Thank you to friends, family, future guests and past guests who have checked in on Bluefields. We truly appreciate your interest in the humanitarian situation on the ground, which is slowly improving.
What is the current status on the ground and how is the Bluefields Villas Foundation (d/b/a Bluefields Environmental Protection Association) helping?
After five harrowing days of no outside support, World Central Kitchen arrived to Bluefields and Belmont on last Sunday, and they have been a godsend. Our Managing Director spent two days driving around the region with Jose Andres and connecting his team with local residents and residents of small, disconnected villages in the mountains. By mid-week, the Bluefields region and remote villages in the interior were receiving 2-4 helicopter drops of food and water per day. Food insecurity seems to be under control, at least for now.
We have been impressed by other NGOs that have arrived to the region. Samaritan’s Purse has built field hospitals and clinics, temporarily replacing the largely destroyed Black River and Sav-La-Mar Hospitals, the two places where our community would typically go for medical care. Samaritan’s Purse is setting up water filtration systems that will be needed to address water insecurity in the medium-to-long term.
From our side, we are sheltering and feeding 60-70 staff members and their families on site (numbers vary by day) and providing three meals a day to anyone in need. We ordered truckloads of materials from Kingston, are working on replacing lost roofs for community members. We are working with Scotiabank to put an ATM on site at our location for community use since lines at the few banks open in the region (more than 2 hours away) are 4-6 hours long. We continue to provide charging and internet access to all. Next week, we hope to develop a plan to address the rebuilding and reopening of schools, though this will take some time.
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