; we are making final preparations for departure as I write this. A small group of us will fly on board to insure that the aid arrives safely and is distributed fairly, coordinate with village leaders, and field check our information and our long term aid strategy.

Accounting for the month of November is simple:

DATE ACTIVITY INCOME EXPENDITURES BALANCE
US$ US$ US$

4-Nov-98 Opening deposit 7.30 7.30
25-Nov-98 Received from R.C. North 1,700.00 1707.30
Sacramento
25-Nov-98 Bank service charge 10.00 1,690.30
30-Nov-98 Interest 3.14 1,693.44

If the columns above do not line up properly, set your viewing window to display fixed width fonts.

Please keep in mind that funds are held in Honduran lempiras, so exchange rate fluctuations will affect the U.S. dollar equivalents shown. The above does not show funds sent or pledged but not credited to our account in November.

To those of you who have donated, thank you. To those of you who have not had a chance to yet, let me take this opportunity to let you know of our accounts:

IN CANADA --

IN THE UNITED STATES --

IN HONDURAS --

Questions? Comments? Let me know. In the meantime may you have a very merry Christmas and a fine new year.

Sincerely,

Warren Post
Mosquitia Relief Committee
Rotary Club of Santa Rosa de Copan

Warren Post lives in Santa Rosa and owns the highly recommended Pizza Pizza restaurant. He can be reached via email at wpost@hondutel.hn..

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