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Welcome to Michael Andrew’s Blog!
Welcome to Michael's blog. Michael Andrew, (aka Michael The Maven) is a freelance photography instructor and tech innovator. Read More
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Spent the whole day moving food and hygiene kits to different churches housing displaced survivors. Literally all day of loading and unloading, most of the time my driver Jordan and I, but Taylor joined us on the last runs of the day. (Taylor is a volunteer who I invited to join me and came a few days after I arrived in Tacloban. He has been focusing on housing projects, but joins us when he can.)
I'm missing the little things. Like electricity. (Generator comes on for about 2 hours a night- I charge 2 14,000 mah battery packs to power everything I need for the next day).
I miss clean, running water I can drink out of the sink if I needed to and not have to buy all my drinking water from a town 2 hours away.
I miss food, all food I took for granted.
I miss a real shower and not a bucket bath using filthy, mosquito maggot filled water to bathe in.
I miss AC, and not sweating all day or walking around in sweat drenched clothing. I miss washing machines and not having to wear one of three sets of clothing while the other two are hand washed, from sweating in them all day. I miss ice and cold food.
I miss not having a lot of things, but I am so very grateful to be here, to serve, to see the strength of the Philippine people rebuild. I will hop on a plane and one day later have all these simple things again, but they will not have it so easy. It is an honor to watch and have helped them in a very small way and it is an experience I will not ever forget. |
| I wanted to share this because it is a very common way people get cleaned up here, probably more common to use just a bucket of water, soap and rinse. Very common to see people doing it fully clothed too. Always cold water. I've been doing the bucket bath thing for most of the last month, the water we use is dirty, filled with mosquito larvae swimming around. Makes me really appreciate my hot shower in the States. |
| Spent the day taking food around to church shelters. Long day. Lots if lifting. Tired. |
| Taylor helping unload a van. Seemed never ending today as much as we are working, it just doesn't seem like there is enough to go around |
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Spent most of the day running around town trying to meet people or email others in Cebu or Craig in the Netherlands trying to get my food through customs in Cebu. Long story short there was one little detail on one if the forms that was incorrect and it slowed everything down. We just needed 2 signatures to clear things up. There is a lot more to the story, much of it maddening, but the good news is the food is on the way and should be delivered directly to me here in Tacloban (it was going to Ormoc, 2 hours away). There are many, many accounts of both food and gear being seized by customs and being distributed by the government, or even other aid organizations - pretty scary stuff. I'm in awe of the amount of work required to actually get things shipped, but I'm also learning and have support from the best.
I'm not so happy that Damarius and Craig are gone, I like the new Salvation Army crew but the vibe is quite different. Damarius and I worked really hard (and well) together, and I love having Craig around because he just makes things happen and we think similarly in terms of the task at hand/goals. Very easy to get things done when u have that.
I need to be honest and just say that I do not feel very needed by the new group, which is fine because we have a great model working and the aid is flowing. My concentration right now is focusing on getting this food here, preparing it, & getting it delivered. I'm also trying to help President Aban with everything he needs before I go. Also trying to get a few clips for an overview/documentary.
It has been such a great, great experience being here. |
| I have gained a whole new level of appreciation for food after eating mostly this for the last couple weeks. I also eat ramen and hard boiled eggs and am down about 20 lbs now. Coming home soon. |
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I have a new driver while Andoi is attending the birth of his new daughter. Jordan is one of President Abans counselors and used to be a truck driver, knows the area well and we have a lot of fun talking about almost every topic imaginable.
We had a wonderful distribution this afternoon, it was by far the most organized I have ever seen. The bags the Salvation Army gives out can be quite heavy for women or older recipients, so to solve this the village designated 10-12 younger men to act as proxy carriers of the relief goods, it was quite a beautiful thing. Impossible in Haiti.
At lunch I tried to do as much follow up as possible with the food I have coming through Cebu, everything should workout ok there as well, UPS is shipping it straight to the warehouse we have been using here in Tacloban, which we have 24/7 access to. I hope to document as much as possible of it once it arrives.
