That's a Wrap

Our time with AHV has come to an end. 15 weeks after arriving at the hospital in Kananga we said our goodbyes to our new family at Tacloban airport and travelled for a few days around the Philippines before flying back to England on June 5th. It is incredible to think that the journey we were anticipating for so long has reached its conclusion already and we are both desperately trying to formulate a plan to get back to Tacloban and AHV as soon as possible. 

True to form, however, our final week on project was not an uneventful one. While I worked on my final decon. sites, the issue of asbestos became a larger and larger stumbling block for the organisation. Jenny was at the forefront of AHV's approach to the issue and eventually the decision had to be made to halt all rubble clearance, decon and safety work in Tacloban. As a result, we committed our entire volunteer force to the Santo Niño rebuild project, which, I am pleased to report, was completed a week after we left. Despite the issues with the initial houses that we worked on, there are now sixty fully completed transitional shelters ready to be moved into as a result of AHV's work: something to be immensely proud of. 

Surrounded by AHV built shelters, I am looking at the only house that stood when we arrived in the community in March.

Jenny's role changed significantly over the course of her time on project and, as such, she is certainly the best person to explain how and why that decision was made:

The last few weeks on project were an entirely different experience for me than the previous months, and the final week brought about some enormous decisions and changes.  I mentioned in the last post that asbestos was becoming an issue on some of our work sites.  Sadly this did not cease to be a problem but only intensified.

After extensive research we had a pretty good idea about what Asbestos was and the type of materials that it could be found in. Unfortunately, however, it was one of those situations where the more we learnt, the more we could see it.  And it was everywhere! The likelihood is that the majority of the houses we have worked on have had asbestos in them; it is not only a risk in the roofing insulation, as we first assumed, but also in wall panels and concrete adhesives.

In a pile of debris like this, it's almost impossible to avoid disturbing any asbestos that may be hidden in the wreckage.

One of the problems we faced through research was that there are a variety of opinions on the amount of exposure that can be damaging to humans, from one particle, to regular long-term exposure.  Therefore there was a lot of talk about working on sites but avoiding the areas where asbestos was found.  It is less likely to cause damage when it is wet, as the fibres do not float into the air, and so AHV bought watering cans for each team.  Masks were also discussed, making it mandatory for all volunteers, although I wouldn't want to be the one to make all the boys shave their beards (more on that later)!  And, sadly, it turned out that the Philippines do not manufacture or sell a mask that would be able to protect us against the fibres.

We had a meeting with our Team Leaders discussing the material and ways to reduce the damage it could cause.  This was a low point for me.  I couldn't bear sending my friends into an environment that I did not consider safe.  I felt a huge responsibility to the people I cared about and despite wanting to do my best for the communities and especially the families we had already promised to help, I just didn't feel comfortable sending my friends to work everyday.

The more the issue was discussed, the bigger the problem appeared to be.  AHV have no protocol in place for dealing with the material and, although this made me angry at first, it turned out that no one in the INGO world does!  Even the UN cannot fathom how to deal with a material that is so useful (cheap, fire proof and insulating) but poisonous.  I attended a meeting with two men responsible for waste disposal at the UN and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), where they run a ‘Cash for Work’ scheme, hiring locals to clean up private and public property.  Neither of these men were any further along than us and their workers were still continuing to expose themselves, just the same as ours.  They did have some positive points though: an asbestos expert was being brought in at the end of June to try to tackle the issue in Tacloban.  This would be a huge job and the primary question would initially be, ‘Do we deal with this according to US/British laws, or according to Filipino ones?’  The answer to that question will define which of two very different paths the organisation will move down next.

These kind of damaged structures are the bread and butter of AHV work - the search continues for a safe way to continue.

During this meeting three different Team Leaders rang me to say they had found asbestos on their sites.  It was one thing if it was found rarely and we could shut down the site, but with it on 5 of our 7 sites, something more drastic had to be done.  And so the enormous decision was taken that we would put decon projects on hold until the UN official arrived and a satisfactory method could be found for dealing with it. This was truly heartbreaking.  It has the potential to change the very identity of the organization as a whole who primarily work in decon projects and have made their name doing the jobs other people don’t want to do.  It also meant letting down families that I had promised to help; this was hideous.  I had to ring an old man and tell him that I would not be sending a team the next day to start his house.  He yelled at me, confused at what the material was, why it was so dangerous and why I was making life so difficult for him and his family.  His grandchildren were spread all over the country and by clearing that house they would all have been reunited.  I cried when I hung up.  There was nothing I could do and yet he felt completely betrayed.

He wasn’t the only person I had to answer to.  I had to go to meetings with CRS to explain why we would no longer be clearing the houses in their rebuild queue.  This was a much more positive meeting.  They supported our decision to protect the health of our volunteers and promised to check for asbestos in all the houses that were being rebuilt and refuse to continue funding if it was found until it was removed.  This was truly excellent news and with all the negativity surrounding the topic, if this is the only thing I managed to achieve then maybe that is one small step towards less asbestos in the future.

Telling the volunteers they would not be returning to decon for the foreseeable future was also awful.  To work for a family and help them rebuild their life is the true joy of AHV, and I knew people would feel as if that was being taken away from them.  I just hope that they know it is because we wanted them to be safe. 

