Saturday--removing belongings, rotting futons

On Saturday, we removed the belongings from the second floor of a woman's house. Strangely enough, the first floor wasn't completely clean, but we were told that was OK because the house was going to be torn down. What needed to go was larger things in the second and third floor.
I've never heard of that before this job, but that was the explanation that was given.

We didn't touch the third floor, possibly because the cleanup was going to happen one floor at a time, or maybe because the third floor was unstable. We were told to borrow helmets, which doesn't bode well for the overall health of the ceiling.

The second floor was covered in things--clothing, futons, tatami mats, paper, books, tsunami mud. Everything was wet, and had been wet for a very long time by now. There were plastic tubs filled with clothing that had been sitting in water for 8 months or so. Frankly, it stunk. I guess if you leave lots of things to rot for long enough, they start to stink, even fabric. We drained the tubs and carried them down the stairs. The clothing and such, we stuffed into bags and threw out the second floor window. Then the usual--drive the truck to the dump site, dump the rubble, drive back. We had to throw everything into piles at the dump site by hand because the volunteer center didn't have enough dump trucks to lend out. (Maybe there was another dump-truck heavy job going on that day?)

The owner of the house, a little old lady, filled her purse with canned coffees from a nearby vending machine and gave them to us during breaktime. She was happy to have found a notebook with money slipped into the pages--really old Japanese money, 10 yen and 100 yen notes. "I've been looking for this," she said, smiling.

I learned how to tie a knot called a "nanking musubi," English name unknown, which allows you to tie down stuff in the back of the truck securely while still unraveling quickly when you need it to. We'll see if I can still remember how to tie it next weekend?

annna

One of my leaders just spelled my name with three ns, all in lower case letters.

<3 <3

Planting flowers and hardcore rubble clearing

Long time no blog post; sorry about that. A lot of crazy things have decided to happen since last week, and some more crazy things popped up for good measure this week. My apartment is covered in excess bedding from the nice group of exchange students who came to participate last weekend, plus a couple of pizza boxes. I have already stress eaten all of the Pocky they left behind, which reminds me why I never keep sweets in the house...

Anyway, let`s talk about last weekend`s activities! It was a pretty weird combination of activities: on Saturday, we planted flowers in pots and flower beds to decorate Miyako Station. On Sunday, we went to Kamaishi and cleaned up an enormous pile of rubble behind a building.

Saturday was nice and relaxing. At first, if you happen to not be a flower person (like me), you might worry about harming the flower during the process of putting it in the pot, but after a while you learn to relax a bit and enjoy shoveling the dirt into pots and pretending you have a color sense. I was a little jealous of the Man Team, who got to do more physical work like shovel dirt into flower beds and such.

Sometimes we get explicitly separated into the Man Team and the Woman Team for volunteer activities, which is not my favorite, but you have to make a judgment call. If you are in another country, volunteering or doing anything really, you have to work with what people want or expect you to do. Otherwise, if you decide that you`re going to do it the special non-sexist American way and everybody else should too, you`ll end up hindering the work you want done in the first place by wasting everyone`s time arguing about something no one`s going to change their mind about.

This does not mean it is not ridiculous, however. Especially when someone in charge says "All the women will move these little rocks over here," but when you start moving all the little rocks using the wheelbarrow it becomes a really hardcore heavy weight bearing activity. But then they can`t really take it back, and amaaaazingly it turns out we can handle it anyway!!

Anyway, but the women what with our estrogen and natural color sense did hopefully a good job with the flower pots. And Miyako Station, I have to say, looks great.

I suppose I shouldn`t complain about lack of physical work, however, because the next day we went to Kamaishi and cleaned this.

It was an enormous pile of rubble, a house had essentially been washed into the alley behind the building next to it. Keep in mind that this is November and the disaster happened last March. That`s an eight month old pile of rubble.

