Thursday, February 2, 2012

Volunteer January 28/29

Last weekend, we spent both days at an old folk`s home. It was a day care center for the elderly in Unosumai--HANDS had been there at least once before to clean out the flowerbeds and plant new bulbs for the little old ladies to enjoy.

This time, there were about three jobs. One: get the first floor ready for repairing and repainting. This meant tearing off the floor and then getting the rust off the metal beams so they could be repainted. There were two main ways to getting the rust off the metal beams: one, a little metal scrubby brush and/or sandpaper, which seemed to do a whole lot of nothing. Two, the scariest looking contraption alive, this evil-looking machine that screeched when it hit metal and set off an impressive batch of sparks everywhere. I think it`s called an "electric sander" in English. I have no intention of ever touching one.

Job two was outside. Some pine trees had died, likely because of the tsunami water, and we were to chop down the trees and cut them into pieces to load onto a truck and dump.

Job three was inside, in a back room. The old folk`s home had received adult diapers as relief goods donations, but the little old ladies actually preferred the pad kind. So, job number three was to cut off part of the adult diapers to convert them into pads.

Our group was split into two groups, men and women, with the men handling jobs one and two and the women cutting diapers in the back room for job three.

I`ve always thought of myself as a feminist, but I have a tendency to accept sex-specific assignments even though I don`t agree with it. For one thing, there were only three women and the diaper-cutting job was just as important as the others. On the other hand, it was very cold and because we had no opportunity to move around we couldn`t warm ourselves up very well.

Well, on the second day the group from Tokyo (mostly foreigners) decided that on Sunday, everyone was going to change jobs. The men would take a turn back cutting diapers, and the women would go get rust off beams and such. So they did. Not sure what our site leader thought about all this, but he`s an easygoing fellow so I figure he must have been fine with the change.

Anyway, some diapers were cut and some rust was removed, and all the trees I think were cleared out.

The Kamaishi volunteer center, either because it hadn`t been getting enough weekday volunteers or because there wasn`t enough work to merit being open all week, has changed the days it takes volunteers to Friday through Sunday. This means there should be plenty of work to do Friday to Sunday, when the most people come in the first place.
Rikuzentakata, I think, is still holding steady at 6 days a week with Tuesdays off. When there`s not enough work at Kamaishi and we`re scheduled to volunteer, we go to Rikuzentakata instead.

In the coming weeks, HANDS may be changing its schedule from every day to just part of the week. So far, we have changed to taking every Tuesday off. This isn`t due to not needing volunteers, so much as scheduling concerns for our regular staffmembers. Stay tuned for more information.
If you sign up for a day that we don`t end up dispatching volunteers on, don`t worry. I will help you sign up for another volunteer opportunity in the area (probably through Toono Magokoro Net) or in Ishinomaki (probably It`s Not Just Mud).

It was a great weekend. According to my planner, looks like I`ve had 46 volunteer days. I`m still looking forward to next time. :D


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