With all this negativity, that is not to say I had a miserable last week on project.  I got the chance to see the start of some permanent rebuild projects in partnership with Gawad Kalinga, ‘Building Communities to end poverty’ , a fantastic organisation that build beautiful rainbow homes.  I was also invited by our Project Director to join her at a WASH (Water and Sanitary Health) meeting, and although they did not cover topics relevant to AHV, I felt very lucky to have an opportunity to see the progress of the city through the eyes of other organisations.

The houses AHV build with GK (http://www.gk1world.com/home) in Ormoc. 

Finally it was time for our last day and I truly couldn't have asked for a better send off.  Robbie and I both went back to Santo Nino and spent the day building two walls together as had been our lives for the two months we lived there.  

One block left to put in on our final wall, on our final day. 

Our neighbor and friend Fred came out of his house on his way to college and presented us with two friendship bracelets.  We saw the little girls that we had grown to know and love and I was able to give them some photographs of us altogether to remember us by.  The day was over far too quickly and before we knew it, it was time for Saturday Kareoke!  By the time people were singing, ‘Save Tonight’ in our honour I was well and truly gone, tears running right down my face! I might have been able to make it back had it not been for the tears of our wonderful friend Kevin. It’s always so much worse when boys cry! Finally it was time to pile into the jeepney and multi-cab for the drive home. We looked around the multi-cab as we pulled away and noticed it was only the old Santo Nino group in it. What could be more fitting?! We reminisced, laughed and cried most of the way home until… we weren't heading home at all! Jheri (our driver and friend) turned off the main road towards his house. I have no idea how he did it but it was no accident that it was just the long-term volunteers in his vehicle and he was so smug that we thought it was all a coincidence! He presented Robbie and I with plates of food to take back to base. A better man than Jheri cannot be found in the Philippines, he is a huge asset to the organisation and a wonderful friend; we were very honoured.  In fact our whole send off was incredibly humbling: our cook Nancy cried when we said goodbye, we were given an amazing card signed by loads of the volunteers and 4 of our best friends even took us to the airport. I couldn't have asked for anything better and in the end there just aren't words to express what this experience has meant to me, how much I love everyone we've met and how much I would like to go back and continue to help and witness Tacloban fight back.  Tindog Tacloban.

While it was sad to see such an unceremonious end to my time on the Decon sites, it may well have come at the right time. Everyone has a limit as far as this kind of physical work is concerned and, after such an extended period, my aches and pains were beginning to take their toll and my daily endurance levels had dropped to an almost embarrassing level. While I didn't spend a day working on GK, it was nice to spend my final two days at Santo Niño, building houses, reminiscent of what was probably my happiest period of time during my stay. I mentioned falling in love with Santo Niño in my leaving speech (mandatory, emotional) and I have incredibly fond memories of the little community in the mountains; it was a fitting farewell.

Ready to move in!

One of the results of living in such an intense communal environment, not to mention sharing such visceral work experiences, is that the relationships you build are immediately stronger and more complex than they would be in the same stretch of time in a normal context. For that reason we felt as though we were saying goodbye to family; it was an absolute wrench to walk away from. Our final week felt very much like one of the 'peaks' I wrote about in a previous post in which the social group hits a high point, and this was illustrated on Thursday night. Volunteers have been known to hold auctions in the name of AHV as people shed unwanted travel items and the occasional service or (generally comedic) act. For 7000 pesos (approaching £100) I agreed to lose the beard I had been cultivating over the course of the trip along with three other fuzz faced members of the group, a decision I did not take lightly! We raised a total of 32000 pesos that evening, all of which will go towards tools and a couple of luxury items for base. 

Freshly shaved and not too pleased about it.

That night also saw Jenny and I reach our long awaited Just Giving target of £1000 for AHV, the culmination of endless Facebook plugs and irritating emails. Astonishingly it didn't end there: some phenomenal offline donations have been made since then, most notably an incredible £950 from the Wrington Vale Rotary Club, and the overall figure currently stands at £2,285. I never believed we could raise such a sensational figure and it means a huge amount to us both: enormous thanks to everyone who donated; it will make an unquantifiable difference.

It is now over three weeks since we left project, and almost two weeks since we arrived back in the UK after the culmination of our four months in the Philippines. I began writing this post almost three weeks ago and have only now managed to bring myself to complete it. Writing this has been a huge part of my experience - offering an outlet and decompression zone in which I have been able to lay out the events of the previous weeks as they appeared to me. I have already been asked the question 'how was your trip?' and it is genuinely impossible to find a way to condense my time in Tacloban in a way that does it justice without being boring. The things we have seen and done have very little context when being discussed over a pint in a beer garden in summery England and, while that is a relief, it has made me value this blog even more. Thank you for reading. 

[The search continues for safe ways for AHV to work with asbestos. If you know anything at all about asbestos, or anyone that does, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the organisation or either of us. We are looking into ways to remove it, educate locals in its dangers and materials that can be used as substitutes. Both mine and Robbie’s contact details can be found at the bottom of this post.]

Base #1. Kananga Hospital.

Our first working day - painting the hospital roof.

We moved out of the hospital into this tent, were flooded out the following day and thus began ten days of almost constant moving around.

A compromised house in Ormoc, one of Jenny's first jobs.

The view of Tacloban from the roof of the Alejandro Hotel. We both fell in love with this city and it's not hard to see why.

One of the many boats washed ashore by the storm surge.

Our little helpers from Santo Nino.

The customary way for Filipinos to travel.

The work force on our final day in Santo Nino.

My favourite photo from the whole trip. Look closely and you'll see that, despite shoveling trenches in human feces, we are both in hysterics. This picture typifies for me what it is to work for this amazing organisation.