There is nothing like the piles of rubble that I`ve seen in Kamaishi. They`re not like regular piles of trash. They have their own smell and their own weird set of colors. Twisted plastic, rotting books, the weird tsunami mud, splintered planks of wood, telephones, televisions, cans of beer. And yes, teddy bears. Children`s clothing. Wallets for teenage girls. You learn not to look at these things too closely. You learn not to think about the little shoes. It takes a newer volunteer commenting, "I hate finding these," for you to think about it again.

On Sunday, a big group of volunteers wallowed through this pit of dirt and rotting tatami mats and ex-furniture and twisted clothing and pulled everything out, and eventually we finished with this:

The other side of the building, but you get the idea. After a day`s work, with many vans full of volunteers coming in as reinforcement, we got the area back to ground level, though you can see the ground still isn`t clean.

Tomorrow we have another public holiday and more than 10 foreigners coming to volunteer through HANDS! That`s a HANDS record, for your information, and it`s all thanks to one of our regular participants offering to set up an event. I`m looking forward to seeing the faces of surprised Japanese volunteers at the center when an entire mob of foreigners shows up. Should be fun. :D

Wool-san

A conversation I had yesterday between leader Taiki-san about a change in schedule.

Taiki-san: So please let them know that they should come at 7:15 and their lunch is provided this time.
Anna: OK, well, I'll let the TIU group know and it looks like Will-san is also coming on that Saturday, so...
T: (Sounding worried) Who?
A: (Didn't he get my email?) Will-san!
T: W-...Wool-san?
A: Nooooooo! Wiiiiillll-san!
T: Wool-san. Wool-san??
A: Noooo! [Last name] Will-san!
T: (After a pause) Oooh! Wuiriamu san!
A: (Hahaha! <3<3) Yes! William!
T: OK OK!
A: So, I'll let William-san know, and...

Google translate

Somebody running the HANDS Facebook page/group or whatever just put an announcement up today in Japanese, and in English (!). The English had been clearly originally just Japanese that had been Google translated or Babelfished around a bit:

"In NPO hands, the "earthquake disaster revival tree planting support service" in which a NPO Iwate environmental counselor conference works is supported. "

:D What a happy thing. Maybe this means they want me to translate some announcements. Maybe this means I should wait and see if they Babelfish anything else. :D
Anyway, looks like we're helping out an environmental NPO based in Kitakami plant trees for recovery. I'll try to post other highlights of our activities in English here.

Busy busy busy busy and I needed to go to work (I have a job!) five minutes ago. Need to email like four people and call two. But first: teaching kindergarteners!

Saturday volunteer: moving beauty salon chairs

We had another large group volunteering on Saturday. On the foreign volunteer side, there was myself and a wonderful relaxed couple now living in Tokyo who came to participate with us Friday through Sunday.

When we got to the volunteer center leader Futo-san told us that we were going to split up into two groups: one group was going to be cleaning a house with a big water gun, and the other was going to cut grass and pick up rubble. Richard, Debra (the couple) and I were all set to be part of the cutting grass/rubble picking up team when Futo-san ran up suddenly and said "The volunteer center needs more people for another job, so we're going to split you three off."

!!!
You mean you're going to leave me ALONE?

Aw, but it was just fine. HANDS: Team Foreign was assigned to work with three nice young men from various places who had registered to volunteer as individuals. Our mission was to move various hair salon equipment, like those heavy chairs and mirrors, to a storage facility. One hair salon owner was closing her shop, and wanted to give all the equipment she could to another friend who was going to open up a business in December. The explanation sheet for the job looked intriguing. "You will move chairs, mirrors, etcetera" it said.

Hmmm. Is etcetera heavy?

When we got there, it turned out that along with the chairs and mirrors, the shop owners wanted us to take some shelves as well. Unfortunately, the shelves were very, very firmly bolted to the wall to be earthquake-proof, so they wouldn't fall over. The team poked around the shelves for a while. The Japanese conversation didn't sound very hopeful: they weren't sure if it was possible to take off the shelves without damaging them, so maybe it was best to just leave it alone and take the things we could carry easily. The English conversation going around at the same time was Debra and Richard discussing exactly how the shelves were bolted to the wall and strategies about how to find out.

