After the Wave - 3 Parks and Recreation

One of the aspects about the All Hands organization that I appreciated was their broad focus to just help in any capacity that they could. Unlike other organizations that I've worked with they didn't have a narrow focus say on housing, education, or cleanup.

All of the active projects were shown up on this board. Every evening after dinner all of the volunteers have the opportunity to sign up under different positions. Volunteers who have signed up for chores around the base get the first pick of projects.

In addition to gutting and de-mudding houses and stores hit by the tsunami many of the projects had a community support element to them. One project had volunteers helping to harvest rice fields, because a lot of the laborers they count on are no longer there. Another job had volunteers taking senior citizens to grocery stores or other shopping centers. With most of the public transportation infrastructure damaged, and many stores destroyed or still closed some people have no way of getting to the shopping centers to by daily necessities. Many of them have lost their family members and have no one else to rely upon. The photo reclamation project will be the subject of my 4th post.

Two of the coordinator's primary responsibility was to scout, choose, and plan different projects. It's worth mentioning here, how difficult it is to actually turn the good will and motivation of potential volunteers into actual good works. Just showing up in a disaster zone and trying to help isn't such a good idea. You're going to need accommodation, food, water, sanitation all of which are going to be difficult to get for the people who live in the impacted area and you don't want to be a burden on already strained resources. Then once you've managed to do provide for the basic necessities for volunteers you have to pick and choose a steady stream of projects for them to work on. Then you have to mediate conflicts and issues that arise when you throw all kinds of random people together in a really cramped living situation and working in a very emotionally taxing environment. This includes dealing with the occasional oddball crazy guy who manages to find their way in.

So really what I'm trying to say here is that the logistical work that goes into managing a base that regularly had over 100 volunteers constantly working for months is quite impressive.

On my first day I would be fixing up a park that was submerged by and filled with debris from the tsunami.

Leaving the base I got my first view of Ofunato in daylight. The first reaction I had was surprise at how beautiful the natural scenery is surrounding the town.

Ofunato is a port city located on a bay, but it's surrounded by dramatic green covered mountains. One coordinator I talked to, a former investment banker, said if this town was located an hour from Tokyo it would be the most expensive real estate in Japan.

The park itself was in much better shape then it had been a few months ago. Most of the debris had been cleared away. A bulldozer had spread a new layer of fresh dirt.

Looking around I saw most of the houses were intact, and I initially assumed the tsunami must have not done much damage here. I learned from our site leader that in fact they had just already renovated the surrounding buildings. I would guess that the park itself was a bit over a mile from the ocean, by the time the tsunami reached it it was only several feet high, big and powerful enough to totally destroy the first floors of most buildings but not strong enough to destroy most structures. A few hundred feet towards the ocean and it was a much different story.

Still the rate of recovery for this area was really impressive.

I spent most of the day working with two other volunteers and our sit leader all of whom were Americans. Two of them have lived in Tokyo for many years and happened to be friends with Ricky. Either Tokyo is a smaller community then I thought or he's a really popular guy.

Our major project was building the fence that was going to surround the park. Part of this involved mixing cement by hand in order to set the posts. Turns out leveling and getting a fence to stay straight is way more difficult then you would think.

But I think we did a pretty good job. Although at the end of the day, a crew came by with a flatbed truck with a crane to remove the 1 ton debris bags we had our site. They managed to drop one of the bags on one section of the fence when their crane malfunctioned. Bummer...

We also planted a few new trees. This was actually the scariest job of the day since the large trees were occupied by giant spiders.

We finished our work day around 4:30 and headed back to the base for dinner. Every workday a big meal is prepared for the volunteers by a few Japanese women from the community. It was quite good and it was great to have a nice home cooked meal. Although mayonaise on sweet potatoes, common really.

After dinner, the daily meeting and selecting work assignments for the next day volunteers are pretty much at liberty to do what they want. Which is mostly just shower and hang out, there isn't a whole lot of activity going around the base. The volunteers work 6 days a week including Saturday and Sunday, Tuesday is the only day off making Monday night their weekend.

Still, I was sitting in the main common room with a few of the other volunteers around a Japanese style floor table when a macho Japanese worker strolled in wearing those crazy baggy pants and sat down and joined us. He was one of the neighbors and apparently stopped by regularly. The only english he seemed to know was "You drink Japanese sho-chu" sho-chu is a Japanese liquor made from potatoes. After that he produced a 4L bottle of the stuff and poured us each a tall glass mixed with a little water.