Boulders litter Verapaz, El Salvador, following heavy rains that triggered landslides last weekend. Photo by Tjarda Muller

Oxfam America’s Tjarda Muller lives in El Salvador where torrential rains last weekend caused widespread damage. She visited one of the hardest-hit communities, Verapaz, yesterday. Listen to her report: VoiceMessage1

Mud and debris fill the streets of communities in El Salvador following days of heavy rain that triggered landslides and floods. Photo by CORDES

More than 100 people are dead in El Salvador following days of torrential rain that triggered floods and landslides. Over the weekend, the first emails hit from colleagues. Then wire service stories started showing up in newspapers around the country. This morning, I have spent the past hour emailing with my colleague Tjarda in San Salvador: Thousands of people have flocked to shelters. Some have seen their houses washed away by the raging waters, and many will return home to widespread damage.

It’s hard to fathom the devastation that rain can cause, but in a poor country where many of its seven million citizens live in precarious locations—in low-lying areas prone to flooding, or along steep hillsides whose fronts slip away when water-logged—the destruction can be sweeping.

And one of the worst consequences of flooding is the pollution of drinking water. Read the rest of this entry »

Medhin Reda depends on rain to water her fields of teff and corn. Erratic weather has a profound impact on the well-being of her family. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

Climate talks in Copenhagen are just a few weeks away. Here at my desk in Boston, I’m hearing a growing urgency in the pitches from campaigners who have been working long and hard to get the United States and the European Union to own up to their responsibility for the future that is facing us all.

But what I hear louder, still, are the voices of the people I met in Ethiopia in August for whom changing weather patterns and increased cycles of drought mean failed crops, skipped meals, and deeper poverty. Read the rest of this entry »

Loko Dadacha walks up to six hours, round trip, during times of drought to fetch water for her family. Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

Our water bill came the other day. It was about 100 bucks—a spike from the month before and it left us scratching our heads. Where did all that water go? We hardly know because here, with water, it’s easy come, easy go. Turn on the tap and it gushes—hot, cold, or just right. It couldn’t require less effort. Read the rest of this entry »

A resident searches for victims under a collapsed hotel in Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island. Photo by Reuters/Crack Palinggi, courtesy of www.alertnet.org

At a powwow here this morning, fund-raisers, press officers, and writers—not quite believing the cascade of bad news–huddled over the headlines sprawled across a table in one of the cubicles: “Quakes Ravage Sumatra and Samoas,” said one.

“Tsunami Came Too Fast for Warnings to Reach All,” said another.

“Typhoon Eases, Leaving More Than 300 Dead,” said a third.

And this one, which summed up the shock of it all best:  “Week of Tragedy for Asia.”

It’s a week that has left us here at Oxfam racing to help meet the needs of some of the countless people who have seen their homes crash down around them following the earthquake that hit Sumatra, their villages flattened by the tsunami that swept into Samoa and Tonga, and all that’s familiar washed away in the flooding unleashed by Typhoon Ketsana  as it roared across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Eva-Lotta Jansson/Oxfam America

A man in the Netherlands is trying to cash in on what the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says could someday be a $10 billion market for goods produced from camel’s milk. According to the New York Times, Frank Smits has imported a small herd of the lanky, cranky creatures and is coaxing milk out of them at the rate of a gallon and a half a day per camel. And he’s selling it, hardened into cheese, for $60 a pound.

I’m not so sure about their milk (or the price of their cheese), but I have to admit, I’m kind of in love with camels—especially after a recent reporting trip to Ethiopia, where drought takes a swifter toll on lesser beasts. Camels can suffer, too, but not like cows. And increasingly, pastoralists in the southern part of the country are expanding their herds to include camels, prized for their endurance when the rain refuses to come. On this trip, it seemed like we were seeing them everywhere—saucer-footed and gangly—loping along the dusty tracks that snake through the region.

But as hardy as they may be in dry climates, camels need water just as much as the rest of us do. And there’s no sound quite as lusty as a crowd of them draining a trough. Here’s proof:

In the year following Hurricane Katrina, Cleo and Martin Sylvester lived in a FEMA trailer while they put together the financing they needed to rebuild their own home. Photo by Steve Thackston/Oxfam America

On the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina , Andrew Blejwas, one of our colleagues who has been working with many of the communities on the US Gulf Coast, looks back on the long years that have passed since that storm turned so many lives upside down and revealed so much about injustices in our country. Here are a few of his thoughts:

Four years after Katrina, a lot has changed. Many homes are rebuilt, there are far fewer trailers than there were just a year ago, and communities are beginning to get back on their feet. But not much has changed either. There should not be more homes to rebuild, there should not be any families still living in trailers, and communities should have more support getting back on their feet.

Though Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were one-time events, the issues they helped unmask in the region are pervasive and long-standing. It’s going to take more than just a few years worth of work to reverse the poverty and social injustice that are pervasive on the Gulf Coast of the US. Oxfam is making a commitment to address the long-term issues that affect the region and will continue to work with dedicated partners there who are already working tirelessly to do just that.