We loaded some of the chairs and mirrors into one of the vans and two of the men drove off to onload them at the storage center. While we were waiting, Richard and Debra got ahold of the crowbars and, after we got permission from the shop owners, started to carefully pry at one of the shelves.

I've never understood crowbars. If you want me to be as useless as possible, give me a crowbar and tell me to pry at something with it. You might as well be telling me to pry at something with a wet noodle. This is how useless I am. But Debra and Richard were pros. They had all kinds of prying/wiggling/lifting/jiggling strategies that they employed, all the while having a pretty lively discussion about exactly in what way the shelves were bolted to the wall. (Pics forthcoming.) The rest of our team came back to find that Debra and Richard had pried off one of the shelves perfectly, with no damage, and were starting on another.

This made me and continues to make me really really smug about HANDS: Team Foreign. Essentially all I did the whole day was stand around looking really smug watching Debra and Richard pry at shelves, occasionally helping to move a chair or translate something.

All in all, I felt, a very successful day.

Other projects for November and December are in the works, lots of leads to a lot of different things. Specialists in childhood trauma maybe coming to Iwate the end of this month, groups of 20 volunteers from India, Christmas parties for children, a call for donations for Christmas candy, an NPO ally in Toono who are also taking foreign volunteers. There's a group of college students coming next weekend, and a really big group of Iwate foreigners on the national holiday on the 23rd. I need to send a volunteer translation sheet to this great guy from Holland who's staying in Kamaishi and volunteering as an individual, with minimal Japanese, but can't enter his ridiculously long scribbled email address correctly.

It's all very exciting and nervewracking. These months are also going to fall under the category of "hard, but cool."

Hello Canada, pictures to show we are not scary

I'm really very curious about some of the people showing up to read this blog. Hello, Canadian Firefox users! Hello Russia!
Please leave a comment or send an email if you have any questions! We are a friendly organization running a friendly operation that does good things. We won't bite.
Here are a few pictures to show who we are.


The usual group picture in front of Kamaishi volunteer center after a hard day's work. I'm in the middle there with the hat hair, holding the sign. This was last Saturday. As you can see, there was one other foreign participant that day, really nice guy from Tokyo. Our site leader is the one with the disgraceful hairstyle on the left there. He's been working for a nonprofit too long and his fashion sense has gotten a bit warped.



Here we are enjoying ramen at a shop in Kamaishi. This shop opened up just last month and the ramen is delicious. Every week, new businesses open and we can see a little bit of progress.



This is our celebrity participant, Hello Kitty, enjoying a nice post volunteer ice cream in Toono City.

Winter ho!

I belong to a Japanese NPO, which means that everyone speaks Japanese and is very busy, which means that a lot of my time is spent listening to conversations about very important things that sometimes sound to me like this:

"Volunteering may change from what you`re used to, hamina shamina shahimina hamina hamima hamina but we hope to have your ongoing cooperation during this change."

Or news articles that look like this:

"In Iwate prefecture today, the prefectural KANJI KANJI KANJI! cooperative KANJI distributed a number of heaters that should be MORE KANJI to temporary housing residents."

It`s a bit frustrating. It`s like all the input here operates like an enormous broken radio, where you`re trying to listen to a station and hear five minutes perfectly and then the radio wigs out and you get a bunch of static.

I don`t want to bother my leaders, because they`re already busy, and don`t need to spend their time explaining to me. I want to keep up as best I can without hindering anybody else`s work. Occasionally, I do corner someone and demand that they tell me, in relatively simple Japanese, exactly what is going on with housing insurance, or the Kamaishi volunteer center, for example. But even if I do this, often the answer isn`t very satisfying.