Bangon Leyte.

Robbie and Jenny.

robbie.brown4@googlemail.com
jenny.burns@btinternet.com

The Final Countdown

It's almost impossible to believe, but we are now only one week away from leaving AHV Project Leyte. Having completed fourteen weeks of volunteering we will be spending our final days with Jenny attending numerous CRS meetings and planning for the future of the decon programme in Tacloban while I have been asked to help with the training of new team leaders to take the work forward after a major exodus of long term volunteers which began last night. The culture of AHV dictates that groups of volunteers are constantly changing as people come and go. What this means is that very often, just as a group has settled and the key players both in the field and the social group have been established, many of them appear to leave all at once. What you end up with is a cycle of peaks and troughs as a very strong group who have experience in the field and a tight social circle leave and newer long term volunteers and big characters step in to fill those roles. We have witnessed two or three of these cycles, and now it is our turn to be part of the outgoing 'old guard'. Work has continued at a furious pace since my last post, and this week has seen an astonishing 1000 man hours put in on deconstruction sites across Tacloban. 

My current job site is the remains of a Barangay Hall, used for council meeting and community events before Yolanda. The storm surge accounted for the vast majority of the structure and left only the floor of the second story, which fell and, incredibly, remained intact while the rest of the building was swept away.

We have been working on the site for one week and, after days of sledgehammering, angle grinding and shovelling, have nearly removed the structure. 

We hope to have the site completed by midweek next week, which will allow me to spend my last few days helping with Team Leader training while also getting a good range of jobs in before reluctantly hanging up my sledgehammer for the foreseeable future.

JENNY SECTION:
As for me, I hung up my sledgehammer and work boots two weeks ago now.  I overdid the physical work; considering my standard fitness level at home, I do not know why I expected myself to be able to manage three and a half months of manual labour! Luckily I have been given the opportunity to act as Field Coordinator while the current one returns to England for a few weeks.  This job is exactly the kind of role I would like to have on a more permanent basis (and preferably for a wage!)  The last week has been one of the most complex of the trip for me - I no longer have to do any of the labour but I have to coordinate it for up to 35 volunteers! I share the role with Tonja, a Slovenian who I actually know from my previous AHV project in Cagayan de Oro.  The basic daily role involves finding work for the deconstruction sites, visiting families and hearing their stories and seeing their properties to work out how we can help.  The jobs are then put in a queue and we have to organise a daily schedule based on the number of volunteers each day, the team leaders available and the skill sets each one has.  Then one of us explains the work in the daily meeting and the logistics of each day, including transport and communication.  This alone can be frantic enough, jobs often become much longer or shorter depending on the beneficiaries' wishes.  Sometimes jobs have to be put on hold because a pig has been slaughtered on the column they were about to sledge, in our honour, of course.  (Little anecdote from yesterday.)

I am also the CRS liaison, which means that I have weekly meetings and daily communication with their engineers who, after detailed assessments of all the properties in 17 barangays along the coast, give materials and funds to rebuild homes.  Their beneficiaries must reach certain requirements before funding can be granted and one of those is clearing their own properties. This is where we come in.  With the information that I gather from CRS, we create a timeline of all the jobs and the order in which they will be receiving funding and create our schedule around those deadlines.

An example of our job board, Jenny's daily nemesis.

However there are other much bigger topics that fall onto our shoulders too.  Last monday we hoped to start a huge clearing site.  45 people lived there before the typhoon and it is one of CRS' biggest priorities.  They hope to give 20 people funding to rebuild on that land in the next 2 weeks.  However, on the Sunday, we found out that a body had been found on the site two weeks ago.  Tonja and I agreed to postpone work and go to reassess the site.  We found the landlord's family desperate for work to start and seemingly unaffected by the discovery of a body on their land. However as we were walking away from the site, the fire service arrived. They were there collecting the remains on a person found the day before.  Despite the site being high priority, it was clear that we needed to have a better protocol for body discovery. The following day Tonja and I went to visit the Fire Service Cadaver Retrieval Task Force.  Their captain is a lovely young guy called Anthony.  He was more than willing to communicate with us about anything that is reported to them in the barangays we are working in. We had the entire system explained to us: the fire service are contacted if anyone believes they have found human remains, Anthony's team are on permanent standby and are dispatched immediately. From there the Scene of the Crime Operatives and National Bureau of Investigation identify the type of remains and the person's identity and then the body can be returned to the family. As we went to leave his office, Anthony showed us a series of white boards on which they had documented the last 6 months. This very brave man and his team have collected over 2685 bodies across the city.

The next big topic has been the discovery of materials on site that are suspected to contains Asbestos.  This is a problem that in my eyes cannot be taken too seriously.  

This level of Personal Protective Equipment will not suffice!

With no money for the required equipment I have no intention of allowing volunteers to continue to work on a site until the material has been tested and the suspicion has been disproved.  Of course this is an unpopular decision with the beneficiaries who do not understand the danger of the product and therefore why we have abandoned work on their property (not, of course, for lack of trying to explain).

Finally, I have also been invited to be involved in some more positive changes within the organisation. Robbie and I are both involved in formalising the training for Team Leaders, and one of my biggest jobs at the moment is ensuring we train enough volunteers into Team Leaders before a large group of 'long-termers' leave.  I have also been asked to be involved in looking at new programmes for the volunteers in future months.  Today I went to look at a permanent housing development that we may be able to assist in over the next 6 weeks, building 20 concrete homes.  Hopefully next week I will be able to go to a Shelter Cluster meeting where all the organisations in Tacloban involved in shelter programmes meet to discuss progress.  I could not be happier in this role and it has only reaffirmed what I knew all along: this industry is definitely for me. Saving the world, one meeting at a time!

