Disaster Relief

At the beginning of last week I just felt sad about the flooding – perhaps with a combination of survivor’s guilt and a wish to be more hands-on. A couple of productive days of sending out email appeals made me feel better – after all, the rebuilding won’t happen without the funds. I was reminded of a conversation I had with my friend Roberta, in which we talked about the people who work with the community and the people who raise the money so other people can work with the community – you need both kinds of people, and both kinds have different skill sets. More power to the people who work with the community, we said at the time. Serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco made me feel I was where the action was, and early last week I felt sad to be back to being behind the scenes. But by the end of last week I realized I was both and that I could serve an important role. The best use of my skill set is probably being in the office – I was pulled into a board meeting last week and asked to put together a one-pager of fast facts of Habitat’s disaster relief efforts, review a proposal that will go out to prospective donors and answer requests for information – so in the office I now feel on the front lines, working on immediate response. On Monday my responsibilities increased when I was pulled into a meeting with my supervisor, someone from Asia-Pacific who had flown in, and the head of Friends of Habitat and asked to put together a bunch of things for resource mobilization – proposals, budgets, timetables, prospect lists.

What also made me feel good about working on disaster relief in the office is a day I spent in the field. Friday we left at the crack of dawn to get to Marikina, one of the hardest-hit places. Habitat decided that its response would be to build portable bathrooms in the most crowded evacuation centers, filling an immediate need and also providing some sustainability (the evacuation centers chosen were all schools and will use the bathrooms later). We also held a soup kitchen there – to meet an immediate need and also to have some visibility (not sustainable, so not something Habitat would normally do). I had been told about the soup kitchen but not the bathrooms so I didn’t bring work gloves, and after slicing my hand open a couple of times on the metal frames, I hung back a little bit from the build, but I dished out soup (leading me to say, “mud, blood and soup,” which Julie thought should be the title of this entry). I’m glad I spent the day in the field – seeing the people and the mud and the trash and the remains of the houses that were swept away is different from seeing the pictures of the same – but it was somewhat disorganized and there was downtime and I thought about how many emails I could have sent. Now, that said, I would do another day in the field if I were needed, or pack relief supplies, or do whatever would be most helpful. I’m in Peace Corps Response, after all – and now I am responding!

There was a sobering article in Monday’s New York Times, noting that the infrastructure of Manila is particularly unable to handle the disasters – and with 20-25 typhoons a year, disasters are bound to happen. Read it at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/world/asia/05philip.html?scp=1&sq=manila%20philippines&st=cse. Fortunately for Manila, Typhoon Pepeng – for which we were told to stock up on food and water and avoid nonessential travel this past weekend – didn’t hit here, though it did cause major damage up north, and it is affected by the track of the next storm, Quedan, so it’s stalled there.