Updates (1 of 2)

I am writing this post from the far more civilised and orderly city of Singapore, overlooking the almost obscenely opulent skyline while on our first obligatory mental health break. We have completed three weeks of work with All Hands and, while we are a little premature, are more than happy to be spending a few days in luxury, having flown out of Cebu yesterday.



Yes, this is the view from our friends' balcony.

Our second and third weeks have certainly provided some ups and downs and the field work has been slightly overshadowed by some unavoidable yet unsettling changes in our setup. The work in Kananga Hospital is nearly complete, representing a major success story for the charity and allowing members of the community to access much needed medical care. By the middle of last week we had access to only four rooms in the hospital as medical equipment and essential furniture began to be moved in. This meant that the volunteers had to move out, and so began a series of relocations that saw us sleep no more than two consecutive nights in one place for almost two weeks. In fact we moved our beds and possessions six times in the eight days between last Friday and Monday morning when we left for Singapore. While this began as a slightly irritating process we became more and more able to adapt to new situations and can now happily pack up and move on at a moment's notice!

Kananga National Hospital: our home and project for the first fortnight of our stay.

Our working fortnights have been vastly contrasting: Jenny has been carrying an elbow injury and has been forced to take on a consultation role, often utilising her architectural background and advising projects while I and others have barked furiously every time we spot a hammer or saw in her hand! Despite that, she has continued to work in the safing team. The picture below shows the team working on the house of an 80 year old woman that had become dangerously structurally unsound and needed to be taken down to allow her to rebuild.  The problem was intensified by there being houses on three of the four sides, and a main road on the fourth. It took three days of strategising to bring the house safely to the ground, so Jen's mind was able to work overtime in her body's absence. Other highlights have included removing a collapsed ceiling from a classroom that was still in use, and being interviewed for a student newspaper on the subject of the typhoon and the trials of leaving our families to come here, something that is rather an alien concept to most Filipinos. It's been very frustrating to be indisposed but hopefully the break in Singapore will enable her to fully recover and get her hands dirty again when we head back to base on Monday.

Three days of thinking later, the house was safely levelled.

I, on the other hand, have been heading down the 'brute strength and ignorance' route, working at a school in the small village of Margen, levelling a damaged 1930s built assembly hall with sledgehammers, chisels, pick axes and shovels. It can be brutal work sometimes, with temperatures exceeding 35C, shovelling dirt in the midday sun, but it is where I feel I am most effective and I enjoy the endurance test as well as seeing a very clear measure of progress at the end of each working day. I put in six days at Margen, a project that took a total of three weeks and regularly saw teams of ten turning up to the site each day. Being present on the day we finished the job was arguably the most satisfying moment of the trip so far. It is also worth noting that having a grandstand of pre school children cheering you on and yelling 'BOOM' every time you hit a wall with a sledgehammer makes the day go a lot faster, unfortunately they were camera shy and wouldn't comply when we tried to video them!

Let me tell you, that is exemplary technique.

The Philippines is renowned globally for being a country full of friendly, welcoming people and we have been shown incredible hospitality from every community we have entered and worked in throughout our stay. Workers in schools are met with snacks at the midway point of the morning and afternoon, ranging from caramelised bananas to locally baked breads, pastries and rice snacks. Riding home on top of a jeepney after a day's work becomes a lap of honour as whole families run from their houses to wave to the volunteers and children shout 'Hi! What's your name?' from every angle whenever we take a walk into town. The Kananga National High School took this a step further, though, by putting on an entire evening of food and entertainment for us, beginning with a variety show and culminating in a hog roast and impromptu dance party (Gangnam style, naturally). It was a great opportunity to mix with the students who were old enough to hold full conversations with us in English and yet still screaming like fan girls whenever the particularly handsome male volunteers (myself, bizarrely, not included) posed for a photo with them.

We have also had the chance to visit Tacloban, easily the worst effected city and the source of the vast majority of photos that made the British press around the time of Haiyan in November. In fact my first post on this blog featured a picture of an enormous boat washed up far from the water; that boat is still there, people have built their new shelters around it and many refugees are actually living on it as their homes were crushed beneath it. I found it difficult to ascertain exactly what constituted storm damage and what was normal life in Tacloban, but three obvious clues to the extent of the damage are the boat (rather difficult to miss 100 metres from the sea), a queue for food at the back of a UN truck (normally a sight associated with the immediate 'emergency phase' within a week of a disaster) and the '40 metre no build zone' signs. The government have introduced a rule whereby nobody may build within 40 metres of the sea to avoid history repeating. While this seems a good idea on paper, it means that the hundreds of refugees who had no choice but to rebuild their shelters contrary to that instruction (space is at a premium) will be evicted in due course.  The devastation caused by Yolanda / Haiyan does not cease to astonish me, nor many of the far more experienced disaster response volunteers we are working with.


I have titled this post "Updates (1 of 2)" for reasons I can't yet fully announce. 2 of 2 will go up as soon as we are able and will contain a lot more details on the projects that we are working on now and what will be happening going forward. Apologies for being so cryptic! The first month of this trip has disappeared and we are fast becoming part of the long term crew on base as most people stay for between one and four weeks; we look forward to bringing you more updates from the field as and when we can. For the meantime, here are a few more choice photos of what's been going on:

The end of day one, painting the roof of the hospital.

Jen making friends with the local children, who know her as 'Ate Jenny', a local term of respect for elder sisters.

It always hard to stop the children from wanting to get involved.