We have also been lucky enough to be in Tacloban to commemorate the passing of six months since the typhoon. On May 8th a local Barangay invited AHV to a commemorative ceremony which consisted of a series of speeches and presentations from Barangay officials and members of the AHV team. We then handed over balloons in the AHV blue and white colours to members of the community and watched as they were released in memory of those killed by the storm.

This was followed by a music concert in the astrodome, initially used as an evacuation centre after the storm, but now empty again and being used for community events such as the screening of Pacquiao fights and concerts.  It is incredibly important to AHV to be active in the community outside of simply putting in the hours on the worksite and the organisation is always willing to change the work schedule to enable us to engage with local events. The six month landmark was also noted by the Telegraph, and if you look very closely, you may spot me doing a little bit of work and a lot of messing around in the background of this video. We were interviewed for the piece, but apparently didn't say anything interesting enough to make the cut! 

Another community / organisation event took place on Sunday as our friends from International Disaster Volunteers joined forces with local business owners to host a football tournament at the Tacloban grandstand. Twenty AHV volunteers represented AHVFC and we played from 7.30am until well past midday in a round robin competition with teams made up of a combination of locals and volunteers from across the globe.

Despite giving a good account of ourselves, it was no surprise that the winning side was the one with the fewest volunteers and the most locals. We were quick, as many European teams may well be at this year's world cup, to blame everything from the pitch and the temperature to tired limbs at the end of the working week. I'll leave the real reason for the reader to decide.

Finally I need to make a confession. We are reminded with relative frequency that it is highly recommended that we do not help individual people or animals outside the remit of the organisation for a variety of reasons, all of which we both agree with. Those reasons, briefly, are that to give money, food or materials to any one person can quickly create a culture of expectation. On more than one occasion we have ended up with hoardes of excited children expecting us to buy them food or drinks, and trying to help us work. Not only can we never satisfy all their wants and needs, but to have them around us at work is a major hazard to both the children and the volunteers. The same applies to all potential beneficiaries, human or animal. As a result, AHV has adopted a blanket policy whereby no volunteer, while representing the organisation, may give out money or materials to individual beneficiaries. The staff also highly recommend that we do not take that course of action outside of base or work, but acknowledge that they cannot successfully police that policy. However:

We have found ourselves in a situation whereby we have been forced to break one of the rules of living on an AHV base. On Monday evening last week a volunteer arrived on base having found this kitten abandoned on a pile of rubbish. We have taken her in and kept her alive by feeding her on our dinner scraps. She is now infinitely healthier and happier than the scrawny, crying ball of fluff that arrived 12 days ago. Having a project pet is discussed regularly and dismissed as being bad for both the animal and the volunteers. With no one person taking direct responsibility and the animal's life hopefully outlasting the project, the long term future for a project animal is always bleak. As such, the intention is to find her a long term home as quickly as possible but, in the meantime, she has become a big part of our lives on base.

All that remains for us now is a trip to the beach (tomorrow), 6 days of work and then the dreaded leaving speeches. Last night was a particularly emotional one as we said goodbye to two of our longest serving volunteers, next week we will be part of a six person exodus. The time has flown but we are leaving on a high. I will most likely be wrapping up this blog with the next post, so watch this space for the big finale!

A Game of Two Halves (Second Half, Extra Time and Penalties)

It seems that every blog post I ever read begins with an apology for it not having happened sooner; unfortunately this one is no different. We have, as ever, been incredibly busy. Time has a funny way of working on project: a day can often feel about 72 hours long, while a week can disappear before it even feels like Tuesday evening should have arrived. Months disappear like a conjurer's trick. We are now past our original end date with AHV as we were expecting to travel the Philippines for a month or so before our flight home. We have extended our time with the organisation by a (slightly flexible) month for two reasons: the first is that we are slightly worse off for money than expected at this point in the trip and the AHV lifestyle is a remarkably cheap way of living; the second (and more admirable) reason, is that we are constantly overwhelmed by the amount of work that is left to do. Somehow it doesn't feel quite right to go and spend five weeks on a variety of beaches while Tacloban is still in such a dire state of need.

The original "Game of Two Halves' post was intended to document the change in mood and fortune that took place over a two week period, some three weeks ago. I wrote the first post about some of the hardest times we had experienced since our arrival, and this post, the sequel, was supposed to detail the brilliance of the week that followed. Of course enough time has passed since then for the entire somersault to have taken place twice again. This, then, is Match of the Day - all the highlights with a bit of chat in between.

The picture above is the updated 'before and after' images of Jeremy's house. I wrote in the previous post at length about his experiences in the storm and I am happy to be able to write that work on his plot was completed a few days after the blog was published. He will now have money made available to him for rebuilding to take place.