In the afternoon we went GPS scouting, heard there was an entire region not getting food down south and it turns out they were doing just fine. That's the thing with disaster aid work is that information is only good for 1-2 days.
In the evening Jordan and I ran some food over to another church who has a lot of people staying there, they were happy to get it.
I believe we have another general Salvation Army distribution tomorrow morning, as well as moving a lot of food around for the church in the afternoon. I'm hoping my food will arrive by Monday and be distributed by Wednesday. I should be heading back to the states on Thursday.
I'm very close to full strength again, I think a lot of the nausea and dizziness I was feeling the past few days was the medication I was taking as I'm not feeling it anymore, having stopped taking it this am. I'm still quite exhausted, but as long as I can fall asleep I'm good.
Damarius, the Salvation Army lead who has been here since the beginning is leaving tomorrow morning. I'm sad to see her go, we had a great time here getting the pipeline set up and I hope to work with her again in the future should the opportunity arise. |
| I seriously love working with the Salvation Army crew, they are very hard workers and completely committed to helping the Philippine people. |
| Andre left this morning, I think he was lonely without Craig. We will miss both of them. |
| How can I even try to explain this? |
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We have a couple big distributions lined up for tomorrow, I think about 60,000 meals if I am not mistaken. Spent much of the day moving people around, Andre left this morning from the Tacloban airport.
Andoi and Bob Poff also left in the afternoon, but we had to drive them to Ormoc. We also had two females visiting that need to go to Ormoc as well, one if which is the wife of one of my best friends from BYU, Mindy McQuivey.
Andoi is going to see his second baby be born, and will be back Sunday, he has already promised to bring me some McDonalds from Cebu.
I never eat McDonalds in the USA. Never. Overseas, McDonalds, for whatever reason becomes the holy grail of anything you can eat and I would gladly eat there all three meals.
The main problem I'm facing is I've already gone through all my MREs (I brought 3 weeks worth, but have been sharing them) and I'm not getting enough protein. There is plenty of meat available, but my stomach doesn't agree with the way it is prepared (mostly fried in heavy oil) so I am left with the choice of either getting sick from eating it (yes I've tried) or having zero energy and feeling a different kind of sick. Most of my meals consist of white rice, ramen, oranges and hard boiled eggs. Bob Poff and Mindy gave me a bunch of cliff bars that I immediate ate.
I'm drinking as much water as I can get my hands on, all of it bottled. My guess is I'm about 20 lbs lighter at this point, my belt has moved 2 notches and my pants feel loose & baggy. It's hard to describe, but it's like my body is just absolutely tearing through calories and I can feel the weight coming off each day. It's so strange to me that I can't duplicate this with exercise in non-disaster situations, but I think much of it comes from the constant hustle involved combined with the loading and unloading of trucks each day.
We are having a few problems with our food coming in, but we should have it resolved soon. |
| One of my best friends wife from BYU came with another group to help with the effort. Was so fun to see Mindy MCQuivey here! |
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We had one big and one small distribution today, but because I still don't have all of my energy back, I spent my time co-ordinating with all involved parties about getting the food Bob shipped over to Cebu prepped to be sent here to Tacloban.
I won't bore you with all the details, but it hasn't exactly been smooth, starting with another aid group attempting to steal the food for its own distribution purposes (true, as crazy as that sounds), getting it shipped to the correct location leaving the day before thanksgiving, getting the rice for the meals in Cebu as other agencies are buying it in bulk, then getting it here to me, then getting it distributed to those who need it most. It has been a wonderful learning experience, and with Craig leaving and mentoring me from a far, I am getting extremely valuable first hand experience in disaster aid logistics.
This afternoon Andoi took a load of food up into the mountains to deliver to 27 or so families that hadn't received anything - it turns out that at least the last family was most likely the leader of a rebel group. Andoi had asked I not come in this distribution in the event something like this turned out to be the case, and we are both glad I wasn't with him when he did.
