Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Construction of Ilagan Homes





4/18/2011
We are finally finishing up the construction of humble homes for people who were left homeless due to the typhoon and had no means to re-build. We along with Catholic relief have completed over 800, and now we are finishing up the last few. It is all volunteer labor with the exception of a contractor/supervisor. It has demonstrated the spirit of cooperation and helpfulness. The project took place in a town called Ilagan in the nothereastern part of Luzon. The first picture is of the dancing policeman. At the main intersection of Ilagan they play peppy music and the cops dance as they conduct traffic. The second pictures is a home being built. Next is an old couple in front of their completed home. The fourth picture is a home that will be eventually taken down. Their new home is being constructed just below it with a view of the valley and a stand of palm trees. In this house is a 40 year old man who has been paralysed for 18 years. We saw him and he just lays there under a mosquito net on a bamboo bed. From what I can understand he suffered a stroke at 22 and can't move the lower half of his body. The skinny old lady in the pink shirt is his mother who takes care of him. She has no husband, and just one daughter, in the white shorts, to help her. The other people are just curious about the strange white people with a camera. We are providing the son a special wheelcahir and have requested the new house have a concrete slab in front with an overhang so he can at least sit and look out at the valley below. The last picture is the home of a family with 12 children. I guess they had no other place to go so they are living in the old house that is leaning so much. I imagine when ever the wind blows they get really nervous. We are building them a bigger house in front of their old one. Hopefully they will all fit.
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Thursday, April 21, 2011

The Inspirational People of Amulon

3/30/11

We met one group of church members that were an inspiration to us. They and some of their non-member friends are part of our new Amulon agricultural project. Their little community is not accessible by road. The Saturday when we visited there were 45 people helping transport by foot sand, cement, and cement block out to build their worm beds. They live in very humble circumstances, bamboo huts with no water, electricity, or bathrooms. They cook their food outside over a fire in a cooking shed. The picutres are the kitchen, the cooks, the water source which is not that close to the kitchen and me in the bathroom. Next to the tree (which is for support for us old people) is a hole that you squat over. Not much privacy.








Around their homes these people have small gardens for vegetables, a few chickens but they make money by working as farm hands in the rice fields. Their daily wage is from $2 to $3 dollars per day. Their work is not consistent depending on the crop and the weather. So in a good week the most they could make would be $10 to 15 dollars.
However this is what is inspiring to me: To get to church they need to walk through the rice fields a little more than a half a mile to get the main road where they can catch a jeepney. In the last picture I have the view from the village to the main road which is where there is a stand of trees. A jeepney ride cost about 30 cents each way, which is 60 cents round trip. If the average family size is five people that would cost $3.00, at least an entire day’s wages to get to church and home again. If they don’t have the money sometimes they walk and that is 10 miles round trip. The rest of my life I promise I will never again complain what a hassle it is to drive 37 miles to get to church.

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New Agriculture Project

3/26/11





This first picture is a woman dry rice and corn. We are starting a new agriculture project in Tuguegarao. Seventy families have come together to form a coop. These 70 families have been broken up into groups of 10 with a leader that represents them. These are poor families that need to grow food to supplement their diet and perhaps sell the excess. The local government provided them with a daylong seminar in home food production. Also their soil needs some revitalization and so they were instructed in composting with given a kilo of earth worms to speed the process. LDS Charities chipped in with seeds, cement, sand, gravel and cement blocks to make the worm beds. Dennis and I took a random sample of the before pictures and will go back just before harvest time to record the after. We had so much fun visiting the various barangay sites of our new project. In the process we came across many of the recipients of our white corn farmer project of almost a year ago. People called us into their yards to show us the harvested corn crop that was from the seeds from the original batch we passed out. (Like the great grandchildren of our original seeds) We also saw vegetables that were from the seeds gleaned from the original seedlings we distributed. We noticed several people had also taken the initiative to grown seedlings ready for planting. It was so rewarding to see that the effort put into that project is perpetuating and people are still reaping the benefits. The last two pictures are families getting ready to build their worm beds and preparing space for their gardens.
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Return to Lake Buhi

3/23/11



Lake Buhi is one of our favorite places in the Philippines. The weather is usually cooler, and it is situated where there is more cloud cover and thus rain or at least a mist often. It kind of reminds me of home. The people, of course, are open and friendly, the local government is innovative, proactive and out to serve the people of the region. As mentioned before in blog 8/18/10 we are doing a huge water project there. This time we went to check on progress, attend a graduation ceremony for people who learned how to manage the administrative and maintenance part of a water system. Also we brought two special supportive wheelchairs for people with CP. We brought with us a medical screening team from Mabuhay Deseret. This is a charity group started in the Philippines by an eye surgeon and ex mission president. They do free eye surgeries, cleft lip and pallet, clubbed feet, burn constrictors, and prosthetics for below the knee amputees. In addition to the surgeries they have a huge house where they provide housing and three meals a day for the patient and caretaker as they prepare for surgery and recover. In the case of clubbed feet this can be very lengthy because it is done in a series of castings. They do this all free of charge for the poor. The screening was very successful they were able to identify and set up surgeries for over 150 individuals, and others that they could not help were referred to other potential sources of services. In our everyday lives we are so often bombarded with images of evil things people do and it can give one a dim view of the world. In this field of work we are engaged in we are so blessed to meet and associate with the exact opposite. There are definitely angels among us, and we are so privileged to know them. One such person is Dr. Calveria lovingly referred to as Doc Batoy. He comes from relative wealth but works out of a humble clinic in Buhi. Included is a picture of him being pushed around his clinic in one of our wheelchairs by a young patient. Another picture is a 21 year old young man with severe cerebral palsy in our chair. The last two pictures are water pipe being carried up the trail and Dennis speaking at the graduation ceremony.



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