Background time: In a similar arrangement to the AHV/Operation Blessing deal I described previously, AHV is working alongside other charities such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the UNDP's Cash for Work scheme to enable the most effective relief effort. CRS, as an organisation, make funds available to homeowners to rebuild on their land, but are not permitted to clear debris or deconstruct buildings on private property. They will also not release the funds until this process has been completed by a third party, which is where we come in. In fact, it's more complicated even than that. CRS give money to families only in multiples of ten, per Barangay (the local name for a small residential area within a city; there are 138 Barangays in Tacloban). The idea behind this is that the families will all help each other in the clearance stages while CRS will only communicate with one representative per ten families, reducing the strain on their own human resources in the city. However, money will only be made available if the work is completed on all ten plots by a set time, meaning that our priority sites are often the ones that need to be done as quickly as possible to ensure the beneficiaries receive their funds. Jenny has recently begun training as a field coordinator, working closely with CRS representatives to identify our priority sites and carrying out assessments on potential new programmes around the city. She will eventually be leading the 'work for tomorrow' briefings in our nightly meetings, instructing all AHV volunteers on what needs to be done the following day, and introducing team leaders to their beneficiaries. This job is incredibly stressful, by virtue of being one of the most vital links in the chain that takes us from sitting on base drinking San Miguel to picking up our tools and heading out in the morning but it also takes the job satisfaction level to new heights as she is now actively, personally helping a far greater number of people over the course of a single day. She also gets to carry a clipboard which everyone knows is a sign of true authority, I'm immensely jealous.

Since completing work on Jeremy's house Jenny and I have worked on a range of similar programmes. Below are a couple of 'before' photos for job sites that will be coming up in the near future:

Each job is different, but the daily routine remains the same: We arrive at the job site, where the team leader discusses the proposed goals with the homeowner. The team leader then briefs the group of volunteers (anywhere between 3-10, usually) on the task at hand, discusses any major risks and delegates specific roles to team members. The primary objective is to make any structurally unsound areas of the site as safe as possible as soon as possible and then clear rubble and debris and salvage any building materials so that the CRS funds can be put to the best possible use. In some case this is a simple case of knocking over a wall, but it can be an incredibly complex and dangerous task, in which case, special AHV 'safety trained' teams are brought in. A programme can last anywhere between a couple hours to a number of weeks. Jeremy's house, for example, took teams numbering as many as fourteen over three weeks to complete. We completed ten deconstruction and clearance sites in Tacloban last week and the eleventh of this week was finished today. The plan is for all deconstruction and clearance work conducted by AHV to cease in August, so the orginisation can focus on the transitional shelter programme in Santo Nino, but even that would see us complete somewhere in the region of a further 120 sites before easing up on the work that is normally completed within three months of a disaster.

There is, however, another reason for being too busy to post. My previous entry came at the beginning of our second mental health break. I try not to talk too much about our relaxation time out here for fear of straying too far from the point of the blog but rest assured we had a much needed break on the neighbouring island of Samar. Driving for hours in a hired van, Jenny and I, along with two of our closest volunteer family members spent three days enjoying beaches, food and the unforgettable experience of watching Filipino boxer / congressman / hero Manny Pacquiao in action on a big screen in a local sports centre. Thankfully he won and the national holiday that occurs whenever he fights was able to continue in good spirit!

We returned to base and completed a day and a half's work before packing up our lives once more, and moving to the new headquarters of the project, in the much more central Barangay Utap, around ten minutes (and, more importantly, ten pesos) away from the city proper. Our new base is the final step for the project and we are finally being joined by the full volunteer force from Ormoc, the first time the entire AHV Project Leyte team has been under one roof for over two months. This means a return to full scale communal living, sharing our home with over 50 people, and it has come as a real shock to the system after our lengthy spell in the mountains with a much smaller group. That said, it is a huge improvement as far as the orginisation is concerned, and sleeping under a roof rather than a tent has come as a relief! The move was timed to coincide with Holy Week (Good Friday - Easter Sunday) in which the majority of the country shuts down, much like England between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. This is a family time for Filipinos and our work schedule was halted, which allowed us a long weekend to adjust to our new environment and a little more beach time thrown in for good measure!

Taylor saying goodbye to our mountain home.

By the beginning of this week, then, we had managed a paltry 1.5 days of decent work in the previous fortnight. Needless to say, returning to the six day week has been a difficult task, and we have both felt the effects of the physical work, the heat and the return to routine extremely hard. The physicailty of the work takes a cumulative effect on the body and, at the end of our tenth week on project, every little ache or hour sledgehammering in the sun feels like a body blow in a way that is much harder to recover from than it was earlier in our stay. Jenny was forced to take a few days off suffering from serious fatigue, while I have taken on a site which is less physical than my normal work, allowing me to pace myself. That said, clearing wooden and plastic debris in temperatures exceeding 35C and >85% humidity is only slightly easier than clearing concrete and I am only just holding on! The staff here have been incredibly understanding and have all experienced the same problems having been long term volunteers on previous projects. Thankfully there is no judgement passed over anyone who needs to take it easy for a while and everyone is afforded the time they need to maintain their health.

After two days of clearing, my recent site is slowly returning to normal.

There has been no lack of drama on my new worksite, though. Work is currently suspended for the second time while we review the safety of the area. Our first scare revolved around the discovery of huge amounts of a dark, sticky liquid that rose from the ground as we dug.  Our initial thought was that it could ahve been blood, and, as such, the site was evacuated and a sample taken to the local authorities for testing. Seeing as I had already discovered a dog's jaw bone in the rubble, our field coordinator then conducted a thorough search of the area for any other animal or, potentially human remains. Nothing was discovered and, despite still not having heard the results of the tests, we felt comfortable to resume work. However, that did not last long as we almost immediately stumbled across large quantities of asbestos. It is still legal to build with asbestos in the Philippines and we will have to be able to deal with it as we continue clearing these kinds of sites but, until the correct procedure has been developed, we will be working on other sites in town, of which there are more than enough to choose from.

