My time on All Hands Project Leyte

This post is probably going to sound super cliché in some spots (hopefully I don’t come off like this article does), but I’m certainly going to write it anyway. My experience in the Philippines is one I really want to share… mostly because it has really given me more momentum to continue with NGO and charity work. So here it goes. Once again… I apologize for the length of this post (you've been warned!). 

Over my time off of work for Tet holiday (the lunar new year), I had the pleasure of going to the small town of Kananga on Leyte island, the Philippines, to volunteer with the typhoon Haiyan relief effort through a group called All Hands Volunteers. My first step on this volunteering journey was of course getting myself there. I had never traveled very far alone by myself before this trip, so I have to admit I was a little nervous. I managed to make my 3 (yes, 3!) flights from Hanoi to Cebu no problem. From Cebu, I had to take a ferry to the city of Ormoc on Leyte island. I had read that Filipino ferries were not the most reliable, so when I missed the ferry I planned to take (the last one of the day, too) by 10 minutes I started to think my smooth-traveling luck had run out. I ended up catching an slow, overnight ferry, where I meet 2 really nice Filipino women who kept me company. Their comments on how brave I was for traveling alone in the Philippines made me both worried and proud of myself at the same time. Once I got to Ormoc (at 4:30am, might I add), I hopped on a bus that took me to Kananga, where I found a bicycle driver to take me to the town hospital where the All Hands base is. I got this sudden anxious feeling when I realized was in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, guided by a complete stranger in a foreign country… but one look up at the incredible stars above me and the sight of the bright pink hospital down the road made it go away instantly.

Lucky for me, there were some volunteers who were already awake when I arrived, and one of them (an awesome, 40-year-old, tattooed-up, American guy named Jeff) came out to make sure I didn’t get ripped off my the bicycle driver and even offered me his bed to nap until the work day started. That just goes to show the amazing character of all of the 40-ish All Hands volunteers and staff I meet! I could talk about each one and how dedicated and caring they are… but I’ll just leave it at saying it was so nice to meet people who had devoted themselves to helping those less fortunate than themselves. What is also really cool is that we were a really diverse group of people, so I have friends to visit all over the world now!

So as for the work that I did, Project Leyte had moved bases to the Kananga Municipal Hospital about a week before I got there. We were restoring the hospital from top to bottom, trying to repair the damage that Haiyan caused to it. My first day I was on the “debris team”, which meant I was cleaning up all the garbage, glass, scrap metal and wood that was around the hospital. My second day I signed up to be on the interior painting team, because I have experience with it thanks to the painting business I ran 3 years ago. When the All Hands staff found out I had painting experience, I ended up with the responsibility of leading the painting team (on my second day!). We ran into tons of technical issues with the painting (as in, paint was peeling right off the walls), but we solved them with some trial and error solutions. The painting team  were also in charge of repairing and painting the cabinets and shelving of the hospital (which turned out to be MUCH more difficult than I remembered it to be). I know this is not really what you think of as “disaster relief” work, but I felt good knowing I was helping give the people of Kanaga a fresh, clean hospital.

One of my working days, I managed to get away from the paint by getting first pick at which team I would be on by volunteering to do dinner dishes (yes, that’s how team assignments work at All Hands). I went of the “safety” team, which meant going to a local high school to make some of the damaged classrooms safe for use. This usually involves taking down loose ceilings and roofs, and on the day that I went there, we took down 2 giant A-frames (the triangle pieces of steel that meet to make a roof). The experienced volunteers I was with made an awesome pulley system to get these massive pieces of metal down from the roof, and it was so cool just to even be a part of that! I also just helped moved a lot of debris, and tried cutting the A-frames with a angle grinder. The children of the school were what made that day really special for me though. As I walked around the school grounds with my wheel-barrel full of scrap wood or metal, all I could hear were the kids asking me “what’s your name?” or “where are you from?”! One student, a 12-year-old boy, even gave me a letter addressed to all the volunteers, thanking us for helping he and his people to recover from Haiyan. It was such a humbling and touching moment, and made the all the sweat and the sore back at the end of the day well worth it. When I was walking through town a few days later on a hike to a local waterfalls with the other volunteers, I heard kids yelling my name, and I realized that it was the high school students who must remember me . How can you not feel overwhelmed with happiness when you’re welcomed like that?!

After work was done every day, you could usually find most of us volunteers at a local house just down the road that sells beer (appropriately named “beer lady”). Then there was dinner and the daily meeting, where the team leaders talked about the work from today and what was to be done tomorrow.  My nights were filled with great conversations, bond fires, card games, and of course more beer. That’s the remarkable thing that happens when you have no internet or constant electricity… you connect with the people around you instead of staring at your phone all day. It’s also surprising how little you miss internet and electricity when you have great company who keep you entertained anyway! One of the more eventful nights while I was on the project was when a typhoon passed through Kananga! It was a 3 out of 5 on the typhoon class scale (to put it in perspective, Haiyan didn’t even register in this class system), and we prepared very well by securing the hospital and getting emergency food/water. Being in a typhoon was scary for me at first (even though these size storms are a very regular occurrence for Filipinos) but it turned out to be not a huge deal. There was also a small earthquake that night… which didn’t even wake me up. So I guess I can say I lived through 2 natural disasters in one day, but really they were not disasters. There were no reports of damage or loses from the locals in Kananga from this smaller typhoon too which was reassuring.

Overall, my experience in the Philippines gave me a whole new perspective on disaster response and risk management (which is a field I hope to get involved in during my carrier). I saw first-had how people lives are dramatically changed by natural disasters, and how they can still smile and be incredibly generous even in the face of such loss. I realized that disaster response work really means getting things “back to normal” for the communities affected by disasters and understanding their needs (even if that need is a newly painted a hospital). I also realized how complicated and frustrating this kind of work can be, when you don’t have access to the materials and funds to effectively respond to the community’s need.  But I also realized how truly rewarding and impactful the work is. I can say I helped get a hospital back up and running… and that’s pretty freaken cool. I can’t wait to see the pictures of the finished hospital, which should be done next week, and to hopefully return to Project Leyte this summer (SURPRISE MOM AND DAD! :P).