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