Finally, if you want to do something crazy, try climbing a mountain in the Philippines in flip flops in the blazing sun and occasional downpour with no drinking water and a 'guide' who confirms your suspicions that he has never before actually climbed this exact mountain just as you have fallen and slid halfway down it and are inspecting the myriad cuts, scrapes and grazes that now cover your body. This was our day off last week. We were expecting a casual stroll up a hill but, before long, found ourselves scaling sheer rock walls, hanging onto vines and giving each other leg ups, only to have to bushwhack our way out of the jungle with a machete. Here are some photos of the most memorable day of rest I have experienced in a long time!

Our welcome party, after four hours of bushwhacking, was this rather suave looking water buffalo.

Thank you for reading, apologies again for the time delay. We fly home less than five weeks from now but I will endeavour to post at least twice more before we finish with AHV. Also, massive thanks to those who have donated to our Just Giving site, I would really love to reach our target before we leave so please take a look.

A Game of Two Halves (First Half)

It was inevitable that I'd title a post with a football analogy at some point. There are two reasons for this slightly unnecessary turn of phrase: one is that I stayed up until 4.30am to watch my beloved Man Utd crash out of the Champion's League quarter final to Bayern Munich last night; the other, more redeeming reason is that it is incredibly apt. The two weeks that have passed since my last post have seen us reach our lowest point since our arrival in the country and, immediately after, our highest. A fortnight of two weeks, if you will. A lot is written about how volunteering represents a watershed moment in the lives of the volunteer, likewise the idea of 'finding oneself' on a trip around south-east Asia has become cliche in the UK. While there is serious evidence of that on show here almost everyday (and I hope coming through in this blog) I want to give as honest a representation of life with All Hands, and in the Philippines, as possible, and that includes some of the not-so-pleasant day to day realities. As the worst week came before the best, I will open with a series of slightly less glamorous stories. 

I have also gained access to the photographic collection of lots of our friends on project for this post, so I'll be filling it with pictures. 

Around three weeks ago we had been dealing with a long series of horrendous downpours, coming intermittently up to six times a day. Rain in the Philippines is a completely different beast to rain in the UK; rolling over at a moment's notice, it can switch from baking heat and perfect sunshine to tropical storm in the blink of an eye.

A row of our temporary shelters in Santo Nino (thanks to Jedd Sankar-Gorton for the photo).

The rain would typically last for ten to fifteen minutes and then stop as suddenly as it began. The result of this was that our work site in Santo Nino (my favourite photo of which is above) became a mud pit.  We had to call the working day to a premature end on more than one occasion because conditions underfoot were making working on slippery ladders or coco lumber incredibly unsafe. It even became a hazard to use our wooden handled hammers as they could so easily (and regularly did) slip out of one's hand on the backswing! While it was irritating beforehand, the situation intensified on the Tuesday of that week when we made the realisation that our septic tank, located directly under the community centre we call home, had been continually flooding with rain water and, subsequently, overflowing.  What we thought was mud turned out to have been grossly contaminated, and we had to act fast. What followed was four hours of digging drainage ditches through our back yard to funnel the rivers of contaminated water away from our home. Every member of the organisation, administrative staff included, got involved and, somehow, we made it fun as we lay over four tonnes of gravel in two hours in an attempt to create sanitary pathways to walk on, to avoid the mud. We had the added joy of the delivery truck sinking into the saturated earth and needing to be pushed to safety by a group of already overstretched volunteers. It was a brutal afternoon's work, and we ended up continuing long after our regular stopping time of 4.30pm and finishing our day in the dark, exhausted and, quite literally, covered in excrement. 

Digging ditches in our back yard, 

Digging out the delivery truck. I swear I actually did some work and didn't just stand around... Honest. 

Work returned to normal on Wednesday and Thursday as we continued to work on our shelters but the peace didn't last long as I had to take a trip to Tacloban's Divine Word Hospital on Thursday to be treated for turned out to be a relatively uninteresting allergic reaction to an ant bite.  The experience of going to hospital with a big swelling on your leg (no photos, regrettably) in a language you don't speak and in a city rebuilding from a massive natural disaster is a scary one, but there was very little drama in reality. Volunteers, for better or worse, are given priority in hospitals in the Philippines, by way of gratitude. Jumping the queue and being told not to pay for my consultation felt a little uncomfortable but I was not given the option and it meant that we were in and out of the entire process within twenty minutes.

We returned to base to the devastating news that construction had been abruptly halted midway through the afternoon. To give a little background, the site that we are working on has been provided as a result of a negotiation between the city government and another NGO called Operation Blessing (hereon OB). The deal in place is that OB will fund the project and provide materials, while the city will organise the labour. Before the involvement of AHV, the team of engineers was seriously low on numbers, so we were brought in to bolster their work force. The architect who had designed the buildings visited the site at the request of AHV to take a look at a few concerns that our site managers had about the design. We were confronted by an incredibly angry German missionary, furious to find that his plans were not being brought to fruition. The structures he designed utilise cutting edge disaster relief techniques, forming a primary structure that could withstand another typhoon of the same scale, minimising the need for large scale rebuilds in the future. Damaged walls and roofs are cheaper and easier to repair, which would allow families to be independent in repairing their homes. These disaster relief / architectural techniques are not even being taught in universities yet and Jenny and our site manager, the excitable Scot that he is, have been transformed into a pair of gushing nerds on multiple occasions. It transpired that there had been a major miscommunication between the city engineers, AHV and OB's team of architects and designers which meant that we had been unknowingly building substandard shelters that would not conform to the specifications of the drawings. Our month's work was hanging in the balance between the best case scenario of major tweaking, and a worst case of needing to completely deconstruct and rebuild.