Me: Dear leader, there are foreigners who might want to come and participate in December, what do I tell them?

Answer: We don`t know what is going on, it`s up to the volunteer center. If there`s a need, we will still dispatch volunteers.

Me: ...OK, but I wonder what I`m supposed to tell them...

So when I actually stumble into some real live information, and connect a few measly dots, I am very happy because with that information comes a plan on how to act.

The dots I have connected are these:

One, that Rikuzentakata volunteer center, according to its blog, is continuing operation through next year. Read this yesterday.

Two, that HANDS was founded and is run by a bunch of fanatical maniacs (bless them) who will continue to serve the Iwate coast as long as it is needed.

Three, that the things the Rikuzentakata volunteer center ask for are things definitely doable for a foreign volunteer.

Four, that even if for some reason HANDS no longer dispatches volunteers or can`t handle foreign volunteers during a certain period of time, there is an NPO based in Toono called Toono Magokoro Net that is also actively recruiting foreigners. Which I am going to contact like, tonight.

This means, in short: winter ho! I don`t know exactly how this going to work out, whether it`ll be Kamaishi and Rikuzentakata, or just Rikuzentakata, through HANDS or through Makogoro net, but there will be ongoing opportunities for foreign volunteers to participate this winter.

So why is it important for foreigners to volunteer? I think there are many reasons, not the least of which is: the foreign population of Japan is an underutilized source of manpower. I understand how in the direct aftermath of the disaster, the first priority should be getting in trained professionals, and then the next priority is getting in the most useful volunteers--native speakers or fluent speakers--but the third priority should have been people. Just people, including the however many? 2 million? foreigners who are living in this country.

Every foreign volunteer who participates with us is another "in" to reach other members of the foreign community, plus their Japanese friends, plus their friends and relatives back home. Part of recovery means fostering connections between the coast and the inland, between far away prefectures and Iwate prefecture, and between Japan and other countries.

And on a personal note, I want Japanese to know we care, that we are connected to their country, and that it`s our country too. It`s the place we live and pay taxes and go to the movies and recycle our cans. Or it`s the place we used to live. Or a favorite travel destination. I know that shouldn`t be the goal, for foreigners to make themselves feel better, but at least it might be a little reassuring to folks on the coast that these people haven`t forgotten them. Not Japanese, not the international community.

And if foreigners want to communicate caring, or allegiance to a country that they chose, for whatever reason, that`s a really good source of motivation and another reason why the foreign community should be tapped.

That`s why I`m happy there should be a place for us a little longer, at least through the winter. So...have at me! Winter volunteer season starts soon!

Water gun Saturday

On Saturday, I particpated with Rupert, a really great guy from Tokyo who refers to his boots as “Wellies.”

The group of HANDS participants was especially large on Saturday for two reasons:

One, there was going to be an enormous, epic all HANDs participants party that night and it’s kind of natural to do the volunteer work before going to the epic party,

and

Two, because the party was anticipated to be so epic, the party organizers had arranged a HANDs holiday, a day off, for our three staff members. This means that there was no volunteering on Sunday, so anybody who wanted to participate on the weekend through HANDS had to do it on Saturday.

(This does not happen often, by the way. We’re still dispatching every day.)

It was such a big group that we used both vans for transportation, plus two participants drove their own cars and took passengers to boot.

When we got there, we were split up into two groups. One was tasked with handing out donations, mostly winter supplies, at the big Kannon statue. About six people from our group, though, were to split off and do a different job—using the pressure cleaner, aka 高圧洗浄、aka “big crazy water gun,” to clean a barber shop on the main street with all the shops.

Rupert and I ended up working in the big crazy water gun group.

It was the last day of what must have been a multiple day job; the sheet said to remove rubble from the shop but that had already been done by another team. What was left was washing off the salt and mud from the shop with the water gun. The walls and ceiling had already been removed so the only thing that was left of the structure was the iron beams plus some wooden beams, and an iron ceiling.