A lot of people are leaving tomorrow, including Bob Poff, Andre and even Andoi will be gone as his wife is having their new baby on the 6th. (he should return on the 10th). Until my food gets here, I'll still be working with the salvation army, in their operations. They expect to see another ~1.2 million meals distributed through the pipeline we established in the month of December.
My main focus now is making sure the food gets here ok, and then documenting its delivery. I'll also continue to help Aban with anything else he needs. I have a flight leaving next week to Manila, I'll spend a half day there getting cleaned up before I come home.
Looking forward to a hot shower and pepperoni pizza |
| There are so many times in the day we can't really take pictures for whatever reason, but we do when we can. It's such a cool experience to see how they react to strange visitors, they are very curious. |
| I had to direct traffic today for about 20 minutes during a delivery. Our big truck blocked one if the lanes in the road. Everyone followed my instructions, no accidents. Never did that before |
Six distributions this morning. Still finding lots of gaps of people who are not getting enough to eat. We have a big distribution tomorrow morning. I've been typing all my updates on my iPhone, and it takes about an hour each night, so I'm going to keep this one a little short and try to get some rest, I only got about 3.5 hours last night.
Bob Poff made it to Tacloban today, he is shipping in the 75,000 meals from the money we raised and I'm looking forward to getting that food distributed. He is a wealth of experience, information and resources and I have already learned so much from him. |
| School started again today for most kids in Tacloban. We originally heard this school was hosting several refugee families who weren't getting any food, but because school started they had been relocated. I decided to visit with them anyway and was greeted with a very loud "good morning sir!!" These kids are so much fun. |
| One school was still drying out their textbooks so they could still use them. Sad! |
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Feeling much, much better today. Still a little tired and weak, but I would say I'm at 85%. Thank you to everyone who wished me well. I don't like being sick here, because there is so much to do and not many volunteers. I hate not being able to get my hands dirty for these beautiful people.
The island we checked out today is called Zummaragra. Learned many important lessons from this experience and need to apply them in the future. Getting access to a helicopter in a disaster situation is essentially the holy grail of assets in disaster aid work, everyone talks about getting them, or how wonderful it would be to get one, no one actually does it. Turns out there is an actual submission process to borrow one through the UN, you just need to know who to talk to and what to do and Craig was able to make it happen as we were worried about 3 different islands and wanted a quick way to assess them. One of the islands was ok, the other had already been adopted by another NGO group, a few kilometers away, apparently had massive damage. No one knew anything about Zummaragra. Craig accessed the right people through the right channels and lined it up.
I have at least 400-500 images on my 5Diii, also got several clips on my iPhone. The video on both the iPhone and 5d3 were shaky, so I decided that full res stills were the way to go.
Surprisingly, there was very little damage on Zummaragra, and while we could see children and adults both signaling us to land, the pilots, who were civilian contractors hired from a tour company didn't believe they had a good place to land. I saw at least 3 places, including a fully paved basketball court. I think any military pilot would have done it, these guys seemed afraid, so we weren't able to land, disappointingly.
While the infrastructure, buildings, power lines, cell towers, fishing boats all looked ok for the most part, we really don't know how much they depend on neighboring islands for food, and if they are not fully self sufficient (growing and catching all their own food) they might be hurting. We are looking into a ferry to the island, but it's a 5 hour trip one way. Zummaragra is also a notorious rebel hideout. At least we took away an interesting experience and have a knowledge of the protocols and contacts to hopefully make it happen again in future disasters if needed. That or maybe it's time to get our own.
After a quick lunch of Ramen noodles we loaded up our trucks and split into 2 teams making 5 deliveries each to "refugee shelters". That term is to be taken with a huge grain of salt, it's essentially a building that has some of its roof intact, there may be anywhere from 1-20 families all staying there, each with very little food. They sure were happy to get what we brought them. Most of the places we went today were just completely out in the boonies, and because there weren't many people out there, some were really hurting.