Just as the houses were beginning to look  good, a major redesign was in order. (Note how the local workers don't wear shoes or use ladders.)

A series of meetings between AHV and the other organisations behind the build was called for the following day which meant that we were forced to find work elsewhere. Fortunately a site was found in the city which required a lot of people and very few tools. So began the next stage of project Tacloban. The rebuild section of the project has always been intended to be one of many AHV programmes taking place in the city and our assessment team had spent much of the week finding work in the worst hit areas of town.  We were taken on the Friday to one of these sites, to begin work clearing rubble and debris, retrieving personal and/or salvageable items, and leveling the plot of a group of houses.

Storm clouds loom over the plot of land we were challenged to clear.
Twelve days later, work is almost completed.

The final two days of the week were spent on this site.  We are yet to complete work here, but have, so far, cleared and cleaned ten rooms, deconstructed every compromised wall and salvaged everything from ID cards, teddy bears and a watch, frozen in time having stopped at 11.20 on November 8th, 2013. It is an immensely emotional experience to search through the remnants of somebody's home and, at the end of such a stressful week, it simultaneously provided perspective and pushed us to tipping point. Despite our visits to the communities along the coast, this was the first time we had been so exposed to the devastation on a personal level. Bodies are still being found in Tacloban with regularity and conversations were had within the group about the possibility of uncovering a corpse after we were informed of a suspicion held by the locals, which had prompted them to alert the necessary authorities. After a group discussion about the potential emotional impact of such a discovery, as well as of AHV protocol, every single member of the team opted to continue working on the site. One of the stand out elements of life with AHV is that the team remains united seemingly regardless of circumstance, and this was no exception. The plot of land is owned by two brothers, one of whom introduced himself to Jenny with the words: 'Have you found any bodies yet? Lots of children were found along this stretch.' Incredibly he still managed to raise a smile as he told the story of saving a 'very large, naked' woman who had become trapped in the rubble - 'she is healthy, and eternally grateful!' The scenes that unfolded on November 8th will never leave those who witnessed them, and he still dreams every night of a piece of tin roof, propelled by the wind, instantly killing a man before his eyes.

We continued to work for the brothers until Wednesday when Jenny began work on a new house, as team leader, leaving me to complete work on this site. Building relationships with the people you are helping is the high point of this kind of work and both Jenny and myself have been able to grow relatively close to our respective beneficiaries. It was these relationships, coupled with the incredibly tight bonds that have developed within the AHV team that brought about a massive change in mood for the following week.

The bigger the hammer, the happier I am.

Jen's nemesis, conquered by hand, was a twenty foot tree, fallen across the plot of land, destroying everything beneath it. It took almost two full days of sawing to remove.

We are currently on our second mental health break, but the second half will be posted as soon as possible.

Updates (2 of 2)

 

I'm going to begin this post with two apologies: the first is for having to be so secretive at the end of the last post, something I will rectify here. Secondly I'd like to apologise for what is about to be a rather long post while I fill in all the gaps - I'll do my best to be concise and promise to put in lots of pictures! 

So, to begin at the beginning: five days before we left for Singapore, Jen and I were asked to join a team of five volunteers to head over to Tacloban City, about two hours across the island, to set up a new project for the charity. In time the entire Leyte project will be moving to this, the worst hit area, and it was a real honour to be asked to be part of the team that opened the new base, prepared the living quarters and began work on the next stage of Project Leyte. The idea was proposed to me by the Volunteer Coordinator of the project at 6am as I stumbled across the Kananga Hospital driveway to make my morning coffee. The catch was that we left that afternoon. We would be given a total of six hours to pack up all our belongings, say some quiet goodbyes to those we would not see again and pile into a pick up truck to start what has turned out to be an adventure of quite incredible proportions. In fact, the situation intensified before it had even begun as we sat down for dinner in Tacloban that evening: there was a problem with our water supply at the new base, and we would have to find somewhere else to stay while the problem was resolved. We were incredibly lucky to be able to stay two nights with the British charity International Disaster Volunteers who were unbelievably accommodating to us in our time of need. They have a really beautiful base in Tacloban and I would definitely recommend them as an alternative to AHV for anyone who was looking into coming out here.

"Team Tacloban" - five volunteers and four staff members outside our new base in Barangay Santo Nino, Tacloban City. The raised shirt (extreme right) is a slightly bizarre local custom that we have come to relish.

On the day between our two nights with IDV we got to grips with what was to become our day to day work schedule. As a result of the extensive damage caused by Yolanda, and the new 40 meter no build regulations along the coast in Tacloban, over 10,000 families will have to be moved to new accommodation.  We have set about building a small transitional community that will house families in the time between now, and the completion of their new permanent houses. The idea is that the worst effected families will move in first and then a rolling system will commence; as one family moves into permanent residence elsewhere, another will move into the temporary coco-lumber shelters that we are currently working on. We then set about readying our new base (water supply issues resolved) by building an outdoor shower block, installing a generator and generally setting up our way of life by sourcing locals to do our laundry and cooking, and (Jen's domain) establishing the systems that we all have to abide by for smooth communal living. Strict rules have to be adhered to for 50 plus people to live together in harmony and if you even dream of wearing your work boots indoors, be prepared to feel a wrath like no other!