Tsunami water and mud is nasty stuff. It doesn’t stink, per se, but it doesn’t smell nice. From a building perspective, for one thing, it’s salty, and salt means rust.

I once met a resident who said her family’s car had only floated a bit in the tsunami and been dented. They thought “Lucky! We still have the car.” But after they drove the car for a while, it performed worse and worse, until they finally had to take it to a mechanic. The mechanic told them it was the sea water, and there was nothing they could do. They could drive it for now but at some point the car was going to be junk.

On a side note, that same family had a bunch of belongings still intact in their house as well, but because that neighborhood didn’t get power or water for months and months, by the time they got the chance to come back and clean and salvage things everything had been ruined by mold.

Anyway, so one reason to wash off a building is rust, but another is the smell. You have to get rid of all the mud because if you don’t, it’s going to start smelling. It’s a process with really a lot of steps—take out the big rubble, shovel the mud off the floor, take down the walls and ceiling (it’s rotting by now), hose down the building and scrub the beams, remove the remaining mud. After volunteers come in and finish the washing stage, there’s actually another step where you have to disinfect everything or a lot of nasty tsunami bacteria is going to grow and the place will start to smell. I don’t know what happens after that.

So after one person had washed off the whole shop with the water gun, everyone got ladders and brushes and started scrubbing the beams. I think this is both to get rid of the mud that the water gun didn’t get, and to get the remaining salt off the beams, but don’t quote me on that last part because I’m not sure.

I’m up there scrubbity scrubbing away and reach to clean the top of the beams, and when I pull my hand back I find—

an enormous gob of mud that is still stuck up there on the top of the beam.

The people using the water gun were using it from the ground, which is really about all you can do, but when you do it from the ground the tops of beams and nooks and crannies up there in the ceiling don’t get water shot at it directly. Therefore, we had to use the ladders to get all that mud off by hand. By the time I was done for the day, I was covered in mud because I couldn’t figure out any way to get the mud off that

didn’t involve flicking it towards myself.

My jeans will never forgive me, and my beloved volunteer hat looks like it’s been attacked by a mud puddle.

The owner of the barber shop was very nice. At the end, some of the guys moved a big barber chair back into the shop. The tsunami came up to the third floor of his building, so the owner still isn’t done with cleaning, nor with rebuilding his shop.

In other news, I found out Saturday night that it’s very rare for homeowners and business owners to have insurance, like disaster insurance. According to my leader, Futo-san, the only money these people are likely to get is from the prefecture. I had been assuming that everyone was getting a big payout from their insurance to rebuild.

Culture Day Thursday

I suppose if I am going to make an English blog for HANDS and take the time to update more often--out of having nothing better to do, and probably the need to write some of these thoughts down—I might as well tell you what we did for volunteering once in a while.

Yesterday we went to Kamaishi, as per usual. More people than probably is normal for a Thursday because it’s a national holiday: Culture Day! What does one do on Culture Day? Absolutely no idea. Like every one of those random holidays that hangs around in the middle of the workweek, I think one usually either does something fun in the area, like go to an onsen or watch a movie, or sits in a corner of the living room vegetating. Anyway, and some people volunteer too.

Because of the large number of people (maybe around 30 in total) we were split up into a couple of worksites. One group finished up cleaning a house with a big water gun, and there was possibly another group doing things unknown, but my group was tasked with removing the tsunami mud out of a person’s backyard.

When we arrived at the worksite, we found the tsunami mud was not just any tsunami mud, but tsunami mud that had been mixed with gravel, and the resulting mixture had been pushed all over the place. Meaning: you can’t tell where the tsunami mud ends and the gravel begins, and you can’t tell how deep you are supposed to dig. The information sheet summarizing the job said essentially, “Owner will not be on site, and will leave the depth up to you. Err on the side of digging deeply.”

