Gifts, Guests and Gambatte

June 29, 2011

Well, today marks my third week here in Ofunato. This week was filled with delights and surprises.  My sister, Nancy, sent the best care package all the way from California. Salami, beef jerky, California cheese (a hot item here among the volunteers),  candies and chocolates (that went very fast),  poker chips for the nightly volunteer’s poker game and tabloid magazines.   Great fun!  (Thanks Lil’ Nud!).  On Monday, Embassy Ann sent up a huge box of freshly baked chocolate chip, peanut butter and oatmeal raisin cookies for the community center and the All Hands volunteers.  These were gobbled up quickly with great joy!  One of the local resident’s often comes by to give thank you gifts of food and other goodies to the volunteers – the other day he dropped by with 6 large bottles of Diet Pepsi  (those who know me well  can only guess what heaven I was in over that gift!). On the job sites, the people we work for often give us gifts such as cold drinks or homemade baked goods. 

I had tea tonight with a Japanese woman that I met at the local laundry mat last week.  She asked if we could meet up again so that she could work on her English.   Hanae is very well traveled and loves Italy.  We talked about the day of the tsunami and her experiences.  She works in the office of a large local drug store chain that was in the tsunami zone.    She and her colleagues ran for the hills when the alarm went off.    Smartly, she and her family had a pre-arranged meeting place in case of any large earthquake  and they met there.  All were okay.   Since the earthquake happened on a Friday, she didn’t get to see what happened to the store until Monday.   The upper offices were fine, but the store below was a wreck.  On Monday, the company accounted for all the workers except one – she is still missing and was probably washed away by the wave.  Hanae tells me they went about four days without electricity or water, but that many stores in town were open the day after the quake so that people could get supplies and food.   She brought me a lovely bandana which I shall cherish!     

         

Yesterday was somewhat exciting for the All Hands team, because the U.S. Ambassador to Japan came for a visit.  The All Hands organizational management was all buzzing with excitement of the potential media exposure (and possible donor money) that it could mean.     The volunteers were happy just to do their jobs and hope that the local community benefits from it.    I did learn that Ambassador Roos was a San Franciscan and I may have crossed paths with him before – the name was familiar (possibly a former board member of one of the non-profits I have worked for in the past).

I was lucky to be able to sign up for the job site where the Ambassador’s entourage was scheduled to drop by to do about a half-hour of manual labor. We were “gutting” the building of a local Mazda dealership that had been hit pretty hard by the tsunami.  The water & mud line was up to 12 feet high and the building was pretty beat up.  Our job was to remove the dry wall, pull out the nails and insulation and clean out the debris within the walls, so that the wood can be de-molded and contractors can install new drywall and repaint.  There was also a lot of scary hanging glass to be removed.   Most all of the glass plate windows in the dealership had been shattered.   The owner was quite nice – through a translator I got his story about the disaster.   When the alarm went off, he got in his car and drove home to high ground.    The traffic lights were out from the earthquake, so it was a slow drive.    Later that evening, he drove to a nearby highway over pass and was able to see the damage to his business.   Lots of debris and whole sides of the building ripped off.   

We had a productive morning with eight of us working at that site.  Our team leader, Loc, was wonderful.  He was very safe and gave detailed instructions.   About thirty minutes before the Ambassador’s arrival a couple of reporters from NBC news (China) arrived with TV cameras. At lunchtime, the Ambassador Roos and his entourage of about 8 showed up, along with about 10 more TV cameras and reporters (mostly from Japan, I suspect). It was pretty funny as we all sat on the ground with our bento box lunches with the staff and had the reporters filming us eat.  I now know what it must feel like to be on a reality TV show!   After lunch, they were all given dust masks, goggles, hammers and nail claws and we all worked on the building while the cameras rolled.  I gotta give the Ambassador’s team credit – they worked up a sweat as they ripped out sheet rock and helped us get a lot of the job done.  After a photo op with the ambassador holding some tools, he quipped, “that’s great, but please don’t show these pictures of me holding a hammer to my wife!”   

The NBC reporter may be coming back to our Fourth of July party on Monday.   Oh, I forgot to mention that we are being allowed to hold a party... yeah!   There is some concern about it being culturally insensitive to celebrate while the city is still healing – but the volunteers need a release and break from all the hard work.   Also, we are inviting many of the locals that we have met and feel that it will also be a nice way for them to have a short reprieve from their troubles.    Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t initiate this event (I’m on a break from event management).  One of the other volunteers, Patrick is putting together the celebration and we are all looking forward to it!