Craig is leaving tomorrow do we got some good footage of him playing with several of the children.
One of the members from another city called General Santos apparently purchased a van for me to use as long as I am here, so Andoi and I have access to travel anywhere we want, anytime we want instead of needing to bum rides from one of the few church vehicles we have here. He is going to be a new Dad soon, so it looks like I'll be driving this thing for at least a couple days.
The pace doing disaster aid work can be absolutely brutal. I think one of the problems some volunteers is that if they actually get here, they do not know what to do or where to start. I also think that sometimes they get burned out (it is truly stressful & hard work). If you really apply yourself, yes you will still occassionally have some down time, but for the most part, it is flat out go go go, non stop. You may load or unload a truck 2-3 times a day, do a distribution, do a food or gas run, just non-stop. If you are going full speed, I don't think it is humanely possible to consume as many calories as you will burn, simply because if you have enough time to eat that much, you will fall asleep before you can finish such a meal. Come 5am, you better be ready to go again. Day after day, for weeks.
Something I just love about working with Craig, Andre, Demarius, Andoi & the Salvation Army team is we are definitely all on the same page as far as pace and sense of urgency. We all jump in to fill necessary roles depending on what is needed, sometimes without even discussing it. Makes it so much easier to get things done.
When we don't have things going on with SA, Andoi and I focus on helping with the church, it's members and friends (we have made many, many deliveries to non- church members that came from the requests of concerned members). We really try to help everyone we can, as fast as we can, as fair as we can, but between the LDS church and the Salvation Army, we absolutely have a full plate.
My flight from Manila is scheduled on the 12th, but I'm keeping the option open to extend if necessary.
Definitely not seeing the numbers of volunteers we saw in Haiti or Japan, and I can see an impact we are having, extending is definitely a possibility.
We will have a very busy morning tomorrow before taking Craig to the airport. Bob Poff is also coming in with President Aban from Ormoc (Aban has been spending the weekend with his family). Bob Poff is the CEO of the company that is bringing in 75,000 or so meals from the money that we raised together. I'll keep you all updated. |
| Shows Zummaragra in relation to Tacloban City. |
| Look at these faces! I just love the philippino children. They are among the sweetest, most gentile, humble children I've met. |
| This is my dinner, a cup of Ramen noodles. It tasted like heaven after 2 days of white rice. I think I've lost 15 lbs so far. Nothing will make u lose weight like disaster aid work! |
| I shared some of my ramen with this handsome fellow who was clearly malnourished. Hate seeing so many animals and pets suffering here. |
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I felt it coming for the last 4 days, & Finally crashed this morning. The Salvation Army usually has medical clinics, including a full team of doctors and nurses, one of the many reasons I love to work with them, if something happens they can take care of you.
I was really upset I missed the 2 distributions today as I was resting trying to recover, very proud of Andoi who stepped up and was able to get the coupons filled out (200+ of them) on his own at the second location. We have a really good system of same day deliveries and have most of our logistics worked out. Should be pretty straight forward for the local SA leadership to run it smoothly.
Come 7pm, I was completely dehydrated and couldn't keep any fluids or food down. Craig talked to Demarius, the SA lead and she sent the doctors right over. So thankful to all of them.
Andoi thinks I accidentally drank some of the well water we use for bucket baths. The doctors gave me 3 different kinds of medications and an IV, and I'm already starting to feel better.
I'm going to try to rest tomorrow and get better by Sunday, where we have some island assessments lined up. The plan is NOT to travel by boat. |
| Came down with something been in bed all day and was completely dehydrated. The good news is Andoi knows enough about tagging now that he took over for me today and the team delivered 60,000 meals to 2 villages we found the other day. I hate missing distributions, but we all work great together and have an established system. When I didn't get better in the afternoon,Craig notified the Salvation Army team of doctors and nurses here, and they came over tonight and took care of me. I should be ok soon. |
| How lucky am I that Andoi is also a nurse! He's been a great help with the IV. |
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