Monday, April 18, 2011 Bluffing, Bumbling and the One Thing We Didn't Bring on the Truck

After a long night of frustrating internet drop-offs while trying to post, I headed out in the morning to Sendai in one of the blue vans with cardboard to recycle, and to pick up whatever we could get from Samaritan’s Purse and Food for the Hungry. I’ll add it to what Corey and Tim brought. Small problem: I forgot to get the pass with the shiny gold seal from the K truck to put in the van, so I practiced my “kyu en bushi” speech most convincingly during the drive, hoping the toll booth guy would be impressed. He wasn’t. He asked for my pass, helpfully handed me an application form, and warmly said “sen sanbyakyu goju yen kudasai” (thirteen hundred and fifty yen please).

Samaritan’s Purse (the picture is from an earlier trip) was out of most things on their inventory list, but had mountains of blankets, cooking kits, collapsible water jugs, and pantyliners. So I filled out their requisition form, grabbed a couple of cases of each of those and walked over to the Food for the Hungry side. Same type of form, only in Japanese. I just listed what I saw there that I wanted, signed the form and started loading up: pens and pencils, sandals, towels, noodles, juice, cabbage, hand lotion, hand sanitizer, hand wipes, diapers and underwear. Pretty much filled the van. Samaritan’s Purse also had large bales of futon’s (fwootone), trifolding cloth-covered foam sleeping pads, but no way could I fit a bale in.

Now time to find Chad, Beth, Chihiro, Maya (a karate student from the dojo who came along to help), Corey, and Tim, who were already in the target neighborhood. 45 minutes later I’m in the neighborhood and Chad says turn left down the good road right after the J Electric crew putting up power

poles and after the Laundromat. Of course I don’t know what “Laundromat” looks like in Nihongo (Japanese), plus in this part of town nothing looks like what its former use was—all the wrecked buildings look the same. But I did actually find where he meant; and looking down the road I saw 20 or so helmeted Japanese volunteer men along the road; and I’m thinking “I don’t want to squeeze by all those guys, I’ll just take the next street and work back.” Several blocks later I take the next passable left turn, wind down it for a couple of minutes, and an excited man is telling me in Japanese it’s blocked up ahead, that I need to back out, and Chad’s calling on the cell asking where I am. . .

Anyway, I finally see him waving on the side of the road, and I turn in and all the helmeted guys were leaving—they were a drinking water truck crew—and there’s our crew and a tarp and lots of stuff but hardly anybody to take stuff. Only a few apartments, mostly single-family homes and most

uninhabitable, but people start trickling in by twos and threes and it’s good because we actually get to talk to them, find out exactly what they need, play with the kids, and there’s no wind today. And all the produce

gets taken a bit at a time, and most of the dry food too, and blankets and socks and few cook kits. Then we’re loading (with the little kids helping)

and taking pictures, and saying goodbyes, and as the last people are leaving, Corey and Tim remember they have some small folding two wheeled
carts, so we go through the maze of junk, houses, and alleys to find where the people are actually living. And suddenly there’s a multigenerational

family in a mostly cleaned up house and mostly cleaned up yard, and this beautiful old crinkly, wrinkly-face couple and we talk and laugh and they ask us for the one thing we don’t have which is anything they can use for a bathroom, and of course we don’t, but Chad figures if we talk to the right people, maybe we could have a port-a-potty dropped off near their house.

We lead Corey and Tim with a van now full of cardboard and trash out through town to the highway so they can head back to Tokyo, and Maya (who was a great cheerful help) rides back with Chad and she can’t believe how we give and help without asking anything in return.

Back at the “ranch” Chad’s thinking about Golden Week (kind of like spring break, except for the whole country) when up to 30 volunteers may be arriving to help. But I guess that’s a good kind of problem to have.