“I’m generally a very calm person, but it’s distressing being here; I feel extremely on edge. We have so many needs that aren’t being met. Thank God, I’ve ended up with a group of good people”. Sara Gaona speaks over the noise of the rain beating down on the corrugated metal roof of her make-shift home. She is noticeably tired but punctuates her sentences with laughter whilst comforting her young daughter, who is sat on her lap.
Since the beginning of April, Gaona has lived with her husband and their three small children in the Plaza Japón, a public square in a middle-class neighbourhood in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital. They are not alone: “There are 55 families, like us, inside the square and another 50 on the pavement outside: 105 in total”. The families have erected temporary housing using available materials—mostly plywood, tarpaulin and corrugated metal—transforming the square into a maze of narrow, muddy alleyways.
The appearance of this improvised settlement is a result of the unrelenting rise of the River Paraguay. Heavy rains, beginning in March, have incrementally swollen the river—on the banks of which Asunción sits—and caused its waters to flood the city’s low-lying, poor neighbourhoods, known collectively as the Bañados. Visitación Aquino, one of Gaona’s neighbours in the Plaza Japón, describes the event: “The river reached the back of my house and I was worried. Then, in the evening, it came inside. It was so quick; I didn’t expect it to be like that. When we left the next day, we were practically in the water”.
