The acrid smell of bloated dog carcases and raw sewage cause burning in the back of my throat. It took almost two hours to get from the airport to the Casa Alianza Crisis center - a journey that used to take 20 minutes, passing by broken bridges, landslides, muddied roads that make the car dance, and the queues of people waiting for water from the occasional cisterns. A perisistent drizzle makes the whole devasted city sticky. The guard rails were washed off by the torrents of water which have since subsided. Some wash their clothes in water that seems dirtier than the clothes themselves.
Children are everywhere.
Most without clothes and almost none with shoes. Their protruding bellies, covered with mud and grime, are probably empty. Their smiles are missing as they sort through whatever they can find in the clay like mud along the edge of the river that used to be a street. There are 85,000 children under the age of five in emergency shelters here tonight. Trauma is affecting many children here.