Thursday April 21, 2011 Cow Barns and Railroad Tracks

We spent about 45 minutes unloading and reloading the vans to balance the variety of supplies so that we could go to two completely separate areas.

Glenn and his daughter Julie from California have great energy and joy; they're here for a week after their other mission trip got cancelled.

Three vans (team B) set out for the Rojin home at the Kitakami River and I drove one of the 5 team A vans to the East Ishinomaki Area. We began at a small rest home there by the rice fields and Chad went in to see what they needed there. They asked for some specific clothing items. We saw a teenage guy in a crew shoveling mud off the walkways. They all had pointed

nose shovels and we had several square nose shovels. So we brought our shovels and started pitching in helping shovel sand and mud while the ladies carried clothes inside. We left the guys a square nose shovel to finish the job.
Chad scouted for an area east than where we had been, especially where the army and other relief organizations such as Peace Boat might have missed. We found a gravel parking lot along the frontage road to the railroad tracks. Chad talked to a woman who came out of the house by the parking lot, and they decided this would be a good place. We hadn’t been to this exact neighborhood before, and looking around it was hard to believe anyone was living nearby. And who should come walking down the lane with a bullhorn, but the Peace Boat guy announcing they were setting up a station for a hot lunch (takidashi) nearby.

No danger of a train coming by and disturbing our operation—a stone’s throw away were a house and a car sitting on the railroad tracks.

I manned the clothing tarp, and as the team set up the food across the lane, people started appearing—like out of nowhere. After we had been there half an hour, a girl came up and introduced herself as Haruna. She asked my age and I asked hers—she was 15 and proudly introduced her mom.

I was happy to let her practice her very excellent English on me. I forgot to mention one of the first people to come over to the clothing area was an older woman who saw on display a new very luxurious blanket someone had donated. She could hardly believe her eyes—it was like Publisher’s Clearing House showing up at her door.

Earlier, entering the housing area the first thing we noticed was the junior high kids walking down the street in uniforms. We remembered then that although the rest of the country had started the new school term on April 8, the schools in the northeast area had been delayed by the effects of the disasters. From our view there is still nothing normal about life in these areas, but the authorities had decided that it was safe enough to set for today the opening ceremonies of the new term. The brightly decorated school opening sign and the clean, neat-as-a-pin uniforms of the kids in groups of three or four were in jarring contrast to the downed power lines, jumbled houses, cars, and unrecognizable debris and belongings. How in the world were these students with no power or water or bathroom or front door or kitchen or paper or pencils able to prepare for school?

We're almost cleaned up and some of the school kids walk by after opening day and Chad asks them how they feel about school starting and they say we're glad to be going back to school.

Beth and I had thrown our dirty clothes in the van this morning, so instead of going straight back, I went to find a coin laundry I’d seen earlier. Unfortunately, when I found it something didn’t look right. I called Chad on the cell and said “I think these are all dryers.” He said, “Hmm, look for somebody and ask, “sentaki?” So I converse with this guy in some kind of Englanese and he says drive that way two lights and turn left. I go “at McDonalds?” and he goes, “eh?” and then he says “oh, Makudonarudo.” Anyway I finally find the coin laundry and figure out which are the washers and dryers and the change machine (the soap dispenses into the washer automatically) and go get gas while the clothes are in the dryer.

In the meantime, three new arrivals: Joey Millard of Yokohama dropped by to spend the night. He has made 18 trips into the affected area over the month’s time, staying with contacts he has. And Paul and Ricky Clark, Chad’s inlaws, from Osaka arrived.

After we finally got back to the dojo and had dinner, we again shared our day’s highlights. At the Kitakamigawa post office parking lot, obaasan (grandma) Oikawa San had come up thrilled that we had come back since she had run out of rice (the village is getting their water and power back, but everyone’s cars had washed away). The people there told them they wished they could get meat, milk and yogurt, which no one had had in a long time. And Ricki told how she was shown the cows that that remained in the community near the rojin home.

And then Collin told this story which was actually from the previous day. While we had been walking around offering our help, Collin saw a 14 year-old boy playing basketball, so he walked up and joined in. His name was Yuusuke and he was actually from an area in the mountains but he was here staying with his grandparents. When Collin told him we were Christian volunteers, Yuusuke says, “I learned about God in school.” And Collin asks him, “really, how?” and he says, “my friend was a Christian and he died in the tsunami.” Then he says to Collin, very serious-like, he says, “I believe he saved my life, like he was watching over me.” And then he doesn’t really want to talk about that any more.

And then Collin says how good he is and Yuusuke says his goal is to get real good, and somehow make enough money to send some home to help people here. He says that’s my hope, but my friends don’t have much hope—but it’s really good for school to start, it’s good for all of us, like because now when we go to school we feel like life may actually go on.