It's hard to explain

 





July 30

Earthquakes cause unexplainable damage. A house that's fallen off from its foundation sits next to a house seemingly intact, the residents still able to live in their house. Most of the damaged houses are older, more traditional wooden structures with the heavy tile roofs, yet I also saw houses less than 20 years old rendered uninhabitable.



We jumped into a van and took a 2.5 hour ride to join a team of 13 to the Noto Peninsula. On the country side, they don't have a complete sewer system, so water from cooking and cleaning drain into concrete-lined ditches, which eventually flow into a nearby river. The earthquake and later heavy rains caused the ditches to become filled with mud and debris. Our job was to clear the ditches to allow waste water to flow again. (In case you're wondering, bathroom "sewage" does not drain into the river and are properly disposed elsewhere.)

We were given the option of starting a day later with the cleanup team, they assumed we needed time to recover from the flight. Peter and I decided to start almost immediately since Peter and I agreed we were there to work. It was quite hot and humid, but the team leaders were good about giving us lots of breaks and providing cold drinks. You can see the before-and after, it was challenging and tiring, but the team got it done.

We're about to start our day. Who knows what we'll be doing? Stay tuned!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

August 6 - Cleanup time

Image
August 6 Hey y'all, it's Peter. It's been a week since we touched down in Japan. To keep things (relatively) short, between a lost wallet, a surprise change in accommodations, and tomorrow being our last full day in Japan, I'd say we're seeing just how far we can be stretched. The work we're doing has been the highlight so far. The days we took off weren't bad but I would rather sweat doing important work rather than sweat walking for hours trying to track down our lost money (we did find it, but boy, what a way to reach 20000 steps). I won't deny that just me and Dad feels like a Japanese comedian duo or ボケ (gag) and ツッコミ (retort) with the positions changing occasionally, but we're looking forward to having a bigger team next time (hint, hint) so it's not just two clueless Odas playing "guess or google translate" I'm turning it over to my dad now, but seriously, thank you for your support in all shapes and forms. またね、bye! Click on ...
Read more

Down and dirty day two

Image
  (click on any photo to enlarge) This is a view of the kasetsu jyuutakuu (temporary housing) that still dots the Noto Peninsula. I think each unit is maybe 200 square feet including kitchen and bath. We became familiar with these units at every place we've done our volunteer work, though so far we haven't done any community building. Not yet, anyway. This time our team was led by Egawa-Sensei, who is on staff with Noto Help and a Pastor at the Uchinada Church. We again were removing walls, this time it was a retaining wall that was collapsing. So that meant more digging and breaking down concrete. Both boys have been fantastic. They've done everything they've been asked to do and more. It's all been about physical labor. Fortunately the weather cooperated, we encountered only brief showers. This is Peter working with Choi-San, using the jackhammer to break down the wall. Let alone this is a challenging task, the jackhammer itself is quite heavy. The chunks of the b...
Read more

We've started!

Image
(Please click on any photo to enlarge.) FYI, the flight here was no problem, we flew United Airlines' partner, ANA (All Nippon Airways) who served us well. My wife Donna purchased a "newly designed" web pillow. It felt a little weird, but I actually got to sleep on the flight, something I rarely do. Getting to Ishikawa Prefecture was a bit more of a challenge, there's no direct route from the airport to our eventual destination, but we used a couple of buses and local trains to get to Kanazawa, which is the city right next to Ishikawa. After a day of settling in, we were sent out to a residence in the Noto area. It may be slightly difficult to see, this is sort of a cross betwen a curb and a ditch. Our guess is the original wall collapsed during the earthquake, but the base of the wall is still there. To rebuild the wall, we need to dig out the dirt, then remove the remaining wall. Note Peter digging out the dirt while also in his rain jacket. A jack...
Read more