Gary and I building our outdoor showers with coco-lumber, the new build site in the background. (Apologies for the vest.)

 
Building the transitional shelters has been an immense challenge for a huge number of reasons: first and foremost we are a team of (for the most part) unskilled and inexperienced workers with little to no understanding of the construction industry. I for one had to be shown the absolute basics with regards to handsawing, toe-nailing and bracing and even I took on a team leader position within a week of working on site.  Jenny's architecture degree has again worked to her advantage and her knowledge of precision measurements, angles and structural integrity has seen her quickly become an integral member of the on site team. The second major issue is the timber; soft at one end, rock hard at the other, seldom cut straight, it splits when it's dry and crumbles when it's wet. With such a lack of consistency in our materials, getting one's head around building the shelters has been a difficult task even for the small number of experienced, skilled contractors and carpenters on site. That said, the priority is getting them up quickly and safely. These are, we regularly remind ourselves, temporary shelters and, even if they are not perfect, they are a huge step up from the living conditions suffered by those worst hit by Yolanda.

Last weekend we were taken to the water's edge on what has become known as "Seven Boat Road", so called because of the number of enormous ships that were washed ashore during the storm surge. A local man started talking to me and for the first time I was truly hit by the severity of the situation. He, who had lost no less than nine family members in the storm, told me that the flat parade ground on which we stood had, in fact, been the local gym and basketball court, complete with ten foot walls and metal roof. I would genuinely have had no idea there had ever been a structure in place there as the ship had gone through the building like a wrecking ball, taking people and houses with it before coming to rest in the middle of the road. It still sits there now, inhabited by survivors whose houses were caught beneath it.
 

Local teenagers continue to play basketball in what was once their local gym, levelled in the storm.

He also told me that he believes the reported death toll, currently standing at 6,201, is a deliberately botched report. If a disaster's death toll reaches over 10,000 then the UN take control of the relief effort, something, he said, that the government cannot afford to allow for fear of exposing their corruption. Whether this is the case or not, he voiced some extremely strong opinions about the government's handling of Yolanda. He was not prepared to be relocated into the mountains into structures like ours because his business and income lay in the city and believed that he would be forced into a new remote community he did not want to be a part of. We were relieved to discover that our shelters are only given to those who sign a request form after a brief moral dilemma. The situation regarding other such transitional builds and the implementation of enforced relocation to other remote communities is one that we are unable to find clarification on.  

A whole community has formed around and upon the ship that destroyed their homes.

On the same evening as our tour of Seven Boat Road we were then treated to a taste of what it is that makes the Philippines so special. In the same breath as telling me about the deaths of his family, the man by the water (whose name, regrettably, I never knew) told me that Filipinos always smile. And so it was that evening as the local indie music scene came together to throw a street party in honour of all he aid workers who had come to Tacloban. With free beer all evening and over fifteen local bands (from hip-hop to heavy metal) taking to the stage this was an evening I will never forget. The MC paid tribute to the many musicians and artists lost to Yolanda and the heavens opened upon us as he rallied the crowd not to rebuild what they once had but to 'build a bigger city.' The grit and optimism in this city, in the light of such incomprehensible trauma, is something that will stay with us both forever.

I speak for us both when I say that we have never been so motivated to work at anything as we have been since that evening and, despite us both having to take some time off sick this week, we have now completed work on ten structures and are getting faster and better with every day that passes. The motivation is further enhanced by our proximity to the people of the community that we work in.  Our new base is built around the local community centre; we use the main building as our communal and meeting space and have erected a massive army tent full of bunk beds in the neighbouring plot of land.

Army tent; bunk beds; home.

The local children are so used to having access to the space that they have become a huge part of our lives, screaming our names (RobbieJenny - one word) every time we walk by and endlessly wanting to play games, learn English and generally be as silly as possible with us.  It is at once a great antidote to a frustrating day at work and a huge inspiration to get the work done for the countless other children throughout the city who need a place to live.

Jenny with Gibreel and Lucita.

We have been experiencing some Biblical downpours, but I don't get too wet.

We are both beginning to fall in love with the city and the communities in Tacloban and I'll round up this post with another series of pictures. I have been asked 'What's it like out there?' by a couple of friends via email or facebook and the honest answer is that it is truly impossible to describe. I hope that some images can give an illustration of what we see and do each day.

Seven Boat Road

Early interactions with technology caught on camera. She is looking at an image of herself.

Impromptu evening boxing classes - will we unearth the next PacMan?

Propped up by cement bags, the ships washed ashore will be there for some time.

The height of local fashion.

The communities are so eager to show their appreciation for our work. It makes it all worth while. (Credit for 'The Earth Ink' pictures to Andrea, fellow AHV volunteer.)

The video on this link was made by a fellow volunteer and shows us hard at work in Kananga, I am hoping to be able to embed it in the post soon.

We both desperately hope that the blog, the photos and the video will inspire some of you to donate to our Just Giving page. AHV, and Tacloban needs as much help as possible and we would be honoured if you would help us to provide them with anything at all.


We will spend the next week continuing to work on the shelters and AHV is now assessing other projects in the city, which may mean a return to sledgehammering and rubble clearance in the next two weeks. Its unlikely that we will post again until then.

Thanks for sticking with us, I know that was a lengthy one!