“What I would like the most now is to have a home, food, and clothing.”

PUERTO CABEZAS (NICARAGUA) / PANAMA CITY - "What I would like the most now is to have a house, food, clothes, that’s what I would like," says 13-year-old Jhon Dell, as he goes through the ruins that were left where his home used to be in the neighborhood of El Muelle. Hurricane Eta did not leave a single building standing and left dozens of families like John's homeless.  He saw his house, his clothes and his school supplies disappear from one moment to another. There were about five continuous days of rain and wind gusts that exceeded 110 miles per hour.

With the passing of the hours and the relative calm of the weather, the families returned to their homes along the coast of Puerto Cabezas. Mayadana Servantes, 24, holds her little girl, barely a month and a half, while showing a pile of zinc sheets and boards, which were the only things she recovered from her house. Built on cured pine wood piles, the houses in this area of ​​the Nicaraguan Caribbean are built to avoid the floods of the rainy season, but their board walls and ceilings are merely nailed to the structure, and did not resist the winds of Eta, which always turned in the opposite direction, counterclockwise.

“What worries me the most is what am I going to feed my children, and where are we going to sleep, people give us where to sleep one night, two nights, but then?”, explains Madayana.

Her children have been left homeless, without even clothes or sheets. Neighbors helped them out of their house Tuesday afternoon, just as gusts of wind began to blow off their roof.

Until this Friday, the National System for the Prevention, Mitigation and Attention of Disasters (SINAPRED), reported about 30 thousand evacuees throughout the North Caribbean and northern Nicaragua. According to official reports, there is enough provisioning to assist the refugees, but the damage caused to the only land route between Puerto Cabezas and Managua, from where the aid is distributed, seems to be delaying the arrival of food to the families.

Everyone in El Muelle neighborhood lives off fishing. Despite the vulnerability of the area they inhabit, they cannot and do not want to move because there they have developed their traditions from generation to generation. It is a multicultural and multiethnic community made up of Miskitos, creoles and mestizos. Although they each have their own language, they share Spanish. Their diets have also fused, but all are based on tubers, shellfish, and fish.

Mayadana and her children, aged two years and a month and a half, also had to seek refuge. In the area where her house was, you can barely walk without avoiding the edges of zinc sheets, and even parts of stoves that the hurricane washed away. Despite the difficulty, Mayadana carries on with her baby in her arms, seeking to recover whatever it is they can to prepare for a new beginning. This mother of two children is beginning to worry about the delay in the arrival of help. “We don't have water to drink, and even if I get some food from my neighbors, I don't have the proper conditions to cook. What worries me more now is that my daughter could make me sick, because the hurricane damaged latrines and there is a lot of pollution and we are homeless, ”she remarks.

Eta has left a trail of serious floods, and land displacements through its passage through Central America. Nicaragua and Honduras have been the worst hit countries.

But Eta has also caused damage in other countries in the region devastating the lives of more than 1 million children according to UNICEF estimates based on official reports.

UNICEF estimates that over 100,000 people, including 40,000 children, have been evacuated to temporary shelters across seven affected countries, namely Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala,  Honduras, Nicaragua and Panamá.

Working with national authorities and partners in countries hit by Eta, UNICEF teams on the ground started delivering critical live-saving supplies to evacuated families, including hygiene kits, water tanks, disinfection tablets, tests for water quality monitoring and recreational kits.

Immediate response actions also include the setting up of temporary shelters with safe spaces for displaced children, provision of emergency mental health and psychosocial support services for children and families, and support for gender-based violence survivors to access basic services.