Often, the person making the volunteer request is on site, so we can ask them specific questions about how deep to dig, what to throw away, whether they need help with anything else, etcetera. However, like today, they have every right not to be there, just to use up an entire day watching us work, or working alongside us and bowing at us and having to say “thank you.” They have their regular lives to live.

Anyway, we found ourselves faced with a whole backyard of gravel mixed with tsunami mud that had hardened in places and was mixed with large unpleasant rocks. Unlike cleaning up the floor of a house, or concrete, there was no clear “end” or “bottom” to the mud that you could hit and say “Aha! This is the bottom! I will dig down to here, and no further!” You could conceivably dig very, very very far down. It was a dangerous, potential “dig a hole to China” situation.

It took a lot of scraping, and some unpleasant shoveling (gravel is not easy), and throwing gravel into bags, and throwing the bags into trucks, and some sweating, but we did finish the job by just about 2:45. Tools washed and returned, ate ice cream in Toono, took a bath at home and ready to order a pizza and have a glass of wine. Good day’s work.

Need to figure out how to get the important stuff

I need to figure out how to get the important stuff permanently at the top if this blog, instead of my latest volunteer-related rambling.

In the meantime, here is the important stuff that should be on the top of the page, before I start rambling:

Volunteer Application
FAQ
Volunteer Manual

Tomorrow's a national holiday, which means that myself and some of the other HANDS regulars are taking a mid-week trip to Kamaishi.

I think I might have been at least partly misinterpreting that graph of incoming volunteers--that dip in October, at least for Kamaishi, is probably in part because the volunteer center there stopped accepting volunteers without pre-registration in October. It does not mean you should not come. You should come.

First, a little explanation about volunteer centers, keeping in mind this is the explanation of an imperfect-Japanese-speaking, late to the party, "I got the memo three weeks later" foreigner.

Volunteer centers take requests from locals, or sometimes from the city itself, for volunteers to come and perform a certain task. For example, let's say my yard has rubble in it and I want volunteers to come pick it up. I go to the volunteer center and have a consultation session with them. The staff member I consult with listens to what I need and records on a form estimating what tools, how many people, and how many days are needed for this project.

Every day, a number of volunteers come to the volunteer center and are assigned one of these projects. If it's a big project, many groups of people and individual volunteers might get combined into a big megagroup (technically speaking). If it's a big project and there aren't many people, your tiny group might be assigned to a project that is clearly not going to finish that day.
But it's OK--projects can take more than the estimated time when the volunteer center decides that's appropriate. Some projects take less than a day, some can take a week or more.

Earlier on, essentially any number of people just showing up to Kamaishi was great. No matter how many people showed up, it was fine, because there was a very big urgent problem and you just had to throw as many people at the problem as possible. Everyone who came, even without notice, would have work.

Now, it sounds like there is a steady stream of less jobs than before coming in. This does not mean at all that the volunteer center doesn't need volunteers. It means that the volunteer center needs a preferably stable number of people coming in who register in advance.

It's like donating goods. Before, you could throw a lot of food and blankets in a truck and bring it to the disaster area and there was a very good chance someone could use it. Now, the need is still there but NPOs and such are planning to match the supply to the demand.

Anyway, there is definitely still demand, and you can definitely be part of the supply, if you fill out that registration form so the volunteer center knows you're coming! Hint hint hint.
(Those who already filled out that form before don't need to fill it out again, just need to tell HANDS you're coming.)

I had a dream a few weeks ago that A, a volunteer and friend who's come a couple of times, was sitting with the HANDS volunteer group. And I was like, "A, what are you doing here? You weren't here this morning?" And she said "Well, I figured I would just show up and help in the afternoon!"
"But A," I said, in great distress, "HAVE YOU FILLED OUT YOUR REGISTRATION FORM?"
Which is silly because she already had anyway.
I never knew I would turn out to be such an anxious paper-pusher. Who has dreams about registration forms? Who does that?...