The supplies will go to Rikuzentakata and Kamaishi. Each item is listed as needing "100" but because these are all everyday use items, basically we just need as much as people can give.
I had a mission last Saturday, but I have it on good authority that last Saturday was spent breaking down a house--walls, ceiling, floors--probably so the house can be rebuilt without any rotting materials left behind.
Sunday I went. There were only three of us that day. They gave us those little orange wands to wave around and told us we were going to help cars park for an event. Entrusting this task in part to me sounded like a surefire way to cause the biggest car crash in the history of Kamaishi, but Futo-san was wise and put me in the entrance to the parking lot, where all I had to do was wave the cars on to someone else who knew better than I did. Wouldn't have been a hard job if it weren't for the fact that it was bitterly, horribly cold. Two young trendy ladies in big horn-rimmed glasses shuffled into the event, and when they shuffled back out, they had a brief powwow between the two of them and shuffled up to me. It was to show me pictures of the event: a famous boxer, teaching little kids how to box. The girls reported that the boxer was being hugged by the children. When the girls shuffled off, Futo-san asked me if I know those girls. No, I said. I waved goodbye to them as they pulled out of the parking lot. Futo-san asked me again, do you know them? No, Futo-san. I am special so people show me pictures. :D
On Thursday, we leveled off someone's backyard. This meant getting rid of the excess gravel and such around so the ground was flat, plus getting rid of whatever rubble we found. It's surprising every time I do this how deep into the ground rubble gets, and how much there is of it. Ground that looks like it might have a bit of glass or plastic just on the surface ends up yielding big planks of wood, frying pans, mysterious metal things, who knows what, plus buckets of broken glass. All the broken glass a mosaic artist could ever want. Spent the day hauling bags of gravel around. My body thought it was done for a while and is deeply upset that I am pulling this kind of junk with it again. Punishment: it hurts. I feel like I did 5000 situps and even little obscure muscles like the tool grippy muscles in my thumb are sore.
This is the nice woman with the rice field we helped clear. HANDS had come to work at this site at least two times and it took a lot of work: chainsawing and throwing wood into the trucks our day, but it must have taken a lot of time to gather all that wood the other days.
She said that she still couldn't quite grasp the reality of the situation and even now felt like it might be a dream.
They had just spent money on repairing their new house and expected to live out the rest of their lives working on the rice field and living off retirement. Instead, the house was washed away and they're living in temporary housing.
Even though people say to "ganbaru" (do your best) no matter how much they worked to clean, it didn't make a dent in the rubble and they stopped even remembering what it felt like to be motivated or feel hopeful.
One of the other volunteers, Takami-san, later reported that she began crying for awhile while we were there and all he could do was cry along with her.
He did say she felt encouraged working alongside the other volunteers and seeing the rubble finally go away.
While the world, and frankly, some parts of Japan, start to “move on” from the Tohoku disaster, coastal residents are increasingly being left out in the cold. 9 months into a recovery process that will take about 10 years, the people on the coast are nowhere near the point of being able to “move on” themselves. Meanwhile, many NPOs like HANDS that work directly in the disaster areas are struggling and going under due to lack of funding and interest.
Now, more than ever, HANDS needs your ongoing support.
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To make a donation from within Japan, please use the following information.
As of the end of December, HANDS had registered 1026 people and transported 4003 volunteers to and from the coast. We are still dispatching volunteers every day to distribute supplies, clean tsunami mud and rubble, help with landscaping, assist with events, and more. HANDS regularly helps coordinate events at volunteer centers to distribute food or other aid. The founder of HANDS has traveled the country as far as places like Tokyo, Nagoya and Shizuoka Prefecture and given lectures on the current state of the coast and how listeners can help.
HANDS is a smaller nonprofit, but there are advantages to being small. When people on the coast tell us they need something, we can react immediately while larger groups have to take time to deliberate. We’re flexible with volunteers as well—we take volunteers daily, sometimes on short notice, when many groups only dispatch volunteers once or twice a week, and we don’t ask people to attend an orientation.
Our group has relationships with the Rikuzentakata and Kamaishi volunteer centers. This means we can act as a contact to introduce small nonprofits, businesses or professionals who want to help the region. For example, a Hawaiian nonprofit called Kids Hurt Too reached out to HANDS a few months ago and we set up a meeting between Kids Hurt Too, HANDS, and the Kamaishi volunteer center. Now Kids Hurt Too will provide seminars in Kamaishi next June on grief and trauma and how residents can self-care to soothe their symptoms.
In another recent example, HANDS was contacted by a frozen foods company in Toyama prefecture and is now taking regular shipments of frozen food donations this winter to distribute to people living in temporary housing facilities that are too far away (30 minutes or more by car) from grocery stores.
HANDS is even in the business of throwing the occasional party. With the cooperation and support of the foreign community in Iwate, HANDS and Kamaishi Volunteer Center threw a Christmas party for children in Kaminakajima temporary housing unit. Later, HANDS received donations for wine and amazake, a traditional New Year’s alcohol made out of rice, and distributed the drinks to temporary housing residents for New Year’s.
The needs of the coast will change through the 10 years recovery is estimated to take, but HANDS is flexible and dedicated enough to adapt to those changes. And it might not just be Tohoku that benefits; Jun, the head of HANDS, said he wants to use our organization to help other regions hit by disasters in the future, within Japan and even overseas.
If you can, please consider supporting us this year so we can continue to help the coast.
