It may have faded from the headlines, but flooding persists in the Belize River Valley. It's like a slow motion disaster, where these hardy residents have grown accustomed to the vicissitudes of the Belize River Basin. But that doesn't mean they aren't suffering. And the former area representative Edmond Castro is attuned to that. He's launched a canned food drive to help residents see some kind of Christmas. He told us more via phone from Maskall village:
Voice of: Edmond Castro, Shadow Minister - Disaster Risk Management
"Many of our people will experience a bad Christmas, in particular those people in the Belize River Valley area, and in particular Crooked Tree and that whole May Pen area, and much of the people in Belize Rural Central."
"I try to stay out of it, give my one cents, two cents, but it aches my heart when I go through the constituency and I see up to now some people houses are still underwater and apparently it doesn't look or appears that those people are well taken care of or being handled properly through the the authorities."
"Up to now many of the people in those flood prone areas have lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of livestock. I mean from sheep to goat to cattle. There's no grass, there's no way you could even find grass, even if there was an area that you could have put some animal and it's high time for me to at least kick in and see the little... I don't have much, I don't have a lot but let me use my expertise and so and go around and beg so that we could do a little fundraising."
Jules Vasquez
"How much of a difference will this make for persons in flood affected areas?"
Voice of: Edmond Castro
"Not much Jules, but the thought that at least we could take something to some of them is better than nothing at this time."
The drive goes through to December 14th and you can call Castro at 610-2393.
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