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Maidel Jorge, a 36-year-old farmer, sweats as he cuts down a young tree for firewood. Early November in eastern Cuba still feels like summer. The wood is green, so it burns slowly, and cooking takes longer.
Jorge, his pregnant wife, and their six-year-old son are staying in a school that has become an evacuation centre in Grito de Yara, Granma province. They are three of the three million Cubans affected when Hurricane Melissa hit last month.
The family has had no electricity for two weeks. Water arrives only when tankers appear. Mosquito-borne illnesses have spread quickly. Eighteen people in the centre have a fever, but no one knows which virus. People simply call it “the virus”.
Jorge says the hurricane was devastating. “Nothing was left.”
His wooden house survived, but he lost his corn, beans and sweet potato crops, two oxen, and a 100-kilogram pig. Only one hen survived. Most of the destruction came from flooding, not wind.
No deaths were reported when Melissa made landfall as a category 3 hurricane, though it brought more than 38cm of rain in some rural areas. The floods made an already difficult situation worse.
People were already coping with long blackouts and shortages of food and medicine. Mosquito control programmes have weakened, and illnesses such as chikungunya, dengue, oropouche, and zika have all increased.
In recent months, chikungunya has caused particular suffering. It is rarely fatal but brings high fever and severe joint pain. Alerts were raised in Matanzas last July. By late October, health officials reported 13,000 new fever cases in one week. Reports now suggest one-third of Cubans have been infected, and the government has declared an epidemic.
In the east, where Melissa hit hardest, these illnesses have made recovery much harder.
Leanet Pérez, a 21-year-old teacher from Cauto del Paso, spent two weeks evacuated at her cousin’s house in Bayamo. When her family returned home, they found their house damaged and full of mud. Pérez soon caught chikungunya. She relies on alcohol compresses to reduce the fever and paracetamol from her sister. Many families without repellent or medicine depend on natural remedies.
The large Cauto del Paso dam began overflowing the day after the hurricane. It released huge amounts of water, leaving houses coated in sludge and creating standing pools where mosquitoes breed.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, a 31-year-old social worker at the evacuation centre, travels through small communities to collect information for the authorities. “All the damage I’ve seen breaks my heart,” he says. “I have no words.”
In Cauto del Paso, the floods destroyed mattresses, clothes, and electrical items. Tractors struggle through deep mud. Along the roadsides, vultures pick at dead animals. Even the raised graves in the cemetery look as if they are floating.
At sunset in Grito de Yara, smoke rises from balconies and back yards. With no power for more than two weeks, families cook with charcoal if they can.
“Here, cooking with butane gas is only for the wealthy,” says Yudelkis Alarcón, a 42-year-old teacher. Her four-year-old son has caught “the virus” and needs saline treatment at the local polyclinic.
Source: The Guardian (UK).
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