Community

Both a very satisfying and a very harrowing day today.
I have come once again to Rikuzentakata in Tohoku with a Hiroshima based volunteer group. The last time I came I was literally clearing wreckage. 2 months has passed since then and I am pleased to say you can see a small but noticeable difference in the enormous mountains of wreckage here.
Today I have spent visiting temporary housing settlements of people displaced by the tsunami, handing out a few hundred Chinese cabbages, clothes, hot water bottles and other goods to help deal with the fast approaching winter, as well as Halloween treats to the students of an elementary school and tulip bulbs and daffodil seeds to try and provide some colour for Spring.
It has been nice to see the goods we collected delivered directly into the hands of people who clearly want and need them and are delighted to get them. Thanks so much to everyone who donated.
On the other hand it has been hard to know anything meaningful to say to the people we meet. "Ganbatte ne" feels patronizing as hell. "taihen deshita ne" is the understatement of the century.
One lady said, " I can't get my head around why so many strangers come here from so far away to help us". I said " but if it were the other way round and it happened to us, people from here would come" .
She said " that's just it. We were talking about it the other day and we were saying we are not sure if we would have. And we feel terrible... grateful, but so ashamed".
I said, " no, you would have. It's the same country that we live in. It is different from a disaster in another country. Some people would have come".

" Please keep coming. When you ask what we need, more than things, it's that people keep
coming. And that they don't forget us".

The photo is of the community centre for the block of about 70 huts. It is about 5 yards squared. For 70 families. It was the biggest they could fit up the road to the site.

The same lady left me saying "thanks for this hot water bottle. I'll cuddle it at night. I've noone else left to cuddle at night". In a totally resigned and undramatic tone of voice.
That was the first time I wept today.

The next was this evening, when 69 year old Mr Suzuki and Mr Chiba told me this is the second time their lives have been swept away by a tsunami. Mr Suzuki's family all managed to survive, but he weeps as he tells me and the guilt eats him up. He tells me of the children crying out in terror in the evacuation center after it happened, and he can't get it out of his mind.

There is nothing I can say, but he says " please keep coming. Don't forget about us".

2 people both stricken, separately, but the exact same message.

Breaks my heart, but I'm glad I came.