Slowly, a future emerges from sea of mud

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

DINORA AGUILAR, a young mother who in better times sold chewing gum from a street stall, cradled Lourdes in her arms and waited to show the baby daughter to a Cuban doctor.

Lourdes had swallowed mouthfuls of mud after Hurricane Mitch caused floods and landslides in Comayaguela, a town across the river from the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Her nose was also blocked and she was suffering from flu-like symptoms. Dinora, 23, was afraid the girl might have dengue fever, which is spreading through disaster areas of Central America. "Classic" dengue fever can be controlled if caught, but doctors here fear worse - cholera, malaria, typhoid - as floodwaters recede.

That could happen any day as Mexican engineers unblock bridges whose arches are clogged with hurricane debris from houses, buses and cars to the carcasses of animals and, it is expected, hundreds if not thousands of human corpses.

The doctor, Miguel Aldama, is part of a team sent by Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, to help Honduran disaster victims. He eased Dinora's fears. Lourdes, aged 22 months, was suffering only from a respiratory ailment shared by thousands of people in the stricken zones, caused by humidity and dust from drying-out, contaminated mud. She was given medicine and went home feeling better.

The Cubans have set up a makeshift clinic in one of the worst-hit areas of Honduras, an area about the size of the City of London that is still knee-deep in mud and cordoned off by Honduran troops. Only two weeks ago, it was a bustling commercial district of shops, markets and bars. Now it looks as though an earthquake had hit a medieval town. Even now it seems inconceivable that the river rose 150ft, tore through bridges and surged through areas that thought they were several storeys higher than the flood danger zone.

In the San Isidro market where the Cubans have set up their clinic, frail old ladies sleep on the cold concrete floor where their market stalls used to be. Across the street, families form human chains to shovel thick, black mud from their bedroom windows.

Tens of thousands of Hondurans are living in Dickensian conditions here, without electricity or water, only a ruptured bridge away from the centre of the Honduran capital, its parliament building and historic city centre. This is where the Choluteca river not only burst its banks but turned into a 150ft wall of surging muddy water a week and a half ago.

This was the urban area worst hit by Hurricane Mitch. Most residents had heeded the call of appointed "town-criers" who raced through the streets as the surge approached, urging them to flee uphill. Several thousand who believed the river could never swamp its 150ft bridges refused to run and paid with their lives.

Now the survivors have returned to see if their homes are still standing - thousands are not - or to clean out mud that in some cases is packed as high as the ceilings of third-floor rooms. In many cases, it seems a hopeless task. Residents walk around in surgical masks, many wearing plastic wrappers like fishermen's waders around their trousers to keep out the mud. The masks are against the stench and the air-borne diseases that have begun to spread.

The locals could be in shelters or stay with relatives. But these were their homes, their shops. They have come back to reconstruct. They fear looters will run off with their possessions, furniture, their wares. If you used to live here, you can get through the army cordons.

In a first-floor corner of the devastated San Isidro market a block from the Choluteca river, the 13 Cuban doctors are risking their own health to fight spreading diseases. They have set up an emergency clinic to deal with whatever they can, mostly the respiratory problems and foot fungus from wading through mud.

The "clinic" is an unlit corner of what used to be the market's warehouse area, with two "consulting rooms" and an "infirmary". Each is a tiny room with a dusty concrete floor. The doctors wash their hands between patients in a pink bucket of water they change whenever a fresh supply is brought in. As in 75 per cent of this country, there is no running water.

There are hundreds of men, women and children with skin diseases, mostly fungus on the soles of their feet from wading in water or mud, sitting on wooden benches waiting for treatment.

Dr Juan Rodriguez Meso, a provincial health official for the Castro regime, fears outbreaks of cholera, malaria, hepatitis or typhoid. He points to half a dozen giant rats scurrying around the concrete floor next to the clinic. "We're seeing cases of Leptospira, transmitted by rats," he said. "I've asked the Honduran government to come here and fumigate but so far they haven't come.

"We have a second Cuban team in the Mosquitia region of the east coast and they have had a few cases of cholera. We are expecting cholera here and are getting ready for it. The problem here is that all the latrines were washed up here in the mud, as well as corpses. We're getting more and more cases of conjunctivitis from people rubbing their eyes after touching contaminated mud."

Stacked against the clinic's outside wall are cartons of medicines donated by the Castro government despite that country's lack of medicine, largely a result of the United States trade embargo. "It's a question of solidarity," said Dr. Rodriguez. "These people are our brothers."

Some of the cartons are marked with the destination "Nicaragua". The Cuban doctors first intended to visit Nicaragua, an ally when the Marxist Sandinistas were in power there, but Nicaragua's present conservative president, Arnoldo Aleman, refused to let them in. He did accept some of their medicine, particularly a chemical called Biorat which the Cubans, who produced it, claim is the best anti-rat product in the world.

The Cuban doctors are just one part of an international aid effort here which was slow to get started but is now a perfect example of solidarity. Outside the Cuban "clinic," young Mexican army engineers push building- sized piles of mud up the narrow streets. Not far away, American soldiers are trying to repair the broken bridges that have made travelling between here and Tegucigalpa a nightmare.

And everywhere you turn, there are young men and women, mostly university students, shovelling mud to help the clean-up effort. Honduras has been wrecked, its infrastructure ruined, its people shocked. But they are picking up the pieces, encouraged by the aid they are beginning to see at first hand.

They know their country will never be the same again. Many believe that, with world assistance and recognition they had never seen before, they will build a new country from the mud of yesterday.